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

[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.