if your past calls, don't you pick it up, it's got nothing new to say

[highprofilerichkid]

Characters: Tony, Gene, Pepper, Valdis, Miles and Danny
Date: February 8-12
Location: House Spicy Iron Dragon, a kedanese dojo, KPD HQ, the College, Jasmine Dragon Tea House
Situation: Memory sharing catch-all!
Warnings/Rating: mentions of violence, major injury, death, roller skates


1. Pepper | House Spicy Iron Dragon | ɢ ʀ ɪ ᴇ ғ

Ah, it's so nice to have a day off once in a while, to kick back, relax, and... work in the lab. Okay, yeah, his hobbies are exactly the same as his work. So what?

He's been at it a couple hours, so Tony trots upstairs to the kitchen for a refuel. Pepper's already there eating lunch. Tony smiles. "Hey, Pep," he says, grabbing a leftover sandwich from the fridge. "I was gonna make some tea." (Coffee, as scarce as it is, is now reserved for special occasions.) "You want some?"


2. Gene | The Dojo | ғ ᴇ ᴀ ʀ

Tony's been diligent about attending his practice sessions, even with the temporary relocation while the Jade Dojo gets repaired, and it's paying off. He's getting pretty damn good at hand-to-hand combat (if he does say so himself), and he doesn't look like a complete idiot holding a sword.

Gene can still totally kick his ass, though.

"Uuugh," Tony groans from the mat. "My everything hurts." Nevertheless, he's smiling. He props himself up on an elbow and wiggles his other arm at Gene, asking for a hand up. "One more round?"


3. Danny | Jasmine Dragon Tea House | ғ ᴜ ɢ ɪ ᴛ ɪ ᴠ ᴇ

Tony's on edge. The... incidents with Pepper and Gene had been incredibly emotionally draining. Whatever magical bullshit is going around like the flu, Tony wants no further part in it.

He'd needed a little time away from the house, so he's escaped to the Jasmine Dragon tea house, where he's sitting in a corner with some technical diagrams, trying to lose himself in his work. The papers are scattered all over the table (some in dangerous proximity to his pot of tea), and Tony himself, open book that he is, looks a little bit frazzled. It's been a long couple days.


4. Miles | Tony's College lab | ᴄ ᴏ ɴ s ᴜ ᴍ ᴇ

Tony's glad he's just an all-purpose on-call genius and not a professor, because it means he can put the "WARNING: DANGEROUS EXPERIMENTS IN PROGRESS" sign up on his lab door and avoid people without having to cancel any classes.

His working theory on the memory swaps is that the memories have to have some sort of association with the person receiving them (Gene and the plane crash is obvious; Pepper had lost her mother at the same age Tony had; Danny and Tony both had the secret superhero identity thing going on), so there's a lower chance of swapping traumatic memories with random strangers and casual acquaintances. Still, Tony doesn't want to take any chances. Until this is over, he's going to be making the most of the 'antisocial engineering nerd' stereotype.

He can't avoid everyone, though. He's fixed Miles' camcorder, and since they've only met a couple times, Tony figures his risk factor is pretty low. So Tony sends him a quick message letting him know that his camcorder is fixed and waiting for him in the lab. Fingers crossed that nothing weird happens when he shows up!


5. Valdis | KPD Headquarters | ʙ ᴇ ᴛ ʀ ᴀ ʏ ᴀ ʟ

So, based on the reports of the other Foreigners, the only consistent feature of the memory swaps is proximity. Everything else seems pretty much random. Which means Tony can either become a complete recluse for the entire duration of whatever this is, or he can suck it up.

He decides to suck it up. He's got too much going on to just vanish for a week or month or however long (as tempting as it is).

One thing that he definitely doesn't want to let slide is keeping tabs on the Cultists. As a sort-of-consultant to the KPD, he checks in with Valdis regularly to make sure they're on the same page. He doesn't have any new intel this time, but she might, so he drops by her office for a meeting.

Comments

3

[schrodingersghost]

Danny was a bit on edge. Of course this was a fairly normal state of affairs for him. Especially considering he had a keenly honed sense for when his life was about to devolve into misery once again.

He'd spent most of the last day fighting the urge to spend the rest of the week hiding under his bed.

But he was an experienced superhero, okay? He refused to let something like well deserved paranoia screw up his life. Any more than it had already.

So he'd ventured out in search of food. Tea wasn't he really his thing, but he figured he owed to Sheena to at least give it a try. He goes into the tea house and spends a moment standing at the counter, side eyeing the menu like it was in a foreign language. Was green better than white or black? What the heck was rooibos?

this icon is going to see a lot of use in this log

[highprofilerichkid]

As he works, Tony's mind drifts to some of his past inventions – and some of his past exploits with them. Which isn't unusual in and of itself, except that one of them sticks out with a particular clarity that is starting to feel familiar.

He chokes on his mouthful of tea, coughs, and looks up with a startled expression. The memory flickers though his thoughts - dodging police helicopters, crashing into the garbage truck, escaping on those stupid totally awesome roller skates - and if this time is anything like the other times, he's not the only one 'remembering' it. And he's about to see something in return.

[schrodingersghost]

Danny stiffens as a memory he was sure didn't belong to him flickered through his head. Okay, so robot armor, he;d used that. Fired on by police helicopters? He'd done that too.

But he was 99% certain that he'd never used powered roller skates. Not even Fenton Powered Roller Skates.

And then he flinches as a memory he actually recognized flickers through his thoughts. But why that time? He hadn't thought of the whole international ghost fugitive incident in months.

OOC: 14:29 to 16:29

[highprofilerichkid]

Aaaaand there it goes. Tony's come up with some seriously wacky tech, but never anything as wacky as... all that. Wow. At least it wasn't a bad memory, this time.

He blinks, shaking off the unfamiliar memory, and snaps back to the real world. As soon as he does, he realizes he's staring directly at the only possible culprit. It's a Foreigner, the same age as the other kids in the memory, and he looks just as startled as Tony does.

Completely caught off guard, Tony blurts out the first words that pop into his head:

"Your house turns into a blimp?"

[schrodingersghost]

Still in shock from the unfamiliar memory, Danny blurts out the truth.

"Only the Op Center on the roof."

[highprofilerichkid]

"...That's awesome." Tony grins suddenly, and lets out a startled laugh. "Totally crazy and ridiculous, but awesome. And all I've got is armor that transforms into a backpack."

[schrodingersghost]

"What, seriously? That's kind of cool too."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Yeah, it's pretty sweet. Plus, you know, the roller skates." Tony's still wearing a goofy grin, because, damn, it's such a relief to swap a memory that isn't traumatic. And, if that memory was representative, it looks like they might have a few things in common.

"So— that's your deal? You turn intangible?" Not Tony's favorite superpower after his run-ins with Ghost, to be completely honest, but as long as Mister Blimp House doesn't stick his arm through Tony's chest and threaten to rip out his heart Temple of Doom-style, they're cool.

[schrodingersghost]

Danny throws himself into a chair at the same table.

"I'd try denying it, but I guess there's not much point to it after seeing all that." He makes a face. "Apparently I really suck at the whole secret identities thing."

He frowns. "Not exactly. How do you feel about ghosts, by the way? 'Cause if you're any kind of ghost hunter I'd like to get a head start."

[highprofilerichkid]

"I showed up here in my armor, so, didn't really have the option of keeping it secret. It's been fine, actually. Nobody's tried to kill me yet— not because I'm Iron Man, anyway." It's a nice change of pace from home, where pretty much everyone wanted to kill him for being Iron Man.

"I've got a big problem with Ghost, capital 'G', but that's because he's a mercenary who tried to assassinate me, not because he can turn intangible. Also, I'm 95% sure he's not a real ghost. I don't think we have ghosts in my universe. Definitely not a ghost hunter. So, wait—" The implications have belatedly occurred to him. "You're a ghost? Does that mean, you're, uh, dead?"

[schrodingersghost]

"Iron Man?" Danny hits his head. "Oh! Because of the armor. Man, I feel dumb."

He winces. "Yeah, I try not to think too hard about that." He shrugs. "The other ghosts call me a halfa. Half kid, half ghost. Me? I don't know whether I'm a kid that happened to get ghost energy glued onto me or a ghost that just never died all the way. I mean, its not like there's tests you can take for percentage of being alive."

[highprofilerichkid]

"It's actually a metallic polyresin, but Metallic Polyresin Man doesn't have the same ring." Though, if Tony had picked his own superhero name and not the media, who knows what he would have ended up with. He's terrible at naming things.

"Wow. That's... Better than being all the way dead, I guess." Weird as hell, but not the sort of philosophical dilemma Tony's going to get too fussed over. "You're still walking around talking to people and touching things, so being some percentage dead can't be that bad."

[schrodingersghost]

"I don't know, I've heard worse superhero names. It might have caught on."

He shrugs and grins wryly. "It has its moments, I'll say that. But flying is nice."

[highprofilerichkid]

"I know a guy named Unicorn" Tony says, and, really, that's all he needs to say.

Then Tony's smile widens again. "Flying is the best. Definitely worth almost dying for." And, yes, he does speak from experience.

[schrodingersghost]

Danny winces. "Wow. Can I just say ouch? And here I thought Inviso-Bill was bad."

"Total agreement here. There's nothing like it."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Inviso... Bill?" Tony snickers. "That's some serious pun commitment." Tony can respect that— though maybe the execution leaves a little to be desired.

"So why have you been keeping it a secret here? Most of us have some kind of wacky superpower. Nobody would think you were weird or dangerous."

[schrodingersghost]

"Blame the media. That's what they called me before I convinced them to call me Phantom instead."

He winces. "A lot of reasons. I could call it habit, but what it really comes down to is me being a ghost. And as I'm often reminded, ghosts are scary things. It's tough to tell who's going to be cool about it and who's going to freak." He shrugs. "And there's always the chance that someone here is secretly a ghost hunter. Being dissected by ghost hunters is really not on my to-do list."

[highprofilerichkid]

"You know the head of the KPD can turn into a giant wolf, right?" Tony points out, with a grin. "And one of my friends was a living skeleton, which is a lot weirder than a regular ghost. We've got a pretty high freak-out threshold."

He shrugs and eats a tea biscuit. "It's your secret identity, you can keep it secret if you want to. But the Foreigners have been cool about freaky powers so far. And if anyone goes after you, you'll have a lot of us backing you up." Tony smiles. "We look out for each other."

[schrodingersghost]

"Uh, no? That one must have missed me." Although to be perfectly honest he'd done his best to stay far away from the KPD. Danny had never had the best relationship with authority figures. He hasn't really wanted to check whether any of the local ones had a shoot first ask questions never policy when it came to ghosts.

Though now he was a little curious.

"Uh, thanks I guess?" It was a nice sentiment, but he wasn't sure how far he trusted it."

[highprofilerichkid]

Neither does Tony, but he kind of has to play nice with the KPD. Seeing as it's a Foreigner initiative and it's being run by his friend, his roommate, and his boyfriend.

"It is weird, not having it secret anymore," Tony admits. "But, honestly... it's been a relief. My secret identity was a big deal back home. I got my ass kicked about a million different ways trying to keep it a secret. Then I got here, where half the Foreigners have some kind of crazy superpower, and it's not really a big deal anymore."

Tony chuckles. "And it was really convenient to be able to use the armor to build my house."

[schrodingersghost]

"Yeah," he says slowly. "I can see how it could be nice. But I don't think I'm anywhere near ready for that. It's tough enough just getting used to a handful of people knowing."

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony nods. "I get it. Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Superhero honor code, right?"

Superfriends don't let superfriends get their secret identities blown! Hey, if he can cover for Whitney (who was actively trying to murder him at various points in time), he can cover for Danny.

[schrodingersghost]

Danny blinks.

"Wow. That is such a weird idea. I mean, not about superheroes having an honor code. That's kind of cool. But that there's enough of us here for someone to say that."

Up until he'd come here, Danny had never met another superhero. And now he knew two.

[highprofilerichkid]

Well... It's more like guidelines than actual rules. Also, there isn't really a code, that was a joke.

Tony laughs. "Isn't that kind of the point of the spell? The whole idea was to collect people with abilities that would help them fight Malicant." Sure, most of the Foreigners aren't superheroes in the strict sense. But it's not that surprising that there's a few of them in the mix.

"So are there not a lot of people with powers in your world?"

Odd. You'd think a universe with 'ghost energy' that can be fused onto living people would produce a fair number of other wacky things.

[schrodingersghost]

"I don't know. Do ghosts count?"

Not that any of them were really interested in the superheroing. Usually, it was more the opposite.