June-July and Calibrations

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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.

Comments

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"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."

[in_extremis]

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?"

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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.

[in_extremis]

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."

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"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."

[in_extremis]

"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."

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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."

[in_extremis]

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."

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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.

[in_extremis]

The cat would have been interesting, except that Reeve had just offered Tony some of the most annoying nonsense about his magic yet, and Tony had his hands on his hips to stare up at the sky in exasperation. Reeve wasn't supposed to agree that bigger body meant bigger soul, unless he was conceding that they weren't talking about theological souls and more like whatever chemical cocktail was keeping a body upright, and neither option was any less complex for a synthetic lifeform. Magic.

"Yeah, you guys and dragons, you've got a real dragon problem," he at least acknowledged as he dropped his head to eyeball Cait Sith skeptically. "So, you're still just manipulating this lifestream, but that's somehow different than using it for energy," he had to lay out, just one more problem with how Reeve's nonsense worked. "And that means that the planet that we're on--that means Risa must have a lifestream, too. Unless-- you're drawing it from your planet." Two theories, one making Cloud's trepidation about using the crystal rods more reasonable, and the other linking them directly, Tony thought, back to Reeve's planet--a connection that had to be useful.

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Yes, Reeve's magic doesn't make logical sense. But his world is full of magics like that, and he doesn't know the way to describe it. To study his magic, to QUANTIFY it, would mean someone better at the science than he was. And the scientists were horrible to people like him.

"We do, but they're mostly contained, thankfully. But I... suppose I am manipulating the lifestream. I wish I knew how. But if that's true, if I'm tapping into something here..."

Reeve shudders and the world around them shakes and shatters like glass, leaving them back in Reeve's office, back in that chair with Tony leaning over Reeve. Fun.

"I hope it's drawing on Gaia and what it gives me."

[in_extremis]

How did Tony keep on getting roped into thinking about these guys' magic powers? Honestly, if Reeve really didn't have a thing with Jon, it was about time he figured one out so they could commiserate. The shatter made Tony shiver again, squeezing his eyes closed against it with a grimace until he was blinking down at Reeve again, and he slowly relaxed, only to offer, "Uh-huh," for Reeve's magic situation. "Hey, listen, all of this," he said, easing himself back so he was standing in front of the desk again to gesture broadly to the room, "has been a real treat." And Tony might have had it in him to keep on digging through Reeve's dirty underwear if he didn't feel like he had already witnessed the a-bomb, that was a lot to process, it was working through him and wasn't leaving a ton of room.

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Well they sure learned a lot of things, hadn't they? And yet only scratched the surface. Barely even scratched the surface. But he gets it. There was only so much he could deal with, and dealing with the situation they're in is a bit too much.

"Of course. You deserve a bit of rest, right? The door is what you need."