Ikora Rey - June Catch All

[cannot_flinch]

WHO: Ikora Rey & You
WHERE: Various locations
WHAT: June Catchall
WHEN: Various Times
WARNINGS: None yet.



Closed to Tony Stark - Library & Guardians

The room was not in the best condition but Ikora could see that work had already been done to make it a useful place to strategize and share information. She had settled her thoughts after the strange other world and other life and felt ready to focus on the present problem at hand. The aliens that had brought them here and the storms that ruined the planet.

As she examined the room, she was unsurprised to hear a voice. She remembered it from the other world. Ikora stepped out of the room, Ophiuchus floating slightly ahead of her.

"Tony Stark," she said with a slight smirk. "Still interested in buying me a drink?"

---

Meditation - Jedi Temple

Not all Warlocks meditated. Many of them had minds too vast and too cluttered to manage it. Asher Mir had certainly never managed it and found it a waste of time. Ikora found it calming and good way to refocus her mind if her thoughts started to scatter between too many ideas at once.

She knelt in a shaded part of the Jedi temple where she knew it would be quiet and slightly away from the others who inhabited it. She knew her meditation would perhaps set off the senses of the Jedi. When Ikora retreated into her mind the Darkness was more present than usual.

In her meditation she walked the gardens of the Ishtar Archives and the streets of the Last City. She stood in the Tower listening to Shaxx call out challenges and congratulations to Guardians and Tess chat about her latest goods.

Even deep in her meditation she sensed another presence and slowly opened her eyes. She looked at the newcomer with an eyebrow raised. "Hello."

---

Socializing? - The Deep End

Ikora did not typically like bars. They were loud and crowded and full of people. Ikora was more of a loner but she wanted to get to know these people. They would be working together. It would be good to know them, their skills, and their quirks.

Also, Cayde was here and she wanted to spend more time with her old friend. When this journey was over she would go back to a time where he was gone. It was a... lonely prospect.

She sat at the bar, turned slightly to face the room, with whatever drink Cayde had poured for her and Ophiuchus at her shoulder. Her ghost was always good company.

---

Wild Card - Whatever/Wherever.

Comments

[in_extremis]

That raised so many more questions than it answered, leaving Tony's gaze darting between Ikora and Ophiuchus while he worked through how close they were straying back to the magic stuff. It was a risk he had to take, because he had to know, "Where do you go then?" It seemed to Tony that the solution to those problems had been built into the system; he had seen Sundance decompile and reappear enough times to assume the shape the Ghosts took was a choice they made. And as someone who had recently started to back up his arguably less manageable and very squishy human code, Tony could see how having the one he was using destroyed would not be ideal, but a manageable problem. Maybe not here..."And, sorry, but, you bring the Guardian back to life. I feel like taking a bullet for Ikora would be counterproductive, in your case."

[cannot_flinch]

"I go back to the Traveler as Light." Ophiuchus didn't seem uneasy about that prospect. He didn't seemed worried about it at all, actually. "There are some things not even I can bring her back from."

Ikora could see that Tony expected logic and sense from all of this but without years of study the Light was a difficult concept to grasp. Even Light scholars who dedicated their lives to studying it didn't fully understand it.

"It's very hard to keep a Guardian dead but it is possible."

[in_extremis]

Ophiuchus answered a different question than Tony had asked, and a much bigger one at that, but it might have been the same answer either way so Tony only went, "Huh," after opening his mouth to correct him. As much as the nature of the afterlife did not interest Tony in the least, he was for the moment considering how different being dead and just not being physically present actually were.

"Well, I won't ask you to demonstrate," he very graciously allowed, and flicked a finger between Ophiuchus and his communicator. "But if I don't find it in there, I could be interested in some morbid details. Not for my own pleasure, I assure you, I can do that on my own, but just in case." They had been put in some unpredictable situations here, and Tony did prefer to be prepared.

[cannot_flinch]

To the Ghost, the answer was the correct one. He hadn't lied to Tony the entire time they talked. He wasn't one for deception even though Ikora was very good at keeping secrets herself.

"I can answer your questions. You might not like the answer," Ikora said with a small smile. Her answers hadn't seemed very satisfactory to Tony but eventually he would come to wrap his mind around the mysteries and secrets of the Light and their world. "But I will answer them."

Ophiuchus' database should help a little bit. It was a fairly detailed with descriptions of enemies, theories and actual rules on the way the universe worked for them. There was history as well.

Somewhere in those records might even be a mention of Cayde's death and funeral. Unless Ophiuchus kept it from him.

[in_extremis]

"You never know what'll make it all come together," Tony muttered in reply, as though his curiousity was purely in pursuit of an actionable solution to their problem, and he might be able to tease out the pattern if he could just lay out the breadth of all of their varied experiences to examine. That Ophiuchus was able to just hand Tony so much context for the world that Ikora, Cayde and the Ghosts came from was an unexpected convenience, because Tony found the he regularly did not know what questions to ask when their 'normal' was so different.

What wasn't normal for any of them and was going to be seen different by everyone that interacted with it was Agra-10, so Tony knocked a knuckle on the table to refocus their intent. "I'll get Jon to dig up those tapes and see if he thinks there's any value in getting people to talk about their personal stuff. We'll have to find out who's available to focus on exploring the city, and how many hands should hang back to make sure enough of it is habitable by the end of the day. Not everything has to be a deep dive, so we shouldn't limit a party to how capable we think they are in a structural collapse crisis; if we can get a few people just to do some scans and start marking areas of the map that they think look dangerous and should be restricted, or look valuable for scavenging, or, you know--categories, you seem like you'd be into that, making lists."

[cannot_flinch]

Tony had a sense of leadership about him when he put his mind to it. She could see it in the way he laid out a plan of action and how through all of his questions he hadn't forgotten the original idea they had started talking about.

"I've done some organizing before." Ikora shared a look with Ophiuchus who nodded. He had made a list of those task for them to keep track of. They would make a list and help maintain the map.

"I'd appreciate the help, Tony, and I look forward to what we can accomplish together." She offered him a hand to shake.

[in_extremis]

Tony took the offered hand warmly in both of his and shot Ophiuchus a wink for his help. Now that there seemed to be enough people here to keep this place running, fed and sheltered, it looked like they wouldn't have to start from zero all over again every time some new crisis like a storm cropped up, and maybe they wouldn't have to play so much defence when they did. "We're going to get everybody home," Tony agreed with an optimism that took him by surprise. After Steve's disappearance, he didn't think they stood a chance.