Russell T. Dalek con't

[windemere]

It was a few days after Thor returned from Earth before he ran into Tony with his pet. After the first week Tony had, of course, gotten a bit bored of the fact that all Russell did was follow him around and shout ‘EXTERMINATE!’ a lot. And since things were back to progressing on the Mark IX, he’d gotten too busy to tinker with a toy that was never meant to do anything other than obey a remote control.

Tony appeared in the kitchen right before dinner, which was a minor miracle in itself. Or would have been had Bruce not programmed an alarm clock into the Stark Tower systems and convinced JARVIS to make full use of it if Tony went more than six hours without eating – or drinking – something. The alarm shouted ‘DELETE’ loud enough to be heard over AC/DC cranked at full volume.

Tony had not been amused. Unfortunately, he could not for the life of him figure out where in the system Bruce had hidden the code and JARVIS was being annoyingly useless. He had very nearly reprogrammed him  to ensure he obeyed all commands, but Tony had to admit to himself that actually eating regular meals was making his brain work even faster. So he complained very loudly and only made a half-hearted attempt to change it.  Which meant that the alarm now shouted ‘GERONIMO!’

It had been nearly a week since Tony had last showed up in the kitchen with Russell, but he had obviously wanted to show the little guy to Thor.

At first, Thor didn’t even notice the thing. Russell was back to following Tony around as he walked, hovering a foot above the ground, and in the noise of five other Avengers attempting to make dinner, the whine of the propulsion system couldn’t be heard.

‘Hey Thor,’ Tony greeted him. ‘I brought someone to meet you.’

Thor turned from his conversation with Clint, a pleasant look of curiosity on his face. ‘I should be pleased to meet a new friend, Stark.’ Thor couldn’t seem to call him, or anyone else, by their first names. Apparently only warriors of Asgard got first names.

Smiling, Tony sidestepped so that everyone could see Russell. Except Thor was not expecting a toy hovering a foot above the ground and so failed to look down.

‘Russell,’ Tony started, grinning widely. ‘Meeting the God of Thunder.’

‘EXTERMINATE!’ Russell yelled, louder than ever.

In a second Thor was standing to attention, eyes scanning in all directions to locate the enemy.

‘Down here, buddy,’ the genius motioned to his feet.

Thor looked down, and then took a full step backwards.

Clint burst out laughing.

‘Wow, big scary god of loud noises is scared of a toy!’ He hooted. Natasha slapped him upside the head, but Clint just laughed harder.

‘What...is this creature?’ Thor asked, glancing down at it with a good amount of hesitation.

‘It’s a Dalek. Well, that’s not accurate,’ Tony explained. ‘It’s a miniature toy version of an alien from a television series. I just made it better.’

‘EXTERMINATE!’

Thor stepped further away. ‘It is a most...unusual toy.’

‘It’s cool,’ Barton, who had managed to recover the power of speech, butted in.

‘It’s awesome,’ Tony corrected. ‘See, he shoots things too! Russell!’ Except he neglected to give any direction to the AI, so the Dalek targeted the nearest thing. Which, unfortunately for all involved, happened to be the light directly above Thor’s head.

The light went ‘crack’ very loudly and shattered into pieces on top of Thor’s blond hair. He actually roared.

‘Oops,’ Tony muttered. ‘Bad Russell.’

‘EXTERMINATE!’ Russell shouted, waving his arms around and zooming in circles.

What happened next was a little unclear. Thor made a very loud – and very annoyed – noise and in the next moment Russell lay in shattered pieces across the hardwood.

‘What did you DO?’ his creator screamed. ‘You killed him!’

Thor didn’t look at all apologetic. ‘I do not suffer attacks to my person so lightly.’

Clint fell off his chair and this time Natasha looked about ready to join him. Bruce was standing between the stove and the counter, tongs in one hand and an expression caught between wanting to laugh really hard and trying desperately not too. Steve still looked confused.

‘But you killed him!  He’s harmless and you smashed him to little itty bitty bits!’ Tony screamed in a voice that would not have been unusual if it belonged to a five year old girl.

‘The...creature attacked me.’

‘Oh, Russell,’ Tony moaned, kneeling down to finger the toilet-like plunger arm. ‘I’m so sorry little guy.’

Thor was moving quickly from battle mode to embarrassingly apologetic. ‘Perhaps I acted rashly, friend Tony.’

‘I’ll fix you, buddy, I promise. You’ll be so much better when I’m through with you.’

He began to gather up the scattered pieces of the toy, as Thor stood there, Mjolnir dangling from one slack hand, the look on his face suggested he had just accidentally kicked a puppy because it snarled at him.

Tony hugged the scattered remains closely, using his ever present t-shirt to make a sort of basket to hold them all. Ignoring the still howling with laughter Clint and the shocked expressions still gracing Steve and Bruce’s faces, he retreated from the kitchen.

***

Introducing Russell Mark II

Tony didn’t surface for a week. Bruce took pity on him the second day and starting bringing him food, if only to keep the alarm quiet. Tony always looked like he was busy with real work whenever Bruce actually got through the coded door, but he knew that the pieces of the toy Dalek were hiding somewhere nearby and that Tony must be working on it at times when he thought no one would bother him.

‘Thor is really very sorry,’ Bruce told him on day two as he handed over a plate of stir-fry.

‘He smashed it to pieces. With a hammer. With The Hammer. You don’t think that was overkill no matter what Russell did to him?’

Bruce tried to hide the smile. ‘Yes, quite.’

‘Well, it won’t happen again.’

‘That’s good,’ Bruce agreed and then paused. ‘Wait, why won’t it happen again?’

A slow smile pulled across Tony’s mouth. Bruce stopped himself from thinking how reminiscent of Loki it was. ‘Wait and see. Wait and see.’

***

A week later, Tony showed up in the kitchen, alone.

‘I have a surprise. But first, Thor,’ he turned to the demi-god. ‘I swear on every single one of my suits, that if you touch this thing with the Hammer I will make certain you never set foot in this Tower again. Clear?’

Thor looked a little uncertain about the intensity in Tony’s voice, but he answered anyways, ‘Yes, friend Tony.’

‘Good. Natasha? No guns.’

She looked just a small bit disappointed.

‘Right then! I’d like everyone to meet Russell...Mark II!’

The noise started low, from down the hall; the faint drone that was reminiscent of the Iron Man tech. It grew steadily louder and became a concerted hum. And then around the corner, a not miniaturized Dalek appeared. It was deck out in red and gold glory, which made Steve immediately snort.  It came to a stop level with Tony. ‘Master,’ it intoned, in a much lower-pitch voice than the mini-toy had.

‘Yes?’ Tony said, smirk evident even in his voice.

Clint peeled with laughter. Natasha didn’t even both to thump him on the head.

‘Russell, I’d like you to meet everyone. Everyone, this is Russell.’

No one said a word, except for Clint, who was laughing so hard he couldn’t even form syllables.  Finally, Bruce drew out an extended ‘Hello.’

‘Russell, this is Dr. Banner.’

‘Doctor,’ it intoned.

Clint actually fell off his chair. Bruce nearly followed. Tony had managed to get the perfect pitch of voice to sound like Nick Briggs on his best day. It was terrifying and very impressive at the same time.

Tony gave them all his best ‘I am Tony Stark and I am Awesome’ look.  ‘Good boy, Russell. Now, what are the rules?’

‘No explosions,’ it uttered, in the self-same voice. ‘No attacks on...Master’s friends.’ The toilet plunger made a circular motion. ‘No revolutions.’

Tony was nodding along with each rule. ‘Exactly,’ he said at the end. ‘Definitely no revolutions. We can’t afford to have the kitchen appliances revolt. Well, I can, but that’s really not the point. So, in turn for Russell not shooting out anymore lights and such, he remains undamaged, right?’ Tony raised an eyebrow at his team.

They nodded. ‘Yes,’ Thor intoned.

‘Good. And the next time the evil aliens invade, we’ll see how they do against the ultimate, universal evil alien.’

Steve’s voice had a strange note of interest in it. ‘How many of those things can you build Stark?’

Tony just smiled.