sixthiterationlogs | (204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

Entry tags:

(204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: Blacksmithy
WHEN: Prob like Nov 16 to Nov 23? Flexible rn until i get more input.
OPEN TO: Annie Cresta, Sam Wilson, others.
WARNINGS: I doubt it but I'll edit if that somehow comes up.
STATUS: Closed twice, open otherwise. not that. there's that much of a difference

Open:

Tony wasn't really sure why he kept coming back over here so often. It wasn't like there was anything to actually forge. He had a few handfuls of nails he could clean off and melt down - needed to melt down, really, since removing them from their previous embeddings had bent nearly all of them into being little more than gradual triangles if force were applied to the heads a second time. Nails though are still difficult to use without some sort of mould, although he was starting to suppose he could just try something to see if it worked. That would work better with the larger pieces, like the hinges, since they wouldn't have to be completely melted down to change their shape, since he didn't think he had all the tools for that anyway. Regardless, it wasn't like he had much else to do, beyond keep up with his hand to hand, attempt poorly to forage, and continue dismantling destroyed houses.

Regardless, he's here anyway. Probably attempting to repatch something that was previously already repatched itself but working at least well enough to be, you know, working. The whole place is generally workable but needs updating in many respects. In his mind at least.

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Modified closed to Annie Cresta:

It's the same thing except he has like. This big pile of nails he's sort of. Just. Staring at. He's not sure what to do with such a finite amount of metal to work with, and he really wants to make something, but at the same time he doesn't know what to make. He knows he can make whatever and just redo it later, but that actually - here - runs through resources that aren't as infinite as he's accustomed to, and he's working to keep that in mind.

So he's attempting to run through all the scenarios mentally, so see what. Would work best. It's... having limited results. Most of which involve him staring intently at a pile of bent nails because there's no one to talk to here like he talked to JARVIS, and there are no holograms to project his thoughts to, so everything has to be internal.

[ This is literally 'my character is x-ing by the lake come bother him but feel free to notice like. an unnecessary fire dying in the forge or tools that don't match sitting out if she'd notice that sort of thing. Basically everything here reeks of at least one project that abruptly stopped. With like. Several tools nearby and a bunch of nails. ]

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Modified closed to Sam Wilson:

He's not even been attempting to fix or use the forge recently. Instead, he's been steadily - when he can or isn't already working on some other project - attempting to dismantle the houses that were already damaged by the earthquake to a point where they cause more problems to fix than otherwise. Architecture was never his particular foray, but he knows enough about it to work with these - what can be removed now and potentially put back later, what can be removed and is too damaged to be anything but replaced anyway, etc.

Tony's making what appears to be one of at least a handful of trips - this might be the last one considering once he dumps his armload into the part of the floor he seems to be using as a dumpspace it starts to roll and blob into more of the walkway; tony promptly kicks it back into place, apparently assuming the given hiking boots are totally a match for boards with nails in them and whatever else it is he's grabbed at first glace.

He's actually crouched down and about to start resorting items just now. He picked each one specifically at the site, but now that they're here, they need redoing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thorfinn kept himself busy, more so now that the furnace in his house was busted and he had no clue how to fix it. He felt useless, so he got back to what he knew best. Collecting wood, hunting and things for the forge to get it going. He had tasked himself with collecting charcoal from burned out fires which hadn't amounted to much as he didn't want to draw attention to the project.

Dressed in layers today he could still feel the cold cutting to his bones. Finding kindling hadn't worked as he would have liked so he decided to go and take some of the charcoal he had found on to the smith. He had realized someone was inside before he even opened the door, assuming it was Cougar until he stepped in and pushed the hood of the tunic Kate had made him down. "Hello Co...." He started in his heavy Scandinavian accent, cutting himself off seeing the other man. He just blinked a moment at him. He recognized him from around the village, but he hadn't attempted to say a word before now.

It's a bit different, working in what is neither complete silence, nor against the overwhelmingly noisy backdrop of his music. It's more difficult to concentrate, but then again he's not really found many projects thus far that actually require him to gather such concentration. That, in itself, isn't really helping either, honestly. He's tiding himself over here and there, working on practicals, working more on his physical exercise than he ever seemed to have time for back home, but he's just shy of chomping to get at something really challenging.

So normally, it would take a bit of doing to get his attention, but against the noise that he has yet to truly push out of the reds and oranges of attention-grabbing and into the more passive white version, Thorfinn's interruption is sufficient.

"'mrade'? 'mandant'? 'aitlyn'? Don't leave me hanging, c'mon," he quips back, sparing a half-second's glance midsentence to see who it is he's actually talking to. There's a structural issue within part of the forge that means that it works, yes, but it could work better, and Tony's attempting to modify it so that it can potentially be used to work with metals that aren't even present because there are almost no metals present to actually use, but. Challenges. We went over this. Everything can always be made better, unless it's something Tony Stark just came up with. That's always the best.

"What brings you to the Fortress of Solitude?"

Thorfinn looked at the strange man as he spoke before shaking his head at the half words Tony spoke. "I... thought you were Cougar. Only he and I, sometimes Thor come here." His accent was very heavy. And clearly Scandinavian. English wasn't his first or second language and recently learned but he tried his best to make it sound like it was... which didnt always work.

A box full of charcoal in his hand he moved in into the building pulling the door shut to move and dump it with the rest.

"I came to add to the Charcoal... We had planned to forge the bogiron." He pointed to the rustic orangeish looking rocks. "... what is a Fortress of Solitude?" he asked confused despite clearly getting the question the other asked.

Well, it's not Thorfinn that she finds when Peggy arrives at the blacksmith with food, expecting to see Thorfinn. From what she knows of Howard, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing for a Stark to do, humble in a place like this, but then she thinks of Howard's past and his work and has to wonder how much of the real man she ever knew. Setting the plate of food on a table, Peggy knocks on the door and waits to get Tony's attention before addressing him.

"What are we creating today?" she wonders, thinking that if anyone is going to invent something wonderful and odd and mad here, it'll be Tony.

The knock works pretty well for that, especially since he was in the middle of what is one of the more 'chill out for a minute and watch what happens' stages of what he was working on. It's been cold as hell, and he figured it wasn't a bad time to try and make some arrowheads out of the various bits of metals he'd pillaged from the more destroyed homes. If he's particularly adventurous he might try and make a knife, but he'll see how the arrowheads turn out first, considering he hasn't got moulds for anything yet.

So he's actually on the hotter side of things, and watching hot metal get hotter and trying to make sure the fire stays stoked well enough with this old equipment to keep it malleable for the length of time he might have to wind up working with it. He's not too bad - if you can make a mask, you can make an arrowhead, he figures - but it's been a little while. Although it had been many 'little while's between the last time he did all this and the time immediately before that, but he's not really trying to think about the last time he did all this anyway.

So maybe the distraction is actually welcome. Tony wipes off his forehead with the back of his forearm as he turns to look at who he's already identified, because it's just reflexive to look at her. "Arrowheads. Kind of boring, but in that whole retro, Urban Outfitters kind of way where it's still new? You hate using it, but it's still the in thing at the moment. I'd much rather be working on an automated drone that sends back information regarding the boundaries and constantly maps the apparently-shifting geography of this place, and could even provide helpful information by telling us exactly where it hits system failure, but." He shrugs a little bit, turning enough to locate and then pick up the closest thing to a ball-peen hammer he has access to. "I don't have any silicon."

She opens her mouth to remind him that she has no idea what he's talking about, but is beginning to get the feeling that he both doesn't particularly care and isn't liable to stop anytime soon. "I would have much rather something to fly over the canyons rather than my risking life and all my limbs," she concurs as she bundles her jacket a little tighter to her neck, wandering inside to investigate what he's been working on. She can't help her fond smile that she works to hide in her collar, thinking how very familiar this is. At least Tony isn't sending her away to fetch him disgusting liquid cheese so that he can concentrate.

"Can I help?" she asks, pointing very deliberately to the plate with her chin. "While you eat," she adds pointedly. "Don't think I'll let you go hungry."

"I figured you might. The Indiana Jones thing is fun for a little while, but it gets exhausting pretty fast," he says, as he realizes that he can't really do a whole lot of hammering if he's going to be having a conversation. Well, he can, and he would, but most people seem to find it pretty annoying after a couple of minutes and just leave.

So he looks back over at her in time to see and follow her gesture towards the plate of food he hadn't noticed she'd brought with her.

It's weird, to get a sense of not-quite-déjà vu - because the situation couldn't possibly have happened to you before, but you know one that was very similar to it, although not specifically. It only lasts for a moment or so, because it's weird and fleeting like a Skittles commercial from the early 00s; you have a general feeling, but you don't really know what to do with it until it goes away of its own accord.

Anyway. There's food, and he's apparently hungry so this is great timing all around. "With the arrowheads or the drone?" he asks, reaching out to pick up a piece of meat before noticing his hands are dirty. There's an attempt to wipe them off on his pants and he seems to be of the mind that whatever's still there is fine, since he picks a piece up anyway and starts eating. "Know where I can find vinegar?"

"Perhaps the inn or one of the kitchens?" she suggests. While her own hasn't been stocked with anything that would be useful in this instance, she still holds out hope that someone else might have the supplies he needs. She gives him a disapproving look when he uses dirty hands to pick at the food, but it's also not like she can offer him a better solution, so she'll have to let it rest as it is. "Is the vinegar for the arrowheads or the drone?" she asks, taking a seat in the makeshift workshop, feeling a wash of familiarity over her.

All that's missing is the overwhelming ego that seems to follow Howard Stark and his scientific ilk around (given how both Wilkes and Samberley had been so utterly similar when it came to discoveries). Honestly, you dangle the prospect of naming something in front of them and they go mad. "Do you think it's actually possible to get the drone working?" she asks.

He blithely ignores the look with the ease and practice of someone who has four decades of doing so already as he continues to eat, although assuming she did bring cutlery he'll start using that because it's just easier. "One of the kitchens in the fifty houses here? You guys didn't ransack them all already?" He supposes there's something nice in the idea that when new people arrive, they can pick out a house and it will have things in it, but still. It makes more sense to take out anything unique for communal usage and leave more general items behind.

"Vinegar's for the scraps," he says, gesturing vaguely with the fork to a small pile of metal bits that remain. "Bent, rusty - gotta clean 'em up. There's no rush though - there's other stuff I don't have anyway."

Tony pauses for a moment, presumably thinking about whether it's possible to actually make the drone but actually considering the hilarious improvidence of timing happening here. He makes his life better by removing the RT, and now he's stuck somewhere where he actually really needs the damn thing, albeit for a totally different reason than before. Fantastic.

"Not without... Basically look at all the things we have access to now, and I need the opposite. And a way to make a battery that doesn't immediately crap out if you hurt its feelings by staring a little too long. Does anyone even have a camera or some kind of radio?"

"They've been torn apart quite readily, but vinegar isn't exactly on the top of my list as far as things go," Peggy points out, seeing as blankets and other supplies top that list, given that she'd much rather survive and keep warm, especially with the winter coming. She reaches forward to eat little bits of food from off Tony's plate, seeing as she's the one who brought it there.

"I haven't seen any technology, not from my era or yours or even before that," Peggy says, though she'd give anything for a radio, some days. Eyeing Tony, she wonders if he really will be able to get anything going. If anyone is going to do it, she imagines it will be a Stark, won't it? "And if you had to make something with what you do have, what would it be?"

Tony considers the pile of what-he-formerly-would-have-deemed-trash-and-is-now-forced-to-accept-as-the-top-billing while he chews on another mouthful. Then considers everything else he has available to him within the village.

"A rocking chair for James Hetfield?" which sounds like a legitimate proposal he's thinking about making until he continues, "I'm not sure what we actually need against things we just want - are we trying to make a living here or are we trying to go home?" Because technically, yes, you can do both at the same time, but you need to pick one or the other as a main course of action, especially when your options are already so limited. "I would actually like to leave - weird - but I don't think I can just shoot my way out of this one. It's gotta be a group thing, all or nothing."

"Tony, I don't understand anything you say," Peggy remarks, a touch critical and slightly frustrated with his insistence to keep doing it. She gives him a stern look and lets out a long sigh as he talks again about trying to go home. "You know as well as I do that I want to get home," she promises. "And I've been trying my very best to find us a way out, but I haven't and I can't understand why I've failed again and again."

"If you could figure out a way to somehow track the ground we've been over before, it might help, but it seems even that can't be trusted," she says, thinking of Margaery and Kate's vanishing in the woods and how everything had seemed to move on them.

"You're not alone," she reminds him. "We all want to go home. We all have people waiting for us."

"Who was the heavy rocker back in your day then? The one that makes mom and pop tell you you're just listening to noise instead of music?" he sort of vaguely concedes, taking another bite.

As she continues, he listens a bit more calmly than he had been before, leftover energy from trying to make something work bleeding back into the gradual build up of the stuff he's got slowly increasing the pressure on him to figure all of this out. He has to figure this all out, he can't stay here; time dilation and chicanery aside, the world might be ending back home and even regardless he can't be stuck here. He doesn't do well with stuck.

He deflates a little, when she's done - not entirely, but enough - and sort of sighs. "Yeah, I know. Technically they might not even be waiting, on their end. That would be nice. Romanoff and Rogers are both here from after me and they didn't even notice I'd gone missing in their timeline. Of course, that also means there could be multiple timelines..." He trails off a bit to regather his thoughts from where they were scattering elsewhere. "I get the farming, I get the repairs, but why not an all out go at the border, all of us? Sometimes you have to take the risk." Despite the argument he's making, his tone and delivery suggest he already knows the reasons and is just... frustrated. The lack of options here, the lack of any ability to produce your own options, it's just maddening.

"I wasn't very much of a music person," she says. "I didn't spend much of my time in dance halls," she says. "Waiting for the right partner," she echoes old words that she doesn't ever think she'd say again, especially not now that she actually has a chance to see that dance through. At least, she would have the chance if ever she was able to find some music and some time not trying to survive. "As to the border, I've gone for it. Multiple times. The border keeps moving outwards," she explains, though she has no idea how that can be possible.

And yet, haven't her incidents int eh canyon been proof of that? "I don't understand how we can be here and not at home. Does that mean no one is looking for us?" she asks, a thread of worry hitting as she'd been counting on a search party from Daniel and Howard, at least from Mr. Jarvis in order to find her.

Wow, Tony's not even going to touch that bit of nostalgically familiar reminiscing with a ten foot pole. He gets the comment, and the meaning behind it, but he's just. Yeah, nahhhhh. Maybe later. Maybe never.

There's other things to address anyway. "How far outwards can it move if we keep going in a straight line though? Even if the land we're on isn't infinite, the confines of whatever physics-fucked space we are in is, or the boundaries wouldn't keep changing and putting us literally back in square one. We're not meant to go too far - what happens if we do?"

Tony simply refuses to accept that space can extend forever. He hasn't himself ventured too far out, but that's because he has no real reason to if he's doing it by himself. He's not stupid; he knows he doesn't have the skillset required to do the sort of potentially-long-term outdoorsmanning he's talking about. He's just surprised that everyone else seems to be content not to do the same as a group. They've surely been here long enough?

It's why he said you have to have a direction. Either they want to create a lifestyle here, or they want to figure out how to get home. In a situation like this, in his opinion as he's seen things so far, there is only one or the other, collectively. Individuals may have their own agendas, but as long as they don't all agree? They're apparently collectively okay with making a life here.

Anyway.

"I don't really get it either, but apparently it's happening anyway. I'm not sure how far ahead they are, but it's enough to mean something, and none of it's happened to me, and they didn't seem to remember me going missing and coming back from the world's shittiest summer camp, so." He shrugs a little bit, not trying to be unsympathetic but seeing no reason to sugar the news down. He'd been hoping someone would notice too, until he realised the futility likely involved. "I don't understand how we're here at all, but time is apparently about as much a factor as landscaping or a protest vote against the obvious prom queen."

"Clearly it doesn't mean much at all when it comes to timelines, given that I'm from several decades prior than anyone else," is Peggy's thought on the matter, "And I'm still no closer to understanding why myself and previously Sergeant Barnes were the only two from our time period where we've been privy to so many people from the future and from space."

"When I walk towards the canyon wall, it keeps expanding in front of me," she says. "You're welcome to come with me at some point if you'd like to see it for yourselves," she says. "And I would always love to spend more time with you," she adds, trying to add a little more guilt to her voice, even though she's giving Tony a fond smile. "Besides, once you have the drone working, you're going to find us an escape, aren't you?" she teases.

He'll give her a point about being super behind, and another for being so, although that's not totally what he was getting at regarding timelines. Though, if pressed, he's not sure what he's getting at with the timelines, so he's not sure how to address that at all. She's from a time before he knew her, from after his father had known her for years, if records and oral-history were anything usable, but this doesn't help him piece together why none of the people from the same world are from the same time. He has plenty of points to reference, but nothing thus far to connect them. Are they all from climactic points in their respective lives? Is each one of them from a turning point in the overall timeline as it stands? Are they part of an overarching relatively-inevitable-but-not-entirely series of events that leads somewhere catastrophic? He has no idea. That's the fucking problem. There's so many potentials but never enough to trail together any one singularly decent idea.

He's going to explode at some point. He can tell.

"There's not a whole lot here that seems to care about relative time outside of this reality." It's news though that Barnes is apparently gone - Tony had just assumed he hadn't seen the guy in a while, but he'd imagine the person living with the guy would have a better understanding.

"Expanding in the sense that you can visibly watch it do so, or expanding in the sense that you keep walking and things that seemed far away just stay far away? And I'm absolutely coming with you on a physics-breaking hiking trip. Count me in." The guilt is noted, and felt, thanks. It's vague, but he has enough of his own feelings towards her and his reaction to her - in his day - mental illnesses to get the adequate pangs she wouldn't even be aware of sending.

He does at least huff a laugh about the drone. "Yeah, sure. You guys just find me the parts I can use to craft a microprocessor or thirty, and I'll have us out of here before you can say 'interdimensional molecular proto-transport'."

She ignores the parts about the time aspects, because her mind is clever enough, but she's hardly equipped to theorize or make determinations about what's going on with the timelines that she would be able to offer anything valuable. She turns, then, to the question that she can answer. "Every time I'm out there, the distance continues to move. Without a compass, it's all guesswork as to whether I'm even heading in the right direction, of course, but the boundary keeps escaping me and then I'm pushed to a side and I hit a wall. Literally," she says, thinking of how nothing ever yields as escape.

"Maybe we ought to keep you to inventing something that can actually be done," she says, eyeing the smithy around them, hefting up one of the tools and using it as if a fencing rapier, setting herself at the correct stance before relaxing, setting it done. "Swords? Clubs, maybe? I'm a fan of using your own two hands in a fight, but your father was quick determined to equip people with mad new inventions that often doubled as weapons."

At least talking about geography - while still irritating as hell here - is multitudes easier than trying to talk timelines. Although honestly, nearly anything is easier to talk about than timelines, whether you're talking about personal experience or your favorite sci-fi tv show.

"There's got to be a way to rig up some kind of compass," he says, in the tone that people use to indicate they're both skeptical and disappointed you haven't thought of this already. There must be a reason she hasn't, but that doesn't mean he's not going to ride her about it. "Also, 'literally'? Are you being like, shoved into rock faces, or what?"

Anyway. He watches her fencing stance demonstration with vague amusement, manfully not letting himself be sad again about the state of the tools within the shop in general. He's totally okay with them, okay. He even manages not to have any visible reaction either way when she mentions his dad, and weapons. "I've got a couple ideas for arrowheads," he starts, moving a couple things that don't really need moving but work better with the organizational system he's come up with in the last seventeen seconds. "Clubs are a bit on the obtuse side of whatever physicalities we seem to have in abundance though."

"Well, I did hit the rocks fairly hard when the rope snapped when I was exploring in order to find a way out, yes," Peggy replies calmly, seeing as she hadn't been anticipating that, but had managed to come face to face with exactly that in her determination to get out. "Ideas for arrowheads," she echoes. "How could they differ?" As far as she imagines, an arrow is just that - an arrow - and there's very little that you would do with it otherwise.

She settles back in a seat, moving his plate about slightly as she regards him. "Do you want me to talk about your father around you?" she asks, having stormed right into that without delay.

Annie Cresta does not tend to strike people as stubborn. And yet, she is. Quietly so, occasionally defeated by shyness or madness, but she's stubborn and she'll keep trying. The gamemakers have given her an apron, a glass-or-metal working apron, and there is a smithy, and she will keep turning up until she finds out what she's supposed to do.

So it is that today she walks, and pauses. Not in the doorway, where she'd be a target, but just inside, where she can do a crab's side-ways step and have her back protected. Dirty white jeans and a black peacoat, her hair having lost all curl without a wash so is just a frizzy mess mostly braided away. The apron is in her backpack, but she ignores it for now.

For now, she looks at the man, and his pile of nails, and the dying fire, and scattered other things, and then decides to be brave.

"What are you doing?"

There's a lag of a few seconds where it might seem that Tony didn't hear her, but that's just his thoughts taking a little while to resurface to the level where external communication is possible again. The physical shift is marginal, if visible at all, but if she's good at body language - and I'd imagine she is - she'll still be able to locate when he returns to the land of the conversant.

"Crying internally at the lack of integrated circuits in subpar-Bermuda and wishing I had access to literally any form of network or keyboard-based input. I'm also trying to figure out if I should try and make these into arrowheads or if something like knives or even spare parts for the plumbing or mill - or shit, the forge itself - would be better. We don't really have the materials to just let spare parts sit around, but simultaneously not having spare parts sitting around could make things pretty terrible very fast."

At the end of this, Tony finally twists around to look at her. "What are you doing?"

She's done that often enough herself, had that lag while consciousness returns to deal with any new company, that she doesn't mind. She waits, and doesn't particularly seem as if she's waiting, either.

The babble that comes the man makes her blink, but then she internally shrugs: that, too, is something she's done often enough that she might as well be polite and listen to the important bits.

"I'm, um. Seein' if there's anything useful I can do here. I make glass, back home. So, I know a bit about heat and dealing with hot things." Then Annie frowns.

"If they're just taking down deer, do they need actual arrowheads or can they just use sharpened ends of the shafts?"

"Are they just taking down deer?" he asks, pointing vaguely at her with whatever is in his hand. If he'd glance at it, he'd know it was a fork from the food he had earlier - he'd apparently been fiddling with it while in thought. "Because I got a friend who can take out a tank with a tictac and ten minutes holed up in the town's inn beat half to hell after apparently a fight with a mythological monster."

He's not trying to fearmonger, but they do at least need to be prepared, right? It's just common sense.

Anyway. "That could be good. What sorts of glassware did you make?"

You can kill people with forks. She'd thought about it, once, on her Victory Tour. Sat at a dinner in her honour and stared at the cutlery and ran through all the ways they could be used to kill people. Even the spoons. She'd started giggling at the time: now her eyes cross faintly as she focuses, then her gaze moves to the hand holding the fork.

If the man were to do anything, it'd come from the hand, not the implement.

So she tries to ignore the fork, and focus on his words.

"That sounds more like you need a gun or a catapult, not an arrow." But, still, maybe it was a mutt that was a trap, not an ongoing threat.

"Vases, jars, bowls. Cups. I don't think paperweights would be useful here, but I know the theory of make planes of glass, for windows."

"Yeah, well," Tony starts, turning back to look at his pile for a few moments before tossing the fork on top. They've got plenty of them. "I'm working with what I've got handy. Or potentially handy." There's really not a whole lot he can do about it, about any of it, about anything here at all, and he's not used to this feeling of impotence, of powerlessness. He's felt it a select number of times in his life, and it's never gone well for anyone involved. In the end, sure. But it took a hell of a lot to come back around.

He listens to the list, considering the options here and there. "So, relatively basic workmanship. 'Theory' means you've never made one? Think you could make a convex lens?"

She rolls her eyes, a little, then pauses at the rudeness of it all. Swallowing, she shrugs.

"I don't have a manufacturing background," she explains, "but an artist's. Glassblower. I, uh didn't think making a multi-coloured, hah, glass octopus would be useful." No matter how intricate, no matter how much she manipulated the tentacles.

Then Annie cocks her head, considering. "Theory means I never had reason to. But you blow out a cylinder, cut it and lay it out flat. Just gotta move fast enough to make sure it's flat.

Um. Convex lens? Ye-e-es but it wouldn't be a precise grade without grinding tools. I can blow out a small, shallow dish, then work with it while hot. Or a sheet and slightly dip it."

Rudeness? He hasn't even begun to be rude. What rudeness? He's stating facts. She just listed the kind of stuff someone makes in their beginner ceramics class. You can make that kind of shit out of Lego.

"Specifically? No. But I wouldn't discount the ability to merge multiple forms of molten lava together in whatever shape is intricate enough to look like an octopus."

That doesn't mean he's not slightly worried about her idea of a convex lens, but then again that's sort of his fault for over-simplifying. "How about putting two of them back to back? Better yet, a convex objective lens outright; loses the potential for air bubbles."

Edited (i literally added a dot but it was necessary i'm sorry) 2016-12-15 14:10 (UTC)

Annie had not been raised to be dramatic, and yet, there's an element of that in her. The Career Academy worked on it, the tiny sassy girl with her opinions. And although she's away from the art scene she sells to, some of it stings. Basic workanship, as if she hadn't been working on those skills for five years. As if she hadn't improved, or as if there wasn't a difference between the bowl of a rank beginner and someone who knew what they were doing.

But she'd be fair: she had rattled off the basic forms, rather than the skilled level of them. Mostly because she's been thinking of what might be useful instead of just giving him all of what she knows.

"I... think you might need to sketch that out for me," Annie says finally. "And I can only be so precise. I blow glass, and I don't have any grinder here. But if we get things workin', I can do what we can. And we can work at it." Her mouth twitches into an almost smile. "It's not like glass isn't reusable."

Tony had been here for awhile now and, even worse, taking up a lot of time in the one shop that was next to Sam's house. He'd mostly been avoiding the man, of course giving him a nod in passing so it didn't seem too terrible. After all, with the population they had it was impossible to truly avoid someone unless he pulled a Finnick or Annie and just hid in the woods. But even they appeared from time to time -- now more often than before due to the weather.

So he'd decided. If Tony was going to be next door every day, well, Sam wasn't going to be that guy who just continued to avoid him. Besides, from Sam's perspective the events of his own world had been six months ago now. He'd gotten over Natasha's involvement, and he was done acting like it mattered here. Here they had to survive.

Sam knocked on the door to the blacksmith shop, even as he poked his head in. He could never be sure what Tony was doing in here so he wanted to make sure he wasn't going to startle the guy. "Hey. You all right in here?" He'd been seeing and hearing about too many animal corpses lately to be comfortable leaving people he knew unchecked.

At this point, Tony felt like he'd actually had more interaction with Sam Wilson in whatever setting this counted as than he'd had a chance to gather at home. As such, it left Wilson more or less on '30% not a stranger' status, which was still not really that much to work with, and meant that unless Sam knew him and initiated contact, Tony didn't really have many reasons to beyond the general 'hi' 'hey' 'how's it going' 'fine' &c. Their acquaintanceship was limited enough that it almost meant nothing anyway, and they didn't seem to be running into one another naturally, so. Granted, a little weird given the limited population, but on Tony's end, not entirely abnormal.

Really the most abnormal element came from Wilson being from their own planet - he assumed - and only borderline seeming to recognize him at first. Maybe there was a time discrepancy involved. Honestly, Tony had no idea, and out of the myriad of mysteries in this place at any given time, 'why this one guy isn't acting as familiar with me as thought he might' doesn't really hit any bells.

Anyway.

"Yeah, fine. Toasty, almost. What brings you here?"

"Was in the neighborhood," was his coy reply.

Sam decided honesty was the best policy, "Just checking around and making sure it's still only animal corpses that people are finding and not the other kind." He might not have cared much for Tony, but he certainly didn't want him dead.

This reply likely earns Sam the look that he was anticipating. Tony refuses to dignify the comment with anything more than that, though, immediately returning to picking out the handful of items that might still be useful in their original form, as he lacks the means to reproduce them should they need the things later. He's eager to produce something, but that hasn't blinded his forethought in terms of his new reality.

"Appreciate the worry, but I promise if something starts trying to kill me, my lung capacity extends to the ends of the neighborhood."

Sam considered that, though didn't exactly find it reassuring. He'd seen this place mess with the senses before, he wouldn't put it past this place to prevent him from helping a friend if that was truly part of the design.

"Right," he finally said, skeptically. He hesitated, eyeing the room. He had no idea what Stark could possibly be working on, but he couldn't help being curious. "Well, I'm here and got nothing better to do...you need any help moving some of these pieces or anything?"

That happens to be one of the kinds of responses that Tony has been gradually learning to recognize as 'hey shithead maybe you were just an asshole', albeit on the really down-low. Regardless, that level of breathlessly obvious subject change is indicative of some sort of something underlying taking place, even if he's not immediately attuned enough to key into it specifically. Tony's gut with people tends to outpace his cognitive awareness.

"Not a lot of big pieces here to move around, although I might call you up later on - there's a couple of beams that look like they'll fall and kill me if I try to pull any more screws out, and while I'm all about screwing, I'd really prefer not to die in the process."

After that, he shrugs a little. "This stuff isn't too bad. Although if you wanna pick through the pile and figure out which nails are straight enough to live healthily in Kentucky and which ones need a little hammering back into shape I wouldn't necessarily mind."

Well, he had asked.

Sam hadn't known Tony for very long nor had he known him very well. This combined meant it took him a split second to put together what the man had meant. Sam looked down at his feet, a few nails having scattered around from other efforts with the pile Tony had mentioned. "Yeah, keep in mind you getting crushed under a beam isn't something we can just run you to the hospital for here," Sam added. He crossed over to the aforementioned pile, he was taking his own advice of caution and started picking through the scraps for nails. No sense giving himself tetanus or something worse by rushing the nail search.

Allison doesn't set humane traps. She can't — their very survival depends on her traps and snares doing their job and killing whatever is trapped inside of it so they can eat, and use everything else however they can. Hunting isn't something she was brought up in, but she's taken to it, the talent and drive to protect the people she's now living with. So she's surprised when she sees movement in one of her snares, a dark color wiggling against the white snow. She kneels down, her eyes growing bigger when she sees what it is: a small raccoon, probably not even a year in age. It was probably out foraging, and got caught, and for whatever reason, the snare failed, catching the little animal by the leg and not the neck like it was intended to. The poor thing's nearly tired itself out — it doesn't even try to flee when Allison approaches it slowly, setting her borrow knife down next to the snare. She reaches for it carefully, and she frowns when it doesn't try to bite, just lays there, breathing heavily — and it doesn't take her long to see why all the fight is nearly out of it. It's leg is raw and open where the snare's caught it, rubbed beyond raw and into bleeding. It's so little and in so much pain, and Allison doesn't even think, she just grabs her knife and cuts the raccoon free as carefully as she can and whips off her coat, wrapping it up in it as carefully as she can. The chill cuts her to the bone, but it's not a long walk back to her house — if she can warm it up, maybe she can figure out a way to help heal it.

'We protect those who cannot protect themselves', and this little thing is in no condition to do so.

Her house is by the blacksmith's, and she stops when she sees movement inside. She's not sure if the forge is going, she can't see smoke coming from the top of the building, but it's closer to her than her house is. Whomever is in there might be able to help her get the raccoon patched up, and maybe even decide what to do with it afterwards. She doesn't wait for the thought to really process, and she doesn't even knock on the door, just pushes her way in and shuts it behind her, squinting in the low light.

"I need help."

Tony isn't expecting anyone - he can't even say 'at this hour'; he just literally isn't expecting anyone right now, period. He has a fire going - he might be able to make boiling water in the inn a bit more efficient if he can figure this one thing out - and he sort of wipes at his face when his thought process is interrupted. Despite the overwhelming chill from outside, it's still either marginally to very warm in here, depending on where one stands, and Tony looks first at the girl, then at the bundle in her arms.

He has literally no idea how to help.

"I have no idea what you need. You can't say 'help' and then find someone and not elaborate." There's a slight pause. "Well you can, but you still do need to immediately keep talking. What is it, and is it serious?"

Edited (i literally just noticed i had some txtspk in there whoops) 2016-11-30 07:01 (UTC)

Allison balks for a second as he speaks, because she recognizes — maybe not the cadence but that particular brand of verbal vomit. Her instinct is to roll her eyes, and she thankfully keeps from doing so. Rolling her eyes at Stiles is one thing, but a complete and total stranger who she's asking for help out of the blue? It's a little rude.

She's still rolling her eyes in her tone as she sets the bundle down on the cleanest part of the workbench she can find, opening it up just enough for the raccoon to poke it's head out.

"It's this. I found him in the woods," she says, guessing the gender; she hasn't exactly had time to check. "In one of my traps. He's probably not even a year old yet, and he's hurt really bad. I'm not even sure how he managed to set off the trap without it doing what it was supposed to do."

Allison pulls open the coat a little more to reveal the wound on his leg, looking up at Tony. "Can you watch him here while I run to grab something to clean this out? I think he's shock, so he shouldn't give you too much trouble."

Holy shit. There is a tiny furry thing on his workbench. Well, it's not his workbench - he has yet to truly break it in and even once he does it will likely not be in a manner that makes him assume this place dwells within his own dominion.

Either way there is still some sort of tiny baby furry thing on the limited workspace he was accustomed to sharing with approximately no one. Sure, other people used the place here and there, or even attempted to use it, but Tony had personally run into p much none of them so far.

Honestly, he would be so much happier if someone else who thought they knew shit about blacksmithing were here right now, because apparently no one knows anything and it leaves him alone in this sudden situation.

"It's this," she says, as though that will help with anything at all, even though not even six seconds before Tony requested exactly that sort of information. "Uhhh," is how Tony helpfully replies. He does at least double-check the furnace and like. All the sharp or boiling hot materials he happens to have handy. Honestly it's the final glance to the tiny fluffball just here that does him in. Tony Stark is a dick in a suit of armor, but it's his mechanical, magnetic heart that does him in every time.

"Yeah, sure, what the hell. Why not. This fire isn't going out anytime soon," he replies, as though he's not close enough to grab the tiny thing in his arms anyway. Shhh - Tony Stark is a dick, pass it on. He doesn't take care of tiny animals.

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(204): Text me later if you aren't dead and wanna have a drink later

The Blacksmith

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Sorry for the delay.

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i'm sorry my tags keep getting so embroiled in his thought process

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