Rimuru rode in Jazz as he sped all the way to Tony's villa. Along the way, traffic police stopped them for having no license plate and for speeding. Fortunately, Rimuru was in the passenger seat, and he tricked the officers by saying they were testing a self-driving car. In the end, they let him go; after all, there was no way to convict a car.
When he arrived at the villa, he found not only Tony and Pepper, but also someone he hadn't expected: Doctor Strange, who was still Dr. Stephen Strange for now.
Pepper threw her arms around Rimuru as soon as she saw him. They hadn't seen each other in two weeks, and not only that, but they had completely lost contact. Of course she had been worried.
Tony was also surprised to see Rimuru. They hadn't seen each other for so long that, needless to say, he must have gone back to his own world.
"Tony, it's only been two weeks. Did you get captured and taken to a cave again? You've even called a doctor to your house."
Tony had been happy to see Rimuru, but the moment Rimuru opened his mouth, that happiness vanished. What a nasty little brat.
"Kid, your Knight got smashed to pieces last time. I haven't seen you come up with anything new in all this time. Have you given up on it completely and switched to playing with cars instead?"
"This isn't an ordinary car. I found this bodyguard for Sister Pepper." Rimuru looked smug, ready to watch Tony's jaw drop in a moment.
When Pepper heard that the bodyguard was for her, she looked it over from top to bottom. The car did suit his taste, but he couldn't see how it was supposed to act as a bodyguard.
"Huh?"
Tony raised an eyebrow and set down his coffee cup. "A car for a bodyguard? Kid, did you go back home and upgrade your sense of humor?" He walked over and circled the sleek silver sports car, which obviously had no license plate, then rapped on the hood. "Looks like a nice car, but a bodyguard? It doesn't even have a camera. Oh, wait." He bent down and stared at a spot on the front of the car. "That's an unusual badge. How come I've never seen it before?"
"Of course you haven't. I had a hard time bringing it back."
"Enough about me, Tony. Why did you invite a doctor over? Did you blow yourself up doing an experiment?"
Tony's face twitched. "Can't you wish me well for once? I invited him here to give Pepper and me a physical."
Strange also found it a little odd. This little girl had been looking at her strangely from the very beginning, but he didn't pay it much mind. Kids were like that; it was perfectly normal for them to act a little abnormal now and then. "The examinations are over. The results show that Mr. Tony and Ms. Pepper are in good health, with no problems. In that case, I'll be going."
"Wait, wait. If something happens one day that turns your life upside down, go to this place." Rimuru handed him a card with Kamar-Taj's address written on it.
Strange looked at the card in his hand, puzzled. He had initially thought the child was playing around, but seeing Rimuru's serious expression, he put it away in the end.
"All right. If something really does happen to me one day, I'll go."
"Did you know this doctor before?"
Tony looked at Rimuru's strange behavior with some curiosity.
"I didn't know him before, but I will in the future."
Tony dismissed the deliberately mysterious remark.
"All right, where did you get this car, anyway? JARVIS's scan shows its energy readings aren't quite normal. In fact, they're extremely abnormal."
"I told you, this is the bodyguard I found for Sister Pepper."
"How is a somewhat strange car supposed to be a bodyguard?"
Pepper looked at the car and asked curiously as well.
Rimuru snapped his fingers. "Jazz, show them."
The front of the car slowly transformed, and a cannon barrel extended from one of the headlights. The change gave the otherwise ordinary sports car an aggressive look.
"Wow."
That was all Tony managed to say. He stepped closer, bringing his face almost up to the barrel as it rotated out from deep within the car's front end. "An energy weapon? No~ the structure looks more like some kind of pulse emitter. The way the joints work together... that's impossible. This level of precision and these material properties-this isn't scientific."
"Hello, Mr. Stark." A deep male voice came from inside the car, slightly synthetic in texture but exceptionally clear and smooth. A friendly blue light flashed at the front of the car. "I am Jazz. Lord Rimuru mentioned me to you."
For a moment, the living room fell silent, save for the faint sound of distant waves. Tony walked halfway around Jazz and let out a quiet chuckle through his nose, impossible to tell whether it was admiration or defiance.
"Transforming metal, onboard artificial intelligence, and that strange badge." He turned to Rimuru, his gaze sharpening. "Kid, where did you get him? Don't tell me he's another specialty from your world."
"That's right. I went to a lot of trouble to bring him back from another world. Strictly speaking, he isn't an artificial intelligence. He's a mechanical life-form. He's alive."
Pepper found her voice after her shock. She approached cautiously and looked up at Jazz. "You... you're really conscious? You can talk and think?" As Tony Stark's secretary and the person who actually ran Stark Industries, she was far more receptive to high technology than most people, but a living, transforming mechanical life-form was still beyond the ordinary.
"Yes, Ms. Potts." Jazz lowered his head, deliberately moving very gently so as not to frighten her. "I am a Cybertronian, an Autobot. Protecting intelligent life is one of our core principles. Mr. Rimuru believes I can fulfill my duty here, and it is my honor to do so."
"A mechanical life-form?" Tony raised one eyebrow and repeated the term, his voice practically overflowing with doubt and curiosity. He approached Jazz and extended a finger. After a moment's hesitation, he tapped Jazz's smooth, cold metal door, producing a crisp clanging sound. "Can you feel pain?"
Jazz's body seemed to tremble almost imperceptibly, and he emitted a low hum resembling a human chuckle. "Not pain in the traditional sense, Mr. Stark. But my sensors can provide feedback on external pressure and structural integrity. You could call it an advanced sense of touch."
"Incredible." Pepper had recovered from her initial shock. True to form as the capable partner who managed both Stark Industries and Tony Stark, she quickly got to the point. "So, Jazz, what are your duties?"
"To serve as your everyday transportation in vehicle form, Ms. Potts. Whenever you face a threat, I will transform and intervene, providing armed protection and isolating you from the surrounding environment. My onboard systems can also connect to the vast majority of Earth's civilian networks and some encrypted ones, providing early warnings and route planning. In short," Jazz's tone seemed to take on a touch of humanlike humor, "I'm a bodyguard and driver who can drive, fight, and connect to networks, and who needs no salary or insurance."
"That sounds like a much better deal than the salary I pay Happy." Tony folded his arms and looked at Jazz, then at the smug Rimuru, his gaze moving back and forth between them. "But kid, you gave Pepper a... uh~ living, armed, alien mechanical life-form as a gift? Did you do a risk assessment? What are his underlying directives? Could he suddenly decide to get overprotective one day and classify everyone who approaches Pepper as a threat, including me?"
Rimuru was doubled over with laughter. "Hahaha, Tony, so this day finally came for you too! Don't worry, Jazz is super reliable-much more reliable than some guy who flies around in an iron shell all day and keeps crashing through his own floors."
Tony ignored Rimuru's teasing. His engineer's soul had been thoroughly set ablaze. "What's his power source? The microscopic materials science involved in that transformation mechanism is unheard of. How is the energy weapon integrated without affecting the vehicle's basic functions? And what serves as the substrate for that mechanical life-form's consciousness? Quantum computing? Or some kind of particle information state we can't understand?"