cape_kore | 002 | video/action

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002 | video/action

[ Man, does Leo ever look irritated when his face shows up on the network this time. And rattled; he's just woken up after trying to hack the machine, missing something very important to him. ]

Okay! I get it! Don't touch the machine, don't hack the machine - even if that's literally a gods-given ability of yours - just don't do anything with the machine. I get it! Now can someone -

[ The camera suddenly goes nuts, and there's a loud thunk as it hits the floor. Leo curses in Greek, and you can see his hand as he struggles to pick the thing back up. It takes about a minute, and a few poor excuses for attempts that end up with it clattering to the floor yet again, before he manages to keep it in his hands (yes, plural) without dropping it. He lets out his breath in a huff before continuing. ]

Can someone please explain how a machine can take away your sense of touch? Because this isn't funny! I mean, on the one hand, I can't feel pain anymore than I can anything else, so I'm practically the next best thing to invincible right now. But how do I get it back? I need that.

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[ No, seriously, this isn't funny at all. He's walking back from where he found the machine just fine - thank the gods this place doesn't have much in the way of steps, or that could be a disaster - but everything else is pretty much a no-go. Someone probably got a good laugh of his attempt to hail the network, but this is actually the worst thing ever. He can't feel, can't taste, can't even tell if he's on fire unless he happens to be looking in the right place. And every now and then, out of sheer frustration, he does catch fire, and if Leo catches it, he has to just stop and breathe for a moment.

If you have something breakable, you might want to keep it away from him until further notice. And it looks like his power over mechanics is null with his sense of touch, too, so you might catch him sulking as he trails his hand along the wall, trying to sense the mechanics that make the walls move or something in the rooms he passes, or anything at all. When he isn't doing that, he'll be glaring at the phone when it isn't casually falling out of his hands like the floor is the love of its life, alternately trying to sense the workings inside of it or to set it on fire.

If this isn't Tartarus or something, he must have at least gotten thrown into the Underworld, because Leo is pretty sure this must be what the Fields of Punishment are like. ]

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[ Really, kid? Really? Why does no one ever listen to the incredibly loud mouthy ginger? It's not like they can't hear her, so why does no one pay attention to her words?

She rolls her eyes. ]

Didn't I warn you to stay away from the sentient machine that gets pissed off easily? Didn't I warn you it would punish you?

[ He scowls. You are not making this any better, Donna. ]

You don't get it. It should've worked! I should've been able to get into it. [ If anyone could have, it should've been him. And now he doesn't even have his Spidey senses for machinery. Fuck his life. ]

[ Well maybe he should've listened to her then! She warned him bad things would happen. She warned him specifically not to mess with the machine because bad things would happen!

Men! ]

You're not the first one to try and fail. Plenty of other geniuses have tried before you!

As for the touch thing... Be careful in the shower. That water gets pretty hot. [ Donna learned the hard way how easy it is to scald yourself when you can't feel the temperature of the water. Her skin was a blistery mess for awhile. Good times! ]

[The face on screen is squinting judgingly at you, kid. Okay, so at one point, Tony really had been considering tinkering with the Machine himself. Because, hey, that what he does. He tinkers and he gets himself in trouble. He really should write a self-help book titled 'Bad Life Decisions of a Mechanic' so people knew what not to do in day to day life. Fortunately, someone else beat him to the punch, lest that would be another lesson to add to his book.]

Not sure I'll be much help in that area, kid, but what exactly did you do?

I never said I was genius. [ Even if his siblings say he is; Archimedes was another son of Hephaestus, and he was a genius if there ever was one. Leo will never live up to that. ] But I should have been able to do something.

The heat won’t bother me, [ he says dismissively. Or did she miss the part where he set himself on fire against those blobs? ]

I tried to hack into it. [ And if anyone should have been able to do it, it should have been him. ]

That machine is more powerful than any of us here. It's just the way it is.

[ Hey! He could be some kind of fire alien that spurts fire but who's to say such fire aliens can withstand hot water? The universe is vast. Strange things exist. He could be one of them.

Don't judge her. ]

Also. Stay away from sharp knives.

I'm a mechanic, [ he says stubbornly. ] Any other day, I can sense machines or mechanisms through walls - I've even made a lock move before without even seeing it! One machine is nothing. But I can't even sense it anymore.

[ He doesn't think you get it, Donna. Even if he could feel anything, not being able to sense things like normal... It's like part of who he is has been stolen.

He sighs. ] Guess it's a good thing I always stuck to fire and hammers. [ Thank the gods he's never relied on swords or knives or whatever in a fight. With his luck, that would be a complete disaster. ]

[It's not every day that Fortescue meets someone else who can light themselves on fire. At home, pyromancers are fairly common, as far as magic users go. Learning to control flame is one of the early stages of warlock training. Most move beyond it, but some find an affinity. Fortescue's strength is as a voidcaller, working with the shadows, but like all other users, she touches two Planes. Being able to light yourself on fire is a useful skill, she's learned. She's trained herself away from all her other lesser skills as a warlock, but that one she's kept.

Of course, when you can't control it, it's annoying as hell, and it wrecks clothes.

Fortescue turns in Leo's direction with a frown, as he drops his phone for what sounds like the upteenth time. The black cat riding on her shoulders eyes the teenager with curiosity.]

Are you all right, there, darling?

[Stupid question, and her slightly apologetic expression says as much, but someone needs to get it out of the way. So she can get to the part where maybe she can help him. Because she very clearly remembers the time when she accidentally lit her parents' drapes on fire.]

Yeah, I kinda got that part. [His frown deepens, but he doesn't sass off more than that just yet. He was mostly curious just what he was trying to gain from hacking it. Information? Their freedom? Or if he had a specific goal in mind at all.]

Okay, well, I've noticed when I tend to royally tick off the Machine, the consequences gradually disappear on their own after I start... behaving again. But I haven't tried anything that stupid. [Yet. Because he'd been about to. But he really isn't going to mention that now.]

About the only thing I could do now is set the place on fire, and I'm not planning on that, so. [ Then again, his control over the Blessing is imperfect at best. It could still happen. ]

And it wasn't stupid, [ Leo argues. ] I can usually get into any machine I want, no problem. Now I can't even sense them.

[ Leo looks up with a frown, still struggling to pick the phone back up. ]

Do I look alright to you?

[ Okay, maybe that's a little rude. But he has other things to worry about - namely, that he can't focus long enough to figure out how to pick this stupid thing up without being able to actually feel it, or controlling the Blessing so he doesn't scorch his clothes any more than he already has so far. And with the machine angry at him, it's doubtful that he could convince it to give him a change of clothes. ]

Yeah, let's not do that. I don't see any fire exits lying around.

[He continued to pin the video feed with a look.] So can I, kid. Mine may not be a--what did you call it--'Gods-given ability', but there's very little I can't do. This thing has the power to bend us to its will--I think--and you go poking at it with a stick?

[Hypocrite, much Tony? But something catches his attention and he eases off a bit. Curiosity getting the better of him.]

Sense them? ...you literally mean a Gods-given ability, don't you?

What else was I supposed to do? Things like this don't fix themselves, and there's kind of some important stuff going on back home. You know, the apocalypse and all.

[ He's normally not this vitriolic, but losing his power shook him pretty deeply. Leo's method of coping? Lashing out. ]

No, I mean I made a deal with the devil, [ he says impatiently. Since coming here, he's lost all sense of caring who he tells about his divine heritage; there doesn't seem to be a point to it. ] Of course I mean it literally. [ Or did you miss the part where he actually said it was literally passed down to him by a god? ]

Yeah? You think I want to be here, kid? I may not have an apocalypse on my hands, but I was kind of in the middle of trying to stop a national crisis while trying not to get myself killed by fire-breathing veterans. You aren't the only one with something important to do back home.

[Don't worry about it, Leo. Tony seems to invoke that kind of reaction from most people. But Tony raises an eyebrow at the deal with the devil comment, because since he arrived, he'd been informed that's a thing here. Crossroads demons or something.]

I deal with over dramatic aliens who think they're Gods on a day-to-day basis. You'll have to excuse my scepticism.

[But he gives Leo a more critical once-over.] Okay kid, look. I'm not a biologist, but if you want me to take a look, I have equipment in my lab. I'm working with microcomputers, but they might be able to help.

I never said I was! But excuse me for trying to take care of that.

[ He'd love to get home, especially if it means breaking everyone else out of this place in the process. Everyone he's talked to so far has something they should be doing wherever they're from, but Leo isn't the type to sit around and wait for a way out to plop into his lap. ]

Yeah, well, the gods are pretty overdramatic. I haven't met one yet who doesn't belong in the crazy bin, especially with the Romans marching on our camp. [ They can't hear him saying that, can they? He hopes not. And screw your skepticism. ] My dad is Hephaestus. So yeah, dealing with machines is literally a gods-given thing.

[ ...Though he can't help but be interested in Tony's suggestion - though maybe not the suggestion itself. His eyes light up with curiosity. ] Microcomputers? What kind of stuff are you doing with them?

[ That basically translates to "yes". ]

Apparently, so are their children.

[Take that as you will, Leo.]

The uh... blacksmith guy? Greek God? [There's a bit of a suffering sigh.] Tell me Greek Gods are slightly less petulant than Norse Gods... I don't plan on getting thrown through any more windows.

[But the kid's interest helped turn his mood around. If there was one thing that could send Tony's insufferable personality into a 180, it was technobabble.]

Whatever I want. I have forty-eight of them implanted under my skin, designed to call my armour to me at a thought--or, they used to before I was relocated to this pocket dimension. In the lab I've got going right now, I'm working on re-purposing them to be a little more useful here. Endgame is emulating the systems of my suit without my actual suit. Sensors, my on-board AI, keeping track of my vitals... [Preforming diagnostics on his arc reactor...]

If I can figure out what's disrupting your primary somatosensory cortex, I might be able to fashion together something nano-techy to go in and essentially bridge or repair the disruption. Even if it's just a temporary fix, it might tide you over until the box of scraps decides to give you your senses back.

Edited 2014-06-27 18:38 (UTC)

You have your sense of touch taken away and we'll see how overdramatic you get.

[ Hmph. ]

That's him. God of forge, fire, mechanics, whatever. I haven't met any Norse gods, but they're probably not much better. I mean, I didn't even get a thank you when I saved Hera's butt. [ And for all the crap she put him through, he should have gotten at least that. ]

Wait, under your skin? [ That's new! Leo wonders idly, if he had his sense, if he'd be able to mess with them. Not that he would, of course - unless he knew it wouldn't harm anything. ] Why have them under you skin? Why not just press a button or something? Almost sounds like what Festus does for the Argo II, but why would you need a suit of armor tracking your vitals? You'd think you'd know if something's wrong.

[ He'd ask what the suit of armor is even for, but. "Fire-breathing veterans" pretty much answered that question already. ]

I've never built anything for a person - not like that. Just armor, or weapons, machines or whatever, [ Leo muses, clearly interested. ] I wouldn't know where to start to make something like that work.

I never said I wasn't over dramatic.

[He smirks lightly but doesn't argue further or even explain that point. Instead, he listens. This felt like the Asgardians all over again but with less... Archaic English overtones.]

Sounds about the same to me. [Did they get a thank you when they captured Loki, or a simple apology for accidentally letting their rabid dog loose on Earth? Nope.]

Because sometimes I don't have time to press a button. I'll defer you back to me getting thrown out windows by Norse Gods. I don't know anything about Argo II, but I'd have been roadkill on the pavement without a way to summon my suit.

[He pulls the camera away from him a bit, to give Leo a wider shot of his body, showing the glowing light in the center of his chest, so bright it shined clean through his shirt. He taps it with the thumb of his free hand to indicate it, in case it hadn't been obvious already.]

Need to keep an eye on that and make sure it's running smoothly. If it malfunctions or shorts out somehow, I'm as good as dead. So, yeah, I'll know pretty quickly if something's wrong, because I won't be around to fix it. So catching it before I go catatonic is critical.

If you're as good as you claim, maybe I'll teach you a few nanotech tricks and we'll see what you can make with them. Tony Stark, by the way. I'm actually in my lab now, if you wanna head this way. I a friend of mine said if you keep the location in mind, your path should lead you here, or something to that effect.

[ She gets it. Her best mate lost his timey-whimey senses for awhile. She wanted to throttle him for most of that time. But then, she'd gotten to experience just how overwhelming those timey-whimey senses were and when she stopped it was pretty darn quiet. ]

You'll have to hope it's temporary and hope the machine takes pity on you and gives back what it stole. Just... try not to piss it off any more!

[ He's kind of nursing the thought that it was just a fluke, and he messed something up. How that works, exactly, hasn't quite registered, but that's not his problem right now. ]

Yeah, right. Am I supposed to, like, apologize to it or something?

Oh. I can see that. [ It's not a problem Leo himself has faced, but he imagines it would feel similar for him to lose his tool belt. There are some clear advantages to doing things the way Tony here has, though Leo couldn't emulate it for his own purposes if he wanted to.

Seeing the glow, he leans in as if to get a closer look - not that it helps. ] What is that? What's it do, besides keeping you alive?

[ His mood is obviously improving the more they talk shop; Leo's entire face is lighting up in excitement. ] Dude, that would be awesome. I'be programmed automatons - [ and the signs in Times Square ] - but most of my projects have been weapons or the ship.

It's an arc reactor. My father--and a colleague--designed a large one. I improved the design, shrunk it down, and now it, well... It's a sort of electro magnet. A self-sustaining power source. Clean energy. [The only reason he doesn't seem overly boastful is because of the unpleasant circumstances involved to push for its creation.]

Hey, we all have to start somewhere. I made my fortune on advanced weapons development. It wasn't until recently that my company took a different turn. And even then, it depends who you ask whether I've gotten out of the business. They call my armour a weapon. [He shrugs as if it doesn't bother him. It really doesn't. Just don't try to take it away from him again and they can call it whatever the hell they want.]

A ship, huh? What're we talking here? Air ship? A jolly seafaring vessel? Starship to boldly go where no man has gone before?

Edited (I suck at phone tagging...) 2014-06-28 13:38 (UTC)

Cool! Electromagnets. I could get behind that, so long as the magic doesn't screw with it. [ He's mostly used to that by now, but some things are still trial and error. Phones, for one thing - he'd love to make one that doesn't broadcast demigod signals like fireworks on the Fourth of July, but you know. Priorities. ]

Try a Greek trireme. And it can fly or sail, [ Leo tells him proudly. ] If you're gonna face the end of the world, you might as well do it in style.

Magic. [Heavy sigh. He was almost tired of how often science and magic crossed paths anymore. Given a little more exposure, he'd get over it.] Explain. How exactly does your magic work with tech? [Hey, give Tony some time, experimenting, and details to go off of, and he might be able to grant that wish.]

Okay, I'm impressed and can absolutely get behind that idea. But, how about stopping the end of the world instead?

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(I apologise for Tony.)

and I for Leo.

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