tushanshu_logs | Catch-All for Operation Get Our Stuff Back

Entry tags:

Catch-All for Operation Get Our Stuff Back

Characters: Tony, Sokka, Valdis, Gene, Cain and YOU
Date: December 12 onwards
Location: The Hotel
Situation: Tony is pissed about SI falling into kedan hands, and more levelheaded people have to talk him out of doing something stupid. Once sense and discretion have prevailed, it occurs to Tony et al. that the foreigners might be able to more rapidly regain some leverage in Keeliai if they worked together to befriend/infiltrate the gangs, especially the three major families. Devious plotting ensues.
Warnings/Rating: None so far

[1 - the common room of the Hotel - December 12]

Tony returns from his meeting with Zanru after less than two hours, and he is seething. Sokka had asked him about the status of his job at Stark Industries, and Tony had promised to go find out right away (he'd put off meeting with the new "boss" of SI long enough already). The meeting had not gone well. To put it mildly.

Now he's back at the Hotel, looking for Sokka, to deliver the bad news. And poor Sokka is about to get an earful.

[2 - around the Hotel - the following days and weeks]

Tony had - miraculously - been talked down from teleporting his entire lab and all its contents out of SI and permanently alienating the Metalworker family. A longer-term strategy of insinuating themselves into the families' good graces had been suggested, and Tony, grudgingly, had acquiesced.

Since then, word has been getting around. Anyone who hears about that discussion and wants to ask Tony about it or offer their help should be able to locate him pretty easily around and about the Hotel. That's where he's spending most of his time, after all, since he is currently unwelcome at SI.

[3 - Make your own starter!]

[ooc: the initial discussion will be closed to Tony, Sokka, Valdis, Gene, Cain, but anyone who wants to have their character hear about it second-hand is welcome to post a thread here. You can request a thread with Tony or any of the other original conspirators, but it isn't necessary - anyone can thread out anything related to this plan in this log.

Keep in mind that this is not (currently) a conspiracy to depose the families or destroy the gangs or take over Keeliai - merely an attempt to organize the foreigners so that they can pool information and coordinate their negotiations with the gangs without making the kedan more distrustful. However, this is supposed to be on the DL, so if your character accidentally or intentionally lets the plan slip to the kedan, expect there to be IC consequences!

The ooc plotting post for Operation Get Our Stuff Back can be found here.]

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[Tony doesn't answer Sokka's question. If he doesn't already know what a horror show the inside of the Palace had been, he's probably happier that way. Especially if they're really planning to move in.

Anyway, Sokka's already moved on to telling his "diplomacy" stories, and there's plenty to discuss there. Starting with:] Wait, how do you kill the moon? [Did they blow it up? Based on what Sokka's told him about his world, there's no way they had the level of technology to do that.] And how do you become the moon? Are we talking about the same kind of moon, here? Big glowy rock up in the sky that comes out at night?

Uh. [Gene points a thumb at Tony.] What he said.

[SUCH ELOQUENCE. IT BRINGS A TEAR TO YOUR EYE.]

Edited (dw wanted to foil my dr. mcninja reference >:() 2015-03-02 23:10 (UTC)

[Okay, that last question, Tony, is borderline insulting.]

I may not have a big awesome metal suit, but I do know what the moon is.

[Seriously, for real?]

Don't ask me how it works, because this is way way waaaaaay outside my realm of expertise, but apparently there's some little fish that's the moon spirit... or spiritual incarnation of the moon... or... just ask Aang about how that works, okay?

Anyway, Captain Grumpypants invades the north and kills the fish, and then everything goes dark. No more moon. And then Yue gives up her life to be inside the fish, and then the moon comes back.

[Seriously, Sokka's just flailing at an explanation. And his arms are flailing as well, as if trying to handwave all the parts he doesn't understand.]

Moon... Spirit. Okay. [Um... Magic bullshit. Yep. That's getting filed under Magic Bullshit. It is such a struggle not to start asking stuff like "how did that make the moon go dark, when the moon just reflects light from the sun? Did the moon disappear into another dimension? Do spirits affect the reflectivity of celestial bodies? How far into space does their spiritual influence extend? Only to the planet and its satellites? Across the whole solar system?" It's a struggle, but somehow, he refrains, because he knows it is an exercise in futility.]

So... your girlfriend is the moon. Or, she's a fish...? A fish spirit that is also the moon? [This hurts him in his science, Sokka.]

[Meanwhile, this fits totally within Gene's paradigm. He grew up on Journey to the West and all sorts of spiritual allegory and whatnot, so this makes...if not perfect sense, then it makes sense enough. Ya just gotta ~believe~, Tony.]

Okay, but why did they want to kill the moon?

[Asking the important questions.]

That's... a good question, [he says to Tony.] I mean, she's the Moon Spirit. And the representation of the moon. And I guess she lives in the fish now. But she can still look like a per—look, it's really complicated, and I don't know, and that's one thing I don't ask questions about.

[Don't worry, Tony. Sokka filed it under in the Magic Crap file too. It just so happens to be subfiled underneath Magic Crap that Sokka Is Okay With Because He Used to Date It. Kind of. It was totally dating her despite that she was engaged to someone else. Right? Right? Bueller?

Thankfully, Gene's question was easier.]

Well, it's because the moon controls the tides, right? [Finally something that Tony might like!] Waterbenders get their ability to bend from the moon. And the ocean. Or maybe it's the Moon Spirit and the Ocean Spirit? [Whatever.] Anyway, no moon, no waterbending. The Fire Nation could just sweep through and take over the entire Water Tribe, leaving only the Earth Kingdom to stop them.

If it had worked, of course. [The important caveat.]

So there was some kind of war between the... element... nations? And the Fire Nation wanted to destroy the moon just to win? That's a little bit extreme.

[Why are countries divided by bending anyway? Does everybody in each nation have the same kind of bending? Do you have to move to another nation if you have the wrong kind? This sounds like one of those chick-in-a-future-dystopia movies that are so popular at home.

Hm.] Zuko's a firebender. Does that mean he's from the Fire Nation?

Oh, please, keep going, this sounds fascinating, [Gene says, resting his chin on his hand. Sokka's world sounds pretty nuts! And hey, if the people were segregated by what elements they could bend, then that would explain why he'd only ever seen Zuko use fire.

Also wait. Gene is thinking. If Sokka understood his Chinese invective, then...] Are the elements in your world the same as the ones in the sectors here? Like the Wu Xing? Or are they different?

[Oh gosh, how little of Avatar World had Sokka told Tony? Or had Sokka just been too keen in letting Tony show off his iron suit thing to even say much?]

They're... similar, Gene, [he says, though he's also talking to Tony as well since the questions are more or less the same.] Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom, and Water Tribe, sure... those we have. But the fourth one is the Air Nomads. For us, metalbending... well, that's just a fancy sort of earthbending. But at least three of the sectors feel right at home!

But yeah, Zuko's from the Fire Nation. But he's a good guy from the Fire Nation... except he used to be a bad guy, except he eventually joined our side to help take down his father. But yeah... Admiral Zhao from that country was a little bit... you know, crazy in the head.

[Sokka totally puts his finger to the side of his head and waggles it in a circle to illustrate.]

Which kind of leads into us trying to kill the Fire Lord anyway. I planned an invasion deep into their capital city to try to take him out. Still annoyed that Zuko's sister knew all about it in advance.

[Tony probably wouldn't shut up about his suit, yeah.]

Right, I remember you talking about your metalbending friend Toph. You planned an invasion into the capital city of a hostile nation? ...Wow. [Your resume keeps getting more and more impressive, Sokka.] I mean, I've taken down an evil dictator before, but that was because Gene can teleport, and Doom kept himself cooped up all alone in a crazy Fortress of Solitude in the middle of nowhere.

Edited 2015-03-15 00:30 (UTC)

Latveria was something else, that's for sure, [Gene notes, but he's getting increasingly impressed by Sokka's skillset and experience.]

So if Zuko's sister knew about it, what happened then?

[Oh right... Gene can teleport. Sokka almost facefaults all over again except he certainly remembers that that was a thing that was already mentioned... at least a half hour ago. Still, that someone could do that still was incredibly impressive!]

Well yeah. The plan was going to be flawless. You see, I had this great piece of intel that we found out from this one secret library under the control of this giant spirit owl. [Pause for effect. Yeah, that's right. Giant spirit owl.] Anyway, we found out that there was going to be a solar eclipse smack dab in the middle of summer, and just like how the moon influences waterbending, the sun influences firebending! So solar eclipse? No firebending!! So I figured out that we had to invade on that day, since... well... not long after that, a comet would come to our world which would supercharge all the firebenders' powers for a day, letting them pretty much burn everything to the ground.

So anyway... with the help of a mechanical genius, we created the world's first submarines to sneak as close to the capital city as we could undetected. We'd breach the beaches of the city so that we could hold it while Aang was supposed to fight the Fire Lord one-on-one, all before the moment of the actual eclipse.

But because they knew of the plan, the Fire Lord was nowhere to be found. Instead, we found Zuko's crazy sister. And... well, she pretty much consumed all the time we had to dispatch the Fire Lord.

[He shrugs.]

A lot of people mostly managed to escape to safety, though some got captured in the process. At least we end up getting him in the end, even if that hasn't quite happened for me.

Tony hears: 'magic bullshit blah blah politics blah astrology blah blah blah submarines.'

"Submarines?" If Tony was a dog, his ears would have perked up. "And they worked? Were they one of your designs?"

[None of the magic comet or spirit owl stuff is fazing Gene. Sokka's world is a few levels of folklore away from his, that's for sure, but it all seems to make...a weird amount of sense, in a fantastical sort of way.]

Sounds like a good plan, [he says.] Shame you were found out.

"Sure did!" Sokka says, almost as smugly as Tony spoke when he was showing off his Iron Man suit. "I mean, I didn't build them, but I certainly designed them!" Please don't ask to see his 'blueprints' for them, Tony. "They didn't have to go to the bottom of the ocean, and they were propelled by waterbending, and they were a little bit limited on how much air we could put in them, but hey, we sneaked underneath the Great Gate of Azulon that way!"

But yeah, they were caught, and that was a bummer.

"At least a lot of us still managed to get out safe and sound.

"Everything else was that we managed to expose to the Earth King that his Grand Secretariat had covertly seized power from him and had stopped including him on decisions. No biggie."

It is probably best for Sokka's dignity if Tony never sees any of his 'blueprints.'

"If you want submarines that run without waterbending, I can give you some ideas to work with." He would love to discuss submarine propulsion with you, Sokka. But you should probably stick with Gene as your source on military tactics. Since Tony's only solution to a full-scale war is 'blow all of them up.'

"Submarines, political intrigue...you've got quite a lot of talents, Sokka," Gene says. Talents that will almost certainly prove useful down the line. He's putting a list of your skills in his mental Rolodex.

Sokka just gives Gene a shrug. "Well, a good half of it is straight-up common sense, really. You'd be amazed at how many political leaders and otherwise official representatives think they know but actually don't. The rest of that is just a little bit of cleverness and then some aggressive fact-finding."

However, Tony's little idea sounds even better. "I can imagine that self-powered submarines would be even better than waterbending-powered ones, especially here. Not that we actually need submarines here... yet." Kind of defeats the purpose of being on a turtle, huh? "But still, the theory would be fun to learn. And who knows what other ideas that would generate while we're stuck here?"

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Catch-All for Operation Get Our Stuff Back

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"I will KILL the President, thereby BECOMING the President..." "That's not how it works."

How dare DW kill your Dr. McNinja reference!? /outrage!

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