sixthiterationlogs | sorry mario

Entry tags:

sorry mario

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: The Fountain, Blacksmithy.
WHEN: 25 Sept.
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Tony Stark.
STATUS: Open, ongoing. Like I'll ever remember to edit this once it's not.

ᴛʜᴇ ғᴏᴜɴᴛᴀɪɴ

He squints.

Both at the sunlight and the fact that the world seems to have rearranged itself somehow in the last little while since he most recently took survey of his surroundings, and he's not entirely sure to which direction things have swung but he knows he doesn't like it.

Level one, assessment. He's sitting up on the bottom of a probably-concrete pit outside, and he can hear wildlife. No, wait, not a pit, a fountain, unless one makes the argument that a fountain without any water is technically a pit anyway. "Somebody changed my clothes, sure, why not, that's not weird at all. That hasn't happened since like. Ninety four." Investigating the backpack tells him very little aside from the fact that someone around here apparently lacks forethought and that he's retroactively pretty happy this fountain is empty aside from one increasingly irritated engineer.

"Alright, I don't know what kind of game this is, but it's pretty crappy! Like, terrible. Duke Nukem wouldn't even touch this with a wavebird, and now I'm just talking to myself in a hole. Fantastic. I have red pants, a peacoat, and nothing to get out of here with."

Shouting into the void seems like potentially a Bad Idea, so instead he's gonna poke around and see if he can finagle something out of the pipework maybe. Probably with running commentary to himself.

ʙʟᴀᴄᴋsᴍɪᴛʜʏ

Well this is familiar. His hand releases the strap of his backpack over his shoulder and trails over the edge of a shelf. Tony hasn't seen much of wherever the hell this little place is - nothing even really indicates whatever country he's supposed to be in now - but he can't really say it looks that appealing. If there's a blacksmith, then this might be a little bit more rustic than he's comfortable with. Either that or he's found the last bastion of hipsters. That might at least explain the overalls.

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Tony's actually heard this story from her, but in a rare moment of insight he's figuring it would be the better option to maybe decline from saying so. Anyway it's less of a story right now and more an admission, and sometimes you just let those live where they lie, in the moments between making the decisions that cause them. Besides, he doesn't want to bring up years of resentment for Captain America right now, or scoot back into how Howard Stark was as a father.

Anyway, she abruptly shifts her posture and appears to move on from the topic, which - thank god - means Tony can as well. "Uh, sure, yeah why not, if you don't have anything else to do." If there's a bit of a tone in his voice it's less questioning and more on the edge of hopeful. The longer they speak, the more he realizes he's missed her.

"Sadly, my time here is occupied with mealtimes, explorations, attempts at learning new skills, and keeping in whatever shape I can manage," Peggy says. "Which leaves a great deal of free time for whatever might pop up," she says, managing a warm smile for Tony. "I'd be happy to show you around."

It's both for a friend of hers, but also for Tony himself. After all, where he comes from, she's a sort of support for him and she thinks it's only right that she offers that now. Besides, he seems a good boy (and what a strange thing to think, given how much older than her that he is).

"What a ball," Tony says, relatively deadpan but smiling a little back reflexively in the wake of her own. He turns to look around at nearest parts of the village - he's done it a couple times sure, but that was mostly a conversational tool for avoidance - and. Well. Maybe it'll look more encouraging up close. Hopefully. Dear god, please let it look more encouraging up close.

He never really has been one to let silence dominate a conversation, so once they start walking, he starts multi-tasking. "So, question. I've got red - clearly - and there's a fire symbol on my backpack. Do you have like, a water symbol? Do we get together to create Captain Planet?"

Peggy gapes at him and feels like she's not as confused as she ought to be for all the madness Tony seems keen on sputtering off to her. She glances down at her navy blue scrubs and then to his red ones, thinking that perhaps there's some meaning behind it, but she's allowing that mystery to run in the back of her mind. "Perhaps it's just someone's favourite colour," she says. "Or the last colour you were wearing on a Tuesday seven months ago."

"What on earth is a Captain Planet?" she demands, when it continues to poke at her and annoy her terribly.

It will inevitably probably become added to the list he's already working on putting together for things that he wants answers for, but for now it's at the forefront just because it's right there. "I do wear a lot of red," he agrees.

She just sounds so irritated, he can't help but laugh a little bit. "By product of sustainability movement targeting kids. Also produced one of the most catchy theme songs of pretty much any cartoon ever, I can actually hear it playing in my head now."

She blinks once, then twice, then a third time just to see if she can somehow process the information that he's giving her. She's used to crass media being awful and twisting things for entertainment value, but she's not entirely sure that she understands why on earth they would need such a thing to promote sustainability.

And yet...

Tony might not be Howard, but in some ways, a Stark is a Stark. "Sing it," she insists.

"Wait, what? I'm not gonna sing it," is his knee-jerk reaction, because wow out of all the things he was expecting her to react with, that was definitely not one of them. Hilariously far from it. He's not entirely sure why, considering he did just say it was catchy and he could hear it, but. Still.

That's interesting, enough. Peggy hadn't really counted on him to actually sing anything, but it says something that in this state, he doesn't. It means that there are limits to how much Tony intends to do to win over her favour and it gives her a baseline to begin working with. "I'll have to leave it to my imagination, then," she says.

Soon, they're arriving at some of the homes, down the block from where Peggy is staying. "Apart from the aesthetics on the outside, they're fairly similar," she says. "Beds, linens, curtains. Unless you've the ill luck of picking a home that's been ransacked for materials."

He's not actually sure why he said no, but. He doesn't know. Tony concedes a few seconds after she says she'll leave it to her imagination, because that's not necessarily disappointment, but. Who is he to deprive someone of the Captain Planet theme song?

"Maybe later."

Anyway, they're closer now, so he's kind of sad that it does, in fact, not really look that much more encouraging. "I'm sure you'd tell me if I did that, right?" he says, somewhat playfully. "So, totally furnished - stocked? Nobody lives in any of these? Aside from fountaineers."

"I haven't done any pilfering," Peggy says, a touch offended that she would invade someone else's home to find something for herself despite the fact that she has absolutely done that for other supplies. Perhaps it's a touch hypocritical, but she keeps mum about that. "But you're right about the population. The only people who are currently living here are those that came out of the fountain, but the signs are absolutely there to indicate that there were people here before."

"For one, the very moment that I arrived, there wasn't a soul but us, and yet, someone set off an air raid siren as warning before a windstorm hit." She's yet to be able to explain that and it irritates her more than she thinks it should.

Tony sounds slightly confused when he first responds with, "I never said you did," but the tone doesn't quite make it to questioning. He hadn't assumed when she said that materials had been taken from certain houses that she'd been burgling people. Not like she couldn't if she wanted to. Or did a lot of for Uncle Sam.

Anyway. Whatever.

He mulls that little nugget over for a few moments before finally responding. "Where's the siren?"

"I don't know," she bites out the words, the frustration evident in the way it forces the words out a touch aggressively, but it's the biggest problem right now. She absolutely doesn't know who set it off, how they knew to set it off, or where it came from. "It's just one more mystery this place has decided to throw our way and I'm no closer to solving it, despite going nearly mad trying to figure it out."

God, it's like. There's so many layers of nostalgia and guilt and giddiness happening right now. Tony's no stranger to feeling many different, often contradictory things at once, and neither is he unfamiliar with feeling them strongly. It's really more the being able to identify and appreciate them all and not be overwhelmed by it. Why is he not overwhelmed? Why does this feel... Comfortable? He's just arrived god-knows-where, god-knows-when, he's a generation older than his aunt, and the edge of frustration in her voice is so recognizable he almost wants to scream. Or at least point at her and then loudly shout, "Look!" No one has ever argued that Tony Stark makes sense more often than he doesn't.

Anyway. That is weird, the siren. Not knowing, how it went off, why it went off. "How far out have you guys managed to explore? I mean, we can't be completely isolated." There's a moment, then he amends. "Okay we could be, but evidence strongly indicates to the contrary. Unless we're either extremely lucky with a very well hidden, abandoned, and malfunctioning security system, or the alarm goes off on a regular, albeit very long interval."

In many cases, Tony is irritated about the interruption to the mystery he was working on back home. In most, however, at the moment, this one is a welcome distraction. This one at least literally can't be his fault. Probably.

"Every time I try and push the boundaries of this place, something shifts. It's like an endless horizon," she says, thinking of the multiple maps that she's had to throw out because a one hour expedition turned into six hours of her walking and walking, only to find that the horizon before her kept expanding. "The more and more I'm here, the more I start to think this must be some sort of experiment."

"Or, rather, that we've got captors," she says darkly.

Oh, fantastic. "So I've landed in a mysterious, malleable, maybe malevolent, unmappable location of some sort. That's great. What do you guys call it, Bermuda?"

An experiment does... Actually not sound inaccurate. No interfering except to change the independent variables, introducing new catalysts and quietly observing, having a confined and controlled environment - they just have to figure out some sort of common theme among whatever random shit happens to them. As for the other idea, he shrugs a little bit. "Captors tend to be pretty direct and immediate with the whole 'telling you what they want' thing," he starts, before continuing. "Unless we're leverage against someone else, but that doesn't really jive well. Kidnapping doesn't really look this much like Skyrim; I'm liking the experiment idea a bit more."

Peggy isn't sure how they haven't named the place they're in. It's typical human tendency to want to put a name to things, so she does find it a bit strange that they've been here for some time and have yet to give it any sort of designation. "No one's actually named it," she says, but it's quickly followed by a sharp look. "Which isn't to say that any terrible name is going to do." If they are part of some larger experiment, she has to wonder what on earth the purpose and point is.

All she knows is that she doesn't like being pushed around and told what to do. It makes her bristle and bark, hating the way it makes her feel trapped. "You keep saying things I absolutely don't understand," she reminds him wearily. "I'm an old woman, remember?" she dryly jokes.

"It's not terrible, it's perfect - quasi vacation, way more trouble than it's worth, people appear and disappear at will - I'm calling the fountain the Bermuda Triangle and I doubt you're gonna stop me. Also seriously, how have none of you named it? People name everything."

Tony's also curious as to what could possibly be the point, but unfortunately all that sort of information gathering means observation over time. Which means... time, and waiting. Something he's neither all that fond of, nor historically very good at.

He glances at her when she jokes, a bit amused because that's better than any other potential way to handle all these things he's learning. "Yeah, that's probably not gonna stop either, but I guess I can try." Anyway, he's glad she didn't question whether his awareness of how kidnappings usually go was theoretical or otherwise. He continues on, "If it is an experiment, commonalities would hopefully be visible after a while. Patterns, testing us on the same skills in different ways. We'll just have to keep watch."

"Not when you're not intending to stay past the week." Only that one week had turned to two, then three, and then more and more to the point that Peggy is fairly sure she's missed her window for naming this place and she's going to simply have to put up with whatever it is that people come up with.

She leads him down another path of homes, some of them affected by the quake, including hers (which had collapsed in half). "People keep arriving in a fountain," she points out. "Not to mention the predominant habit of something terrible happening, only for something beneficial to swoop in on its heels."

"I've seen people name a mocha frappuccino they knew wasn't going to exist in half an hour," he deadpans. "You'd be surprised."

Tony's somewhat distracted by the damaged houses, because that's something to file away for later, and he wants to see what's in the walls. What better opportunity than walls that are already cut away for easy viewing? So his response comes slightly delayed while he's investigating a little bit. "I assume that means something bad just happened," he says, turning back around and brushing his hands off. "Since I'm here now."

8D

She rolls her head to the side and resists the urge to place her hands on her hips, the ego a staggering thing that she's unfortunately not unaccustomed to. She just didn't think that she'd be dealing with someone so like Howard - and it makes sense, seeing as it's his son, and the apple does not seem to fall far from the tree.

"There was the massive earthquake that destroyed my home," is her prim, even reply. "I'm not sure your arrival is enough to make up for that fact."

Well that sort of. Like he knew something bad had just happened, because she told him, but he wasn't really thinking about it. It does sort of sober him up a little bit, although he's not sure how to go about responding until he's caught back up alongside her.

"Any other patterns?" Because that's the best way to move past awkward things - you just sort of pretend it didn't happen.

"The earthquakes had been followed by a tainting of the water, but then a spring appeared. It healed wounds and left a rather glowing effect on any who used it. There was a crate of weapons found not long after we arrived, too, but there are others who vanished right before they got here."

She settles back against a spot of ruin that she can perch on, watching him idly. "I'm sure any of these homes would suit you."

"Glowing aside from healing wounds? Does that mean they actually glowed?"

Not that the weapons thing isn't interesting, neither is the people disappearing something he wants to dismiss. He's mostly just more interested in something he might be able to understand, science-based or maybe otherwise. It's easier to pretend whatever might have just happened didn't just happen.

She seems as though she's more than willing to wrap up the conversation though, and Tony's not quite sure he's ready for that. They might be stuck here together in a potentially confined environment, but this is the first time he's properly spoken to her in years, if not decades. Maybe he doesn't want it to end. "Which one would you recommend?"

"The sort of glowing a woman typically only has when she's pregnant," she clarifies. "It seemed to enhance natural beauty and make one's skin feel rather incredible." She can speak from experience thanks to that lovely little dip in the spring, but she's hardly about to tell Tony all the benefits she'd noticed after that little foray.

As she studies him, she wonders how much like his father he is. "Do you like large, ostentatious styles and homes? There are some here that are quite large. Four or five bedrooms, I think," she says, having seen them in her exploring. "You won't be able to decorate it as lavishly as a Stark mansion might be, but it should suit."

Tony's not initially actually familiar with the description - despite his somewhat-previous-hilariously-difficult-to-shed public playboy persona, he's never actually knocked anyone up - thank god. And it's not like pregnant women haven't been near him, or whatever, but in all honesty they're usually in mobs and he just can't remember.

Anyway, he can guess it readily enough - it's not as though he's never seen a pregnant woman, although until now he'd tended to associate the sheen to various other potential sources. This only added one more to the convoluted mix.

At the housing suggestion, Tony gives half a shrug - if that even translates as movement at all - and replies: "Don't really want that many potential roommates. Anything that looks like a studio offhand?" Tony also doesn't want all that potential space, familiar and not all at once. There's a reason his NYC pad isn't the same as his Malibu one, and it's complicated no matter how you look at it.

sorry mario

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'he seems a good boy' leave me here

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lord i wish he was current bc he'd suggest 'the upside down' for the name

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