Calibrations Waiting Room Mingle

[trpmods]

WHO: ALL HE ROWS
WHERE: The Secret Tunnel, which has become the Calibrations Waiting Room (or was it always...?)
WHAT: Mingle log for literally anything you'd like to take place in the waiting room between sleep cycles during the event
WHEN: June 3 - July 10
WARNINGS: Please mark individual threads with warnings

For those that have heeded Ga Re's warning, the door within the secret tunnel - which looks suspiciously like the hatch to one of your shuttles - is wide open, waiting for you. You walk through... and the door behind you disappears. You’re now standing in a cavernous, cold, white waiting room. There are hallways leading off the main corridor with names above each. One of them has your name and will draw you toward it, inevitably.

And on the wall, in pink, running letters is written this single greeting:

‘Welcome to Calibrations’.

The secret tunnel has become a large waiting room with chairs, tables, and the same food dispensers available in the shuttles. There are also communal bathrooms - one for each gender - with several toilet stalls and shower stalls in each, including basic shampoo and soap dispensers, like you might find in a hotel. The water isn’t hot, so hopefully you don’t mind lukewarm showers. Somehow, at least, it never goes cold.

Branching off the main waiting room room are the labeled hallways. At the end of each short hallway is a door, with the same character’s name written on them. Anyone can enter any room, regardless of the name written on it. Everyone has their own room, though of course people can share. Each room has a simple bed (approximately queen-sized) and a set of drawers.

You can opt to spend time in your room or in the larger, common waiting room. (And if you do, you can thread it out here!) But every 16 hours, you'll feel a compulsion: You need to sleep. Right now. You find yourself going into your room (or someone else's, if you really want). But you’re drawn to the bed. You can’t help but lie down. And then, you fall asleep.

Comments

[in_extremis]

Not a lot did, and the more Tony thought about it, the more massive chunks of this equation were clearly missing from his process. Reinforcements fit about as well as anything else did, to him. Especially if they were all like Cloud, and didn't seem too perturbed to have found themselves sealed in hell's waiting room.

With a pout of discouragement, Tony dropped his attention back to the stolen page. The sketch of the still was a pretty clear sign, but Tony couldn't quite believe this was really Cayde's handwriting or handiwork until he had read through a few lines and found he was staring at the form of it with a puzzled smile. He had a lot of questions now, but he started with, "Who's Ace...?"

[deal_me_in]

It was worse not having Tony give any more objections about it. Then again, they'd be pretty foolish to not admit something was probably amiss. Which just got one thinking how much of all of this was for show and how much harder they should be trying to work a way off this rock.

"Buh?" He'd been expecting the question eventually, just not when he was hung up on the potentially evil intentions of their smiling, three-eyed vampire kidnappers.

"Oh, Ace." It however wasn't a question he ever really expected to have to explain to anyone outright. He studied the curve of his knife's blade as though it was suddenly the most interesting thing in the world right then. "My son," he finally said, loading up the next like another round in the gun chamber. "I think. It's...been a while."

[in_extremis]

Tony would sooner have guessed 'Ace' was a nickname for a gun Cayde had decided to pour his heart out to. No one here talked much about the families that were waiting for them back home, and, in particular, no children that they had been separated from, which would have been enough of a challenge, Tony thought. If he had to guess, he would say 'a while' meant a few reboots between Cayde and his son. The mattress behind Cayde dipped again as Tony slouched against his back, one arm draped loosely over Cayde's shoulder just to hold himself up, really, while Tony waved the page near the other one like he was trying to draw Cayde's attention to it. "Is that who taught you how to draw like this?" he asked. "Amateur. That still is a thing of beauty, how do you expect him to really understand its full glory with this shading?" It didn't have quite the bite of Tony's usual teasing, and he snatched the page away again, the sound of the ripple of paper betraying how he brought it back up to his nose to try to reconcile the Cayde on this page with the explosive sharpshooter.

[deal_me_in]

It was a handy placeholder, a switchable reference that conveniently fed into his love of gambling and his spotty past. He hadn't named his gun, but as someone so fond of using card suits, how could he possibly pass up a hand cannon called the Ace of Spades?

So Tony could be forgiven for thinking as much; the Exo referred to that Ace in public more so than this one. The only ones that knew about this Ace were his secret caches where he'd left letters, and any nosy Guardians who might just be excellent treasure hunters.

Cayde gave the man a look as he found himself with a Tony-limpet once again. He snorted, easily going along with it. "Maybe I should have you draw it then? We going for stick figures or full schematics?"

[in_extremis]

That wasn't the direction Tony had hoped Cayde would go along, making him tip the page against his nose as he eyed Cayde's back in consideration. He at least seemed more open to talking about where the artistic side had come from, Tony would have to solve the puzzle of his family from another angle. "Oh, no. Jon is her artist, you'd have to ask him for another rendering. I am simply a passing admirer," he deferred. Jon wasn't supposed to tell Cayde that Tony had anything to do with the production, as far as he was supposed to know Tony wasn't in the business of giving him gifts anymore and had never met a still in his life. "What came first, the art or the...army?" Tony prompted, not sure that was the correct name for whatever institution Cayde was part of over his lives, but found himself easily thinking of Steve and his sketchbook sticking out of his go-bag, a whole different life he thought he was going to have before this one picked him up off the ground.

[deal_me_in]

Unfortunately for Tony, Jon had in fact told him about Tony's involvement in the still production, even if it was at first an apology that it might not be done. Things had clearly smoothed over from then, whatever had occurred.

Talking about his sketching habits wasn't deflecting, at least. Cayde shrugged. "You know my memories are like Swiss cheese and yet we're asking these questions. Honestly though, couldn't say. They tell us when we're first converted, to just let 'em go. All the memories, the past. Easier that way. Start fresh. Maybe it's less buggy that way. Me, guess I'm too clingy. Gotta remember what's mine. Drawing helps. Each line's ingraining it into your memory. Anyway it's a thing to do during my downtime."

[in_extremis]

"Isn't that kinda..." Tony started, searching for what it was about the request to 'let 'em go' that he found so distasteful, "culty?" Maybe 'army' had been appropriate, Cayde didn't have an immediate argument and they didn't encourage an individual identity, either. Tony did get the brain issue, he hadn't forgotten that part, but an unavoidable deterioration and the suggestion to let it happen were different issues. He did a lot of terrible shit to his brain, but not because anybody else told him to. Cayde was relieved of his barnacle for Tony to lean over to the bag again, laying this page beside it to nudge the mouth open and search for another easy one to snatch. "How do you remember Ace?" could have been two different questions; functionally how, or what he was like in that memory, however Cayde wanted to tackle it.

[deal_me_in]

Cayde laughed. "I don't think they were thinking that way. Focused on efficiency. They didn't figure on things like the Ghosts and rezzing and the weird stuff that does to an Exo, because it wasn't a thing then."

He tried to hide a frown as Tony went rummaging around his stuff. The next one started off conversationally, just like the first, touching on the strange but fun forced-locals of their involuntary imprisonment. The few sketched faces were simple, partial, but enough of faces to identify, even without the scrawled notes in between, like 'has a stuffed cat' and 'workaholic' and 'Trouble'.

"..." The question was a simple one, but he turned it over in his head and spun it around like an engram he'd consider from all sides. "...I don't," he finally said. "I got brought back by my Ghost, found the name, the journal with me. Decided it couldn't hurt to stick to it."

[in_extremis]

Tony didn't know if it was worse if the kid actually existed, or had never existed at all; both possibilities made him stop bouncing around, sliding demurely back to the edge of the bed to watch Cayde out of the corner of his eye as he slipped a hand under his cape to hold his shoulder again. He was not the one to be telling this kind of thing to for emotional support, and hoped his lean this time read as an apology for putting Cayde in that position with the snooping he wasn't about to stop. It wasn't like Tony wanted anyone else to know these details before Tony did, how was he supposed to control the conversation then?

Instead, he offered a smile, snapping this new page up to his chin and muttered, "You do have excellent taste," as though Cayde had any control over who was hanging around him in this situation. "Are you giving these to Jon? I think it's the kind of thing he wants in the library, you're doing all of the work for him. I thought you were the muscle, but you might actually be the desk jockey." They were all supposed to forget all of this, weren't they? Maybe Cayde didn't hear that yet, and Tony didn't want to be the one to tell him, not when he didn't even know if it was true.

[deal_me_in]

Emotional support wasn't something he was asking for anyway. He didn't do that sort of thing. He hated feeling vulnerable, and right here was walking that fine line. Maybe his way of coping with loss was unhealthy, but it had worked for him these many, many years, and so long as that was the case, he didn't see any point to stopping.

The Exo snorted again as Tony spoke. He figured if anyone had to know about it, he could live with it being Tony Stark. The man in some ways wasn't all too different from himself for personality, and they both had the tendency to deflect conversations.

"No way! If he wants these, he'll have to go scrounge around for 'em. I usually don't keep 'em once I write. I stash them with my hidden caches." He laughed, this time a little more genuine, but how could he not laugh at the thought of Jon trekking around the woods or a cave trying to decipher his infamously unhelpful clues?

"Hah! You say that, but that's pretty much what I've been stuck doing as Vanguard. No more runnin' around out in the field, all paperwork and telling Guardians to run my errands. Except recently. See, you don't get in trouble if you leave a note when you sneak out. Then they can't get mad at you because you're already out there."

He hadn't heard about the details, of remembering and forgetting and what not, not for here. But he won't stand for it either. The whole job they were expected to do still sucked, but when you weren't focused on that part, it wasn't so bad.

[in_extremis]

"And you did tell someone, formally written request," Tony agreed, grinning like he would have done the exact same thing in that position. Well, not exactly. He wasn't patient enough to leave the note himself, but Pepper had gotten very good at writing that kind of letter to excuse his eccentric behaviour. He squinted though, knowing he couldn't be contained to a desk from day one, he didn't spend any time working up to it like it sounded Cayde might have. "What got you out the door?" he asked, "Have a backlog?" He gave the page a wiggle again, journals to secret away in his hidden caches of thrilling administrative duties and all of the Guardians who gave him the hardest time.

[deal_me_in]

There was an emphatic nod of agreement to that. Cayde could count on Tony to be on the same page as him. "Exactly," he said. The whole Vanguard gig was a tricky matter, if only because the Hunters made it so. No one who called themselves a Hunter wanted to be saddled with the job.

"Eh, the space rhinos. This fancy pants guy called Gary or something. ...is that like, a common name for aliens now?" The Exo shrugged. "He came and punched us Guardians in the face, did some real damage to the City. So we finally got around to kicking him back, and after that it was like- why am I just sittin' around here? There's some jerks out there that need to be headed off before they come 'round to our end of the solar system. So yeah, called in a few favors-" Practically begged, really. "-got a few calls to help out, knew Big Blue would give a giant speech about why we're needed at the City blahblahblah so I skipped that part."

Cayde grinned, even as he suddenly reached out to try snatching that page back. "Not that much. I mean, it's not as fun if you don't actually have stuff to hide. There is an almost insulting lack of beautiful firearms around here to hoard."

[in_extremis]

Space rhinos was almost enough to get Tony talking, but it was Gary that had him shaking his head while Cayde continued, suggesting under Cayde's explanation, "Same guy, actually. One alien Gary, really fixated on you." That was the noblest of reasons to quite your day job that Tony had no arguments for, so he was the one nodding, eyes closed, of course Cayde didn't stick around to be told off by the people's choice voice of reason, there was space out there and it was full of ass to kick. There were plenty of people more than capable of running a company while he was gone.

Tony let him take his doodles back with a pout of loss, but he wasn't about to fight over it and get accused of being the sentimental one in the room. Cayde had that role locked down, there were other ways Tony could sneak the portraits away. "That's deliberate," he pointed out, "Gary's coming back for round two. Doesn't want you kicking his ass again." It was only partially a joke. Cal and Jon might not have been convinced, but some heroes used a bit of firepower to defend their cause and there did seem to be a very deliberate cultivation of what managed to make it to the surface of this planet when the Agrii could, surroundings noted, obviously make some calculated choices.

[deal_me_in]

"I knew it," Cayde said with a scowl, as though some great conspiracy had just been cleared up. "Shoulda had our Guardian bring back his head. On second thought, no, that guy was just ugly. Most Cabal are though."

He turned as he straightened the journal-letters, rolling them with care before sliding them back into his bag.

A 'bit' of firepower didn't even begin to cover it. Guardians practically carried an entire arsenal. Being able to transmat weapons at the drop of a hat sure was something you took for granted until some army came and blew up all your stuff or you got transmatted yourself into another world way off the normal charts.

"Gary's a sore loser," Cayde said, smirking at Tony.