madimpossibledreamer | System Error: Identity Manager (Part XVIII)

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...
Star Trek AU
Word Count: 375
Rating: Teen

        “I’m sorry,” Rogers says for the forty-eighth time, and Stark smirks, not glancing away from his PADD. He’s gotta use it before it disintegrates in his hands.
        “Tell Pepper. Better yet, tell Laufeyson thanks for the containment room.” He’s sweating through his engineering reds, which is a pretty good indication the infection is starting to burn through him. “Because I guarantee if you’d brought me back to the Avenger this virus would’ve eaten it without even bothering to chew.”
        He’d thought it would have gone for the Asgardian tech, too, but it hasn’t. Yet. His best bets are either that it hasn’t worked out how to eat the Asgardian technology as something new, or the loaned tech incorporates nanobots, which is where he’s planning to go. A traditional style antibody injection, essentially—injecting himself with nanobots to fight the nanobots, and hoping the right nanobots get eaten. It’s a gamble, but it’s the only chance he’s got.
        In the corner of his vision, Cap makes a face, mostly because his pride is probably protesting at the idea of thanking Laufeyson for anything. And also because he’s probably feeling guilty again as the Captain of the whole ship. Like every single person is his responsibility.
        He’d argue, probably, that that was the very definition of a starship captain, but hey. Stark didn’t put much stock in definitions.
        “And hey, it was my call to come down for the Away Mission. You know you couldn’t order me.” He’s made it a point to ignore orders before—small ones, that won’t affect operations, just to make a statement. “If not for the whole ‘possibly dying’ part I’d be over the moon. This Technovore stuff is incredible.”
        “And terrifying, and you had better not die on my watch, Stark. Banner and Potts will mutiny if you don’t make it.” As amusing an image as that is…yeah, probably not the best of ideas. They’d get delusions of grandeur.
        Some of the stuff he’s writing in don’t make sense, but he’s in a flow now, so apparently stabilizing the nanobots—he’s gotta have a better name for it, like Extremis maybe—and programming in personalities even though that seems like a waste of time seem to be orders of the day.