fe_male | memeboxing

[ It's not Tony, that broadcast of curiosity. Or at least it's not quite Tony, some parts of this mind feeling familiar in ways that are practically stamped 'Tony Stark' but without so much that she's come to expect. It's a strange feeling, and she draws back, carefully cuts off any connection between their minds. No Tony that she absolutely recognizes anywhere, but this one other presence in the house is in the workshop.

There's a long hesitation before she takes the stairs down, types in her access code. Something strange is going on, obviously. The question becomes then, what precisely is the something strange and how worried does she need to be? ]

How'd you get in here? [ Quiet and a little withdrawn, because she's still thinking. ]

[ He frowns a little at the cutoff, but doesn't really do anything else. He knows he's a hard Sentinel to get along with already, and it's not a reaction he's found is all that uncommon - a Dark Sentinel, but there's only one every-- and he doesn't know, doesn't care what it means, just that every time he senses someone else who could fill in the other half of his pattern, they close themselves off. It's nothing tragic, really, just what seems to happen. He doesn't get to actually interact with Empaths until he's well in the throes of sensitivity and on the way to trying to sleep it all off (a temporary situation at best.)

But he still thinks maybe this isn't all his, he just woke up here, this could be a weird sort of kidnapping, but that's an empath, and that's new, and he feels pretty normal right now - his hearing is a little sensitive but nothing he can't handle on his own, and he's not sure what's happening here all around. When she withdraws, he does the same, instinctively, pulling all of his feelings and senses into himself. ]

I woke up in here. How did you get in?

[ He still feels like Tony, somewhere underneath, and that's what's throwing her most of all, feeding into a growing theory in her head. She's seen some pretty weird shit over time, and right now she's starting to think this is going to fit into that category very effectively. ]

I live here. [ Taking a seat nearby, still watching him steadily. For a moment she licks her lips, considers whether this is actually the next best step. But theory testing it is. ] Tony?

[ He's sort of just ignoring her as some sort of nanny, maybe, one of his mother's cognoscenti friends, a 'friend' of his father's, tuning out, checking back into the things he was looking at.

And then she says his name, and that's not all that abnormal - most people he runs into know his name, but not the way she said it. He glances back over at her with somewhat new interest. ] What?

[ So, yes. Tony. But not her Tony, and that's unsettling in a way she'd really prefer it wasn't. She tilts her head at him, wondering how precisely you phrase something like this.

Then again, he's smart, he's had JARVIS with him. He may already know. ] JARVIS has told you you're in you future?

[ Heh. He pulls up something about the modern day version of himself on youtube - G-rated, because JARVIS looks out for Tony in all forms and phases. It's a fanvid of Tony being... Tony. Iron Man saving the day, Tony at the senate, Tony with ladies, Tony gambling, pre-Iron Man, all to the tune of AC/DC, which the kid is currently subtly air guitaring without noticing. He gestures again and they freeze, the air guitar stops. ] I know. That's really me? [ A little sly, glancing up at her without actually trying to.

[ She watches it, face softening from an unsure neutrality to that quiet real smile she gets around him, and when she glances down at him air guitaring it stays, fond even if the lack of her Tony is disturbing. When he looks up at her she's still watching him, still smiling just a little. ] Yeah, that's really you. I'm your - [ what is she? well isn't that a good question ] I live with you and we help each other. My name's Max.

[ He's not quite as used to people watching him yet. Still likes it, but he's not as good at shrugging it off as he will be later. But mostly he narrows his eyes. ] What do you mean? Why do I live here? We've never lived in Malibu. How do we help each other? You don't look like you work in a house.

[ She can look away again after a long moment, back at the paused video, try to sort out answers to his questions. It's not that she minds that he has them, because of course he's going to have questions, she would too. It's kind of a bizarre new situation to get thrown into. But she doesn't know how to answer all of them. Particularly the one about helping, because they've never done definitions of what they are. It's just - help. Unquantified and there and a saving grace sometimes. ] I don't know why you live here, it's just - your house, you've lived here as long as I've known you. You know how Guides and Sentinels work?

[ It's cool. People take time to answer stuff. People who aren't him, anyway, and he's already learning both sides of the time differential. Doesn't mean he's good with handling it though, and now that the earlier immediate entertainment is done, he pulls up a game Tony had on his computers that he's already found. ] How long have you known me? [ Although that gets a look. ] Of course I do.

[ Well, now she knows he came by his attention span honestly. Although, child. That's a really weird switch to have to make in terms of thinking about him. ] I - quite a while now. Over six months? I can't remember when I moved in. [ And okay, so that will make the explanation a little easier, even if she's still going to have to cut corners and try to keep it simple so that she can keep out any mention of trauma he's not going to know about for years. ] We help each other like Guides and Sentinels help each other, but without a bond.

[ Six months. That's a while. But without a bond, he already has help like that from time to time, it's just never the same person twice, and never for six months, beyond that. And because of that, he doesn't totally get what Sentinels can offer Guides in return. ] What's in it for you? Free house?

[ She glances down at him at that, a little startled because that's a surprisingly cynical approach for someone so young and maybe she should have expected that, given what she knows of his general history with empaths, but it's still strange to run across and a little sobering. It's important to make a point of only bringing in empaths for young Sentinels in arrangements that don't make it an obligation for them to work with the Sentinel, so that it becomes at least a somewhat natural thing rather than forced. A long pause as she sorts out how to phrase it. ] No. He grounds me as much as I ground him. We work well together.

[ He waits for the response uncharacteristically patiently. It's something he's curious about, so he doesn't mind waiting for an answer that seems to be accurate or otherwise hard to find somewhere else. ] I don't know how to do that.

It takes a long time to learn. [ Immediate, calm and sure. This bit she knows. She and Tony are better at it now, but they're not perfect either. It's a skill that takes a lot of learning to do right even with a bond. ] Most people don't figure it out until adulthood.

[ That's a flash of irritation, then a mask of vague annoyance. He's learning. ] I hate things like that. That take a long time.

[ A sympathetic glance down. ] Yeah, everyone does. Patience isn't much fun to learn. [ Reaching out to bring up one of Tony's projects, glancing it over. Mostly for something to distract herself, buy time to figure out what she's supposed to do now. Call SHIELD? She doesn't really like them. How would Tony wind up a kid? ] I don't know how to get you back home.

[ He watches what she's doing, thinking about things but oddly still in the process. ] Into the right time, you mean. [ More considering. ] Maybe I can just stay here anyway.

[ She's flicking through it, which she doesn't actually normally do with Tony's things, but double checking his math in columns is soothing and blowing up the model to watch the simulation even more so. ] I'm no expert in time, but I think that would cause linear causality problems.

[ It's okay, he likes watching it too. It is soothing, in a weird way. He's not up to that level in math, but he can still see the basics in the way things go together, and if nothing else, this technology doesn't exist in the timeframe he's from. ] Yeah, I've seen tv shows about that. Just hoping.

What do we do here?

Why don't you want to go back? [ Soft and unsure, because he doesn't really talk about his childhood, but she's never gotten the impression it was good. And she'll just keep going over his things, staying casual. ]

You invent things and go be a superhero when you're needed and help run the R&D division of your company.

[ He's just started leaning back in the chair he found, now he's spinning it a little bit, still looking at the schematics she's flicking through when he's facing the right way. He's only sliding around fairly slowly as it is. ] Just don't. [ And wow, he's about as forthcoming as a child as he is as an adult, although it's probably easier to coax a little more information out of child-him, given how he mostly spoke into his lap while still moving the chair. It's not quite evasion. More like temporary avoidance. If she feels like following it, of course.

That causes pause again though. ] I run the R&D section? At.... forty? Where's my dad? Where's Obie? Are they helping me run it?

[ Well that's really not subtle at all there, though she wouldn't have particularly expected subtlety from him at any age. She hopes it's not bad that she feels curious now, because she does, but at the same time - okay wow those questions are going to be hard to answer, maybe she can dodge them. ]

More stuff to do here, or? [ And a short pause. ] You ran the whole company for a while, but you got bored of it. [ She'll just. Leave it at that version of events yes. That'll work, right. ]

Yeah. Cooler stuff. Less school. I don't know.

[ Okay, that sounds enough like him, he thinks. He considers it fairly heavily for a little while, but accepts it afterwards, starts spinning again. ] I guess they're back in New York still. It looks like a lot of work - I really just like building things.

You don't like school?

[ She lets out a half breath of relief at that, her physical reactions as always muted around him but never quite eliminated. ] Well, you do a lot of that. And really well, of course.

hey heyyyy

~~~~~~~~()_)

i see

do you not like marshmallows or something

i have never seen that before but okay marshmallow that's good

~~'~{@}

oh man upping your game

8D

i'm impressed

i can be your ASCII art master, baby

you say the sweetest things to me darling

i try

and you succeed very well

thank you very much

alwaaaays

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject