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

[propulsion]

"I mean worse comes to worse, we'll be rebooting the universe," Tony says, with a crack of a smile that is more gallows humour than anything else, now resuming his wander upon Viktor speaking up, "but I figure mass sacrifice is a hard sell no matter how temporary the timestream."

A gesture. "Dragon's blood is more than a substitute and according to what I've read, we wouldn't even need a lot of it, not if we're talking about just activation. We destabilise, amplify," a nod to Viktor and his helpful diagrams, "and build something to channel and loop the overflow. We have a decent stock of material I don't mind completely burning through.

"It'll be fun," is just true, discounting the high stakes, the absence of reliable Grey Wardens to bring him coffee during the wee hours, and so on.

[grindset]

Viktor's impromptu diagramming, having been done with a blunt pencil, in a hurry, using his leg as a table, is nigh illegible—but then, most of the words are in Runeterran squiggles, so even under ideal conditions they might be less than ideal for this audience. On the other hand, the mathematical notation translates almost 1:1. Funny how that works.

First come first served: he offers up the page to Strange, for perusal or passing off. Meanwhile, being no longer in the middle of a thought, he now takes advantage of this tiny notes queue to have his turn at giving Wysteria a belated Look of his own. This one happens to favour aggrievement.

"The fuel collection team should still be encouraged to collect more than is needed," he says. "Best to assume this will take multiple attempts to succeed." And then, with barely any inflection, he confirms, "It will be fun."

[portalling]

Strange takes the papers as offered, meanders away to press them to the table and lean over and start trying to decipher that train of thought, that initial seed of an idea. He and Viktor have discussed their runic magic before and tried to conduct a sort of comparative etymology; enough that he recognises a few of the glyphs, where they’d tried to find the commonalities between their systems, a way to mesh them together.

Fun is an alien word these days, but he can still feel it: that kick of brutal satisfaction, building momentum, firing up the engine without guard-rails and without any of them looking at each other and asking are you insane. If anyone can do the impossible, surely it’s the four people in this room.

“That means we need to rope in Forces and Scouting and others,” he says. “People with muscles to go fight a dragon for us.”

Then again, other members of Riftwatch might be looking for somewhere to pour all their energy. Maybe they’re angry and grieving enough to go fight a dragon about it.

[heirring]

Don't you look aggrieved at her, Viktor. Some members of this division have refrained from disappearing behind their locked doors and have been stuck minding certain excesses of paperwork on account of it.

But there are more pressing things to squint at other than directly back at him, and so her attention reverts back to Tony. "We should also test to see whether lyrium has effect on the power generated by the anchor. Take it as a mage might," Ser Orlov had recommended. "We can open a Rift or two in the dungeons and close them right away as soon as we've takes measurements. That way if something were to begin to— fray, I suppose, when it comes to overtaxing the machine. We could be certain then of how far it might be pushed while retaining some stability of the Veil about it."