revivalproject | What It All Comes Down To

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What It All Comes Down To

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba
WHAT: Coming Down From It All (Post House of Billy)
WHEN: The first week post event [Forward Dated]
WARNINGS: CW: Referenced sexual encounter in thread with Kyle, Referenced child abuse in thread with Kyle.

A. Keeping The Diners Supplied The Diner
"Delivery of fresh produce."

Tommy's tired. Perhaps that's why he's coming in later than normal with supplies for this meal shift. Perhaps that's why he looks frazzled and his hair is limp and he's not racing in with all speed. Clearly it's not the heavy crate loaded down with all sorts of foods from the green house, because that's never slowed him down before. But sleep after something like what they'd gone through was... Well, unlikely.

"The cyanana harvest is starting, so I'm thinking about trying to figure out how to make some sorta pudding out of it. That's a thing, right? Banana pudding or something."

He'd been enough out of it on entering that he didn't even know who it was he was talking to. Like hell he'd thought about how the kitchen help rotation was working now. Nor did he care. He was too tired from all his dreams to care.

B. Healing Power of Horticulture The Greenhouse
If there was one place that Tommy often found peace, it was the greenhouse. Today Tommy was trying his best to work there without getting too complicated with other people. For this he'd done the best thing he could do: working the mint wing. The advantage that came that the specific wing was sealed off from the rest of the greenhouse to keep it from spreading too much. Tommy moved slowly through it with a woven rush basket, humming quietly under his breath some German pop music he remembered from back home. While he moved he clipped little sprigs of mint to pass on to Glownies as a treat.

The advantage of the sealed area was that when the doors opened, Tommy knew someone was there. He could hear it. He turned to look at the door and frowned.

"Can I help you? I thought I was soloing the mint today."

C. The Solitary Island Closed to Aeon
It took a while for him to find her, but Tommy had wanted to have an excuse to get away, but he didn't want to be put into a position where his stupid brain could interrupt him. There had been someone interested after all, and so he'd raced through the city until he found her.

"Aeon," he said, offering a hand up for a high five. "You doing anything? Because if not, island time."

D. Wild Card
[Feel free to hit me up on Discord or Plurk to discuss places Tommy could get cornered. Or just have someone come to his actual home. Other options are to find him lazing by the fountain, on top of a tall building, or hiding out with the glownies which he normally does not visit.]

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"Are you a robot?" Ophiuchus satisfies his own curiosity by floating over and scanning Tommy. "No... you're human? Some mutated genetics but no mechanical or electrical systems. How is your father a robot? Did he clone you?"

The question isn't meant to be rude. He's genuinely interested. A Warlock's ghost just as curious as the Warlock herself. She's learning quite a lot simply letting the two talk to each other and listening.

"It is Ikora," she said with a slight eyebrow raise. "Thank you for clarifying. That is most certainly more invasive than regular mint."

"Wow. 'Mutated genetics'. We call it being a mutant, thank you very much. And my existence came from magic. My dad can Grandfather are still what they are, even if mom made us by magic."

At least someone's interested.

"There may be a demon soul involved or some shit. It's sorta why Billy's so powerful."

Ikora, right, that. He'll try and remember.

"Humanity had gene altering in the Gold Age but we curled illness and extended lifetimes with it. Only Guardians ended up with the sort of powers your mutant abilities give you," Ikora explained, interrupting Ophiuchus before he could start explaining exactly what he found in Tommy's genetic code. Because he would.

"Wow. That doesn't make any sense," Ophiuchus still circled around Tommy, clearly approving of the illogic. His shell spun excitedly around his center eye."But it worked because you're here. How does it work? Even Hive magic can't create life from nothing."

It was a perfectly reasonable question. "The Hive are more comfortable creating death. Of course they can't make life.

Cured illness and extended lifetimes. Sounded like Krakoa's organictech to him.

"Well, we're not deliberate gene altering. I was born like this. A mutation on what is called the X-Gene. Manifests in a multitude of different ways. And I'm not created from nothing. I'm created from magic and the fractured soul of a demon. Then died so a dude who thought my soul was a part of his could get it back. But then our souls were released to the actual origin, and that sorta blew the demon up for a bit of time, and then there was retroreincarnation and shit."

Tommy make NO LOGICAL SENSE. He knows it. He likes it.

"Don't worry, all Guardians are resurrected from the dead." Ikora could almost imagine Asher Mir hearing all this and ranting about the impossibility and illogic of it all. "That's not really strange at all. I've died hundreds of times and come back. Though, my world doesn't have demons."

Or Heaven and Hell as far as she could tell from her time walking the line between life and death and what came in that space between. But she wasn't terribly predisposed to religion anyway.

"X-gene? But you can't achieve mutation like yours from just one gene. It would be more accurate to call it X-genes," Ophiuchus pointed out. He understood all this magic talk but he would nitpick.

Huh, well at least he's not that weird. Except yeah, he's totally resurrected. Just, he doubted they had people who were resurrected by being reborn in their own past. But yeah, her situation sounds weirder than his. That's a nice change.

"And yet," Tommy answered, rolling his eyes, "it's an X-Gene. Maybe Billy could tell you which it is. One active gene that leads to us changing when we're in our teens usually. Shifts a lot of us later. Mine, like, give me stronger bones and muscles and the like."

Guardians made very little logical sense to the average person. The Light was a satisfactory answer in most cases. Ikora had studied it most of her life. Warlocks were like that.

"But... but that's not how genetics work. To adapt so many systems in the body there should be multiple mutations," Ophiuchus argued. "And puberty causes many changes but it shouldn't awaken a dormant mutation like that. It should always exist."

The Ghost turned to his Guardian looking for support. She raised an eyebrow. "We come from a world where a Hive larva can become a Knight simply by absorbing enough death and destruction. I would accept a single gene awakening powers in a person."

"And yet, it's how mutations work," Tommy answered with a shrug. Don't tell him he's wrong, because he's lived this life. You can't logic the life he's lived, man.

Or maybe you can and he just doesn't bother to.

Ophiuchus huffed out a breath and seemed to stew for a moment. No doubt he was forming a rebuttal to Tommy's comment.

"You've been here a long time," Ikora said to keep her ghost from fixating on the one comment. "What do you think is the most important thing to get done?"

Ikora had thoughts. She had been around when the Last City was rebuilt though she hadn't helped much in that rebuilding. She had been more interested in exploring and testing her limits as a Guardian.

"Were you not here for town meeting time?" Tommy asked, crossing his arms over his chest. He was pretty sure plenty of people had laid out what they thought was the best thing to do back then.

If she was new, though, he'd send her to one of the people with ideas. Not that he thought they had all the right ones.

"I mostly listened. There were a lot of good opinions." A lot of differing opinions. Some she felt were valid and some reminded her of the infighting among the political factions of the City. "A lot of entitled ones as well. A lot fears."

It sounded like some people had never experienced this sort of destruction and this sort of resource scarcity. It was strangely reassuring to see that people were people no matter where they came from. There was no perfect universe out there.

"But, arguably, the people who have lived here longer and survived here longer have a better understanding of what the city needs. You, Jon, Cayde," she shrugged.

The people who had been here longer. Tommy, Billy, Keith, Lance. They had been here longest. Even Jon and Cayde were people Tommy considered 'newer'. Granted, Tommy was quickly approaching two years on this rock, so he guessed 'older residents' was a bit relative.

"The storms. That shit clearly isn't natural. We haven't run into many, but no one has gone looking for what causes them. They're, theoretically, why we're here. It took us a while, but we got the good, the homes, some other shit stabilized. People should be figuring that out now. But they don't."

"It's hard to investigate a storm you cannot predict but I'm curious about the storms myself." Ikora wanted to experience one which was probably madness but it was the way of Warlocks. She had died to experience the moment between life and death.

Why not walk into a storm that forced you to relive your worst moments? It was roughly the same.

"Do you know where we should start looking?"

"Well, people should be trying to figure those out," Tommy answered with a shrug. She asked, he's answering.

Helps, of course, that he fears the storm and wants someone else to figure it out. The sensation of being powerless in one had left a deep fear in him.

"Outside of the city, probably. If it came from here, we'd have noticed."

"So, we need to find a way to travel outside the city. Then we can find the source of the storms." Ikora nodded to herself. It was a reasonable plan of action.

Of course, making some sort of transportation would take awhile. They had some smart engineers to work with.

"Thank you for taking the time to talk to me." She looked at Ophiuchus who floated back to her side. "I'll see what we can do about better ways to explore beyond the city."

"I can carry people, if they want it. Or someone can make an all-terrain cart."

Because with his strength and speed, he can help them get going. Too bad they don't have more riding animals.

"Glad to talk. Always make sure the door to this area is closed when coming in or out, by the way."

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What It All Comes Down To

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