tushanshu | video;

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[Here, turtlefolk, have a teenage boy who is still a little bit zonked from landing on his ass in the palace. There is a Chinese dragon on his shirt, if anyone's at all interested in dragons. From what can be seen, his suite looks like it's in mild disarray; he got angry enough to break a couple things once he was alone and did not do such a good job cleaning it up from the camera's view. He looks mildly upset.]

I-- I don't understand why I'm here, I--

They gave me this place, they told me I have to work...I'm not really trapped, am I? I can't be. This doesn't make sense.

[He stops talking half-to himself and focuses his attention on the camera again.]

I guess I have to work under the assumption that this is all real, until proven otherwise. Even if I'm still not entirely sure what's going on.

Anyone care to enlighten me? The...kedan...weren't all that helpful.

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[did you say dragons i love dragons and it is clearly all right to open with video because you have a dragon on your shirt and that means you will be not at all alarmed]

It is real, I can assure you of that, at least, but your initial assumption is incorrect: we are all trapped, until the thing we are fighting is defeated.

Wh--

[He stumbles back from the console. Congratulations, Temeraire. You broke him.]

A dragon.

Now I know I'm dreaming.

[Because at least Fin Fang Foom only tried to EAT him, never talk to him. And also was made out of stone.]

Edited 2013-08-26 01:27 (UTC)

Welcome to the Twilight Zone, kid.

[ Some people might be sympathetic to the plight of a teenager waking up in bizarro land. Some people aren't Tony Stark, who lets the sympathy up to people who have feelings. ]

You think this is bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.

[WOW OKAY first a dragon and then the dead spit of Howard Stark yeah this is exactly what he wanted.]

[Under breath:] This is officially a nightmare.

Stark?!

[ha ha ha ha OH GOD NO.]

[why the freakouts]

I do not see how that is any proof, when you have got one on your shirt.

Well--

[Okay, you've got him there.]

--that doesn't mean I'm expecting to run into one!

[ He doesn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed by the recognition. Either this is someone who's seen the news or it's someone from another world. The familiarity of that use of his last name points to the latter. ]

Last time I looked at my driver's license, that's what it said.

I-- whoa, okay.

[He takes a deep breath and a closer look. Voice is different, but the resemblance is uncanny, despite the mismatch in facial hair.

And also, does not appear to recognize him.

Not sure if that's a good thing or not.

Tentatively:] Right, but you're not...Howard Stark, are you?

[Can't be, because Howard Stark hates his living guts and would not be this calm. Either way, his finger is hovering over the button to cut the feed. Just in case.]

[ One of the worst insults that can be leveled Tony's way is to be mistaken for his father. It doesn't happen often, and most notably with elderly people who actually knew the man, but every time it does, it sets his teeth on edge. ]

Yeah, no.

[ He would guess there's some time-traveling involved here, but the kid's shirt looks a little too modern. Which makes knowing Howard even stranger. ]

Try Tony. His son.

[Oh sweet fancy Christ that's even worse.

And even weirder, because if this is Tony, then why isn't he recognizing him?]

You. You're Tony.

You can't be.

[He can't be, because seventeen-year-old Tony Stark was just fighting him a few hours ago in Gene's frame of reference.]

[ And it just gets worse. First, he's his father. Now, he's the wrong goddamn Tony again. This is getting old. ]

Guess I missed that memo.

[ It's a little more brusque than usual, but a man can only be told so many times that he isn't right before he starts getting prickly. ]

Thanks for clearing that up for me.

[Okay, well, at least that sounds like the Stark he knows and tolerates.] Look, give me a break, a few hours ago you were seventeen. [Not to mention fully armored, with War Machine and goddamn Pepper along for the ride in her own armor, and getting in Gene's way.

Time to start clearing up some stuff of his own.]

So...you really have no idea who I am? [Sudden thought.] What about Rhodes? What about Pepper? Do those names ring a bell or am I just unlucky?

Try twenty-seven years ago.

[ And good riddance to that. Being a teenager who was lightyears ahead of everyone else and already had a few doctorates to his name wasn't as much of a picnic as Doogie Howser might've led people to believe. ]

And yes, Auntie Em, I know who Rhodey and Pepper are. What I don't know is who you are. Last I checked, sidekicks weren't my thing. Especially not teenaged ones.

[YA DUN GOOFED.]

I'm nobody's sidekick!

[But he cools down pretty quickly. His mind's going at full speed - if this Stark really doesn't know him, then this Stark has absolutely no reason to hate him.

This could be useful if he turns down the antagonism.]

I'm Gene. Gene Khan. We're - we were classmates. Friends. At the Tomorrow Academy in New York. Rhodes and Pepper were there too.

[Not all of the pain in his voice is acting. In fact, very little of it is. He definitely did not expect to be re-introducing himself to Tony goddamn Stark, and especially not on such civil terms.

And Stark, who'd been his best friend, practically his only friend, and then Peru and it all went wrong. This is the closest he's had to a kind word from him, from anyone, in about a year.

Even if it's not really him.]

[ Tomorrow Academy? What? Tony stares a him a little longer, trying to make sense of that. He doesn't remember going to a school like that. At 17, he was in MIT. He certainly hadn't known Rhodey or Pepper at that age. ]

Khan? Like Genghis Khan? Or Shere Khan?

[ Not that that's really relevant, he just needs a minute to get his bearings. He rubs at his face, sighs, and makes himself let the irritation go. ]

Look. There's this whole interdimensional space-time continuum SNAFU going on here. You're clearly from some world where I'm younger and... [ He trails off, shaking his head. ] Whatever. Point is, I am Tony Stark. Just not the one you knew. Obviously.

...yeah, like that. [More like the first than you know.]

This is...this is a lot to take in. I mean, first I'm here, now I'm talking to you...

[Gene pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes briefly.] It's giving me a headache.

Like the giant talking tiger? Got it.

[ It's a joke. He even smiles a little when he says it. ]

Well, pop a few aspirin because I've got some more weird news for you. Pepper's here too. An older Pepper like me. And there's another Tony Stark. A little younger than me, but still quite a few years older than you. Rhodey's not here though. Any Rhodey, so there's that.

Yeah, sure. Kipling.

[Gene's lucky he didn't take Stark's advice and actually pop an aspirin, because he would have either choked on the pill or spat his drink all over the console. If they even had aspirin here. Still, he looks pretty gobsmacked.]

Pepper-- and another you--

[That would make three Tony Starks he would have run into in his life. One would be sufficient for several lifetimes.

He doesn't know quite how to feel about Pepper being here, even if it's not the Pepper he knows. He actually likes Pepper, or likes her well enough, even if she's not too fond of him now. But at least there's no Rhodes. They had never really warmed up to each other.]

Why?

[Yeah, that's about the most coherent thing he can muster right now.]

Edited 2013-08-26 03:29 (UTC)

Beats the hell out of me.

[ He's not particularly fond of this other him business either. Or the fact that there are so many people running around who look like the people he knows and just... aren't. Empathy isn't something he generally wastes on other people. He doesn't have the time and he's got enough problems without needing to worry about someone else's feelings. But he gets where the kid's coming from.

It's weird. It sucks. And he doesn't like it any more than it sounds like Gene does. ]

This is place is... It's in the middle of a war. Or it's trying to be. I don't know. Theory is, we're here to fight some kind of monster thing. I guess the people who're responsible for us being here at all thought that more soldiers — [ He rolls his eyes at the term. ] — would be better than less.

...wonderful.

[Gene looks pissed enough to chew nails and spit rust. If they wanted someone to take care of their monster problem, could they maybe have waited five minutes?! Then he'd have all the rings, fix this monster thing's little red wagon, and then - if all ten rings were as powerful as they were supposed to be - just zap himself back home.

But that would be easy, and since when has his life ever been easy?]

See, that would have been helpful to know right off the bat!

So you mean to say that you have never seen a dragon before? [Have a screen full of dragon nose as he leans in to have a closer look at the shirt.] But that one is very like a great many Chinese breeds, except without wings; where did you get the image from?

[It looks like someone was far more upset than they appear to be at the moment, going by some of the broken things in view.

It makes her angry herself, because there are so many kids and teenagers here, and none of them should be here, but she composes herself before turning on her video and replying.]

Everyone's stuck here. They brought us here to fight something [Her tone makes it clear how she feels about that, before switching to being concerned again] and we can't go home.

Are you alright, though? I know this is a huge shock to wake up to.

It does appear to be that we are, as they said, trapped here.

I'm afraid I don't know very much as I was just led to my own housing not too long ago, but that is what I was told.

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I am gonna get a lot of mileage out of this icon, aren't I?

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