Logs:Signal
| Signal | |
|---|---|
| Dramatis Personae | |
| In Absentia | 2024-10-02 "This has really turned out quite stirring." |
| Location | |
8 September. lucien's apartment, le bonne entente. As is often the case, Rocket has preoccupied himself with a side project, this time with his more delicately crafted tools cleaned and laid out in carefully organized spots that allow him to simply grab what he needs without looking. The parts that he is using seem to be from a disassembled clock radio as well as some more unfamiliar looking pieces. He is listening to This is the Day on a small speaker set on his workbench, though he turns it down as he tests the functionality of the progress of his project. There is some muffled chatter that quickly turns into a screeching sound, some cacophonous songs layered over each other and then some white noise to punctuate it all. He switches tools, and continues his delicate labour. Lucien is looking extremely Generically Businesslike, when he returns home, one of the understated grey suits that together with his "Contractor" ID badge helps him fade easily into the endless background bustle at Stark Industries. The tablet he has tucked under his arm says Property of Stark Industries as well; his fingers are tracing lightly up and down against its side as he materializes quiet in the doorway. His head is tilting, eye squeezing just a touch tighter against the dissonance before he relaxes into the jangle of sound. "I came up here to ask you if you think you might have time for another side project, but --" His fingers drum against the surface of the tablet, and his eyes sweep Rocket's workbench with a mildly amused curiosity. "It's a bit of a silly formality, isn't it?" What he is offering instead, then, while he's starting to flick the screen of the tablet to life, is: "-- I think some friends might be in some trouble and I seem to have stumbled across a challenging puzzle. Are you interested?" Rocket kicks his stool to spin around on the surface of it. "Doing challenging stuff to help someone's friends is my middle name," he says, hands splayed magnanimously. He reaches back to click the radio off, his gaze moves down to the tablet and he scratches his chin thoughtfully, "So what's your friends' problem? I'll play fixer, unless, y'know, it takes way too much work." --- 12 september. lucien's apartment, le bonne entente. The work has been expanding to fill the space available, in the way of these things. Lucien's normally impeccably tidied apartment is -- well, okay, it is still impeccably tidied. It has, however, sprouted something of a small conspiracy-board corner tidily laid out in the sitting room, where the aggregated data and brand-new disappearance-specific workspace have their own dedicated area to collect and organize the findings, now. Though Flèche is not really capable of doing too much real damage to the holographic interface that Lucien is currently flicking at, he is still nudging the dog away from it, tossing a soft ball across the apartment to distract her as he swats a stream of satellite data off into a folder. He is rubbing absently at the hollow of his eye as he slumps into a seat and picks up a glass of Scotch to drain the rest of its contents. "Pardon, run that by me again, we might need a what?" Rocket has propped up a chair to reach the spots that he is prodding at one of the data points with his extended clawed finger, but at the question he swivels on his feet. "We might infra-dymen superheterodyne receiver. It's like a regular superheterodyne receiver, except instead of using the local crystal oscillator, we've gotta use a dymen-shifted crystal oscillator. Which, you were able to detect the Brood's coming, right? So that shouldn't be--" The raccoon leans back against the back of the chair, arms crossing in consternation, "Well. I'm guessing it's not common here, but you've gotta have at least what we'd need to get it together." He looks after where Flèche has run and then scowls, "We're gonna need some help, huh? Please don't tell me--" Lucien is wincing. He refills his own glass, and fills a second for Rocket for good measure. His eyes have tracked to the Stark logo spinning small at the lower corner of the display. "Unfortunately," the slow scrub of his knuckles against his cheek pull his mouth just that much more rueful, "I know exactly who can help." --- 14 september. tony's apartment. "-- when Baldy asked about a possible rift event. Turns out. What day isn't there a rift event out at that, ah, prep school of his, but. Guess we shoud've zoomed out a little." Tony has dragged a wealth of equipment into his workshop, some of it looking oddly old-fashioned among all his high-tech gear and robots. He's spinning up one of several displays, idly shaking his head. "Thank God Dad was such a packrat -- wait." He's twirling around here, on his stool, twirling the slender mental tool he's been holding to point at Rocket -- "Do you have those in space, too? Little woodrat engineer up there? Squirrel for your copilot? All I know it's a whole damn. Redwall Abbey ship you've been flying around all this time." "You asking if I got a packrat up there, or your dad?" answers Rocket, as he pauses to admire one of the old-fashioned pieces in Tony's collection. "'cause your dad could only have wished to ride with me." He shakes his head, and replaces the worn looking tool where he picked it up, "That's probably another raccoon joke I don't got the reference to, which is all I should expect from someone known as a genius only on Earth, but I've seen your raccoons. I'm not impressed." He waves a hand, "I've been flying solo, and my copilot is normally a tree-guy, thank you very much. But let's stay on topic." Rocket's expression lights up when he stops upon a robot, which he hops up to and starts feeling around on. "You think we can re-appropriate some of this stuff for our project? You can even help with the tinkering, if you want." --- 16 september. tony's apartment. Rocket's original radio project has been greatly altered, but at its heart, there are still some familiar elements. However, it also has some of the almost sci-fi looking elements that have since been plugged into it. Rocket bops it with his screwdriver, as if offended by one of the noises that it just made, "I was expecting this thing to pick up lots of signals, but your planet must attract way more nonsense than I originally planned on. And this city...." He points his tool towards his co-conspirators more local to said planet accusingly, "This is way above baseline. What, did you decide to put a big 'mess with me' signal to everyone who would listen? Decided to liven up your backwater lives by taking a crack at the fundamentals of local reality?" Tony has been frowning for a moment at the incoming streams of data, as if this will contextualize -- recontextualize, decontextualize -- the voices coming through the speaker. He glances briefly towards Rocket and maybe it is a herculean effort that has him bite back some more woodland creature snark here or maybe he's still recovering from his last roasting by the raccoon. Either way it's the receiver that he is directing his incredulity at: "Somewhere around the, ah, horde of squirrels averting disaster -- think the fundamentals of reality are taking a crack at us, here." --- 17 september. tony's apartment. "I know, I know it seems bad. The weird space transmission, the sinister laughter, the actual use of the word 'abduction', but..." Rocket pats the radio where said recent transmission was able to be picked up. "I think we can rule that out as a suspect. I know about those guys, they think--" And now, a laughter starts to bubble up beneath his words, "They think it's really funny-- really funny when they steal cows. Which you have to admit, that's pretty funny! Like you gotta imagine the farmer out there like." Rocket pauses a moment, trying to recompose himself to make his voice a little deeper in imitation of a farmer, "Oh no, my cooooow. It's in spaaaace." He just can't contain it anymore and he bursts out in raucous laughter, though when he is able to recover, he adds, "They also think cows are cute. We can rule them out." Tony has gone briefly quiet -- very pensive, while he is picturing this. Brows scrunched, thoughtful. At the end of Rocket's impression he huffs one quiet snort. "That would only happen if they left behind -- wait. Are they leaving behind messages. 'Took your cow'. Picture of the cow in space. Maybe we should..." Possibly it is only another glance at their long to-do list of things to sort through that is stopping Tony from, Right This Moment, sending some hapless Iowa farmer a satellite image of their cow off in space. He does consider the latest transmission for a considerable moment longer before chucking that file off into a holographic file cabinet, this one helpfully labeled: BULLSHIT FOR FURY. "They leave big messages in their circle-language, but I don't think anyone really gets it," says Rocket, though he snickers and adds, "That makes it even funnier." --- 19 september. tony's apartment. There's a spread of Vietnamese food laid out on one of the side tables, half finished by now. Tony is gesticulating with his chopsticks, kind of animated -- his rice noodles have long since been forgotten in favor of some eager tangent of a tangent of a tangent that long since got away from the first spark of interest in one of Rocket's side projects it began at and has landed on, "-- will go down with you right now and show you, they seriously --" But here he's breaking off, distracted yet again to glance back at one of their displays with a frown. "That shouldn't --" He pokes it, checks it again. "Ah. I think. That signal -- is hailing. Us." Rocket's previously relaxed posture is suddenly ended, and he is sitting up straight with wide eyes, only remembering to noisily slurp up the noodles still in his mouth (covered as they are with fish sauce) after a brief pause, and he clicks the radio to the 'off' position. "We don't talk to those guys," he says in a hushed voice, as if whoever was on the other end might hear him from wherever they are in space. He stares at the radio for a few moments and then scoops up more noodles, resuming his more casual demeanor. "That's gonna be a problem to deal with later. But hey, at least I know what the Brood were spooked about now, mission success." He shakes his head, "Remind me after we unkidnap Lucien's friends to give you all the low-down on the Kree empire. One thing at a time." "This whole -- kidnapping thing. Becoming a whole project, if these, ah, Kree --" Tony is not looking at the receiver now but at Rocket, at his drastic shifts in posture. One of his legs bounces, restless. He's in creating a new digital file, this one now labeled with just an Avengers icon, and before he tosses this new transmission in he is (very reluctantly) opening up a long-ignored Signal thread to start sending a message. --- 21 september. tony's apartment. "Hey! Get off this frequency! You're clogging up our project!" Rocket is hovering over his radio-project-turned-tech-abomination yelling into one of the microphones. Unfortunately, based on the garbled reply, it does not seem like this signal is entirely stable, though this does not keep Rocket from trying to bully them. "You're not even a real pirate! Just a quarter-rate Quill wannabe! What kinda callsign even is 'Coarse Hair', you stubbly chump!" When Rocket looks over his shoulder, his voice has returned to total calm, almost cordial in comparison, "Hey, can you keep harassing these guys for me? I gotta get something to drink." "Jarvis," Tony is saying immediately, "you got any good insults saved up? Space pirates -- did not imagine pirates were going to feature so heavy this season, seems almost retro after the invasion. Oh, Jarvis and I got you," he's adding as an afterthought to Rocket, although it does seem like he might be leaving the bulk of the harassing duties to his longsuffering assistance as he peers with some curiosity at the broken transmission coming through from the Starjammer. "-- is it pirates all the way up, now?" Lucien is just now returning to the workshop, hauling along with him a shorter, wirier, much-scarred man dressed in a bold red tee with Magneto's helmet emblazoned in purple silhouette on the front and a green plaid lungi tied around his waist. In his other hand there is a tray, balanced with a practiced waiter's ease -- four glasses, one of which (thick and red and rimmed with celery salt, a stick of celery cut neat like a half-straw for garnish) he rotates neatly to face Rocket as he lowers the tray. "Do you think it might help at all with locking down this signal if you could predict the ship's next whereabouts? I located some of the corsairs with whom they've been treating, and my wonderful Madripoorean friend here," the friend in question is turning distinctly a shade paler as Lucien nudges him forward, his eyes gone very wide, "has graciously agreed to tell us when and where they will rendezvous. Apologies for my absence, I haven't wanted to disturb your work. I get so terribly lost with all the technical details." --- 23 september. tony's workshop. This room hasn't been quiet for a while, not really -- there's been plenty of sounds from the screen, where a flying strike team has been raining explosives down onto the players below. Tony has been uncharacteristically quiet, jaw working slowly as he watches a huge spiky boulder rumbling down a path toward a no-longer-there Joshua. He downs a large swallow of Scotch, and leans back in his seat. "Think they really traded, ah, down after the pirates." Lucien is not drinking. He's been rotating his glass slowly between his fingertips, his expression calm and thoughtful while on the screen Ion scrambles desperate at a bobbing barrel, several large claws snatching vicious out of the water towards him. His mouth presses just a touch thinner when Tony speaks, his wrist rotating slow to tip his glass idly to one side and then the other. "Scylla, Charybdis. Thank goodness this group is well accustomed to rough waters." Rocket has been leaning over the interdimensional receiver with a tool on his eye, working on keeping the signal stable for the broadcast, though it seems he's gained a grasp of it pretty readily. When a purple portal on screen closes, after Kiri is ushered through, he looks back through his monocular viewer, "Seems like they handle themselves. But it's not gonna stop, eventually--" He hesitates, then looks back to the machine, "Can't leave them treading water for too long." --- ???. otherworld. Damien has most assuredly been listening -- there is often something about his comportment that's almost unnerving in that respect, an overly-intense focus that suggests very much that the person he is talking to has become quite nearly his entire world in this conversation. No less so right now for his youngest child; his starbright eyes have been fixed rapt on Lucien through this exposition, the attentiveness perhaps all the more uncanny given that all around them the kinnari's sybaritic revels are continuing wild and intoxicating. It's only once he is quite sure that Lucien has done talking that his brows start to crease in a mild confusion. "I do not think I understand. You seem quite distressed and you seek my aid but what, exactly, is the problem?" Lucien is not doing quite as well at fully shutting out the whirlwind of music and bodies around them, but his eyes have not left Damien's. Not until this moment, anyway, when they turn slightly heavenwards as if in supplication. "They have been impressed into enslavement for the entertainment of those beasts," he emphasizes again, patiently. "You have vastly more experience with traipsing through other magical dimensions than the rest of us. These creatures have them captive and we could dearly use some assistance in reaching them before they all meet their bloody deaths in there." "Their ideas of entertainment could use some refining," Damien is agreeing quite gravely. "Though that bit with the balloon animals did sound very droll, you will have to show me." His brows are pulling deeper and deeper together, though, while he considers, and it isn't enslavement or bloody deaths that finally widens his eyes in stark indignance. His wing drapes around Lucien's shoulders and he starts steering them away, a definite huff in his voice now: "Captive for good? That won't do at all. That's my Joshua, I won him quite fairly. Come, then, the Market may hold some answers for you." --- 1 october. tony's workshop. There is a brief silence after Beast's form crumples over in the transmission, along with an edited in 'womp womp' sound unenthusiastically signaling his demise. "That guy seemed like a real dork, but I didn't want him to--" Rocket shakes his head, having worked tirelessly on trying to get his signal out to the team, and has had the program running in the background all the while. "These slugs are real hungry for blood now, figured it'd be only a matter of time after they got a taste..." Almost apologetic, Rocket looks over his shoulder, "We've almost got a hit, their stupid. Bike to nowhere. It's a receiver." "Yeah, but what the signal's doing here makes no damn sense." Tony has not, previously, showed much outright irritation with these technical challenges, more excited than upset when there's some particularly confounding puzzle to solve. Here, now, he's pulled his eyes away from the video feed and back to their work, his jaw tighter and his voice sharp. As the Weirdos are conferring he's getting back to looking over their work, and he doesn't look back up until the background boom of explosion. Even then it's not the screen he's watching, but Lucien. "We're going to get through." Lucien isn't saying anything at all. The small corner of the room he has claimed looks far less high tech and far more witchy, though whatever the purpose of the candles and herbs and small bowl of water it is not immediately apparent. He is ignoring all of them, eyes locked onto the feed and his expression stony-blank as the bright flare of light fades away. Damien is humming, some quiet melody that in its manylayered intricacy doesn't seem quite possible to be humming. It doesn't stop through these deaths, his thoughtful gaze flicking between the other men in the room. Eventually, as the victory fanfare plays, he reaches into the bowl of water. Plucks a metal ring from it, hefting the smooth steel in his palm. "Your science's view of sense is very limited," he's musing, "but the worms have stolen magic in plenty, you ought to borrow a touch as well." He's setting the ring down by Tony and Rocket and drifting back to Lucien to fold himself languidly into a chair. His expression as his long fingers unfurl towards the feed has shifted somewhat dreamy: "Such a romantic end for that lightning-god, wasn't it? And his poor lover there with no eyes to weep. This has really turned out quite stirring." --- 2 october. tony's workshop // brotherhood house, mojo world. While at first, the silence in the makeshift morgue is more or less normal, there's the hiss of sound as first some static begins playing and then something more clear starts to play. "Is this it?--" There is the sound of static, and then a brusque raccoon voice speaks up, easily mistaken for a radio having come online. "Hey! Come here, who knows how long this signal is gonna be stable and we've got some stuff to talk about." There's a pause, and now the insistence grows stronger and the signal stabilizes into something clearer than radio noise. "Hey! EARTH TO JOSHUA!! Talk to the nowhere bike!" Over on the other end of the screen, Joshua has been slouched heavy and exhausted beside a weight bench, hand gripping the still-lifeless one of the pyrokinetic laid out atop it. His eyes drag slowly upward, and in the sallow exhausted lines of his face his surprise is at first hard to clock, gaze just stuttering blank and listless on the Peloton's video screen. He blinks, sighs, slouches a little more heavily, but a second later he's sitting up sharp, a second after that he's blipped over to perch on the bike wide-eyed and intent. He's staring down at the screen, posture tensed now like he is readying for this small furry loudmouth to start barking fitness drill sergeant instructions at him. He rubs a hand against his cheek, whispers something very quiet with the rote rhythm of a prayer, but for all the brightness in his eyes his voice is still gruff. "Peloton getting real desperate for a new market." "Oh, they should be so lucky to have a personality as galvanizing as Rocket on their media team." Lucien is just appearing in frame, settling down quiet and poised to give Joshua and then the room (and the corpse) behind him a very long scrutiny. "I do apologize for the delay, that strange dimension of yours is quite well tucked away. -- Does time work much the same there, do you know? Out here I believe your year is just starting." There's a softness to his voice, gentle across the crisp speakers. "The last seems to have taken quite a toll, but we can try to make the next one sweeter." Rocket glances over towards Lucien and tilts his body so that the other figure can better be in frame. "I wasn't about to go leaving a co-pilot hanging," says Rocket with a sniff, "I'll take the product placement deal if it means making contact. Besides, you don't have the charisma to carry a show." He makes a quick slicing gesture across his throat, "So let's see about getting this bastard cancelled, and all you weirdos home." | |
