Tommy Shepard (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
doubled_speed) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
revivalproject2019-08-20 12:13 pm
doubled_speed) wrote in revivalproject2019-08-20 12:13 pm
001 - Speed Is Productive!
WHO: Tommy Shepherd and Anyone
WHERE: Hotel and Greenhouse
WHEN: First Days on Agra 10
WHAT: Settling In and Learning Practical Skills
WARNINGS: N/A yet, will update if change
Finding Pear Dice - Greenhouse Exploration
There is a serious issue here, namely that Tommy hates moving at snail pace. Part of the issue with being a speedster is that the mutation that made him move fast made a lot of the rest of him fast. Which included two things that were already a problem here on Agrii Whateverthefuck: his brain, and his metabolism. There was literally no turning off how fast his brain ran, even when he was choosing to operate in the sorts of time frames that humans do. Sure, he could slow it down some, but in the end how fast it ran meant that walking at normal human paces left his brain bored if there wasn't other stuff to do. Exploration, as it were, wasn't exactly the easiest for Tommy to manage. Which flowed into the second issue, his metabolism.
As much as Tommy wanted to speed around, make a full mental map of this place, figure out how to start improving it, he couldn't. His body needed food to fuel it, and speed was something that had to be sacrificed for the basic rule of survival. Which was literally the opposite of what Tommy had always thought he should do. He had managed to survive everything by running away, running to find answers, or otherwise using his speed as a survival strategy. Which meant not having enough food to maintain speed very long was sort of frustrating.
This was what led to Tommy staying in a relatively small area for his initial explorations. More than that, this is what led Tommy to a glass building, and through the doors. Was it wrong that he smiles the second he opened the doors and realized what was going on? Probably. Maybe not. Food. There is food in here. It isn't cooked, it isn't starch, but it's something.
And more than that? Another glowy orb. As weird as the previous one had been, this one Tommy is prepared for. Or so he thinks. When he touches it there is a moment of immobility as the system uploads to his brain, and a jolt that goes through him when a glitch prevents him from getting everything. But what he gets is enough to leave a grin on Tommy's face as he cracks his knuckles.
"Talk about a worthwhile project."
The only question is where to start. And the answer is easy. Bypass the seeds, ignore the broken irrigation system, and he makes his way up to the over-grown upper level. He moves to twisting, curling, monstrous vine covered in what looks like small cyan bananas. He plucks one down and just devours it in three bites. The peel is nutritious, and good for fiber, his new knowledge tells him. The flesh inside tastes something like a pickle, but one seasoned with lime. Full of good vitamins. Tommy laughs and pulls off his long-sleeved shirt and ties it around him at an angle to make a sling. Like he cares about being shirtless right now. Food is a great first step.
Over the next hours and days he starts doing more than a recurring task of gathering food. For one thing, overgrown plants absolutely have lots of dying and choked material below them. Tommy spends a lot of time squatting under plants, crawling around, and otherwise pushing things aside to start pruning back this dead material. It will be great fertilizer, his new knowledge tells him, even sets himself up a corner where he starts piling material until he can clear an area or tools enough to start a compost pile. When he isn't slowly working his way through one area he's trying to water everything he can. The problem, of course, is the process of watering, how to carry water from the fountain outside and in to the plants. This he solves rather clumsily, with a large, cup-like leaf from some durable sort of plant from a more tropical corner. The thing is more durable than he was expecting, and he doesn't care too much about the repeated treks. He even pours the water into a second leaf he pokes some small holes into near the top to make it more like a watering can.
Sometimes there is an advantage to fast brains: creative solutions to problems. And so it is, somehow, that digital age and tech loving Tommy Shepherd becomes, well, a farmer.
Personal Space - Hotel Exploration
In the early mornings and evenings when light isn't nearly deep enough for him to really want to work by, Tommy gets to the other tasks of living. Which means heading back to the hotel with a small selection of fruits and vegetables from the overgrown green house, together with some of what he can handle that is left over from the Whale Combthose cherries are a serious advantage for someone who has trouble getting drunk. He walks through the halls and up to the third floor where he's set himself up, and if he passes anyone in the hall he offers over a piece of food, usually one of the cyan bananas he's come to enjoy that taste like pickles made with lime in the brine, or a crimson red cucumber that tastes, just faintly, like tomatoes seasoned with oregano. That one, he knows well, is starchy as hell, and that's great for survival.
Once he gets up to the hallway he lives in and puts the rest of the food away, it's about securing the place. Checking over windows that may be present to make sure there are no new cracks or hole. Checking the pile of dried leaves he gathered from the green-house and laid out on the floor to make something like a mattressmostly a barrier from the floor to maintain warmth, and making sure his little degree of personal items are still around.
After that he goes down the hall and starts cleaning up other rooms. More people might come, and you never know what space they'll want for themselves. And he hates doing nothing.
When all of that is done Tommy sleeps. At least, he tries to. His body doesn't like more than four hours of sleep, stupid being fast. Which means often in the darkness of the night and early morning, Tommy moves quietly through the halls, one hand on the nearest wall to keep himself going in a straight and predictable line. Hopefully he doesn't scare anyone or start a fight.
[OOC: Wildcard or other starters available on request. You can message me here, find me on plurk @![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
churbooseanon or discord at Churby#4290. Happy to take Tommy's TDMs canon unless you wanna choose otherwise except Billy, mostly because we changed up timing, hit me up on that one bro
Will do brackets but prefer prose.]
WHERE: Hotel and Greenhouse
WHEN: First Days on Agra 10
WHAT: Settling In and Learning Practical Skills
WARNINGS: N/A yet, will update if change
Finding Pear Dice - Greenhouse Exploration
There is a serious issue here, namely that Tommy hates moving at snail pace. Part of the issue with being a speedster is that the mutation that made him move fast made a lot of the rest of him fast. Which included two things that were already a problem here on Agrii Whateverthefuck: his brain, and his metabolism. There was literally no turning off how fast his brain ran, even when he was choosing to operate in the sorts of time frames that humans do. Sure, he could slow it down some, but in the end how fast it ran meant that walking at normal human paces left his brain bored if there wasn't other stuff to do. Exploration, as it were, wasn't exactly the easiest for Tommy to manage. Which flowed into the second issue, his metabolism.
As much as Tommy wanted to speed around, make a full mental map of this place, figure out how to start improving it, he couldn't. His body needed food to fuel it, and speed was something that had to be sacrificed for the basic rule of survival. Which was literally the opposite of what Tommy had always thought he should do. He had managed to survive everything by running away, running to find answers, or otherwise using his speed as a survival strategy. Which meant not having enough food to maintain speed very long was sort of frustrating.
This was what led to Tommy staying in a relatively small area for his initial explorations. More than that, this is what led Tommy to a glass building, and through the doors. Was it wrong that he smiles the second he opened the doors and realized what was going on? Probably. Maybe not. Food. There is food in here. It isn't cooked, it isn't starch, but it's something.
And more than that? Another glowy orb. As weird as the previous one had been, this one Tommy is prepared for. Or so he thinks. When he touches it there is a moment of immobility as the system uploads to his brain, and a jolt that goes through him when a glitch prevents him from getting everything. But what he gets is enough to leave a grin on Tommy's face as he cracks his knuckles.
"Talk about a worthwhile project."
The only question is where to start. And the answer is easy. Bypass the seeds, ignore the broken irrigation system, and he makes his way up to the over-grown upper level. He moves to twisting, curling, monstrous vine covered in what looks like small cyan bananas. He plucks one down and just devours it in three bites. The peel is nutritious, and good for fiber, his new knowledge tells him. The flesh inside tastes something like a pickle, but one seasoned with lime. Full of good vitamins. Tommy laughs and pulls off his long-sleeved shirt and ties it around him at an angle to make a sling. Like he cares about being shirtless right now. Food is a great first step.
Over the next hours and days he starts doing more than a recurring task of gathering food. For one thing, overgrown plants absolutely have lots of dying and choked material below them. Tommy spends a lot of time squatting under plants, crawling around, and otherwise pushing things aside to start pruning back this dead material. It will be great fertilizer, his new knowledge tells him, even sets himself up a corner where he starts piling material until he can clear an area or tools enough to start a compost pile. When he isn't slowly working his way through one area he's trying to water everything he can. The problem, of course, is the process of watering, how to carry water from the fountain outside and in to the plants. This he solves rather clumsily, with a large, cup-like leaf from some durable sort of plant from a more tropical corner. The thing is more durable than he was expecting, and he doesn't care too much about the repeated treks. He even pours the water into a second leaf he pokes some small holes into near the top to make it more like a watering can.
Sometimes there is an advantage to fast brains: creative solutions to problems. And so it is, somehow, that digital age and tech loving Tommy Shepherd becomes, well, a farmer.
Personal Space - Hotel Exploration
In the early mornings and evenings when light isn't nearly deep enough for him to really want to work by, Tommy gets to the other tasks of living. Which means heading back to the hotel with a small selection of fruits and vegetables from the overgrown green house, together with some of what he can handle that is left over from the Whale Comb
Once he gets up to the hallway he lives in and puts the rest of the food away, it's about securing the place. Checking over windows that may be present to make sure there are no new cracks or hole. Checking the pile of dried leaves he gathered from the green-house and laid out on the floor to make something like a mattress
After that he goes down the hall and starts cleaning up other rooms. More people might come, and you never know what space they'll want for themselves. And he hates doing nothing.
When all of that is done Tommy sleeps. At least, he tries to. His body doesn't like more than four hours of sleep, stupid being fast. Which means often in the darkness of the night and early morning, Tommy moves quietly through the halls, one hand on the nearest wall to keep himself going in a straight and predictable line. Hopefully he doesn't scare anyone or start a fight.
[OOC: Wildcard or other starters available on request. You can message me here, find me on plurk @
Will do brackets but prefer prose.]
I love your vegetables omg. Now I am hungry. Hotel!
This time, instead of finding someone, he instead was handed food. New food he'd never seen before. By Tommy.
Steve takes the colorful item and holds it in his hand as though it were one of the bizarre tools people seemed to keep finding. "Where did you get this?" He sniffs at it and makes a small, concerned face. "I don't remember this from the Whale Comb..."
no subject
But really, his not-dad gets top billing.
"These are some of the few things we can get without getting too deep. Still working on clearing stuff. But you've got serious metabolism, right? You should take an extra cumato. The starches are good. I haven't checked the root stuff yet."
no subject
He pockets it to work on finishing his own.
"If you need some help clearing things, I am more than happy to help. I'm sure The Vision is more than capable but, if you need some extra hands?"
no subject
Too many adults taking him seriously lately. It’s weird.
“I mean, you’re welcome to help. With all the people here it’s gonna be important for us all to work. Especially metabolism assholes like us. D- Vision and I are only two people. But seriously, what is it with all you Avengers being nicer than ours?”
Not that Tommy has an opinion. Okay maybe he has some opinions about some of them, but Steve is being nice, and his Dad has been better to Tommy the few times they had interacted than the Vision back home had ever been.
no subject
"I...I guess maybe different experiences?" He's pulling at straws because 'nice' is subjective and Tommy doesn't seem like he's a fan of authority as a general concept. Who knows what's going on objectively back in his home.
"Are we really that bad?"
no subject
So yes, they are that bad. The Civil War had been bed, especially because of the fallout and how it had hurt Billy and Teddy. The two had been captured and tortured, which Tommy was REALLY not okay with. And that was without paying attention to the issues that came with Billy being a mage and the two senior Avengers not knowing what to do about that other than be assholes.
But yeah, a lot of it does derive from Tommy's authority issues. Which were fair ones, given the life he had led.
"Different experiences can explain a lot of things, I guess. I mean, Hawkeye is REALLY different back home. Kate says he's an idiot, but he's also super fucking smart. And his background is, like, super complicated but she never told me what it was."
no subject
"I'm sorry," he says softly. "Maybe the difference is that, in my universe, the issue was conflated with Bucky. Maybe that muddied the water enough. Or... I don't know. Maybe it was Thanos."
He doesn't know. It's hard to imagine what would make him act like that. He shakes his head.
"I don't know. But I'm sorry that's what you lived through."
no subject
"Life is shit. You don't get to apologize for that," Tommy dismisses. "Your world doesn't seem to have as many young heroes. Just be careful with SHIELD, okay? some people use that as a protection to do some fucking terrible things. Like the Cube."
Fuck the cube.
no subject
He relaxes a little, not needing to stand on this soapbox with Tommy, clearly. He's got enough mistrust as it is.
"By Box do you mean the Tesseract?"
no subject
"No, I literally mean The Cube. Capital T, Capital C. Not box," he answers, frowning and shifting his grip on his veggies. "And I don't know what the Tesseract is. What I can tell you is SHIELD prisons are evil."
no subject
"What do you mean?"
no subject
"Maybe if you go home, you should dig around and see if it exists still. And if it does and it's run by a guy known only as The Warden? Shoot him."
Make life better for the future.
no subject
It wouldn't be the first time Steve was kept in the dark, though.
no subject
no subject
"Did you defeat him?"
no subject
"No, we escaped. Cap wasn't exactly pleased that we'd run off anyway. I think Noh-Varr did that little conclusion."
Not that he knows for sure. But he knows they got out and Vision fixed Noh-Varr.
no subject
"So we fought together? With the other Avengers?"
no subject
And, of course, the fact that they were 'children' didn't help the discussions back then any. Because people like Cap forgot just how fast 'children' can grow up in certain situations. Then again, most of his initial team hadn't gained their powers so young. They hadn't been born as an alien unknowingly passing for human because he took after his pink-skinned Kree father. Or wanting to be a hero because your father had been one and you'd lost him like Cassie. Or as an unwanted mutant child of two people who could barely even begin to earn the first letter in the word 'parent.'
No, Steve didn't get it, and Tommy doubted he'd care to learn. Neither he nor Tony had even cared to think, at the time, how the registration act and their war would affect younger people with powers.
"Sort of. There were times that your group told mine to lay off. Too young. Don't know what they're getting into. Which, from my understanding, the Avengers were stupid as hell to do because it was the Young Avengers that killed Kang. And then the stupid Hero Civil War shit. Cap didn't mind us on his side, but he didn't want us going out and doing all the stuff the 'adults' did. "
Which Tommy was guilty of a lot of the time too.
"Or the time the Avengers tried to kill our Mom, even though she'd been mind controlled to do bad things. Which almost literally all of them had done before. And the worst part was that she'd hurt mutants, and not the Avengers themselves and the Avengers never care about mutant shit. We weren't working together then. If your guys had just listened, had just given us a chance, we wouldn't have lost half our team. People died because the Avengers were too stupid and always fall back on the 'you're only kids' thing. Well, I'm legally an adult now, so the next Avenger that tries to lecture me for doing adult work when I go off solo to rescue earthquake victims somewhere, I'm punching them through a wall."
Heroes with authority issues: typically not good.
no subject
Steve holds his hands up but doesn't move to touch him. Clearly this has touched a nerve. Steve makes a note of all of this as items to not broach again for awhile. Tommy and he would discuss it one day, but not until a lot of groundwork had been laid out first. A lot of it, considering the baggage this teen had brought along with him, here.
"Whoa. Okay. I get it. I mean, no. I don't. When I was a teen the biggest things I had to worry about was dying of TB or pneumonia. But...I understand what it's like to be told you can't do something when you know you can. And I know it wasn't me who did it, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry.
"I promise, I'm not gonna cut you out here, alright?"
no subject
"Good, because I'm fucking useful. Strong and require little sleep. Not a lot of people can say that."
no subject
"Just don't wear yourself out trying to prove it, okay? We're gonna need you in top form, I'm sure. Whenever anything around here happens, we'll all need support."
no subject
"Yeah, well, I'm not going to be in top form until I can eat as much as I really need."
This situation here? Forcing self-rationing. He wouldn't do that to other people, but Tommy knows EXACTLY how little food he can get by on.
no subject
"Fair enough point," he concedes. Steve looks over at the food and tries to make some calculations with it. No matter which way he cuts it, unless the farm is full of vegetables on every single square inch, there isn't enough to last Tommy for more than a few weeks at full-ration. What they needed was a steady form of food.
Maybe even meat.
"Are you thinking about starting to hunt, too? Or sticking with just the vegetables? For all we know, we can get some better protein if we can locate big-game. The two of us could probably even take some of the larger creatures down, if we find them..."
no subject
"I'd have to run up to things and wring their necks. I can't do that. I can help people find things, but I can't..."
no subject
Steve talking like he's some sort of mountain man who hunted for his food even once in his life. Truthfully, he has no idea if hunting is for him, either. The gamble is that necessity will overcome any discomfort he might otherwise feel. No way to know for sure until he actually does it, though.
"Taking care of the farm and all the vegetables is way more important, anyway. That is gonna be how we make sure we stay fed in the longterm."
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)