revivalproject | Ikora Rey

Entry tags:

Ikora Rey - June Catch All

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That question felt so much like Ikora was conducting a prime time interview that Tony recoiled with a delicate hand to his chest, who, me?, and glanced around like he might spot the cameras. What comes next? was his whole career. He wasn't used to not having an answer.

"You saw what Billy is capable of," he started slowly, dropping his blithe performance and his hands to the edge of the table where he could tap his restless energy against the underside. "A whole world, a dynamic population, entirely new lives for all of us, from nothing. That amount of power, that amount of control, and its like he's here just to prove that it means nothing compared to what the people who put us here are capable of. It's not a threat. We are powerless." With that cheery preface out of the way, Tony shrugged one shoulder and one of his hands escaped to sketch through the air as he continued. "I think they underestimate us. We've found...pieces, of the puzzle. That message from Coruscant, sure, but there's a whole--factory, or lab that at the bottom of a lake that wasn't hidden well enough, there's tunnels with cages and mechanisms that are not from this world and they spoke to us, came down to our level and let us know that there is a voice which means that there is a throat to strangle.

"I can't trust that all of this isn't a deliberate part of their game, but the more pieces we have, the more we can see. There's more here, in this city, to find. What we need is the tools to look."

Ah, there it is. The man behind the mask. Ikora was glad to see it. Tony's flash hid a lot but she had always felt there was more to him. A more she found interesting.

He was clearly intelligent, incredibly so. Why he hid it... she didn't know but eventually she would. Ikora rarely let the answer to a mystery elude her.

"Then we start making a list," she suggested once he was finished. "Of the places that have been thoroughly explored and what we found there. And another list of the places that we need to explore."

A simple enough task on the surface but the city was larger than one might think at first glance.

And the cooperation thus far had been...spotty. Hopefully, the shift that had happened recently extended to better communication as well. Tony swayed forward to turn slightly toward the table instead, where he could spread his hand over the surface as he said, "This place could use a map. Get Reeve or Cayde to draft it up, so we can see what we're working with." Something more detailed than the abstract one they had in their pockets, ideally. "A while back, Jon and I tried to make a proper record of peoples' experiences here, like...an archive, to try to figure this out. It didn't have a great focus, it was kind of...He has tapes, though, somewhere in the library. We start marking out locations, and do a proper debrief like that, we'll get a better idea of what's out there."

Ikora looked over at Ophiuchus who nodded. He was taking notes on what Tony suggested.

"That's a good plan." A better drawn map would certainly be helpful. "I'll suggest the idea to Cayde and see if he wants to draw one."

He did like his maps, though he rarely had to draw them himself while the Hunter Vanguard. His hunters did most of that for him as they wandered far and wide.

"And if you'd like help maintaining an archive I enjoy organizing books and tapes." She could help find and organize the tapes, perhaps even transcribe them.

Claiming to enjoy the organizing might have been a step too far, making Tony smile skeptically at Ikora, but he could see why Jon liked her. Or, Tony assumed he must have, because Tony knew personally what kind of conviction it took to stick around the library in the face of Jon's snarling rejection. "Librarian wasn't too far off, huh?" he observed, then gave a short not, twirling a finger in the air. "That's Jon's area, I just make him look good. You'll have to find out what he's been doing in here, because it's been moving walls and shit--he's got a system."

She smiled warmly back. Genuinely she liked organization and making sense of things. She would happily work with Jon to clean up and maintain this space. When information was organized it was easier to find and easier to understand.

"I'll be sure to check in with him before I start to make too many changes." She didn't want to intrude too much. But she was something of a force of nature herself and wouldn't stand back for too long.

"Cayde and I have been talking about expeditions away from the city," she said, "We could expand the map and perhaps find more telling ruins."

"They probably wouldn't keep us sitting right on top of the juiciest stuff," Tony agreed, but with a cautionary tilt of his head, hand curling over his heart. "And he's got a habit of running off without telling anybody. What we know is out there is the storms, though, and I don't...You shouldn't underestimate them. If there was a way to track when the next event was going to hit, we'd be in a better position to travel wider. It's not a natural phenomena, though, so it's not as simple as watching where the wind blows."

"Yes, I've been warned about the storms."

And she still wanted to walk into them. A Warlock was not afraid of the Darkness and horrible visions. It was almost bread and butter to them.

"Even an unnatural event has signs. There should be something different about these storms than natural ones," Ikora mused, mostly to herself instead of at Tony. "We should watch the next one very closely."

It would be great if it worked out that way, and Tony's wry smile suggested he didn't think there would be much watching happening, but maybe with some of these new powers around them there was someone who could keep that thing from getting into their heads now. "The last one shredded my bots," he admitted, with a vague gesture back toward the door where Ikora might have noticed the D.A.T.A. unit perched near the entrance to the library. "Huge energy output, overloads anything caught in it. Most of them will trip now instead of blowing out, but I've tried a few runoff options to see what works. That tower up north of town, looks like a radio tower, was outputting a similar effect, Sundance tried to get readings off of it while it was operational. Maybe you two can make sense of them," he suggested to Ophiuchus.

"We'll make an expedition."

"But we should talk to Sundance first," Ophiuchus said with a little bob in the air for a nod. "She'll be able to share whatever readings she's got."

"I doubt Cayde would let us go alone anyway." They were a fireteam, after all. A few more people to tag along would probably also be wise. Another thing to add to the list of things to get done. "I doubt anyone here would let us go alone."

"That's very thoughtful of you and I appreciate the respect for the concern. Some people around here have no idea the kind of stress they cause when they wander off," Tony said very solemnly, rubbing at his heart again with his eyes closed like he had suffered greatly from such inconsiderate behaviour and couldn't be accused of doing anything like it. More genuinely, though his fingers continued to flex where they were and his gaze wandered across the table like he was very focused on picturing their potential map and how to most efficiently utilize it, Tony continued, "I don't think I've met anyone here that didn't...care. Like, really care. Most people are nice, you know, people are good, but that's not what I mean. If there's any constant in the selection process that decides who has to be here, I think they really are looking for...heroes." With a deep breath, already thinking that sounded too soft, Tony added, "Or everyone's learned the game and keep the worst shit to themselves."

"Are you one of them?"

Tony seemed like the type to do something reckless like that but she shouldn't assume. Maybe he was more reasonable than he appeared at first glance. His points in this conversation had been insightful and well thought out. He might be more Titan than Hunter.

"Everyone has a dark side," she said with a shrug. The Darkness was right then chanting in her head, a soft collection of voices always in the back of her mind. "We can still be heroes and carry the darkness with us."

While Tony didn't try to give Ikora a satisfying answer, his cocky grin suggested she should feel comfortable assuming the worst of him. She would figure out his reputation soon enough, and if she was properly primed for it, she would readily accept what a flashy asshole he must have been. This conversation was a one-off, don't look too close.

'The darkness', as a concept, was largely poetic fluff to Tony, and he snorted at this being what Ikora took from what his said. "You're really into astrology, aren't you?" he accused, then put a hand up in surrender to stop Ikora from taking that as a bad thing. "One of the great sciences," he said reverently. Some people happened to look at the stars and try to derive meaning from them, and there was nothing wrong with that and Tony, personally, wasn't ashamed.

"Astrology is an excuse for people to blame bad behavior on the movement of the planets." Ikora had no patience for such blatantly unscientific way to study the movement of the stars and their effect on the things around them.

"The Darkness is a real force in my world," she explained since he seemed to think she babbling about some sort of mystical nonsense. She wasn't, in this case. "A power just like the Light. It corrupts but it can also make someone strong."

The Hive were all fueled by Darkness.

Okay, maybe Tony could be a little ashamed, pursing his lips and crossing his arms and not doing a very good job of not looking like he was being scolded. "Says the Scorpio," he muttered, and eyed the Ghost accusingly for his stellar name.

Darkness actually being a thing did make more sense in the system of Ikora's philosophy that Tony was slowly decoding, he just hadn't expected it to be so...Light and Dark. He should have, but Cayde and Ikora's military was alien enough that he was evidently inclined to be too charitable. It was still a familiar structure. "The Jedi, the guys with the cool swords, they just call their 'paracausal' powers 'the Force', and they've built whole social structures over who is using it the 'right' way. And Reeve, the guy with the cat toy, can't miss him, he calls it the 'Lifestream' or--something like that, that's how he brings the toy to life. I'm not saying you're a toy for Ophiuchus, you know..." he said, and squinted at the Ghost, welcoming him to admit that picking his companion was kind of the same thing, no judgment. It was just a pattern that Tony was curious about, and without something from Earth that so easily fit into it.

From what Ikora had seen of the Jedi abilities, they were not fully paracausal. They can do things normal humans can't but she didn't think they could change destiny or reverse fate the way a Guardian could. They certainly couldn't die and come back over and over again.

"Being a Guardian isn't a religious calling like the Jedi have made their order. And we can't animate any toys with our Light." Ikora held up a hand and called the Void to her palm, holding the vast darkness of space in her palm. "We can do some very interesting things."

The orb of Void changed to Solar, a small sun sitting her her palm before it transformed again into Arc, ball lightning in her palm. It cycled slowly through the elements. "It might be considered magic by some."

They might have taken different forms, but Tony wasn't convinced they weren't all drawing from a similar source. He wasn't even entirely convinced, in that moment, that Ikora was right about what she was doing being magic, because Tony was watching this evolving orb raptly with wide, dark eyes, like he had tracked Ophiuchus when he appeared. Every configuration very much looked like energy to Tony. It had never occurred to him that what Cayde could do was magic, after all.

"This is--you don't have to answer this, not, ah, immediately pertinent, but--were you also serious about the not dating thing?" he asked suddenly, one hand escaping from his defensive pouting to open with understanding. Maybe that wasn't exactly how Ikora had put it when they met at the gala, but the librarian thing had been pretty accurate, after all.

Cayde probably hadn't demonstrated like Ikora could. Hunters had a very different relationship with the Light than a Warlock.

"I haven't had any interest in that." She closed her fist, snuffing out the orb. It wasn't important in her mind. There were plenty of Guardians who had relationships. She had heard of all the legendary love stories and she had her suspicions about Osiris and Saint-14 but none of it made her envious or really interested.

"I think you and I would have more fun debating the nature of the universe than dating, anyway."

There had to be something to that. The prevalence of people in Temba who had told Tony that they weren't interested in dating, full stop, had to be part of a larger pattern, or Tony hadn't been paying attention back home. He considered Ikora thoughtfully, better prepared now to accept this premise than he had been than he arrived, but still pointed out, "Not to make it weird, but that does sound like foreplay. If you're open to exploring the recursive nature of the multiverse, I might suggest getting a dog together, maybe a joint bank account."

"If I had my library from home, I'd let you read the writings of a Warlock who has a very convincing argument that Guardians are separate from the multiverse and do not create branching timelines because of our abilities to change destiny." Ikora thought he would enjoy so much of the Golden Age writings they had and the newer ones written post Cataclysm. His intellect and curiosity was obvious even with all the joking and teasing.

"But I only have what information is stored in Ophiuchus which is mostly useful field data."

"I have some writings though on other theories. I have all of yours, Ikora," her ghost offered. "I could possibly download them into the Argii communication device for him."

"You minx," Tony accused, like it was her boudoir that Ikora had just offered to open to him, but he did scratch thoughtfully at his beard at this growing certainty that Ikora, Warlocks, and maybe Guardians in general considered fate or destiny a forgone conclusion. Tony doubted they were going to be able to come to an agreement on that, even with this great exception to her rule.

Tony's eyes were still narrowed in consideration when he was surprised out of the rumination with delight at Ophiuchus' offer, even if the Ghost didn't seem to want to address Tony directly. He still gambled with a teasing grin, the gold web spreading once again over his fingers that he didn't reach out, but turned up his palm in welcome. "I'll devour them, with pleasure. You can test me in the morning, if you like. I do give a great oral presentation."

Ikora had never said anything about not teasing him about the vast amounts of knowledge her universe had so different from his own. There was no such thing as destiny to a Guardian. They laughed at the idea of fate. Paracausal powers did that to a person.

Ophiuchus wasn't the kind of ghost who had much of a sense of humor. He also didn't know what to do about Tony's very obvious flirtations.

"Um. I'm not sure I want to interface with your tech, no offense. Nano technology is very dangerous in our universe. It can corrupt even a ghost." Ophiuchus did float closer to Tony but not near the golden mesh. There were too many notes of SIVA for him to feel comfortable.

Nanotechnology was infinitely weaponizable, so it wasn't a surprise to Tony that it could pose enough of a threat to make Ophiuchus nervous; Extremis itself had been a bomb that Tony diffused. Still, Tony raised his eyebrows and touched a delicate hand to his chest, taking offence to the idea that he might be corrupted, then admitted, "I can't promise I'm not interested in corrupting you." She could be hard to read, but with a counterpoint to finally compare, Tony was quickly figuring out that Sundance might have been just as reckless as her Guardian. He raised a shoulder in a lopsided shrug, welcoming the Ghost to share Ikora's fine work the boring way, not about to be completely distracted from that treasure, but his gaze slid slowly back to Ikora with an obvious calculation running. "Is that how they die? The Ghosts. You said they could be destroyed."

"We can die a lot of ways," Ophiuchus answered for himself. He floated over to Tony's communication device to scan it. It was difficult to communicate with. Agrii technology behaved like no other so he needed a moment to establish a connection strong enough to send the data.

"Shot. Crushed. Eaten. We can choose to die, sacrificing ourselves to save our Guardian." The ghost paused a moment and Ikora knew he was thinking of Sagiria and Osiris. "While we're not like other machines, we're still machines. Destroy the physical or our code and we're dead."

No matter how much they liked to think it, Guardians were not immortal. Neither were their ghosts.

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."

Ikora Rey - June Catch All

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