revivalproject | Succession

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Succession

WHO: Anyone on the first train out of Temba!
WHERE: Not-Temba, the Not-Transport Station
WHAT: First look at the new city! Tony has some specific things in here he's doing, but you can make it your own first impression experience.
WHEN: As soon as possible after receiving Ga Re's message, time to Ex Floor.
WARNINGS: I'll let you know if this gets weird.

a. Arrival! [OTA! This is a mingle option, so display your preferences accordingly]
The last time they got an urgent message from the Agrii about travel plans, they were headed to space to fight a war. So when Ga Re said far, Tony was not expecting to be standing at the train tracks, staring at the vehicle with some bewilderment. It hadn't been that long since the last time Tony had come this way, and it hadn't looked to him like this station was going to be in service for a good, long time at that point. Even now, as he looked down the tracks to where they disappeared into the woods, he wouldn't confidently say they looked serviceable. Even if the train itself had the juice, it very much looked like a rusty bolt and warped metal was its first and last destination.

That was a problem to solve when they got to it. Tony wasn't the only one ready to find out what was going to happen, and he glanced around the platform to the few people who had dropped what they were doing to come see Ga Re's train with a faint, wry smile, before turning back toward the city to watch for Jon with a flurry of encouraging text messages to spur him on. They had plenty of time already to hang around Temba, it was time to go forward.

The train itself was a sleek tube, like a subway car, lined with seats on the inside that weren't particularly comfortable or inviting. It wasn't giving a long-distance impression, without much room for luggage or travel comforts that a long-haul vehicle might. It didn't even appear to have any kind of control system that Tony could find after some frustrated investigation; just walls and windows and a button to open and close the door, that swished enough times to be irritating before Tony fully gave up on it. He was about ready to apologize for not solving the go puzzle when the car gave a rattle and lurched forward of its own volition, starting its slow roll toward the woods. From there, while Tony bounded for the window to watch Temba disappear behind the foliage, the train rapidly picked up speed, until the leaves were whipping by and then they were suddenly plunged into darkness.

An hour, when you don't know when its going to end or where you are even going, is an incredibly long time.

Abruptly, somewhere deep in that dark tunnel, Tony could feel a snap at the back of his neck, a tingle that numbed the base of his skull enough to touch it gingerly as he realized with a pitch of dread that he couldn't reach out to the network anymore. He reached for Jon's hand first, waiting for a steady breath as he stared distantly out at that endless darkness before he stood to get the rest of the car's attention. With his communication device in hand, he announced, "We've been bricked."

It was possible that Tony should have better prepared for this. It was possible that he should have been ready for the rapidly mounting anxiety as the train burst back out into the sunlight, lashed from all sides once again by the dense, untamed growth of the abandoned planet. And he should have been thoroughly anticipating stepping down from the train as it sighed into the strangely familiar station, and looking back over his shoulder with the realization that they had no control interface, and no way to contact anyone back in Temba.

Were they stuck here now?

b. Transport Station [For Bucky, but you're welcome to join!]
If they were meant to be here for the foreseeable future, the immediate experience wasn't what Tony would call hospitable. He never experienced Temba as it was when the He Rows first arrived, only coming to know it well after some progress had been made and there was clean, running water, and he hadn't realized how thankful he was for that small mercy until he disembarked the train in this new abandoned city. If he didn't have the map to orient himself and assure him that this place was a strange mirror of Temba, he wasn't sure how quickly he would have recognized the shape of the transport station obscured as it was under the tangle of vines and enthusiastic bushes. It took Tony some work to pick his way out of the snarl of it, thorns managing to catch in the seams of his heavy, metal boots and snagging where they met the nanoweb on his thighs, to turn and take in the structure as a whole, looking for a place to start. Where Temba could be shockingly quiet, here Tony could hear a whole cacophony of life calling and chattering high up in the branches of the expansive trees. The air itself smelled sweet with the overripe rot of lush fruit that hung heavily everywhere Tony looked, and littered the ground where more plants yet would grow. Tony wrinkled his nose and planted his hands on his hips. The train wasn't broken, that much was clear. There had to have been a way to make it run.

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"The difference between that hypothetical and mine is personal choice, Tony. Would I like to be able to, for a change, sleep through a whole night like I haven't done since I was a kid? Yep, that would be nice once in a while. And drinking? I'd like to have the choice for that to have an impact on me. If it was only me that could control it?"

Yeah, he thought he'd go for it. He thought a lot of mutants might go for it, even though they'd deny it. He didn't look at Tony as he said the next thing.

"It would be nice, every now and then, to be able to just sit down and watch a movie without straining myself to keep slow enough so it's not just a slide show. Or to be able to play video games without wanting to break my controller for it not responding right because it doesn't have tolerances for me."

The world won't make adaptive tech for people like Tommy. So if he had something that could give him the briefest moments of getting to interact with the world, he'd do it. And chances were he'd be seen as a traitor to what he was for that.

"If it was completely under my ability to turn on and off, and it was the best way to handle a problem, I'd listen. If you said the best way to handle a problem was to take my powers away from me, against my will, yeah you'd be drinking salt water."

Either Tommy was really excited to have devised his own way to depower Billy, or he really did think himself making these kind of calls was identical to Billy's personal choice. Tony couldn't see how else he had come up with that delineation between their proposals--it wasn't Tony that had outlined that personal choice difference. And Tony really hadn't expected Tommy to be open to the concept of turning off his powers after the sheer amount of defensive pride he took in his mutant identity. Tony had to nod slowly, very aware that he wasn't a mutant or even a metahuman, and while he was frustrated that Tommy didn't consider his experience as a superhero valuable, this was a very different experience that Tony would never be privy to. The way Tommy talked about his powers sounded so much like the ways Tony had heard people with disabilities talk about their barriers, and in a lot of ways that wasn't very surprising; Tommy's environment was at odds with his needs. But Tommy could also interact with the environment far beyond the abilities of any baseline human.

It definitely wasn't in the best interest of Tony's ongoing physical integrity that he pursue a discussion about a switch to turn off mutant powers, or comparing mutations to disabilities. None of the rest of this conversation suggested to him that Tommy had some misplaced trust in Tony to think he should be engaged like that, but that Tommy just didn't consider Tony enough of a threat not to say it.

"Okay," Tony said slowly, navigating through that tangle of wires to get back to the source, "but we're not talking about having a beer and playing Mario Kart. We're talking about Billy when he is his most vulnerable, with a mechanism attached that will suppress his ability to fight back. Whether or not its intended use is an ideal situation where only Billy has control of that mechanism, the fact that it exists makes it exploitable. Just like making that mechanism for you exist, means all those fellas in congress who make big robots and collars to keep the X-Men quiet will have something to point to to fix them."

It wasn't him making the calls. It was him coming up with an idea and then, after hopefully finding a way to execute it, offering the idea to Billy so he could choose. What was so hard about this?

"Billy doesn't need the verbal spells to throw energy blasts," Tommy counters. AT least, it had never seemed like the guy had to him. "Or the electricity. So it's not defenseless. And the goal would be something he could turn on and off at need in an emergency. Or what, do you think you'd be moved to hack the thing to take control of my brother while we're here?"

Robots and collars weren't here. What was here was people who might decide that the best way to keep Billy's powers from being used against them was to just kill him.

"I'll figure it out myself."

Neither of them should have needed Tony to answer that question, and being confronted with it had Tony raising his eyebrows then dropping his gaze back down to his restlessly twining hands with another humourless laugh. Of course that would be the firs thing Tony was doing if he knew such a thing existed. If Tommy doubted that, then the Tony Stark he knew on Earth was a very different guy.

All of them seemed to be.

"You were always going to," Tony muttered down at his hands, because Tommy's idea of collaboration so far was to be dismissive about Tony's concerns.

Wow, it would be shitty if Tony did consider just hacking something meant to make Billy feel safe and in control just because he could.

"No. I wanted your help. I wanted someone who knows how shit works to help me figure this out so I don't come to Billy with a theoretical I come to him with a plan and let him decide if it works for him. If he wanted. it. And instead I've got a guy comparing me to Bolivar Trask when it isn't, like, unheard of for mutants to have things to help them with their powers and control."

"And I'm telling you how shit works. That you've just proposed a dangerous weapon, without enough respect for Billy to bring him on in the process. I'm not helping you make a weapon, Tommy, and a weapon is not a plan," Tony replied, slow to look up to meet Tommy's eye again but steady when he did. "What you wanted was for me to agree with you, and I don't."

"I proposed a metaphorical suit of armor," Tommy answered as he stood. "But I should have realized that someone like you would only ever see something meant as a defense as a weapon. I figured the great Tony Stark would know how to help me make it safe, how to help me make a plan. Instead I get told off for even trying to help him. For thinking I might be able to put power and control back in his hands."

So he really didn't know what to do. A plan defeated before he could even work on it. And if Tony was against it, he was certain the man would try and foil it.

"So that's it, huh? Just fucking powerless to keep the person I care about safe from powers beyond just praying. Great fucking talk."

None of Tommy's sarcastic needling was going to convince Tony that he wouldn't recognize a suit of armor or a bomb when he saw one. They were firmly back in Tony's area of expertise, without any of Tony's doubts about what is was like to live as a mutant, but it seemed like Tommy only wanted to recognize that as far as he could use it as an insult. It wasn't like Tony was about to disagree, raising his hands in surrender as he leaned back to drape his elbows across the seat again.

"The dramatics are a great look, keep it up," Tony welcomed, tilting his head with a goading smirk like he was encouraging Tommy to take the easy sucker punch. "You let me know when you actually do want to make something safe, not just treat me like an idiot when I tell you that it isn't."

Tony turned armor into a weapon. Of course Tommy thought he was wrong on this one. But that jab makes Tommy's fists clench at his sides. It's only the fact that knows a misjudged punch might well kill Tony and he isn't up for that right now. Stupid fucking fragile face.

"The point of talking to you about this was to find a way to make it safe you condescending asshole! You're Tony fucking Stark, and you keep the sun from exploding! How could I not have faith that you could help my brother?"

That wasn't the first time that Tommy had mentioned the exploding-sun thing, which, christ, but while Tony gave him a cautious sidelong look for it, this was not the time to try to get him to explain the details. Hopefully, Tommy could relate it quickly if the star in this system started an uncontrolled reaction, because right now, Tony was not very confident that he would react well under that kind of pressure. That was the kind of problem he really needed Reed for.

"Then why won't you listen?" Tony challenged, and gave a small shrug, palm open to scan across the room for whatever uncontrollable source that was making Tommy react so strongly. "I'm not the one that said you can't do anything, that came straight out of your melon, but you sure have faith that you should be angry at me about it. Is that the faith you're talking about?"

The secret, of course, had been that Tony had apparently decided to think like Reed. Who knew?

"I can't program Tony. I'd need you for that. And I'd be hard pressed to think you couldn't hack into someone else's code to decide and fuck with the project. So yeah, fucking road block named Tony."

It was very difficult to tell if Tommy was aware that he was both still not listening, and fundamentally agreeing with Tony's concern, so Tony gave him that narrow look again, brow furrowed and lips slowly parting as he watched expectantly for that connection to be made. When it didn't come quickly enough, Tony illuminated for them, "So, we should be aware that some asshole," with a gesture back toward himself, just for example, "could get access to this system and make it not work as intended."

If this discussion hadn't been such a mess to begin with, maybe Tony would have been better prepared to approach it with the assumption that he should make Tommy feel like every idea was entirely his own. It definitely wasn't going to work now as Tony started to nod slowly like he was having an epiphany and announced, "Wow, yeah, that would be really bad," and the teasing smirk was not going to help.

"And if he spelled them to avoid hacking, then what?"

Yeah, no, hope is gone and all the energy and anxiety is gone from Tommy, replaced instead with just a sense of defeat. He had no intention of talking to STark anymore. There was a whole other part of the train he could go be miserable in, thanks. THough he did shoot back a parting statement.

"You're a real son of a bitch, Tony."

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Succession

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