Fustercluck

[letskicksomeice]

As far as Jack and Bunny could tell, they'd gathered up all the people they would find tonight. They'd have to sweep by in the coming days just to catch any possible stragglers.

Jack looked somewhat awkward as he stood in front of the group. A leader he was not, and public speaking wasn't something he was used to since being seen by the public was a whole new thing for him.

Still, he gave it his best shot.

"Okay, so most of you have gotten an explanation of who we are and why we think you're here, right? If you have any more questions about that, you can ask 'em. Then we need to talk about where you guys wanna stay. We have a few places in mind that are safe - and trust me, with Kuk's minions running around kidnapping any myths It thinks is a threat, you'll need somewhere safe - but you should have some say in where you live, so we want to see what works best for everyone."

[ooc: Clusterfuck thread! Always tag the most recent comment near the bottom.]

Comments

[letskicksomeice]

Jack sucked in a deep breath as if he was going to launch into a long explanation of the possible lengths of time it might take, but he decided on:

"We have no idea."

[guardianofawesome]

He sighs. Pointedly. It is a sigh that is loud with oh my god do you have any idea how much stuff I was doing right now.

"Okay," he says, thinking. He speaks with an arm and finger raised.

"So. We're here to be fairytales fighting a hopelessly doomed magic war with a mysterious evil entity that wants to... take over the world? Destroy everything? Punt kittens? Something along those lines?"

He looks for someone to confirm this, tilting his wrist a little to swing his finger around the group in the hopes of indicating somebody who will say yes.

[spellitonce]

One of them has a very different response than he was hoping for.

"Oh Hell no," Nico shouted, shoving Molly behind her. "I was willing to put up with a bitchy, holier-than-thou giant rabbit, but Tony freaking Stark?! No, screw you! SCREW YOU!"

Keeping herself between Molly and the rest of the group, Nico began backing away from the group, her Staff still trained on the new guy.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony frowns.

"Hey, I'm not as bad as the rabbit," he protests.

[letskicksomeice]

Jack started mouthing 'Bitchy, holier-than-thou-?' but then he saw things had the potential to be violent, rolled his eyes, and flew up in the air, landing between them. He didn't point his staff at either of them, but held his hand up in a placating gesture towards Nico.

"You wanna explain what's going on here? Obviously, you two know each other."

[guardianofawesome]

Tony backs off, holding his hands up defensively.

"Hey, she started it!"

[spellitonce]

"You want to know why there's so many kids here?" Nico snarls, eyes flicking to Jack briefly before landing on Tony-freaking-Stark again. "Why don't you ask him? He's pretty big on recruiting child armies these days!"

[letskicksomeice]

At that, Jack turned back to Tony, wordlessly raising his eyebrows, as if to say: Explain.

[guardianofawesome]

His attention is stuck on Nico.

"Except for the part where I'm not. What tabloids have you been reading, kid?"

Tony is actually kind of sad he hasn't seen that one yet. He likes to keep tabs on the completely out of left field crap that gets made up about him. It's cheap entertainment.

[spellitonce]

"How about the one where you and your SHIELD cronies showed up in my home with guns because we wouldn't register our powers with the government and join your stupid Initiative?!" Nico retorted. "Oh, ooh, how about the one where I had to break into your government facility and rescue my friends and a couple Young Avengers from getting experimented on, that was fun!"

Heart thundering in her chest, she glanced around briefly for something she could use to scratch herself with. Annoyingly, the area was distinctly lacking in thorny plants.

[animalhats]

"Yeah!" Molly chimes in from behind Nico (where she doesn't want to be, gosh Nico, she can take care of herself!), her eyes glowing pink. "We hadta run away and move and I liked that place! Gert lived there with us, and there were pictures of her and everything!"

She glares at Tony around Nico's arm, then wrinkles her nose.

"You used to be taller. When'd you shrink?"

[letskicksomeice]

Taller? How could an adult shrink?

That was when Jack's eyebrows raised again.

One afternoon, not long ago, he'd sat on Jamie's desk, listening with great amusement as the boy ranted for a full half hour about how the "big event" comics were ruining everything and how the movie versions were superior to the comics because of something called "adaptation distillation."

Jamie's favorite topic to rant about (because it was his favorite comics movie character)? Iron Man.

That left Jack with a little more knowledge to work with in this situation than he had for all the other people pulled through. (Sometimes it just didn't pay to not be pop culture savvy.)

"I think I know what's going on here. Mr. Stark, was the first big bad guy you ever fought your business partner?"

[mywarrenmyrules]

Bunny had started to mouth "holier-than-thou?" back to Jack, because bitchy at least he could accept. He was well aware he was not the cuddliest bunny in the world.

But Nico's talk of the new guy recruiting child soldiers cut that exchange straight to a halt. If the man had appeared an iota more menacing, and Jack hadn't appeared to recognize him, Bunny would have already had a boomerang out. He stayed where he was, light on his feet, ready to race between the new guy and the kids if he had to.

"Jack, who is this guy?"

[amazing_amazon]

Diana immediately understood what was going on, seeing as to how she'd recently met another version of herself, one who was older than Diana, from a different world, and led an entirely different life than the one Diana had led.

She'd taken up a defense position, her glowing lariat at the ready in case anyone needed to be caught, but for the moment, she said nothing. Emotions were running high, that she understood. Sometimes, they needed to run their own course.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony had opened his mouth to say something cutting about lies, slander, libel, etc so it was a good thing Jack had spoken up to distract him.

"What? Yes. Obediah Stane. It was all over the news."

He has no idea how this is relevant.

[animalhats]

"Nuh-uh!" Molly almost looks insulted - she might not the actual first person that Iron Man fought, but she knows some of the bigger names. "It was... the Mandarin, I think. Or the red iron man guy from Russia!"

She stomps her foot a little and narrows her eyes suspiciously. "Stop lying!"

[letskicksomeice]

"Okay, okay, thanks to a friend of mine, without whose influence I wouldn't know any of this stuff at all, I think I know what's going on here."

Jack turned to gesture at them all, the whole group, with a wide sweep of his hand.

This would be something of a revelation for some of them, but they needed to be told eventually.

"All of you, all of the people here are considered fictional in this world. Manny was a little worried that means you've been made entirely new, like...like you actually are fictional and were made by the kids, but we've met new myths and they're...simple. They're not as solid as you guys in identity, in knowing who they are. We've been going about this like you got pulled through because that's the most likely thing."

He went on, "But the possible worlds that can exist out there - that's gotta be infinite right? In your worlds, you're real, but having so many worlds out there means worlds where other people had ideas for stories that were identical to your lives. That's just statistics - everything has to exist somewhere."

He held his hand to his chest. "Before I was even believed in, before anyone thought I was real, someone in this world came up with the idea for me as a fictional character - one that was, admittedly, not much like me and prone to wearing really stupid shoes and glitter - and to this day, I still don't know how. But they did it. Coincidence, since no one could see or hear me yet."

He gestured with his hand for emphasis.

"The thing with stories is that when people come up with an idea for a story, they come up with variations on how that story might go."

He pointed to Tony and looked over at Nico and Molly.

"There are multiple takes on this guy's story in this world. The one that's really popular right now - i.e. the one the kids would've most likely believed in hard enough to pull here from the world where it's real - is from movies based on comic books. There's a very different version of the character in the comic books themselves. I don't think this is the same version of the one that hurt you - and if you're not comfortable with talking it out, there's a quick way we can prove it."

He pointed to Wonder Woman. "She has a lasso that makes people tell the truth."

[spellitonce]

Jack was trying to talk it through all nice and logically, but logic-brain wasn't steering the boat right now. Nico didn't care that this might not be the Tony Stark from her reality, she just wanted him as far away from her and Molly as possible.

"I don't care how awesome her accessories are," she retorted. Besides, the fact she was wearing a star-spangled swimsuit made her judgment questionable at best. "I'm not working with him, and if you think I'm staying in the same building as him, your brain has rotted through just like your pants."

She took one hand off her Staff and began hitting the tree beside her, hoping to split her skin on the rough bark so she could cast something -- anything -- to get them to safety.

[guardianofawesome]

Tony kind of gives Jack a look. It's the "I have nothing better to go on than what you're saying, but I think you are a crazy person," look.

To Nico, he says something else.

"Look, you don't have to like me. A lot of people don't like me, it's part of my charm. But I'm telling you I don't have anything to do with child soldiers or human experimentation. Stark Industries is at the forefront of energy, that's far outside the scope of what it's doing even if I went insane and decided to violate every ethics code on the planet. And even then, I've put an incredibly capable woman in charge of things who would stop me."

"So really?" he finishes, with an air of washing his hands of this nonsense, "This is your problem, not mine."

[amazing_amazon]

"They aren't accessories," Diana said softly. "They're weapons and armour." Which they were. Her tiara itself was razor sharp and could cut through many, many things. Her bracelets and lasso were both indestructible. "Fighting amongst ourselves will get us nowhere," she said. "Nor will harming ourselves," she added, watching as Nico started hitting the tree. "Please, little sister, stop. This is not the way to fix your problem."

[mywarrenmyrules]

Bunny sighed out his frustration as he glanced at Diana with a glance of grateful appraisal. At least the other adults among the chosen demonstrated competence and Guardian potential - Tony was the only one, so far, whose every word demonstrated absolutely the opposite.

He took a step towards Nico. "You don't have to work with him. You don't even have to stay on the same continent as him. I can take you to the Pole right now. You'll be safe to hide out there, and we'll make sure he stays at the Tooth Palace."

There was more chaos to be made at the Pole, arguably - but Nico was too volatile for him to trust her in a place with as many important memories as the Tooth Palace.

"Nobody's going to ask you to put yourself in danger. Not him, and not us. We're gonna make sure you have a safe place to hole up. You just have to stop hurting yourself now."

He made his voice as calm as possible, as if he were soothing a stressed animal down from chewing its own leg off to escape a trap. Nico didn't like him, he was aware, but he had to try to help her - and at least he hadn't driven her to self-harm as the new man did.

[spellitonce]

Nico calmed down substantially when Bunny said that they didn't have to work with or stay anywhere near the Iron Toolbox. She didn't stop glaring at Tony; but while she stopped hitting the tree, she didn't take her hand off it.

She also rolled her eyes at the 'you have to stop hurting yourself' thing from Bunny and the Lady With The Lasso of Truthiness.

"It's not about hurting myself," she grumbled under her breath, reluctantly turning her gaze from Tony to Jack. "Is there anything else we need to know before we go?"

[letskicksomeice]

Jack just held up his hand as if to say he didn't even know what the heck to do with this whole situation, then shook his head and said weakly, "That's all for now, I guess?"

To Bunny, he said, "So you take the rest of them to the Pole and I'll take him to the Tooth Palace until we figure this whole thing out?"

[animalhats]

"Are you gonna take all the grown-ups with him?" Molly asks, because she is an eavesdropping little brat. Or, y'know, because Jack's not trying to be secretive. "You should. 'Cause that way I don't gotta keep an eye on them and kick their butts if they don't leave us alone. Me'n Nico'n Mami'n the grumpy guy can go to the North Pole, and everybody else can go to the Tooth Palace."

She pauses for a second. "Buuuuuut I really wanna see it sometime before we go home, okay?"

[fromfryingpantofire]

Sam had kept back because he wasn't sure what he could contribute at the moment. He'd almost spoken up about the whole Tony Stark thing (and...just how cool was that, that Tony freakin' Stark was here?), but the zombie kid seemed to have that under control.

Molly's suggestion, on the other hand, makes him shake his head. "I think it would be a bad idea right now to split up more than we absolutely have to." He held up his hands, palms out and placating. "It's not that I don't think you can't take care of yourselves. Assuming we're getting the whole truth, the kids of this world admire and believe in you for good reason." Which, of course, was a roundabout way of reminding them that the kids of this world also believed in the ADULTS in the group. "But there's a lot that we don't know because these guys don't know it, either. No offense," he added to Jack and Bunny. "But until we know more? There's safety in numbers. For my part, I can swear that I won't do anything to you guys. I'm trying to avoid getting my butt kicked for the time being."