tushanshu_logs | Torn away from home soil

Entry tags:

Torn away from home soil

Characters: Pepper Potts, Raine Sage, Yami no Bakura, and you!
Date: Throughout August
Location: All over Keeliai' specifics in the starters
Situation: It's hot and dry, but Pepper is starting to get comfortable with being here.
Warnings/Rating: None yet. Will be edited and marked in starters if need be.

A. Jade Dojo | Backdated to August 3 | Closed to Bakura

Pepper has been spending a lot of time at the dojo, either training with Gene or just coming by to observe or talk to Bakura. It's nice to have someplace to go other than home. His disappearance the previous month had been weird, to say the least, but she'd refrained from saying anything. Hard as she tries, Pepper can't seem to resist asking what happened. She also has a different request to make of him, and perhaps if she asks about that first it'll distract her enough to keep her mouth shut. ~~Not likely.~~

The way to the dojo is familiar to her now, and she heads there with a sort of relaxed determination on her face.

B. Sky Sector | August 8 | Closed to Raine

Raine has had the opportunity to fly as Pepper's passenger in the armor, but as cool as that is, piloting it is a lot better. Although she's a bit nervous about letting the half-elf use her suit, that's more a result of not knowing how to teach her properly than anything else. Pepper had spent months using the armory remote chair before stepping into a suit, so it wasn't that big of a leap. Fortunately, the armor's computer is pretty smart, so she's relatively sure everything will be okay. She's asked Raine to stay near home base just in case, so Pepper is waiting at home. Tony can be there in a heartbeat in the unlikely event of something happening.

C. Earth Sector | Late August | Closed to Raine

Pepper has been trying, she really, really has. She’s been here for almost four months now, and Tony and Gene are still dating. So she can’t just pretend it isn’t happening. She’s been working on the whole ‘being supportive’ thing like she knows she should, but when it comes right down to it, she’s still upset. It’s not so intensely awful now, sure, but man is it upsetting. And the reasons why it’s upsetting are confusing and painful all to themselves, and it’s dimming her usual cheeriness at times.

What she could really use right now is to talk to a friend, and normally that would be Rhodey, but he’s not here and that’s just more upsetting. The only other person she can think of that might understand, or at the very least be willing to listen without being clever and/or snarky in some way, is Raine.

D. Keeliai | Throughout August | Open to All

Pepper has more of a set schedule, sort of. She spends part of her time with Skulduggery a few days a week, and sometimes does Guild work. She’s spending more time in the Wood Sector, since she goes to the dojo a lot, too. It’s a nice area, calming, which she wouldn’t have expected since she’s not much of an outdoorsy kind of person. Of course, she’s also in the Sky Sector, often checking out the new shops that open seemingly once a week. She needs to maintain her shopping skills, after all. After her jaunt with Raine last month, she’s also taken to flying around the city at times, usually at night.

E. Central Sector | Before August 10 | Closed to Bakura

Of all the people Pepper ever thought she would get to go shopping with, Bakura was not one of them. And yet, here she was, going to meet the dojo owner to search for cards. It wasn't exactly a spree, and there would be no shoes or clothes involved, but it's still a shopping trip. She's excited regardless. Granted, this simple exercise is the first step on what might be a very dark road, at least for a while, given what Bakura said about a test. In the meantime, though, this ought to be fun.

OOC: If you want a starter hit me up at plurk.

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To be frank, Raine hadn't even realized it was an option; the armor seemed to have been crafted for one person, and she'd hardly expect to be able to wear even one of Colette's guards and have it fit the same way. But evidently either she was close enough to Pepper in size or Tony's technology was eminently adjustable or some combination thereof, and it had not taken Raine much thought at all to say yes.

So they set a date, and Raine showed up on Pepper's doorstep at the appointed time, knocking twice before taking half a step back. A thought occurred to her, and she tipped her head back to look up at the sky, wondering if Pepper would happen to be up and about.

Looking up, as it turns out, is a good idea. Pepper is zooming around above the house, doing somersaults and spirals and dives, whooping with glee. Her HUD alerts her to Raine's presence on the doorstep, so she stops mid-roll and looks down.

Grinning, she returns to the ground next to Raine and retracts the face plate.

"Ready to fly? You are so gonna love this," Pepper says happily.

Raine watches Pepper's landing carefully, looking at her movements more closely than she has before. "I believe so," Raine says when the faceplate opens, and it's almost calm, but the opportunity at hand is too exciting and unique for her to be anything like completely calm. She smiles at Pepper, bright, cheerful.

She doesn't quite bounce, but it's a near thing.

"All right, what do I need to do?"

Raine looks like she's about to start jumping around with excitement, which Pepper can relate to. She actually had jumped around when Tony showed her the armor for the first time.

"Well, first I need to get out." Pepper gives the computer a command and portions of the armor retract, while others open, so that she can step out of it. The armor remains standing, and it's possible to see the inside. "And then you get in. If you put your arm in first it'll put itself on you, actually.

"It responds to voice commands, like 'Engage thrusters' and whatnot, and there are buttons inside the gauntlets you can use to fly and fire repulsors and stuff with more control. But," she adds, "I turned off the firing capabilities for now. I got the computer set up to give you a kind of walk through. It's also got autopilot in case things go horribly wrong," she finishes brightly.

It's amazingly exciting. It's very close to magitechnology, in fact, but so far as Raine can tell with none of the deleterious effects on the magical environment. The sheer scope of it is astounding, as is the fact that something like this exists. And that Raine gets to ~~experiment with~~ experience it firsthand? It's marvelous.

Although Pepper's description of 'repulsors and stuff' leaves something to be desired, the computer setup is promising. "A wise idea," Raine says, of both the autopilot and turning firing capabilities off for now. "All right. How precise do the voice commands need to be?"

In concession to the heat, she's begun to leave her jacket at home lately, which means the only other necessary pause is to lean her staff against the doorjamb before moving toward the armor. The entire thing gets a careful visual once-over, mostly on principle, before Raine puts her arm in as instructed.

Fortunately, the suits are run using ARC technology and and electricity, zero magic whatsoever. Pepper would agree that it is endlessly amazing.

"Um, not super precise. Tony has it programmed to understand humor. Well, his humor at least," she adds, "but it's pretty responsive. Fire boot jets, engage thrusters, same idea."

As Raine put her arm into the suit, it shifts, clicking and whirring until it fits itself around her. The faceplate closes, so she should be able to hear the computer greeting her, and the repulsor activators against her palms. The Heads Up Display should start walking her through basic operation of the suit.

"I'm going to be totally hypocritical here and say you should just stay with hovering," Pepper says, pulling out her phone. She has some control over the armor with it, but it's mostly just for monitoring.

Raine remains very still as she lets the suit fit itself to her, and she pays careful attention to the computer and the ensuing tutorial, memorizing as she goes. Her first step, eventually, will not be to fling herself into flight, but rather simple movement, experimenting with the weight of the armor and seeing if she'll need to compensate for anything. She flexes her fingers, shifts her weight. Takes a few steps. It's easier than she'd expected.

"I take it you didn't exactly start slow," she says, amused. It isn't really Pepper's style. "All right. Hovering." Rather than instruct the computer, Raine goes, carefully, via the controls in the gauntlets, as both Pepper and the computer instructed.

"Uh. No. Not exactly. I took it for a test drive. And then we took a nice flight to China and the world almost ended," Pepper explains cheerfully. "Best. Lessons. Ever."

She watches Raine carefully as she starts to hover about four feet off the ground.

"Tony would probably kill me is I let you do that, though. You're still getting into a suit a lot faster than I did. It literally took years to get Tony to let me wear one, much less make me one," she says, the annoyance clear in her tone. She presses a button on her phone. "Ooookay, now you're gonna move around a little bit so just take it easy."

Raine wonders if Tony wasn't trying to keep Pepper safe, in a misguided sort of way. Whatever his faults, he does care for his friends, very strongly. But she doesn't voice this, instead focusing on the way the suit works.

It responds a little more readily than she expected. Even having seen Tony and Pepper in theirs, she's still used to thinking of metal armor as a resisting, unyielding thing. This is that, certainly, but it reacts almost easily. "You saved the world, then," she says, doing as Pepper instructs and moving fractionally to one side, very, very carefully.

Raine isn't wrong, for the most part. Tony was reluctant both out of concern for her and Rhodey's well-being as much as worrying that Pepper couldn't handle the armor.

"Apparently. I haven't seen that for sure yet. The last thing I remember was the ship about to explode, though, so I suppose that's a good sign." Pepper watches Raine being careful. It's a little mind boggling to her that she wouldn't just go nuts, but then again, this is Raine she's talking about. "You can move more, if you want. Like, a lot more. Go crazy a little."

The suit well help guide her to fly around the house, mostly using the boot jets to hover and her hands to direct, but if she leans forward a little bit, Raine can use the boots to move around as well.

"Don't Tony and Gene know the answer?" Raine wants to know. It would set Pepper's mind at ease, if she's worried, though admittedly Raine isn't sure how far past her in time those two are.

At Pepper's injunction to go a little crazy, Raine flashes her a quick grin, hidden by the faceplate. "All right," she says, and immediately leans forward, shifting to make use of the boot jets. The suit's directing her, but even so Raine takes off with perhaps more speed than expected, going to circle the house and return to Pepper's side. Her tiny initial movements were mostly for familiarizing herself with how the suit handled, and now it's beginning to feel a bit more natural. Not instinctive by a long shot, but-- not nearly clunky, either.

She seems unmistakably pleased when she gets back to Pepper.

"Yeah. Tony said everything turns out okay. Or at least as okay as things can be when a giant alien ship blows up over a city full of eight million people," Pepper replies, trying to sound bored despite how unhappy the thought makes her. "It's not the same hearing it as seeing it," she adds, shrugging slightly.

Pepper watches as Raine zooms around the house; she's a little awkward but for the most part steady. The redhead gives a small yell of triumph when the healer returns.

"Nice! You're picking this up super fast. How do you like it?"

"It's incredible," Raine says, without reservation. The hidden smile is implied. She lowers herself, carefully, back to the ground rather than hover and force Pepper to crane her neck. "Tony really knows what he's doing."

She's not really sure how to address Pepper's other problem-- of course it's different, hearing the resolution as opposed to witnessing and believing it for yourself, but all the same, there's not much she can do to fix it. "The array of sensors is really quite impressive," Raine adds, thoughtfully, chasing the trail of an idea all the same. "Does the suit record at all?"

"More or less," Pepper replies, grinning. Tony had this interesting habit of being a genius and still making some phenomenally idiotic mistakes, but when it came to technology there was no denying he was beyond skilled.

It's a little weird having her last memory of home be seconds before a massive explosion that surely caused chaos in its wake, but it is less troubling with both Tony and Gene's assurances. There are a lot of other things that are far more upsetting at the moment, and the ship doesn't often feature in her dreams or nightmares.

"Yeah, it records just about everything. Tony made the armor to monitor us and so we could adapt to stuff on the spot, so it's always scanning, like, everything," she explains. "Why?"

Tony knows what he's doing when it comes to technology, at least. Raine should have been more specific. "More or less," Raine agrees, and there's the sound of a similarly amused smile in her voice.

She fusses with the height alone for a moment, rising several feet more or less evenly before descending back to Pepper-level. "Would Tony's suit have any recordings from that point in time?" she asks, not entirely certain. "He may not wish to revisit that time, but if it was possible for you to see it..."

This posits that Tony would have been recording in the first place, or would have kept the recordings, but it's a thought.

It looks like Raine has figured out the basics of the suit, even if she's a little hesitant or shaky in her movements. Pepper had bounced off a few buildings to start with, so she's not complaining about the lack of property damage.

"He miiiiight," she muses. "It's probably mostly sensor readings, but I guess I can ask. Anything else you want to try?"

"It's simply a possibility," Raine acknowledges. If Pepper wants to, or finds it necessary to pursue, she'll find a way to learn something more.

Raine considers the other question for a few moments, moving absently back and forth a few inches above the ground as she does; finally, she shakes her head. "No, not at the moment. While it would be fascinating to revisit this opportunity at some point in the future, I don't believe there's anything more I wanted to do here." It's a little reluctant, but she can hardly expect to go soaring across the city with no trouble today. "Shall I take the armor off, in that case?"

"Well, I'm not really going anywhere, so the suit isn't going anywhere either. Although technically it could go somewhere without me in it, but I'd still have to be driving," Pepper explains.

She grins for a moment, remembering how Happy had sort of stolen Tony's suit once and what it took to get him out of it. Nothing like the threat of being blown up to get somebody moving.

"I guess so. See if you can figure it out on your own how to do that," she adds a little mischievously. She's pretty sure it won't take the healer very long, given that the computer is pretty good at interpreting instructions.

In other words: the opportunity will continue to exist. Raine nods, smiling even though Pepper won't see it. "All right," she says, and lands on the ground to set about doing just that. With the relative intuitiveness of the controls thus far, and the way the computer responds to verbal orders, it's not all that long before the suit opens and Raine steps forward onto solid ground again.

She looks maybe a tiny bit regretful, but that goes away shortly as she smiles at Pepper. "Thank you," she says brightly. "This has been a wondrously educational experience."

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Torn away from home soil

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