sixthiterationlogs | Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: Tube Room in the Bunker, Inn, Forge
WHEN: September 3rd onward
OPEN TO: Initially Bucky Barnes, then Everyone
WARNINGS: Descriptions of Dissolving, Canon typical Violence, Language, Blood, etc.

Tubular Trauma - [Closed to Bucky Barnes]

Oblivion isn't as comforting as Tony thought it might be. That drifting, aching sort of silence that seeps in like ice to strangle all sensation and thought? Normally didn't include quite this much pressure. Like the armor locked up dead around him, but with a single terrifying exception he's never had water between his skin and the circuitry. It makes drifting awake less of a vague meandering towards consciousness and more of a snapped, panicked shot of adrenaline to the base of his spine. Because this? This isn't Titan. It's not stale air stinking of ozone and ash it's a tube.

Full of fucking water. Whatever's just beyond is a bit beyond his capacity to grasp seeing as the first detail that sinks in isn't that he's in soaked scrubs, floating in a tube. It's the slow coil of red swirling in the water from his left side and- that? That's going to be a problem. The patch job didn't hold through whatever the ever loving fuck brought him here- why being fully submerged makes this easier, he doesn't know. Too confused to panic, he'll think- as soon as he gets out. Though trying to scrabble for a seam in the tube is A) useless and B) slow going with one hand, the other pressed tight against his wound, for all the good it does in keeping the exit wound from bleeding.

Protip: It doesn't.

Got an Inn

Adjustment after a shock is- well. It's a thing. A shock to his system, a shock to the senses, emotional fatigue, whatever. The finely tuned engine that is his brain keeps trying and failing to roll over, the dull click click click of failing spark plug echos in his teeth. Failure's one thing. It wasn't an option, and they'd failed and that- he'll. Cope. Somehow. Not much of an option. He'd given himself a moment, maybe ten to breathe and think and wonder and he'd- woken up here. In scrubs (his stylists would kill him, Pepper would kill him) and they're not there, he knows they aren't there, but he can't help but keep picking at his nails. Digging out bits of ash and soot that don't exist anywhere but in his memory along with the still palpable crumpling of an adolescent arachnid that-

Yeah, no. Not thinking about that.

Heels of his hands pressed to his eyes Tony tries to just. Breathe. Eat the damn lunch he'd come to get and figure out a step two. Or. Shit, at this point? He'd take a step one. Maybe another soak in the hotspring so his ribs and torso stop feeling quite so delicate; he's been over this whole thing for years Revisiting this particular sharp edged vulnerability? Not his idea of fun.

Rebuilding, Rebranding, Reforging

The best part about waking up here, Tony decides, is the built in ability to figure out what the 'best' option is for him, outlined in a shade of blue so damn familiar it aches a little. As long as he's stressed out of his mind- which is all day, every day, since he was fucking twelve- and without direction (which is every hour since the snap) the universe which screwed him over so spectacularly through circumstance and poor cosmic shuffling throws him a bone. A glowing line not entirely unlike a flight path that guides him from wherever his latest round of trying not to rattle apart while left alone with his own sharply spiraling thoughts that circle 'we're fucked we're fucked we're fucked' on a nigh infinite loop was (usually somewhere not too open, usually with his back pressed so hard to a wall it's hard to breathe but he needs to know he can see everything that's coming at him or not) to...a pretty well dead forge. It's antiquated like the rest of the village. Clean, empty, quaint.

Dead coals, unused tools, and just getting everything cleared out to the point of use would take a day, finding ore or iron would take gifts or mining but- he can start doing something. Here's the best place for him and it's true, he can feel that garrote of tension fit to strangle start to go loose at the idea of a project. It's direction. It's something productive, something he can lay his hands on and...tinker. Bandage around his ribs or no, Orders for bedrest or no (he has them, he's ignoring them, some shit doesn't change), Tony busies himself with getting the forge cleaned up and organized, rough charcoal sketches dusted on the wall as he plans the first of many projects that still...won't be enough. Not to keep him busy. Not to keep him sane. But for now? it's as good a place to start as any. First order of business: Stockpiling iron to work. Which...that'll take some doing, won't it?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[She nods, moving to the workbench and shrugging off the backpack. It hits the ground with a dull thud, and she opens it up slightly to pull out a journal that she's kept stored at the very top. Firewood fills the rest.

The pencil she pulls from behind her ear where it had been tucked previously. She starts idly copying down what she reads and roughly organizing it. She adds 'chalkboard' as he mentions it.]

It used to be worse, if you can believe it. None of the buildings had electricity at first, not even the Inn. [So not even a fridge or oven or anything like that.] We were also stuck in a canyon, surrounded on all sides.

Edited 2018-09-06 01:24 (UTC)

How do you go from a box canyon to...this?

[ Fresh and verdant and full of batshit insanity. Tony's not too fond of what he's been seeing- sure it's pretty enough but the Bunker brought up so many unpleasant memories it's not even funny, and the weird shit he keeps hearing about in the surrounding area? No thanks. ]

We've got a mill, we've got an engineer, I can see about making it a more consistent thing- or at least get us an addition where appliances will be run on hydroelectric systems.

[She shakes her head.]

I had disappeared for a while when it happened, but someone said the whole canyon thing? Was just some kind of simulation. It wasn't real. Anyway, everyone was moved here somehow. Someone's controlling the whole thing, but we don't know how to get to them.

[Even more batshit insanity to add to the pile. Sorry, Tony.]

Every little bit helps. Having you here...I mean I wish this hadn't happened to you, but you being here is going to make things a lot better for us.

...Like the Matrix?

[ Which is apparently both possible and a thing and- not something he really wants to think about all that much if he wants to stay sane. So. Work. Projects. Hair iron and something to heat it since electricity isn't a reliable kind of thing around here just yet. Give him time. ]

There's always work for Engineers. This is...pretty good compared to where I was back home, if I'm honest. So I'm not about to complain. Give me a week or two to settle, then I'll start bitching.

Maybe? Between the simulation and those....tubes in the bunker, who knows.

[The tube they'd found her in about a week after she died. No one even knew how she ended up there in the first place.

It's hard not to dwell on.]

Me too. [She'd been dying back home, too. Her and most of the people she cared about.] But the upgrades will be nice.

Better living through technology. That's the Stark byline.

[ Might as well kick up the same business here- less defense contracting and more day to day assistance but- he'll get them on the right track. There are more than enough projects to keep him busy at any rate. ]

Getting power to the village regularly would be useful- or at least to a workshop or something.

[She taps the end of her pencil against her chin thoughtfully.]

Well, some of the buildings have electricity. Would there be some way to route it to other buildings in town? Maybe slowly build outward from the inn or something?

I haven't had a chance to figure out A) how that's happening or B) take a look at the power grid. Building off the inn wouldn't be a terrible idea but developing a generator and going off the mill was more along the lines of what I was looking at. Instead of depending on what some people arbitrarily have, building up a store or space that we can run on our own terms.

[ What's provided is fickle- Tony hates fickle. Something standardized is more ideal 100% of the time. ]

This is all assuming that, even if we do figure all this out, the powers that be won't just take it all away if they think we've overstepped our bounds.

[The joys of being a part of this nonsense.]

If only they'd left some kind of manual to let us know where those boundaries were.

Here's the thing: They brought me here. They either know who I am and what I can do or they'll figure it out pretty quick. I revolutionized clean energy once before, I'll do it again. I've got the tools and I'll make it happen.

They take it away? I'll start from scratch.

[She just hopes they won't take the step of doing to him what they did to her if it comes down to it.]

At least we're always sure to have something to do.

[A poor attempt at humor, but she has to try.]

Idle hands are the devil's workshop. It's have an obscenely long list of projects or I'll be day drinking and blackout engineering shit I can't actually build like...a helicopter made of bamboo or something.

[She chuckles softly, shaking her head.]

Obscenely long list of projects it is, then. Just don't work yourself to death.

Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing

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