Tony Stark (cutsthewire) wrote in thedisplaced, @ 2018-03-22 21:05:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !log/thread, julia wicker, tony stark / iron man (mcu) |
Who: Julia Wicker and Tony Stark (MCU)
What: Spending the next 24 hours in the brig.
Where: The brig.
When: Night of the ball.
Warnings: None.
It wasn’t funny exactly, but Julia spent the first several minutes in the brig snickering, head down, hand over her mouth. It almost looked like crying, the way her shoulders shook. The witch couldn’t help herself. She was still wearing a very dramatic nearly black green ball gown, her hair and make up still done up for the night. Everything about their situation was ridiculous, and at this point the hedgewitch decided to just run with it. It was only twenty-four hours. At least she’d have a funny story to tell about the time she and Tony Stark tried to look at a robot. What made it worse was it hadn’t even been close. The wards had worked but the robot had gone incorporeal and Julia’s powers were shut down fast. Her magic and his technology had been pathetically outmatched. It should have worried her but she found herself strangely giddy. Though she couldn’t see the walls of their cells, Julia knew they were there. They lit up whenever either one of them got close to the barrier. Just as her giggles started to calm, she remembered something, and the hysterics started all over again. She really wasn’t crazy. She probably just looked crazy. In her mind, it had been a pretty fun night. “We really should have thought this through,” Julia barely managed, as her hand when into a hidden pocket of her willowy skirt and she produced, only partially as a joke, two toothbrushes. A toothbrush she couldn’t hand to her partner in petty crime. Because they had been placed in separate cells. Julia set them down on the bench next to her and pulled out a pre rolled cigarette. The giggles finally subsided, but the smile on her lips uncontrollable. She snapped her fingers to light the cigarette and… nothing happened. Perhaps that shouldn’t have been a surprise given that her powers had been turned off to bring her in with her accomplice, but she hadn’t thought to bring a lighter with her for her stint in holding. “We really, really should have thought this through,” she said, feeling a little sheepish bringing cigarettes she couldn’t light. Julia looked over at Tony and smirked. Tony was reclined back on the bed in his cell, watching the hysterics of his companion with obvious amusement. Like everything else on this ship, the bed was remarkably plush. During his last visit to the brig, he had actually slept relatively well, better than he had on any other night since his arrival. Though, it wasn't as if there was much else to occupy his time. Round two was shaping up to be a more lively experience. His thousand dollar suit was getting crumpled as he lounged, but he gave no indication of caring one bit. Sitting next to him on the bed as if it were another person was his armor, its strength, weapons, and systems infuriatingly useless against the ship and its horde of polite yet firm LMDs. Which Tony had still yet to see the inside of. It had been a valiant effort, though. And Tony had enjoyed the company and seeing the hedgewitch at work, even if they had failed in their task. He shrugged casually. "At least we know now what not to do." He looked over towards the doorway where a robot stood motionless with its back to them. He gave a whistle and shouted, "Garçon! A light for the lady." The robot turned to look at him with what seemed to be annoyance, but stepped out of the room for a moment and returned with one single match. It stepped through the barrier as if it were not there and stood in front of Julia. Striking the match on the barrier somehow as if it were a wall, the robot lit the cigarette, snuffed the flame, and moved back to its post. "How's that for five star service?" he crowed, giving Julia a playful grin. Julia grinned at Tony, taking her first drag before speaking. “You know what’s really crazy? This magic suppression system. At least when it comes to technology, a hierarchy is understandable. But a system that also shuts down all magic? Magic is literally gone from my world, and for some reason I don’t want to think about, I still have it. But here? I mean, I’ve been in clean rooms before that neutralized magic but not like this.” And maybe other magic users would have panicked to be cut off from their spells, but Julia? She wanted to know more. “If we could find the source of this technology, any bad witch or Voldemort or maybe even a god that causes problems? I mean, how nice would it be to have this to neutralize them? Don’t behave? No powers until you do.” Her eyebrows rose and she looked over at Tony at the next cell hopefully. The smell of the smoke would linger on her dress now without a spell to keep it fresh, but it wasn’t a deterrent to keep her from smoking. “How do you want to try and steal their shit next?” she offered. Now that she knew her magic was limited, that curtailed the amount of help she could give him, too. Unless the two of them did something incredibly clever. “Brute force isn’t going to work. You said asking them didn’t work. So...?” "Did they suppress your magic when you arrived, too?" Tony asked without even a little difficulty. He could have conversations with witches about magic now. His threshold for weird was getting even higher. He had more personal reasons for wanting to pursue the technology or magic behind the defensive abilities of the ship and its robot occupants, the same reasons that had led him to dream up the Ultron Program. Ever since Loki had helped unleash the Chitauri on New York City, he had been working towards an effective protection system for the planet. Ultron had failed for reasons beyond his control, but this? If he could find a way to harness this power, with its suppressive and phasing abilities, and apply it on a much larger, potentially even global scale, it could be the game changer he had been looking for. He was glad to see that Julia was still game, even after they had failed to accomplish anything but an up close and personal tour of the brig. "It will require a bit more planning on our part," he admitted. They had been too quick to rely on her magic the first time around. They were going to have to get more creative. “Weirdly, I didn’t even try when I first got here. I think I was in shock.” Julia decided not to dwell on that. “But I can ask my friends. My guess is yes? I mean, what if we could rig up your suit with some sort of magical EMP?” Julia paused, wondering if she could figure out a way to accomplish the same effect magically as the cruise ship did presumably with technology. It gave her one more project to put in her list. She needed to check in with Penny about his hands. And Margo and the others about who was trying the No Updates Potion first. And seeing if there was a way to send memories back to their own timeline, somehow. At least she was busy. “On the cruise ship, things are regulated by the technology here, but we don’t know anything about who’s running it, or if we can continue to trust it. Plus, if we end up on a magically dangerous world it could be useful. Or when we get back to Texas if they don’t have this kind of technology there it could be useful for anyone that tries to cause problems.” Julia may have been trying to justify the outrage she was already imagining from her more magically inclined friends at helping Tony Stark develop an anti-magic EMP device. She had a few ideas, but wasn’t sure if talking in the brig was wise. Then again, there might not have been anywhere on the ship free of surveillance. “I started taking up jogging,” she said, seemingly changing the subject. “I’m not much of a runner, but if you wanted to join me you could?” It might give them a better opportunity to properly conspire. Tony raised his brow at Julia's suggestion of a magical EMP. The thought had, of course, occurred to him as well, but he was surprised that a magic user would be plotting ways to extinguish magic, temporarily or not. He got to his feet and removed his jacket, draping it over the shoulders of his Iron Man armor like it was a date who was feeling chilled. He paced a bit as she rattled off her list of concerns that were his as well. When she had finished, he approached the barrier that divided them, hands in his pocket, the tabby kitten on his t-shirt looking over at Julia with the same interested look as Tony's. "You sure that's something you want to do? Alienating people is kind of my M.O., but are you sure you want to get on the wrong side of the magically inclined population of this place?" It felt like something he should ask before they went any further. "I normally have people who do my jogging for me," he quipped at her suggestion. "But," he added, following her line of thought, "seeing as they're not here, I suppose I could do a lap or two." He had actually begun training in Wing Chun back home, at the suggestion of his therapist who thought that the focus, control, and mental discipline required for the martial art would be beneficial. It might have been, had Tony been able to continue with his training instead of being brought here. “They’ll get it or it’ll be their problem,” Julia said. “But the Harry Potter folks had Voldemort, my friends have dealt with gods and The Beast, it’s not like the concept of a dangerous, powerful magic user is unheard of. Even if we can get a hold of the tech on the ship, Brakebills had a clean room, a place magic didn’t work. I could…” Fuck. “Read the books and see if I could get any more information about it. If I can reverse engineer how the school did it, maybe we could use the same concept Ironman style.” Julia was already thinking the problem through. “But we know the technology on the ship exists and that it’s pretty foolproof.” She took another drag on her cigarette and smirked. Maybe she gave him a once over. “Nice shirt.” The books. Tony knew they were a sore spot for Julia in a way that he could definitely relate to. His face screwed up into a bit of a scowl, but still, he offered, "I can peruse the books for mention of this clean room if you would rather not." Though, she was probably as against Tony reading the books as he was interested in reading them. But if she thought it would help... "Better yet, if anyone has them on eBook, FRIDAY could scan them for what we're looking for." "Nothing is ever fool proof." The voice of experience. He looked down at his shirt as if he had forgotten which one he was wearing. Which, of course, was unlikely since he spent much of the evening at the ball fielding questions from people about it. "What, this old thing?" The fake modesty act worked for some people. He eyed the two toothbrushes that she had produced somehow from the folds of her dress, then looked back at her with a playful glint in his eyes. "What else are you hiding in there?" Julia rolled her eyes at the mention of his shirt, but wasn’t quite able to wipe the tiny smile on her face. She would rather think about his shirt than the books, which made her want to crawl into a hole somewhere and never come out. But she didn’t deny his offer, either. He already knew what would be in them. The smile faded and a familiar exhaustion set into her eyes as she considered it. “I don’t think anyone has them on ebook,” she said. Her shoulders sank and when she sighed, her whole body deflated a little. “I think maybe I started out as the villain in the story.” Julia had already agonized over this. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she tried to avoid agonizing over them once more. “But, if we’re going to be working together, I guess you have the right to make your own conclusions. Eliot mentioned that the books were different than what we went though. Like the difference between the comics and the movies? Or, maybe they describe an alternate timeline so… No guarantee if the books will help us or not.” Mentioning the books and the show was enough to bring down her mood. So when he mentioned her dress, Julia shrugged halfheartedly. Tony shrugged his shoulders in a way that hopefully conveyed more indifference than he felt. "Everyone is the hero of their own story. Makes sense if we're a villain in someone else's." His own concern, which he was trying very hard not to show, came not from worry over his depiction in whatever fictional space he happened to inhabit, but rather that he was seen as having done everything that he could to right his wrongs and to protect against another New York or Sokovia or worse. His mind began to replay the conversation he'd had with Mrs. Spencer about her son Charles, but he shook it off. "There seems to be quite a bit of overlap when it comes to the multiverse. Same shit, different circumstances. And sometimes wildly different results." He had learned that much from conversations with the other Sam Wilson and his younger, seemingly more well-adjusted self. "Has your friend Eliot read them?" That would save them both the trouble. “No one from my world has any interest or inclination to revisit what we’ve been through. Eliot looked up wikipedia pages trying to find out what happened to people he knew but the summaries were too vague to be useful for even basic information.” Julia tried her hardest not to think or feel about any of it. It involved staring at the other side of her cell pretending she could see the invisible barrier until she had steeled herself to make eye contact with Tony again. “If you do read them or… watch…” Julia sighed just saying the word, “it would probably better you keep that between you and me. I know you’d be doing it as a favor, but given how personal it is, I don’t think everyone would see it that way.” "Fair enough." Tony certainly had no desire to investigate his own so-called source material. The same could not be said for the alternate universes. Ever since Sue Storm had issued a rather ominous warning about one of the Infinity Stones Thor was supposed to be investigating, he was beginning to wonder how much knowledge of the other universes might be beneficial, should he ever make it back to his own time and place. He returned Julia's stare, doing his best to appear sympathetic to her obvious inner turmoil. "It's your call, Shrubwitch. I'll follow your lead on this one." At least the nickname got a small smile. Julia hoped if he ever found out what hedgewitch meant he wouldn’t suddenly become too uncomfortable to tease her. The teasing helped her feel normal. “I asked Kady to see if she could find the books. She never got back to me if she did and sort of threatened to throw them overboard. I guess we start there. If they don’t have anything, we might have to wait until we get to Tumbleweed.” She nodded. Putting it into a plan made it less emotional. They were doing something productive with it. “Assuming we get back there. No one has really been able to confirm that we will. The people who’ve been here longer just sort of assume.” Julia shrugged, and then carefully pulled out the rest of the cigarettes and a small deck of playing cards from the hidden pockets in her billowy skirt. At the mention of Tumbleweed, Tony grimaced. On the one hand, he was anxious to get off this ship. But he was not particularly looking forward to making a place called Tumbleweed, Texas, his new base of operation. Nor attempting to make a go of it without the considerable resources he was accustomed to. "I'm not sure which is more unappealing. The thought of being stuck on this for the rest of my days or being relegated to small-town Texas." He eyed the playing cards then flicked the barrier with his fingers so that it lit up momentarily. "Looks like it's solitaire for you. Unless we can convince Mr. Congeniality over there to be dealer." He motioned towards the robot who had obviously drawn the short straw and was stuck on brig duty. “It makes Jersey sound appealing,” Julia said. Not that her New Yorker pride would ever allow her to admit that aloud ever again. Julia pulled out the deck and started to shuffle the cards. “Since neither of us have any money…” They were going to have to come up with stakes. Her fingers were deft and precise from casting with them, mostly it was the sound of the cards smacking precisely against one another that she found satisfying. “Hey? Guard? You going to shuffle?” Julia asked. She rose slowly from where she had been seated on the bed and set the cards down at the edge of her cell before stepping away, hands up, as though promising to behave. She finished off her first cigarette and dropped the butt on the floor, smooshing it under her shoe. The robot, perhaps even reluctantly although Julia may have been anthropomorphizing slightly, reached into her cell to pick up the deck, shuffled and then started to deal. "At least in New Jersey, you're within spitting distance of Manhattan. Is this Tumbleweed place even on the map?" Tony had suggested the robot deal, partly out of staving off potential boredom, but also to see if he could get a closer look at whether or not the phasing was confined to the ship, the robot, or whether they phased in tandem. There was always the possibility that one or both of them changed the molecular structure of the items they interacted with, but without his suit running, he could not be sure. "What're we playing here?" he asked, as the cards landed on the floor at his feet. He reached out to touch one of the cards as it was being dealt. He caught the card in his fingers, but when he tried to move his hand, the barrier lit up again as if it had never been down. He gave Julia a playful yet resigned shrug. “Five card draw unless you have another preference?” Julia carefully sat down on the floor of her cell, dainty and ladylike. She watched the cards pass through the barrier carefully, but like Tony, couldn’t tell how the ship managed it. It looked like magic to her, but then this ship had the technological advancements right out of a science fiction novel. Julia collected her cards and put them face down in front of her. Tony followed suit and sat down on the floor opposite Julia, crossing his legs awkwardly beneath him. Reaching out to take his cards off the floor, he raised a brow at her. "And here I expected you to say Go Fish." Best of five turned into best of seven which turned into best of twelve when they realized they had only passed about an hour. In the end, it was Tony who came out on top, and there was a fair amount of gloating when he collected his winnings: a verbal IOU from Julia for some magical device called the Quarterback. "Think they'll let us out early for good behavior," he asked later, settled back onto the bed in his cell with his armor standing over the foot of the bed like a sentinel. “Just because you’re old,” Julia said right back of his go fish remark. If he was going to make fun of her for being younger, she was going to dish it right back. And then try to destroy him at poker. She talked shit better than she played poker, but she also wasn’t against the opportunity to show off a little. None of the other magic users were ever really impressed by her. There was either begrudging respect or talking down to her like she was an idiot for not getting a fancy education at a formal magical school. She’d mostly become immune to it. Hedgewitch was a badge of honor. At least Tony didn’t know the difference. She didn’t want to sleep but went to the bed anyway. She looked tired, but felt warry. It didn’t matter how comfortable the bed was. Sleeping in unfamiliar places always brought out nightmares. Julia tried to tell herself she was used to them by now. “For you, I think they’d double your sentence,” she said, rolling her eyes. Maybe she could stay up. Julia sank down into a seated position on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. "They already did that once before for not being particularly compliant. Turns out, it's not much of a deterrent." His raised his voice for that last bit as if talking to the ship itself. Aside from subjecting him to extreme boredom, being stuck in the brig was not much in the way of a punishment. He already felt just about as listless when walking the decks. Even chatting with some of the folks from the other universes had lost most of its luster by now. He was in need of something to do, and for the time being, this was it. He looked over at Julia, who had somehow become a strange and unexpected ally. Not the most fruitful thing to ever come out of one of his benders, but definitely up there. And like most things in his life, it would either turn out well or blow up in his face. He was a man of extremes. There was no middle ground. |