revivalproject | 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

Cal shook his head. "I'm not sure. The caves were amplifying my usual ability to sense echoes and everything was overlapping." It was both a good and bad thing in that nothing particularly stuck but you still knew, and then he'd been so overwhelmed by it all that he hadn't been able to get back out on his own.

Under normal circumstances he was sure he wouldn't have been able to pick up on such vivid imagery, definitely not as much as he had. The sense that something terrible had happened, perhaps, but it was difficult to say whether having so much occur in one place would have muddied any echo into a generalized bad feeling when the properties of the cave were in itself unusual.

Tony had intended his question to be much broader, he didn't think the exact death count of the Agrii before extraction would be terribly meaningful, but Cal did distract him then with another question. "Your sword doesn't do that to you?" he wondered. Those were the same crystals, after all. Maybe if they were going to be a viable defence like the Agrii thought, they just didn't find enough.

"Thankfully no, it doesn't," the padawan replied, seeming more relieved to confirm that. It had definitely been something he'd had some concern about, but the crystal hadn't elicited nearly the same sort of output as those in the caverns. "Obviously it still has some effect when a power current is running through it, but it seems more attuned to metals and other powered equipment. Or droids," he added with a nod at BD-1.

"Makes me wonder what 'powers' the crystals in their natural state, if it's like what Cloud and Reeve described. Maybe there's some kind of resonance." And when that resonance was severed, it understandably dampened any effects.

"That is very much Reeve's area," Tony said as he released Cal's shoulders to swipe a hand over his hood instead, scattering the glitter that had collected there and mostly getting it stuck to his fingers. He was trying to pat it off as he continued, "That used to be most of his job, harnessing these energy sources to use. And he said that was how his magic worked, where Mini came from." That might not have been an entirely accurate account, but Tony wasn't the expert, and Cal and Reeve were the engineers. If the power rods really were the same material, they had an advantage. "Do you want to go ask him about it?"

That was a good point, as to which Cal nodded his agreement. Reeve had been the driving force in getting most of the city's power grid back online. "Explains why working on things here had most of his focus. I wonder if he knows about the caves..."

He tried not to flinch at the glitter that Tony dislodged from his hood, smiling crookedly as the man continued to do his best to dust him off. "Yeah, couldn't hurt. Might also be good if we could understand a little more about this place."

"And," Tony noted, finger in the air then pointing to the map where he was trying to find connections, "he would probably know about some of this underground stuff. There might be more traps hidden down there that we can get ahead of." That did sound slightly more interesting to Tony than wandering around in the woods, and it seemed fairly unlikely that there would be a second spider problem. Whoever was causing these problems had proven to be more creative than that.

"How many replicator charges have you got? We'll lure him out of that office with some cheesecake or something. Talking about the Life Stream stuff gets him all tense, we gotta butter him up."

True there was a lot of ground to cover below. They'd probably only navigated through a small area considering the size of the city, only narrowing down an entry point from where spiders had been observed escaping to. "It is a good place to hide things," Cal nodded.

He chuckled at Tony's methods for engaging Reeve in such a conversation. "I've got three free." Two had gone to making stims, which he figured weren't a bad thing to have in case of emergency. "-what's cheesecake?"

Cal made it sound like he was used to austerity, so it wasn't surprising but Tony still commended, "My god, you have incredible restraint," for not blowing through his replicator opportunities. With the amount of things Tony could be making, he was never satisfied by the time the replicator chugged miserably.

"You must have something like it. It's like a--tart, a dessert, with a cookie crust and sweet, creamy filling, and some other stuff on top," he tried to explain, layering his hands and finding himself quite at a loss to explain foods. "Now you definitely have to get one. Do you have a sweet tooth? You'll love it, it'll be great."

With so few chances to get things that would actually be useful rather than asking a box, Cal didn't want to waste them. He felt like the trial run once he'd gotten the replicator up and running again had been the most he'd ever really splurged, and even then most of those things had gone to others. And BD-1 really deserved an oil bath.

"I think the sweetest things I've ever eaten were back on the Agrii ship between their choice of food and what was at the party you and Tommy threw," he laughed. He wasn't sure how the Agrii could subsist on something sweet like peanut butter, but he supposed if it were an occasional treat, it wouldn't be a bad thing.

At first, Tony's hand alighted delicately on his chest, aghast that no one along Cal's life-threatening adventures was spoiling him with desserts, and feeling like this was something of a common story among the residents of Temba. Granted, Tony's sheer access to indulgence was an outlier on Earth as well, but he didn't think he'd ever encountered so many people who had never experienced a cake or a date. Still, he accused, "That's not an answer," with an expectant quirk of his eyebrow even as he continued, "Cheesecake is a New York staple. That's where I'm from, it's a city, best place in the galaxy. You, me and Reeve, we're going to have a date, I'll take you on a tour, show you all of the highlights." What kind of 'pizza' Tommy might be able to make or classic painting Steve attempted to reproduce might not be quite as effective as a trip to the Met, but it would certainly be fun.

He started on that remark, only to abandon any attempted follow-up as Tony pushed on. He really was set on this cheesecake thing. Cal exchanged a glance with BD-1 before looking at Tony, head tilting with a faint grin.

"Sure. Sounds like fun." He wasn't sure how Tony meant to pull off such a thing, but he had no doubts that he'd somehow be able to do it. Learning about the places other people called home would be a nice change as well, and just reminded Cal that there was so much he didn't know about these people he'd come to consider as friends.

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