Broken Space

Dairine had told Ianto once that she meant to look for cat wizards. What she had actually found, or rather, what Rua had found for her, were kittens--tiny, furry, wriggly, playful, too adorable for words kittens. When she'd first found them, they had been tiny mewling balls of fur with squinted, stuck-shut eyes, but they've been growing at an astonishing rate, and when their mother hadn't seemed too fussed about letting Zelda take one of them, Dairine thought the rest must be ready for homes as well.

Really, it's best. Because if she doesn't give them away soon she's going to try to keep them all, and that is a dangerous number of kittens.

She looks down at them, hands on her hips. "Dai stiho," she greets. "I don't suppose any of you are wizards?"

The nearest kitten mews and rubs against her leg. Dairine isn't really sure if that's an answer.

[Free kittens! Come get one if you want one. They're adorable. Fluffy kitties, free to good homes!]

The island was very, very frustrating. Or, rather, Tony was very, very frustrated in many, many ways. The only people propositioning him were women with kids or teenagers. The worst of the stuff with Sue is now she'd probably avoid him and he had actually liked talking with her.

To avoid dealing with how incredibly ticked off he was at himself and other people, he tried to concentrate on larger projects, but after awhile, he'd go for a walk wishing he had a segway or a golfcart. Anything that could move faster than he could.

Eventually he dug up his suit from where he'd hidden it, taking time to deal with the sand and everything else. Only a few stray grains here and there, but he didn't want the stupid thing to rust. He wanted to put it on, but it wasn't going to work. The newer suit was different than the first one he'd made back in that cave. Sure, it ran on his arc reactor, but it also really needed Jarvis. It needed a computer monitoring its systems and various functions. Getting bugs in his mouth or crashing into the ocean lacked a certain appeal.

Instead, he made a travoy out of some cloth and bamboo. Then he set all the pieces on it, dragging it behind him as he headed to the Hub. He could change things around or he'd try to come up with a way to make a suit a little less advanced so he could fly again.

Rather than dwelling on how lame his life had suddenly gotten, Tony had taken to hiding behind booze and various other pointless projects. The first of which had just been pimping his little remote control car in various ways, but he figured the best thing to do was to give it to Sue's kid.

Tony Stark's second pointless island project was going to take a little longer, but he wanted to at least build himself a small robot of some kind. He'd found some tools (pliers, tweezers and screwdrivers), wire, batteries, an exacto knife, a few small solar panels, random gears, bits of scrap metal, and a sodering kit, but he wasn't sure how far he was going to get with three different little clocks, a radio, and four remote control cars at his disposal.

Taking another sip of scotch, he surveyed the supplies and sighed. "Might be able to build some kind of proto-Roomba. What d'you guys think, huh? What would you like to be?"

Why, yes, he was talking to inanimate objects. What of it?

It had been one of those days when nothing had gone right. At all. Izzie was kinda reminded of that kid's book--Alexander and the No-Good, Terrible, Very Bad Day or whatever, because ever since she'd woken up one thing after another had gone wrong like some freakin' Greek tragedy (Were the Greeks really so tragic? That whole Hercules movie had been kinda funny and not sad.)

She'd woken up later than she planned, causing everything to fly around in a mad rush as she was getting ready to go out and organize the ever-messy clinic and see some patients. She should have been down there at first light, but it was edging toward mid-morning by the time she managed to get there, and not without a few mishaps along the way.

She couldn't find anything to eat in the kitchen (tragedy, considering that she'd been seeing increasingly more awesome things showing up lately) and Ianto hadn't been around to make coffee, which resulted in Izzie making it--shiny death. Izzie managed to burn her wrist and become her first patient for the day.

She bandaged her own wrist carefully, sure to apply a tiny bit of aloe to it to help keep the burn from going spaztastic and sighed, figuring this was one of those days she just needed to start over.

Deciding to give up, she plopped just outside the clinic, hair limp from humidity and face exasperated from stress. Dammit. Dammit, Dammit, Dammit.

It was a baking day.

[Open, but I would love for Ukyo to meet Izzie so that some cooking time awesome could happen. Misato too, for other kinds of awesome. Of course, all the regulars.]

Whoever was here before had made sure to set up two roasters--one for coffee beans, and one for cocoa beans. And Ianto's taken it upon himself to gather both on a weekly basis, which is where he's headed back from now, two handmade bags slung over his shoulders, one with coffee beans, the other with cocoa. Angharad accompanies him today, and he's grateful for the company.

It's another hot day, and he's still not used to the humidity. He wipes the sweat from his brow and pauses by a tree to get a drink of water from his canteen before pouring a little water on top of his dinosaur companion to cool her off as well.



[Open to everyone!]

Since the announcement that he was, in fact, Iron Man, Tony Stark had been the recipient of a wide variety of reactions, looks, letters and assorted packages. He fielded the looks well enough and tolerated the disbelief because, in some ways, he probably should have just shut up about it and pretended he had a bodyguard. Thing was, he couldn't understand why anyone would believe he had a bodyguard who was never around when he was around. Then again, people seemed only to notice what they needed to and believed whatever they were told. He knew that because he had been guilty of it once upon a time.

A few weeks into the superhero gig, and he'd met plenty of the tried and true stick-in-the-mud heroes and heroines that seemed to have been in the game way longer than he had. They were the genuine article whereas he was more of a smart-ass poser. They were a clueless and dorky bunch, but that was all right. Tony was pretty sure he'd end up hanging out with Hank and Janet for the most part. He liked Reed, but the guy was sort of off in his own little Richards world. Thor was all right except for the part where he was really bossy and out of his mind. Spider-man was kinda thick, but in a good and noble way. Still, after the umpteenth pointless meeting about dedication, loyalty, commitment, and a bunch of other things he wasn't interested in, Tony wasn't sure about the Avengers nonsense though. He wasn't a team player, really. He was the lone wolf that runs with scissors type.

Figured that the flight home would be a bumpy one that wouldn't allow him time to really think about anything. Lots of turbulence and then he was pretty sure Jarvis was the world's worst navigator and backseat driver since Tony ended up hovering over some island in the middle of nowhere.

"Terrific," he drawled, spreading his hands and slowly lowering himself to the beach. He scratched his metal head and sighed as he glanced around. "Because this is a much better use of my time than listening to Thor deduct points from Gryffindor."

[OOC: The title of this entry is from the '60s Iron Man theme song, and Tony comes from some point in time not too long after the Iron Man movie, so he'll recognize other heroes from the Marvel 'verse.]