player plot: when my time comes around, pt. 2.5.

[propulsion]

WHO: Stephen Strange, Tony Stark, Viktor, Wysteria de Foncé, feat. James Flint, Yseult, and sundry!
WHAT: A sleepless month.
WHEN: First week of August
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Partially open! Within are some closed threads for time travel solutions and geniusing, but feel free to use this post as a catch all if you wish to RP about time travel and sciencing or talking to people about time travel and sciencing.

Something is happening!

And at first, who could possibly say what, with the research workrooms kept closed? But the sounds of other voices muffled on the other side can be picked up at just about any hour. Eventually, this becomes more erratic, but only because there is the sound of metal grinding, clanking, and quiet conversation drifting and pattering up through the lyrium-glowing stone passageways that funnel down into the basement of the Gallows.

Eventually, an announcement is made, and the cause for at least four of the Research division being utterly consumed by work becomes apparent. Do feel free to stop by, whether to register your disapproval, make sure they are eating, or to lavish upon them your tearful gratitude, but don't expect to stay too long regardless.

Comments

[hassaran]

Yseult remembers the musical--the theater a rare familiar setting despite the scale and the fantastical effects. She remembers drinking three Black Widows and, to ensure no feelings were hurt, at least one Iron Man, and taking one sip of a bright green Hulk that managed to be both overpowering and so disgustingly sweet that she immediately pressed it on Flint. She remembers whistling one of the songs, its melody looping in her mind, as they walked back to the Tower through streets lit as bright as day. (She remembers returning to her rooms half drunk and trying to explain the show to Darras until they gave up for laughing.) She does not remember anything that seemed serious enough to be relevant to their current situation. Nothing worth the danger of raising hopes.

She doesn't bother to conceal the skepticism, but it's tempered somewhat by the indications that he is serious. Likely delirious, but at least in earnest. "Do you have any reason to believe this is possible other than confidence in your Division's capability?"

[propulsion]

Tony does go for his coffee, here, somewhere between Flint's dry reminder and Yseult humouring him with a question. That's called progress.

He used to sell things. Almost exclusively to clients who were already bought, sure, but it's not like he'd never found himself in a room with skeptics. If it chimes uncomfortably with slightly more ruinous projects, then it's the kind of thing he can ignore while thought crackles uncomfortably hot across over-stretched synapses.

"Couple," he says. "First, precedent. We know rifts have spacetime manipulation capability. We have two semi-documented cases of people being thrown forwards into the future and evidence of movements back into the past, altering timelines and events. So it's possible. Achievable?"

Everything is, he doesn't say, but does think. "Let's back up. The Gates require blood sacrifice to open and close. And by the way, I'm not about to pitch blood sacrifice," he adds, with a raised pointer finger, "not a phrase I've ever used in a pitch meeting, so that's fun. Kind of a new low bar to clear, for me.

"But we do have an ancient Tevene blood magic machine in our basement, also incidentally the name of my new band, which is capable of generating the massive amount of power we'd need to break through spacetime."

[katabasis]

This spurs a small sweeping motion of the hand from Flint, the metaphorical clearing away of the flash involved with all of this so he might cut directly down to:

"But that machine. It does require blood to use. So if you're not suggesting we all slice our wrists open for th effort, then what exactly are you suggesting?"

Nevermind how Tony—they? A while cadre of Rifters; don't think he didn't notice—means to alter the device to point in the direction they want it to. Because, fine. Let's pretend that's possible for the moment.

[hassaran]

No, let's not. "This all sounds very--" vague, speculative, dangerous, yes. But worst of all: "It sounds like wishful thinking. Rifts do all sorts of strange things we've no control over. We know little about that artifact. Two semi-documented cases?"

She lifts her hands, turning palms up, something pleading in the gesture. "We all wish this hadn't happened. But giving people hope it could be un-done, based on half a theory that made sense when you hadn't slept for a week? That would be cruel."

[propulsion]

Tony draws in a breath, very prepared to jump on Flint's question in the interest of forwards motion—

Lets it out, looking to Yseult. Coffee cup set back down, hands on the back of the chair as if to stop them from leaping about in gesticulation, a minor flex of knuckles alongside that we all wish, but it isn't a sign of irritation. Maybe a minor fleck of that, at the suggestion of something cruel about any of this, mitigated by her gesture.

"I'm coming up on four years, now," he says, making some concerted effort to appear more level, although this is quick to unravel half a sentence more in. "And a not insignificant portion of that time has been dedicated to making the strange things rifts do, the things we can do to rifts, a little less, and not just me alone," comes with a gesture that must indicate a workroom full of enterprising scientists.

Hands resettle. "Semi-documented or not, what we know is: a guy altered his recent history to manipulate the present to his benefit. The artifact he used to do that, we don't have, but I bet you we know more about rift interactions seven years later, and Strange, again, is a time wizard.

"And the answer to your question is dragon blood," to Flint.

[hassaran]

Yseult does at least seem to be listening intently to his pitch, even if there is a growing sense, as she does, of opposition setting and hardening. It's hard to place what it is, some subtle tightening of jaw and sinews, stiffening of posture, gritting of back teeth. A wall hurriedly erected between her and this threatened hope. "And if all our resources are devoted to this and it fails? Or makes things worse, rips open the veil? Interferes with the Gates?"

She looks once to Flint beside her, but doesn't wait for his reaction. Inside the neat curl of her hands, not a white knuckle among them, she presses the curved edge of a thumbnail into the meat of her palm. Nothing she wants this badly can be trusted.

She shakes her head, "It would be irresponsible to allow grief to divert our efforts."

[propulsion]

"That's,"

he starts, too-quick a protest, so Tony lets out a sigh first. Not exasperated, nor defeated, just the natural response to that sense of wishing very much they could skip this part, that he could leap through the correct series of hoops that would lead to either or both of them catching the same spark.

It would be a nice bonus if everyone was on board, that's all.

"The Gates aren't involved. That's like," a gesture out, "shooting an arrow in the training yard and worrying you'll hit the Divine if you miss. Veil tearing, we can contain. And the problem we're addressing is how to generate enough energy, not if we'll have too much of it. That'd be a nice problem to have, would love to have that problem. The worst thing we'll break if this doesn't work is some hearts."

Which is not nothing, says a turn of his hand, head tipping. "But it'll work. We open the door, we send through a message. A few people to carry it. We keep it small, contained, precise. A single word of warning would have shifted everything that happened that day."

[katabasis]

Somewhere in here, the point of Flint's attention his shifted from bouncing between Tony and Yseult to the map on the table between them. It's heavy enough that the edges of the vellum aren't much prone to curling, and spares the various pieces littering it the double duty of both marker and paper weight. Not far from him, a familiar cluster of wooden pieces crowds Starkhaven. A twin knot marks Hasmal. Somewhere between the two points, unburdened by any counter, the map still calls out Tantervale.

He's seen revised editions of chart books detailing that stretch of the Minanter that have chosen to exclude it.

"Stark is right," he says. Where Flint's hand had risen in the interim to smooth some corner of his whiskers under his thumb, it now falls away. "As things stand now, we have little choice but to fall back in under the Inquisition's banner unless we mean to suddenly make better friends. There's already talk of what that would mean among the remaining company. We'd lose more people, and find ourselves relying on the Inquisition's reputation and resources regardless."

He looks to Yseult.

"What do we lose by trying?"

[hassaran]

"More lives. Our remaining resources. Any chance of salvaging morale and rebuilding in time." She does not lift fingers to tick things off, but they're rattled out just as immediately. "Give them hope of this and fail and you'll break whatever spirits are left. That will be the end."

This conversation is viscerally uncomfortable, grating like a note ringing in the ears that somehow crawls along the skin. Tony's certainty, the perpetual arrogance of rifters and researchers, the easy way concerns are dismissed, the inevitable intrusion of Flint's personal aversion to the Inquisition and the Chantry and any body with any standing, the idea of saying yes and having it prove a false hope. Of saying no when it might have been a real one. It's little comfort (but not none) to realize that of course, it isn't really up to her.

"I can't outvote you. And you were going to try it no matter what we said, weren't you?"

[propulsion]

Tony first points at Flint, looking to Yseult, but this gesture drops off as she makes her counter.

That hand finds a place to be at his waist, but only for a short second, loosed into a sweep of a gesture that is not as dismissive as a shrug but seems to say: yeah maybe.

"Have to," he tells her, after half a beat. "But our chances of success increase exponentially if you're both onboard."

[katabasis]

From behind the shape of his knuckles, Flint's hand having turned so he might twist absently at the short hairs bristling near the corner of his mouth, he regards Yseult for a long moment. Later, when they've left this room, he will let the revulsion over the whole prospect find and sicken him—too protectively narrowed against the prospect of success to find any sense of optimism for this thing that Stark's suggested.

But that's a few rooms and minutes, hours maybe, removed from here. After a moment, the point of his attention breaks from Yseult to Tony.

"I assume you came prepared with a list in case we said yes." Of what exactly being onboard is meant to look like.