TITLE: In Extremis
Iron Man (movie)/Transformers (movie)
AUTHOR: Macx
RATING: PG-13
DISCLAIMER: None of the characters belong to me, sadly. They are owned by people with a lot more money
Author's Voice of Warning (aka Author's Note):
English is not my first language; it's German. This is the best I can do. Any mistakes you find in here, collect them and you might win a prize The spell-checker said everything's okay, but you know how trustworthy those thingies are...
FEEDBACK: Loved
BLAME: Sapphire made me do it. No, seriously, I was toying with the idea and Sapph wasn't trying very hard to discourage me. She actually went over some of the ideas with me. Between her leaving on Sunday and the next weekend I wrote this baby. All blame to her. And the rather receptive brain cell.
PLOT-BETAS: Sapphire and elfin
GRAMMAR-BETAS: okamimyrrhibis and elfin

In Extremis. Latin. Meaning "in the furthest reaches" or "at the point of death", generally referring to grave or exceptional circumstances

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Author's note: The Extremis in the Iron Man comic book series has fascinated me to no end. Iron Man: Extremis was the first comic book I bought after a very long time. I devoured it.
Since I write movie fic and the movie is so very different from the comic in oh-so many ways I had a hard time coming up with a plausible explanation for Extremis in this 'verse. It has almost the same functions, but with a twist. The IM fans who know about Extremis will see what I mean. Everyone else: just enjoy the story.
This mixes comic book facts and characters with the movie!

Happy reading.

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One of the advantages of working with the Autobots and Project was the almost unlimited access to Sector Seven files, as well as all their experiments of the past decades. Tony Stark had first employed his skills as a hacker, then gotten the official passwords and codes from Banachek – which was like an open invitation into the sacred halls.

Tony had been in heaven.

His mind had worked overtime when he had started to browse through all the accumulated information. He had even taken everything upstairs to read when he had to leave the workshop for some mundane matter or other.

The work of one Dr. Ben Lays fascinated Tony the most. Lays had been among the first scientists to explore the inner workings of the Ice Man. He had taken sections off the frozen mechanoid and put them under an electro microscope. That had been in the fifties. Lays had worked tirelessly on exploring the true depths of the machine Sector Seven kept hidden and he had made astounding discoveries. While no one knew what a nanite was back then, Lays had filled several note books with details of what he perceived as tiny machines that rebuilt the section of the skin he had removed from Ice Man. While frozen, the nanites were dormant. When they were exposed to any kind of energy, be it solar, atomic, or otherwise, they would revive and try to repair the damage done.

Lays had died in 1988, still a scientist for Sector Seven even as he had already reached the amazing age of ninety-five. Tony would have wanted to meet the man because of his revolutionary discoveries and his infinite knowledge and theorizing on mechanoid life. Others had picked up on what Lays had started, but they hadn't had the true grasp of genius.
Tony had.

And he had something Lays hadn't had: mechanoids who answered open questions.

Hot Rod had been more than willing to help. He wasn't a scientist, so some questions Tony posed were impossible for him to answer. But he let Stark scan him, as well as answered questions as to why he hadn't repaired his systems while hiding in Tony's garage.

It was a matter of energy conservation.

Tony was even more fascinated. While the protoform was able to withstand immense heat or cold, contained enough material to create the camouflage shell, the self-repair for inner systems was put on hold. Hot Rod hadn't been able to answer that; Ratchet had.

"We can survive in stasis-lock," the medic told Tony.

"But you could also die."

"It's a risk we have to take. Our body shell is more resilient than it appears. In dire need we could shuck all disguise and revert back to protoform shape to insure further survival. It leaves us vulnerable and open, but the protoform is denser. It also varies from mech to mech."

Tony studied the data, frowning a little. "These nanites are part of the protoform then?"

"They are what form the camouflage shell. Without them, we couldn't do what we do in the amount of time we do it."

Tony chuckled. "I see."

The concept of these little repair units kept Tony awake at night testing all kinds of variations on that idea. The basic construction plan of the nanites wasn't really all that different from what human scientists had thought about for decades, just more sophisticated. Tony had kept an eye on those developments and had made his own experiments, but he had never pursued it.

Maybe he should have.

At least he was now.

Using the nanite idea, Tony involved himself in that research, set Jarvis on several ideas for the AI to experiment with, and while he was also running his company, Tony was now more or less a permanent fixture in his workshop. Pepper had to move him out of there with a crowbar most of the time when he was supposed to be some place else. She couldn't shut down his brain though.

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"Fuck!"

The expletive rang through the workshop, audible even through the hard beats of music, and Tony sucked at the cut in his hand. Blood still dripped onto the table and he glowered at the red drops.

It wasn't the first time he had injured himself while working on the suit. It wouldn't be last. It would definitely never be the last since he also injured himself while inside the armor.

Oh well.

Tony walked over to the sink and let water run over the cut, glaring at it. It stung, but it wasn't deep, and it was bleeding sluggishly. An arm descended from the ceiling and held out the first aid kit.

"Thanks, Jarvis."

The music dialed down.

"Whatever keeps you from exsanguination, Sir."

Tony fumbled with the clasps and took out a piece of gauze, pressing it against the wound. He winced a little, but this was nothing compared to other injuries he had had before. This was truly no more than a paper cut. He wrapped some bandages around it, cleaned up and turned to look at the offensive piece of metal.

The new armor was turning out to be rather… difficult. While the basic model was still the same, Tony had started to tinker with the shielding, the flight control and some of the sensors. All proved to be rather entertaining for him, aside from the shielding. That was throwing up faults and keeping him on his toes with error messages. Now he had also cut himself on the thing.

Great.

Not his day.

Tony reached for his mug and grimaced at the lukewarm coffee. Still, he emptied the mug and placed it into the center of his work bench.

"Jarvis? Implement changes," he ordered.

"Affirmative, Sir."

Tony took the offending piece of metal and wiped off the droplets of blood clinging to it, then tossed the whole thing into the scrap metal bin. Jarvis would recycle it. The whole idea hadn't worked in practice, only in theory. Back to the drawing board it was.

Seven hours later the first remodeling of the exterior of the armor was done. Nothing obvious had changed, but Tony knew that he had improved things greatly. He ran a hand over the smooth metal and smiled.

"Ready for a spin?" he asked softly.

The armor, of course, didn't answer.

"Jarvis, we're going for a ride," Stark said out loud as he headed for where he kept the black undergarment of the suit.

"How exciting, Sir," was the dry reply.

Tony chuckled.

Ten minutes after that a golden and red streak shot across the sky.

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Tony hadn't really felt so good for a while now. Two days, if he had to put a time label on it. It had started with a sore throat and a sniffle. Now he was running a low-grade fever, he slept longer than he was used to, he was easily exhausted, and he ached all over.

Summer flu, Pepper had called it.

He called it a bother and something that shouldn't have such crippling effects on his brain. He couldn't concentrate, which was a menace to his experiments, and he forgot even more memos and emails than was usual. Pepper kept coming down into the workshop every hour to gently remind him of a signature needed or an okay he had to give. He finally told her to forge his signature and decide on what to buy, sell, or ignore herself. It had gotten him raised brows and something along the lines of 'You don't pay me enough for this' before she had left.

When she came downstairs an hour later, Tony jerked out of a doze he hadn't been aware of falling into.

He felt abysmal.

He felt like something had stepped on him and scraped the remains off at the nearest piece of rock.

His head was killing him, his joints ached, and even the thought of a new gadget or an upgrade to test couldn't rouse him.

"Go to bed," Pepper told him firmly. It sounded repetitive. Actually it was.

"I'm fine," he muttered.

"You're not and you're just too stubborn to confess you're feeling like crap."

Tony raised an eyebrow. Even that hurt. "Harsh words, Ms. Potts."

"It seems you don't understand subtle any more."

Pepper was glaring at him and it was a rather angry glare. Very impressive, too. Tony smiled and turned back to the computer screen where a model of the Ghost-2 was currently put through the virtual wringer. So far it was handling just fine.

"Go. To. Bed."

"Coming with me?" he teased.

Her eyes flashed fire at him. "In your dreams."

"There's always room for you in my dreams."

Again he turned back to the screen.

The hard clicks of Pepper's heels announced her retreat, but Tony could almost feel the look she had given him.

He ignored her. He had a personal deadline to meet and he would meet it. A flu couldn't stop him; it never had in the past.

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Pepper flopped down on the couch in the living room and sighed deeply. Her eyes were drawn to the peaceful vista outside. Nothing but sun and blue skies. Perfect weather.

She took out her cell phone and pushed a button.

"Hello, Pepper," Hot Rod's voice greeted her.

"He's still working, right?"

"Of course. You know he would be."

Another sigh. "He's sick, Hot Rod. He should be relaxing."

"I think Tony's definition of 'relaxation' is work."

"Hasn't taken you very long to figure that out."

"It's not exactly hard."

"True."

"Jarvis and I are keeping an eye on him," Hot Rod reassured her.

"I know you will and it's good to know, but he needs rest. He's doing too much at the moment. The company, Iron Man, the Ghost-2… and whatever else he's fiddling around with."

Hot Rod chuckled. "I doubt it's the first time Tony is multi-tasking under adverse conditions."

Pepper grimaced. She had no idea what kept the man running, but Tony Stark had given speeches while drunk, had astounded audiences with his eloquent ways, had charmed heads of state, and had survived getting shot at, blown up and crashing – only to sit in a board meeting as if nothing had ever happened. Thankfully the alcohol consumption had lessened. Tony was mostly clean of that vice. He had turned to coffee instead.

"Maybe I'm just a worry wart," Pepper muttered.

"You're one of his few true friends," Hot Rod told her. "You have the right to worry. By the way, he has fallen asleep."

"He has? That's new."

"Well, he's dozing off," the mech corrected. "He'll be asleep soon. His vital functions are normal for a human."

"A human with an arc reactor in his chest?" she asked wryly.

"Yes. The reactor isn't influencing his physical functions in a negative way."

Pepper was silent for a moment, eyes on the sky outside again. "Keep an eye on him," she finally only said.

"You know we will."

She put the Blackberry away and remained on the couch a while longer, enjoying the silence of the perfectly climate controlled house. Jarvis was monitoring, she knew, and should she address him he would answer. There was nothing to talk about, though.

Finally Pepper rose and left.

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Tony had woken with a headache this morning, but the fever was gone and he hadn't had the queasy stomach any more. If at all, he felt hungry. His breakfast had consisted of a lot of coffee and some hastily burned toast. He would have Pepper get him something real after the board meeting.
He grimaced at the thought. One of his favorite past times.

The achy feeling had turned into a constant dull beat and Tony felt a bit nauseous by the time Happy dropped him off at Stark Tower. He rubbed his temples.

"Are you okay, sir?" Happy asked.

"Fine. Headache. Nothing serious."

The ache had turned into a slight pressure inside his head and he sighed silently. Just what he needed. He'd get some aspirin later. For now he had heads to bash and people to introduce, and knowing his staff they would waylay him to get papers signed on the way in and out of the meeting room.

Stark got out of the Rolls and straightened his suit jacket. The whole suit was impeccably tailored and ridiculously expensive, all in black, and he wore it like a shield.. He pushed his sun glasses up his nose and nodded at the security guard who held the door open for him.

Time to start being the industrialist for a few hours.

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Five hours later Tony Stark walked out of the board meeting, trying to look more awake than he actually was. The meeting had been dull, as not otherwise expected, with the usual posturing, arguing, mildly venomous barbs, and Tony's cutting remarks that if this was a kindergarten party, he would call for some clowns to lighten up the mood.

Tony finally decided to confront the bickering bunch with the hard facts of life: weapons contracts were a thing of the past. He still researched material for the military, but that was solely connected to Project and the Autobots. It paid very well. The new branch of Stark Industries, medical equipment, computers and cell phones, was running pretty good.

"It's not the same money as weapons," Carl Summers argued.

"No, it isn't," Tony agreed amiably. "It's no longer blood money."

"You conscience in all honors," he shot back. "But we're losing stock! The stockholders aren't happy."

"You know what we're really doing, gentlemen," Tony said, voice hard and unyielding. "We're building a future. We're involved in one of the biggest secrets the world has ever known. What we manufacture is something only we have access to."

They all knew about the Cybertronian tech and they knew where the money came from. It didn't stop the hunger for more money, though.

"This is still my company, gentlemen."

And he'd make damn sure it would remain his company, even if he had to sell his soul to Banachek.

"And this is the course it's going to take. Any of you who have a problem with that, it's very easy to write a resignation. My email is always open."

Tony rose.

"That would be all, I believe."

And he left.

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Stark Industries' stock had risen in the past few weeks. Everything was quiet on the political front and Tony was able to work on what was really important right now.

It was throughout his research into Sector Seven's secret files that Stark stumbled across the name of Dr. Maya Hansen. The woman was a medical designer and her work had already received great recognition. Tony browsed journals and articles, found dozens of references on the Net and he hacked into files he shouldn't have access to at all – or even known about. It was how he came across the Super-Soldier program. He had heard of it before.

Hansen had taken the failed program from the mid-forties and pushed it to the next level, but as her research failed to bring any success and promised no immediate results, she was finally shut down. With it, her project had been shut away as well.

She had called it Extremis.

Tony was fascinated as he went through the research files.

"Extremis is a bio-electronics package, fitted into a few billion graphic nanotubes and suspended in a carrier fluid," she had written in the documentation of her experiments. "It hacks the body's repair center, the part of the brain that keeps a complete blueprint of the human body. When we're injured we refer to that area of the brain in order to heal properly. Extremis rewrites the repair center. In the first stage of execution, the normal human blueprint is rewritten into the Extremis blueprint."

Tony wondered how she could accomplish that. How did one tell Extremis what the blueprint was? What was normal and what not? How could the bio-engineered tech virus know? Medical science today had come so far, but this was beyond his understanding.

"The brain is being told that the body is wrong," he read on. "The process was never tested on human subjects due to the instability of the nanotubes."

Tony snorted. Instability my ass, he thought.

Just looking at the tech specs had him wincing. Hansen had a medical background, but she was missing the engineering knowledge necessary to make the electronic parts work. That and the missing continued funding.

Tony saw it. In every detail. And it was beautiful. In an eerie way, of course. It was highly dangerous and no one in his right mind would voluntarily undergo such an extreme, but no one had ever called Tony sane. 'Erratic', yes, but sane?

He grinned.

"Jarvis, download all files on the Extremis and Dr. Maya Hansen's other work."

"Very well, sir. May I ask what you're planning?"

"Finish what she started."

Jarvis was silent for a moment. "Do you think it wise, sir?"

"I think it's interesting and warrants further research. She was on to something, Jarvis. And I know that the Extremis has potential."

Because if he reprogrammed the Extremis to his needs, he might solve several problems that had been bugging him for months. The reaction time of the suit was inadequate. He still felt like a lumbering hunk of metal, like the Mark I had been. Tony wanted a smoother handling, the feeling that the armor was just a second skin. He needed maneuverability and endurance, and if he wired the Extremis into the suit to act like a neural transmitter… it might work. It could rewrite the human body – in theory – so it should be able to rewrite the suit, too.

"Done, sir," Jarvis announced.

Tony smiled. He loved a challenge and this was truly one.

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The latest test flights had gone smoothly. The weapons testing had been perfect. The fact that if a weapon was strong enough and the impact was hard enough could still permanently damage the armor sat heavily with Tony. That hadn't been the plan. He had hoped to trigger the P-Cells, as he called them, into repairing any damage done.

The Protoform Cells were nanites constructed with Cybertron technology. They were a derivation off the tiny cell structures in the Autobots' skin that repaired their damage, given enough energon and time. Tony had spent weeks at the project, ignoring everything else, except when Pepper hit him with a verbal mallet and had him attend meetings and PR stuff. He hated those. All tests in the lab had gone perfectly on small examples of armor. Damage was always repaired.

It didn't work on the real life model.

Tony was frustrated and his moods varied. Had he still been drinking, he would have fallen into bed, if he found it, intoxicated every single night. So he just snarled and snapped and bitched, and drank excessive amounts of coffee.

"Jarvis?" he snapped. "What's taking so long?"

"All computations show no error, sir," Jarvis replied dutifully. "The P-Cells are working perfectly."

"They are not!" Tony replied sharply. "The armor remains damaged. There's no sign of any kind of repair. It should work!"

Tony ran a hand through his already tousled hair, smearing grease and oil everywhere.

It should work.

It should do what it was supposed to.

The P-Cells did everything they had been programmed to do… until he applied them to his armor and then… nothing. Not even a beep!

Tony sat down at his workstation again and called up every schematic, then transferred them to the holographic display table.

"We'll start again," he ground out.

On a whim he called up Extremis on the second monitor. Maybe he could mesh it all somehow, make it work as a hybrid form.

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It took Tony another three days of cursing and next to no sleep – he still attended the charity events, meetings and business deals necessary to keep the company afloat and placate some of the stakeholders, which Pepper insisted he had to go to -- to finally get the P-Cells to behave as he had planned them to. At least for now and at least until something else went wrong somehow.

No, don't think like that, he growled at himself.

Pepper had declared him a lost cause and the few visits by Rhodey had been accompanied by head-shaking and comments like 'you're crazy' and 'I always knew you'd work yourself to death'. Hot Rod was his silent, watchful self. The mech rarely initiated conversations when Tony was working. It was like he knew and respected the 'haze' his friend was in and Tony appreciated it.

Stark had teleconferenced board meetings, had appeared at five out of ten charity events, which was a record anyway, and he had kept up with his company's new direction.

It didn't help that part of his mind was simultaneously checking and rechecking specs of the Ghost-2 and coming up with ideas for that as well. Sometimes he wished there was an off-switch.

As it was… there was none. And his mind was hard to tame. Especially since Extremis still occupied his thoughts quite dominantly. Simulations had shown that there was no way at all to incorporate Extremis into the armor itself. It just didn't work that way. So a new idea crossed his mind: incorporate Extremis into the user; himself.

It was highly dangerous. It was completely radical. It could kill him.

Tony smiled darkly and touched the arc reactor glowing in his chest. A lot of things had nearly killed him, but he had survived.

"Jarvis, run a probability on the injection of Extremis into a human body."

There was a long second of silence. "Sir?"

"You heard me."

"Are you seriously considering injecting Extremis into your system?" the AI queried.

"Do it, Jarvis. That's an order."

"Yes, Sir," came the almost snappish reply.

"Tony?" Hot Rod asked.

He sighed. "What?"

"Are you? Thinking about injecting Extremis into yourself?" the mech added.

"Why not?"

"Because it's dangerous. You could kill yourself."

"Or I could give myself the edge I need. I'm like a flying tank, Roddy. My fights tell me my weak spots and those are maneuverability, speed and the weight of the armor. It's impossible to make the circuits even smaller and while the P-Cells help with the repair, I'm still vulnerable."

"If you kill yourself in the lab because of an experiment that would end all theorizing about fights," Hot Rod pointed out.

He smiled darkly. "It would, wouldn't it?"

With that Tony turned to the model Jarvis was constructing, watching the simulated injection of the Extremis into a human model. He knew his chances were slim if he used Dr. Hansen's original version, but maybe, just maybe he could get the virus to work as he wanted it to. He didn't need superpowers. He didn't need to throw flames or ooze acid. He needed maneuverability and speed. The armor would fly, not him. He needed a better interface and that interface was Extremis.

Tony set to work on altering the command codes and running more simulations.

Hot Rod watched his human charge, worry coursing through him. Tony was an intense man, someone willing to risk himself, his health and even his sanity, to accomplish that he wanted. He was a risk-taker. Hot Rod knew the breed; he was a risk-taker himself. But he had never gambled on his physical health, had never wanted to upgrade with untested software. Hot Rod had also never thought of himself as lowly as Tony did. He had realized in the time he had spent with the man that Tony Stark's opinion of himself differed from that of others.

Tony was ready to risk it all now.

And Hot Rod wondered if there was anything he could do to stop him.

tbc...