One thing about Chastity is that she is really hard to keep down. Even after highly limited communication with an elusive Tony Stark after his return, she has decided that their usual Wednesday Night session is on. And the fact that she has access and clearance to get down into his workshop helps with this. Trudging along with her usual slight-limp and a leather aviator jacket paired up with her Lucky Scarf's yellow silk, the little mechanic winds her way down into the guts of the building. With the hiss of doors opening after her security card is shown to it, she walks into garage. She has a little bag with her, held under one arm as she wanders toward the work-table she knows to expect to find Stark at.

Where else to find Stark but at the work-table? An occasional quiet word breaks the unusual stillness of the garage. By the robot's movements, they are directions. As Chastity nears, they become clear: "--up a little," he says, then says, "No, now back down. Wait. Stop. There." There's a brief spark of light from a delicate bit of soldering. His focus is entire, and his back is to Chastity. He is dressed in loose pants and a simple cotton tee. He is apparently working on some sort of robot foot.

Chastity is not the most quiet walker. Her gait is uneven and aided with metal, but with Stark's focus so intent on his project, she might just manage to get around him without being heard. She sets her little paper bag down on the table and peers at his project. All smiles, she blurts out, "Big metal feet," without putting together a sentence around it. Then she looks up at Tony, innocence and her usual perky interest in anything he is doing all there is to be found in her freckle-dusted face.

A bright spark results from the twitch of Stark's body as he's brought forcibly out of his concentration. He looks to Chastity with wide eyes, slipping wireless earbuds from his ears. Tinny, obnoxious music shouts overloud before cutting off abruptly. He looks from Chastity to the big metal feet and then back again. "Uhm." The fabric of his shirt thin, a circular glow of blue is clearly visible beneath, centered on his chest.

Chastity's eyes track from Tony's startled face, down to the blue glow beneath his shirt, down to his project, then back up again. Her lashes flutter and a little face slowly resolves with brows lowering and her nose wrinkling. "I kind of figured after... all the last weeks, working on the Stingray would be nice." She smiles up at him, like a puppy caught chewing his slippers. "I'll sign more NDAs if I'm looking at things that I'm not supposed to look at," she offers.

Tracking the shift of Chastity's gaze, Stark's expression slips first sheepish, then irritated, and then exasperated. A hint of wary humor colors his eyes as he holds her gaze. "None of this is work," he doesn't quite answer. "I wasn't really expecting you."

"Sorry," she manages to eke out. "Just missed the cars." That is very obviously not what she meant. Her gaze falters away from his, though this time off to one side and toward the floor. Chas's fingers tweak at the edges of the bag she is holding onto, ripping at the edges of the brown paper. "Why're you making a foot?" Her curiosity is greater than her embarrassment.

Stark slips the probe of the solder back, and rubs the heels of his hands into the orbit of his eyes. He steps back, releasing a long breath, and then sweeps a hand across the table. "I'm making a few refinements on the Sentinel armor design." But it isn't work!

Chastity leans up onto her toes, trying to get a better look at it. "For fun?" she asks, then looks up at him again. Her eyes stray again to his chest and the blue glow. Her brows wrinkle and she looks like she wants to plead for answers. "I'm sorry," she says again, more abruptly. "I can go? I just didn't want to not work on our projects anymore. I thought maybe you'd be down here and..." The pint-sized mechanic sighs and her shoulders slump.

The slight hint of a curve that crooks across Stark's lips is easy to miss if one is not used to the minute variations that constitute his idea of an expression. Luckily, Chastity is! "No need to apologize. For fun, I guess, sure. Haven't you ever wanted your own suit of robot armor?" he teases with bland flippancy.

"I already have part of one, remember?" She seems to relax a lot with the little curve of his lips. Chastity is indeed fluent in the borderline non-expressions that Tony makes do with. A hand pats at her right leg. "Is everything okay, Tony?" she asks, her anxiety over showing up melting away to a genuine, warm concern for him. "I was so worried, then when we talked you were all, and yeah, and what do you have under your shirt? It's glowy." A concerned Chastity is also one that tries to say six sentences at once.

"Ah, well then." Stark's gaze trails toward Chastity's legs, and then up again. "I am busily trying to catch up." He meets concern and deflects like a /pro/. "You know, it is possible that this technology could be used to give you an easier, wider range of motion as well, in less-bulky form. I've already managed to heavily streamline the Sentinel designs, largely due to the repulsor technology."

Chastity looks thoughtful, but it is a distracted kind. It isn't her usual deep nerd-trance. "I think trying to work with stuff with my legs is... kind of complicated," she says, frowning at Tony's chest. She is talking to the glow. "It's just one of those things." Then, she blurts out a reminder of her question. "Glowy?"

"Glowy." Stark agrees without explaining. He widens his eyes at Chastity, all innocent.

"I think I can tackle you and take your shirt off of you," Chas counters to his wide eyes.

Stark's voice is a suspicious deadpan: "That's sexual harassment."

"I'm not on the clock," she points out. Chas abandons her frayed-edged bag and starts sidling around the work-table toward Stark. It is not at a kind of pace pitched toward serious persuit, however.

Humor fading, Stark slides a step away. He looks away, discomfort fairly clear, and then gives a tiny sigh. He turns to face Chastity, and reaches up to the collar of his shirt. He pulls. The fabric stretches downward to reveal the top curve of a gleam of metal and light.

The discomfort showing clearly (fairly clear by Stark standards is probably like most people putting up billboards) makes Chastity stop playing chase. When he turns to face her, she actually flinches. Someone is braced for being yelled at. Instead, she ends up looking at Tony Stark's chest and the curved shape of illuminated metal implanted in it. She doesn't say anything. A hand comes up, reaching out as if she wants to touch. She is, however, a table's width away. It's just a gesture.

Stark explains in a low monotone: "The S.I. 87643-XRT missile is designed so that, upon detonation, the metal casing fragments to maximize shrapnel. The fragments tends to be quite small. Removal can be tricky, depending upon the metal's placement, and sometimes it is best to simply stabilize it." None of this, of course, has anything to do with him. His hand falls away, and his gaze slips to the curve of the robotic calf. He clears his throat.

"Sounds... efficient," she tells him. She looks at the robotic contraption under his hand. It's easy to read the intense curiosity on her face, but Chas is strangling it down. She moves back over to her little bag and uncurls the top of it. Inside is a little project of her own. It is a very basic little robot, four legs and a power source, basically. She sets it on the table and turns it on. It walks! It doesn't do anything else.

Stark leaps upon this change of topic like a cheetah onto fleeing prey. "That's not the robo-cat, is it?" he asks, leaning over to study it.

"Nuh. That's a little doodle with what I'm learning. It's..." She wrinkles her nose up and bites down on her bottom lip, falling short on how to explain it for a moment. "Wanted to show you I'm still working. Learning stuff." Chastity looks up toward Stark again.

Stark loses some of the reserve remaining from explanation fun-time, and gives Chastity a glance that is difficult to decode. "Fair doodle," he says, and moves around to study it much more closely. The nerding he is capable of with cars is quickly surpassed by the brilliance displayed with robotics. The conversation that follows is technical, with lots of helpful pointers and critiques and no mention of glowy things. It is a really awesome conversation.

/>In spite of the lingering glowy spectre, Chastity enjoys this kind of conversation. It is rare that someone is tutored by a genuine genius in the field they are learning and she is not dumb enough to pass on a single one of his pointers or critiques. After the time spent in robotics, she has turned her little walker off and lets it sit on the work-table beneath one of the arms. The little walker is named Steve, she informed Tony somewhere in there. "I really missed that," she finally says, smiling up to him. "I know stuff's weird after... you were gone. But you can trust me with stuff, Tony. I never even ran to the tabloids to get credit for helping with the repulsors. I could have maybe gotten a co-medal out of that," she points out. There is a tiny curve to the corners of her lips, an expression cribbed directly from him.

"You want my medal?" Stark asks, glancing toward Chastity with a mirroring expression. "Certificate, really, I think. Maybe a letter. I'm not sure. I'd have to ask Potts. I can correct it. Cross out my name, scribble yours in pen. You do deserve it. Maybe I'll make a new medal for you. The Stark Award for Covertly Saving the Planet." He leans forward, tapping the walker on a leg with a light touch. "I'm glad you are pursuing this. I think you have a lot of promise."

"Will the Stark Award for Covertly Saving the Planet be made out of construction paper and macaroni? I'd put it on my fridge," she promises. Chas's brand of smile boils over, breaking away her Stark-smile. "I've got a good coach," she says of her proported promise. "Plus, maybe you're onto something about using this kind of technology to deal with this leg." A hand reaches out to lightly tap Tony's project, copying his tap of hers.

"I might even color the macaroni." Stark's smile widens fractionally as hers brightens, but it never quite breaks the limits defined for his expression. He tips his head, acknowledging his awesomeness rather than pretend to false humility. Glancing over at the metallic boot, he looks thoughtful. "I know you were looking forward to the Stingray, but...."

Chastity's smile turns into a warm, flattered thing. "If I'm good enough to colored macaroni," she decides, "I'd be real happy to help out with this, if you'll let me." It isn't so easy to see, but her curiosity and excitement at this odd, secret project of his is making her curl her toes and wiggle them in her shoes.

"As long as you promise not to turn it in for your final," Stark says dryly, and pushes away from the work bench to head over toward the screen recessed in the wall. "This is a private project," he adds, turning back to hold her gaze. He slips toward solemnity. "Or rather, personal. Very personal. And I feel strongly about it. I don't have a pre-printed NDA for this, and, honestly, I don't even know if that would be a good idea. There is nothing for you to sign. But I want you to make a promise to me that you will not discuss this, ever, unless I say otherwise."

Chastity nods her head to him. She looks up and meets his eyes at his request. The way he's talking, her joking dissolves and she takes on a serious expression of her own. "I promise. I absolutely promise. If it's that important to you, I'm here for anything you need with it." A smile ventures forward with that.

Tension drains from around Stark's eyes, and there is the barest shift at his lips before he speaks. "Good," he says, acceptance simple. He leans forward to tap the screen into life, and then enters a complicated series on a displayed keyboard that doesn't exactly seem to use the standard symbols. "Come here, then. We'll start by going over the plans." A three-dimensional image springs to life with his words, rotating on the screen. Where the Sentinel armor is bulky by necessity due to the mechanisms of its movements and its power source, the suit on the display is a lean and sleek machine that is a bit like nerd porn.

Chastity leans over the table, resting her chest on her crossed arms. If she were wearing one of her summery tank-tops, this would be kind of a revealing pose. However, she is blissfully unaware, because that /is/ nerd porn. "Oh, wow..." There is genuine awe. "That is.... it's... oh, wow."

Stark looks very smug. "Uh huh." He taps the screen, pulling the hand forward into greater magnification and detail. "Okay. Let's go through it bit by bit." He glances at Chastity sidelong. "If you see something that you think could be improved or something that might /even/ be a mistake, don't hesitate to tell me. Sometimes, it helps to just have fresh eyes looking. Okay?"

"Yeah, let me just get my jaw off of the table, and yeah." She shifts a little, setting herself into a more serious posture, to be intent on this. Chastity is full of about a thousand questions and her fidgeting shows it. She manages though, to restrain herself only to observations and theoretical comments on the design as the show goes on. After a bit though, she pauses to look at him. "How are you going to power this thing?"

"Ah. Yes." Stark pulls the view back out again, so that they can study the suit as a whole. There's a little round thing over its chest. It is easy to miss at first glance, with all the distraction of the rest of the porn, but now--. He taps it, and the view rearranges. As it magnifies, a blue glow lights the screen. "Are you at all familiar with the arc reactor technology powering the Stark Industries plant?"

"I've... heard about it. Internet commentary and stuff. Perpetual energy discussions, stuff like that. I don't know all the details though," she admits. However, the blue glow on the magnified chest of the design is leeching at her attention. Chastity's eyes once more return to the illumination beneath Stark's shirt.

A twitch at the corner of Stark's eyes stands as surpressed wince at the idea of being classed with perpetual energy. "The arc reactor technology has always been limited due to the difficulty acquiring materials for reactors of sufficient size, and because it was impossible to miniaturize." He leaves some blanks for filling in.

"Was." Chastity doesn't fill in the blank so much as point out where the biggest indicator of it lies. She is looking straight at his chest once more and the metal and blue light there. "It..." Her focus is growing more intent as her mind works furiously at this. "Functioning arc reactor on you?" Though the sentence is missing a few words, her question comes spilling out anyway.

For reply, Stark merely taps his chest, once. It makes a much sharper thunk than it would against flesh.

"Okay," Chastity decides. "I know you don't want to talk about it, and you don't need to tell me everything but..." She looks up at him, searching his eyes for answers before her question is even asked. "Something about one of your missiles, and a miniaturized arc reaction, which people don't even think is possible, stuck on your chest. What happened, Tony?"

Stark gives Chastity a mild glower, perhaps testing her resolve. Or perhaps warning her off.

Chastity looks like she can't decide which it is. "Well, if you ever /want/ to talk about it..." She leaves it alone there. Instead, she turns her attention back to the screen. "So how much power is that thing putting out? This is really scaled down from the Sentinel suits, but it looks... well. Better."

Once again, Stark leaps upon the change in topic, tone incredibly satisfied: "Puts out twelve gigajoules per second," he says, with appropriate pause for gaping and applause.

There is gaping. "In that size? That thing can't be bigger than an inch or two thick... that's..." She stares at him in disbelief. "Holy shit. Can I have one for my computers at home?" Chastity checks, with a hopeful smile meant to try to temper some of her nerding.

Stark snorts, circling attention on the leads necessary to feed the power produced through the suit. "Your computers might blow up. Or else light on fire."

"I do that swapping out power supplies a couple times a week," she answers matter of factly. Chas stares at the screen, her eyes a little wide as she marvels over the design. Now that she knows the power source, even if she doesn't fully understand it, this is even more fascinating. "Can I ask another question that you're probably going to just glare at me for?"

Stark spreads his hands in an expansive gesture, pulling the view out and then back around to the point where they left off before this entire digression. "Of course."

"How come we're building it?" This question is probably every bit as weighted as the others she has not been given answer to and she knows it. That knowledge is reflected in her ducking her head down toward her scarf, as if she would like to use it to hide her face. "Not, you know... that I don't want to build it just because it's amazing and you want to build it. Just curious."

"If anyone ever tries to take my technology and turn it to bad purpose, I want to be ready," Stark says, tone fading into something entirely grim. "The next time someone steals a missile, or tries to hijack one of my suits, or turns my weapons against American citizens -- I want to be able to stop it."

Chastity takes in a deep breath at hearing that. Slowly, she begins nodding her head. "That sounds like a hell of a good reason to build this thing," she says. "Okay, so show me the shoulders again. I saw something in there that looked kind of awkward to me..."

STARK IS NOT DOING ANY THING.