Tony sat in his lab, "working". Normally, yes, he would actually work. But, right at that moment, he was waiting for his new AI to be finished/air guitaring to AC/DC's Back in Black. The AI was supposed to be done in about two hours, so Tony had plenty of time for quality music. As he thought about it, two hours was a really long time, long enough for him to realize the futility of doing nothing but head bang and do air guitars, and start a new project, just for the robot to be done when he got to the part that required the most concentration.
Ah, being Tony Stark was just so much fun.
Just then, his computer dinged. He glanced at it apprehensively, worrying that it might be an email from a very important annoying guy, asking him to do very important, yet highly annoying things.
It wasn't.
The AI was suddenly, inexplicably, finished.
"Huh?" He shrugged, and clicked for it to be activated.
There was silence for a bit, then, "H-hello?"
It was normal for the AI to be a bit disoriented upon first being awoken. Witness both Jarvis and Ultron, so Tony wasn't perturbed. "Hey, buddy! It's great to hear from you! Can you hear me?"
"Um… yes." The robot replied. "What's… what's going on? Where am I? Where did my body go?"
Okay, that last one was a bit weird. And why did his voice sound so familiar? "You, my friend, are my new AI. Stands for artificial intelligence. You're gonna be a bit discombobulated for a few minutes, and when you've got a handle on things then I'll upload you to the mainframe of my tower. Okay?"
"That's not… I'm not artificial intelligence…" The… very much artificial intelligence protested. "I'm… I'm a person. Who are you? And what have you done with me?"
"Oh, my bad." Tony replied, now a bit weirded out. "The name is Anthony Edward Stark, Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, and Philanthropist, generally known as Tony, or Iron man, but you can call me… you can call me boss."
"Boss?" The machine asked incredulously. "You are not my… I am a prince of Asgard, you… you're just… where's Thor?"
Tony sat back in his chair, dumbfounded. "Okay… what? You're a… prince? Of Asgard?"
"Yes!" The machine insisted. "What realm is this? And where have you put my body? Where's Thor?"
Tony waved his hands frantically. "Okay, okay, okay… what?" That's how the voice sounded so familiar! This was… no… could it be… Loki? "WHAT?"
"Thor! My brother! Big, blond, and extremely muscular? You must have at least heard of him!" the robot's voice sounded slightly panicked.
"Yeah, yeah, I know him." Tony assured. "But… are you… Loki?"
The machine paused. "Yes?"
"This is insane." Tony said. "I've finally done it. Everyone said I needed to get more sleep, drink less booze, or I'd go nuts. But I never listen, do I?" Tony turned back to the computer. "I'm finally crazy."
"Would you stop babbling on, and get me Thor?" Loki demanded, his voice cracking. Was it possible for a robot's voice to crack? "I don't understand, I don't know what's going on, please!" Loki begged.
Tony ignored him, pacing in circles around his lab floor. This had got to be some sort of crazy dream, right? He pinched himself, the sharp pain bewildering him. How was this real? This made no sense! Thor had told them Loki'd died! The Thunder God had spent hours bawling on the couch over his evil little brother. This had to be a prank. A prank! Of course!
Tony dropped himself into his chair, opening the coding files on the new AI. Loki suddenly stopped his desperate, and nearing hysterical babbling. "I feel exposed." He suddenly announced. "What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to figure out…" Tony scrolled through the radically unfamiliar and ridiculously complex coding. "Who the hell ruined my new system…"
"I'm not a system!" Loki insisted. "I just… I just want my brother! I want Th-Thor…"
Tony hesitated. Loki seemed really upset. Seconds later, the sprinklers suddenly turned on. "Oh my GOD! What the hell is going on? I didn't let you into the mainframe, yet, what's going on?"
Loki whimpered. "Please… I j-just want Th-Thor!"
"Holy crap, are you crying?" Tony shoved his computer under the desk to protect it from the falling water, scrambling around the room to protect his robots. "Shutupshutupshutup!"
The sprinklers slowly ebbed out, and a miserable silence reigned over the room. Tony crawled out from under the table, computer in tow. "Okay… what was that?"
"Sorry." Was Loki's only response. He sounded thoroughly miserable, confused, and disoriented.
"How did you get into the mainframe?" Tony demanded, shaking water off the blueprints on his desk.
Loki was quiet for a few seconds. "Is that what that did?"
Tony put his head down on his desk. "What did you DO?"
"Well…" Loki began awkwardly. "I was attempting to reach for my sedir… but… it's gone. There was… something, instead, and I pulled on it, and… I don't know what's going on."
The temperature in the room suddenly raised about twenty degrees. "Oh, god… you really are Loki, aren't you?"
"Is that… hard to believe?" Loki asked. "I suppose you can't see my body, so… where is my body?"
Tony lifted his head up, glancing around the room. "Okay… this is a joke, right? I can't have a homicidal maniac god for an AI… can I?"
There was a disturbed silence from the computer's speakers. "Um… I believe you're thinking of a different Loki. I'm not… homicidal…"
Tony scoffed. "Dude, you practically levelled Manhattan! What do you mean, you're not homicidal?"
"What's a Manhattan?" Loki asked. "And how would one level it?"
"You… don't know?" Tony asked. "This is… You don't even remember?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Loki sighed. "Perhaps, if you could just contact Thor, we could get this whole thing sorted out?"
Tony made a helpless gesture with his hands. "Thor took off after Ultron. Oh, wait, you don't know about that. It's an evil robot I built with the gem from your Loki Pokey Stick. After we finished fighting, Thor left."
"Loki Pokey Stick?" Loki wondered. "What in the nine is that?"
"Glow stick of Destiny?" Tony tried. "Your scepter that you used to mind wipe Clint?"
"Oh, yes, of course…" Loki did not sound like he understood. "That scepter…."
"You don't remember New York." Tony gaped.
"No! Of course, I remember… New York!" Loki assured, lying through his metaphorical teeth. "But… could we pretend… for fun… that I don't remember?"
"You know, for the god of lies, you're pretty bad at it." Tony said, dropping his face into his hands.
"I know…" Loki sighed. "I ought to get better, it's embarrassing. No, I don't recall what happened in… New York, you said?"
Tony shook his head, groaning at the extreme futility of his life. Was it just a few minutes ago that he had been so pleased with his own life? "Okay, let me get this straight. You, Loki, are my new AI, and you don't remember anything that happened to you in the last… three, four years?"
"Yeah, that sounds really bad." Loki admitted. "But I can't see any other explanation. Could you, perhaps, contact Thor, now?"
Tony reached for the coding, again, the temperature slowly raising even higher. "Hey, turn the thermostat down, would you?"
"Urm… how?" Loki asked, sounding extremely awkward as Tony scrolled through the codes, trying to manually call up Loki's brother. "Would you stop doing that? It makes me feel naked. I'm not sure what you're even doing, but… please?"
Tony raised an eyebrow. "I'm just looking at your coding."
"Errr… I don't know what that means." Loki admitted. "May I ask you a few questions? I'm extremely confused. Would it be too much of a bother?"
Tony sat back, staring in thought at the ceiling. "Yeah, that's fair. If I get to ask you a few once you're done. And you promise not to do anything particularly diabolical with the information."
At that, Loki actually laughed. Tony'd never heard him laugh, besides his evil chuckle, and honestly, the sound was adorable. "You obviously know me rather well." Loki giggled. "Were we… allies? Friends, perhaps? I've always wanted a friend…" He trailed off in an honestly pathetically wistful fashion.
"We were enemies." Tony explained shortly. "You tried to take over my planet."
"Ooh… that's nasty." Loki acknowledged. "Did I have an extremely good reason?"
"Not that I know of." Tony shrugged. "To piss off your brother, maybe?"
"Thor?" Loki asked in confusion. "Well, I suppose I wouldn't have told you my motives. Urm… which realm is this?"
Tony narrowed his eyes, trying to remember what Thor had called. "That would be… Mid… Mid something. It's Earth."
"Midgard?" Loki suggested hesitantly.
"Yeah, that's the one!" The engineer nodded.
"Hm." Loki was quiet for a few seconds. "You've progressed greatly since I last saw you. Well, since I last remember you, I suppose. What was it you said your name was?"
Tony was half-tempted to insist that Loki call him "Boss", just so that he could be called Boss by a norse deity. "Anthony Stark. Tony for short."
"Well, you are particularly short." Loki agreed mischievously.
"Hey!" Tony glared good-naturedly at the computer. "You're mean, you know that?"
"Ehehehe…" Loki cackled. "I take pride in it. Besides, you already knew this, didn't you? It's generally considered mean to dominate a realm, yes?"
"Yeah, whatever." Tony shrugged. "My turn for questions, now?"
"Um… I can't think of anything else particularly pressing, right now. Go ahead."
Tony clicked a few keys, practically feeling Loki squirm in embarrassment. "Don't worry, I'll be done soon." It was interesting, he'd never really thought of it as any sort of breach of privacy when he reprogrammed Jarvis. Perhaps his previous Ai hadn't really known the difference, having never been a human, before. "Let me see… how old are you?"
"Fifteen." Loki replied promptly. "By your calendar, that is."
Tony's eyebrows shot up to the ceiling. "Wait… You're a teenager?"
"Um… I suppose." Loki acknowledged. "I may have forgotten a few years. But I remember all the way up to being fifteen. Dominating realms, I think, I would most likely not attempt until I was at least Twenty. So, I'm missing, maybe, five years?"
"Holy smokes." Tony breathed. "Well, that explained why you're being hyper-emotional."
"I'm sorry." Loki sighed. "I'm not intending to be. I-I'm truly sorry I, uh… wept all over your things. I honestly didn't expect that to happen."
"Yeah, that's okay." Tony shrugged one shoulder, completing the summons with a few more clicks. "You were scared, I get it. Aaaand… I have sent the thummons, I mean, Thent the summons… Ah, great. I delivered the thingy to Thor. Whenever he chooses to respond is now his prerogative." He shut the laptop with a swift click.
"Oh, thank goodness." Loki breathed a sigh of relief. "I was starting to believe you'd never stop."
"That bad, huh?" Tony frowned. "I never would've guessed. So, can you turn down the thermostat?"
"How?" The temperature seemed to be returning to normal, by itself, anyway.
"There, you got it." Tony nodded.
Loki hesitated. "I… didn't do anything."
That was when it finally clicked for Stark. The tower was Loki's body. When he cried, he turned the sprinklers on. So, when the heat went up… "Were you blushing?"
"…I believe so." Came Loki's answer. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry about all of this… I don't know how this happened, and it's very confusing… and-and disorienting."
Tony protectively put his arms over his head. "Don't start crying, again!"
"I won't." Loki said quickly, and fell silent.
Tony stood up, and walked to the elevators, stepping inside, and pressing the button to go to the communal floor, when this had been Avengers Tower. Loki was silent the entire time the elevator was running. The entire time Tony downed three glasses of scotch. The entire evening, actually. Tony was used to his AI not talking unless he was needed, but this was different, in a way. It was almost as if Loki was following him around, his eyes trained on the engineer, but never speaking a word. He felt rather uncomfortable as he ate his cold pizza in silence.
"Whatcha doing, Bambi?" He finally asked after he couldn't take the tension one more second.
"You're addressing me?" Loki asked quietly. "I'm not doing anything. I'm staying as still as I possibly can, actually. Every time I move, it seems I mess something up."
Tony popped a piece of pepperoni in his mouth. "You're awfully quiet."
"What would you like me to say?"
That was a very good question, actually. Tony thoughtfully chewed. "I dunno. You got any more questions?"
"How soon do you expect Thor to arrive?" Loki blurted suddenly, as if that had been weighing on his mind for a while.
Tony shrugged. "It all depends. Anywhere from half an hour to two weeks."
"Two weeks?" Loki gasped. "You don't understand! He's my brother! He can help me. I-I just want to understand, please! When Thor gets here, we can work it out together; I need him, Anthony! I just want to understand…"
With that, the sprinklers came on again.
"OH MY GOD!" Tony dove under the table rescuing the pizza along the way. "Loki, stop it!"
"I-I-I'm s-sorry…" Loki sobbed. "I'm so confused, I d-don't know what's g-going on, I'm so sorry! I just… I just want Thor…"
Tony didn't do well with emotions. He never had. He didn't know how to get the Trickster to stop crying, but If he didn't stop, and soon, everything water soluble in the tower would become very melted, very fast.
"Listen, Loki." He tried again, in a gentler tone. "Hey, hey, Loki. It's okay. You're gonna be fine. Thor will be here before you know it, and you can get all of this worked out, okay?"
The sprinklers finally stuttered to a stop. "Yes. Thank you, Anthony. I-I'm sorry. You're a good man, and you don't deserve all this. I'll just… I'll just stay out of your way." Loki gave a shuddering sigh, and fell silent again. Tony crept out from under the table, brushing water off his chair as he took another bite of pizza. This was honestly the most ridiculous situation he'd ever been forced into.
TheOnlyHuman.