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

[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."

[letskicksomeice]

Jacked looked like he was very narrowly resisting the urge to pull out his hair at this point.

"I swear if it wasn't already white, I'd be going grey right now..." only the closest people to him would hear him mutter to himself.

But Molly was a kid, and she was a scared kid, so when Jack turned to her, the patience was forced but it wasn't fake, and neither was the concern on his face, the earnest desire that she understood she was safe.

Walking over to her and crouching down, staff resting against his shoulder, he said, "Listen, Molly, Bunny and I have - we have a lot we have to worry about right now. Every day, there are kids out there dying and getting hurt, and our friends - we don't know if they're okay right now, we don't know what the bad guys might be doing to them. And there're lots of little things we have to do to keep the world safe that none of you guys can really help with - not yet, at least."

He sucked in a deep breath through his nose. "We have a lot on our plates right now, is what I'm trying to say. And I know none of you chose to be here, but the timing wasn't so great for us, either."

Just because they weren't prisoners didn't mean they were wardens. They hadn't chosen being put on interdimensional babysitting duty anymore than this crowd had chosen to be here. And it looked like, for a handful of them, it was going to be babysitting duty. (He's looking at you, Tony.)

"It's going to be hard for me and Bunny to do all those things we need to do and keep this whole crowd safe, especially if we're splitting up the group that much. And there are some things even the grownups here will need us to do to keep them safe - and they deserve to be safe just as much as you kids do."

Jack tried to figure out how to word it in a way she'd understand, and as he pursed his lips together, trying to collect the words, he looked for a moment not like a jovial teenager or the ancient, fairly competent spirit guardian he was, but a boy a bit in over his head, very tired from trying to break through to the surface.

"We can fix this and save the world and keep everyone safe, but to do it, we need this to be as easy as it can be, or we're not going to be able to keep doing all this. We don't have it in us." He pointed. "Now, Sam, see Sam seems like a pretty good guy. So do most of the grownups here. They probably aren't going to give you any trouble."

He went on, "But if they try to, I promise you, Bunny and I will keep you kids safe. So far, I know it sounds like what Guardians do is protect the world in general - and we do. But the main thing we protect, the thing that's most important to us, is protecting kids. That's what a Guardian is, that's the oath we took, to protect the children of the world. Right now, the reason we're protecting the world is to protect the kids in it."

He shook his head. "So to make this easier, we really, really need to keep you all in one place, but I promise you, if any of the grownups try to hurt you, we'll kick their butts so hard they won't have butts anymore, okay? Do you think it'd be okay if everyone mostly stayed in the same place if Bunny and I were careful about kicking their butts if they do anything wrong and try to hurt you?"

[animalhats]

Molly doesn't trust Sam. It's not that she actively distrusts him, but he is a grownup, which means he doesn't get trusted. And Nico pretty much doesn't seem to trust anybody, but Molly thinks that they can probably trust Jack and Bunny, even though they're technically really really old. And she's only 12, and Nico will probably not like it, but Nico doesn't know everything, and Molly still believes in Santa and everything.

Maybe even before you're grown up, you grow up too much to know things for sure without any solid reasons.

It doesn't hurt, of course, that Molly knows that sort of forced patience. That 'we really don't have time for this but I'm not gonna just yell at you to do it' sort of patience. Nico has it, a lot. And Victor sometimes. Chase mostly just yells, but sometimes he tries, even if he's bad at it. And even if Jack's been magic for ages and ages, he was probably a kid when he started being magic, and magic stops you growing up, right? Like Never Never Land, where Peter Pan lived there for ages and ages, and he was still a kid. Not like, a grownup in a kid's body, but a kid inside, too. Because of magic.

None of this is a conscious thought process in Molly's head, of course, but it's all rattling around in there somewhere when she looks at Jack and listens to what he's trying to explain, and seeing how scared and tired he is. So before she answers, she just steps forward and flings her arms around his neck in a tight hug. 'Cause he clearly needs one.

"I can probably kick their butts just fine," she says seriously, a little muffled by his sweatshirt. "As long as I won't get in trouble for doing it."

She lets out a breath and lets go of Jack, stepping back and looking up at Nico. "We should go with them. Jack and Bunny won't hurt us and we gotta stay somewhere. As long as Iron Man's not there, it'll be okay." She says this with that sort of pure belief that some kids have that their dads can save them from anything, that their moms will always love them. The kind of belief that Molly had that Chase didn't die in that explosion in New York, that Old Lace had saved him. And hey, Nico - she was right that time, wasn't she?

[guardianofawesome]

Tony shakes his head in a half weary, half frustrated motion. Really he shouldn't talk because he doesn't have the best track record of improving things by opening his mouth.

But this is Tony Stark. Of course he's going to say something anyway.

"Okay, fine. You guys can put me in time out for something I didn't do, I can take it."

It's not like he was super jazzed about any of this to begin with.

[mywarrenmyrules]

Bunny cut in dryly, "The Tooth Palace is a mythic marvel and I can count the number of mortals who've gotten to see it on one paw, so nobody's going to be playing a tiny violin for you just yet."

Not that Tony seemed like the sort of person to be awed by elaborate filing systems spanning a world of children and thousands of years, or by an army of world-crossing fairies. All the more reason to defend the place, since Tooth wasn't available to sass on her own behalf.

He stamped the ground, and a tunnel opened up into the earth. Anybody who looked inside would get a glimpse of, strangely, not darkness, but a softly illuminated mossy path, twisting out of sight, smooth-edged as a slide.

"Everybody in, non-stop to the North Pole."

He cast an apologetic glance towards Jack - who else was going to make sure Tony got to the Tooth Palace safely and didn't disrupt too much while he was there?

"Reconvene at the Palace in two hours?"

By then the yetis and elves would probably have taken up the hosting ball, and Jack might need checking up on. The new guy could have been more dangerous than he seemed.

[letskicksomeice]

Molly's hug pretty much melted Jack's heart into a gooey, little blob. In all of this, with everyone on edge and looking at him and Bunny as figures of authority - for good or ill - kindness like that was a bit unexpected.

But it was definitely welcome. In the time she hugged him, he hugged her back and smiled when she pulled away.

She was a pretty freakin' adorable kid.

Then Tony opened his mouth again and Jack rolled his eyes. Tony was not so adorable.

"See you there," said Jack, looking sour about being on babysitting duty.

Then again, the other option was...well, babysitting duty, so it was pretty much lose-lose.

Jack held out his hand to Tony.

"You're going to have to hold on tight. This isn't really a fairy dust and happy thoughts kinda deal."

[guardianofawesome]

Unfortunately, it's either this or stay here and be invisible.

"Just don't drop me, Peter Pan," he says, taking Jack's hand reluctantly.

He wishes he had his armor, at least he could fly under his own power.

[letskicksomeice]

I won't.

He'd just maybe make Tony wish he had.

By, for instance, doing things like whipping up into the air really, really fast without warning, for instance.