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“As much as I’m loath to admit it, we’re in need of some ship repair. And Lucy’s been having some problems with her voice synthesizer and translation algorithm and, brilliant though I am, I haven’t been able to fix her up.”
Barely looking up, she responds, “You’ll want the Stark kid and his crew. Kid’s a genius and he’s been tinkering with his own AI since Lord knows when. He’ll have Lucy shipshape,”
“A genius like I’m a genius, right?”
She shrugs. “You’re the one askin’ for help.”
“Alright, alright. Anything I should know.”
“Don’t go looking for trouble with Stark’s crew. The Rhodes kid’s got about every weapon there is and then some, and Potts has connections through half the quad.”
“Duly noted.”
----
“Hello sweetheart,” Tony Stark says to Lucy as he enters the ship.
Dutch nudges Johnny, “Don’t get jealous,” she teases softly.
“Pff. Jealous.”
“My naAm-error - Lu - is - cY -error.”
“Oof, yeah, that doesn’t sound fun. Alright, Lucy, my name’s Tony, and I’m gonna help you out with that voice problem. This is Rhodey, and that’s Pepper.”
Rhodey, behind him, stood on two wholly-cybernetic legs that looked like they probably had weapons built into them which. Cool. Cool but terrifying, especially given that Rhodey was staring at the three of them as though carefully assessing how long it would take him to take all of them out. And Pepper Potts doesn’t look like someone who probably has blackmail material on half the quad until you catch the wrong corner of her eye.
Basically, he’s really hoping this goes well.
“Hmm, yeah,” Stark says, looking at a screen he’s hooked into the wall. “You said you took engine damage?”
“Couple days ago, yeah. Got it mostly working but it’s still limping a little.”
“Honeybear, you want to take a look at that?”
Rhodey - or Honeybear, evidently - takes a suspicious look at Dutch and D’avin.
“I’ll be fine, go have fun.” Stark says,
“I can show you to the engine room,” D’avin offers.
Rhodes shrugs. “Alright, I’ll take a look.”
“Thanks, Platypus.” Stark says, smiling. “Now, have you tried -”
Johnny looks over his shoulder at the screen. “Yeah, and -” He flips around some of the code, “Tried that as well.”
“What about a full -”
“Can’t do it. But I tried resetting most of the voice synthesis systems and language processing, and checked for signal degradation.”
“What about -”
“Yup, tried it. Here’s my latest patch.”
“Huh.” Stark scrolls through the code. “You’re one hell of a programmer, what are you doin’ hanging around with these Killjoys? You should be working on this full time.”
Johnny shrugs. “I happen to be one of these Killjoys. ‘Sides, I like ‘em, and someone has to keep them from getting themselves killed, or blowing up half the ship, or -”
“Well, if you ever change your mind, you know where to find me. There’ll be plenty of job openings for people who can code an AI like this. Speaking of which,” He adds, “Jarvis, whaddya think?”
“There may be an underlying problem with the processing matrix,” a lightly accented voice speaks from the padd.
“How’d you get an AI on something that small?”
“Ah, Jarvis isn’t on here, his brain’s in our ship, he’s just transmitting over to the padd.”
“Hello, Lucy, Johnny, Dutch. Hello again, Miss Potts, sir.”
“Hey, Jarvis.” Johnny says. Dutch nods. Lucy is uncharacteristically silent.
“Lucy?” Stark asks.
“I think she’s just - embarrassed.” Johnny gestures to his throat to indicate voice.
“Ah,” And a new message pops up on the screen. “Oh, look, Lucy says hello, Jarvis,”
“I am aware.” Jarvis says, and Johnny has a sneaking suspicion that the two AI are now in a conversation well outside the earshot of the surrounding humans.
“Alright,” Stark rubs his hands together, “Shall we get started?”
---
About an hour or so later - Johnny had definitely lost track of time - Rhodey and D’avin wandered back from the engine room.
“Well, half of what you’ve done to that engine I’ve never seen before, but she’s fixed now, and I think you should get some extra efficiency. I also reinforced some of your weak points so the engine shouldn’t take it so hard next time.”
“You’ve got perfect timing, Sugarplum, ‘cause I think we’ve - okay, try it now,”
“Hello, Mr. Rhodes.”
“Whoo!” Johnny and Tony high five.
“Hey, isn’t that better now, sweetheart?” Tony says.
“My name is still Lucy,” Lucy says, “But thank you,”
“Anytime. You, Lucy, are an absolute beauty.”
“Oh, Tony, are you sweet talking the ship?”
Pepper wanders back in with Dutch - Johnny hadn’t realized they left.
“Hey, where’d you get to?” He asks Dutch, who rolls her eyes.
“Sparring.”
“Really?”
“No, it turns out Pepper has access to the best tea on the quad on top of leverage on half the idiots we have to deal with around here.”
“... Fair enough.”