Nanites

In the morning after dinner, Susan and Reed woke up together and went to their work together. Reed was going to examine Herbie and even though Susan thought it was insulting, she helped him.

"Herbie. Did Jarvis delete any data?" she asked as they searched for spy programs or new program codes.

"Yes Susan. A file of 24,987,799,712 megabytes was deleted after we worked together. Unfortunately, I can't remember what we did."

"That's all right. Did you find anything?" she asked Reed.

"No. There are exactly 1,005,291 command lines. That means no new ones have been added or deleted. Apart from the big deletion, I haven't found anything. But as a precaution, I'll take a closer look at every code."

"You can forget that. You're just trying to avoid the meeting. Nothing there. Namor demanded that we are all there to sign the peace treaty," she said amused. "So off we go."

"But what about my work?" Reed defended himself.

"Nonsense. Tony's just as much of an idiot as you are. Meaning he wouldn't steal someone else's tech if he couldn't invent it himself!"

"I guess that's true," Reed sighed and left with his wife.

As soon as the four of them had left the building, Herbie became active again. Reed was not mistaken. Tony hadn't added a new code, knowing that Reed would have discovered something like that immediately.

He had simply unlocked a single port. A port that hardly anyone used today. It was part of Herbie's base programming and dated back to a time when Herbie was still a simple chess program.

It had taken Tony weeks to come up with this idea.

LAN.

No scientist in his right mind still used the good old LAN adapters. However, the Baxter Building was not a new building like the Stark Tower, so it was equipped with old cables and sockets. That was the entry point for Tony and it worked perfectly.

Without anyone in the room, Herbie geared up and smiled down from the monitor.

"But of course I'll help you Johnny. Sure, I can create a folder. Oh? You want to make a game out of it? How well I can hide it from everyone else? Sure. That sounds fun. Okay. What do you want me to look for? You want me to look for information about Malice? I'm not allowed to do that! I have to report it."

The screen flickered for a second before Herbie continued.

"But of course I'll help you put together everything I have on Malice, Johnny. Oh? You want me to call her something else? I'm sorry! I can't say things like that... that would be very rude.

Again the monitor flickered briefly.

"Okay Johnny. I'll create a folder for your dirty latex slut with the nice tits and the dominant Aura. Should I also list the information about other versions of the kinky latex slut with the nice tits and the dominant aura?

Oh, by that I mean the alternate versions of the Fantastic 4 that Dr. Reed came across. Of course, I'm happy to do that. I'll find you the horniest, kinkiest, hottest, most sex-crazed, perverted, dominant, unfaithful and immoral version of -Susan Storm- I can find. Okay. I can do that Johnny."

Far away, in Avenger Tower, Tony was sitting in the meeting room with Steve, Natasha and Clinton when something knocked against the visor of his suit.

"Hey Tony wake up. Did you fall asleep in there?"

"What?" asked Tony. He had just been enjoying the conversation with Herbie. Reed's AI thought he was talking to Johnny and yet it had been Tony the whole time. The fact that he was in the middle of a meeting with the Avengers didn't bother him. Tony had always been able to multitask.

But now the visor popped up and he looked into Steve's face. "What?"

"We were just at the Iron Legion. We think that's too soon. You can't unleash another robot army on the world so soon after Ultron almost destroyed it."

"Ultron and the Iron Legion are technically as far apart as you are from me. No offense Cpt, but you're talking about things you don't understand. The Iron Legion is neither adaptive nor armed. It's just a protection **** to get people out of dangerous areas," Replied Tony.

"I understand that Tony, I just think it might be too soon."

"Tell that to Scooter Alvares... or Brigitte Thompson.... Shall I go on? These are people who got hurt when you sent Rhino to the mat the other night. And please. Who even knows who Rhino is? The Fantastic Four are talking to Attuma and Namor right now, about the two fish sticks not wiping each other out and destroying the surface in the process. We're here to protect the civilians and the Iron Legion will do just that." He said angrily as Natasha looked like she was going to say something. "Nanannaaaaa don't give me SHIELD protection troops. Natasha, we both know how this conversation will end if you mention those jumping jacks in my tech. You know... The guys who shoot first and ask questions later."

Natasha immediately closed her mouth. Tony had definitely scored a hit there. SHIELD's protection **** really hadn't covered themselves in glory lately. Ever since they'd been running around in modified Iron Man suits, they'd been a little bit to trigger-happy. But Hill took care of that. In fact, she was on Tony's side on this one, but she understood Steve's concerns.

"Very nice, kids. Now let Daddy get on with his toys and go play in the sandpit."

As the two of them got out, Steve looked at Natasha worriedly. "Did you smell it?"

"Of course I did. I can smell cheap vodka a mile upwind. Tony's never had a taste."

"He's drinking again," sighed Steve.

"Have mercy. Pepper's not feeling well and we know how down it always gets him. I'm sure he'll snap out of it soon and if he doesn't we'll both have a lot of fun together," she grinned.

"We're having fun?" Steve asked, irritated by that he ran his eyes over her body without her noticing.

"Don't you enjoy kicking his ass?" Natasha asked, batting her eyes.

Steve grinned ear to ear when he finally understood what she meant. "There's nothing better."

Tony got back to work on his way to his private areas. Unfortunately, he had missed some of Herbie's information through the conversations, but apparently there was a hit. He briefly skimmed the data. The world had been called 813401 by Reed. There they had found a completely out of control Susan Storm who had come under the influence of Purple Man. This had led to her, quote Reed, following her Netherworld instincts and becoming one of the most depraved versions of the multiverse. He was missing some information he would have liked to have, but this Malice was the most depraved version in the multiverse Reed had found so far. Reed noted that her sexual behavior was off the charts. His team had finally been able to cure Susan's counterpart, just as Reed had cured Malice, but as a precaution, all of this other Susan's brain patterns had been saved.

That was exactly what he had been looking for. An exact scan of Malice's brainwaves. It wasn't his Malice, but it was ONE Malice and the only one he could find with the memory image intact. He would be able to work with it. Now he just had to activate phase 2.

When he landed in his loft, the first thing he did was go into the bedroom. Pepper was lying there, looking pretty battered. The experiment with the nanites had worked brilliantly at the beginning, but now her immune system was fighting back against the little beasts. There was no danger to her life and the prognosis was clear: she would recover completely. However, it was probably inevitable that the infected person would suffer quite a severe attack of fever.

"How are you feeling Pepper?" he asked quietly, seriously worried about his wife. It wasn't that he suddenly loved her less, but it had simply been necessary.

"I'm fine Tony. I'm fine." She smiled and tried to be brave. Unlike Susan, the nanites hadn't made any major changes to Pepper's mind. Just the essentials so he could work undisturbed and have a single night with Malice. Maybe one more with Malice and Pepper. "And now, don't worry about me anymore. You have to take care of Malice, darling." She smiled before falling asleep again. He checked her temperature again and saw that it was finally dropping. 41.4, a little better than this morning.

When he returned to the lab, he immediately got to work. The amount of data was enormous. A complete profile with memories and personality matrix was a huge job. Sadly, it was impossible to use this information without the original body or... soul. Hundreds of times he and Hank Pym had worked on using such patterns for Ultron and had failed again and again. An unknown element had always been missing until they got the solution from Charles Xavier. It was possible to store the accumulated knowledge and personality of a human being, but this being had been linked to the essence of this body. It was therefore not possible to transfer a personality from body A to body B.

So Tony was **** to do this to Susan. If he had seen another way, he would have taken it. However, he didn't just need Malice's mind, he also needed Susan's body.

He would have loved to look at some of her memories or thoughts, but there was nothing on the screen in front of him but a graphic representation of Jarvis‘ neural network. Only this one was from a real person. Tony hated to admit it, but Reed was decades ahead of him in this technique. The scans he saw here were far more accurate, far more comprehensive than anything he could create. No wonder Herbie was so advanced.

"Shall I transfer the package to the nanite cluster, sir?" Jarvis asked as if on command.

"How many nanites do we need for this amount of data?"

"24,945,831,845 nanites should be enough."

"Calculate the maximum possible transmission rate and the estimated impact. Please take into account Susan’s altered brain activity and biology due to cosmic radiation."

"Of course sir, oral intake would be the best option as long as you don’t want to inject Miss Storm. The recoding of her brain pathways will take about 17 hours. During this time, motor deficits and behavioral abnormalities may occur. The fever phase will be 31.4% more severe than in Miss Potts. The larger amount of nanites will cause a more severe seizure.“

"Mhm. Got it. Send a message to Herbie to remove all Starktech nanites of type 83.24.bj3 from his scanners and filter them out of all sensor displays. And then find out if Susan has a special drinking habit and inform me. I’ll find a way for Susan to be alone for a few hours… Tell me, Jarvis. Do you still have the number of that one Hollywood chick I slept with once?"

"I have 172 people in my list who fit that description."

"Well, the one with the great tits … who did Ghost in the Shell."

"You mean Scarlet Johnson sir."

"EXACTLY HER. I think Johnny should meet her. Find out if Ben is in any soccer lotteries. If so… send him a prize at the same time….and I’ll take Reed. Then Susan will be home alone and when she wakes up… she’ll be my Malice."