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WHO: Viktor + The P
WHAT: a kind of entrance interview
WHEN: the day after this
WHERE: Research division office
NOTES: nerd alert

Viktor is early.

It's unclear by precisely how long, as clocks don't seem to be much of a thing here, but aiming for the break of lunch hour affords him enough time to look somewhat less obliterated by the climb to the Research office; whether or not he's encountered early depends on Tony's own comings and goings. Either way, early or otherwise, he may be found seated outside the door, a weary, bent shape who makes some effort to unbend and unweary himself when another person arrives. The crutch he holds like a staff at his side is a bespoke ergonomic affair, and the metal brace hugging his right leg is of similar character: designs of practical elegance. It takes him a second to stand.

"Provost Stark," he says, by way of greeting, and turns the crutch under his arm with fluid motor memory. His gentle voice, carrying an accent somewhere within the range of Slavic, belies the seriousness of his eyebrows. He does not offer a handshake. "Thank you for making the time."

For the usual reasons, one might assume: to establish whether this newest Rifter might be a suitable candidate for Research. To discuss the principles of your division, to quote his written request.

He's barely taller than Tony; his posture brings them a little less than even.

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Temporal barriers—that's a particularly interesting phrase. He takes his time considering it, and the rest, along with the strange ring in his hands.

"Back home," is less stress-inducing to speak aloud than in my world or something to that effect, "our source is likewise a naturally occurring material—not an ore, but a crystal." He feels at the inscriptions as he speaks, slow strokes of a thumb. "It too becomes safe to handle once refined, and, in conjunction with runic components, its utility is potentially unlimited. It's... much more than a simple battery."

An adaptive rune matrix,

"And we don't, eh. We don't consume it."

(Just the other way around.)

"...But they may have, for all we know. Much of the arcane record has either been lost to time or deliberately destroyed."

Tony, a big fan of batteries (granted, complex ones), sort of raises his eyebrows—mostly in inquiry.

Interested, though, attention forwards and down. 'Back home', possessive pronouns, all that is familiar language, and sometimes he uses it too, even these days. It's not exactly brushing it aside when he says, "Careful," but kind of playful, a hand raising up briefly to wiggle his fingers. "About making connections. Assuming similarities. Leads to heartbreak and long, sleepless hours."

Nothing really works, here, the way Tony ever expects it to. Metaphysical handcuffs. There's a reason he hasn't built a water-powered powerplant, say, but dicks around with lyrium forever. (Besides the fact that lyrium is cool. And that is, to be fair, a major factor.)

"But expertise isn't nothing," he goes on. "It's just a matter of translation. What made your thing more than a simple battery?"

Long, sleepless hours—he has those already. Not the sort of thing one ought to volunteer while cruising the line between interviewer and -ee, but he can't help his mouth making a thin, fleeting shape about it.
Also about being course-corrected in a way that makes him want to counter it, I know, even as he accepts the wisdom in it.
Mostly that one.

"It's... not an easy thing to articulate." Success: that didn't come out snippy. "You could call it a, a conduit to something greater, and even that doesn't do it justice. Seven years in, we've only scratched the surface. You have to see it, to feel it, to understand." In the movement of his hand, his present rejection of eye contact, are echoes of frustration. "I was working on something," he starts, abruptly corrects his own course: "We built a teleportation grid. Industrial scale, sketch to build, everything from the ground up."

There's long, sleepless hours being productive, and long, sleepless hours wasted on a figment of an idea that something about this world does not want you to find. Tony has done both, will do both, does not know if he'd have heeded the same advice if their positions were reversed—because most things worth learning, you learn the hard way—but, you know,

he'd be ~remiss~ if he didn't offer the warning.

But Viktor's face doesn't offer articulate protest, so Tony moves on, listening. "If you wanna build one of those again," he says, "we'd be super grateful. And 'we' is your," the fingers on hands braced against the chair back briefly splay, "faculty? Department?"

Look, something about Viktor gives unhinged postgrad vibes, despite the magnitude of the thing he just said, but Tony expands. "Company?"

"Department," is more or less accurate. "Consisting of myself and one other person." This pause needn't be long to snatch into him—a hook of sentiment, barbed, quick, slow warmth seeping after. "With a coordinating assistant. We had access to whatever resources we needed... equipment, materials, labour... designed all the specialized hardware, built much of it ourselves. Adapted the refinery for the crystals. It was," the best years of his life by far, "it was all overseen by the head of the governing Council."

Who also happens to be the dean of the local academy, whom Viktor was assisting until he met the aforementioned other person and tenderly bullied him into breaking into said dean's personal laboratory for guerrilla science, so, unhinged postgrad vibe: also accurate.

"We call it Hextech—the technology. Our inventions." The ring turns in his hands. He's feeling for burrs, something tiny to worry at with the pad of his finger, has yet to find a single one. "His idea."

Edited (you saw nothing) 2022-08-30 14:52 (UTC)

"That's," and Tony pauses over it, before deciding, "way better than 'magitech'."

Damnit.

Also: stalling, and thinking, absorbing. This note about some mysterious other guy is shelved, for now, labelled for later. There is an impulse that he has to process, too, wanting to throw more into the mix to see what comes out, but it is a universal truth that you simply don't put out on the first date.

But when doesn't Tony Stark put out on a first date?

"So now you're here, you wanna get to work?"

It doesn't have the inflection of an invitation to come play, exactly, although it could be. It's a real question, questing after Viktor's aim, sensing that curiousity. He could easily just relax, read some books, continue to familiarise at whatever pace he wanted. Contrary to popular belief, rifters don't owe this world anything.

Some faint flare of nostrils, a momentary loosening of his jaw, his next breath, suggests amusement too weak to manifest. It is way better, and he can imagine the likely response: Yeah, warm and proud, insufferably charismatic even while flashing ego, I know.

The ring turns, one smooth flip around its axis.

"Now that I'm here, I'd like to know a little more about you," finishes with a lilt, and he raises his eyes at last. "What you've done previously, here and elsewhere, and what your plans are for this division—beyond maintaining a hands-off approach."

How the body behaves, after all, is determined by its head.

"Hm."

Tony tugs his chair back out of the desk, finally returning to sit. Picks up the mug he'd left there earlier that day, whirling around the liquid inside to assess how good it still is, which is, not very.

"Well, you've benefited already from one of my contributions," he says, as he does this. "The automatic rift/rifter indicator via early detection system, or, ARRIVED, you know, for short. It detects Veil weakness with enough time to spare to get some boots on the ground in anticipation of a new rift, and ergo, new rifters. I could use a third set of hands willing to know how to fix them when they go haywire, by the way. Or install them when we expand."

He gestures loosely with the mug, before bringing it up to sip from. Tastes like black coffee from hours ago, predictably, and he makes a face.

"Me and my friend are working on a flying ship," he adds. "I also invented soap, like, a while back."

(Hand sanitiser.)

Invented soap.

Viktor heroically resists the urge to lay his head down on the desk. It's possible his interest in the early detection system, plus the invitation to put his hands on it, gives him the strength to do this.

"I suppose there's a wartime mandate that gives aerostatics a higher priority than, say, plumbing."

This place doesn't even have a freight elevator. He doesn't say that, but he wants to. Maybe it'll be communicated psychically if he sits here long enough.

"Would this installation take place before or after I single-handedly recreate the Hexgates?"

His deadpan is flawless, any present mote of humour as parched as the tannins in a nasty old coffee, fit to suck all the spit out of your mouth.

"Before," cheerfully. "Definitely."

Only blithe, upon sass detection—or attitude detection, but benefit of the doubt says that this rifter didn't make an appointment with him to be rude for no reason. Tony sets his stale coffee aside and then pushes it out of the range where he might pick it up again on auto, and brings his hands together in a loose steeple.

"When it comes to resources, time, a paycheck, yeah, wartime mandate. Home improvements inside and out tend to be at the pleasure of externals, sponsors, whatever. There's also research in Research, lot of book reading, and a new mystery to crack every few months. My plans for the division is to help Riftwatch help the Inquisition win the war."

His hands part. But.

"I like a big picture. And if we're gonna get philosophical about why rifters are even here to begin with, I'd say the best answer is that we're here to help. We know things, we've done things, and we've built things that no one else has, in this world. I took the big desk because that's what I believe in. And also I wanted to do whatever I want without asking or being sneaky."

Obviously.

Obviously.

The promise of a lot of book reading is less attractive than one might assume. Viktor does have some of that fussy academic air about him, and while it's not an entirely false impression, there's only so much studying a man can do before his hands start to feel empty. He's not worried about it; if he starts to feel benched he can just exercise some of that go-getter spirit the Provost claims to value.

But big-picture values are of greater import than the book to build ratio, and he receives them, and weighs them, earnestly. What Tony says appeals directly to the most raw and frustrated part of him, the one freshly set with a barb—it's a single finger touching down to slow the desperate spinning, and the contact pinches at him.

Off that pinch, he says, "I won't build weapons. No designs, no fabrications, no repairs. I want no part of it. Just so we're clear."

"Why."

It's blunt and quick, the way he asks that, lacking in a questioning inflection but certainly expecting an answer. Not a challenge, either. More so a direct scrolling down to whatever footnote matches this asterisk.

"I believe in helping people. Not hurting them." A heavy footnote, set down neatly between them, fixed where it lies. Under the ledge of his brow, his vivid amber eyes are steady. This is an argument he's had before. "There is enough suffering in the world as it is. I choose not to perpetuate it."

One foot, braced by metal shell and leather sole, scuffs quietly on the stone.

"The abandoned mining complex beneath Kirkwall—what they call Darktown. Have you seen it?"

Steadiness is met square. There's no pending argument on Tony's side of the desk, only a sharp-edged desire to understand an ultimatum set down before him rather than breeze on by it. He is, anyway, familiar. There's a slight twitch to his brow at the answer he gets, first—lofty words—but he is receptive, hands steepled and head at an inquisitive tip to the side.

The swerve in subject is followed along willingly enough, as he says, "Haven't been," in the tone of someone who knows about it.

"I'm waiting for the quarantine to finish."

Once that's over, he'll brave the ferry and visit these places that have been described to him, if he can manage it. The ferry alone is an intimidating prospect—even if he could swim, he hasn't the muscle tone to combat even the modest weight of his supports, so a mishap could send him straight to the bottom of the harbour—but he feels obliged to try.

"The way it's been described—Lowtown, too, the strata," his hand comes up, fingers bent flat, to stack invisible layers. (Hightown is a given, no need to mention it.) "I was born in a similar place. We even call it the undercity," and the coincidence plays in his tone. "It's why I came up, why I earned that position: to improve the lives of people with no chance to help themselves. That does not change simply because,"

shortly after it begins, this gesture becomes a helpless cycle,

"because of," what do you even call such a batshit crazy circumstance,

"this."

The idea of this little stick-figure man traipsing around Darktown—doesn't get an obvious reaction out of Tony, except maybe his chin tucks down a little in his stare across the desk. It's a problem—if it's a problem—for another day. Say, after the quarantine period is up.

"It could," Tony says, once he's done. "Change. But I dig that it doesn't."

Sometimes it sinks in longer, that there's no way back. That this is the world now. Hard to say at first blush how many of those processes Viktor has actually internalised or if this is just the instinctive pursuit of an already established pattern—but that, too, is not necessarily Tony's problem.

Anyway. It is batshit, and there are worse reactions. "I don't build guns," he says, after a second. "Or misc machines of destruction. It's not a div-wide ban, to be clear, and some of my stuff has," a finger wiggle, "a little grey area, but I like to give people options. Subduing damage, not lethal," another gesture, hands flowing from one end of the spectrum to the deadly other. "But I used to. May as well get that out of the way before you hear it somewhere else. And I got out of defense before I got here.

"Switched majors. Energy, robotics, communications, infrastructure," a gesture on this last one, Viktor's way, "on a manufacturing scale. Wartime mandate doesn't mean designing the biggest gun."

The acceptance and... digging... of this critical condition brings immediate, if tentative, relief. Like relaxing a clenched hand, like the safety that permits it. A fist he didn't realize he was still holding. (He's had other reactions. Privately.)

The rest, as he listens, is encouraging—and as he listens, intently, the shape of his brow suggests sympathy, or worry, though really it's just attentive. That shape doesn't change for specifics: grey area, non-lethal. He's not a fool, doesn't expect everyone to lay down their arms just because he's arrived with opinions instead of luggage. Most people don't like to fight; most people do what they feel they must.

"What led you to that decision?"

There is a second spent trying to remember if Tony relayed any scrap of his incoming answer to the other guy, when he was sitting on the other side of the desk. Doesn't think so. Remembers clamshell reticence, sealing it off at first opportunity, the good and the bad and the ugly. Things are different, lately, beyond just having the windows at his back, general feng shui choices configured through the room.

Part of that being: plenty of people have, by now, seen the worst of him. It happens to everyone eventually.

"When you put something out into the world and it stops being yours, it becomes anybody's," after that second is past. "Which is a bad premise if you're making missiles that can tear up mountains. Bad enough for it to fall into the wrong hands, worse when that's happening behind your back on purpose and for profit. The only mistakes I make twice involve nacho cheese and anniversaries."

A shrug. "And I built something better. Simple battery. Goes a long way in a world suffering from the depletion of finite resources."

"That's... admirable." Not a surprised pause—he was trying to think of another word, maybe several, and settled back on the first one that came to mind. "Truly. And most reassuring to hear."

Clam recognize clam; his shell's hairline crack widens.

"Before I," woke up to find he'd lost everything, "found myself here, we were in the midst of negotiating such a crisis. One of our stones became anybody's. Stolen," he adds, slouching into the memory of their failing. "There was talk of preemptive countermeasures, and... a Hextech weapon could easily be made to tear up a mountain."

Or to collapse a fissure, with so many people inside, innocent and otherwise—not a distinction he cares to make in this context. An unconscionable choice, regardless. He would never have consented to it.

"So." So, he doesn't know how that story ends, and never will, and the acute pain in that thought becomes a note of wistful humour. "I'm relieved there's room here for better batteries."

Tony's half-smile is quick, a wry fishhook tug. Amen to that.

No need during the onboarding to get into the lessons learned by hand-wringing physicists in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the variety of weapons of destructive powers that, in a dream of the future, had been wrung out of both himself and his colleague. If Viktor sticks around, like some of them tend to, there'll be time for any of that.

For now— "Wysteria Poppell," a gesture, "or, excuse me, de Foncé, has her own wealth of experience in working with enchantment and mechanics from her home world and, in the past few years, this one. She's summering in Orzammar—which, you definitely gotta go to Orzammar at some point, we'll find a reason sometime. But she and me and now you make up the R&D, total, right now.

"Unless," he adds, a gesture to Viktor, generous, "I didn't get the job. Diplomacy's pretty desperate, I hear."

Viktor's one cough of amusement literally goes like heh, nudges his torso into a little bounce from inside, and much of the tension leaves his face—this stops well short of an actual smile, but in his present state it's as good as.

"As tempting as that sounds," it doesn't, at all, "the better fit is R&D. With emphasis on the D."

He now rises from his seat to step to the desk, with the rune switch in one hand and his crutch in the other, held like a staff for the time being. And no, that was not on purpose. Look at him, with his formidable eyebrows and his razor cheeks and the funny little shape of his mouth, his two little moles perfectly placed, his sloping shoulders, long hands and bony wrists, offering the ring back to its maker, innocent of the knowledge that he should really just set it on the desk: completely earnest.

"This being the case, I am very pleased to inform you that you're hired."

Tony accepts the ring back anyway, a finger hooking it before giving it a twirl, letting it spin around his knuckles before it dangles off a wrist, caught at the sleeve. The placement better emulates its purpose, despite lacking the gauntlet it fits into.

"Thanks," easy. "We can do a tour sometime. Some stuff you should see before you get started for real."

The rune switch is tossed back into his other hand with a flick, moving to go see Viktor out and placing the device back on his worktable as he goes. Once at the door, he pauses, and then looks back.

"Do you have pizza in your world?"

Is Viktor a little slow to get going because he's still tired from the stairs, or because he's stalling along the worktable to get a good, solid look at everything he can reasonably observe during these few extra seconds?

Yes.

The abrupt non sequitur gives him pause—and he pauses, physically, and for a moment looks like he's trying to decide if this is a trick question. No, it's probably normal. As he reanimates, a normal answer:

"I'm... not familiar with the word, but... maybe? What is it?"

Edited (arrr) 2022-09-18 03:56 (UTC)

'Normal'.

"It's a food group," Tony says, now opening the door and standing aside for Viktor to go through it. "You know, cheese, meat, circle. Dining hall has it every other Wednesday, so you're just in time."

But he doesn't get to be a part of the focus group for pizza perfection. Still—

"Kitchen'll welcome the feedback."

"OK," he says, on his way through the door. He is definitely that guy who always sounds like he's saying OK, specifically, not okay. Something in his accent, the way he nips those syllables off. There are others—yeah becomes yah, and so on—

"Thank you, sir." For the meeting, for being receptive, for the grounding sense of trajectory, for standing to see him out. "I look forward to that tour, whenever you have the time." Not professional lip service; he's ready to go, tour him now, put something in his hand so his mind can stop drilling inwards. "And I'll be sure to give the kitchen my impression of their... cheesy meat circle."

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unwieldy week, sorry for delay

no worriesss

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