Tomorrow morning when we wake

[lasergrenades]

Characters: Pepper Potts, Marie Kreutz, Yami no Bakura and you!
Date: Throughout January
Location: Sky Sector, KPD Headquarters, and around Keeliai
Situation: Pepper is hanging out with friends and helping with storm recovery, enjoying the start of the new year
Warnings/Rating: None yet


A. Jade Dojo | Early January | Bakura

So they're still trying to figure out what exactly they are to each other and how this whole 'relationship' thing works, but Pepper is content with that situation. She'd worked with Tony to make a customized senet board for Bakura's birthday, but she'd left the pieces uncarved so he could make them himself and perhaps show her how to carve as well. Plus, she didn't really remember how to play, and Bakura had already proven to be an adept teacher. She stayed after the dojo closed, as had started to become habit, and wandered back towards his apartment.

B. House Spicy Iron Dragon | During the storm | Marie

Well, the weather is terrible. Pepper has seen the remnants of hurricanes that have petered out in New York, and a few really bad storms, but this definitely takes the cake. She probably won't admit it, but it makes her a bit uncomfortable. Between the weird weather and not being able to go outside much because of it, she needs something to do with her hands when she's not working. Marie had done some baking before she left, and Pepper asked if her returned housemate would be willing to spend time in the kitchen. It would be fun, and tasty, and hopefully give them time to get to know each other better.

C. Healer's Guild | Early January | Raine

As with Valdis' Shadow test, Pepper had been alerted to Raine's (albeit with a lot less urgency by Vee this time). She can't help but wonder what Raine saw - if it had the same sort of bone-rattling effect on her. Each test was different, wholly individualized, and Pepper is nothing if not curious. Raine might appreciate the comparison as a scientist and a mage, too. As has become something of a habit, Pepper brings treats along with her when she arrives at Raine's office, and knocks gently.

D. Around Keeliai | After the storm | Open

In the aftermath of the storm, there's a lot of repair work that needs doing, and once again Pepper's suit is perfect for the task. She can be seen wherever the worst damage is, pulling apart structures so waterlogged they would become rotten before too long, or helping with new construction. She keeps the faceplate open most of the time, even though the kedan have largely gotten used to the armor by now. Even though there's a lot of work to be done, she remains chipper and does whatever she can to help.

E. KPD Headquarters | Throughout the month | Open

Pepper continues to work diligently, though her schedule remains a bit erratic. She likes taking a variety of shifts. The early part of the month is fairly quiet, but she's preparing reports with Valdis and Gene to give to the Council as part of the push for laws and policies that has arisen.

After the storm passes, things get busier. In the wake of any disaster, there was potential for crime. When she wasn't out helping with repairs herself, Pepper was organizing patrols and doing logistics for aid parties, coordinating with other groups in the city like the Healer's Guild and the Council so they weren't reinventing the wheel.

F. Midnight Hotel | Beginning of January | Valdis

Pepper is still a bit worried about Valdis. Although she seems to have gotten her head on straight again in terms of immediate fallout from the failed Shadow test (and the fact that she survived was impressive), it must have left a mark. Pepper had passed, and it left a mark. Cookies in hand, she goes to see Valdis at the Hotel, sporting a smile but not trying to hide the fact that she's here for a specific purpose when she knocks.

(OOC: Feel free to make your own starter or let me know if you want something specific!)

Comments

B. House Spicy Iron Dragon | During the storm

[reluctantaccessory]

Marie would be lying if she said that she was entirely fine with the storm that was raging on outside, but as long as the power held and there was something to do, then she could push that particular set of anxieties away, very deep down. Internally she thanked the universe for Pepper's idea to spend the day in the kitchen.

Of course, that also meant that the house was going to eventually end up with enough sweets that even a bakery would be overstocked and even the four of them were going to find it enough to but a dent into it.

But, too late to cut down now.

And one step at time, that would be a problem for another day. Like tomorrow.

"Pepper?"

Marie had just placed the first of what she had the suspicion where going to be many more trays of cookies onto the counter top. She noticed that her housemate seemed a bit quiet.

"Are you okay?"

[lasergrenades]

"Hm?"

Pepper turned from where she was measuring out ingredients with not quite enough care. It was good to have something to to keep her busy when there wasn't much else going on. Going outside wasn't impossible, but it was unpleasant.

"Oh. Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just not super used to big storms. I mean, we get thunderstorms all the time in New York, but we're kind of too far north for actual hurricanes and this is just, you know, huge," she answered rapidly, her voice half a note higher than normal. "It makes me a little antsy."

[reluctantaccessory]

Marie listens and nods some.

"Yeah, I think I understand. That's why I was a little relieved that you asked if we could spend today in here," Then she finds herself starting to ramble but it really did help to have something to do, "Most of the places I lived never got storms quite this bad, at least not this time of year, I think... but well, I think as long as we stay in and the power holds, then we should be okay?"

Then she stops herself because none of this was helping, was it?

She pauses and begins to pull out some mugs. "How about some tea or some hot chocolate while we wait on the cookies to cool and then we can have some and then go back to baking?"

[lasergrenades]

"That sounds like a good really good idea," Pepper replies with a nod, and after mixing the last of the dry ingredients a little more carefully, goes to fill up the tea kettle.

"I'm not, like, worried the house is going to fall down or anything - Gene did a really good job building it - and the Metalworkers know what they're doing when it comes to the electricity," she adds. "But it's totally a good excuse to bake. Tony'll be thrilled, I bet; he eats like he has four stomachs."

F

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis is in the reading room, which has been filled with books, though most of them were different from the ones that had been in Anton's. She had started at the begining of this particular one. She hadn't read it in far too long and after what happened in the Shadow Realm, well, she probably needed a bit of God right now. The human interpretations, however, were left a bit wanting.

[lasergrenades]

Valdis is a well-known face around the Hotel, so it's easy enough to find her when she's not in her room by asking around. She seems engrossed in a book, and for the first time that Pepper has seen in a while, it's not one on kedanese law.

Pepper waves as she approaches, hoping she doesn't startle Valdis. "Hey! Mind if I join you? I brought snacks," she says, holding up the bag of treats.

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis doesn't look up from the Bible as Pepper approaches, but she knows the girl is there long before she says anything. Being familiar with a soul tends to be useful.

"I don't mind," she replied, her eyes staying on the page, "Checking up on me?"

[lasergrenades]

Got it in one. Pepper slides into a chair across from Valdis and puts the bag on the table, opening it up so the cookies are accessible.

"Maybe a little," she admits, since she's been caught. "I, uh, heard about your Shadow test. I kind of felt it, actually, but mostly Vee told me what happened. Since I've been through it I figure if you, you know, wanted to talk about it at all, I know what it's like. Sort of."

D

[ten_zero]

Valkyr is out helping cleanup too. She doesn't have quite the same utility that Mag did under the circumstances, but she's still strong. She can break through rubble with ease, and her ziplines give her some other functionality. She runs into Pepper, at first not recognizing the suit until she sees Pepper's face. "Pepper. I didn't recognize you-" not that the recognition would go both ways. Valkyr had never met Pepper, Mag had. Valkyr's voice was different, even if it functioned similarly to Mags, the way it emanated from her body rather than coming from a localized speaker. But she was unmistakably a warframe, just as Mag had been.

[lasergrenades]

"Uh."

Pepper took a moment to look Valkyr over, trying to figure out how she knew whomever or whatever this was. It didn't take long for her to connect the dots to a similar figure, Mag, and then from there to Bisi. There were only so many Foreigners on the turtle that it could be.

"Right back at you," she said finally, her confusion replaced by a smile. "This is the armor Tony made for me." Pepper sounded quite proud of it. "Did you get a new Warframe?"

[ten_zero]

"Yes!" The circumstances were complicated and unpleasant. "Her name is Valkyr."

"Your armor has impressive capabilities."

[lasergrenades]

"Valkyr. Huh. Cool!" Pepper couldn't help but think of Vee, and her ka made a quiet grumbling at the back of her mind about a lack of similarities between them.

She positively beamed at the comment about her suit. "Thanks. Tony's a literal genius; he made like a dozen of these things back home. It took me more than a year to bug him into giving me one, but I'd operated his other suits remotely for most of that so I was still able to help Team Iron Man. It's called Rescue. Or I am, when I wear it. Superhero identities and all that."

E

[lostundercover]

After finding the stack of files in his own handwriting and a conversation with Valdis, Costigan can't help but think of the police force. It's not that he has interest in joining so much as he wants to remember the time before and is struggling to do so, wondering if joining the new KPD will help jog his memories. It's not enough, not yet, and so he instead passes by on occasion and scowls at the building without ever actually walking in.

With the storm, he's been helping to break up fights and clean up what he can. He tells himself it's what a good citizen does, that it's the Bostonian in him that views the camaraderie of the city above anything that threatens it so long as there's an active threat. Yet he can't help noticing that it's mostly the police and medics that are doing the same thing.

It only takes a few days for him to run into the girl he was speaking to before outside the station, a casualty of bothering to be around the building.

"Hey," he greets easily. No use in avoiding her. Costigan is great at pretending that things aren't weird when they are very, very weird. At least when he tries, like now.

[lasergrenades]

It's been busy dealing with the aftermath of the storm, and Pepper isn't in the station as often as she usually is. She has been keeping an eye out for Costigan every so often, wondering if or when he would show up and whether there would be a chance to lure him back to work or not.

When she sees him during some of her downtime from repair work and he's warmer than she was expecting, Pepper grins broadly. "Hey! Good to see you again." She waves, redirecting from her previous path towards him instead. "Have you had a chance to talk to Valdis yet? It's been kinda crazy around here."

[lostundercover]

Costigan resists the vague urge to shrink away as Pepper seems to beeline directly for him. Instead, he simply shifts his weight from one foot to the other and gives a noncommittal nod in acknowledgment of her greeting. At the latter, he gives another.

"Told her I'd think about it." Which he still is. "You were right about me being here before."

[lasergrenades]

Pepper is a very direct person, it's true. She stops a reasonable distance away, since they aren't close yet.

"I was, wasn't I?" Her smile turns a little sly, but just for a moment. "Not gonna lie, it's kinda cool to meet you since you're like half the reason we have a police force and the start of a government in the first place. Have you started remembering anything?"

C | i'm very good at timeliness

[ruinsprofessor]

Raine's half-expecting it when Pepper drops by, this time; she's grown used to the frequent visits, though she can't quite mark a calendar by them, and Pepper always seems to bring something delicious. Perhaps on the principle that good food improves what's already good and softens what's bad.

Raine doesn't look much different than usual when she opens the door, but she's smiling in a way that's been less common to see since Solomon disappeared. "Pepper. It's good to see you again," she says, opening the door farther and stepping back. "What brings you by today?"

Is fine <3

[lasergrenades]

It's good to see that smile on Raine's face, and Pepper smiles right back. There are cookies in the paper bag she's brought, straight from a nearby bakery.

"Hey," she says warmly. "Well, first of all, cookies are better shared and if I bring them home Tony will scarf them down in a second." Her smile turns almost sly, like a shared secret between them. "And I hear you've got company worth celebrating about. Vee told me about your Shadow test."

[ruinsprofessor]

"They'll still be shared with Tony, in that case," Raine points out; but her tone is warm and she's not going to turn cookies away. She nudges the door to shut behind Pepper and moves back, leaning against the edge of her desk.

Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that the kaa would speak to each other. Either that, or there was some mark of the occurrence magically-- neither would surprise Raine. She nods, with a smaller, more private smile. "Yes. She and I... came to an agreement."

A.

[denyamenti]

It had been quite a while since Bakura batted an eye at Pepper strolling into the kitchen from the dojo as if it were completely natural to her. "The only redeemable point of winter," he remarked. "The days are short, so everyone leaves early."

[lasergrenades]

Pepper laughed at that; she'd long since figured out that Bakura really didn't enjoy the cold weather. Things would get interesting if it snowed, because she would almost certainly want to drag him outside for a snowball fight.

"Yeah, I can't really complain about having a little more free time," she replied, leaning against a counter. While Pepper liked being busy, the chance to hang out and relax (particularly with Bakura these days) was still welcome. "I don't have work tonight so I can stay for a while. How are the senet pieces coming along?"

[denyamenti]

"They're coming along well," he replied, retrieving a box of the carved pieces. The board that Pepper had brought was a good size, so he'd decided to make the pieces a bit more ornate than plain spools and cones. He's finished all the cones, and has started working on the spools in the same style, except painted with red.

D. Water Sector;

[simulsimul]

Though having arrived only far after the storm had hit, the damage remaining to the city was clear. Kratos had walked in from the fields, with enough information to be working with and wearing some simple linen clothes bought from one of the farmers with a piece of lightweight gald. He was already familiar with dimensional travel; this sorta just could have had better timing.

After the first day and his powers returned, he set to with the recovery efforts. There wasn't really anything else to be done; all he had to do was be patient and he'd be returned from whence he left. He may as well help in the meantime.

On this particular day Kratos was with a house which destabilised into one of the canals, far after the shocks of the storm had ended; waterlogging had done its work, and now a good portion of the structure was blocking the canal. Water overflowed, leading to some mild flooding in the houses around. Kratos was helping block off that seeping pool of water -- too much flooding to the rest of the houses could result in more of the same. The trouble was getting the first house out before the canal was blocked for too long, but the rubble had packed in there tight. A couple of kedan with particularly good gills went down to see if they could unjam it a little.

Kratos had just dropped another sandbag on the short wall when there came a dangerous creak from the pile of rubble. Some of the floorboards shifted and the house tilted, more debris skidding into the canal in a cloud of damp dust and a medley of warning shouts as kedan all over jumped back from the tumbling debris. One of the volunteer kedan popped up from the water, gasping and reaching for the edge. "Joclen's stuck -- she got caught in the slide, it's unstable --"

Because of course. Kratos unbuckled Flamberge and laid it by one of the beams, and threw his cloak over it, and kicked off his boots. He wasn’t the only one wading into the canal, but the kedan just starting to do so threw him an uncertain look and backed off. It was unsettling, having people assume he was capable of doing the things he could -- before he'd even displayed any evidence of them. He wasn't fond of that spotlight.

8D hiii

[lasergrenades]

Given that the Water Sector was hit particularly badly by the storm, Pepper had been spending more time there than anywhere else. Water was as beneficial as it was destructive, and right now it was definitely showing off it's ability to reshape life as people knew it, and not in a good way.

She heard more than saw the debris of a house begin to slide further into the canal, her suit's computer blaring an alarm at her that the structural stability was rapidly deteriorating. Without another thought, she snapped the faceplate shut and fired the bootjets, braking to a hover over the area. Once there, she noted the man with red hair wading into the canal, and the way the kedan seemed to get out of his way - almost certainly a Foreigner.

Her HUD gave her the rundown of the situation within seconds, identifying a person stuck in the collapsing debris, mapping out additional areas of high stress, and calculating the best place for her to apply leverage. But she could either lift or retrieve, not both.

"I can help shift the house if you can grab her," Pepper called to the stranger, dropping neatly into the water; it rose to her waist. She knew from crashing into the ocean before that the suits operated just find underwater, at least.

hi there ;)

[simulsimul]

The hum of technology overhead made Kratos's back prickle, but when he glanced up the machine only dropped into the water across from him. It didn't look all that much like the machines on Derris-Kharlan; more humanoid. And they didn't speak.

Of course, they didn't have mana signatures, either.

"Alright." If the person in the machine armour wanted to hold the house, Kratos wasn't going to argue. That would probably look less strange than him doing it himself.

The canal-water was deeper in the middle, where the flooding hadn't breached the wall; Kratos exhaled and turned off his breathing, and dove into the canal proper. It'd been a while since he'd needed to swim anywhere, but the cruxis crystal didn't forget; he descended toward the bottom with long, easy strokes, making a direct line toward the kedan's mana-signature.

She was pinned by her legs under a beam with the weight of the house on it, her eyes wide; but she wasn't struggling. She knew better than that. Kratos hooked himself on a stable piece of rubble to keep himself on the canal's floor, and tossed some debris aside so he could see how the kedan was pinned.