revivalproject | A Diving Expedition

Entry tags:

A Diving Expedition

WHO: Cal Kestis, Jonathan Sims and Tony Stark
WHERE: The Flood Plain
WHAT: When one has rebreathers, one does underwater exploration
WHEN: A few days after being freed of Calibration hell
WARNINGS: N/A, will update as necessary

It was decided rather unanimously, and perhaps unsurprising given the time that had been spent in confinement. After being cooped up indoors with little place else to go, the opportunity to finally go elsewhere is a welcome one, and there seems no point in waiting. Besides, Cal can use the distraction. While he's not certain of exactly how many of their number have been sent away, it's difficult to miss at least one presence, strong in the Force as Altair was. Hopefully he would be back where he was meant to be.

Cal's looking forward to the outing, however, eager to be about and exploring with friends. Given the chosen venue, one might never guess from the way he's prepared. He's dressed as he usually is, BD-1 perched on a broken bit of wall, both beside the shallows of the eastern-most inner curve of the large lake that's taken up a good portion of the southwestern corner of the city.

It's a lot of area to cover, and the more he looks at it, the more he wonders just how deep it can be. The couple of times he's gone in probably haven't even covered very much of anything, and with so many places to look, he'd been practical and stuck to where he could make out the remnants of buildings. That seemed to be the most ideal place to find anything, anyway.

Glancing at his droid friend, he tilts his head. "They should be here soon. You ready, BeeDee?" The little droid borbles, wiggling eagerly, making the padawan laugh. "Yeah, it'll be a nice change of pace after all that." He turns, looking out towards the main road again for any signs of Jon and Tony.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Cal grabs Jon's arm the moment he's close enough, looking him over to make sure he's fine before he looks back down where Tony's gone. BD-1 manages to keep his own light directed where Tony is, looking anxiously towards whatever sort of creature (creatures??) that the man has thrown himself into a fistfight with.

About to head down himself, Cal lets out a rush of bubbles in a sigh of relief once he sees Tony head back towards them. He grins around his rebreather, giving him a pat on the shoulder. So much for an eventless diving trip. While he's glad everyone's fine, the glance he casts between them is an inquiry as to whether they want to continue or not.

He won't argue at Tony's insistence in having him hang onto Jon, and hopefully Jon won't object either.

Jon on his part may not be sure just how exactly the two managed to find him this quickly, but he also isn’t one to complain about thee rescue. He gives Cal a short nod before turning to observe Tony’s struggle as well, grimacing a little when the creature pulls him down as it retreats.

Though he’s glad it does retreat rather than try to make a meal out of Tony and makes his relief known with a short squeeze to whichever part of Tony’s arm he can reach once the other man pulls him close for a moment. Tony’s gesturing is answered with another nod and his currently free hand gives a brief pat to the gesturing gauntlet in hopes of being reassuring enough. That very hand is the one Tony puts into Cal’s, causing Jon to look over to the Padawan with a short, apologetic shrug.

Unfortunately neither of em seems to have picked up his flashlight.

Jon looks from Cal back to Tony and then points back down to the hole Tony has pulled his arm out of just moments ago. That’s not normal soil, is it?

Less clumsy with his own tool lost and both hands free, Tony tried the sign for 'shipwreck' on them, but even as he did was tilting his head, unsure. This wasn't a natural lake, and the sort of metal, hulking masses they might find underwater were probably not the kind they would expect back home, but he didn't have a better way to describe the brief discovery. Didn't matter, better to do than float around not talking about it; no one seemed to be traumatized, so he didn't even address Cal's consideration to abort. Tony didn't linger any longer, diving back down to where he had made a hole in whatever the thing was, then keeping a hand on it as he skimmed along, looking for an edge or any other defining feature, his glowing hand keeping his progress visible as he slipped away over the cliff of it.

The surface was less sturdy than it seemed, held mostly fast by the amount of growth on it that embedded and adapted it to this new environment; a relatively slim sheet of metal that appeared to house a bunch of wiring on the underside, or at least that was what Tony guessed it was after rubbing some of the clinging algae free from a mass of plastic-feeling tubing. That glowing worm symbiotic relationship hive must have felt at home with the insular casing that Tony stripped away to test his hypothesis, finding the metal underneath. Huh. He kicked to push himself further into the metal cave, feeling his way forward with the gauntlet.

Shrugging back at Jon with a faint smile, Cal then looks towards where the Archivist indicates, and where Tony is soon diving back down towards. With a glance at his safety-buddy, Cal starts swimming down once Jon's aware of the plan.

His eyes widen as he catches a better glimpse of what all Tony had found. That's not the standard ruin material they've thus far found, and he can hear BD-1's muffled hoot of curiosity as the droid's light envelopes the metal that had been revealed, and the opening that Tony's gone through.

Cal hesitates, if only to make sure that there's nothing potentially hostile awaiting nearby, but the clump of creatures that previously filled the space seems to have effectively blocked anything more of a threat from claiming territory within. Nodding at Jon, he gestures with his head towards the opening before following Tony within.

...it's definitely not a ruined building. Compared to the broken structures and things in the city, what they've just come across is decidedly more alien by comparison. There's something vaguely familiar about it, but at this point it's more like a niggling thought at the back of one's mind that doesn't quite click into focus.

Water and time have definitely taken its toll here upon whatever this metal housing used to be, but under the build-up of minerals and algae, protruding shapes and sunken alcoves can be found, further inspection revealing consoles of some sort, long eroded with no clear indication of what they might have formerly been a part of. Here and there thin, palm-sized and nearly transparent fish of some sort flit and float lazily about, for the most part ignoring the intrusion.

There is no objection from the Archivist about following Tony. He is just as curious as the others regarding what they have found and this time he follows the others inside, yet again wishing he hadn’t lost his light.

Making sure not to let go of Cal, Jon runs his other hand over the surfaces nearby. Shipwreck, indeed. He does feel a little reminded of the ships up in the hangar, but has no way to share that thought properly. But then again, unlike his companions, Jon isn’t very versed with machines and space ships, so Tony and Cal May be the more appropriate judges for this case.

So Jon lets his attention be drawn to the creatures around them, faintly illuminated by BD-1’s light. Some of them swim close enough to brush past his arm and hand and one curious looking long species even briefly winds the top of its long tail around his fingers. He actually might like these.

This would have been a profoundly useful bounty if any of it looked anywhere near salvageable; there was a whole construct that Tony crawled his way across to make sense of that he would have called a birthing bay if it sat next to his workbench, with a vice rusted permanently and pointlessly to an otherwise thinly eroded plate, bolted through with what might have been a pair of positioning arms, if Tony extrapolated correctly from the baseplate that remained of one. Glancing up to the meandering wires, then around as though he could see through the darkness that his gauntlet didn't really penetrate, Tony tried to place any of this in space, and found himself quite at a loss. The factories around the forge didn't house anything like this, and he was pretty sure they hadn't somehow gone inside another building. It was just...a mechanic in an open basin?

The dark made Tony back up, searching back the way he had come for the other two with BD's light to guide him, only to frown at Jon getting intimate with the locals again. Gesturing to Cal to get his attention, Tony tried to sign 'make', then 'construct' to get Cal's professional evaluation of what else they might run into with that in mind, hopeful that he could figure out what the machines Tony was feeling around might have been used to make. He hadn't come across what might have been an end product yet, but it might have been too small to survive the submersion.

Cal brushes the walls with his free hand, trying to get a sense of what they've found. He looks over at Jon amusedly as the man can still be friendly with the fish despite his earlier experience.

He catches Tony's movement, nodding before giving Jon's hand a light tug, jerking his head in Tony's direction before following once the Archivist is prepared.

BD-1's light illuminates the space better once they move to where Tony is, and Cal looks around, brow furrowing as he tries to understand what he's seeing. He moves his free hand towards BD-1, inviting the little droid to grab onto his arm so he can bring him around. Time for the droid to engage in his favorite pastime! Doing all the scans!

Cal looks expectantly at BD-1 once the droid seems to finish, but the latter's response doesn't seem promising as the droid tilts his head, giving a low borble. Frowning, Cal looks around for himself, glancing at Jon and their clasped hands before loosening his. Surely they'll be all right if they all stick together in here.

Once he has his hands free, he'll further explore the strange machinery that Tony's come across, but it doesn't seem like he's got any better ideas of what they could be used for. Compared to the things he's salvaged around the city, it looks like nothing by way of design or structure that he's come across before. He frowns more, shaking his head as he rubs at some of the growth clinging to the old contraptions.

At Cal’s quiet request, Jon lets the young man go to help Tony inspect what they have found. The Archivist stays at the edges of BD’s light, poking at various alien findings that may be tools or just extravagant art. A couple of those long underwater creatures follow along, zipping in and out of the light cast by Cal’s droid and offering Jon something to inspect he has an easier way to make sense of.

They lack fins like most fish Jon is familiar with and rather seem to move via intricate movements of their long tails, which appears to be at least two tails tightly wound around one another most of the time. And while they somehow seem to be aware of where the droid’s light shines, Jon can’t make out any eyes on what he assumes is their head. But they do appear quite fond of circling his hands when offered or his feet when Jon inspects some of the odd pieces around.

He does make sure not to lose sight of Tony and Cal, however. And whether or not they find something worth noticing while he picks through bits of broken debris, wondering if maybe they can find remains of some of those data spheres down here as well. Or maybe even another data point.

This micro inspection wasn't producing any strong theories, apparently, so Tony shrugged and turned to dart away more quickly instead of lingering over a new ridge or component as he passed, trusting the other two to commit to the buddy system as he went searching for the limits of this scrapyard. Placing it in space, like he had tried to before, might be a better start than trying to identify individual components of alien hardware. The data points were in Tony's head, too, as one of the pieces of Agrii technology, as far as he knew, that he had worked with the most, considering maybe that was what had been made here, but nothing he was finding looked much like how the spheres were constructed. The dark, the erosion and the overtaking plantlife could have been skewing that estimation, to be fair, but the closest thing any of this appeared to have in common with the data points was the level of destruction-- it was a lot like looking at the far flung debris that had cluttered the library when he arrived, not a single component left entirely intact.

When Tony came swimming back toward BD's light again, it was to gesture for Cal once more, beckoning him closer to deposit one item Tony found while searching the sand the make sure he had reached the edge of this find. Based on the rest of what he was seeing, it was entirely possible that it was a nail- or heat-gun by the shape, but Tony cocked his head, glancing only briefly to make sure Jon was still nearby but distracted enough by his fishy friends.

Looking it like one would art isn't exactly a bad idea. One would have to be familiar with local styles to be able to find a point of contrast, and in this instance, it's not exactly style so much as design. Cal tries to picture things without the extra overgrowth, but it still doesn't tell him much for its purpose.

When Tony comes back towards them, Cal turns to Jon, giving him a wave before starting after Tony, glancing back to make sure the Archivist is following.

BD-1 still clings to his wrist, feet clamped around the rim of the padawan's glove, his light trailing across the floor as he looks down and then where the fourth member of their little diving group is before twitching down towards whatever he's found. Coming alongside of Tony, Cal's eyes widen at the object. Now that's definitely something they've not come across anywhere in the city so far. He reaches out with his right hand, brushing at the object, pausing abruptly in the motion, fingers twitching away from it slightly as though burned, and again his brow furrows, uncertain.

Jon meanwhile seems to be attracting his own entourage of eyeless fish friends. They seem perfectly happy with trailing along with him, riding along with his movement the way that remora do with sharks, save that they're not there to snack on parasites, thankfully.

Jon doesn’t necessarily require the nonverbal invitation to paddle over, only remotely noting that the fish that seem so curious about him seem less interested in Tony or Cal. He reaches the others just in time to see Cal’s reaction on reaching for the item - And he can well guess where it comes from. The lingering anxiety down here is even stronger than outside in the dark. And it seems to get even denser the further one swims inside. Wherever Tony has picked up this thing can’t be a pleasant place.

Which makes Jon a little curious.

But he resists the impulse for now, despite casting a prolonged look in the direction Tony has returned from. Though instead of swimming away, Jon pulls forth another odd piece he has found between the pieces he has been inspecting and places it in Tony’s hand, right next to the thing the other man has brought with him. This one looks much rather like a hilt of sorts. Though one that hardly fits to any sort of knife Jon can imagine.

Edited 2020-07-15 02:36 (UTC)

The amount of attention that Jon seemed to be accruing and brought over with him was weird enough, and combined with Cal's physical reaction to the potential weapon discovery when the city seemed to have been deliberately swept clean of them, Tony finally considered that maybe this had been a risky idea. With some frustration, he tapped at his mouth and the rebreather, sure that he wasn't going to be able to make a convincing argument to send them both back to the surface to let him continue the map on his own with this gag in the way, only to shiver at the bolt of panic that went through him as he realized he would be left alone, gagged, in the dark. He shoved it down quickly, this was fine, he was ignoring it so far and they were trying to accomplish something here, and Jon was kind enough to hand him another distraction.

Either all of the Agrii's secrets of creation or destruction happened in the bowl of this basin, or it was where they threw the things they didn't want found. The hilt could have been for any tool in this workshop rotting at the bottom of the pond, cutting or binding, but next to the gun-shaped object, underlit by the gauntlet, it didn't come off looking friendly.

Handing them both back to Jon so that Cal didn't have to touch them, they didn't seem to agree, Tony twirled a finger for the pair to search for more, maybe they could place the objects in context with further examples, then signed 'map' to explain where he was going before kicking off again. This wasn't really getting them anywhere right now, mostly Tony was feeling frustrated and freaked out, but if he could at least pinpoint the outer bounds of this trove they would know where to send a second expedition when they had more information.

Troubled by what he'd sensed from the strange find but unable to really explain it at the moment, Cal can only try to reassure the two that he's otherwise fine. Being so close to the other two, the sudden spike of emotion from Tony does draw his attention. The padawan reaches out a hand, grasping Tony's shoulder firmly, reassuringly. They're here. No one's leaving anyone behind.

His eyes look back towards the other item that Jon's brought along, the fine blue line of BD-1's scanning light playing over both items as he too does his own observations before his ambient light switches over again. So weapons did exist here, or at least they looked more like weapons than anything else that Cal had ever seen. It's strange enough finding them in this place. Was someone trying to hide something?

Nodding at Tony, Cal glances over at Jon to make sure the man's all right with moving on again. Resuming exploration, he begins to move in the direction opposite Tony, trusting BD-1 to alert him of anything he might notice first. The droid had the tendency to find some interesting things.

And things there are. At the droid's high-pitched hooting, Cal swims closer to the floor, peering beneath the edge of what might have been some sort of counter space. Reaching in, he pulls out a disc-shaped object, flat on one side and slightly rounded on the other, the center depression housing a mount for something that was otherwise broken off. The housing of the attached cables had been eaten away, the wires frayed, any signs of where it might have been previously hooked up either long since covered up by decades of overgrowth or somewhere else completely.

The sudden panic coming from Tony also isn't missed by Jon, who casts the man a concerned look and for a moment places his free hand over Tony's and gives it a quick squeeze as the man places their current findings into Jon's other hand. No. There is no way they will leave any of them down here alone.

He takes a moment to look after Tony when he swims away again to resume mapping out the place, then eyes the two items once more, his posture seemingly inviting some of the creatures surrounding him to circle around his hand and arm again, tails brushing against him lightly. Jon has stopped counting them, but is pretty sure they keep getting more. Closing his hand around the potential weapons, Jon swims off to the site opposite where he has been looking before, the fish of course following along.

This site has hardly any debris to offer for Jon to look through, but he notices a few of the fish straying away from him to circle around an area covered in sand. Willing to take the hint, Jon begins to search through it.

Meanwhile, Tony wasn't lingering anywhere for very long, only occasionally searching through sand or seagrass to make sure he wasn't missing some notable construction marking a larger territory for this dump site, coming away with a few of his own bounties that looked like circuit boards and chips that, if they were too beyond waterlogged to give up their secrets, he could strip of their copper and platinum. He made quick work circling what felt like the outer boundary of the bulk of the find, skimming his free hand over pieces that looked like arcade cabinets, long since disemboweled with wires floating like guts in the water above them, and small particle detectors, or maybe jet engines; there wasn't much difference after a while spent dissolving, really.

He came upon Cal first, hauling his...satellite dish?, and just the sight of it was enough to make Tony finally swim to a stop and let himself sink down into a seat of weedy coral on his knees, shoulders slouching and releasing a hefty sigh of bubbles back up into the duckweed far above them. They were swimming laps down here; Jon might have looked goofy, but he did spend that replicator charge wisely on those fins. Collecting his boards against his chest, Tony offered his gauntlet palm up again like he had displayed its records above water, this time to show the 3D rendering of the map it was collating so far; a strange, jagged trail of their path downward that widened into his more thorough scouting at this depth. The sensitive readings sketched out the larger structures that were sitting throughout the circle Tony had traced, highlighted in a range of colours where the read was less positive, like the incrementally more red edges of the whole map.

Keeping moving is the only reason Cal hasn't started feeling the cold seep in. The water this deep has been considerably cooler than the depths he'd previously explored, and he didn't usually spend so long down below. He rubs at an arm as he inspects the object he'd found, only slightly bigger than his hand.

BD-1 beeps inquiringly at him, to which he nods before looking back to see how the others are doing. He sees Tony coming over and turns, swimming closer as he sees the man droop. Any gestures in concern are paused as the map is brought up, and BD-1 hoots appreciatively, the display not unlike the maps he usually builds above ground.

There seems too much to cover between the three of them and with their limited resources. Cal looks at Tony, giving a slow nod. This is going to take some time, and even then, they still have no clear idea what they've found. Turning his head, he looks over where Jon is, brows arching at the collection of fish the man's gathered. He glances at Tony, shrugging before moving to see what all the Archivist has found.

Jon doesn't pay attention to the others at the moment, more focused on digging out what these fish-creatures have directed him to. It turns out to be a large gap in the metal and what he can only described as a longer version of the odd gun Tony has found. It's a sleeker design than its smaller cousin and looks a lot less like looking at a potential tool. Jon runs a hand across its long metal shape when Cal decides to check on him and his finding.

Though the Padawan is met by several of Jon's fish very deliberately blocking his way by swimming between the two men and flaring open what Jon has believed to be their heads, making them look more like jellyfish than more regular fish. Their long tails uncurl from one another towards Cal in a threatening gesture and along with them dozens of those same glowing tendrils from their previous encounter with the large anemone unfurl from where those tails connect to their heads, now glowing and swaying at Cal and increasing the formerly small creature's volume notably. There's at least a dozen of them puffing up like this threateningly before Cal with more beginning to hover behind these and yet more slipping into their found space through the gap Jon has freed up, causing the Archivist to back away from it and looking over in the direction of the others when the combined glow of these unfurling beings starts to cast an entirely new light over their surroundings.

He can't help but think just how beautiful this looks.

That's however when Jon feels the first sting-like bite to the back of his neck, causing Jon to flinch forward with a bubbly yelp of surprise but also pain before kicking his feet to back away, dropping the items he has been holding to reach for the thing latched onto his neck only to find another of these beings wrapping itself around his hand and a second bite is delivered to the palm of his hand, resulting in a similar reaction as the first sting and Jon hits the wall he has been paddling towards with his back harder than expected, stopping his attempted retreat and allowing more of the creatures to go for his arms and legs and he can already feel a numbness spreading across his neck and through his hand. And as Jon tries to cast a wordless plea for help in the direction of Cal and Tony, he can only see both of them now being targeted by their own respective groups of fish-creatures as well.

The buddy system might not have stopped the fish from obsessing over Jon, but Tony was still irritated that it seemed to have broken down enough to get them a wall of menacing tentacles splitting the party. Jon would get into a van with a stranger, officially, he needed close supervision, and if Tony didn't figure out how to punch a school of squid, he wasn't going to be able to snap at Jon like he wanted to.

He had lagged behind Cal as they approached, but the transforming fish had him kicking up close to Cal's back, cautioning hand on his shoulder. The slow unfurling of the group kept Tony watchful over them, feeling intimidated but not immediately threatened, not sure if they kept their heads down they could maybe avoid whatever this confrontation was, and he didn't notice they had been flanked by more of the transparent little bastards until the first one spilled its glowing tentacles to catch his eye over his shoulder. Reacting in surprise, he snatched for it instinctively to squeeze in his gauntlet, but its jelly body compressed easily to pop out from under his crushing thumb and dart away, flaring up again like a static field. Another had wrapped itself around Tony's ankle in the meantime, and he could feel it trying to bite through the nanoweb, a slim enough sting that Tony had to try to kick it away as he spun back on Cal with concern. He didn't have a suit at all, and Jon-- panic, mounting panic again. With a flick of his wrist, Tony added another light to the growing glow at the bottom of the lake; a bright burst of fire from his palm that was supposed to cut through anything in their way, and with a quick sweep, seemed to work for calamari, too.

Jon's new friends are awfully overprotective. Cal swims back as he finds them moving to block off his path, and as they begin to show their true colors, he looks anxiously towards Jon. He feels Tony come up behind him, nodding at the unspoken warning, but his eyes flick towards the creatures as they move in to surround them.

BD-1 beeps an alarm as he spies Jon having his own problems with the fishy things, his light narrowing into that scanner beam as he uses the thing to fan across the amassing creatures, trying to help disperse them.

Cal sees what's happening, senses the growing panic. These things aren't harmless after all. He brings up his hands as BD-1 shifts to cling to his belt again, and he sweeps his arms outward, using the Force to push the creatures away. He knows it won't be for long, but as soon as a path is cleared, he propels himself towards Jon to grab him, just as Tony's flare washes behind him. Hopefully it will do the job.

The padawan grabs at Jon once he's within reach, wincing at the stinging sensation in his foot, looking alarmed at the fleeing fish and the numbness he can feel creeping after the burn. Shaking his head, he forces himself to keep moving, drawing them closer to where Tony is so they can maybe make a break for it.

Edited 2020-07-15 18:59 (UTC)

Now Jon really wishes he had brought some sort of weapon. Preferably one he knows to use, which limits his options notably. It’s getting increasingly difficult to fend the odd squids off and he can feel more of them on his arms, legs and back.

Then one of them pulls him away from where he has been stuck struggling and Jon looks up, baffled despite his own increasing fear and flailing, which pauses when he recognizes Cal being the one to pull him away. For a moment, Jon is simply grateful for the help. But he also is quick to realize that they still have to get away properly. So ignoring the pain and growing numbness of his legs, he kicks his feet and flippers behind him to give them a little bit of an extra push - as maybe slap an alien squid or two in the process.

They need to get out of this handy trap they maneuvered themselves into. And back to the surface.

Their approach was waved away with a rushed flailing from Tony, and he gestured for them to go up, up!, out of the dark depths where these things were spawning. He was following, kicking at and scorching the fish that darted too close and slipped their creepy little arms around him, trying to stay behind the pair to take the brunt of the attacks until-- he bolted upward, heart pounding with the effort to reach out and grab at the first ankle he could find in the gnashing disturbance of the water to drag them back down to a halt as the jellyfish kept rushing up around them. With his other hand, he flicked the torch back off, throwing up the display instead, hoping one of them could read through the churning water.

2:59-
58-
57...

Despite the growing numbness in one leg, Cal kept kicking. He began to maneuver towards the exit with Jon at Tony's gesturing, one hand still grasping Jon's arm, the other tightening around the broken projection base he'd been grasping, wielding it like a paddle and to fend off other creatures that still tried to dart after them.

Small waves of them would be momentarily turned away by BD-1's scanning beam but it seems to last less and less as long. It's more by sense than by sight that Cal manages to get them to the opening they'd initially come through. The numbness has started to tingle over his right forearm, and barely realizes his leg's been caught ahold of. BD-1 bleeps, and Cal looks as Tony joins them again, blinking as he tries to make out what the man's got planned.

With them still being swarmed, Cal doesn't feel at ease waiting without doing something. He tries to focus, drawing in deeply from his rebreather before he pushes outward from their little quartet with the Force. It's different using such an ability underwater, especially against something that can swim, but he puts more into it than the first time when he'd cleared a path to Jon. All he can do is buy them some space, maybe a little time.

The sudden stop in their escape earns a brief frown from Jon at first and he manages to turn his head enough to look down towards Tony, only to catch sight of the glowing display and the numbers. And he understands perfectly what these mean. Just another of those little things his body has decided to have no need of any longer. Just like eating or sleeping.... Christ, he wouldn’t have needed this rebreather in the first place. Now if only he could find himself to be useful with these fish... He has been the one attracting them in the first place.

Between Tony’s torch, BD’s Scanner and Cal plain shoving them away with his mind Jon feels remarkably useless, glaring past Tony grimly and setting his stare on one of the fish dashing forward again. Can he maybe access their minds? Force them to stop what they are doing, perhaps? They can’t be entirely primitive by how they have gradually followed their group until they were basically trapped. There must be some consciousness presence. Some sort of...

And Jon finds it. Finds the creature’s mind and digs into it, causing the fish to freeze, then drop away. Right. This may be tedious and not as efficient as Cal’s approach, but Jon takes to pointedly pick out the closest attacking fishes one by one. Which is... something?

They didn't seem happy about the delay, but it wasn't like Tony was thrilled about it, either. He hadn't built the decompression table into the gauntlet's programming just in case, though-- that kind of risk didn't sound like the sort of test he should be putting his freshly scarred heart through, a third heart failure in a quarter was pretty dramatic even for him. He'd rather take his chances with these stinging stalkers.

Cal's pushing them into their own clear bubble gave Tony a moment to consider their options, gaze darting around the glowing school to try to assess the biggest bang for his buck, and it was the random fish dropping out of the regular formation that had him spinning to look questioningly between the pair to figure out where that was coming from. Jon might have been feeling the odd one out, but it was Tony that was feeling underprepared for this telekinesis party--that was the problem, that was why it was feeling so tedious and overwhelming. The fish had coordinated attacks, and the three of them weren't working as a team yet. Tony waved for their attention again and signed for 'gather', the opposite of whatever either was doing by pushing and scattering the fish. He did this insistently a few times before sending another jet of oxygen to his torch to blast through them all at once.

At least one of them was familiar with diving and its effects. It's not something that Cal had thought of, and at the moment there are other things he's concerned about.

He's taking care not to overdo it. They've been swimming for some time, and being underwater adds an entirely different level of things to be aware of. But he notices the strange behavior of some of the fish. He knows who's responsible for it. And right now, it's not something to wonder about for too long.

He can barely feel his fingers, but he can see his arm and knows its moving. Likewise with his leg, one definitely moving more awkwardly than the other for the lack of feeling, the growing stiffness. Tony signals them, and Cal gets it after the second gesture. He gathers himself, and then he pulls once the creatures have started to close in again, bringing them into a more focused bunch for Tony to blast.

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