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

team imagineers. closed to stephen, tony, wysteria, viktor.

[propulsion]

There is no one place that the work is confined to. There are, of course, the Research workrooms, which scarcely needs a booking schedule but Tony has cordoned off anyway for their exclusive useage. Slates, or chalk marks written directly onto stone walls (and sometimes floors) show scrawling mathematical equations and drafted runic patterns, some hasty looking diagrams of complex theory made into abstract forms, some partially smeared lines meant to delineate what can be scrubbed away and what is not allowed to be.

Stacks of books, scrolls, documents paper a worktable, including several large sheets of cheap paper with surprisingly clean diagrams of machinery and their component parts laid out in a semblance of order. Empty plates and coffee pitchers imply some degree of sustenance being had. Some cushions and blankets in a corner are a little more worrying, as far as omens go.

There is also the basement, in which the fractured and dismantled parts of the Magrallen can be found in an orderly sort of disarray, some large frames hanging off chain and others carefully placed on worktables or simply the stone floor. Other elements of in-progress machinery, runic engraved, coils of wire, glowing lyrium-infused crystals, all make for a chaotic set only discernible to a few.

Down here, it's often overly warm, smoke pulled through vents but the heat from furnaces, when lit, has nowhere to go. For the most part, those are kept cold. FRED spends most of his time down here, able to lift and hold heavy things as directed via remote control magic rod, the sounds of his heavy scraping footsteps echoing off stone walls.

There is, too, the Haunted Mansion in Hightown, or Tony's office, or the library, all of which can play host to a wide variety of alarming conversations at any hour.

war room. closed to tony, yseult, flint.

[propulsion]

There is an untouched cup of coffee on the table near Tony's seat. Tony has neither drunk coffee, yet, nor sat down.

He probably should do these things, or sleep, which he has failed to do in about sixty hours. There is a live-wire energy to his demeanor that is at distinct odds with the otherwise buttoned-down, sombre mode he's defaulted to over the past week and change. Matching with the urgency with which he had called this meeting.

"So let's review," he says, hands together. "Granitefall? I'll say it. Devastating loss. Personally, professionally, but in terms of resource? Manpower? Credibility? Show's over. We're not coming back from that, not without substantially downsizing our operations and kissing goodbye everything we've been working on, or sublimating into the Inquisition, if they'll take us. So what I need from both of you," his hand presses fingertips down on the table, "is to hear me out when I say that we need to start focusing our resources on what we do next."

The hand lifts up, sets back down again, as if he could maintain a certain amount of delicacy at the same time as he is saying, "By which I mean, we make it so Granitefall never happened. Redo."

There, a beat, a temperature check as he glances from one to the other.

other imagineers feel free 2 threadjack/join in if desired

[portalling]

They’re in the research workroom, and Tony has just spoken this impossible idea into life, and it feels like a window slamming open.

The suggestion clicks something into place. Some nagging idea which has been buzzing at the back of Stephen’s mind, some persistent instinct which says that when the universe tells you not to avoid tragedy forever, some part of Stephen Strange will always think: why not?

The rules are different here, in Thedas — he doesn’t possess the same eye-wateringly powerful capabilities he once did — he doesn’t even possess the Time Stone anymore — but then again, they’ve always made a habit of breaking the rules.

And for the first time since Granitefell, he feels a faint flicker of hope: a match, sparked in a void.

“You invented a quantum time machine,” he says, “and I once rewound time on the destruction of downtown Hong Kong. Everyone in Research is uniquely situated, with unique capabilities. If anyone’s gonna figure out how to pull this off, I think we stand a pretty good chance.”

[katabasis]

It's late summer and the war room is stifling even at this early hour. Or maybe he's just well sick of the look of the room, and the sense of dreary pretense that has colored so many of these meetings in the last days. He has been reminded of the patching of a crippled ship, seeing how far it's possible top stretch out a sinking and hope land swims into view before it all slips below the water line.

So it's possible, sat there on the far end of the table without any cup to attend, that Tony has him in the first half. It's possible that in his gutted division's office, Flint has been mentally weighing a few options himself—ones that warrant proposal in this room, versus the ones which involve stealing away with as many of the remaining members of Riftwatch might be made willing to follow. For there are places to go, and forces they might join up with which have no relation at all to the Inquisition.

But as for the lunatic second part—

Tony's thermometer of a glance is rewarded by Flint turning his head to confer directly with Yseult: "Do you have any idea what he's talking about?"

[hassaran]

This is not the lowest temperature Yseult has ever given off in this room but it is decidedly cool despite the fact that she can feel a bead of sweat trickling down the middle of her back. This really isn't high on the rifter patter scale, but Tony's manic vibe has it already feeling like one of those conversations where he rattles off a half-dozen inside jokes in a row while they sit and wait for something comprehensible. When combined with the subject matter, she finds her tolerance limited.

She shakes her head without looking at Flint. "None."

[propulsion]

"Yeah you do."

They're talking to each other, but he's in the room too. Not immediately defensive for skepticism—it's a natural part of the process—and, likewise, seems very ready to dismantle it as much as he can.

"We all saw a Broadway musical about it and drank novelty cocktails. We had a wonderful time." His hands come down to alight on the back of a chair. "I'm talking about going back into the past to change the outcome of the future. We send two or three people back to give us the information necessary to avoid Granitefell happening at all. We manipulate the timelines so that we snap back to the new and improved one and it'll be like it never happened."

In theory, is what he doesn't add. Instead, he starts counting off on his fingers,

"Poppell is an expert at rift interactions and rifter-native magic translation. Viktor cracked spacetime travel in his world. Stephen Strange is an actual time wizard. And I've done this before."

His hands spread. "Nothing to lose. I mean. Nothing to lose except funneling all remaining resource into this one thing, but, I'll only ask for it once."

[katabasis]

Somewhere in there, Flint has shifted back to look at Tony—and then sink lower into the chair he presently occupies, elbows hooked on chair arms and knit hands suspended somewhere in the middle. There is a crawling itch forming at the back of his neck under the lay of his shirt collar. Maybe it's the heat.

Maybe it's the part where this proposal is fucking lunatic and Stark looks like he hasn't slept in four days, and the effort required to keep a grip on those facts is an irritant.

"You'll forgive when I say that the mechanics behind that part of the play weren't well communicated."

[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."

stephen strange | ota.

[portalling]

pepesilvia.jpg intensifies (open to all).

He has been here before.

Stephen Strange’s first few months as a sorcerer had been a frantic crash course in magic, astral projecting in his sleep to keep reading and not lose any study hours, shortening the time needed to complete his training, filching books, reading them until his eyes ached, reaching for magic despite how much he failed, and failed, and failed again. He kept trying.

So. Time is a flat circle and Strange is here, once again: buried in books and texts on arcane lore, hunting down reports of native mages accomplishing anything near what they’re trying to do, reading about time spirals. Trying to adapt what he knows, and find a way to fit it to the framework of Thedosian spellcraft. He might not have the Eye of Agamotto any longer, but he’s the goddamned Sorcerer Supreme — or used to be — so he should be able to do this. People might find him hauling away armfuls of books in the library, and commandeering the nearest bystander, declaring “Here, carry this for me,” and marching off with them and books in tow.

One of the empty project rooms has been commandeered and turned into a beehive of activity: chalk diagrams of the Magrallen, hextech, runes, a frenzy of notes. Whenever he needs a break from the other nerds’ physics and engineering, he retreats to the comfort of his own desk in the workroom. He casts spells over and over, with the stubborn determination of a man set on repetition until it breaks him, until he’s drained and has to go nap it off. Maybe you have to help him to the nearest pile of blankets in a spare office so he doesn’t pass out in his chair.

There are empty mugs with tarry black coffee residue, plates with half-eaten food and crumbs, the place is a disaster. The researchers might need some help cleaning it up or bringing them meals when they forget to eat.

He misses, desperately, the days he could control time so easily: he had once understood those spells with a reckless speed, playing fast and loose with them despite everyone’s warnings. His broken fingers twisting, notching minutes backwards and backwards; he had exerted his will on reality, and reality had obeyed. Today, it feels more like the spells are constantly wriggling out of his reach. It is so much harder now.

Strange sleeps poorly otherwise; insomnia kicks in, lying awake and staring at the ceiling in his room, thoughts buzzing on an interminable loop. One might find him in the middle of the night in the most casual of clothes, glassy-eyed and walking the hallways. For a second, he looks like a sleepwalker, but then it becomes apparent he’s on his way to the research workroom and no one can stop him. He’s carrying an apple.

Eventually, it’s just simpler to set up a cot in the corner of the office and sleep there.



proof of concept (one thread, first come first served).

— and then one day, at last, it fucking works.

Strange has drunk a lyrium potion, his fingertips tingling and prickling, his pupils blown wide. There have been apple cores scattered all over the Research offices; the food debris looked like garbage, but he’s been working on something for hours and days.

An apple, with its crisp clean bite marks. He’s been picking it apart and trying to find where all the pieces fit together and how to press them into a different shape.

He hauls on the fabric of reality, on those slippery threads of time and space,

and finally, finally he yanks time backward, and it moves in awkward jerky fits and starts, the bites vanishing one by one, as if they never happened, then reappearing —

It’s only seconds, not weeks; it’s an apple, not a group of rescuers; but it is progress. It’s proof of the goddamned concept. Strange shouts, jubilant, and accidentally knocks over his now-cold coffee.


wildcard.
( Researchers pitching in & assisting even if they’re not the core imagineers, non-Research folks stopping by, etc. Feel free to riff something off the above or do something else bespoke or hmu @ quadrille to plan! )

for mobius.

[portalling]

It’s all hands on deck, particularly since Tony put out the call. Stephen had been conflicted about it at first — on the one hand, they knew they would have to field such a wave of skepticism and incredulousness (which, fair). Plus: what if it fails. What if they promise Riftwatch something they can’t actually deliver.

On the other hand, they need the extra hands, and Riftwatch could do with some hope. Something to do. A last-ditch effort —

The key is to simply not accept failure. Stephen’s good at that part.

So he’s working late camped out at his desk, the one beside Mobius’ — on good days, their mood in this room had been jovial, bored, like two kids goofing off in class while Tony held court at the front of the room and carved out their priorities for the week.

This week, and for every week going forward, they only have the one priority. It’s late and the candles are running low, an echo of the first time Mobius ever found Stephen Strange squinting over books in the library and told him to go rest.

The context’s just different, now. Stephen barely notices the other man as he walks in. There’s a stack of texts in front of him, some rune schematics, and— oh, Stephen’s committed a cardinal sin, he’s underlined some sentences in the book in pencil, jotted little symbols in the margins to categorise the information.

[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."

[grindset]

It's that same flicker, or the inveterate pursuit of it, that has drawn Viktor out among the others. Since the news dropped he's become increasingly reclusive, emerging only for biological necessity, those telltale taps few and far between. His workstation remains in stasis even now, hammer and rag lying just where he left them.

It is no exaggeration at all to say that hope has kept him moving his whole life. He's carried it, fed it, done his best to nurture it in others. But this, this void they're in, has proven so inhospitable to hope that for him its spark has simply failed to catch. His pilot light is as low as it's ever been—but the thinnest shell of flame is still a flame, so here he is, sitting in, like he said he would. In minimal concession to the meeting, he's on a stool near the door, still grimly leafing through whatever papers Stark would put in his hand when he arrived, which he did latest of all present. Between this and his silence, it may seem he hasn't really been paying attention. (And even by a metric adjusted to account for his frail health, it may be noted, he looks truly terrible.)

Strange isn't wrong; even in its diminished state, this is a strong team. The notes aren't exactly exhaustive, but he's worked with less, and the idea itself carries a Fuck It, We Ball calibre of ambition which appeals to him on a personal level.

Moreover, this concept isn't so far removed from the realm-warping operation he helped to pioneer—a comparable mechanism would have to be activated from the point of origin, which seems to have been the case previously—if only they had that amulet—

[heirring]

That Wysteria de Foncé would be to hand in this moment seems obvious. Nevermind her association with Tony, or the particulars of which members of Riftwatch had been laid in careful state in the infirmary and her relations to them, or her black mourning clothes (the dark clothes look very strange on her). The young lady has something of a nose for transgressive magiscience, and this promises to fit the bill. Presumably even without an invitation, she might have somehow sniffed them out.

Stood there at the edge of one of the workroom's tables, her station having exploded with papers and various bits and pieces seemingly in defiance to the absence of work being accomplished elsewhere in the room, Wysteria sets down her pencil. She has been taking notes on a folded sheaf of paper, having abandoned the pretense of keeping things in booklets.

"Perhaps," is not strictly tentative nor skeptical. From the slight frown she's adopted and the wrinkle pinching there between her eyebrows, she is thinking about something very hard indeed. "—Well," is a pivot. She's decided on something. "It's not entirely dissimilar from what occurred in the Crossroads last winter either, is it? Not in the sense that the places we went were entirely real, so to speak, but we've seen that there's a way for Rifters to influence how places adapt to, er, let us destabilizing forces. So we might have some natural advantage which could be levered. Hypothetically. In the right circumstances."

[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.

[propulsion]

Tony can be found sitting crosslegged on a section of table only partially cleared. Some pages are being rumpled under his left cheek.

There is an immediate and fierce gratitude for Strange picking up what he's putting down without as much question as he'd have a right to ask; Viktor's presence in the room is a positive enough sign that he doesn't feel the urge to needle the other man into responding; and so his focus angles off towards Wysteria in her black silks and ruffles.

A flip of his hand in her direction communicates: exactly.

"My gauntlet's a product of trying to work out how to get home," he adds. "I mean. Obviously that didn't work, because that's not how we work," you live and you learn and sometimes that learning is that you might be a Fade-construct of a person you remember being, no big deal, "but I've got some practice in harnessing Fadeiation into doing all different kinds of useful nonsense."

Temporal-shielding, gravitational manipulation, matter attentuation—why not time travel?

[portalling]

“Useful nonsense should be our tagline.” Then, more seriously: “Sometimes you have to break the rules for the greater good. And life has taught me that the rules of time and space are more malleable than not.”

And a lot of people would blanch at that prospect, but these four voices in this closed workroom… well, they’re exactly the sort of people to push the envelope, perhaps recklessly, perhaps too far, but that’s the energy they’re gonna need for an endeavour like this. Tony’s rattled off his Fadeiation credentials, and it’s already starting to ping some rusted muscle: brainstorming, pinging ideas off each other, the sense of a rolling boulder gathering speed.

All cards on the table. Strange spreads his hands flat against his desk. “As for me, I am, as Tony’s put it before, a literal time wizard. I don’t have the magical artifact I used to control the flow of time anymore, but I still taught myself how to use it in a record-short amount of time. With help to adapt the theory to the local equivalent, I’m sure we could put together something similar. I have first-hand experience in magically rewinding time, creating loops, looking into potential futures.”

Fourteen million of them, but who’s counting?

“So. That’s my resumé. What else do we have?”

He’s looking at Viktor and Wysteria both, now.

[grindset]

Viktor has since hooked a heel on the crossbar of the stool. He's done this to raise his knee, because he's also taken a writing tool from the adjacent desk and begun to apply it to the page open on his lap. As this impromptu CV exchange winds up to what sounds like an expectant pause, he glances up—barely—to confirm and then waves it off with a gesture, the pencil light between his fingers. Ignore him, it says, he isn't here.

Time loops—stabilizing the unstable—

[portalling]

Okay, hermit crab's not lured out of his shell just yet. That's alright; they'll keep talking around him, letting it percolate, dropping little kernels of mad science until it eventually draws him out in some shape or form.

Pivot. Strange's steady blue gaze shifts to Wysteria instead.

[heirring]

Who hems and haws a little under it, drumming her fingers absently on her packet.

"Oh, well," is a little uncharacteristically demurring when she does answer. "I've studied runic enchantments and the use of lyrium, and obviously have helped Provost Stark with his work on the Rifts and the Gates and so on.

"And—" A very brief hesitation, a number of years spent dodging around the topic among most of the company having become something of a well versed habit. But no time like the present (or the past, as it were). So: "And I do have some Talent, speaking in the arcane sense. I might be able to help you with your adaptation issues, Doctor. Come now, Viktor, you don't really mean to sit there in silence, do you?"

[favoriteanalyst]

"You're all insane, you know that, right?"

There might be a stack of texts in front of Stephen, and there are about to be more texts, but on someone else's desk (his own, actually), because there's just not enough space. There isn't much that's concrete he's found, but it's also...also just so out of his sphere of actual understanding that how would he ever be sure if he did see something more concrete? Scraps of reports, yes, alarming stuff that's happened to Riftwatch, or to the Inquisition when they were still one entity in the same. That doesn't mean the ability to do it deliberately.

Mobius catches where Stephen's writing and groans. "I get paper's a bit at a premium, but really?"

proof;

[grindset]

Viktor, still working on a cheekful of apple flesh—no time to pause for chewing between bites when there's scientific momentum to preserve—hastily lifts a sheaf of notes clear of the table as coffee sluices by. Now clutching these notes to his chest, he's getting one hand free to commence a gesture led by his finger,

looping that gesture until he gets through swallowing, grimacing broadly,

and exclaiming at last: "Outstanding. Again! Again, again, let's see it."

[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."