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

2 - have a cheerful icon because we will not be getting any more in this thread

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene grins at him. "Well, you're not terrible," he admits. "Yeah, okay. One more round." He reaches down to help Tony up.

[highprofilerichkid]

That's so rude, Gene.

"I've been working on this for two years and I'm 'not terrible.' Thanks, jerk." Tony grins back and takes Gene's hand.

And as soon as they touch, there's a sudden flash of memory. It hits Tony harder than it has in years, as vivid and intense as the day it was lived—

a memory of fear,

and pain,

and falling—

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene's about to snark back with a witty rejoinder when the memory slams into him like debris.

Before he can even breathe, there's another one that crashes over him like a wave, but this time, it's one he knows well, one he's been trying to forget.

It had been the only way to get Tony to listen. He knows that. He knows that. The only way to get him to pull his head out of his stupid ass and work with him, and he knows he had been right to do it. He still knows it. It had been the only way to to fulfill his destiny, his birthright, and to claim his title as Mandarin.

He'd had to use the new crimson ring to control Tony's mind, to bend Stark's will to his own. Just for a little while. Just for long enough. And then he would have let him go.

He hadn't known that Stark would be able to break free on his own, but that had only been a minor hitch.

But although he knows he was right, although he feels vindicated to have the white ring, although he is one step closer to fulfilling his destiny...

...he still throws up when he's returned to his home base and swears to never use it again.

Gene stumbles backwards, reeling, his mind filled with the memories of two of the things he wishes he'd never done. Two of the things that had hurt Tony the most.

[highprofilerichkid]

Gene stumbles away and Tony drops back onto the mat with a painful thud. He doesn't have time to be annoyed about it, because right on the heels of that replay of the worst minute of his life comes another memory, not his own, but terrible in its own way.

It brings with it an oily, crawling sense of wrongness. Tony has his own memory of that event— he remembers the irresistible force that had slithered inside his mind and stolen his will and left him feeling violated for weeks. He remembers how betrayed he'd felt, and how amazed he'd been that Gene had managed to find a way to make him hate him even more.

And now he has Gene's side of things, for a nice little compare and contrast. The self-righteous certainty; the feeling of vindication; the internal monologue of justifications that whitewashed it all into nothing more than an unpleasant necessity. The way Gene had known it was wrong and felt it was wrong but did it anyway, because anything done for the sake of his destiny had to be right.

The dissonance is a kind of horror that Tony's never experienced before. His gorge rises, and he rolls onto his hands and knees, forces himself to take deep breaths, and tries not to puke.

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene's head is still spinning, and he feels like he's going to be sick. Seeing Tony like that - disgusted with what he did, disgusted with him - makes his chest ache and his gorge rise.

Before he's even aware of it, he's ripping the necklace with his rings on it - the necklace that never leaves him - off of his neck and throws it on the ground like a poisonous snake.

And then he does the only thing he can do to keep from hurting Tony further.

He runs.

5

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis hasn't just heard about the memory sharing, she's experienced it and she is trying very hard to forget about it. But she can't hide from the world to prevent more memories from getting out, she has too much to do, so she's in her office, going over paperwork and waiting for Tony to show up and ask about the Cultists, as he does every so often.

"Come in," she says before he has a chance to knock.

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony raises his hand to knock, then freezes when he hears her invitation through the door. He chuckles and drops his hand. Yeah, okay, we get it, Valdis. You've got magical superwolf senses. Sometimes Tony almost forgets how totally weird it is that he's friends with a Hellhound.

He steps inside and closes the door behind him. "Hey, Valdis. How's everything going?"

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis doesn't look up, but it is clear that she is smiling.

"As well as it can be."

The Void hadn't bothered her since her run in with the Shadow Realm. Pepper didn't hate her. She had a family. A real blood family. Things hadn't looked this good since Anton had died.

"Find anything new?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"As well as it can be with everybody participating in the First Annual Keeliai Brain Swap?" Tony says with a wry smile. (He hopes that's a joke. This better not be a reoccurring thing.) "Haven't found anything new," he admits. "It's been kind of a rough week."

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis crinkled her nose, not finding much humor in the idea of swapping brains, but she looked up at him, her smile having faded.

"How so?"

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."

1

[lasergrenades]

Pepper's amusing herself with some reading when Tony comes upstairs (finally). It's supposed to be his day off and yet... he's working. But that's Tony. She grins at him, and her tone is teasing. "Sure, yeah. Need a caffeine boost after your relaxing day of doing exactly what you do every other day?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"I'm not doing what I do every other day." Tony sets the pot to boil and preps two mugs with tea bags. "I'm inventing stuff for myself instead of inventing stuff for other people. And I'm wearing pajamas, instead of real pants." Important distinctions, Pepper!

[lasergrenades]

"Aren't pajamas, like, a lab safety violation?" She is definitely still teasing him. "Something about not wearing loose clothing." Pepper takes another bite of her sandwich and looks pleased with herself. "What are you working on?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"My lab, my rules. And my lab safety guidelines say pajamas are allowed. Anyway, loose clothing is more a problem with shirts than pants." Which is why he always wears very tight and flattering tank tops in the lab, and not because they make his arms look great. Yeah. Lab safety.

Tony eats a couple bites of his own sandwich, then answers, "Messing around with some sigil tech. There's a lot of wear and tear on the armor that's getting harder and harder to fix, here. Trying to figure out some work-arounds till we hit another continent with enough advanced tech."

Which really goes to show how much Tony's adapted to life in Keeliai – when he first got here, he would have been horrified by the idea of polluting his armor with any kind of magic.

[lasergrenades]

"Oh. That's super cool," Pepper replies, perking up to be considerably more interested in the engineering side of things. She hasn't been here nearly as long as Tony and Gene, so her armor is in slightly better shape, but it's been through some beatings.

"I... don't think I've got any Shadow magic up my sleeves that can help," she says, thinking through the collection of spells she's got available to her. They're limited, and not really designed for this sort of thing. "But I'll keep an eye out. I can also go talk to China and see if I can wrangle any other sigils out of her if you need. Pretty sure I'm on her 'marginally tolerable' list of people."

[upshore]

Well, at least the camcorder's gonna be back to normal.

Miles had been a little unsure about soliciting Tony's help, but he'd seemed happy enough to assist. His shoulders are beginning to go down - maybe that was just, you know, regular scientific curiosity? And not creepy scientific curiosity?

At this point, Miles doesn't even know anymore.

He eyes the sign, and opens the door anyway. "Cute. Next time, add a cartoon mushroom cloud."

[highprofilerichkid]

"Nobody here but some of the Foreigners would know what that is," Tony points out. He grins at Miles – despite the sign, he's not upset about the interruption. He'd invited him, after all. And the sign is mostly to keep people out, not because he's actually doing anything super dangerous.

"Maybe I could put a cartoon skull on it, though, and some fire. Or a lot of frowny faces."

[upshore]

"What about a cartoon skull that's on fire? I feel like a fiery skull would be pretty off-putting." And Miles knows from off-putting, these days.

But at least Tony is smiling, and not like a creepy Trager I'm-gonna-vivisect-you smile. So that's good. "It give you any trouble?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"Cartoon skull on fire. Done." (He's not joking, he's totally gonna do it.)

Tony picks the camcorder off the lab bench and holds it out to Miles. "Nope, no problems. It was fun. Grinding lenses by hand – really old-school."

please enjoy all these let's play links

[upshore]

"Glad you had fun," Miles says with as much of a smile as he can muster. "Doesn't sound like my thing. That's some Edwin Hubble shit." Look, see, he has learnings, he knows stuff about things.

"Thanks. You really did me a solid here. I'm not gonna forget it. This thing's practically attached to my arm," he jokes.

He reaches for the camcorder, and when he takes hold of the strap, his fingers brush Tony's, and--

The creaky elevator descends down, down, down into a too-bright, too-pristine version of hell. A hell complete with demons.

He watches the Walrider rip Chris Walker apart.

And then he meets the Devil himself - Dr. Rudolf Wernicke.

A Nazi bastard whose research had been co-opted by the most corrupt megacorporation Miles ever knew of, the one he'd made it his mission to destroy. Even the fact that Wernicke is in his 90s and in a breath-activated wheelchair doesn't give Miles any sympathy - he still hates the bastard.

"Do you know what this symbol represents?" Wernicke's gone to a triquetra on the wall. "It warns of a nanohazard. Microscopic machines, technology we have had for decades, but never mastered. Murkoff discovered, in my research, a workaround. Turning the cells of human bodies into nanofactories. It's the natural function of cells to produce molecules, but through psychosomatic direction, we engineered the precise molecules necessary. Mind over body. It was foolish and wrong to think we could control it. To use madmen to control something so strong.

"You have to stop him, to murder Billy. Turn off his life support, his anesthesia. You have to undo what I've done. No one can get out of this place while he lives. You must kill him."

The scene melts, changes - the Walrider is throwing him around like a piece of meat, like a cat playing with its food.

Miles runs when he's dropped, slams his hand on the failsafe deactivation pad, watching Billy die, and then the Walrider lifts him up, twenty, thirty feet off the ground, attacking him, impaling him, becoming part of him. It's painful, so painful, like pins and needles all over but a thousand times worse. One last attack. The final blow of a dying man.

(Or so he'd thought.)

When the Walrider's gone, he falls, all twenty feet, and he can feel his tibia snap. He rolls to his hands and knees...and the first thing he does is pick up his poor, tortured camcorder.

Miles jerks back, his grip on the strap white-knuckled. He's not going to drop it again.