[Video]

[out_of_order]

[Cal's leaning against a wall nearly overtaken by clinging vines. He sighs a little before giving a headshake and a sad smile directed off-screen.]

Guess not, buddy.

[He looks back at the screen, rolling back his shoulders as he takes a deep breath, trying to summon a more convincing smile.]

Well, things sure got a lot more...greener around the city. Didn't think we were gone that long, but alien planets, right?

Been easing back into things and I'm sure everyone else has been doing the same, but if anyone needs anything repaired or might want to have a look at salvage parts I've got, just let me know so I can be at the workshop.

Also, if you need some doors or paths cleared, I can probably help with that too.

Guess that's it.

[The Jedi shrugs, offering a nod before he clicks off.]

Comments

[in_extremis]

Knowing that this story was going to involve an explosion from the outset really highlighted the irony of Echo's stealth directive for him, making Tony breathe a laugh. He met Echo's eye with the slant of a lingering smirk that started to fade with some concern when faced with the grim reality of what could have happened to the clone, but Tony quickly rallied to advise, "You know, you could have made that a lot more badass. 'I was the only one willing to act when the whole mission was on the line and I knew one wrong move would be my last one. Semper fi. Etcetera.'" Even as he clearly struggled through inspiring words, Tony was still clutching an inspiring fist in the air, which he had to abruptly drop after a beat of silence where his Rhodey impression ran out of gas. He wasn't even a marine. Belatedly, Tony tried to amend, "Aim high," but he had already lost his energy and attempted to recover the tempo, "When I got blown up, it wasn't nearly as noble. My own landmine. Unbelievable. Did always have my name on it," which he also regretted. He cleared his throat and clearly improved the situation by prompting, "So, they couldn't find all of your parts?"

[only_an_echo]

A faint snort and a few lines crinkling around Echo's eyes clued Tony in on the current rating of his impressions. "I figured you wanted an explanation that wasn't as bombastic. Guess I was wrong." The same lines smoothed out again as the ones over his brow returned while he listened to Tony's brush with death. "...That's...well. Ironic," he sympathized. "I don't know if it helps, but I was practically trained for that mission. Putting my life on the line was one of a few expected outcomes." He shrugged, shaking his head as he adjusted the steering. "Better for everyone else to live than have all of us die there."

He let the pause sit for a little longer after Tony prompted him again. There really was no easy way to go about it, and Echo replied as plainly as he could, barely filing down the edge in his tone. "Limbs were replaceable. All that mattered to the Separatists and the Techno Union was my mind."

[in_extremis]

With an affronted gasp for this unflattering assumption, Tony lamented, "I thought I had made my predilections alluringly clear. You wound me." That Echo was even capable of bombast didn't seem likely, not without plenty of encouragement. Tony could be encouraging. Case in point, that shrug of acceptance for his inevitable death. Tony's performance flagged, and he watched Echo first from the side, then through his reflection in front of them, trying to assess if he realized how unfair that was. He wasn't a marine either, or Air Force; those boys at least chose to put their boots on.

The matter of the missing parts gave Tony a lot more to think about than he was anticipating, and his natural reaction was to flap his teasing hand again and purr, "It is your best feature." While his pose didn't change, he did at least sound fractionally less flirtatious as he pressed, "The Techno Union sounds very sexy, I'm seeing black leather and pulsing lights, go-go dancers with PhDs." The Separatists weren't quite so evocative, thought Tony had a few guesses about what they were separating from.

[only_an_echo]

The slight face Echo made was almost routine by this point. "Wat Tambor had pulsing lights, but you wouldn't want to see him in black leather." Despite the subtle shift in Tony's flirting, he sort of noticed when it happened. "He and his cronies salvaged whatever they could while they experimented on me, all in order use my knowledge of strategic algorithms against the Republic." The corner of his mouth twitched. "And if General Skywalker, Rex, and The Bad Batch never found me, I would've still been held captive on Skako Minor."

[in_extremis]

This was a multiple stage rescue then. That was a lot of names now for Tony to file away, which he did by immediately throwing them on the floor and hoping that got sorted out eventually, because the middle part of this 'rescue' was still unclear to him. "If they had been the ones to scrape you up from the explosion, would you have made it?" he had to ask, assuming something that called themselves the Techno Union were dealing in some advanced wetware replacement. "I mean, if it wasn't for the wet tambourine, would you just be a brain in a jar?"

[only_an_echo]

"...Maybe." A sigh crept in as Echo tilted his head forward; the thought of the possibility was hopeful, but it was still grounded in the reality he found himself in. "If there was time to spare and less to worry about, maybe I would be less of a cyborg. But since I was so close to the explosion, I still would have lost something if not my arm and both of my legs."

Tony had a strange way of making the pain of the memory more bearable. Kind of like Cayde. They both functioned on a similar wavelength.

"We were already at a disadvantage the second we got into the citadel," he said after a few beats. "Our resources were limited. We suffered too many losses among our team and the droids outnumbered us. A different team would've had to run the extraction if they attempted to go back in."

[in_extremis]

The more context he had, the more this whole mission sounded like a nightmare to Tony, and the less he felt he understood what had happened to Echo. There must have been plenty of people among those losses that weren't as...exploded, plenty of cleanup, and yet, "How did they even know to look for you?" Tony had missed standing appointments with the Avengers when, as far as they knew, he was supposed to be entirely in one piece, and they'd never made the disappearance into a rescue mission.

[only_an_echo]

"I sent out a signal." Echo's brow line lowered, pensive as he tried to think past the pain. "I was barely conscious whenever the algorithm was tapped. The more frequent those pulses became, I managed to slip something through. Rex found out about it after he said he recognized the plays on Anaxes."

[in_extremis]

Each in isolation, Tony thought he broadly understood what disparate parts of this answer were supposed to mean. Sending a signal made sense, very straightforward, did directly answer his question. Echo was not having a good time, that much had already been clear, and he was probably being tortured in some way for this valuable algorithm. How exactly the pieces related to each other and what that had to do with some performance were less clear.

"Okay, what--" he tried to structure, searching for the fulcrum of their communication breakdown. "When you say 'strategic algorithms', I'm thinking satellite manoeuvres and low orbit ordinance and security redundancies..." he offered, because it seemed like that wasn't what Echo was trying to tell him.

[only_an_echo]

"It's somewhere along those lines, more often terrain than orbital," the clone answered, trying not to sound exasperated with Tony's need to fill in the gaps. Trying to be clear enough was difficult, but this fell more into what he was used to hearing. "War games. Every algorithm was a battle simulation between the Republic and the Separatists. You needed to figure out every angle in order to win, especially when they had specific droids programmed to learn from their field experiences."

[in_extremis]

It seemed to follow naturally, but Tony did still ask to clarify, "And you...know all of them?" The way Echo spoke, he didn't seem to think that was strange, so maybe Tony still wasn't getting the explanation, but it did sound to him like he should be giving the Iron Man to Echo and accepting retirement. Jon would probably appreciate that, for a couple of weeks, before he realized that it was actually driving him insane to keep Tony occupied. Tony glanced back through the ship, raising his eyebrows at the pair swapping secrets in the galley, like he could communicate this revelation he just had to save them both the rigorous testing period.