tushanshu | 1 ⏚ [Video]

[Victor is looking straight into the camera; he's got nothing to hide, after all. He seems fairly nonchalant about being here, and he mostly is, except for a couple of concerns about people he's left behind. Sure, giant turtle cities are pretty weird as alternate dimensions go, but he can cope. At least people seem to be friendly enough, and it does sound like his help might be needed.]

Hey. My name's Victor, and I just got here, so I thought I'd say hi and see who else is here. I, uh, don't think many people will recognise me, unless my friends turned up as well and I just didn't see them. Mostly I'm looking for a couple of kids called Molly and Klara, so if anyone sees them can they let me know?

[He shrugs, and looks down at the console itself, now looking a little confused.]

Anyone know how these consoles work? I usually do okay with technology, but I can't even tell what these are made of. I don't want to mess around with them if I don't know if I can read the code... if they even run on code.

[He'll avoid mentioning why he's usually good with technology, though. He's not sure what kind of prejudices people even have here, and cyborgs usually make people a little uncomfortable even at home. He looks up again suddenly, having just remembered something.]

Speaking of which, I'm meant to find a job, apparently. Anyone know anyone who needs a mechanic or an electrician? I'm not officially trained, but I'm good for an amateur and I pick things up pretty quickly.

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Under the tar pits, dude. The Pride's old base. Unless you're saying some other Iron Man turned up to haul us off.

[Which is, logically speaking, possible, but not likely.]

Edited (oops icon) 2014-02-23 13:30 (UTC)

So, let me get this straight. Iron Man attacked an underground group of lions under the tar pits and you're mad because—Wait, was this a lab? Were they cloning extinct lions? Is there some kind of Jurassic Park for big cats in Los Angeles, because believe me, that is not going to end as well as everyone thinks it will.

[ What? It's possible. That's the biggest lesson he's coming away with from his experience here. Anything is possible. ]

Edited 2014-02-23 22:21 (UTC)

[Just. Victor's about three seconds from a full reset trying to understand that. Literally, in fact.]

Uh... no. The Pride. Big super-villain organisation. Used to run LA pretty thoroughly. Me and some friends of mine were staying in one of their old bases, until you turned up.

[There's no way Stark could have forgotten that, unless...]

Or... I guess it could have just been someone who looked and sounded a lot like you in an Iron Man suit. None of this is sounding at all familiar, is it?

Well...

[ Is it possible that he would do something and royally screw up? Absolutely. He's never heard of the Pride. He doesn't know about any super-villain group, unless Loki and Justin Hammer joined forces, and if that has happened, he thinks "super" might be a bit of a misnomer. Which means that this is likely a case of mistaken reality.

Again. ]

I don't remember any of this, so I'm guessing it wasn't me. Which isn't to say that it wasn't Tony Stark. See, thing is, around this place, we're not all from the same, ah, universe. Alternate realities? That's a thing. You'll probably see it sooner or later. Like, for instance, there's another Stark here. Maybe he's your culprit.

[ He is not above throwing the other Tony Stark under the bus. ]

[Well, that's... a little embarrassing. Okay, wishing for the ground to swallow him levels of shame. The problem with being able to erase your own memories is that it really doesn't erase anyone else's at the same time.]

Oh.

I, uh. Sorry.

[He's doing a lot of apologising since he got here, but this one might be the biggest gaffe he's made so far. Assuming Stark's telling the truth, at least.]

Yeah, I know about alternate realities. I guess that's possible, unless he's not the same Iron Man either.

Eh, don't worry about it.

[ He waves the apology away with a flick of his wrist. Most of the time, he is guilty of whatever he's being accused of. It's no skin off his back. ]

Maybe not. There's apparently an infinite number of us — [ Scary thought. ] — so chances are, we'll run into one who has problems with the feline super-villains eventually.

They, uh, weren't actually feline. Just villains. I'd say human, but some of them actually weren't, so that's not helpful.

[He realises he's babbling nervously, and stops with some amount of willpower.]

Can I start again? Hi, I'm Victor, I'm pretty good with technology as long as I can touch it. I mean, I can't design it, and I can't build it from scratch without some clue about what I'm doing, but I can usually pick up an idea of what I'm doing if the parts are there, or I can usually tell you what something does. As long as it's mostly metal, anyway.

[ Starting over is perfectly fine in Tony's book and he introduces himself too. ]

Tony Stark. Also Iron Man. Pleased to meet you.

[ And he is, minor kerfluffle notwithstanding. ]

Sounds like you're good with your hands. I can relate. That's how I learn too. So your specialty's metal? What do you like to work on? If you could pick anything, what would it be?

Metals and electronics, yeah. I guess the term's a technopath?

[Which isn't really that far from the truth, if you break it down into linguistics. He does talk to machines, after all. He shrugs, a little awkwardly, and carries on answering the questions.]

Usually computers, stuff like that. Or radios, I'm usually pretty good at communications. Built my own police scanner, once. I've been picking up some stuff on vehicle maintenance recently, too.

[ Tony's acquainted well enough with science fiction and fantasy that he recognizes the term, even if he isn't familiar with just what it means in the type of universe Victor comes from. ]

Sounds like my kind of guy. You want a job at Stark Industries - this place's version, not lion people world's - I can find one for you. Fair warning, you'd have to work with me a lot. Close quarters. Crazy tech inventions. Promise I won't wreck anyone's tar pit, though.

[He hesitates, because on the one hand, the Iron Man he knows of is basically a jerk. Also, there are so many ways he could screw up, it's not even funny. On the other hand, how many people can say they worked with Iron Man?]

Well, not having the place I'm living wrecked is a nice bonus, but just checking. Is this paid, or is it some kind of unpaid internship deal?

[ Tony knows that he's a jerk. He isn't aware of the level of jerkitude that his counterpart from Victor's world has reached, but he knows he's got some extremely jerkish tendencies. ]

Unpaid? [ His nose wrinkles. ] Who does unpaid internships? That's a waste of time. And cheap. I'm not cheap. You work for me, you get compensated for your time. Time's too valuable not to get paid for it.

[Okay, Victor's still not about to admit the other Iron Man from back home is less of a jerk, but this one has actually made a reasonable impression. Victor's still expecting jerk tendencies, mind, but if he couldn't deal with those occasionally he'd have strangled Chase a long time ago.]

I didn't even graduate high school, and I'm a Mexican kid from the wrong side of LA. It's pretty much unpaid or minimum wage, back home.

[He shrugs, though, because it's not a major issue right now.]

I'd like to know what I'd be doing first, but other than that, sounds good to me.

First rule of Stark Industries. [ If he says it like he's making a reference to Fight Club, that's because he is. ] Minimum wage is a dirty word.

[ All of the SI employees get paid handsomely. And why not? Back home, it makes a fortune. Here, sadly, they're not quite in the billions. But the philosophy's the same. ]

As for work, it depends on the project. Coding computers. Building vehicles. Building things that aren't vehicles. Working on robots. That sort of thing.

Okay. Some of it I might need to take a crash course in, but that shouldn't take that long.

[It might take a little time to pick up the differences between his own code and whatever Stark's using, but that shouldn't be too hard. And as for the rest of it; well, presumably no-one's going to leave him unsupervised with things he can mess up too badly, at least at first.]

Yeah, I can definitely try, at least.

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