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[wearingthestars]

I'm working on cleaning up/clearing out more of the hospital. I was wondering if anyone either wanted to lend a hand, or if there was any um...I dunno, 'features' you'd like to see here? Stuff to make it more comfortable? Needs that aren't being addressed?

Private Message for Tony
How are you with locks?
[He turns the camera to point at a complicated looking lock located somewhere in the hospital, and then back at himself with a pointed frown.]

Private Message for Tommy
You literally have super speed, why are your clothes all over the floor?

Private Message for Soldier
Super important question- Coffee? Tea? Or Hot Chocolate? Which is the correct choice?
[Billy tries to maintain a very serious expression. He is not succeeding.]

Comments

[in_extremis]

Uh-huh. Do you need more time to clean up now? I can do a loop around the block.

[wearingthestars]

Shut uuuuup.

[in_extremis]

Is this still you being gentlemanly?

[wearingthestars]

Super gentlemanly.

[in_extremis]

We have so much work to do.

text-> action

[wearingthestars]

:-P

---

Billy might have rushed a little to get to the front, generally a little mussed and out of breath, as if he fully forgot he was magic and could have just teleported himself their casually. It only occurred to him after he got there that if Tony was flying he might come in any old way and not necessarily through the front. Cayde was always just jumping in through windows. Was that a security risk? Should they be addressing that too?

[in_extremis]

In contrast, Tony appeared shockingly unmussed despite carrying his helmet under an arm as he sauntered into the hospital, expression slightly pinched like he was there for an important inspection and he was prepared to be disappointed. His eyes narrowed as he came to a stop in front of Billy, giving him a beat to feel properly judged before Tony's smirk cracked just slightly, and his eyes widened for an impatient flick of his hand for the weird, dangerous vault that Billy had apparently been sitting on this whole time, only to undermine his own gesture by drawing them back, "Listen, this is the problem right here, what happened to your hair? How am I supposed to feel confident that you're going to take care of me? Please."

[wearingthestars]

Tony could play Billy like a fiddle, and Billy flushed as he realized how the older man was playing him, laughing bashfully.

He started to move and then Tony had him throwing on the breaks to shoot him a look and worriedly card his fingers through his hair. "What's wrong with it??"

[in_extremis]

Billy's stop was met with a hand on his back, giving him an urgent little pat as Tony tutted like it was Billy that was wasting time here. "First things first, you should be able to do two things at once, keep up. You're worse than Cap," he teased. "There's nothing wrong with it," he continued when they were properly moving again, hand batting Billy's away from his hair so Tony could tug at it instead where it was clearly at least a little wrong. "If you're into that, you know, just-rolled-out-of-bed-at-2PM-for-Calculus-101 look. That's some people's type."

[wearingthestars]

There are worse things in the world than being compared to Cap, clearly, because Billy practically beamed, starting off again down non descript halls.

"Well...what would you do with it?" Billy wondered. He thought his styling had gotten better, hadn't it? He wasn't going for just rolled out of bed.

He turned through a wall suddenly, the illusion shimmering as it was disturbed. "It's down this way."

[in_extremis]

"Some gel wouldn't hurt," Tony provided vaguely, hand waving then, only to stop in the air with a tense curl of despair as he passed through the magic, like just touching it made him brittle. Looking back at the illusion suspiciously as they went, it seemed like a reasonable enough transition to add, "Or this." From inside the his helmet, he pulled a distantly familiar diadem, made of delicately woven red wires with two swooping points at the top. "I made something similar, for your mom--while back, long time ago--only, it was a whole computer then, and I was rich, so, and, you don't have the exact same powers, I think, and this magic thing is a crapshoot--" Okay, maybe stop downplaying your own apology. "It helped her see the future. Not everything. Big things, things going wrong. The goal was to be more proactive. The Avengers were always reacting, after the crisis."

[wearingthestars]

Starting to scoff, Billy paused instead to blink at the unexpected gift. He even looked around as though half expecting there to be someone else standing there more deserving of something like that.

"I think I remember that one," he admitted with a small smile (of course he did, nerd), reaching for it with a gentle tentativeness. "What did I do to deserve this?"

[in_extremis]

It was Tony's turn to scoff, rolling his eyes as much to not have to meet Billy's eye as he answered more truthfully than he would admit to, "You didn't have to do anything." Billy hadn't had to risk scouting and demolishing a building just because Tony was getting restless. It had been a waste of time and resources. He deserved at least something made of the scrap that Tony had recovered. Rapidly, before Billy thought too hard about that, Tony continued, "That's kind of the problem here, isn't it? Things happen and we just--we barely can react, most of the time we're just keeping our heads down."

[wearingthestars]

He smiled, setting it in place and striking a little pose for Tony to admire. "Better?" he asked, feeling like a real and proper Avenger having something made for him personally by Tony Stark.

Tony wasn't wrong, and Billy frowned faintly. "Maybe...if we can get this open we'll get ahead of something for once," he offered, stopping before the heavily secured room.

[in_extremis]

With a wry grin in return, Tony purred, "Irresistible," sure there was some way for Billy to work the costume around so a weird crown didn't look so out of place. Wanda managed it, after all, and they both already insisted on capes.

Tony didn't look so convinced that they were ahead of anything as they came to a stop, frowning at the door that had apparently been there this whole time, right in the middle of the most heavily trafficked part of the city. Relatively. There must have been more of these, in places like the hotel and the library itself--not vaults, necessarily, but secrets, the things that had been deliberately obscured from them, like the broken data points and the structures at the bottom of the lake.

[wearingthestars]

Oh he was definitely all ready imagining new possibilities. He wondered if his future self had some kind of crown, or if that was just reserved for Teddy. Teddy'd look amazing in a crown...

"See through here?" Billy pointed through the reinforced 'glass' to an array of canisters inside. "I've seen those ones before, but broken. Those ones look all right. And they clearly were important enough to keep locked away like this, which either means they're really valuable or...really dangerous."

[in_extremis]

"Broken?" Tony echoed. "Like, on purpose?" More like the data points than he had thought, maybe. Not that it was easy to quantify just how deliberate any damage around here had been, with the destruction that the storms were capable of. He leaned up close to the glass, one hand gingerly on it as he stared at the canisters like he might be able to figure out their secrets from here. Or if he suddenly spread his palm against the window and tested it against a burst from his repulsor.

[wearingthestars]

"Some of them maybe. Most just look kind of old. Or maybe used?" Honestly, Billy couldn't be sure. But he couldn't think of a good reason to break medical equipment of any sort. Unless it really was dangerous...

But he didn't have long to ponder that before he was throwing up a shield to block the repulsor burst from hitting him as it ricocheted off like a bullet, eyes wide.

"...little warning next time?"

[in_extremis]

Tony's only defence for the new singe mark left on the window and the ceiling was, "I thought that would work." Annoying. His eyes narrowed and he started searching around the seams of the window, before considering the door between them and the mystery canisters that might have been deliberately kept from them, or useful, or valuable in some way that maybe they could bargain with.

[wearingthestars]

"Yeah, it's really strong. I don't think brute force OR magic's going to do it," Billy commiserated, "It needs brains, so-" Tony was obviously the guy to call.

"It might take us a while, do you think we should keep it secret still...until we can work out how to get in?"

[in_extremis]

'Take us a while' was even more annoying, but at the moment Tony was rich in wires and plating and poor in anything that would explode, so the reliable shortcut was off the table. He had to accept that this might be a prolonged project and insist, "Definitely." At least, Billy needed to keep it a secret; Tony could not be reliably expected to follow rules, even his own.