Reeve Tuesti (
plate_builder) wrote in
revivalproject2020-06-05 07:04 pm
June-July and Calibrations
WHO: Reeve Tuesti, OTA
WHERE: Arriving In Tunnel, Calibrations Waiting Room, Reeve’s Calibration Room
WHAT: The lead up to and time around Calibrations
WHEN: June 2nd to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Reeve’s Calibration room may contain references to kidnapping and confinement, including of children
Man and Cat OTA
When they arrive it’s near the end of the thirty-six hour period. There had been much to do for preparation, things to pack, and honestly, he wanted to see the storm as it brewed up. It wasn’t like he’d seen it the first time, having arrived just days after the last blew itself away. But that means the man arrives with quite a bundle in his arms. Packs and papers and the few kits and tools he’s gotten himself from the replicator.
And at his side, a foot and a half tall stuffed animal of a black and white, tuxedo-cat, its own arms wrapped around coiled up papers. Was it possible for a stuffed animal to look proud of itself? Perhaps it should, because it’s got a very smart looking, dark green cape tied around its neck and a whole load of responsibility, so why wouldn’t it be happy?
“Does anyone know how long these storms typically last?” Reeve asks of anyone who comes near. And Mini stops every few steps to readjust the papers. It’s a lot harder to carry things when you don’t have fingers.
Calibrations Waiting Room
here
Calibrations [CW: Referenced (nothing explicitly depicted) kidnapping and confinement, including of children]
It’s not a bedroom, it’s an office. A rather dark one at that, most of the light coming either from the scattering of monitors, some recessed lighting high above, or two lights pointed at the rather oversized Shinra corporate logo behind the desk. The desk itself is cluttered, covered with files and papers and reports. This is clearly the desk of someone far too busy with their life. Someone who isn’t fully organized.
On it there are a few things of notable interest, like architectural reports and diagrams, a few reports on small hinges with one bearing a sticky note of ‘but why would you want them’, and there’s even a box filled with several glowing green and blue orbs. Materia. Further along, in a corner, is a framed picture of a couple that look vaguely like Reeve, his parents no doubt, and Reeve as a boy, all of them smiling in front of what looks like a farm house. The computer monitors scroll through a number of images of Midgar in various stages of being built.
Of course most of that only matters if you didn’t sit in the very comfortable office chair. Hope you like boring board meetings.
Reeve himself lounges on one of the couches in the room, looking tired. Very tired. Like he wishes he could just sleep in peace. But, if engaged, he will indeed talk.
WHERE: Arriving In Tunnel, Calibrations Waiting Room, Reeve’s Calibration Room
WHAT: The lead up to and time around Calibrations
WHEN: June 2nd to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Reeve’s Calibration room may contain references to kidnapping and confinement, including of children
Man and Cat OTA
When they arrive it’s near the end of the thirty-six hour period. There had been much to do for preparation, things to pack, and honestly, he wanted to see the storm as it brewed up. It wasn’t like he’d seen it the first time, having arrived just days after the last blew itself away. But that means the man arrives with quite a bundle in his arms. Packs and papers and the few kits and tools he’s gotten himself from the replicator.
And at his side, a foot and a half tall stuffed animal of a black and white, tuxedo-cat, its own arms wrapped around coiled up papers. Was it possible for a stuffed animal to look proud of itself? Perhaps it should, because it’s got a very smart looking, dark green cape tied around its neck and a whole load of responsibility, so why wouldn’t it be happy?
“Does anyone know how long these storms typically last?” Reeve asks of anyone who comes near. And Mini stops every few steps to readjust the papers. It’s a lot harder to carry things when you don’t have fingers.
Calibrations Waiting Room
here
Calibrations [CW: Referenced (nothing explicitly depicted) kidnapping and confinement, including of children]
It’s not a bedroom, it’s an office. A rather dark one at that, most of the light coming either from the scattering of monitors, some recessed lighting high above, or two lights pointed at the rather oversized Shinra corporate logo behind the desk. The desk itself is cluttered, covered with files and papers and reports. This is clearly the desk of someone far too busy with their life. Someone who isn’t fully organized.
On it there are a few things of notable interest, like architectural reports and diagrams, a few reports on small hinges with one bearing a sticky note of ‘but why would you want them’, and there’s even a box filled with several glowing green and blue orbs. Materia. Further along, in a corner, is a framed picture of a couple that look vaguely like Reeve, his parents no doubt, and Reeve as a boy, all of them smiling in front of what looks like a farm house. The computer monitors scroll through a number of images of Midgar in various stages of being built.
Of course most of that only matters if you didn’t sit in the very comfortable office chair. Hope you like boring board meetings.
Reeve himself lounges on one of the couches in the room, looking tired. Very tired. Like he wishes he could just sleep in peace. But, if engaged, he will indeed talk.

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"You really don't have to explain Cloud to me," Tony mumbled, not interested in a character assessment here. Cloud's role in Tony's caution around Reeve was incidental, and Tony didn't need Reeve telling him that Cloud was a trip to talk to. "I just-- I got ahead of myself, okay? You were right, I'm not giving you enough space and I'm giving you stuff because of one..." He took a deep breath before he could decide how to phrase it and concluded, "Night." If he wasn't so obsessive and pathetic, maybe he would have managed to listen better and Reeve would have told him the whole tale on his own time, and maybe Tony would have been able to tell him how dangerous the repulsor tech was before shoving it into his hands. His anxious, wandering fingers slid across the desk to pluck up the photo, not quite looking at it but scanning the textures of the frame under his calloused touch.
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Nope. No time to talk about that. The hands are on the photo and they aren't in the office. They're in a quaint little wooden building. A kitchen specifically. The whole place has that 'hand made' quality to it, at least the structure. The walls are clearly wood overlaid with some sort of plaster, the window frames painted white but the grain of the wood obvious under it, worn to beautiful patterns by years of hands and touches. The central part of the room is taken up by a large table. At one end a woman, young, maybe her mid-twenties, is working dough over a floured part of the wooden table. Through the window behind her there's clearly a man roughly her own age, maybe a bit older, out in a distant field, guiding along a large yellow bird that was pulling a plow. And at the other end of a table is a little boy, maybe six, writing on a piece of paper. It's very clear at a glance that he's very bright for his age, already writing in full sentences, his letters mostly neat, and with few misspellings.
Or, at least, one of his hands is on the pencil he's writing with. The other is working under the edge of the table where his mother can't see. His fingers are quick and clever, twisting long strings of dried straw into a little shape like a person.
And in the room stands an older Reeve, looking around in fond shock before turning his eyes on the woman and clearly trying not to tear up.
"If I had known this memory was here, I might well have tried to get people to interact with it," he mused as the boy worked at his lines but still tried to make the little straw person. "Welcome, Tony, to my childhood home."
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Of course, Chocobos were very social with humans when they were domesticated, so he didn't much mind them.
"Mama!" the young Reeve at the end of the table called as he set aside his pencil. His voice was higher, sweeter, and there was no denying a vaguely scottish brogue to it. And he lifted the little straw figure up onto the table, dumping it there. "Look!"
The woman looked up from her work, eyes curiously turned to her son as he held up a hand, a single finger outstretched, and tapped the straw figure, even as he exhaled. There was a light that seemed to flow out with his breath, low and made more of mist than anything else. And the straw figure... rose. Pushed itself up on little wobbly arms and onto even more wobbly legs. The straw, though, couldn't support itself, so the figure immediately fell over, and the woman gasped in shock.
And there was a flicker of fear on her face. Not of her son, but for the boy.
"Oh Reeve," she said, her accent echoing his, not even bothering to dust the flour from her hands as she circled the table and came to kneel next to her son's chair as the straw figure struggled to get up again. "Reeve, sweetie, mama needs you to take it back."
"Take it back?" the boy asked, confused, tilting his head and scrunching his brow in a way that clearly implied Reeve's faint signs of wrinkling came from curiosity that started very early in life.
"Take it back," she repeated. "The magic you got. That's how you did it, right?"
The child considered for a long moment, his eyes flicking over to a glowing green orb near the kitchen sink, before he nodded. "I guess. It just... happened. Isn't it grand?"
The woman still looked concerned.
"Yes it is, baby. But you gotta look at it. The poor thing isn't strong enough. That ain't nice, leaving it like that. Best take your magic back."
"But... how?"
His mother didn't seem to know how to respond to that. At last she reached out with a hand and scooped up the little figure, which was still trying to rise.
"Remember your sweater? How you pulled at a thread and pulled and pulled?"
"You told me not ta," Reeve agreed. "It got all unraveled."
"Well some magic is like that. So reach for that feeling you had when you made it, and then find the loose string and pull. Okay?"
The boy looked like he wasn't certain, but he nodded. Intent to please was definitely something the child had going for him. So he reached out for the figure in his mother's hand and touched it. The boy closed his eyes and the kitchen was very silent for the moment, even the straw figure seeming to stay still, and as the boy inhaled the light and mist was back, pulled back into him and the light defused under his skin. Reeve's mother set the figure aside and pulled her son into her arms, hugging him tightly.
"I'm very proud of you, baby. But you must never show anyone that again."
The older Reeve in the room hadn't even bothered to turn away from the window. He just made a quiet huffing noise, like he was amused by the comment, even now.
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"I don't know," Reeve admits to Tony's question about the magic. "I just did. My magic is... it's part of me. Deep down in the core of my being."
"But why?" the boy asked in that way that all children seem to have, close to irritating because they don't understand the world.
"Because... because sometimes people don't understand the things that are different. They'll be jealous, baby. And what did we say about jealousy?"
The boy's face scrunches up again. Clearly there had been a lesson in the past about this.
"That it ain't right. Wanting what others got."
The woman nods along, and embraces her son tightly again before letting him go.
"Exactly. But not everyone is right. Sometimes people want things like that for themselves. So this is something you gotta keep for you, Reeve. You're a very special little boy. Just like your Grammie was. But what you got, you gotta keep for yourself sometimes, because no one is gonna understand."
"Like the King of Cats."
"Righto," she agrees before moving to the dough and going to work again. "He always knows what is what and what needed done. But he knew that ya can't do everything, and how it got him in trouble when he tried."
The boy nods, this clearly meaning something to him. "But mama, does that mean I can't do it no more?"
"No, baby. Just that you gotta keep it secret."
"As if I was ever good at listening to her like I should," older Reeve sighs as he turns to watch his mother finish kneading the dough. In his current age, he can see the tension in her shoulders, her fear, her concern. "Always a protective woman. But she knew best."
While he speaks the woman and child, and even the dough fade away, leaving Reeve alone in the rustic kitchen with Tony.
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But leave it to Tony to ask. And Reeve just smiles.
"I've always had problems with jealousy and wanting what wasn't mine. That was why work was so good for me when I was older. A distraction."
He turns to consider Tony and shrugs.
"The next farm over. They bought one of those new Shinra Inc Trucks. My family only had a chocobo. Which was silly to be jealous over. Betsy was so good at me growing up."
She had been the sweetest bird.
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"Many things. How poor my family was compared to others. How smart I was. The way I felt about people I knew could never return my affection. Many things. In the end, I left this place far younger than I should have, longing for more than my family could give me. Sometimes I wonder if it was foolish."
He moves to the chair the child himself had been sitting in and he looks to Tony.
"I suppose I still need those distractions now."
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"My father as well. But this was me at six. I'm... sorry your family erroneously thought you distracting. Or distracting in a bad way."
They understood. That's what makes Reeve frown softly. His fingers caress the arm of his chair. There are marks carved and worn into it with excited children's hands. Oh well. But mostly he was sad. This place didn't even exist anymore.
"Is that something you had to deal with, growing up? Being unwanted?"
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But he seems sad to even talk about her. So instead he looks at Tony.
"Come now, can't you sit with me?"
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"Your friends magic, too?" he suggested, not exactly needing a clear answer on that one; big cape guy had to be magic to justify looking like that. He was more curious how their extravagance fit into this world where Reeve had to hide that about himself, and turned out looking so...straight-laced.
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“I possess a natural magic that leaves me, in a very fleeting way, attuned to the Lifestream of my world. Vincent and Cloud are different. Shinra did many terrible things, what Cloud can do is a result of it. There was a program, they called is the Soldier Project. They infused teenaged boys with mako, among other treatments. It enhanced strength, speed, senses, made materia easier for them to use. But... in those that it goes wrong for, it can turn them into monsters. Literal monsters. Cloud, it is important to note, is NOT a monster. But his mako levels are high, and at this point, I’d say that he’s the strongest man alive on my world, the greatest swordsman, and the single most dangerous individual...”
And that is when Reeve meets Tony’s eyes.
“Except for Vincent. If Cloud chose to come at someone, it’s with a sword that is five feet long, a foot and a half wide, and he lifts it like it’s light as a feather. Vincent? He’s magic in a whole other way. But their stories aren’t mine to tell. That said, Vincent is by far the more dramatic of the two. He’s a friend and I would be surprised if, in the time he’s been here, he’s said more than a hundred words to me. Whereas I, when he arrived in this mind-room, spent most of the time catching him up on the next few weeks of his life back home wherein he literally saved the planet from self-destructing. And yes, before you ask, our world really is that dramatic. But in its defense, it only does so once a year for the last... three years.”
Reeve looks tired at that admission.
“Is it so wrong for me to just want the world to stay saved for a bit?”
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"Annually's not bad," he muttered as he spread his hand away from his mouth to prop under his chin instead. "My planet doesn't self-destruct that much, that's kind of a personal problem, but I'd wager there's someone else out there on yours filling in for your little crew for the rest of the year when shit goes down. Once a month I'm tracking the big, boy, we're all going to die unless someone gets a really good punch in, sort of threat." He tried to offer a supportive smile, not feeling confident after the hand, and let it fade quickly. "Do you really not think we could be from the same planet? I know it's not the same dimension, but-- a medical experiment to make the greatest soldier on Earth that turns everybody else into a horrorshow, a big magic cape guy who doesn't talk much and just secretly saved the planet from the moon crashing into it last night, I've got those friends, too."
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"Uh... I don't think Vincent has ever saved us from our moon. But yes, I'm certain. I've seen maps of Earth from Cayde's mind. I've heard stories of it from the other place I was in. Gaia and Earth are not the same place. You don't even have chocobos. With enough discussion, I could explain how I'm certain of the differences, draw you a map even."
As he speaks the farm house around them starts to fade, replaced slowly but surely by darkening walls. The walls of his office. A set of windows was being changed into a bank of computer monitors. And the table, somewhat between them, was becoming the desk. Reeve sat in the main office chair now, and a non-rolling one would take form under Tony, holding him there.
"This... this isn't what I want to talk about. Not here and now. We've time in these caves. I can find you in the morning and spend a whole day telling you my history and that of my world. Of my work with Shinra and my travels with Avalanche. About Sephiroth and Hojo and Meteor and Holy. The WRO and Omega Weapon. Anything you want. But..."
Reeve hesitates and then lifts his eyes to meet Tony's full on. There's no flinching away.
"I think I have done something to offend you. To trod on your toes and leave us both confused and upset and aching. And I am afraid if I can't speak the truth to you in the openness and vulnerability of my own mind, I'm hardly worth a glance."
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He wasn't looking around long, drawn back to Reeve as he made it sound like Tony could just be asking him about all kinds of things that Tony didn't have the faintest clue about, only to look skeptical that Reeve wanted to spend that kind of time with him, then frustrated. Which was it?
Even with that frustration furrowing his brow, Tony was still surprised and opening his mouth immediately to deny that he was offended. Again, not exactly how he would have put it, but that was a talent of Reeve's. "I didn't take the schematics back because you did something," he said, sure they had already covered this and come to their 'nothing happened' agreement. "I shouldn't have done it in the first place. That's all. I'm the only person on Earth that knows how to put one of those together, and that's by design, I--" Tony found himself clicking his jaw shut again, glancing around for his out before sighing and just abandoning the statement for Reeve to decide what crimes Tony had committed for his own noble ends. He was a quick guy.
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"But you did do it. You shared it with me, even though I would have been content with you seeing the device built and managed by you for Mini's sake. Why? Tony, in our line of work, designs are so precious. Why share something so important to you, so important to keep secret, with me?"
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"Because you're brilliant enough to use it," he offered, and tried to shrug like that was all and it was nothing, only he was biting his lip and dropping his gaze down his chest to continue. "And more kind, I think, than anyone I've ever..." he took a deep breath and gave a small shake of his head, because that wasn't quite right, he knew plenty of miraculously kind people, but that kindness was rarely directed at him, not in the way that it felt like Reeve saw through him and was still kind regardless. "And so sure of your self and-- so beautiful, but you know that," he tried to grin, still down at his shoes, only to worry his lip between his teeth again. That was why. Did it make either of them feel any better?
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“I am nowhere near as brilliant as you, and I cannot say I would understand your technology. Which may be a better reason than any for me to not be able to access it. One need only understand a little to do a lot of damage. But...”
Oh boy. The rest was a sort of opening up he wasn’t always good with.
“I have feelings for you, Tony. Lust and affection and aspiration. And I find it difficult keeping it to a professional relationship when that is by no means all I desire of you. My entire pulling away has been based on the realization that you may be romantically entangled with enough. I... lose out in such measurements. Often. Always. So in that way I am by no means self-confident. More confident in my own failure, thus pushing things to lead to that same failure. So please do not ascribe confidence or the like to me.”
But he does smile up at Tony.
“I’lll take the kind and beautiful. The latter I hear especially rarely.”
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"No, Tony. I really don't. Just want to be honest. I want to try and explain. Explain how I'm handling this awkwardly. Which clearly has not faded."
With a sigh he pushes to his feet, not actually happy with the office chair. He hates this office. Hates how awkward it is to be here.
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wow autocorrect. Boy not bear.
bear now, small blonde bear, CEO
Nah. He's too sleek to be a bear.
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The link is a video, only parts without faces are relevant to this
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