revivalproject

Entry tags:

Scour

WHO: Tony and anyone who wants to suffer
WHERE: The forge, Temba
WHAT: Tony's finally back from Not-Temba, and doing some housekeeping
WHEN: Mid-august
WARNINGS: It's a Tony post. It's safe so far, but watch your step.

The forge was rarely quiet.

Even in Tony's absence, the place hadn't been entirely empty; he could see traces of Catra's visits in the little messes she had left around, like he might not notice among the mess he had left behind himself. The D.A.T.A. unit struggling to manage its awkward limbs, still under development, followed Tony from its watchful crouch at the top of the door to display exactly how useless it had been in trying to pick up after either of them in the meantime, kicking a bolt across the floor in an effort to grasp it and stumbling like a baby deer after it. Tony sighed as he watched it slip on the rotting skin of some fruit that some trespasser had been eating from the meagre store he kept at the back of the room. At least it hadn't gone to waste. Evidently, there wasn't going to be any relaxing done here until someone cleaned this place up.

It was a large building, but the space inside was dominated by the furnace that Tony coaxed back from its constant, low smoldering to a hungry crackle that belched sparks and thick plumes of colourful smoke from the chimney high above him as he tossed garbage and glitter into it alike to clear the floor. Circling around behind the fire was a shivering, metal staircase that led up to a series of catwalks overhead, where Tony had to balanced to try to knock the fur from the beams and walkways where Catra liked to lounge the most, and scare the spiders out of their cobwebs and try to bat them directly into the flames with his broom. Beneath him, the worst of the dirt fell to coat his workbench, making him roll his eyes as he bent to peer over the railing. The bench sat in the path directly from the door, facing the fire, equal parts wood and metal bolted to the floor and then built up in a scaffold that reached all the way to the catwalk above where its weight looked like it might threaten to drag the whole thing down. It was laden with works under construction; more D.A.T.A. units, a handheld vacuum, a bronze ape's skeleton, a myriad of gloves, boots and chestpieces, and buckets full of heart-shaped glitter. Closest to the bench were places for Tony to hang his larger tools, that he had to scavenge around his own shop to find, dust and replace. In between all of these pieces were rare scraps of paper, pinned between the tools and crafts without obvious reason; a treasure map, a drawing that looked like someone was trying an impression of the still in the Deep End, a love letter with a three-eyed smiley face. There wasn't any other paper to be found in the forge; drawers and baskets under the bench were full of nails and wires, broken glass, and what looked kind of like the Mandalorian's helmet. Behind the workbench hung bodies.

From the catwalk above and braced by loops of wiring, some glowing faintly and others trembling at too much movement like they were on the verge of falling apart, suits of armor in various configurations hung for access. Most were decapitated in some way, arms and legs hanging separately, and some pieces appearing entirely alien to the man that most of them were meant to fit. With an irritable instruction, the D.A.T.A. unit clambered up among the wires to begin releasing some to clatter riotously to the stone floor, a crashing and racket that continued as Tony hauled the dark curtains the made up most of his bedding outside to shake out in the fresh air. It wasn't much more organized out here, but there were more wires looping from a window around the back of the forge to another bench that had been set up in among the larger pieces of scrap Tony had claimed and left languishing in the grass until they were needed. He hung these linens over the wires, shooing away a brightly coloured parrot that squawked a complaint, and gladly returned to settle comfortably on the fabric as Tony went skulking back inside. There was a bucket of black water sitting still next to where he hammered by the fire to cool the metal, and he kicked that across the floor to start sweeping the water and the grime it picked up with it out the door. A glint of gold caught his eye at the edge of the sunlight, stalling his energetic sweep to pluck the chain up out of the dirty swill and consider it thoughtfully in his palm before he was throwing it carelessly onto the workbench and retreating with a decisive slam into the small bathroom at the back of the forge.

The D.A.T.A. unit obediently pushed one of the discarded armor pieces across the slick floor, struggling to balance and shove it up the low wall with a scrabbling of delicate legs, and fell back triumphantly as it tipped the armor over into the mouth of the forge and greedy lick of the flames. For a moment, the fire sputtered, with a crackle of bright sparks as the D.A.T.A. unit toddled to its feet again.

In a deep, rumbling boom that made the stones on the dirt road outside skip, a great, black plume poured out of the forge's chimney. Inside, the D.A.T.A unit was thrown back against the wall, and the room was coated with sizzling soot and flecks of orange embers.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The droid was torn between his fleeing feathered friend (?) and whatever commotion Cal and Tony were investigating, his boxlike head swiveling in one direction and then the other.

Cal winced a little at the little unit's state. "Have we met?" he asked Tony as he gestured at the device. It had been some time since he'd last come by but he was sure he would have remembered this little guy. He was hesitant about asking to give it a tune-up. Tony wasn't going to leave it broken, was he?

In a lot of ways this was the same D.A.T.A. unit that had started its life as an immobile camera outside of the forge, and in many others it was a very different machine, so Tony considered this question for a moment while the robot continued to slowly roll its eye back like it had gone from avoiding eye contact, to trying to disappear. "In another life," Tony eventually concluded, and gave him a shake to stop being so rude. "He doesn't have a name yet, and if he carries on like this, he's going to be stripped for parts instead."

All of his legs jerked, and the ones that were still largely functional folded up tensely while he refocused on them, dutifully quiet. This was also suspicious. Tony glanced around at the soot-covered forge, then the fire itself, before he determined, "What did you do?" No one else was here to cause the explosion, after all. Unfortunately, explaining the incident and defending his case were not part of the D.A.T.A. unit's routines.

It was kind of amusing to watch. The little device could still evoke some kind of personality even with its limitations, and Cal couldn't help but grin a bit.

"Well, what was he supposed to be doing?" he asked, given that the D.A.T.A. unit didn't seem able to really respond. He held his hands out to see if Tony would let him have a better look at the thing, if not maybe offer at least temporary refuge from any looming threats.

"Nothing, as far as I know," Tony admitted, and gladly dumped the problem into Cal's hands to turn and consider the larger problem of his once pristine workshop now decimated by this chaos. The rag, in the meantime, had been set alight by the fire it was meant to smother and was smoking thickly with the myriad of substances it had picked up in its difficult life in its weave. Tony only frowned at it, and turned his attention down to the smattering of dismantled armor pieces that were underfoot, lifting one leg carefully to figure out where to step next. "He was supposed to be getting rid of these," he amended, and kicked a plate through the soot toward the scrap bins under the bench.

By then BD-1 had come wandering back, hopping up on Cal's leg, perhaps just slightly concerned that someone new as trying to encroach on his turf. Cal held his arm out for the droid to clamber the rest of the way up, smirking a little as BD-1 took up position on his shoulder like a tiny vulture. The droid beeped a query at the D.A.T.A. unit before running an inevitable scan.

"Um..." The padawan glanced over at the smoldering and now slowly burning rag, hoping there wasn't anything more to catch fire as he surreptitiously tried to look for a bucket that wasn't filled with glitter and rather something more practical for dousing a flame. "Didn't come out how you were wanting it to?" he asked as he looked over in time to watch the armor plating go skidding across the floor.

The robot had no real way of answering that question either, but had his own experience watching BD-1 and narrowed its focus in a responding whir then mirrored the 'scan' with a roll of its eye from the top of the droid down to his feet. Scanning was good, he knew what scanning was!

"A system can always be improved," Tony said primly to explain what was evidently many iterations hanging around the workshop, then pointed to the pieces on the ground. "And I can't afford to keep the old ones for posterity. Not nearly enough materials here to just throw away like that, not until someone opens a Home Depot down the road." Cal knew that well enough, but Tony looked to him hopefully then like he thought Cal was likely to become the independent business owner that Tony was hoping for, then shook his head, no, of course not. Meanwhile, the robot that Cal carried wilted slightly as Tony spoke, drawing up its working legs in its tension.

Gasp! Counter-scanned! BD-1 supposed it wasn't the first time, although this was hardly a very reliable language to communicate by. The droid cocked his head in that birdlike way of his as he observed the D.A.T.A. unit's behavior before exchanging a glance with Cal.

"I guess that's true enough," he said, smiling crookedly as he caught Tony's eye with a hapless shake of his head back. Among the upsides to that strange city-venture of Billy's making, he could at least be on the same page with more of Tony's references. "That does remind me, I need to cart over what I've got of casings from the latest parts I've salvaged from. Pickings have been getting slim though. If we don't think we'll be needing those cages down below, we can try dismantling those."

He tapped the D.A.T.A. unit's head lightly with a finger. "Is he being punished or can I try fixing his legs?"

"What, from the whole city?" Tony asked with some disbelief that they had already combed through the entire place. He was walking away as he spoke then, the smoke from the smouldering rag getting harder to ignore and sending him back toward the bathroom to bring some water. "They don't use much metal in that other place," he called as he swept up a bucket, and had to shout over the pattering of the water as he continued, "But we should get what we can from there before we start touching their weird cages. If we're going to do that, we might as well take down that tower thing, the light, it's got a whole--server room to strip for parts."

By then, Tony had returned, and dumped the whole bucket in a flood across his workbench, showering the floor and soaking his feet, and the hem of his robe. The fire was dealt with. He took a deep breath and dropped the bucket with a careless clatter, then gave a loose gesture toward the robot Cal carried to finally answer, "We should scrap them. He needs to be more dextrous, he's tiptoeing around here like a baby deer and it's stressing me out."

"I probably just need to dig around new places," Cal admitted. "Jon did mention the equipment under the tower. I wasn't sure if we might need it for anything before we started taking things apart, but it sure isn't turning on."

He was studying the D.A.T.A unit when Tony came back to finally douse the fire before it could get out of hand. The suggestion made him frown a little as he picked up one of the dangling legs. "Were you going for something spider-like? Given the um...terrain he's got to navigate, I don't know that he can help with the tiptoeing," Cal noted, flashing Tony a brief grin as he patted the robot.

In Cal's hold, the D.A.T.A. unit did look much more alert, its eye darting between him and his droid attentively and shuttering slightly like he was very pleased with the pat. He wasn't particularly troubled by his legs and whether or not they would be changed, as long as no one seemed to be glaring at him anymore.

How he got them in the first place had Tony waving his hand to dissuade Cal of the notion that Tony had not designed the unit thoughtfully. "He wasn't supposed to move around so much, just get himself in a corner and watch. He's not into that, apparently, that's not his style, he's chosen a more challenging route in life," he explained. "But until he works through this mad bomber stage, maybe we should give him a stationary mount, contain the threat."

A chuckle slipped from the padawan as he considered Tony's proposal. "Too curious for his own good, huh? Sounds like someone else I know," Cal said, casting a look at the droid clinging to his shoulder strap. BD-1 straightened at that, antennae rising and then lowering with the staccato of beeps as he certainly couldn't see anything wrong for being curious. Cal grinned.

"Challenges aren't all that bad. It's just the working through them that needs figuring out. Right, little guy?" he said, addressing the D.A.T.A. unit this time. "Preferably with less fire and potential explosions."

"You know what, I was on board with you getting him back together, but now I'm thinking you have a bad influence in your house, and you need to get that together," Tony accused. No one else in this place was so impulsive. Using his hand to sweep the water from the workbench wasn't particularly effective, and Tony boosted himself to sit up on it anyway. "So, listen, obviously it's been going great here, all systems normal, where've you been? Your girlfriend try to make you fight a bear yet?"

Cal wasn't sure if he was supposed to be offended at that, not that it did anything to banish his grin. "Not sure what you're talking about," he said, picking his way around the mess on the floor as he drifted closer to where Tony was. BD-1 had decided his diagnosis was no longer needed, so he had moved back behind Cal to dangle off one of the straps of his harness where he could better have a look at the interesting things strewn around Tony's madhouse.

"My- wait, what? Bear?" Tony was throwing too many things into one sentence and one was tripping up the other that he wasn't really sure what to focus on. Cal gave him an odd look, expecting some clarification.

"Yeah, your bear," Tony agreed, absently finding a wrench on the bench to occupy his hands while he smirked at Cal. Juggling it idly, he said, "Your gal, the one with the..." then gestured vaguely to his face with the tool, like that meant anything, "she said you had to prove you could handle her." Maybe not in so many words, and she didn't seem to know what a bear was either, but Tony was pretty sure he got the sentiment right.

Yeah, that wasn't helpful at all. Cal continued to look at Tony for further explanation that he had a feeling wouldn't be coming, especially with that smirk.

There weren't many 'gals' that Cal hung out with on a normal basis, so it wasn't difficult to figure out whom Tony was referring to. Hopefully the faint flush of his cheeks wouldn't be noticed in the dismal lighting. He cleared his throat, shaking his head as he gave the man an incredulous look. "Where did that even come from?" he laughed, because Tony did have a habit of bringing up things from left field and beyond. "-you two were talking at the beach gathering. Bears??" Another foreign concept only vaguely familiar through the strange osmosis of having an alternate life experience in the world Tony lived in.

Tony spread his hands very innocently, because it was all very natural and he couldn't be blamed for what came up in conversation when they were relaxing and sharing or whatever it was that everyone else was doing around that fire. "She had a lot to say about you," he said, which was slightly less true than his last summary. This was a trend that would continue, "That you talked a lot and obviously had plenty of wonderful things to say about me, you charmer, and how cute you were, and how much you had in common..." Actually, that last one might have been a little true, whether Merrin realized it or not, so Tony diverted abruptly from his lazy counting, looking away into the middle distance like he was fondly recollecting, to looking sharply to Cal again to ask, "Why doesn't she count as a Jedi?"

He'd wondered about what the two had spoken of. Quite frankly he wasn't very surprised that Tony would have brought up the subject of...them, with Merrin, but admitting as much so glibly still had the same effect as catching him off guard. Cal smiled ruefully, shaking his head as he tried to gauge how much of what Tony was saying was true and how much was, well, Tony. He looked around for a place to sit, or just an excuse to do something other than just stand there and suffer questioning. Moving over to the workbench, he smacked Tony's leg lightly to get him to move over a bit so he could set the D.A.T.A. unit there. At least let him fiddle with temporary leg repairs.

"You two looked like you were getting along pretty well," he said, grinning slightly. He was glad of that. Tony seemed to have some apprehensions when Cal had first mentioned Merrin. "Dancing?" Yeah, he saw that. BD-1 had swung around to hop onto the edge of the bench as Cal set the other robot, reaching for the arc welder on his belt.

"Different aspects of the Force? I'm really not sure where her magick fits into things, but there's a lot we don't know about the Force in general. The Jedi established their order and the code they live by. They believed that it was their duty seeking out Force sensitives while young so that they can properly train them how to handle those abilities so they won't use them wrongly. The Nightsisters have their own traditions, maybe even as old as if not older than the Jedi. I've only learned a little about Merrin's way of life recently."

The fussing around for something to do with his hands was familiar, as was the smack that Tony took as much as an indication to move as it was retaliation for this line of inquiry, not that it was nearly forceful enough to put a stop to it and instead had Tony wrinkling his nose with a laugh while he made the vaguest overtures toward making room on the bench. Mostly, he leaned back on one hand so Cal wasn't talking into his shoulder. He lit up with the assurance that his ploy had worked, at least fundamentally, and Cal had noticed Tony trying to show Merrin off, though it would be even nicer to know for sure that it had prompted Cal into some action. "Oh, yeah, she showed me some moves," Tony grinned, giving a wiggle where he sat with the wrench he still held ticked back and forth like a metronome, eyebrows raised inquisitively. Cal saw that, right?

Tony's teasing glimmer dimmed slightly with this explanation. There must have been plenty more kids that the Jedi didn't manage to recruit that could use some version of the force, and it didn't sound like those kids were where the Jedi problems had started. "Do you think she uses them wrongly?" Tony pressed, watching Cal with his cold calculation for any signs that he wasn't being fully honest, but it was mostly a neutral question.

Cal rolled his eyes at Tony's wiggling, setting to work in trying to remove the D.A.T.A. unit's broken legs so he could try to see what was actually in need of repair. "Yeah, I saw. Saw you trying...something, too," he said with a shrug and a smirk.

He didn't answer immediately, taking care with the robot he was working on. Maybe something got crushed, or the wiring was pulled loose inside. If it were the leg parts itself maybe it could be salvaged just by removing the damaged ones, at the cost of having shorter legs, but at least it might work until something better was figured out.

"No," Cal replied after carefully detaching one of the legs, inspecting it. "She used her power as she knew how, and as she felt she needed to." In that, there wasn't too much difference from how the Jedi applied their abilities in the Force.

"What she can do with her magick is a lot different than what we do, though. It's more..." He lowered the leg, head tilting as he tried to think of an appropriate word. "Raw? And it has a more direct application. I think the most direct a Jedi can be in use of the Force is influencing minds, and that doesn't always work. Merrin's magick does a lot of things that a Jedi can't. Teleporting, invisibility of some kind..." That was what it had seemed like, anyway. He absently pat the robot before he started working on the leg again. "And then there's the whole bringing her dead sisters to life..."

"Something?" Tony echoed, offended by this poor critique of his dance skills and crossing his legs and arms primly, where he could tap the tool he twirled around restlessly against his bicep. "It's natural to be intimidated," he allowed with his own wry smile as he watched Cal work. The D.A.T.A. unit blinked back up at Tony, looking quite complacent with the development until Tony raised his eyebrows at him and his camera eye shuttered entirely closed, shutting down. No more risk of shocks to Cal, and Tony didn't have to try to process the concept of limbs being removed through the damaged static.

The list of potential magics, of both the Jedi and Merrin's people, had Tony raising a lip briefly in discomfort with how much more complicated that made dealing with the natural world. He shouldn't have asked. "Could she teach you to do that then?" he asked more idly, less concerned about the spiritual specifics than he was about Cal's many futures.

The padawan was unable to keep a grin from his face at the exchange, shaking his head again at the unsurprising rejoinder. He did cast a glance between the little robot and Tony once the former had closed its eye, but resumed his work. It wasn't too different from repairing and upgrading BD-1, at least.

The question in follow-up gained a thoughtful frown from Cal. "I'm not sure. I know that the former Jedi that I ran into out there on Merrin's homeworld was seeking to learn how to use her power, but I don't know that he got that far, or how possible it would be." He wasn't really sure how interested he'd be in trying to learn such things. "I hadn't really considered learning how to do what she does. I'm still trying to polish what I know," he admitted with a laugh.

Without quite knowing what polishing could mean, Tony could only join with a lopsided smile and uncertain laugh of his own, brow knit inquisitively. "You can already throw me around and--see the past, I think you're doing pretty good," he said, not to mention the light-sword thing which Tony acknowledged belatedly with a small jump of his shoulders and waving around of his wrench more like a magic wand. He had know idea what the top of Cal's game looked like, just that that kind of thing would likely make him at least an alpha-level mutant on Earth. If it was a mutation, anyway. Merrin was making it sound like this Force-control was a talent that could be learned, which made the baby-claiming and clone-making much more...well. Tony frowned, clutching the tool in his fist against his chest.

"It's kept me alive," Cal had to agree, shrugging a shoulder as he turned back to the task he'd given himself. Maybe he could make this work. Remove the working legs, replace some of the damaged parts with the portions that would be taken off to make them all even length, if a little shorter, but it would give the D.A.T.A. unit mobility once again.

"I've been out of practice for five years. Going through forms with a lightsaber or practicing anything through the Force would have drawn the Empire's attention- that's what happened anyway, but I didn't have a choice at the time." He compared lengths, nodded to himself and resumed.

"I had to remember things pretty quick. My lightsaber work is probably sloppy compared to the other Jedi here. Some things just kinda click back into place, and trying to avoid getting killed is a pretty good incentive too. The lessons I learned Force-wise took a bit longer to recall, and I'd only barely gotten back to the level I'd left off on some time just before I found myself here."

Now Tony felt bad for bringing it up, dropping his prim posture to slouch slightly and leave his legs crossed at the ankles, swinging restlessly as he considered his wrench like he had just realized it was there. After all of that, it should have been fairly obvious that the last thing Cal deserved was to be hard on himself, he endured enough punishment, but it didn't sound like Tony's opinion on his lightsaber abilities was going to be worth much. It did probably look cool no matter who was swinging the sword.

He only perked up as it suddenly occurred to him, "You mean--they have some way of tracking you, if you use it? Just practising on your own, someone would have noticed?"

Cal glanced at Tony, picking up on that dip in his mood, maybe, not for the first time, but he supposed if things were measured out it would be in subtle waves of such moments. "Not exactly, but I was on a planet controlled by a guild working for the Empire. The Jedi had been branded as traitors, and that soon after the war, anyone being able to use strange abilities or seen swinging around a sword of light was going to draw attention."

He looked down at the reassembled legs, satisfied at their matching lengths. Time to rewire and reattach. "And aside from being stuck in questionable territory, there were probe droids everywhere, basically watching for any suspicious activity. Guaranteed to shoot off information the moment something caught their attention. That's probably how I was found out so quick. One probably reported the incident."

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