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Stark Industries | Saturday

This was not the first time Fandom had turned Topher into a pony. It was, however, the first time Fandom had turned him into a pony when Topher had a date planned.

Fandom, you were such an ass sometimes.

So he went to work, hovering a little behind the counter (because disgruntled or not, it wasn't like he was just going to waste the wings) and prodding at a circuit board with a hoof.

It didn't immediately break, but Topher decided it was best not to chance it and left it alone from there.

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Considering the strangeness of the island, Samus wasn't too surprised to wake up and find herself in the body of a freaking pony. It was a little unsettling and upsetting, but only if she bothered thinking about it for too long, which she wasn't going to allow herself to do.

She did think it was pretty strange that her suit changed, too. Really, it did make sense than perhaps the design was so attuned to her physical state that the Chozo had made it so, whatever form she was in, the suit matched it. It made sense on how the Morph Ball worked and a few others things, but the technicalities were the sorts of things that would nag at her until she figured it out.

So there she was, coming into the shop and doing a quick glance over the person there to assure that it was indeed Brink, and she gave him a stiff nod. "I'll be downstairs in the lab," she informed him, "if anyone needs me."

How she was going to run tests was still a little unclear, considering the hooves, but she'd figure something out.

Topher scrambled a little to hover a little higher -- because, you know, moving around the desk was for people who didn't have wings -- to get a better look at Samus.

"Your suit changed," he observed. "You're --" Huh. "Is that metal, or, like, pony-skin?"

Topher, don't be weird.

Samus lifted a hoof to bang it on something nearby so that the distinct ring of metal would confirm her words. "Metal," she assured him. "Same make up as my regular suit, just a different shape. That's what I'm going downstairs to look into..."

She didn't think to see if she could still Morph in this form, too, and so that now became a top priority as well. She eyes Brink and his hovering a little, tilting her head.

"You've been on the island for a little while, right? Has something like this happened before?"

"Yeah," Topher confirmed. "Last year. Probably before then but I've only been around a year. If you're going to run tests on it, can I help?"

No one ever let him do tests, okay.

It really was a shame that the visor prevented Brink from seeing Samus's lifted eyebrow. This wasn't a refrigerator that stopped working. This was her Power Suit. It would feel like giving a pair of scissors to a kid and telling him to perform open heart surgery on you.

"If I need some assistance," she said diplomatically, "I'll let you know."

"Can you need assistance now?"

Sorry, Samus. Topher had a thing about shiny red and gold suits. And scientific testing in general. And... helping.

Samus snorted, shaking her head. "Maybe with the door," she said. Because....hooves. She was thinking of blasting it off since she still had one leg as a gun, and then she could fix it later when she had hands again.

Topher sulked. "I meant with something cooler."

"Want me to go blast out of refrigerator for you?" Samus offered coolly. He could sulk as much as he wanted, she wasn't letting anyone else close to this suit.

"I did that last week," Topher whined. "Suits are awesome. Pleeeeeease?"

"No," said Samus, lifting a leg, and charging the laser on her gun so she could slice out the door to get downstairs easily.

Topher eyed her.

"What are you doing?"

"Blasting the door," Samus informed him. "You can fix it if you're really that bored. And I'm sure I can probably convince Jarvis to take care of opening the door, but this gives me an idea of what the power on my blaster is in this form."

...

"Jarvis?"

The name sounded familiar.

"And you get a blaster? That is so unfair. And awesome."

Samus, you were well above adoration from teenage boys. Got it?

"Yup," she agreed and, blaster charged, quickly dismissed of the door to the downstairs lab with surprising precision, only a little bit of smoke, and the pieces of the door settling at a respectable distance so that no one got hurt. Last thing she wanted to deal with was liability papers on the death of one of her employees.

...

"Holy shit."

Wow.

"That is the second-coolest armor I have ever seen."

"Second?" asked Samus, because that was just too oddly specific not to wonder.

"Don't worry about it," Topher said diplomatically. Because he was the best at secrets, guys. The best. "Nothing shameful about being number two."

...

Topher snickered. "Number two."

Topher was five.

"....Right," said Samus, after a moment. She shook her head slightly. "Anyway, like I said, I'll be downstairs if you need anything." A faint sigh sounded from behind the visor. "And if anything cool comes up that you can help with, I'll let you know."

But don't hold your breath, Brink.

With that, Samus's suit seemed to collapse in on itself, with a little bit of blue lightning discharge, as she curled up into a Morph Ball and went down the stairs like that. Not because she was showing off to see if the number one best suit could do the same. It was all just making sure the suit could still do it in pony form. Really.

The number-one best suit could do anything, Samus. Don't even.

That was not to say, however, that Topher didn't flail a little bit excitedly when he saw that Morphing thing. Because that was sort of awesome.

He'd just be here. Wondering why he'd never made a suit of armor, and thinking up superhero names for himself. Because.

Victor had been told the island turned people into strange things sometimes. He just figured it wouldn't hit him, thanks to the not-exactly-people factor.

Turned out he was wrong. After a morning spent on the border of panic -- and a couple of near-bluescreens when he started thinking about it too hard and overloaded his circuits -- he decided to go find his big brother. If nothing else, Topher might have some clue how long this would last.

So an orange pony with a brown mane and tail trotted into Stark, light sparks coming from his mouth as he spoke.

"Topher?" he checked. "This is weird. I figured I'd be immune."

The voice was Victor's, but the tone was a bit artificial; the mechanical elements behind his voicebox weren't really structured for pony transformation.

Topher squinted at him. "Victor," he guessed. "Yeah, sadly it doesn't seem to take metal exo-whatevers as a deterrent." Sad, that. "Got Tony too," he added, offering a meaningful look to try to convey the relevance here.

A suit of armor on a pony couldn't be comfortable.

[[Sorry for slow, my dad's in town and wanted to, like, go places. WEIRDO.]]

The orange pony tilted his head, as if what Topher had said didn't quite make sense.

"Wait, that's not even part of his body, is it?" Victor asked, and shook his forelock out of his eyes. "And yeah. I'm ... still me. I think. Ponybot."

"Not permanently," Topher said, like that should've been obvious. "I guess he fell asleep in the armor or something. But yeah." He shrugged. "What's with the blue thing?"

Not that he had been looking at Victor's ass or anything, but it was hard not to wonder.

~~But it was such a nice ass.~~

Victor had no idea. But now he was going to trot in a circle and crane his neck to try to see it.

"Kind of looks like a ~~very badly drawn~~ bolt of electricity," he said, once he managed to get a glimpse. "Why it's on my hip, I have no idea. Do you have one?"

"No clue," Topher said, flapping his wings a little so he was hovering high enough for Victor to take a look. "Anything?"

"No mark, only the wings," Victor told him. "Dude, you got wings!"

Ponybots were apparently a little slow on the uptake.

Edited 2012-05-19 23:53 (UTC)

"Yup," Topher said smugly. "This is like the fifth time I've gotten to fly since I first came here. The island kinda loves me."

Topher was forgetting that the circumstances of all his previous flying adventures had been slightly horrible.

"No fair," Victor said, and frowned, and concentrated very hard on the metal in the building's foundation and the earth below to see if he could use his magnetism to float.

He managed to hover ... perhaps three inches above the ground, for perhaps 30 seconds before collapsing with a floomf and a slide of hooves against linoleum that stopped just shy of disaster.

"My balance is totally wrong for that now." Not that he was so good at it even when he was human-shaped. "So, lucky you."

"I know," Topher gloated. Without thinking, he added, "You should try going out with Billy. He has a flying disk thing."

Don't try going out with Billy, Victor. Please?

... yeah, Victor and Billy's romantic spark was less than nonexistent. No reason to worry.

"Flying disk thing?" he repeated, distracted from WTFPONY for the moment. "Like, a ship?"

That was different.

"Flying disk," Topher repeated. "Like... a circle. That hovers and flies around and transports us to Doombots. It's 'magic.'"

'Magic' got finger-quotes because Topher refused to buy that. Hush.

Topher's ability to communicate finger quotes while a pony might count as a superpower.

"It is magic," Victor said, not understanding the tone. "That's like ... a thing he does. Dios, don't tell me you're a don't-believe-in-magic type?"

Though Billy's choice of Doombots as a tourist destination was a bit less explicable.

Fine, hoof-quotes. ~~SHUT UP, I FORGOT.~~

"Nooot in so many words," Topher hedged. "I prefer to think of it as 'other universes' physics.'"

Because that made sense.

"That's kind of it," Victor said. "Except it's bigger than physics, and it has its own rules."

He shrugged. "I dated a witch for a while."

"Gross," Topher said instinctively.

He had Trauma.

Although... that wasn't so far from what Billy was, really, so...

"Gross?"

"... no?"

Victor made it sound like a question right back at Topher.

"I'm not going to date somebody gross, man."

"Some people do!" Topher protested reasonably. If you were Topher. "Girls are... gross sometimes. I don't know, maybe there's a shortage of options or something."

Topher, just grow up and make out with Summer Glau already, god.

Well, okay, so there'd kind of been a shortage of options in the hostel, but that wasn't the only reason Victor had fallen for Nico.

"She's this kickass Japanese goth chick," Victor said. "Way smarter than me, even if she's mad at me right now."

This was because he'd tripped and fallen on someone else's lips.

"We're still friends," he finished. "You ... don't date girls at all?"

"Ew, no," Topher said, making a face. "They're gross and they talk weird and they just like to talk about clothes. Pass."

Topher, were you a Whedon creation or not?

"If they're smart I guess they're okay, though," he granted after a moment, a little reluctantly.

Victor rolled his eyes.

"That's incredibly sexist." A beat. "But they do sometimes talk about clothes at weird times."

"Seriously," Topher echoed emphatically. "Kenzi and her shoes, man."

"They're pretty good shoes."

What? You don't live with teenage girls and not pick this stuff up.

"You guys are friends?"

"Oh yeah," Topher confirmed. "We got attacked by giant rats together on Thanksgiving. Besties."

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Stark Industries | Saturday

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