impact

[in_extremis]

WHO: Anyone in the area!
WHERE: From the Forge to the Hangar, so clear across the whole right side of the map if you're nasty
WHAT: A race, an abrupt end, and the inevitable consequences
WHEN: Once the glitter has settled, mid-Feb
WARNINGS: Some people will probably get hurt, but I have no metric for how gory they're going to be about it. I'll let you know if it happens.
NOTES: I'll put some toplevels just to organize the sequence of events, but if they're in a weird order to you or you want a different one to do your thing and need me to reorganize, let me know. If you just want to put another one, feel free.
For any further plotting discussion of anything going on here, hit up the plotting post.


While the air was no longer swirling with it, the effect of the glitter gathered like a blanket on the ground was like that of freshly packed snow after a storm. It left Tony squinting in the glare of it with the sun revealed clearly in a cloudless sky, only to bounce viciously off of every coated surface. Even through his sunglasses and hand raised to shade his eyes as he peered down the corridor from the grassy edge of the forge toward where he knew the hangar was, Tony could only consider the path for so long before squeezing his eyes shut against the competing oases that the light threw up. It was going to feel a bit like skiing, he thought.

Returning to the site where his pit crew had been gathering throughout the development of the vehicle, he reported, "It's worth a try." The path up to the hangar was almost entirely a wide, straight road, the longest clear area they had to test the power of the speeder. As Tony mounted it experimentally to kick the power on, it flung a new rain of glitter in all directions, leaving anyone gathered doused once more and Tony snickering from the hovering vehicle. "I don't think there's going to be any problems."

It was a heavy, growling thing under the sleek body that Tony had found time to detail with pink and red glittering stars, inspired by the strange storm. Unlike the Iron Man's whispering repulsor power, the speeder purred even at rest, gnawing through the experimental fuel and whining faintly at the effort of holding itself up and in place, like it was straining against a bit. It felt more like a motorcycle that Tony would be familiar with, likely, than the speeder that Poe was expecting, or the sparrow that Cayde had tried to explain, and without having to rely on the repulsors, it could manage far more weight for longer periods than this model of Iron Man. A heavy Exo could easily take a passenger, or a haul of dinnerware, to start cutting down on the travel time around here.

Or Tommy could be given yet another thing to gloat about.

Comments

Forge and Race

[in_extremis]

am I supposed to tag here is this the right place

[deal_me_in]

The huff emitted by the Exo did absolutely nothing to rid himself of the glitter that had probably flown into his mouth what with Tony's firing up the speeder. He shook himself off, batting at his hood and brushing off his face with his gloved hands. "Real funny," he said.

He was still trailing glitter as he stepped around to inspect the vehicle that Tony had managed to pull together. Sparrows came in all shapes and designs and colors so really, this one fit right in, glitter and all. Oh the paint jobs Guardians applied to their rides. Standing pointedly to the side rather than behind the rear thrusters or whatever they were, in case there was somehow still more glitter hiding out, Cayde folded his arms as he nodded approvingly.

"Not my choice for color, but other than that? She's lookin' good. Nice job, chief."

[doubled_speed]

See, Tommy wasn't nearly as impressed by it as Cayde was. And he'd helped Tony in some ways by doing things like really not annoying him in the process. And, well, other stuff. But the not annoying him was definitely super helpful.

"It's not his choice for color either. Tony's obsessed with everything being red and gold."

The speedster had chosen his stuff carefully for today. He wanted to see how the thing went, and since he intended to trail it a bit at first, Tommy had actually gone and grabbed his goggles for today. Those were snug over his eyes to protect him from their glitter-pocalypse.

"Didn't the Avengers used to have hovercycles or something like that which you made, Dr. Stark?"

[in_extremis]

Standing to the side didn't help Cayde much as Tony let the speeder ease back onto the ground, displacing the glitter left underneath it in every direction and making Tony laugh again. He could get comfortable with this level of spectacle. "Not obsessed," he corrected Tommy in the resulting, stark quiet, the small animals that were typically croaking in the nearby edge of the forest shocked away momentarily by the alien noise. "Everything just looks better that way." With a wink in Cayde's direction as he dismounted and gave the seat a welcoming pat, he promised, "Tell you what, if you can beat the kid, you get to pick the colours next time."

There were plenty of fantastical things that Tony had made for the Avengers to transport them around, so he had to consider Tommy's question briefly with a hand to his chin, staring distantly into the clear sky. "Probably. They weren't a big hit. Only Fury really likes my flying car, I've still got a couple of those. Mr. Fantastic's got a whole garage full, though, that's more their style," he said. Tony suspected even the quinjets only stuck around out of unavoidable necessity for the Avengers that hadn't worked out how to survive subspace yet. That would change soon enough.

[deal_me_in]

Scowling under the fresh flurry of glitter, Cayde automatically began to himself off. It was kind of a reflexive thing despite knowing how much the stuff still managed to stick. "Agree to disagree," he said at Tony's quip without even a glance in his direction, which he then amended with a slight smirk. "Empty promises!" Speeder aside, he wasn't sure what Tommy's top speeds were, but if the kid could do things faster than the eye could track, he was pretty sure even a souped up speeder wouldn't cut it. Still, while not completely driven by the promise to pick the next color scheme, the Exo however rubbed his hands eagerly as he sidled up to the speeder and swung a leg over, tossing back his cloak as he sat.

"Hovercycles don't sound nearly as impressive. Maybe it was the name," he commented to both as he looked over the speeder-thing from this new angle to try and work out the controls. "Gimmee a quick rundown," he said, waving Tony over.

[doubled_speed]

"You can't beat the kid," Tommy grins, arms crossed over his chest. So yeah, the speeder would stay at whatever colors Tony wanted them to have. And I've seen Richard's style. It's boring."

Tommy just approved of the unstable-particle clothing. While Cayde asked for an explanation, Tommy just worked on stretching to prepare for the little race.

"Don't worry, I won't embarrass you both as much as I should."

[in_extremis]

Mildly surprised that Tommy didn't jump at the chance to show off his work, Tony watched him start his stretches with a roll of his eyes, muttering, "What does that mean, should?" Tony hadn't done anything in whole hours to deserve being humbled.

Stepping next to Cayde as he settled, Tony braced a hand on the seat behind him to loosely gesture with the other as he itemized. "Hover engage, you might have to give her a kick to get it going, go button, breaks you won't need, if you flood it, not a problem, give that a tickle just watch out for the kick, speed, attitude, it should be pretty stable but if you have to do a manual correction, open this...." Tony had only been in Poe's cockpit briefly, but he tried to let it inform how he designed the controls as much as possible, leaving Cayde faced with plenty of buttons and not so many smooth touchscreens. Tony still dismissed most of that by pointing to the handles and announcing, "Left, right." The thing could take a few bumps, he didn't expect Cayde to become a pilot.

Hangar and Collision

[in_extremis]

[happybeeps]

"What's up, Buddy?" Poe asks, looking up from his inspection. It's habit more than anything. There's not much left to repair from the crash, and without use daily maintenance is next to none.

BB-8 gives a curious string of beeps in return, looking off and rolling away to try and suss out whatever's caught his attention.

It takes a while longer before Poe can catch the unfamiliar sound in the air, frowning and pushing to his feet.

"...What is that?"

[deal_me_in]

In the distance, something is flying. Well, almost flying. Skimming and bouncing over and between the rubble and overgrowth that made up most of the road further up towards the hangar, something very speeder-like is fast approaching. It glitters when the light catches it in all those lovely colors that people have likely gotten sick of from the past week.

Cayde doesn't drive speeders. He drives sparrows, and while they're virtually the same when it comes to function, sparrows tend to get banged up all the time depending on how reckless its owner is. Guardians ride them up old stairways and through ravines, fly across chasms and skim between canyons and boulder-ridden terrain. You get from point A to point B, sometimes dodging enemy fire, sometimes barreling right through it.

All in all, Cayde's been pretty impressed with the vehicle's handling. There's some things that are different but he's gotten the hang of it pretty quick, and with the goal in sight he's pushing the speeder to see what it can give. After everything else, he's confident it should be fine.

And then he hears just a slight whine that he's sure hadn't been there before, and then a rattling, just as Sundance speaks up in his head. ...I'm detecting a power fluctuation, she reports, when suddenly the vehicle shudders beneath the Exo before boosting forth to careen towards another ragged outcropping. "Whoa-!" Cayde yelps, giving the handles a jerk, hard enough to avoid snagging the rising edge, which while it saves a potentially nasty flip into the nearby ruins, sends the speeder shooting off the makeshift ramp. It's shallower than the wall he'd purposely made for, and at the speed he's traveling, Cayde's left no real time to adjust as the thing fishtails briefly before plowing ahead- right for the hangar's opening.

[in_extremis]

The roar of the speeder's engines grew louder in the hangar as the echo of the sonic boom faded, and in the metallic crunch of the speeder hitting the ground too fast and too hard out of Cayde's control, the whine of the Iron Man's repulsors dropped from the sky to join the cacophony. The armor appeared in the wide entranceway to the ship hangar, casting up the glitter that had gathered there on the ground in the rush of his jetboots as he dropped to hold himself tensely just above Cayde's path, hands up like he might be there to blast the speeder off its collision course with the hangar.

"Time to test the brakes, Hot Stuff!" Iron Man shouted, sure already he didn't have the volume or time to be at all effective. But Tommy was right behind him, and at this angle the best Iron Man could do was blast the vehicle's nose down into the ground, which would have easily calculable consequences for the Exo. Iron Man spun instead just as the speeder hurtled under him, hands still up to blast a hard shove at the first ship planted in perfect t-bone position in Cayde's way, to send its front skidding a few feet across the floor with a groan from the bulkhead and metallic shriek of locked wheels along the ground.

lmk if good

[doubled_speed]

See, Tony really needed to account for Tommy, but in a WHOLE other way. Not as someone who might get hurt from a blast, but as someone who had also noticed that something was wrong. He wasn't far behind Cayde, and he definitely could hear the problem was building up. He kept going, pouring on more speed even as Tony worked on getting a ship out of the way.

If there was brakes to consider, Tony, they'd probably be applied by now. So Tommy does the only thing that makes sense. It's easy as breathing to catch up to Cayde, this thing isn't even close to pushing his top speeds. It's a calculated awareness that something could get busted that he runs through, trying to figure out the right angle for things. And when he's got the math he's got time for the math because he's got countless nanoseconds and an undeniable instinct for physics Tommy jumps.

It's really a few different actions. First, jumping into the air. Tommy hates jumping at speed, there's not a lot of control when he's not on the ground, but like a cat or a squirrel, he knows just how to twist his body to get it where it needs to go. Which is landing with one foot planted on the back of the speedster as he grabs Cayde into his arms. And, if his math is right, when he kicks off at full force to send him and Cayde tumbling to the side, it should further the fishtail effect, sending the thing into a spin.

Hopefully the friction of the rotation would slow it down as it kept going. Tommy wasn't one hundred percent sure, there were plenty of other factors in his mind. None of which compared to the importance of tuck and roll and keeping his own body twisting so he made sure that he was the one to land on the rough floor of the hangar. He was going to have one helluva case of road rash, though. Probably not bad enough to be a truly major injury, but bad. And damn was he going to miss this particular outfit, there was no saving it.

[happybeeps]

It all unfolds impossibly quickly, a blend of painful screeches and lurching metal. As luck would have Poe's reflexes are well honed for just such a disaster, pushing questions of 'what' aside for now in favor of leaping out of the way of the wreckage that's suddenly bouncing off the ship and rolling towards him.

BB-8 shrieks and takes off in the opposite direction, both just missing a direct hit, though Poe is winged in the ankle by a bit of scrap as the thing skids and scrapes to a halt, toppling some cargo.

Poe looks to make sure BB-8's all right, the droid doing the same and giving a whistle just as the quiet that's settled over the area is irrupted by a final delayed pole toppling over and catching BB under it with an unpleasant thunk sound.

"...Buddy?"

For a tense moment there's silence and then a low whine, BB-8 not off line, or irreparably destroyed, but very much in need of some assistance.

After the damage is done

[in_extremis]

[heypartner]

When the smoke had cleared and it was obvious no one was going to die from anything Cobb stood back from it all with his arms crossed over his chest. This sort of shit reminded him of being a teenager, bored out of his mind and desperate for any sort of entertainment that wasn't sabacc or throwing chance cubes. Run a speeder through the commune just to scare up trouble.

"Gotta get out of this hangar," he muttered under his breath.

Cobb had wanted to for awhile. The ship was too cramped and cold. He knocked his head on pipes too often. He missed sleeping in a real bed. Honestly, he kind of missed the quiet as well. Tomorrow he'd take a walk around the city and see what he could find. He might have to fix something up but at least that would give him something to do with his time.

All the inactivity had probably caused all this as well. These folks seemed a little stir crazy, like they weren't used to the quiet or something. He didn't know. It was a hard group to read.

Well, he started walking towards what remained of the mess. Better go see if he could help with the clean up.

For Tony

[plate_builder]

Someone was in trouble. Who that someone had to be wasn't even a mystery. And who that trouble was coming from had to be obvious too, because the door of one of the ships opened and out strode Reeve, bristling with annoyance.

It took all of three steps down the ramp and one glance around before his voice boomed out through the hangar. The sort of voice with the sharp crack of someone used to being obeyed who had found himself disappointed. Someone who was, rightly enough, upset.

"Anthony. Edward. Stark."

His voice snapped hard on each name, each punctuated by a loud step down the ramp and toward the ground.

"What have you done?"

[in_extremis]

If that big hit hadn't immediately drained the Iron Man to limping, Tony might have turned tail and made his escape through the nearest hole in the wall at the first syllable of his name that rang through the hangar, before Reeve could see his shadow. As it was, he was already lingering by the carcass of the speeder, helmet in hand and barely able to keep the Iron Man upright, never mind consider dragging the vehicle anywhere. He had to stiffen at the sound instead, then slowly turn his head toward Reeve's approach, jaw set and with a dangerous glint in his eye for being threatened with this authority.

"Redecorating," he offered lightly, or as lightly as he could with the challenging smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth. There wasn't a slap or sanction that Reeve could follow with that tone he took, that would take Tony by surprise. He'd had this fight plenty.

[plate_builder]

Reeve continued his approach, his own jaw set, danger for danger. Because Tony, he truly didn't understand what Reeve was capable of at the moment.

"Redecorating is moving furniture around or hanging paintings. Redecorating is getting rid of a couch you got in college for a one that you actually both rather than picked up off the sidewalk. Or if someone is as mature and prone to causing as stir as you are, Anthony, redecorating is taking your crayons and drawing on mommy's nice clean walls!"

Oh yes, he was angry. Look at this chaos, this damage, this potential of injury. Look at the thing that had crashed!

Reeve's hand came out of his pocket, clenched, and lightning crackled around it, the air getting the slight scent of ozone added to all the other riot of smells.

"This? This is destruction. That I can't see having come from any hands but yours. So I repeat. What. Have. You. Done?"

[in_extremis]

The wall and floor here definitely experienced a change since Tony had last stood in the hangar, and that was apparently his defence to Reeve's tirade as he gestured meaningfully to the mess. "So, you don't like it," he concluded. Too experimental for Reeve, evidently.

Tony suddenly didn't feel as keen to joke as Reeve brandished a fist at him, making him warily turn more fully toward Reeve with both hands on the helmet. Clearly, what he had done was destruction, so he didn't think there was a great need to answer the question. Instead, he insisted in a familiar tone, "Please, call me Tony. Glad to have made such an impression, it's important to have a strong brand."

[plate_builder]

Oh, he had no intention of striking the other man. Not with his own fist. What a mess.

"Was there a particular reason you wanted to damage the hangar and, from what it seems like, our fellows as well?"

He kept walking, circling past Tony so he could instead look at the damages. Damn him.

"Or had you not considered that."

For Poe

[plate_builder]

After a very loud, and very public chewing out of the culprits of today's little disaster, Reeve starts to move on to inspect the results. An engineer and problem solver to the core, his attention is definitely on helping and repairs. But nothing, nothing draws him quite so quickly as Mini tugging at his pant leg and pointing frantically before running off.

The doll has noticed something Reeve hasn't. Mini had noticed Poe and BB-8. The frantic, concerned energy of the doll had Reeve stepping more quickly to approach the pilot and his droid friend.

"Has something happened?" he asks as he approaches.

[happybeeps]

BB-8 warbles in answer, Poe crouched with the droid and trying straighten his loose antennae while he worked out how to go about fixing the rest of him in this place. One of his orange rings had been knocked loose from it's frame, exposing small slivers of his interior. He can still function like this, though it's not ideal to have his insides exposed to the elements like this.

Poe glances up at the question, the end of the antennae between his teeth as he tries to force it back into shape, "We've been through worse," he offers, but gives a faint nod as he tries to gauge how straight he's managed to get it. "Bit of an accident."

[plate_builder]

Oh poor BB-8. He kneels down by the droid, looking at the issues.

"Tony," he grumbles under his breath. "May I please, Poe? I'm very good at straightening of wires and other metal. Came with my work. If you are both already with that."

He also looks sadly at the wires. He thinks he knows what he can do for that as well.

"I have some tools back in my workspace that could help with repairs."

[happybeeps]

"Crashes happen," Poe excuses, though he's going to have his own words with everyone involved. He's been in enough of them to know they can't always be helped.

He hands off the antennae with a grateful hum, palm dropping to give BB-8 a reassuring pat.

"We'd appreciate it," he accepts, not sure he can make the repairs himself without more familiar equipment, "Can you give me a hand up?" His ankle very much doesn't want him to rise, though he's sure it's just a sprain, he can power through easily enough.

[plate_builder]

Crashes do happen, but that doesn't mean Reeve has to be pleased about it because there is so much that could have been avoided here. But he takes the antennae carefully and tucks it into a pocket. They'll need to head to his office indeed. Damn, it's a bit of a walk, especially if Poe had a sprained ankle. Well, he supposed the ships were an option. He did have some tools here, and good hands for the work.

"Appreciation is well and good, I just wish there was more I could do. Sadly, the Agrii did not see fit to randomly gift me with my healing materia."

He offers out a hand, even as Mini goes to check on BB-8.

"Come, let's start with getting you to a ship and settling you there. Need be, I can send that fast young man to my office for what I'll need."