open | cloudreach

[hassaran]

WHO: Yseult + others to come
WHAT: A catch-all for open prompts and maybe some closed starters
WHEN: Roughly now-ish, or backdated throughout April
WHERE: Kirkwall
NOTES: If you'd like something in particular ping me on plurk/discord to discuss!

Comments

office.

[propulsion]

"Knock knock."

—in lieu of actual knocking. It is well past what ordinary earth people might consider normal business hours, and likewise interesting to Tony to see whose door casts light well into the evening.

His, not so much. If he's going to be working late, which is often, it's more likely to find him in the Research workshops, or dungeon-level. Tonight, for whatever reason, he's likewise lurking in his office on a night that so is Yseult, and so: he appears at her door, elbowing it open, and lifts a metal pitcher thing, where the scent of coffee precedes him.

"You shouldn't have any of this after 3 pm," he says. "Got a cup?"

[hassaran]

It's late enough that Yseult has quit her desk and is instead curled into a corner of the sofa beneath the rain-spattered window, though a stack of reports has made the trip with her. At Tony's offer she glances down, finds the wine glass on the side table empty and, after a beat of hesitation and with a faint shrug of eyebrows, offers it out. It's late. Whatever. (If he's without a cup for himself she'll indicate the sideboard against the wall opposite, where several styles of glasses and mugs reside next to a neatly curated collection of bottles.)

"What keeps you from your workshop?"

[propulsion]

"Roadblock."

Tony enters the room, the door nudged mostly closed behind him with a tap of his heel. He's holding his own cup, hooked on a finger, but he will fill Yseult's wine glass first with dark, dark coffee, and then his own more expected vessel. He settles somewhere comfortable and opposite her, a dad-noise type exhale in the descent.

He leans, sets the jug down on a surface. "Figured I could use a break from almost burning down the Gallows tryna get this," a hand gestures, holding some abstract concept in the air, "stabiliser online with some non-threatening paperwork." He nods at what she's reading. "What's keeping you from,"

where do scouts go when they're not in the office, something he considers for a blank moment before settling on,

"hiding in a tree. Right now."

[hassaran]

Yseult allows 'hiding in a tree' to sit in the air between them for a silent moment of roughly equal length to the one that preceded it, making eye contact all the while before she deadpans, "It's raining." Otherwise that's where she'd be.

There's a second armchair beside the one Tony chooses, the pair of them rearranged to face the sofa Yseult occupies now that the season has made the fireplace an irrelevant feature. A grey tabby cat occupies that other chair but now in two neat leaps it joins the Scoutmaster, curling up just beside her shins and reaching out a single paw.

"Reports from the Inquisition," she says once she's had a sip of coffee. "They have a wider network, some of which they are willing to share with me. What is a stabiliser for?"

[propulsion]

Gamely, Tony maintains eye contact throughout, deadpan in kind, but breaks when she points out the weather. Fair. He brings his coffee up to drink from, attention flicking to the cat that he may or may not have just not noticed was there until it moved.

"Kind of what it sounds like," he says, easing to slouch deeper into his seat. Not abandoning all propriety, or anything, but seeking some comfort that the upright chair at his desk hadn't provided. "It's a thrust device that'll stop, say, an airship from capsizing in bad weather, assault, that kind of thing. It'll need some kind of motion trigger—"

A hand wanders in the air, makes a flat line that wobbles so, like to demonstrate, before that hand drops.

"And also to be big. Lots of heat and force expelled in a blast. I've caused worse explosions for worse reasons."