revivalproject | Stranger in a Strange Land

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Stranger in a Strange Land

WHO: Tony, Steve and Bucky? And everyone else!
WHERE: Some network nonsense, and skulking around the resort
WHAT: Tony's playing catch up, and doesn't have a good lead yet. This is also Tony's TDM thread, relocated to make more sense on Risa, so if you want to properly canon that meeting, here we are!
WHEN: Risa: After Hours
WARNINGS: Nothing scandalous yet!

The Resort
The amount of information that Tony had now was not helpful, and neither the tablet he had been carefully tucked into his new bed with nor the computers spread throughout the resort were properly calibrated to help Tony map this ever sprawling conundrum. He had no way to connect the mysterious '31' to apocalyptic storms on a planet he had never heard of to all of the information telling him he was currently in an episode of Star Trek. What he did have was: an already rockstar-trashed room, a new wardrobe, and a creeping sensation of truly disgusting self-pity eating away in the pit of his stomach that he was going to have to overcome very rapidly before it grew any more powerful. To do that, he needed answers. He needed Cap. No, he could do this.

If he was going to solve the problem, he had to be in control of how at the very least. So far, the market had offered Tony plenty of fun and fashion, but not anything particularly useful, and it was about time he experienced a childhood fantasy: the replicators. One of the staff members had helpfully directed him in a way that felt so reminiscent of suggesting the ice machine back on familiar ground, that when Tony was actually standing in front of the thing, his first impulse was 'computer: ice'. And the replicator just made it, just like that; and not even just ice, this thing was advanced enough to interpret this failure of a human communication, vague and directionless, and delivered the beautiful, mouthwateringly glistening ice chips in a delicate glass, a useful container for his bumbling desires. Tony could smell how crunchy they were. He stared at this gift for too long in wonder, before remembering that he was still in public and gave a glance up and down the hall, regrouping, trying to focus. It was late so the halls felt deserted, but anyone could be coming back from the clubs at any hour in this place. Current problem: Kidnapping situation. Problem for another time: solving world hunger. He collected his glass of ice, then tried again, asking for a set of precision tools and a soldering iron. Then, after holding all of this cradled in a hammock of his shirt pulled away from his stomach, asked for superglue (this did not work, Tony had to get more specific and got what he hoped he was looking for with 'Cyanoacrylate?'), then, duh, bandages. He should have brought a bag. "Oh. Computer, one more thing, sweetheart. Do you have a bag?" A Ferengi rounded the corner, looking festive in a Margaritaville shirt (would he get the reference?) but staring very seriously at Tony, clearly suspicious and unwilling to share this space with him at this hour. Tony wasn't eager to find out if the species was really as they were portrayed, and instead gave a courteous nod of acknowledgement as he slung his cleverly resort-branded cloth bag of goods over his shoulder and slid away, glass in hand, to find another station to test the limits of. It couldn't hurt to test out his new tools on one, just a little bit. He could solve two problems at once.

It was late, and the breeze flowed easily through the open-air halls of the resort, keeping the still-warm, tropical air from feeling oppressively hot and carrying the sweet smell of alien, fruiting flowers with it. It was the perfect time to case the joint.

[Video]
[A video message posted to the network of a man frowning down into the camera, chin propped up in one hand and looking equal parts bored and skeptical, but occasionally glancing up, just past the camera, possibly betraying his alert tension.
Tony is in his room, sitting with his back against the bed where he has clearly thoroughly tossed the blankets, a single pillow left in the middle of the mattress among the mess. He knows from Billy that this is the best way to get in touch with anyone who might be able to relate to his situation. It doesn't make him feel any less vulnerable.]

I'm used to having some, you know, guidelines-- hard to read the room here, hard to read the audience. Um-- Tony. [He quickly touches his chest, that's me, before holding his chin again.] Looking for: just some fun, nothing serious. Likes: long walks on the beach, particle physics, black coffee. Dislikes: The smell of bookstores. I know, you'll try to convince me, and it will be a very good date, because I've never had a bad one, but I still won't like the smell. What else goes on these things...? [He's looking past the camera again, like he's waiting for the response to come from out there. If this doesn't produce solid results, Tony's ready to take this thing apart and make it more useful to him.]

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A dirty robot might as well threaten to bounce Tony out of this place, this night had already been weird enough. Nothing else about this environment suggested they should have been on alert for scavengers; the Risans had made it very clear that this was a leave-your-door-unlocked kind of environment, and nothing in the Federation logs said anything about this sector being prone to piracy. Tony was by no means an expert, it had to be said, but he was pretty sure this guy was an anomaly-- if anything, he wasn't from here. Tony was used to that, he had no room to judge there, but not from here like, he might have swashbuckled up on his own intergalactic schooner. After all, no one else Tony had encountered who seemed to know what was going on with him had indicated the need for bad pageantry.

The robot had made its intentions clear enough, so Tony kept up his pace until he had passed it, then carefully slowed to spin around and get a better look at what this ragtag crew was up to. Making a mess, it mostly looked like. Tony doubled back, braving the rolling muscle and blindly searching through the bag hanging from his elbow for the precision tools. He didn't offer them, but folded an arm across his chest and brandished them there in the fan of his free hand. "If you're trying to break something, you're going to hurt yourself much faster that way." Clearly, this guy hadn't figured out the replicator he was sitting on front of yet to make his own life easier. Tony wasn't about to tell him and give up the easiest bargaining chip to gain access to whatever kind of ship this guy might have had.

Poe didn't look up at first, working at prying more chips out with his makeshift tool before he properly glanced back. He did a bit of double take before his focus landed on the fan of tools, and the stranger had his full attention then, a bit of colour spread over his cheeks.

"...You wanna lend a hand? Or are you here to stop me from tearing this place apart?" he asked, arching a brow, waving BB-8 off. The droid gave a low sound, but backed off, still watching the man closely.

"Haven't decided yet," Tony admitted, and closed the tools into his fist to tuck them under his arm, out of reach now until he was given his good reason to share. There was certainly no judgement here; if Tony had gotten there first, he might be the one up to his elbows and being interrupted, but Tony wasn't about to admit that already just to ease that flush of shame he detected. Tony slowly cocked his head, tongue between his teeth as he tried to get a better read on this face, focus torn between those weird robots that had been dragged through the garden and the open wall panel, sparking. He was certainly the dashing pirate type, strong chin, smile lines betraying his skeptical eyes. "Why are we tearing?" That did look like the extent of this guy's plans here, but this was an unavoidably inefficient method if that was all he intended to do. So Tony turned to the menacing robot before anyone could answer, continuing, "Are you the mastermind here? This computer call your motherboard an public network?"

"Heh," Poe breathed out a surprised huff of laughter and that bluntness.

BB-8 gave a puzzle whir at being addressed, before wobbling his head plate 'no', Poe's lips curling in amusement.

"We're looking for parts to take home. Whatever I can use to keep these guys running, or get a message out there. This kind of stuff's hard to come back on Agra 10."

Well, fuck. Tony immediately dropped his defensive stance, arms going loose at his sides and shoulders drooping as he lolled his head back with a groan, pitifully exhausted. Of course, of course this was just another Lost Boy, he didn't have a ship to fly them out of here, either. Tony was so irritated by how short-lived this hope was that he didn't take his time demanding, only kind of whining, "What are you wearing?" as he brought his head back up and hunched forward, gesturing loosely with the tools in his hand. It was like this guy was actively trying to stand out and call attention to how much he wanted someone to ask him about it and then let them down hard.

"Mm?" Poe arched a brow like he was hardly aware of the strange sight he made, before he reached up to tug the fabric away with a sigh. It wasn't really offering much of a disguise at the moment. His gaze followed those tools with an eager expression.

"Yeah, it's not a great disguise," he allowed, shrugging a shoulder, "A tropical resort's not really the ideal location to be hunted in."

Again, this was the kind of thing that Tony felt sure would have come up in any earlier conversation if it was important to make maneuvers to stay alive, but it wasn't like any of the information he was getting was piecing together easily. Everyone's behaviour was strange to him, and nothing had a satisfactory explanation. So, he still found himself pulling his shoulders back slightly to regain some dignified control to ask, "Are we being hunted?" Maybe the threat just hadn't been as immediate yet, and Tony took this chance to look up and down the hall, searching for any other sign that disguising oneself would be in any way necessary or effective. As incongruous with the current pattern as it was, a hunt would make more sense than being kidnapped to have a little vacation.

Ah, no. Poe shook his head with an apologetic smirk. "Just me," he assured. "You must be new. You missed the whole lead in." Which had to be confusing.

He pushed upright, and offered a hand to properly introduce himself. "Poe. Poe Dameron. You wanna help me tear some more of this stuff out before they drag us away from this kind of tech?"

That wasn't particularly reassuring, had Tony just run into the village werewolf? He had been warned to be on the lookout for a shady character as much as he had been warned to stay hidden. Not at all. On top of multi-dimensional personalities and the structural villain of this crisis, now he had a minor antagonist to contend with. Not even a henchman, as far as Tony could gather.

He wasn't completely eager to make this connection, but he eventually accepted Poe's hand anyway, willing to see where this went. "Tony Stark. You know you can just ask for stuff?" The handshake didn't linger, Tony quick to drop the contact to point out the replicator. It was in a sorry state now and Tony wasn't confident this would work anymore, but he tried to demonstrate anyway, "Hey, computer. Can we get some wetwipes or something, for these robots?" The replicator gave a beep like it was listening, but made a much grosser sound as it tried to generate...well, it was hard to tell. What appeared in the tray was certainly wet. Tony pursed his lips, looking exhausted again. "Is that why you look like the handsomest girl in the harem? Because of shit like this?"

Well that really didn't do much to prove Tony's point, and left Poe making a face at whatever it was that came out of the replicator. He'd figured out it could make food, something that seemed within the realm of technology he was somewhat familiar with, but it hadn't occurred to him that they were meant for anything else outside of that.

"Options were limited," he defended, stooping again to use the abandoned disguise to try and clean the droids up. "And I thought that thing just did food?"

"Not the question I was asking," Tony acknowledged, but didn't immediately push him on it. Instead, he cocked his head to watch Poe bend to his robots, a purely scientific observation to determine the threat he might have posed to Tony from behind. He did still look like a pirate. "Why would it just do food?" he asked absently, observing how the robots moved and responded to Poe very naturally as he went on, "Limiting matter generation to very complex, edible and nutrient dense products is like learning how to play guitar exclusively as Jimi Hendrix cover artist. Impressive, but it's not like you can't Wonderwall." Just like the artificial intelligence of these machines was definitely more complex than they appeared at first blush.

Judging by the look Poe gave him he didn't understand a whole lot of that, though maybe shockingly it's the pop culture references he's missing and not the science talk.

"I thought it just a fancy housing, honestly, I didn't think it was actually generating mater." That's not something that's possible in as far as he understood things.

"'Generation' was a generalization," Tony clarified, not sure yet if Poe actually cared about the pedantry of it or was looking for an argument. The pedantry was Tony's personal mission here, anyway, so he continued, "Something that only made food would more likely be a 'resequencer', reorganizing a base matter protein that it depended on, like a recycling machine. Where that protein came from, I wouldn't be too enthusiastic about looking into. This baby is a most likely ionic, possibly chromodynamic matter reconstitutor. Mashes energy together until it's stable. Knitting machine."

Lesson over, Tony had to take a deep breath and admit, "As far as I can gather. I was just going to tear one apart, too. Fascinating little beauties, if I wasn't still pretty convinced I was in some kind of head-trauma comatose situation, I might be rock hard about it."

"Yeah, well, hold onto that feeling as long as you can," Poe advised with a sympathetic sort of smile, "Days roll into weeks, and it's harder and harder to believe this is all some kind of fever dream."

BB-8 grew quickly fed up with Poe's attempts to clean him off, circling round Tony to get a better picture of him, chirping softly.

Poe wasn't great at encouraging his own advice. Tony frowned thoughtfully, trying to get a read on him still, and finding his face pretty irreconcilable with a man on the run for high crimes to the Lost Boys, then turned his pout on to the bot that approached him, raising his arms to welcome the examination before kneeling to meet it at eye level. It looked like something out of an AIM lab. "Is that what happened then?" Tony asked as he examined the robot, holding out a hand like he would to invite a dog's scrutiny, "You found out that there's consequences for your actions here? What dark fantasies were you acting out?"

If Tony was 100% convinced he was experiencing some kind of lucid dream, he wasn't sure what he would do with that time. He wasn't used to having it. "I'd need a pool lounger..." he muttered, more to the robot, not sure if it was the environment but finding his first instinct for his lucid fantasy was to float with the waves along the beach. Could the replicator make something that size?

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Stranger in a Strange Land

Re: The Resort

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