open | april/may catch-all

[industries]

WHO: Tony Stark & you
WHAT: April catch-all for open, planned, & future threads
WHERE: Free Cities - Cadens & Desert Outpost
WHEN: 4/05 - 4/30
WARNINGS: None yet.

NOTES: Although he left his world emaciated and malnourished from months adrift in space, Tony's body was rejuvenated to its normal state by the healing powers of being pulled to Abraxas. TL;DR he looks like his normal self, except more depressed.

▶ i. we are not soldiers
    Cadens Desert Outpost 003 - Wagon | Apr. 6
    [ open ]

[ The last wagon to Cadens only has a couple of seats left when its wheels finally roll and crunch against the sandy road. ]

Hey! [ The shout comes from the right side of the departure area, in the general direction of the barracks. The driver reins in the horses and a middle-aged man jogs up to the wagon, a standard issue knapsack slung over his shoulder. ] One more for – yeah, okay. [ He squeezes in, past a particularly miffed soldier. ] Uh, Private Pyle? 'Scuse me? Thanks.

[ The man drops into the empty seat across from you and sinks into it with a long, slow breath. Judging from his plain fatigues and lack of epaulets, he looks to be a newly-arrived Summoned, though he at least appears to have taken the time to trim his facial hair into a neat goatee. Although his eyes roam cooly across the passenger area, the white-knuckled grip on his knapsack's strap betrays the kind of sharp anxiety common to Abraxas' newcomers – and perhaps something more.

His eyes flit up to you as the horses whinny and the wagon rolls forward again. He frowns. ]

What. Not a Kubrick fan? [He rolls his eyes.] What am I talking about, "Arrival of a Train" is probably peak entertainment here.

▶ ii. we won, mr. stark
    Cadens - Mag's Inn | Apr. 7
    [ open + planned: peter, nadine ]

[ It's only when he sits down at the inn table that he lets himself breathe.

Okay. Okay.

Step completed, box checked off. He drags a hand down his chin, then splays that hand on the table, feels the wood-grain of its surface, old and polished from years of use. It feels real. Has heft, and tactility, enough to tell the mechanoreceptors in his fingertips and the neurons in his thalamus that he's here. This is real. But that doesn't mean they couldn't be lying to him, because how-

Last thing he remembers, with relative clarity, is Steve Rogers' face. The rage rising up his throat, boiling over, barely standing, shaking. The arc reactor in his hand. Liar.

The last thing he remembers, with more bleary haze, is light streaming through glass windows, Pepper's hand over his. Slowly blinking at her face, her creased brow. The answer to a dozen sleepless nights on the Benatar: Alive.

Then – floating in water. And he was here – healthy again, and away from home... again. In... what? A glorified steampunk convention? Las Vegas' most dedicated LARPer club? He'd kind of hoped so, until the outpost wagon neared a city out of some YA fantasy and kicked him to the curb.

He closes his eyes and rubs his hands over his face. Footsteps approach the table.]

Not hungry – starved for a month on a spaceship, you know how it goes – hey, [ he presses the back of his thumb against his eye, ] so I heard you guys do a care package?

▶ iii. wildcard
    [ open + planned: sam ]

Keeping to two prompts for now since I'm not sure if Tony's going to find out... certain information.

Regardless! If you're jonesing to thread something in particular with Tony, please don't hesitate to drop it here! Also feel free to hit me up at LaCidiana, DM me, or PM this journal if you want to ask about anything. ♥

Comments

[shadowthief]

Inej's job for the last few years has been to notice things. To overhear what wasn't meant to be heard. To see what was not meant to be known. There's no mistaking the surprise in him, and more still, the absolute lack of recognition of her when his eyes land on her. It squeezes in her chest, and then it's pushed out of the way, tucked into a box she may choose to open later, or not.

"Apologies, I didn't realize you were... not him." The words are awkward on her tongue, the whims of the Singularity not being something she has been faced with enough to be prepared to deal with the brunt of it laid at her feet so plainly. She never knew Tony left, and she supposes, he didn't either, nor did he know he was ever here.

A beat.

"Cadens," she offers. "The city, it's called Cadens." She holds up a finger with her free hand, the stack of dishes balanced perfectly in her other. "One second," she disappears into the back to deposit the dishes.

It gives her a few seconds to pull her composure before she returns to his table in that same, too-quiet way she has about her that makes her seem to materialize from nothing in the space of a blink. "Can I–" she gestures at the table, a not-quite asked question to join him and once she has the permission, she slides into the seat across from him. "How much have you been told, and how mad is the concept of multiple selves to you?"

[industries]

"Oh." Tony leans back in his seat as the pieces fall into place. It's only been a couple hours since his chat with Sam, which, it appears, isn't nearly enough time for even Tony Stark's brain to calibrate to the mountain of new, incredible information presented to it. This place, the people here, the time passed, the existence of another... him.

Yet, here's more evidence that Wilson's not completely off his rocker. Or EXO-7 Falcon jet, whatever. Tony mumbles out a, "I kinda meant this place in general," as the girl strides away, and can't help but feel a small shard of guilt in his chest. Although the idea of another version of himself strolling around is hard to stomach, it seems that version was real enough to her.

She looks about Peter's age.

She comes back out and asks to sit. Tony gives a little half-shrug – good enough, apparently, and–

He lets out a laugh. Small, more like a single huff of air. But it's there.

"Uh. Pretty crazy." He pauses, twists his mouth. "Honestly, not that crazy, at face value – there's plenty of multiverse theories out there, quantum mechanics don't necessarily negate them, but..." He trails off. Gestures. "All of the 'mes' getting dragged here, into feudal fiefdom land, one after another? That's. Wild as hell."

[shadowthief]

"It is... apparently not completely uncommon here, to have multiples of the same person come and leave and come here again. It's all a bit unsettling if I'm honest." And Inej is rarely anything else.

A pause and she adds, "At least this time you were not brought to the farming community as before. You were... giving the library in Solvun electricity. I glean that someplace with more of a technology base is more your thing." All his pieces and parts and tinkering had easily become noticeable even in the short time she'd known him.

"Inej Ghafa," she offers her hand in greeting since she'd skipped the introductions erroneously to start with.

[industries]

'Unsettling' is kind of an understatement if she's asking how a pseudo-steampunk society harnessed cosmic strings and concentrated them down to a single multiversal destination, but Tony keeps that to himself. He's still processing – "processing"? is that the word? – everything Sam told him, and that means everything, which...

Maybe chatting about things his past-future-self did in some faraway agro-commune is a little easier to stomach than the alternative.

"Yeah, never been one for... corn harvests," Tony replies, deadpan. But that's – god. Solving some local problem, for people less educated, less equipped, in a place where it might allow them access to knowledge to help themselves, that's...

Something he would do. But also, maybe a little less frantic than what he would do? Which means...

...Something. Probably. He reaches out to return her handshake.

"You know who I am. Apparently." Which, he guesses, is one step forward from Herbalife, who'd never heard of an Avenger in her whole post-apocalyptic life. He lets go, leans back, crosses his arms. "So – this other me. Impressions? Trivia? Gracefully aged?" Pause. "If you describe him as 'refined,' I know that's teenager for 'awful'."

Then again, after five years of living with the weight of the world, who wouldn't look worse for wear?

[shadowthief]

She laughs softly at that. "No, you don't seem the type," she admits with a soft shake of her head.

"Will you insist I call you by your first name or are you all right with Mr. Stark?" Because he had certainly preferred the first last time, even if she'd refused it on account of the lack of familiarity between them. But she's found in her time here, that many people insist on everything being much more informal.

She smiles at the questions, "I don't know if refined is the word I'd use," she says with a playful smirk on her face. "He was one of the first people I met when I arrived. I liked him, he...didn't like how quiet I am," she huffs a soft sound at that, recalling being told to wear a bell. "he was going to teach me how electricity works?"

The truth is, things happened so quickly between her arrival in Solvunn, finding Jesper, and trading factions, she'd not had a lot of time spent with him. "Honestly, I didn't get a lot of time with him, before I moved here, to Cadens."

[industries]

Mr. Stark. A little shard of something pierces Tony's chest. He thinks of Peter standing right there, across the room, and then waving goodbye at the top of the stairs. He's fine, Tony tells himself. Just because he's out of sight doesn't mean he's gone.

Outwardly, he raises a brow. "How electricity works – so..." He twirls his wrist. "Does that mean you're from one of these pre-industrial worlds I've heard so much about, or that you just, like. Went through the public school system."

Definitely not the American one, judging from her extremely proper accent. The side of his mouth tugs upward, just slightly. "Anyway, 'Mr. Stark' is fine – I'm sure it won't speed up the mid-life crisis. And, uh. Wait. I thought all the city-states hated each other, but they let you... move?"

[shadowthief]

Inej can sense... something in the air, but she can't identify what it is. That might bother her more than the shift itself, the not knowing. Not knowing what caused it, or what it is, or if she'd somehow stepped over a line she didn't know existed.

She laughs softly. "The first. We were advancing quite quickly, but we were still using torches and lanterns, horses and carriages." she's adjusted to the fact that most people are from much more technologically advanced places than Ravka and Ketterdam could really conceive yet.

"I suppose hate is a good word for it," she muses, considering it for a moment. "But there was a Peace Summit, some sort of show to prove that everything is fine. Each faction was trying to pull people into it, too. So the switch was... drastically easier than I had expected. But I don't think that sort of thing will be happening again any time soon, if at all."

[industries]

"Peace summit," Tony echoes. Sam had filled him in pretty, uh. Thoroughly? Horrifyingly? On everything from back home, but Tony's guessing that by the end of their drinks, he no longer had the enthusiasm (or sobriety) to explain the minutiae of the political situation here. It was all Tony could do to extract himself from the apartment and walk back down the stairs, despite the fact that Sam had assured him "Mag" had gotten a bed ready for him. Laying down, alone, with his thoughts right now – sounds to Tony like the scariest experience imaginable since he first woke up in this particular corner of multiversal hell.

Anyway. Can't blame Wilson for covering all the bases. And this girl – Inej – for how young she looks, she speaks with all the poise and analysis of a BBC commentator, which, Tony figures, means she might be a good source of info. Assuming that her beyond-her-years intelligence doesn't also extend into her ability to harbor ulterior motives.

"Take it from someone with experience?" Tony gestures. "People only plaster 'peace' in big letters when there's been a distinct lack of it. But – interesting, okay, so–" He narrows his eyes. "This whole 'Summoned' phenomena, a.k.a. why we're all here – the people back at the outpost said we're 'important' and they're 'grateful,' yaddah yaddah – but... what about everywhere else? Is every faction actually harnessing this–" he searches for the word, snaps his fingers, "'Singularity' thing, or just attributing some kind of higher meaning to a random rip in spacetime?"

[shadowthief]

"Oh, I don't doubt that. These factions have centuries of bad blood between them, any tenuous peace they may be play-acting at right now will break at the first imagined political slight." She's no stranger to the whims of war, and she's talked with Sam already about the very, very real possibility of things taking a turn for the worse sooner rather than later.

She nods a little, "Yes, the people who pulled me into Solvunn had a similar spiel about being chosen or important, things like that. I think all of them have something like that, that they say to try to put people at some kind of ease." The tone in her voice suggests it did not put her at any kind of ease at all.

"The best I understand, each faction has their own agenda with the Singularity. They all want the power for different reasons, Solvunn is a farming community, but they are also deeply religious. I wasn't there long enough to find out much, but there are a lot of references to... Old Gods, rituals performed in homes and during festivals in the town, superstitions that are followed, with a pretty decent reliance on magic. I think they may want to wake these...Gods.

"Cadens, as I'm sure you've already noticed, is much more military-focused, and much more reliant on technology than, I think, either of the other two. Thorne I know much less about, other than every single thing I've heard from anyone that's been there is utterly wretched. Keeping people as captives in dungeons and the like. Don't think I'll be going there any time soon."

This, she finds, feels more natural than a lot of things she's done since arriving here. The exchange of information is a little bit like coming home. Even though he's the wrong person, and the information is the wrong type, it's close enough.