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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Right. Arno's laughing at that, both delighted and reminded of another redhead who said things like that, to his face, and hadn't been all that concerned about it either.

"Oh I like you." he has to conclude then and there, flashing her a smile. "It may be a lost cause, I have to warn you. I'm told they've been gone for quite some time. Arno Dorian." he added, offering a hand.

Oh, yes. Very charming.

"Pepper Potts. Nice to meet you." Pepper takes the offered hand and shakes it. "Most guys don't get into shopping enough to be that distracted; it's all 'hunt shirt, kill shirt, bring shirt home', you know? What are you looking for?"

She will take any opportunity to go shopping.

"That IS a shame." Arno shakes his head. "I think men have lost the art of it. Of course, there are more interesting things than shirts to be found here. I'm eying..." he nods toward the window. "Gauntlets. Maybe boots. I DO enjoy shoes." Of course he does.

"Do you have any advice, maybe?"

Arno, you're like music to her ears. An entire symphony in fact. She was in a good mood before; now she's downright thrilled.

"Oh my gosh, you have no idea how long I've waited for someone here to ask me that," Pepper says, beaming. "Shoes are my favorite."

"Are they? Oh GOOD." Arno's pretty pleased with this turn of events. "I've been putting off doing this for a bit because I wasn't certain what they'd have, but now, I think my lucky day's arrived."

At least, it really seems that way.

Arno is indeed in luck; although Pepper can't buy all the shoes she wants, she has certainly seen most of them.

"Oooh yes, I can definitely go shoe shopping," she replies, nodding like a bobble-head doll. "What are you after? Do you like boots? You seem like a boots kind of person. Functional or fancy?"

Oh good! It's nice to know that someone's actually scoped these things out. Makes it a bit easier than poking around everywhere.

"Preferably functional." Arno's nodding at his rather worn pair from home rather sadly. "I get the impression that these are going to have to go."

Pepper peers down at Arno's boots, examining with a critical eye.

"Yikes. I mean, they're great and all, but you've obviously used them. A lot." In a way she appreciates their state of disrepair - it means they're likely well-loved. "Yeah, you want functional. Unless you want to spend a lot of money to mess up some mega nice shoes. There's a kedan shop that does leather work down the street; they can do nice and practical." She looks back up at him. "They might even try repairing those if you're like, super attached."

"Hmm.." Arno considered. "A bit closer to 'a little broke' than super attached. They'd not be the first pair that I've trashed." He added, grinning ruefully. "Once you run across one rooftop, it starts to be a habit. Poor footwear."

"You spend enough time on rooftops to ruin your boots? To ruin more than one pair of boots?" Pepper looks somewhere between bemused and scandalized. "You realize the road is perfectly good, right? What's so great about roofs?"

Says the girl who has a suit of power armor and can fly.

"And even more than that." Arno has to laugh at the question, averting his eyes a little...upwards. "Well, I like the way you can vanish into thin air when you jump between them, for one thing. And they let you have a few surprise entrances in your day."

Arno could get behind that.

"Is that, like, a thing where you come from? Does everyone do that? Also that sounds awesome." Sure, she can fly, but this sounds like high-level parkour or something and who doesn't wish they could be that cool?

"You could probably ask the kedan shop to make shoes that stand up to... roof wear, or whatever. They'd probably look at you funny but who cares? More shoes."

"Yes and no. Or...a little of both." Arno WAS finding keeping up with the questions there to be a bit dizzying. "Yes, it IS a thing, but not a thing done by everyone exactly. Those who know the secrets." he added, unconsciously flashing his most dazzling, show off smile. The one he liked to give random passersby who noticed him jumping into a crowd, and the one he would have given apprentices in Paris, if he hadn't been the newest and youngest member of the Brotherhood.

"More of a trade secret than an actual one... Oh they probably would." He agreed, laughing a little at the thought. "The tailors at the yard sales seemed a bit surprised by the design of what I was replacing. But I'm also sure they think most of us are at least a little odd. They COULD be right. And more shoes ARE a good idea."

"You're making it sound like it's a secret climbing club or something. Seriously, is that some kind of job where you come from? You have to be, like, bitten by a radioactive spider in New York if you want to climb on rooftops, they're either too tall or you're not allowed to go on them or both." Or if you could fly. She'd been on more than a few roofs herself, but it was more fun being out in the air.

Ooh, that grin. If she were born a century or two earlier there definitely would have been swooning, but Pepper definitely likes the view, and returns the grin with one of her own.

"Well, it seems like they've gotten over the oddness and started using us as inspiration, some of the time. I've seen some stuff here that looks a lot like what a few of the Foreigners wear." She shrugs. "You might have to redesign them a little if the roofs here are different enough from your home, though. What were the roofs there usually made with?"

"Well, climbing's only PART of the club secret. There's jumping off of them too." And, you know, murder. Just a little. Not that Arno's going to say that part. Tony's reaction to the whole assassin revelation when he was hungover enough to spill THAT has Arno intent on holding back on that a little. You know. Just in case. He doesn't need to go around horrifying people, anyway.

"I'd say it's more like cult if we're getting technical, but we don't have radioactive spiders either. Or, well, it hasn't made the papers if we do." Radioactive....there's a word Arno's left trying to figure out a definition for. Instead, he'll focus on the spider bit. It seems, at least, like these spiders give people abilities where she's from.

"There's a general shortage of bitey things giving people the ability to climb, these days, at least." He adds. "Plenty of bitey things, but you usually just end up annoyed at those. Not exactly a good trade off, honestly. And well, the guards don't seem to like it much, which is why you have to be very fast or very quiet if you want to get anywhere in a hurry."

As for his boots, lets see. "I haven't noticed anything TOO out of the ordinary, so far." Arno mused, glancing at the underside of his boots. "These ARE a little scuffed."

"You're part of a building-climbing, roof-running, jumping-off-of-buildings secret club that may or may not actually be a cult," Pepper deadpans. She brightens after a moment. "That sounds like it would be awesome if you didn't make it sound like it's also seriously illegal."

Then again, what she did in her free time could be considered illegal, too. Team Iron Man had often been called vigilantes, after all. As for the boots in question -

"You might consider asking for something more flexible. You sound like you're playing ninja up there, so something with a rubber sole or something that can bend, but can still be super heavy duty. Or you could learn to walk on the ground," she teases.

"Rather seriously illegal." He does have to agree with that. "Not that anybody really cares too much. It's Paris, people die there every day, and rob and steal and bread prices get higher. A little bit of roofwalking's small change to that. "

It sounds all a little callous coming out in that way, something Arno's thought a little more about since coming here. Not too much, but he'd literally hit bottom, then been tossed here with nothing, after living as the ward of a noble for most of his life, and the son of one before that. He'd never wanted for much until his foster father's death, and then there had been the Assassins, brothers. In a lot of ways, he'd never seriously considered the concept of how hard it must be, even though he'd never really gone out of his way to torment peasants or anything.

Well...

...Victor and Hugo had started it.

"Truth be told, it's close to hell already for a lot of people. No one pays much attention, unless you want them to. I've got a few fun toys for that."

Arno showed Sokka his blade once, but he hasn't really run it by too many other people since then. Not really since he and Shay had agreed to leave most talk of their lives back in the other world behind them here. Still, he's turning his arm now so that Pepper's got a good view of the gauntlet, then releasing first the crossbow mechanism first, and then the blade, letting it flick out for long enough for her to get an idea of how it works.

"Joining the brotherhood is the best thing that's ever happened to me." he confides. "Not just because it's fun, but sometimes it even seems to matter. More than anything else in the bloody city."

And then, back to talk of boots, because they had been doing that, that's right, before someone decided he was going to show off. "Sometimes it IS like playing ninja, I suppose. I don't know much about the Orient, but some great Assa..." Wait, not a word to use casually here, that's right. "Some great members of our group worked there. Flexibility might very well be the key. But please, the ground? Walking is so...overrated."

((http://assassinscreed.wikia.com/wiki/Phantom_Blade ))

As Arno speaks, Pepper's eyes start to slowly rise into her hairline. Given his clothing choices, and the way he's talking about Paris, he's definitely not from any time close to hers. She gapes at the gauntlet, suddenly very unsure of what to think of him. You don't wear something like that for fun - the blade, at least, is meant for close contact, and you don't have a hidden miniature crossbow for playing darts. He seemed charming enough, but this didn't sound like child's play. Plus, that comment about bread -

"Are you- Did you come from the middle of the French Revolution? I- Which side are you on? Why do you wear that?" she asks, pointing to the gauntlet. Her tone is caught between excitement and morbid curiosity. "What is it like? Have you seen people killed? Have you killed anyone? Have you met Robespierre?"

For all she knows, Arno's Revolution was very different from the one that occurred in her world, but talk about finding someone out of history. You've given her a hook now, Arno. She won't let go easily.

Childs play is about the last thing that it is, despite the fact that Arno does take a sort of...glee...in what he does that sometimes borders on childish, for the most part. And he sort of enjoys having sparked the reaction which...probably is a little borderline on that front too. Still, he's nodding in the affirmative.

"It was January 21st. 1793." Arno figures that the date, for someone who knows the Revolution, whatever's going to come next, is pretty significant, in and of itself. It's an event that seems stable enough, despite what other changes might have come about. "So, we haven't got a king anymore, at least. And then...not long after that, I found myself waking up here. I've no idea how the rest of it is going to go, but I have suspicions that are ugly. Uglier than the Marquis de la Sade and his colorful batch of characters all put together. Robespierre...and Mirabeau...we are acquainted. Were acquainted in one case, but everyone knows our Citoyen Robespierre by sight alone."

If Arno spits the name a little, well, he's got some reasons, mostly suspicions, but still. The man's, at best, insane but well meaning,fanatically, well meaning. And he doubts the best very much.

"I've seen...more than I'd like to have, and right now...how I wish I knew. Something had to happen, someday, but I get the impression that it's not exactly your typical revolution anymore. If it ever really was. Things are...complicated."

That's perfectly all right. Sometimes an outside party is the best one to speak to about things like this.

"Double yikes." Pepper listens quietly as the conversation takes a sharp turn. All hell is about to break loose when he goes back, she thinks, sadly. Not that he'll remember having been here, but still. The Reign of Terror was... there's hardly a better word than awful.

"It's...definitely not how we do revolutions. Not exactly, anyway. There's a lot more tweeting involved - it's kind of like the network here - but there's still some similarities," Pepper says, trying to shift away from the darker topics. "It probably doesn't mean much right now, but just so you know, the Revolution was a turning point for the entire world. Mostly in a good way. You know, rise of democracy and republics and lots of human rights stuff. But yeah. Definitely complicated."

She watches him, her expression soft. He sounds angry, and she can't blame him.

"Since you won't remember what happens if you go back, I can give you the highlights if you want. If someone hasn't already, since it seems like a lot of Foreigners are from Earth."

And, in Arno's case, and world, there are some complicating factors to that decision, including how the Revolution itself was conceived of and is being 'run'. All Hell breaking loose is definitely the case, to say the least. Arno's tried not to think too much about going back to what's left behind, particularly as people know him as at least the ward of a nobleman. True, he's got survival tools to use, but he isn't overjoyed at the prospect of having to use them in some cases either.

Better not to think about it now, though, and instead, he's raising an eyebrow at the mention of revolution by something like the network. Arno can see, maybe, support being raised there, but following the idea that the network CAN probably be broken into by the powers that be, he's imagining a world where other powers can step in and stop things like a revolution in their tracks, although, honestly, the idea of democracy isn't a bad one, and the poor devils he's seen could use something in the way of rights.

"Good to know something's going to come out of it that actually helps. I think I could I could stand to know some more."

Fortunately, Twitter and Facebook have better security protocols than the Keeliai network. Also possibly 'Merica.

Pepper tries to remember what she can from history class, frowning slightly as she struggles to recall some of the finer points.

"Well, it get's a lot worse before it gets better," she admits, "And then a guy named Napoleon Bonaparte steps in right before 1800. He ends up as emperor, and France basically takes over a bunch of Europe. That doesn't actually end all that well for Napoleon, but things basically turn out all right." She's glossing over a lot, but why give him all the bad news, like Napoleon's idiotic march to Russia? "But he did kind of export the revolution all over the world. Nationalism became a big thing. The system of nobility in France stayed dead, and the country ended up being a constitutional republic. A lot of people died, but it totally changed the course of European history."

It seems a rather pale sacrifice, when she looks at it from his perspective. It's one thing to read it in a textbook, and a very different thing to be living it.

If those existed in Arno's world, well, in his time, anyway, the brotherhood might, possibly, stand a chance. As it is, although the particulars would fly straight over his head, he could appreciate the existence of those parameters, at least.

"Worse before it gets better." He repeats, laughing rather dryly. "That sounds...about right from what I've seen and heard so far." He's not surprised anyway, but there's the idea it gets better that helps. At the mention of the name, he's raising a brow, both of them.

"I know the man." He'd struck Arno, at the time, as a decent fighter, and capable enough as an army officer. That said, "We met while he was going through the king's private papers." he might as well tack that on, and, as he does, he can't say he's surprised to hear the rest of it.

"He offered me a place in the army, but from what I'm hearing I am particularly lucky I know I would be terrible at it. An Emperor. A bunch of Europe...That's...it's insane. Completely mad." And it makes him wonder just what Bonaparte was after while Arno was burning correspondence. Something greater? More important?

"You think you know a person..."

"He might have been a little insane, maybe. There's definitely a whole bunch of psychology stuff about Napoleon. There's even a whole complex named after him. It's not real, but people used to think he did what he did because he was short," Pepper elaborates, giggling slightly.

"Yeah. Not being the army was definitely a positive life choice," she agrees. "I hope the history lesson wasn't too awful."

Arno snickers too, at the thought.

"True, the man COULD have been taller. There was something odd about him, but not enough that he could have commanded the attention easily..."

Then again, he'd wondered that about the now late King, who was honestly something of a joke, and having a pretty wife (who frankly, seemed caught up in a mess she couldn't fully prevent or really understand), wasn't enough to do it for...

Oh.

OH...

It's a testament to the fact that he'd been trained to hide reactions that Arno's eyes aren't completely wide now, as he remembers that day in the Palace, where Napoleon had been looking for something that he hadn't quite mentioned. That said, he's now got a theory, and it's too bad it's nothing he's probably going to remember if he gets out of here.

He guesses that he could bring it to the attention of Shay, particularly because neither of them is getting to Paris any time soon, and Shay will be too old by then, in Arno's timeline anyway, or maybe too dead, to do a thing about it, one way or the other, but...

Well, it's something to think about, anyway.

"I'd have been drummed out for insubordination in the first five minutes." He has to laugh at the thought, unfunny though it probably is. "And not at all. I'm glad to know a bit more. It helps to have the context, see what's going to lead up to it. Of course, being able to prevent the mess would be better, but if wishes were horses...More than good enough for now."

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Torn away from home soil

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