System Error: Identity Manager (Part XV)

[madimpossibledreamer]

Main Points:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Iron Man Crossover (Self-Made Hero)
Summary: Despite how it might look, the transition isn't easy. There's only so long the destabilized situation can continue before something's gotta give...
Miraculous AU
Word Count: 665
Rating: Teen

        If Tony was pressed to design a cyberhell, it would absolutely look something like this.  It’s just a void with random lines of code swirling around like it’s the Matrix, and he’s just…floating.  Sure, he can move around, kinda like swimming, and it makes absolutely no difference because it’s all the same.  The code, though, maybe there’s a secret in the code—  He tries to catch them as they move past and finds that they’re absolute gibberish, a script kiddie trying to adapt code they’ve bought with no clue of what they’re doing at best.  Though…
        He squints.
        This isn’t an attempt to build a virus.  It looks like maybe it’s actually the opposite, baby’s first attempt at an antivirus or…nah, more like some kid’s trying to pin down why some programs aren’t playing so nice on their computer and rather than do research or ask anyone they’re just blindly poking around with rewriting the programs themselves in the hopes they’ll just randomly stumble across what they need before they wreck their system, the program, or anything else.  Sure, that kind of ‘throwing stuff at the wall’ approach can work, but there’s no indication they even bothered to create a backup.  And educated guesses really could help out in a situation like this.  Right now, there’s a high schooler or something flying by touch.
        “JARVIS?  Yinsin?” he calls out, but there’s no reply.  Not to that.
        Hmm.
        Maybe he can help out?  Assuming this isn’t one big trick to get him to help out the bad guys—that’s it, isn’t it.
        The ensuing headache is painful enough he wants to throw up.  Somehow, he manages not to, though it wouldn’t matter if he did in the cyberhell void, probably.
        This isn’t working!  The voice is familiar, frustrated, but not in an ‘oh shucks my evil plan’ way.  It’s panicked.  Like someone’s going to die, and oh he wishes he didn’t know what that sounds like.
        “Keep your fur on, kid.  This cat can herd himself,” he muses out loud, rolls up his probably metaphorical sleeves, and gets to work writing the relevant code.
        As he does, it becomes clearer why and how all of this is working.  The lines of code become more coherent, to the point he can actually read what’s going on.
        He’s basically a program like JARVIS, only someone went to the trouble of uploading all of his memories, too, the kind of thing that could only be accomplished with magic.  Some people might be a little self-conscious about that kind of thing, but he’d always considered that possibility.  I mean, who didn’t want to live forever?  He was still Tony Stark, just in a new format.  And then there are a ton of different Tony Starks, too, with new and interesting inventions, and he can’t wait to have a conversation with them.
        The kid actually is a kid.  He’s also their hardware, which is what surprises him.  He’d expected a robot, maybe, or possibly a computer.  But—oh, okay, supervillain, basically.  The kid hadn’t meant to end up here.  That makes more sense.  Because at minimum he’d think that someone would, ah, ‘upgrade’ their hardware if they were planning this kind of thing.  It makes his words about ‘herding himself’ a little ironic, really.  Because essentially, that’s what he’s been doing.  Struggling or denying it was only making the process harder.  Which is bad, because they’re on a time crunch.  The exact timeframe, that’s hard to see, but their ‘hardware’ is overheating and slowly dying.  They’ve got estimations, but anything could speed up or slow down the process.
        “Lousy deal, kid,” he acknowledges.  But it’s not the first time he’s pulled off a miracle, and it won’t be the last.  And they’re superheroes, several of them, so saving people is what they do.  “Hang in there.”
        Hilarious, coming from a cat, the kid’s voice says more clearly, and he grins.  From the sense of humor, they’re absolutely going to get along.