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

even better now that it's had mumblemumble days to breathe

[grindset]

Higher and higher, every ebb outstripped by a new surge, not so unlike the arcane feedback loop they mean to create—and just as their instruments will hold that power in check, so too are they here to check one another. The synergy among these particular scientists ought to be terrifying, and perhaps it is, to someone, but there's no room for such concerns now. As long as they're in operation, whether in wild-eyed highs or sleepless lows, they must simply take it for granted that they have the remaining company's trust.

(Viktor has yet to reach one of those highest highs, himself, but he'll get there. He's already wearing the requisite Science Goggles—they're merely hanging around his neck at the moment, yes, but still an auspicious presence.)

Being fluent in frenzied squiggles and lines, he now nods along with the doctor's diagram.

"The translation makes sense," he says, as if none of this sounds crazy. "Going by the prevailing theory on Rifters, you could say we'll be reengaging the mechanism of our arrival... only this time on purpose, and taking everyone else with us, while we're at it." Nary a beat is skipped as he adds, raising the apple, "What happens if I eat this again?"

[portalling]

This is, like, his very favourite subject.

“Y’know, that’s— a very good question. The very first time I did this, back home, I didn’t try eating it again. Presumably it would be a normal apple, until whenever it’s rewound, and then you might not feel full anymore. Like the single thread of this apple’s timeline being pulled backward, rewinding and reassembling the pieces, even if the pieces were in your stomach. If you ate nothing else but apples for the entire day and then we rewind their cores, maybe you’d starve. I wonder how localised it might be, too: if we cut up the pieces and buried them throughout the grounds, could they still reassemble? Does it keep its shape-memory that long? Could the timeline still remember? We’ll need it to remember over a broader distance and longer time period, for the final effort. I know I could do that sort of thing back home, but here…”

But here, his powers are crimped and diminished; lesser than they used to be.

“Still,” Strange adds, in that state where you’re so tired that you’re wired, “it should be fine. If you ate it now.”

[grindset]

That could prove very useful, he thinks, under the right circumstances. One might rewind a mistake to record the point of failure precisely... perhaps destroy something before a witness, only to have it again for a time, perfectly whole, unbeknownst to anyone... or even hold some sensitive item in stasis until such time as it's used, read or otherwise, and then let it loose to snap back to the annihilating present. How thrilling it must be to carry such radical potential in one's hand alone.

And since it should be fine, and he's not in any immediate danger of starving—not that you'd know it to look at him—he sinks his teeth into the apple, none too daintily. A little more flesh comes off than intended, even—it's the kind of bite where lips must get unusually involved to bring it in. On Viktor, who conducts himself politely more or less at all times, this must look extraordinarily uncouth.

Off a glance to the doctor, Viktor now replaces the fruit where it sat, then circles his hand next to it, half like winding a reel toward himself, and half come on, let's see. While he's still chewing. Might as well, right?

[portalling]

Strange sits, at first, waiting for the chew-and-swallow to complete, but the spin of Viktor’s hand urges him onward. It’ll be more noticeable this way, anyway —

Once more unto the breach. He leans in, sliding forward in his chair, feet planted on the floor of the workroom. The magical motions are becoming familiar by now, grasping for that skein of energy he recognises as the apple’s living force, its specific position rooted within time-and-space.

The problem is the sheer arcane power required to do this, and how much more tiring this effort is than back home. He’s already running on fumes, the lyrium potion burning itself out in his bloodstream, he’ll be all trembles and frantic heart palpitations trying to fall asleep later, but there’s just enough juice in the tank for one last demonstration.

The makeshift time spiral tightens around the apple like a noose. He spins the dial.

Within this very particular circle, time goes backward.

A disorienting sensation: Viktor will feel it as if some phantom has swallowed the mouthful of apple in just as massive and ungainly a fashion as he did, a bite executed in reverse, and it simply vanishes from the interior of his mouth. One moment he’s chewing, and the next, teeth are grinding against teeth and it’s gone. The flesh of the apple is right back where it started.

And Strange sinks backward. He looks even more tired now, sweaty and clammy, but he still smiles. “Not a fluke, then,” he says. But Christ, he feels (and looks) like fresh hell.

[grindset]

Viktor is rapt, his attention fixed and toggling between the doctor's hands and the decimated fruit. He's chewing, chewing, then his molars come together with nothing in between—and he's never been so pleased to have food taken away from him.

"Heh!"

Off this single note of delight, he gives the nooks and ridges between his gums and teeth a quick pass with his tongue—lips closed, of course—to confirm that no part of the apple has lingered in any of the usual places. Not a grain of pulp. Not a shred of skin.

"Not a fluke," he confirms. Now might be an appropriate time to give the doctor a little clap on the shoulder, or some such thing—and this cold breeze of a notion, it passes straight through him, calms his enthusiasm in a way that oughtn't resemble anything but fatigue stepping on his heels. What he does offer, in tired, sweaty, clammy solidarity, is, "That deserves a breather, I think."

slaps a bow on it 🎀

[portalling]

As always, there’s that initial defiant little urge to say no, I’m fine, I can keep going. It’s that asinine stubbornness of a physician who doesn’t like to take his own advice— who would prefer to run himself ragged against all sense—

But Stephen Strange has gotten marginally better at knowing his own limits, and so after a moment of pursed lips and self-assessment, he seems to relent.

“You might have a point,” he says, and pushes his chair back. Stands up. A little wobbly on his feet like a newborn fawn, and so he winds up having to brace his palm against the tabletop. The dizziness passes after a moment, eyes flickering closed, before they snap open again and Strange looks at Viktor. “A break, then,” he says,

and they’ll eat some proper food and bring these findings to Wysteria and Tony, and they’ll manage something with it and build the stupid machine to roll back time and then everything, surely, will be fine.