revivalproject | treasure

Entry tags:

treasure

WHO: Tony and...I don't know, there's some predetermined stuff, and some ambiguously open stuff in here. Check in at the Shenanigans plotting post if you're feeling unsure and need a formal invitation.
WHERE: The forge, the not-library
WHAT: Tony has a gift for Jon, and is trying to make a much more misguided gift for Poe. Some early speeder bike development catch all, if you like.
WHEN: Early February, Agrii Valentines Celebration
WARNINGS: Glitter?

a. The forge [OTA! If you just want to bring your own project, this is a good place]
The first shimmering fleck that caught Tony's eye fell onto his cheek, making him wink with his face twisted in surprise before carefully retrieving it with a finger pressed to the...plastic? It stuck easily to his skin, but Tony could only frown at it, baffled, and glance back toward the forge curiously, expecting the chimney to be pouring out some foreign element among the plume of dark smoke. He was on his back under the body of the vehicle that Cayde had called a sparrow, Poe had called a speeder, and was probably neither of them, really, as Tony slowly brought it together, the Iron Man kneeling in the grass next to him to Jack up the whole assembly for Tony to rework the fuel array again. Eventually, he would get this thing working.

As more of the strange precipitation began to flurry through the sky, clumping together against the seams of the Iron Man and through the bricks of the forge, Tony had to sit up and consider very seriously that this was...glitter. As he stared at the armor, he could see some of the more fanciful details--the heart shapes, the stars, making him raise a lip in confusion, then glance around again, seeking a source. It just seemed to be, warm and shimmery and catching the early light in a dancing array over the skyline.

By the time the sun had properly risen, he had disturbed Catra trying to sleep by the fire by clattering around in the forge, searching for empty vessels to collect as much of the strange glitter as possible. Impulsively, he had snatched at the bouquet of flowers he found by her head, only to have them burst in his hand and make him yelp, dancing away from the glitter bomb with his hand coated now in pink and red. He was much slower to pick up the card that had been with the bouquet, pinched carefully between two fingers until it didn't seem to be a bomb as well, the Agrii's pictures making him snort. Of course. It went up with the notes from Cayde and Jon that were clipped over his workbench, slouching against Cayde's map and funnelling more of the glitter throughout the day to gather in the folds of Jon's still designs.

By the time he was back to working on the bike, there were bowls and jars arranged against the walls and among the grass, incrementally measuring the shimmering downpour. This was going to be wreaking havoc on any meal production, Tony realized, so Tommy wasn't as likely to show up today, leaving him to grumble at the pile of tools and components that had been left around the weedy patch where he worked without the kid to find anything for him in this mess.

b. The library? [For Jon, but feel free to crash this party]
If Tony was going to try to understand the Agrii, and he would rather not, he hazarded a guess that whatever this glitter storm and gifting was about, it was something of an apology for the storm that they had come crashing into, or the giant pest problem that the Agrii had neglected to warn them about. Maybe that was just where Tony's head was, though, because he had plenty of his own apologies to make, and a misguided gift was historically how he dealt with that. Did he have something in common with the Agrii? Jesus.

Trying not to think too hard about that possibility, he came gliding slowly into the library on the Iron Man's skates, leaving rivulets in the dusting of glitter on the floor behind him. He carried what would have been a familiar shape to Jon, despite being wrapped as it was in what looked like a scrap of leather, against his armored chest; an acquisition from the replicator that he had impulsively requested just after replacing his sunglasses, then finding himself very overwhelmed with the amount of stuff he could really use at the forge. Taking the stairs down into the basement wasn't quite as smooth, producing a strange, very heavy thunk-thunk-thunk as he rolled carelessly down each step, the momentum depositing him against the desk that rattled with the lurch. He didn't really intend to stay, but had a quick look around for the Countess, hoping maybe she would display a tiny bit less annoyance upon seeing him so he could pretend Jon wasn't as annoyed with him as well. Yeah, that would totally work, Tony would feel great about that and all of his problems would be solved. He sighed into the mask when he didn't spot the animal, leaving the book on the desk and pushing himself back toward the stairs. It would be pretty obvious who it could have been from, Tony thought, even if Jon had no context for the author 'Reed Richards'--only a few pages into the forward of this physics text- cum-autobiography and it was already colourful with the caped heroes of Tony's world, and how they shaped the natural laws around them. And the library had just expanded exponentially, even if Jon wasn't particularly keen on the gesture and couldn't be convinced that Billy was clearly being very thoughtful.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

That explanation didn't make the toy much more welcome, in Tony's opinion, and BD had been far too happy to play around with those dead fish for Jon to not be a little suspicious of his attachment, but watching the droid hop into a glittery bowl with a burst of shimmer kicked up around him did make Tony chuckle. "Looking good, sweetheart," he said with a grin for this new layer of shimmery coat. "It does all kind of feel like that festival, doesn't it? BD's just a little softie, I shouldn't be discouraging his passions. You bring one of those fish over here, though, I'll strip you for parts, I've got my eye on you."

BD-1 was admiring his sparkly metal feet. He looked over at the two with a sassy little beep before hopping out of the bowl and running in circles, fascinated by the glittering trail that got kicked up in his wake, both from what was on the grass and what had stuck to his legs.

"Hopefully he learned his lesson after I told him he smelled like dead fish," Cal grinned. "I just hope all this doesn't clog up his servos. What is this all anyway?" Upturning a hand, he caught some of the shiny metallic specks in his palm, not that some hadn't already been sticking to it.

Tony had seen BD put up with stranger, he was pretty sure, so he didn't feel particularly concerned that a little glitter would be doing too much damage, but it did make him pout curiously and ask, "Does he know? Can he tell you if something like that..." with a vague twirl of his hand. The armor would be warning him about foreign elements in any crevasse, but it was designed to be that kind of sensitive. That kind of thing might limit the droid's adventurous inclinations.

Finally climbing to his feet with another pointless dusting off of his pants, Tony considered the sky, not sure if Cal meant the obvious what the hell is happening, or that he had never seen glitter before. "Either this is a prank, or the Agrii think there's something to be celebrating," he offered. "I found a card with one of their...signatures on it, that creepy face. It's not a natural weather system, anyway."

"If something ends up bothering him, he'll let me know. He knows his routines better than I would. I think he's built for adapting to different sorts of environments because he's an exploration droid, so I'm not worried too much. This is, after all, kind of irregular."

Cal smiled lopsidedly as he shook out his hand, sighing as specks remained stubbornly stuck. The question encompassed both to be fair, and although he suspected the Agrii might have been behind it, he couldn't fathom the reason. "Celebrating, huh? Kind of a strange step up from the welcome home party they threw." He wasn't sure what to think, really. It was...a nice gesture, maybe? Messy, but thoughtful, in the way they probably should expect of Agrii.

"Yeah, listen, Billy made some glitter for that party we had up on the ship, right? So, maybe they think that's the whole party, the glitter part, and we'll catch on," Tony suggested, opening his own hand to the flurry to try to consider alternatives. "Not a whole lot of other uses for glitter. Parties and paint. If I didn't know any better, I'd say they were trying to butter me up."

With a roll of his shoulder, he turned back toward the kind-of-speeder, and said, "Going to make this thing look much cooler than I thought we were going to be able to do, anyway. What do you think, flames? Flames are always cool."

"Good point," Cal nodded. The Agrii did seem very open to learning and improving upon the things they'd known. "Wonder how long this'll last?" And how long the clean-up thereafter.

Chuckling as he turned to regard the speeder progress with Tony, he folded his arms as he considered the suggestion. "Oh, I don't know. I think the glitter's looking pretty good."

The question of just how long the Agrii thought they could put up with something was a grim one, and of course one that Tony had already considered into his future projections, making him suck his teeth with a sidelong glance Cal's way. "On average, based on the other shit these people have been pulling around here, I'd expect the whole glitter experience to be sticking around for a month. Which, don't get me wrong, as much as I do believe there should be an upper limit of acceptable glitter in anyone's life and we're already coming up against it, not to mention the intractable environmental impact, when, listen, I don't even know what this environment is supposed to look like--I think I prefer a little bit of dazzle to whatever 'calibrations' was. We're still outside. And, so far, I haven't been in personal contact with anyone else's brainmatter."

With that dumped out of his mouth, Tony took a breath then pointed to the speeder, "It's not bad, right? Maybe we just leave it all pink and sparkly. Poe could be into that. I don't know him that well, is that a rugged and manly look where you guys are from? It is on Earth, very powerful connotations."

It was difficult not to wince at the reminder of the strange calibrations they'd undergone, and the wording still bothered him. Cal nodded emphatically however, agreeing that if this was all they had to deal with, he welcomed it over previous instances.

He was glad to shift more away from the topic of past experiments or whatever they had been aside from unpleasant experiences, reaching out to swipe a finger along the edge of speeder. "It'll definitely make for some flashy contrails. Honestly, this isn't really a common look anywhere I've seen, but then again I spent most of my life in the Jedi temple and the last several years scrapping starships over a giant pit with teeth so I don't have much to compare with."

Hearing a smug-sounding borble, Cal glanced back to where BD-1 came half hopping on one foot, half jetting over to them from wherever he had gone off to. His other foot was clamped over another plush, except this was of some strange tailless, quadrupedal lizard of some sort. "You found another one?"

The rest of that could have been a very interesting discussion about the difference in their expected aesthetics, but Cal left Tony only asking cautiously, "Why did it have teeth?," and looking very horrified but the image he was allowed to conjure of Cal dangling over a gnashing hole.

It was BD's voice that drew Tony out of that nightmare, looking slowly around at the droid where his expression dropped into the skeptical frown again. "Sometimes," he said sagely, "a guy has to recognize that he has a problem before anyone can help him. It's nothing to be ashamed about."

That image wasn't really far off from reality. "It's a giant creature that lives mostly embedded in the ground, and all you see of it is its mouth and ...whatever those things are that reach out from it. Tentacles?" Cal shrugged. He hadn't particularly been interested in the thing so long as he kept away from it, much like most of the Guild. "It's called the Ibdis Maw. Basically it was a living garbage disposal, it ate ship scraps and anything that would fall into it."

Cal sighed as he picked BD-1 up, lifting the plush the droid so insistently dragged along for inspection. "I'm with Tony on this one," he said as BD looked between the both of them. "What is this anyway? Ever seen one of these?" He held it out for Tony to have a look.

A giant pit with teeth and tentacles only made Tony's horror more palpable, stricken and staring at Cal, but he was left unsure how he felt about the environmental impacts of this creature (was it good that it ate the garbage, or damaging to this living being?) vs. the clear and present danger implied in 'anything that would fall into it'. Like a Cal. "And that's...normal?" he settled on, because as far as he could tell the Jedi temple chapter of Cal's life wasn't particularly normal for his people, either.

At first, Tony blindly took the toy, but it slowly earned some of his attention that wasn't being consumed by a big teeth-pit, letting him turn it over in his hands curiously. "Doesn't look like anything I've seen before. Maybe a dinosaur? They're snatching people from different times, maybe the Agrii saw dinosaurs and thought they were cool enough...to make a toy out of," Tony proposed, obviously losing confidence in this hypothesis with every word. "If the theme for these things is 'things that will bite and poison you', I hope this one isn't native." He galloped it back toward BD, wiggling it in the air for the droid to get a good look. Maybe something in his records would shed some light.

The look if not the faint feeling he sensed from Tony was an understandable one. Cal was pretty sure no one would want to be anywhere near a thing like that. "I guess? It was convenient for the Scrapper's Guild and the Empire, since they took control of the place. And the Empire didn't care so long as the work got done. It was mostly 'everyone look out for themselves' out there. I was lucky to make a friend, he took care of me early on."

Given that neither the padawan nor BD-1 knew what a dinosaur was, they could only guess by context what Tony was suggesting, although they didn't seem particularly sold on the thought either. Still, with the Agrii, who really knew? Native species however?

"There's a whole lot of wilderness out there," Cal said as he nodded. He was sure everyone could do without biting, poisonous things. Especially large biting, poisonous things. BD-1 sat in the crook of his arm, not seeming terribly bothered by the notion although he tilted his head as he watched Tony maneuver the plush in front of him. Realizing input was probably required of him, he beeped a negative even as he shifted to reach for his toy with a ped.

There was no part of these answers that was turning out to be reassuring, only that Cal had evidently survived it and didn't think it was such a big deal that a child was risking his life at some kind of horror-junkyard, so maybe Tony didn't have to ask another upsetting question. Instead, he gave Cal's arm a pat, trying in vain to ease the frown creasing his forehead before Cal caught on that he was probably traumatized or something.

BD was welcome to take the fluffy thing back, but he had dashed Tony's suspicion that these toys were showing up to appeal to BD specifically because he had interacted with them once. With a distracted-looking glance aside, scrolling through the provided 'dick shun airy', Tony reported, "There's something that--if it wasn't pink and cute, might look kind of like that in the records. Think opposite of cute, though. Maybe that's the trend. Maybe they're switching it up, warning us before they send in the spiders, or whatever."

Given the circumstances then, Cal hadn't much choice. He'd been alone, stuck on an unfamiliar planet and the rest of the galaxy had been convinced that the Jedi were traitors. The years had worn away the risks that most would balk at, and although you never forgot about the obvious dangers, they had become expected ones. He realized it was probably bothering Tony a lot more than he'd thought to consider, and at the awkward pat, reached up to squeeze the man's shoulder in turn, looking at least apologetic for bringing such things up.

He helped nudge BD-1 back up over a shoulder, the plush dragged along with it. In afterthought Cal lifted the plush squid, but even as he wondered how the droid would manage to hold them all and still hang onto the harness, BD asked if he'd hang on to it for him.

"Hm?" He looked over at Tony then. "So there is some kind of creature like that?" Despite having half anticipated the droid's reaction, Cal still had to sigh when BD-1 beeped excitedly and popped his head up over his shoulder at that. "I....don't think we want to go purposely looking for something like that, buddy."

On Earth, Cal would have been heading off to college to surmount the most difficult challenge of his life: learning how to do his own laundry. At least, Tony hoped that was the kind of life he would have had. It was a much smaller one, but he was still a kid, and the vastness of his experiences felt as unwieldy to Tony as Cal's strange magic. His smile was still sad as he watched the juggle of the toys, and he muttered, "Got more love than you can hold, sweetheart. Going to need some new arms."

More curiosity, too, making Tony snort more genuinely, then pat down his pockets to actually find his communicator and show the entry on the animal where they could all see it. "I don't know, might be enlightening," we was willing to admit. "Why, did you come down here with something else in mind, or did you just hear the rumours of my brilliance? I know, I've been hiding that one from you, it's time I come clean."

BD-1 seemed content to settle where he was, once he'd gotten a good grip on Cal's harness, his other foot clamped around the lizardy plush as he attempted to mimic Tony's earlier movements with the thing. Cal chuckled, both at his droid friend and at Tony's remark.

"If you really want to do a forest expedition some time..." he said, offering a shrug as he at least was open to the idea. It wasn't like he hadn't gone traipsing around worse places. Grinning at the man, he brushed the edge of his poncho back, tucking the squid into a vacant belt pouch before gesturing to the lightsaber hanging there off his hip.

"No more crazed animals and nightly spider raids, and all this aside, I think we've all gotten some better rest since then. So I came to thank you for this. Couldn't have come at a better time, all things considered." Its blade had been tested against many a multi-legged creature.

A forest expedition definitely made the concept sound less appealing to Tony, more like they actually intended to encounter some new, mean wild animal instead of discover more hidden, not-so-abandoned buildings like the control room like Tony hoped. Despite the grimace at the language, Tony suggested, "Yeah, put it on the calendar. Plenty out there to see, it's about time we blew this joint."

The reveal of the hilt easily turned Tony's grit teeth into a surprised grin. With a dismissive wave for the thanks, Tony just put Cal's pieces together and potentially disastrously, he said, "Yeah, who knew? I mean, I'm still not entirely convinced that wasn't a, uh, coincidence. Is it still doing...that?" Tony had yet to independently figure out exactly what had gone wrong enough to give a sword a blast area.

"If we do, it might be good to have something we're intentionally trying to look for rather than just aimless wandering in the wilderness." Like maybe if there were places those apparent transit stations were connected to. Cal wasn't sure how soon any of them might be up for doing such things, and while he was curious himself, there were still plenty of things to keep busy with in the city. More mysteries too.

For as simple a task as it seemed to just put a lightsaber together once one had the components, there was a lot that went into it, and yes, plenty of room for potential problems. That it hadn't blown up on any of them in the process of using it was a definite plus.

"Coincidence? What do you mean?" Had it triggered something? Cal frowned thoughtfully, but with the following question, he gave a nod. "Yeah. Any time power runs through it, it amplifies anything running on power around it. -aside from making metal glow," he added at BD-1's helpful reminding chirp. "I think that kind of worked in our favor considering that the spiders didn't like the light, but all the same, I might explore some other options for a focus crystal."

That kind of structured forethought was all very admirable, and Tony waved his hands very unconvincingly as he said, "Yeah, of course, a plan. If we see something, we go toward it." That kind of tactical thinking and revealed all sorts of mysteries to Tony so far, like big bugs, and some other big bugs. This place was overgrown pests all the way down.

"Catra freaked out right after I got the thing on for the first time," he reminded Cal, gesturing back toward the still damaged Iron Man kneeling in the weeds and not looking all that pathetic for it in its halo of glitter. "Maybe it...amplified," he proposed, trying to qualify what that actually meant with his hands pressed together then bursting away from each other, ending in a noncommittal shrug. Whether the lightsaber was some kind of trigger or not, these events were starting to feel inevitable. There was no obvious incitement for the glitter. "Have you tried it since the party started?"

Maybe it was for the best that he didn't touch upon the large creatures and things he'd encountered in his various planetary travels. Tony didn't need to voice his discomfort about the whole idea for Cal to sense it.

"Countess was going crazy too," Cal nodded, the implication not lost on him. "But what was it amplifying, if it was? It would have had to be, what, near here, right?" He looked like he considered switching the thing on at the moment, but glancing at the speeder he decided he didn't want to accidentally trigger anything, especially in its early stages. "I've used it, yeah. I go to the amphitheater to practice."

"This party, I mean," Tony clarified, with a twirl in the air to send the glitter swirling. There could have been more to the little particles than Tony could taste; the crystals in that sword didn't smell like much, either. What, exactly, anything that happened on this planet actually was remained an ongoing mystery, with only the most tentative boundaries to divide the natural laws of the place, already alien and bizarre, from the wilful acts inflicted on them, but those crystals were making something of a pattern for themselves, planet side. So Tony continued, "Those crystals, you said the larger concentration of them was intense, right? And they're natural rock formations, could be under the ground clear through the city. Near here, maybe everywhere. Kind of like that life force thing."

Cal frowned, nodding. "No, that's a good point." Inwardly he felt a little guilty for not having considered that when he'd gone back to lightsaber routines once things had quieted down. He'd felt more than a little out of practice when they'd had to fight maddened spiders, not that it required much finesse to deal with things in such a number.

"...I haven't sensed anything off though, following my morning sessions, and...I've been at that once we dealt with the spider nest. But if the possibility is still there, I'll have to look into an alternative power crystal."

Any alternative seemed farfetched, based on the way Cal had spoken of it and the very strange interaction of these crystals as it was, so Tony nodded slowly with a thoughtful pout before breaking into another dazzling grin. "Hey, I didn't know that was you, pest control. Good job, haven't seen hardly a daddy longlegs in days," he said, before sobering considerably. "You okay? Those things didn't fight fair."

"Not just me," Cal said, offering a faint smile. "I probably would have had to hang back if I didn't have a weapon." Relying on the Force to keep up a defense would have been even more exhausting, so he was all the more glad to be able to watch out for those with him with a lightsaber in hand.

"I'm fine. Thankfully they weren't poisonous." That was him trying to be reassuring. After how Tony was reacting to his talk of the daily dangers on Bracca he decided not to make mention of having to face spiders even larger than the ones here out in Kashyyyk. Then again, it felt like everything out in the Wookie world was bigger.

"We found...some kind of chamber. Filled with machine-operated cages of some kind, it was difficult to tell because they were all mangled, likely from when the spiders went crazy and broke free."

It hadn't occurred to Tony that there might be a class of the spider that was poisonous after seeing the myriad of ways they already had on offer to kill someone on the surface, so the reassurance had something of the opposite effect. He shrank away from Cal slightly, arms crossed like he was just very seriously considering something just over Cal's shoulder as he contemplated whatever warrior-type spider was guarding this nest for Cal to encounter.

"What...?" A nest, Tony could handle and understand, totally expected development. Cages and broke free did not fit neatly into that system. "You mean, they were being kept there, deliberately? Or--or they were being held back?" he tried, one hand escaping to mime a flat wall, barricade.

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