Retreat

[out_of_order]

WHO: Cal Kestis and Tony Stark
WHERE: Woods outside of Temba
WHAT: Family bonding Nature hike..?!
WHEN: Now...ish
WARNINGS: N/A


It had been a while since Cal had gone out into the woods. There were plenty of things since their return from the Agrii ship to keep them busy within the city. But even with a mostly empty city, sometimes a change of scenery and a chance to take a breath apart from everything wasn't so bad. But even so, he didn't mind having company apart from BD-1.

What started out as a check-in turned into an invitation for the man to join him for a bit of a walk, maybe some light exploration, and perhaps even a chance to test out what they'd put together for that 'transmat' project. They'd met outside of Tony's forge, the padawan with a backpack slung over a shoulder, BD-1 dangling from a strap. His lightsaber hung at his hip, slightly different than the one Tony had fashioned, if only because Cal had incorporated it with other parts from their recent trip.

With no real clue as to if anything lay beyond the woods in any given direction, but no real intent to go too far anyway, they'd settled on a direction starting beyond the forge and directly into wilderness.

Comments

[in_extremis]

The creature probably wasn't going to respond with any interest to Tony's, "Hooo...," like he was trying to calm an antsy horse, either, but it didn't seem like either of them had better instincts for managing a disturbed rock-beast. This ride was still going up, and at this rate was definitely going to get worse before getting better as it seemed to have unearthed enough of its mouth to tip its head back and sigh, a great gust of wind that flattened the long grass in a wave. Tony still took his time to insist, "We're not making a pattern out of this," with a flick of a finger between himself and flinging himself around, and Cal and his magic powers. For all Tony knew, the non-system would just not work the same way this time, and there would be no catching happening, just like Billy's healing could fail at any moment unlike a predictable stitch. If he got any higher, the consequences of that failure might be rock-beast fertilizer.

Just as the creature wound up to flick Tony off of its head, Tony rocked back to throw himself over the edge, regretting the power behind the start instantly with a wail as he was tossed much further than he had calculated for.

[out_of_order]

Rather than roll his eyes, Cal looked at the man imploringly, however choosing not to just simply grab him and bring him down. He trusted Tony to know what he was doing, or at the very least, what he wanted to do.

"It's not about patterns," he said. "It's about me being here for you if you need me."

And then Tony went flying, and Cal brought both his hands up to 'catch' him before he could fall too far, easing him into a better position where he'd be able to land on his feet before releasing his hold through the Force.

[in_extremis]

That still felt incredibly weird, though somewhat less so when Tony was already quite out of control of his own body and wasn't expecting a certain pattern of behaviour from something like a vine--he'd been telepathically or otherwise thrown around more than enough times in his life to not be entirely out of his element. He hit the ground with a thud and was quickly steady on his feet and bounding back up behind Cal where he curled a tentative hand over his shoulder, ready to pull him back if the rock-monster got any friskier. "Thanks," Tony breathed, tight-jawed and awkward will a flush that wasn't entirely from tossing himself off of a cliff. He wouldn't call himself a trust fall kind of guy, but it was possible he could make an exception.

Without something irritating its crown, the very lively pile of rocks let out another sigh and seemed to sink down into the earth again, its one, big eye blinking curiously at the tiny disturbance in front of it. In this relative calm where the ground had stopped rumbling ominously, Tony raised his eyebrows and tried lifting his free hand in greeting.

[out_of_order]

With Tony safe on his feet, Cal let out a breath, looking back over at the rocky creature of sorts. "I think...we'll leave this guy alone," he suggested to BD-1 at the droid's borbled question.

Tony greeted the behemoth, while Cal held his hands out in placation. "Sorry about that?" He wasn't exclusively able to connect with creatures through the Force like Ezra, but he didn't sense any real hostility from this one at least.

After staring at them a little while longer, the big boulder beast seemed to determine they weren't a threat. Its visible eye closed, vanishing under the rocky ridge of its brow, once again resembling but a large heap of boulders, save for the suspicious amount of freshly disturbed dirt and clods of grass that sat just around it.

Cal glanced over his shoulder, giving Tony an awkward sort of smile and a shrug before he nodded back towards the farther end of the clearing in suggestion.

[in_extremis]

Tony gave a jerky nod in response, of course, time to get their distance, one hand raised to his lips to suggest being quiet and no further bother to the creature, though he wasn't entirely sure it could hear and he was not going to be great and not talking for very long. About three steps away, in fact, though he did drop his voice to a hush as he said, "There, that's exactly what I mean, never would have met that guy in the city, have no reason to even conceive of a sentient pile of rocks, just normal problems like chemical leaks and unreliable building integrity." At least, he was pretty sure there weren't any rock-monsters within Temba, but that one had blended it pretty well. Maybe he would be watching his step in the future. Without waiting for a response, Tony was continuing, "How strong are you, anyway?," volume not quite so controlled in his excitement, because he wasn't exactly as light as a vine or a backpack, and he was going pretty fast. "Could you just lift me? Could you just lift that guy?"

[out_of_order]

With Tony feeling the need to make his point, Cal could only nod along, acknowledging, but leaving agreement open-ended. There wasn't any reason any creatures hadn't moved in for all the time the city had been abandoned, and who knew if there were any other surprises like those spiders hidden somewhere? Not that the padawan felt that voicing any of that would help for Tony's apparent paranoia.

"It's not really a matter of strength, although bigger things do take more effort," he said, unable to help for a little chuckle as Tony skipped onto another subject. "I can hold smaller objects longer. So long as you're not flailing around I can lift you. Potentially, that too," he considered as he glanced back towards the boulders.

[in_extremis]

"That's fantastic!" Tony declared, evidently ecstatic about this now that he had some first hand experience and parameters that could be subject to calculation. The emotional-playback or healing or animal empathy or whatever else it was Cal's people said they could do, the rest of that was still a mess of 'magic' that as far as Tony could tell wasn't about to respect any kind of physical or even internal logic, like Strange and Druid and Wanda all talking shop together like they could convince anyone else it made sense. "There's telekinetic people on Earth, mostly mutants, I guess it's kind of similar, genetic," Tony said, then was holding up one hand to claw against his temple and the other tensely outstretched before them like he had seen Xavier do a thousand times, "but it always seems to take a lot more effort."

[out_of_order]

Tony's voiced enthusiasm made Cal jump just a bit, BD-1 dangling off of a harness strap after his own start off of the padawan's shoulder.

"It's because it's not our own power, really. We're manipulating things around us through this sort of energy that exists in and around everything." He watches Tony amusedly. "It's a lot of concentration, and a lot of trusting yourself to be able to do things. Master Yoda? He's maybe a third our height and I've heard he's moved things several times our size."

[in_extremis]

The concept put that way made it sound a lot more like magic again, making Tony frown back at Cal like he was causing Tony some kind of personal offence, but that could have just been the trust part that he wasn't buying. He couldn't even trust himself to go to sleep before sunrise, and having any kind of self-control over hugely self-destructive habits took a 12 step program, not trust. "You've never doubted it?" he asked, looking skeptical that anyone could be that...confident. That would explain why everyone who had recognized Coruscant on sight seemed so sure about harnessing control of Temba.

[out_of_order]

Not that Cal really had any idea that Tony was so put off by such things, so the face he was making only served to confuse him a bit. The question had him chuckle briefly.

"Hardly. I've had plenty of doubts. But doing so holds you back from trying, and that goes for anything, doesn't it? You can't figure that you'll lift a rock if at the back of your mind you think it can't be done. I guess in that way maybe that's why it's easier to do things when you're under pressure, not that it's a good way, but it really does help you focus."

[in_extremis]

There wasn't much that held Tony back from trying something that popped into his head, though he supposed he didn't have many experiences that he could confidently compare to tapping into the energy of everything. Performing better under pressure he could understand, but he didn't think he did so with any less doubt in himself. "I, uh--" he started, brow creased in a new frown of discomfort and eyes on the grass whipping around their ankles as he considered how to put this, Cal's crestfallen look before they crossed the river and his reliable catch even when Tony didn't really trust him to make it knitting the words together. "The first time I made the Iron Man, the suit of armor, I was a little older than you, I think." That didn't logically follow what Cal had been talking about, but Tony shot him a sidelong look, head cocked, just let him get this out. "I had already been making weapons for years, and it was one of my own landmines that got me caught. Terrorists, they'd taken over the whole region and knew I was flying in and thought a little pressure could convince me to do some of my best work for the other side. The pressure was a load of shrapnel in my chest that was going to kill me in a matter of days, and a bit of waterboarding to keep it interesting when I wasn't doing their laundry for them. I don't think I believed for a second that I was going to survive that, but my options were to give up and die there, suffocating on my own metal, or build my way out, so I started building.

"To this day, I don't really think of the Iron Man as part of myself. I spend just about every waking moment thinking about it, how to change it, upgrade it and perfect it, but it's better than I've ever been. I still doubt it, I mean, that I'm really capable of doing any good. That hasn't stopped me from trying." He squinted up at the sky for a moment, blowing out a noisy breath then added, "Not going to try lifting a rock with my mind, though."

[out_of_order]

At first Cal wasn't sure where this was going. Tony had a habit of doing that, going off on some wild tangents, or at least they seemed to be, but then they'd end up circling back to weave into the original conversation. So he waited. And as Tony's story began to unwind, Cal's expression softened.

So this was where Tony Stark was coming from. It put quite a few things in perspective. "I wouldn't say you aren't capable of doing any good." He wasn't sure what sort of standards amounted to good in Tony's mind, but that he kept on trying rather than quitting was still a good direction to be set in.

"Lifting rocks with your mind isn't really practical anyway," Cal said with a shrug and a lopsided smile.

[in_extremis]

Tony's gaze slid slowly back to Cal then with his own wry smile, a challenge for how much good Cal really thought Tony had displayed in their time together and he asked, "Have you seen me try to cook? It's diabolical. There is evil in this world, and its that stir fry I tried to make last week. We should do something nice for all of those guys'n'gals in the diner, they're invaluable." And much more worth thinking about before either of them looked any closer at Tony any more, because he felt like his spine might snap from the tension. He tried giving it a stretch, twisting liberally as they walked and taking the chance to peer back at their rock-discovery to make sure it really had gone dormant again, finding it reliably still but had shifted up enough to open its large eye and watch them, motionless, like a crocodile at the surface of the water. That was unnerving. And worth very slowly pulling out Tony's tablet to snap a picture to send to Jon. Tony was still talking as he did, of course, back to muttering again with the slumbering rock back in mind, "What are you supposed to do, if it isn't rock lifting?"

[out_of_order]

"Well you've at least tried. I wouldn't have a clue how to go about making a dish, let alone a meal," Cal laughed. "That's a good idea though. Not like one of those datapoints offered is a cooking one."

He followed Tony's glance back at their boulder-pile friend, smiling reassuringly as he patted him on the shoulder. Even if the thing decided to go after them, they'd probably be across the river before it even got out of its rut.

"Comes in handy if you have to grab something out of reach," he shrugged. "My master taught me that the Force is an extension of myself. ...and had me hanging upside-down and my lightsaber sitting on a platform below me."

[in_extremis]

That surprised Tony somehow, like he wasn't expecting Cal not to be good at everything and through a laugh he teased, "What, they didn't teach you how to feed yourself at Jedi school? Absolutely ridiculous, what are we paying for?" and quickly draped an arm around Cal's shoulders so he didn't sound too much like his own dad rolling his eyes at Tony fumbling through their awkward reunion after a semester at boarding school. He used the hold to draw Cal up short again, where Tony began to tamp down the grass around them at the edge of the clearing, which could have been an effective enough space to try out their new toy.

"Oh, thank god, I thought you were going to tell me it was some kind of sacred communion with the planet or whatever, and, don't get me wrong, clearly it's working for you, but I've met enough gods to not really be interested in that conversation anymore. Anyway, your master sounds like a riot," he said, perhaps not understanding the Temple at all yet but sure there were much more gentle ways to teach a kid their magic mind powers without dangling them anywhere.

[out_of_order]

Cal stumbled only slightly with Tony's throwing an arm around him, laughing again. Ration tablets and bars obviously didn't count towards meal prep, and Greez's scazz steaks were by far the tastiest thing he'd ever eaten in his life.

Looking down at the grass, he nodded and let the bag he'd been carrying slide from his shoulder so he could start pulling out the pieces.

"Well, there's meditation involved," Cal admitted as he pulled out the two halves of a large, ring-like construction, containing multiple slots where power rods would be inserted, almost resembling a clock-face for the shape and the lines. The power source he'd worked on for whatever this transmat project was. "The emphasis in teaching us early about the Force and how to connect with it is so we don't misuse that connection and that power."

[in_extremis]

Tony crouched in the grass, mostly there for balance while Cal put his ring together, letting him curiously consider the ground of the field they had been wandering around in more closely as Cal worked. It wasn't rocky at all, he realized there, which might have served to tip them off ahead of time about the rock-creature, and the soil was surprisingly moist like it was more of a marsh than a field, the solid ground only the closely woven root system of the tall grasses that was so thick Tony could see where many of the tendrils had been pushed up into the air, like every blade of grass was a heavy tree trunk. Ideal for nesting in, he thought, if one was a big rock. What had seemed like stones and pebbles as they walked over them turned out to be the tiny, grey caps of clusters of mushrooms that found purchase in this root system, and Tony toed at curiously.

"By lifting rocks," he concluded, looking back up at Cal through his lashes and narrowing his eyes, because so far that had been the only thing that was impractical, and Cal was supposed to treat the power like a limb. Maybe all rocks were mushrooms where Cal came from and moving them around was more destructive than Tony would think.

[out_of_order]

BD-1 had hopped down to look at things again, peering around Tony to study the mushrooms the man had found. He glanced up at Tony and then came closer to tentatively poke at one with the tip of a metal foot.

Cal finished connecting the ring and its wiring, setting the base down so he could remove the bundle of wrapped power rods, slotting each one into place. He gestured towards the bag for Tony to go ahead and start with the rest.

"Or people. Or people built like rocks?" Cal countered, brow arching as he tried not to smirk. "It's not all lifting, that's only part of it."