revivalproject | June-July and Calibrations

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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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

They had definitely danced together, but that wasn't the same, was it? This suggestion was far more... intense. And what if his neurons did go weird from this? Was it magic? Was it science? He didn't know. He didn't understand. And it made him nervous. But not so nervous as to resist trying.

"Chocobos aren't big chickens. But I understand the reluctance. Not everyone is comfortable with them. Still..."

Tony's clearly trying to get a look at the monitor and he smiles.

"You know, if you sit in my lap in this chair, I doubt you'll trigger the memories. Those only seem to come for people who touch it. You'd have a far better view of the diagrams of Midgar that way."

Managing to not touch the chair didn't sound like a game Tony would excel in, but it wasn't exactly one he wanted to, anyway. He really must have been a distraction if Reeve hadn't noticed his hunting. "This one?" he asked innocently, pointing to redirect Reeve's attention to that hand while he brought up the other to shove Reeve back by the chest into the seat. He didn't even pretend that there was a graceful way to invade Reeve's space on the chair without touching it, grabbing the back of it instead to keep it steady as he braced a knee on the seat next to Reeve. Whoops, how clumsy.

The firm push has Reeve's lips parting in a quiet gasp. And to think, he was going to see if he couldn't take the lead. And instead there's Tony, moving forward and... Touching.

Touching the chair. And just like that, than they're not in Reeve's office. Instead they're standing near the door at the far end of the Shinra Executive Board room. And it's a very full meeting, every chair but one filled with people very many years from Reeve's past. But familiar enough for the Reeve at Cayde's side to look half disgusted. There's younger Palmer, still fat and with hair and in that horrid yellow suit. Heidegger in green has less of a paunch, no facial hair, and actually looked the military man he claimed to be. Scarlet... still looks like a woman trying to win a wealthy husband, with her revealingly cut dress, but there's less sag and plastic surgery to go with it. Another version of Reeve, perhaps a few years older than in the last memory, stands near the foot of the table, opposite President Shinra.

From there the table is even more filled, with an older man in a black suit from whom Reeve clearly takes some presentation cues from, from the manner the man kept his hair to the specific brand of his suit. There's another man, unremarkable and prim looking in a violet suit, at whose side sits a boy, maybe fourteen, with silver hair and in what is very clearly a military uniform, what with the armor over his shoulders. Near him was an undeniably creepy looking scientist. But really, the attention was all either on the man at the head of the table and the boy at his side that was clearly his son, or at the younger form of Reeve.

A very, very young Reeve who looked very, very nervous. The younger Reeve shifts nervously from foot to foot, and the tension is overwhelming.

"Mister Tuesti, do you know why you were called here today?" President Shinra asked, and Reeve watches himself look at the floor nervously.

"No sir."

And the President is nodding to then-Reeve.

"Your work has been brought to my attention frequently, these last months, young Mister Tuesti. And I must say..."

The pause is weighty.

"I'm impressed."

The reactions on the younger Reeve's face are... multiple. Confusion. Pride. Relief. They all warred on his face and there were a few chuckles around the table, some mean spirited, others merely amused.

"Mister Tuesti, are you aware that the current head of your department is retiring for medical reasons?" President Shinra continued.

"Yes sir. He will be sorely missed. His work with..."

"You will be his replacement."

The culture of walking right over anything important Reeve had to say had apparently started quickly. And he's left staring in open shock, his mouth hanging open.

"Sir, I'm not certain..." young-Reeve started to say, only to be cut off again.

"Are you suggesting that you do not want the position?" President Shinra asked, his eyes narrowed.

"No sir," Reeve says, stepping forward. "I'll take the position."

"Then sit. We've got real business to get to."

"Now, for the first order of business..."

Clearly the man is going to get plowed over, and the young man was thus going to experience his first board meeting. And with that they were back in Reeve's office. Luckily they are spared the rest of the meeting, thought the President does drone on for bit while the others present look at Reeve in disapproval or curiosity or not at all.

And when it's all over, it's the chair again, Reeve frowning up at Tony and then beyond him to the door in the office, offering Tony an out.

"I'm getting really bored of remembering that particular scene."

"Sorry," Tony offered, completely disingenuously by the way he had immediately left Reeve's side to peer over people's shoulders much the same way he had done to Reeve's mother, like he could calculate for every facet of them in Reeve's life, and looked slightly disappointed to be leaning over Reeve again so quickly. The younger Reeve had been fascinating, nothing like Tony in any similar board room, but he had never really been in the same position and his tables didn't typically seat children, either. He finished the move that had been aborted by the intrusion of the memory, ignoring the door to slide into Reeve's lap with most of his weight on his knees to keep off of Reeve, hand still on the back of the seat where he could look down at him, and asked first, "What's with the kids?" The position felt more manipulative than Tony had thought it would when he started, now that he had seen how easily bowled over Reeve had been in that boardroom, going from assuming his control issues were those of someone who was used to having it, not necessarily someone who wasn't.

Would Tony even believe that all he had to do was ask and Reeve would tell him anything and everything he might want to know about any person in that room. As for Reeve himself, confidence had come, with time. But that has been his first time in that room, and with a far more expansive representation of the board than normally attended.

“The blonde bear the head of the table was Rufus,” he said, his fingers sliding up Tony’s thighs. “the only legitimate son of President Shinra and his heir. He was indoctrinated into the company early, and can be hard to work with. The other is... was Sephiroth. Before everything.”

That didn't really explain what the kids were doing there, or...anything, really, making Tony repeat, "...everything...?," without actually looking for an answer; he could recognize that 'everything' meant that answer would be substantial. Instead, he pushed it away with a comb of his free hand through Reeve's hair, eyebrows raised with another question about that which Tony couldn't quite form, the man he was emulating at that table standing out as much among the strong personalities in his subdued posture as Reeve did, leaving him with, "Place was a little incestuous, hm?" He leaned back then, grabbing the edge of the desk to pull them up close to it where he could look over Reeve's work and the monitors again, asking, "How pissed was everyone to be working for some kid?," already knowing pretty well what the actual answer to that question was, but Reeve might be able to offer a unique insight while Tony assumed his monitors were touch screen and tried to scroll through the images faster.

Surely the heir of a major company expected to follow in his father's footsteps was someone worth being there. But the comment of incestuous earns the loudest bark of laughter from Reeve. Oh dear, he actually can't help but laugh over it.

"Oh it's worse than that. The President later hired one of his bastard sons to replace the man in purple. And that man, as well as Rufus, both tried to assassinate their father to take over. It was a mess. Horrible."

He tries not to yelp when the chair gets pulled, and smiles when Tony looks toward the monitors, showing the city in various states of design and progress. Sometimes it's buildings peeled away to show under-workings. Sometimes it's power grids. So many things.

"In my department? Only the man whose head I was promoted over hated me for it. He left the company. The others... They looked up to me. I didn't understand why. Perhaps they recognized how good I was. Perhaps it was how eager I was to do well. But I was just terrified they would find out about my magic and the things that would happen for it."

Then there was the hand, reaching out past him, touching the monitor. Not a touch screen, sadly. But the touch takes them away from the room again. Instead they stand in a large, clearly corporate style lounge, with towering glass windows. Sure, there is also some nice minimalist modern furniture, coffee tables, fake potted plants, but other than that, most of the place was clearly built around elevator banks behind them, and a sprawling view of a city beyond the glass and far below. Forty some floors below. The city is bathed in early morning light and from this high it wasn't easy to see much more than a sprawl of buildings.

And next to Tony stood Reeve, younger, free of some of the wrinkles. Perhaps Tony's age, perhaps a few years younger. Still older than the one in the conference room, and with a mass of files tucked under his arm as his eyes turned toward a section of the city that was clearly incomplete, given it was tons of exposed girders and pipes and the like of the plate. If one looked hard enough, they'd even see something far below even that. The slums.

"Welcome to Midgar," the younger Reeve mused, before turning his attention to Tony. He's dressed in a very sharp, clearly fashionable suit. Reeve from a point in time when he cared more about the power that came with looking sharp and fashionable. Better than the younger employee Reeve in quality, and yet higher quality materials than even Reeve had worn in the office space, the more modern Reeve. "You really just like letting your hands explore everything, don't you?"

As though to prove that point, Tony was up against the window, hands on the glass like he could reach through it to pivot the scene and inspect it from all angles, and he muttered, "Doesn't matter 'til you can touch it." That Reeve's entire office wasn't touch-compatible would have been intolerable working conditions to Tony, though he would have been more forgiving of some underdeveloped technologies had he not been immediately greeted by the obvious accomplishment that was this city. It took a glance over his shoulder at Reeve, then over the other one to search for the Reeve he was more familiar with, to realize at least some of this experience was a little more tactile and spun on Reeve again to grin, "Look at you, back in fighting shape." Not sure if this truce included being allowed to call him 'old man' again, Tony found himself pressing his lips together in a tight smile as he clasped his hands behind his back to sidle up to Reeve and submit him to the same scrutiny as Tony had his younger selves. "You built this?" he prompted, any image he'd had of the city Reeve kept claiming architect to never quite matching what he saw outside those windows--Tony couldn't imagine a project of that scale, and he was incubating a dyson sphere in his own star system. That was different, no one lived on the sun. No one touched it. This kind of corporate control over a city--that had very different implications.

If Reeve HAD touch compatible technology available to him, he'd LIVE for it. Don't get him wrong. But the 'fighting shape' earned a chuckle from Reeve and he shifted his empty hand, letting his sleeve slide back enough to show the flash of something like a bracelet at his wrist, lit with glowing orbs that might well be crystal.

"Oh yes, definitely fighting trim, so to speak. This is in the prime of the value of my department in Shinra's eyes. The ongoing project. Before the structural failure of the in-progress sector six. The other side of the building's views would show the city still under construction in some areas."

He moves to walk along the windows, smiling cheerfully at the view.

"Consider it less my hands building the whole thing. More... guiding it. I could take you down into parts of the city, I think. There's... something different about this memory. I can almost feel it. Life if I opened the right door I'd be out on the streets in Sector Four, near Loveless Avenue. Or if I summoned an elevator, I'd be near the university in Sector Three."

He moved along the glass, his free hand trailing over it, looking out at his city with pride.

"The more I hear about other worlds, the more I wonder. What could I have made with clean energy sources? What could I have wrought if I had the funding and a board who supported my vision? But this occupied me well enough until the city was destroyed. It's a bit much, even with my department, to plan out all the structures one needs to build a city of this scale. But the city itself started as a series of company towns down on the ground, before I was even born. The plates project, Midgar as it stands in this moment, is three hundred meters above the ground. Constant work crews rotating in an out at all hours... It was a masterpiece."

And a nightmare. He smiles back over his shoulder at Tony. A bright, flashing, hopeful smile. One like Reeve was prone to in those days, before he shut down, closed himself off, lost his hope. Before he was crushed under the machines of the company.

"Would you believe that I designed this while also working on a degree in yet another discipline? Engineering, architecture, city planning, and finally materials science. Most of my robotics work didn't come from a degree, but rather a brief fling with a woman that worked in weapon's dev."

Perhaps he wasn't a genius like Stark, he wasn't a futurist, but Reeve was absolutely experienced in many fields, and the ones he chose fit together like a matching tie and vest picked to go with the perfect suit.

The hardware didn't mean anything to Tony, and he couldn't tell if it was a personal choice of Reeve at his flashiest, as it seemed to be. He gladly strolled along with Reeve, a step behind with his hands in his pockets to keep watching out the window as they moved, trying to reconcile anything he could see with the childhood Reeve had shown him or anything he knew on Earth. Maybe it was for the best that Reeve hadn't had every opportunity at his disposal to create something even more massive; the energy collapse was inevitable, of course, but the darker structural issues of the 'company towns' had to catch up with him eventually if that hadn't. "Why does it have to be elevated?" he wondered, coming to a stop with his hands on the glass again, trying to see through this layer himself.

"They wanted flash," Reeve answers, his voice full of undisguised disdain. Was he proud of what he had created? Yes. Did he approve of the why? No. "They wanted to ignore how 'ugly' the old villages were."

They wanted their perfect little heaven, and Reeve hated it. But the work had to be done, and if it was going to be done, he wanted it done right, to best serve the community they were making. And by the end Midgar had been more than Shinra's powerbase. It had been its own world, all unto itself. Or it had been in some ways.

Reeve keeps moving along the glass until they reached a sealed door, one clearly leading out onto a balcony. One that was locked, but the lock gave way with an audible click as Reeve approached it.

"The view out here is better. More organic, as it were."

Did Reeve realize that at the time? It felt harder to ignore than the power issues, and Tony was slower to follow this time, staring out at Midgar and feeling like he could see the seams now, frowning at the people he couldn't see from up here. He pulled himself away as Reeve beckoned, leisurely pace along the windows gone with some of the polish. A little safer: "You had the cushy job, why did you think you had to complete the degree? Why not just..." With a vague gesture back the way they had come, indicating the much more reasonable way to learn. "Get in bed with some gal willing to tell you about it?" Tony had plenty of his own certificates proving he had put in the work, but that wasn't time he had to spend anymore just to prove he knew something with a piece of paper. He had shit to do, if he didn't know something yet he'd ask Reed for the reading and move on.

"To make it better. To make a better world, better lives, a better city so that people would have more."

Tony gave money as a philanthropist. Reeve gave his heart and soul as something not so different. Plus, of course, he wanted to learn it properly. Out on the balcony he lets his hand sweep over the view down below, and then turns to Tony.

"At this point in my life I was working on city planning. I needed to know it all, know it properly, to do this. To make sure I was doing it right. A city is like... it's like a computer. Every piece matters, and you have to put them in the right places. Things fit together the right way."

His fingers trace the lines of roads, the wires that deliver the energy, the hidden pipes of water. They dot over places he knows are police stations, military outposts, fire stations. Glance over schools and arts and stores.

"If you don't understand how to put all the wires in the right places, then you make a mess, things don't work well. You solder the ground line onto the wrong contact point on the motherboard, and nothing works."

Except the city already had people in it. On the balcony, Tony leaned against the railing, tipping forward on his toes like he might see directly below them to better understand what they stood on, not quite watching Reeve's careful plotting out of the corner of his eye. He could understand wanting to tear a whole place down to make it better, more efficient and balanced instead of the warrens a twisted history made of the environments people settled in, but Tony also had grown up across from Central Park. It certainly looked beautiful, but that didn't justify its inception.

"How'd that work out for you?" he muttered, knowing that wasn't entirely fair. He knew better than anyone else Reeve might have stood on this balcony with about the cost of short-sighted company goals, and how easy it was to see once you were out on the other side of them, and Tony didn't even have the excuse of following orders from the top. He pushed up straighter, off of his elbows and onto his hands on the railing, to look over to Reeve and ask, "Are you rebuilding it the same?"

No. This city was built to order, growing as Reeve created it. So while there were people in it, they moved in a Reeve completed things. Pre-planning was very useful.

"The people that had access, that were allowed to use the plates? They were happy, I think. But..."

Rebuilding. The very concept brought to mind the destruction and the sky above them grew dark, then clouded with red light as the massive form of Meteor hung in the air above them. It was falling, and as it did so the pressure, the magical energy, was kicking up lightning and crimson tornadoes, tearing up the city. Reeve had, by then, been evacuating the city, moving everyone into the slums to save as many lives as he could. So this was never a view he'd truly seen. Just one he was extrapolating. And it wasn't young Reeve at Tony's side anymore. Just an older, wearier man, one in some ways older than even the Reeve Tony knew. It came from the weight of knowing nothing had been enough. He had, in the time since Meteorfall, recovered some of his strength. Some of his hope. But not all of it.

"The damage Meteor did after Sephiroth summoned it to destroy the world was too extensive. Between that, the damage it did to the mako reactors leading to hazardous conditions in the city, structural instabilities, and a loathing of Shinra as a general sentiment, Midgar was abandoned.

Around them the chaos of magically-enhanced natural disaster reigned, yet no lick of wind touched them, leaving them free of it. Crimson, only crimson dominated the sky as the massive rock above them continued a slow, inexorable pull downwards, defying all traditional laws of gravity. Then blue, surging toward them in a pulse, rushing under the massive rock and holding above the city like a shield. Blue and red warring, the energies further damaging all around it until the Meteor started to push through even that. All was doomed.

Which was when tendrils of green started to fill the air. Small things, like strings growing to cords, growing to cables, growing to whole rivers and vines of it, meandering through the air. The Lifestream, freed and acting, the spirit of the planet itself fighting back at the invasion.

"The end of Midgar. After this..."

Well, they had good seats to it, he had to admit.

Edited 2020-07-08 18:49 (UTC)

Christ, that wasn't a meteor, that was a moon, and Tony backed away from the ledge anxiously, not exactly sure if he should be feeling threatened in the strange bubble they seemed to be in but curling a hand over Reeve's shoulder anyway like he might pull him away. The meteor was Sephiroth, the kid at the table-- and this must have been the culmination of everything. Where the blue or green were coming from were more mysterious. "Can you do that...?" he wondered, voice low, knowing Reeve was trying to tell him something and aware enough to feel the tension and the weight in his shoulder to pass his free hand up his back, but overwhelmed by the amount of magic that was happening here.

"Can I do what? Summon something like Meteor? No. Sephiroth had the Black Materia with him, in the Northern Cave. A great, still open wound on our planet from when the alien Jenova landed here. Her taint prevented the planet from healing properly, and the Lifestream welled up there. His presence at that place not only gave him the strength to call Meteor down, but to hold the Lifestream and Holy at bay. Holy, the blue, was what a friend of ours gave her life to summon. Had it been released earlier, it would have been enough. The green is the Lifestream itself. The soul of the planet, reaching out to defend it."

That was what he had been burning.

"My magic is... far less than this. Far, far less, and I'm rather skilled."

The mixed lights begin to swell and Reeve moves, standing in front of Tony and pulling the man closer, pulling his head down against Reeve's shoulder to shelter him from the overwhelming white out of light and the explosive noise. This time winds rushed past them, and when he released Tony...

When he released Tony, it wasn't the same view before him, or world around him. The balcony might seem less stable, though it held with no issue. Midgar was in ruins, no matter how you looked at it.

Not that there wasn't hope. From this angle you could see it, just barely, stretching out beyond the distant rim of the city. Edge, the city that rose up after. Far less structured, far less controlled. Natural.

"I'm only a consultant on some matters with Edge. The WRO volunteers to help however we can. But at the moment, no, there are no intentions to rebuild the monster that was Midgar."

Edited 2020-07-08 19:38 (UTC)

Reeve was as annoying as Jon with these layers of people and magics to worry about in the knot of his regrets, making Tony frown then sigh, sure he couldn't have sounded any more cohesive when he tried to explain some small part of his own world. Was it somehow more annoying when they didn't feel like aliens and some of this should have sounded familiar? He did start to smile at Reeve's metered boasting, only for it to drop quickly as Reeve pulled him in, hands stiff and cautious on Reeve's waist and tensing, turning gold at the noise as he squeezed his eyes tightly against the light and held his breath. That was a nuclear event. It left Tony twitching tense, wanting to retreat to hide how shaken he was but keep Reeve close, watching him in shock that he wasn't a total wreck from it, and leaving him curling a tight fist in Reeve's jacket to keep his hands from shaking. The ruin of the city wasn't helping.

"I thought you were the boss now," he said--the assassination attempts, that stuff, it wasn't fitting in to that picture yet. "What happened to putting the pieces in the right places?"

There had been time, years ago, to be in shock and to grieve for what happened. For now, Reeve just wanted to give Tony some space, to look out over the wreck of a bit more than half of his life. Was there strength, he wondered, in living through this and still moving forward? Probably not. That was just pure survival instinct. Instead there was a hand curling in his jacket to keep him there.

And Reeve, knowing how important it could be for Tony, deliberately ignored the shaking. Tony seemed to prefer looking strong. Reeve wasn't going to take that from him.

"I am the founder and commissioner of the non-profit World Regenesis Organization," Reeve agreed. "Our goal is to help everyone the world over recover from Meteor, as well as the ills of Shinra. But the problem is that I'm one of two surviving executives from Shinra, and the only one people know to be still alive. So yes, there have been multiple attempts on my life. They put the blame at my feet because of my involvement. But there are others that look to me as a hero of a war they didn't know was being fought until the final gasps of it. After all, Avalanche counts me as a friend and ally these days."

Pieces, in the right places. It's a noble goal. One Reeve will give the rest of his life for. His gaze lingers out into the distance as he considers the question.

"I've dedicated nearly every waking moment of the last three years trying to pick up the pieces, Tony. Trying to set everything straight. Trying... Everything. Some people stand with me. Some people hate me. Some people could care less. In the end, though, it's the moving forward that matters, isn't it?"

But it's also the moving forward that isolates. All work and no play and all of that.

"There are just so many, many pieces."

At last he pulls away from Tony, and as he does there's one last change to his appearance. No more suit, instead just a very strange blue coat that fell all the way to his ankles. The coat of the commissioner, one that did wonders at covering most of his body.

Bereft again as Reeve dropped something on him that made Tony want to curl closer to him, only to step away, a terrible habit that Tony was going to have to figure out how to anticipate better, Tony had to tuck his empty hands into his pockets, shoulders up around his ears like he had to shake off a chill. Tony had been doing his moving forward for a decade, and maybe he had started from a worse place-- the one giving the orders and the one making the weapons, the head of that boardroom table-- but it left him feeling cold in the pit of his chest for Reeve's ten year anniversary. Still, he wouldn't have told Reeve any different.

The new look did make Tony narrow his eyes, a baffled smile tugging at his lips despite the coil of tension, and he started to say, "You should--" only to cock his head apologetically, tongue to his lip as he searched for something else to offer. He was going to tell Reeve that he should ask Jon to show him the space pirate thing, because it was looking like they had plenty of stylistic preferences in common, and it was a shame that Tony wasn't sure they were allowed to talk about him because he knew the two of them would get along based on this weird, flamboyant military costume alone. "I mean, good for you," he tried to redirect, "I was worried you didn't really fit in with your friends, but, no, you're hitting all of the right notes."

"Fit in with my friends?" Reeve asks, looking back to Tony. And, after a moment, he moved closer to the man. Moved to touch Tony's arm.

Was he close to laughing? That would be silly if he was. But Reeve tilts his head, and then smiles. He gets it.

"What? The flair for dramatic statements? Perhaps it's just a part of our culture."

"Listen-- you're not wrong, that's definitely true and I feel like we should maybe talk about that because every one of you," Tony said, hands up already to concede that he had an admittedly small data pool of two to really work with here, but it was a strong sample, "communicates like you're Google translate, but, like, the other way--" That was barely going to make sense to someone who knew what Google was, but Tony definitely didn't have a literary comparison that he knew Reeve would connect with, either. Never mind, his gesture said, didn't matter, because that wasn't what he was trying to say right now anyway. "I meant, well, you're certainly making a statement. You look like a conscripted wizard being honourably discharged from desk service. You look like a divorced business mage. You look like you weren't sure if you wanted to do the medieval LARP or the battle reenactment and didn't pack enough for either." Tony had more, but he cleared his throat and offered, "It's a big look to pull off."

His look? This is about the coat? Reeve just chuckles at the commentary. It's colorful, it's constant, and it's so Tony. He loves it.

"And I'm certain I fail to pull it off. But if you really want to see battle reenactment, you should see Cloud with a sword. Sadly, you can't."

He turns fully to Tony and runs his hands down the front of the coat.

"Consider it... camouflage. Once the attempts got a bit too common, I made a double of myself. Mostly robotic, meant to be controlled internally by Cait Sith, Mini's older brother. I can't inspire something that large with my magic, or maybe I could and something holds me back. Still, it allows him to provide a physical presence I can talk through. And all the seams and layers to the coat hide the tell-tale signs of it being little more than a puppet. But that only works if I'm also wearing the damn thing."

Cloud's sword might be negotiable, or at leas that was what Tony's expression suggested in response to Reeve's sure pessimism, a thoughtful pout then a skeptical frown. If Tony wasn't sure he could trust Reeve with a weapon, he wasn't about to rush into arming his friends. That might be a call for Cayde to make for him.

The description of Reeve's truly weird matryoshka of selves made Tony snort, but he was quick to catch on, "Like an LMD," with a nod of acceptance for the plotting. It didn't make a ton of sense that Reeve's magic had a size limit to Tony, and he had to ask, "Do bigger things have bigger souls?," but he was in some way glad that Reeve couldn't make independent clones of himself. "There's no way you would have done that," he did say confidently. "They're supposed to take bullets for you. That's a psychological nightmare, I'm already concerned that you got that far and put the little guy in there. Do you not like him as much as Mini? Don't worry, I won't tell either of them you play favourites, everyone has a favourite child."

A sword as large as Cloud tended to carry was definitely something to be talked about. And feared. Reeve, though, wasn't really speaking of arming Cloud at all, though. The man was sick, whether he admitted it or not.

"Yes, they do. After all, they are pieces of the Lifestream, filling up the thing. So larger souls for larger and more complex lifeforms. But don't be worried for Cait Sith. He's far more durable than Mini is."

And for a moment there's a flicker at his side, a fully articulated and moving feline, tail flicking, head tilting as it considered Tony. Cait Sith, his son, his creation. Missed but not present.

"And Cait Sith agreed to the risk. I maintain a number of duplicate forms to transfer him into in case of serious damage. Cait and I are a team at this point. He's been with me for four years in various forms, and given the little guy has fought dragons and helped save the world, he'd a little less worried about bullet wounds."

Of course he loves Cait. Cait had his own life, though, and the cat had agreed to help protect him.

June-July and Calibrations

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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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