revivalproject

WHO: Lerith and Tony, and whoever else might be taking refuge in the library
WHERE: The library
WHAT: We haven't quite figured out how to handle the screaming moon
WHEN: Mid-event nyoom under the wire
WARNINGS: Depends on your Tony-tolerance.

There didn't yet seem to be a universal way of dealing with the whole moon. A heavenly body acted on them, not the other way around, and so far it appeared as though they had to adapt to this development like they did the tides. The mothcats were relatively instructive. As the sun went down, when they typically became more active and the scourge of the local spider population, they had begun to slink closer to the floors, then huddle as deep in the belly of the library as they could get, infiltrating the human-occupied basement more confidently than they usually would. It insulated them some from the sound, and Tony suspected some other effect that they had no way of articulating, just had them restlessly grooming to try to smooth their ruffled feathers.

He was trying not to stray too far from the library anymore, either, despite the limits. Even if it wasn't so disruptive to cajole Jon along with him back and forth to the forge, that was probably the last place Jon should have been when he had to reminded what they were talking about mid-sentence. Tony hurt himself most of the time he was in there, and he knew what everything did. Instead, he had to work slowly, his workshop at the library largely compromised with the network inactive. For some things, this wasn't a terrible imposition; he could furnish most of Jon's office without the processing power that he had installed. For others, like the stray pieces of the Iron Man that he was slowly collecting, it wasn't so straightforward; they had to be hunted down, then disengaged from Extremis so they didn't go once again hurtling into the walls, or someone's fleshy body, the next time the moon peered down at them with its wicked grin. He lounged now with one of them that he had found, sprawled on the couch on his back with his legs kicking over the arm, meticulously dismantling the errant shinguard with his fine tools and tongue between his teeth. So engrossed, he didn't take much notice of the mothcats slipping away, already sticking to the shadows and moving silently as they did. Only one remained close, tucked against the back of the couch and against the warmth of Tony's stomach, and purring intently in a way that Tony only knew the interpret as contentment. Cats purred when they were happy, right? It was a soothingly consistent sound, anyway, and the animal was very still where it had wedged itself, watching Tony through anxiously slitted eyes. It knew what was coming, even if Tony wasn't prepared for the scream that shattered the air.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hearing Lauri-Ell say his name was almost as much of a shock to the system as the moon's wordless scream, with just a little less scrambling of Extremis. It set Tony's teeth on edge, and he was reluctant to even look her way, sure he was going to find murderous intent in her face for some new crime he didn't realize he had committed. When he did risk a sidelong glance her way, though, it was clear she didn't have her hammer with her, so that must have been a good sign, no official judgment to bring down on him. A pettier crime then, a personal slight, that was better corrected with her fists.

He did his best to play off all of this anxiety by merely wrinkling his nose in acknowledgement as he continued to work, primly twisting at a screw in the plating and giving a small nod as if to imperiously consider listening, and maybe he would respond if it seemed more important than his armor. Only, he wasn't actually the one being judged. He was being recruited.

Slowly, he finally turned his head, tongue still between his teeth but hands finally stopping their restless work, brow furrowed to ask if he had heard Lauri correctly. Fighting the moon didn't seem feasible. It wasn't like anything else was working, though. "What's the plan?" he eventually asked lightly.

To a member of a race who regularly did serious terraforming of worlds, and made great wars, destroying or even just altering a moon was just something to consider. As she did now. Though, in truth, she had no plan.

"I... assumed you would be able to create one. You are a wise man, or so Carol believed."

That was a lot of confidence that Lauri-Ell had walked in with just to vent off immediately at the first question, making Tony purse his lips with a new frown of irritation before he was rolling himself upright to plant his feet on the floor, much to the similar irritation of the animal that was lounging with him. It crawled up the back of the couch as he moved, and tools rolled freely into the new empty spaces left around them. She had presented him a problem, it was his job to invent a solution.

"We can't just destroy it," he had to outline first, because they had to come to some agreement of what 'make war' meant. "For one thing, I think it is this planet's actual moon, and blowing it up would be too destructive for how everything down here worked. Worse than the storms, negative outcome. Besides, it's got a face and appears to have some kind of sentience, I think that might actually be murder." He went uncharacteristically still for a moment then, staring blankly as he processed just how much like a murder that would be, and how likely just killing the moon and leaving the body hanging in the sky would actually solve their problem vs. the morality of that murder. Couldn't scream if it was dead. Could he even put that onto the table? "So, what else--capture it? Prisoner of war?" he pressed on instead.

"Why can we not destroy it? The Kree have never had issues with the careful destruction of such things before," she said. Yes, tides really aren't a thing she knows about. "And I do not believe it has sentience. It is just angry."

How would one even capture a moon though?

"If one cannot capture Galactus, surely you cannot 'capture' a moon in this manner."

The Kree hadn't been particularly cautious about what civilizations were wiped out through their imperialism, which didn't seem like a correction that would win Tony any favour in this tenuous neutrality. Maybe later, after the moon issue. Instead, he narrowed his eyes, trying to asses if Lauri-Ell actually believed blowing up satellites didn't hurt anybody, only to have to confront the idea that she might have believed that because she had a skewed perception of basic sentience. Maybe it only hurt angry people.

"What does that mean--how can it be angry if it's not sentient?" he had to confront that one, baffled with a hand open with some desperation.

Of course they were not. That was history, though.

"I have fought the Cotati to protect your planet. They made use of other plants, who were not the Cotati. They were not sentient. But they were angry because of the will exerted upon them."

It took a moment for Tony to come around to this theory, frozen in his inquisitive position with his eyes narrowing to try to decide which part he liked the least, only to land on a realization that felt really obvious as he said it out loud. "The moon is not angry, because it is just a program. Program is just expressing what the programmer put there," he rephrased. "The moon isn't doing anything, it's being controlled." Just like everything else around here, so it shouldn't have taken him so long to get to this conclusion. "So, it's not the moon we have to 'make war' with."

"So you believe it is a ship then? Or a giant machine?"

Those are the easiest conclusions for her to come to from what he was saying. But she was still following his logic more or less.

"You believe this more Atroma cursing of us?"

Those weren't exactly the conclusions that Tony was heading toward, making him hesitate as he tried to consider them in case Lauri-Ell had said something surprisingly inspired twice in a row. Probably not. "Were the other plants machines?" he tried to reorient them, because it seemed like a different problem entirely that the whole moon had been replaced, only to wave the question away himself because he realized it didn't actually matter now that he had said it out loud. "It's definitely somebody messing with us, because it always is. Going to the source of the problem, then, about as achievable as reaching the moon right now." With a frustrated frown at this revelation not amounting to anything much useful, he tried a different angle, "Moon's big, though. Got to be hard to influence. Got to be pretty complicated to hide that."

"No, they weren't," she said, but then he's going on again, and Lauri-Ell once more felt left behind.

Is this what it's always like around intelligent people?

"I believe I see your point. I still wish to find a way to stop it. Is it perhaps possible for us to create, and launch, a probe to study the moon the next time the ships carry us from the planet?"

Flood

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject