2515/A Growing Partnership

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A Growing Partnership
Date of Scene: 18 July 2020
Location: Memorial and Meeting Rooms - Titan's Tower
Synopsis: A conversation between representatives of the Titans and the X-men brings Genosha and Bushwick one step closer to being restored.
Cast of Characters: Victor Stone, Nadia Pym-van Dyne, Illyana Rasputina, Samuel Morgan




Victor Stone has posed:
Vic still has the channel information Cyclops shared with him before the final battle against Brainiac, so when Nadia lets him know that she needs to collaborate with the X-men to reconstruct the tech necessary to recover Genosha and Bushwick, he calls her into the Titans meeting room and sets up a holoconference with their mutant allies. He has double- and in fact triple-checked the settings to make sure there will be no embarrassing shenanigans like last time, so whoever they're eventually routed to will receive an image of the cyborg seated at the head of the conference table with a tablet in front of him and a cable running from one arm to a socket in its side. No obnoxious jingle, no ridiculous graphics, no unnecessary backdrop -- just the genuine vista of the Metropolis skyline over the water through the window behind them.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"Wow, so you just know the X-men? That's so cool, they're famous! They showed us intelligence files about them in the Red Room among the potential heroes we might have to fight someday on missions." The ever cheerful Nadia is suitably impressed that Cyborg apparently has Cyclops on speed dial.

She is seated there next to him just to the right of the end table seat in her Wasp armor minus the helmet. She stares at the screen intently, infinitely curious about who will appear. Despite her origins she is clearly a fan of heroes.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
The X-Men who didn't turn up until the end of the battle? Those ones who sort of fell out of nowhere and stole a city? Right. They have back channels and then evidently another kind of back channel to reach the Titans, though this only makes sense. Perhaps New York and Metropolis are not the closest locations but spheres of influence tend to overlap, especially where missing mutant nations and neighbourhoods matter.

A holoconference might be distinguished as an -odd- thing rather than meeting in person, but at needs must. At the end of the day, it's all relative: dimensions mean nothing to someone who folds them up like origami and treats temporal-spatial flows as purely optional. Nonetheless, when Illyana comes into resolution, it's against a very nondescript blue wall and she apparently has a cup of coffee to make her life better. Or a pool of coffee in one of those wide-bellied cappuccino mugs found all over Italy. Hers has a sloth sprawled out on it, waving at Nadia and Cyborg with dopey, soft eyes. "I'm such a slack-off!" it reads underneath.

Mmm, coffee.

Technology is a wonder; just ask any child of the former Soviet Union not in a red room. But there she is, looking clearly back at them, putting down her coffee. "Evening." Laconic Russian? Check. Normal pale blue eyes and no scary crown? Check. Her eyes narrow a little spotting Nadia. Aha! "You were so big the last time we saw one another." Maybe both of them! I mean, it's all relative.

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic smiles over at Nadia, quirking an eyebrow at her. "I mean, we don't have a joint happy hour or anything," he says with a laugh, "but we've worked together once or twice. This situation with Brainiac, especially -- with mutants being targeted like that, everybody had to work together, and the X-Men were the natural pick to take the lead."

After her initial introduction to him, Nadia should notice a remarkable difference in the founding Titan; he spent an entire day sleeping after Brainiac was brought down, catching up on weeks of lost rest, and has been restored to his usual personable, outgoing, energetic self.

So when Illyana comes online, he flashes a megawatt grin and says, "Hey there! So you're the X-men's dimensional specialist. Vic Stone, or Cyborg, if you prefer. I gotta say, portaling the stolen cities out from behind the shields, directly into a mystical demiplane while we figure this whole thing out?" He sets closed fingers against his temples, then pops them outward like fireworks. "Brilliant. So cool! I want to see the calculus, but I'm sure it's in Sanskrit or something, so I probably shouldn't even ask. Anyway! Nadia tells me she's ready to get underway on the rebiggening project, so... Nadia?"

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"You seem to be in good spirits Vic," Nadia asides to Cyborg with a cheerful smile as she rests her chin on her hands, elbows on the table watching the screen. "I'm glad. Brainiac must have been really hard for everyone. I only really came into it at the end, I can only imagine what it must have been like."

When Illyana's image resolves into view on the screen Nadia instantly perks up, "Magic portal girl!" She never really got Illyana's name, "It's so nice to see you again! You were amazing in that ship! Can I study how your portals work? They were so cool, you were so cool. I'm Nadia by the way. Or The Wasp, hopefully Janet doesn't kill me for saying that..."

Eventually she stops herself from rambling and gets back on track. "Oh right, the equipment. Yes, Vic has figured out Brainiac's code and I've got the array I tore off the side of the ship mostly repaired, I think, it's been tricky figuring out reverse engineering his technology but I think I've finally got it. We just need the computers and input/output equipment from the other end of the process that you rescued away into your very cool alternate space dimensional place. And once that has all been fitted back together we can try to mount it on a large enough flying vehicle and recreate the conditions to restore them the same way that Brainiac took them." She gives a double thumbs up with both hands.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Energetic Vic is probably the dead opposite of Illyana, who puts down enough coffee through calculated assaults on arabica beans to keep a horse wide-eyed for days. No signs of jitters, but there lies in her a certain translucency speaking to being active these days. Then again, who is not? Brainiac hardly left any room for sitting around lazily. A few days off for Vic restores him; a few days off for her never happened. Sleep might even be questionable at this rate.

"Da," she agrees. "Something like that. Nadia, Vic. Illyana Rasputina." This could be a gauged problem for anyone familiar with the Russian form of her surname. Rasputin; mad monk; great dancing song. "Are we using our codenames now? I see. I am Magik." Or she's literally magic, the statement would sound exactly the same.

The rest of it flows over her with the force of the sea and she lets the sloth wave in frozen glory, a happy Slakoth being the oomph of sleepy friendliness for the world. Who can't resist Slakoth? He's so dopey and adorable, kind of like a sleepy Beast Boy. "The fractured state of Genosha inhibited me from taking them all in one fell swoop without spoiling your fun. So a piecemeal approach worked best. Though I caution you: if you see the blue woman again, treat her as your enemy. She does not work collectively for good of anyone but herself. War profiteer." Knives could be sharpened on the harsh intonations of those words, and they might stab empires.

Maybe be glad it's just a projection. Still, she isn't bridling with anger, but the glacially cool delivery has its own sensibility. Fortunately she can melt back to just cool. She nonetheless listens when they explain embiggening, the best of processes. "Da. The ship was configured to take up more of New York by the look. Anything I recovered is in pristine condition; nothing about the settings changed. It seemed smartest given someone has to backward engineer how it functioned and its present positioning might have a specific role to play in your work. Or changing things might destroy the flow."

She raises her cup again. "Where do you want it delivered? Failing all else, we can look at how it worked in the past to figure out the necessities."

Right. Because the ship had a spycam?

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "I'm Techno, and I'm late." comes the voice from off-camera, as Sam comes in at his fastest limp, preceded by Bear, his German Shepherd. Of course, when he comes into view, his face isn't visible... somehow, an image of Techno's helmet is being superimposed on his face in real time, or near enough that his actual features remain obscured for now. Gah, painkillers, they make him sleepy. Can't sleep, work to do!

    "From the data dump I got from the ship, it shouldn't be too hard to recompile the exact configuration required to reconstitute the cities from their reduced quantum state." He's refusing to use the word 'embiggen' "Targeting may become an issue, but that's a matter of maths with the known geometry of the cities being replaced, the ratio of reduction and the energetic dispersion of the beam in an atmosphere."

    Aaaaaand sit. Breathe. He waves a hand. "I'm the lab assistant, pleasure to meet you." A lab assistant that goes around in full assault armor.

Victor Stone has posed:
"I don't have a secret identity," Vic answers with an amiable shrug. "Kinda hard face to forget. So Illyana works, if you're cool with it." He'll refrain from comment on her surname or the Boney M song, although in his private opinion Russia's proverbial greatest should have been disqualified. Love, maybe, but let's see the machine, buddy! Then again, has there ever been a point in arguing sense at a Russian judge once he's made up his mind?

When Sam rolls in late with a censor bar over his face, Vic just shakes his head and folds his hands on the table. "He means embiggen," he clarifies with a slight smirk. Vic makes a conscious effort to avoid technobabble, and has even been known to discourage it when the babbler is, in fact, Techno. "He also means shapes, size, and fog."

"We've got lab facilities here in the tower that would be a great spot for the reassembly, if you don't mind," he suggests to their guest. "Obviously, anyone you want to send to check on them while they're here is welcome to visit. And thanks for keeping everything just how Brainiac had it configured, that will be a huge help."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"You are definitely Magic!" Nadia nods in agreement, perhaps missing Magik's actual intent there. "I don't really have a secret identity either, though I barely have an identity to begin with, just Nadia really. But I've always dreamed about The Wasp and helping people, so I like that, too."

"Techno, you made it!" she smiles and waves at him when he enters, "And Bear, too! Who is a good boy? Bear is a good boy!" she waves enthusiastically and makes faces at the dog, too."What's embiggening?" she asks Vic seemingly completely confused by the term. As he may come to realize, growing up in Assassin Gulag Kindergarden has left her largely devoid of pop cultural knowledge and slang. "Is that a new Quantum Theory molecular manipulation theory related to Brainiac's resizing of basic molecular structures within the Quantum State?"

She nods in agreement when he mentions the lab facilities, "Yeah, the Titans Tower lab facilities would be the easiest place. It would be very difficult to get everyone into my lab." She has a lab? Where does she keep it? Then again she is of Pym blood.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"It is a good face," Illyana replies without a trace of irony or flattery in the statement carved from the adamantine bedrock of her homeland. She spreads her fingers to support the mug, pouring more coffee off the holographic screen's range of view. A hint of a smirk plays over her neutral countenance, but little more with Sam's arrival. He has the benefit of waving Slakoth as she tips the mug higher and takes another sip. Whatever brew is in there has the relative potency needed to banish sleep for hours, such as it is. "Techno," she repeats the codename, leaving it to stand in silence on its own for a moment.

Cascading shadows linger as she glances askance, not at the monitors or even the table in front of her. Must be a cat roaming around silently on the floor, perhaps, though her lashes tremble slightly to indicate faint motion. A subtle hum of agreement shows, and she agrees, "A positive turn of affairs then. Obviously seeding the isolated fragments in their original axis and orientation before restoring their pre-existing disposition inherently elevates the assumed risk to an unacceptable threshold, given the uncertainties. Not the least being the dislocation presently of the civic substrata and the foundational bedrock on Long Island, not to mention evidence for fractured sills, dikes, and associated geomorphology underscoring parts of Genosha. A sudden increase in volume and mass would reverse the observed isostatic rebound causing the crustal deformation where the cities once stood. Granted, the collective mass of Bushwick can be tailored with a higher degree of accuracy, but not so on an archipelago prone to various tectonic imbalances in the first place. It's not as though we can weld the sewer systems together, either."

Sometimes, she gets the benefit of one of the best developed English lexicons in New York. Not often deployed, but sometimes she can. "In short, I hold concerns about squashing parts of a city back on a battered landscape and hope this attempt for resizing the molecular structures takes into account the inherent problems. You embiggen something, the landscape reacts accordingly. Are there any defenses I should be aware of before transitioning the items and the bottles over? Particularly in that doing so commits a metropolis into your care, and we cannot have hundreds of thousands perish due to carelessness. At least I have been able to maintain equilibrium at present; it would be irresponsible of me to bounce them unprepared your way."

Assassin Gulag Kindergarten is top notch for education. Perhaps immortal demon sorceress collegiate isn't quite up to snuff, but it gives alternatives that make science go cross-eyed.

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    For a second, it seems as if Techno is about to rebuke Victor, but then both Nadia and Magik have their say. He gestures to the screen, his expression invisible to their guest but clearly one of approval to those within the tower. "See? We're doing science here, Victor. You have to be precise, erudite and verbose to get your point across. You can't just start inventing new words, when we have perfectly cromulent ones."

    Beat.

    "But yes, I share your concern. The technology, in my assessment, was never really designed to put things back after taking them, at least not wholesale or in the exact location they were taken from. Soil subsidence alone will make it a task and a half to precisely position the fragments even with the best possible resolution. There's been emergency repairs to the infrastructure already in Brooklyn, and putting Bushwick back is going to cause as much damage again as taking it in the first place." But the censored face looks directly at the camera now. "Nevertheless, we're putting it back exactly where it was. Because it's Mutant town. Same with Genosha. The rest of the world might not care much about mutants, but I do. If it's within my power, we're putting everything back to within one Angstrom of where it was taken. One Planck if we can get the resolution that fine."

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic sighs and stares at the table for a second. These kids are going to drive him crazy. "C'mon, Nadia, you can get 'embiggen' from the word roots," he says, looking back up and gesturing at her with an open, palm-up hand. "Will it help if I tell you it's a bastardized Latin/English neologism, or can I just say it's a silly internet word?"

Then even the X-woman is throwing her thesaurus around, and the poor man just tosses his alloy hands into the air at the pointlessness of it all. (Figuratively. Although he could do so literally, if he wanted.)

"This is why science communication in this country is such a mess!" he grumbles. "Imagine there's a football player in the room." He was a football player, of course; he is one of the country's premier technologists. That doesn't mean he can't still play football sometimes.

"If we're talking about perfectly good words already existing, I'll take 'enlarge' or the colloquial but easily understood 'embiggen' over 'reconstitute from a reduced quantum state' any day," he says, actually sticking his tongue out at Techno. "Also, the only reason anyone uses a terrible word like 'cromulent' in the year of our lord twenty twenty is because it sounds like they're describing a sex act."

He leans back in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose. "And while we were all wasting time arguing about SAT words, any one of use could have just said, 'Call NYC Public Works.' The have teams of engineers whose whole job is hooking up and sealing off utilities connections. If we let them know in advance, they can plan out the operation a lot better than any superhero I know, myself included.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia is nodding along as the others discuss city infrastructure and local geology and the difficulties these will undoubtedly cause in replacing the cities. "Oh, I see now, I am still learning a lot of weird internet slang. Who knew people could just make up words. They never let us make up words in the Red Room. Anyway, if we can configure Brainiac's array correctly, the same technology which can teleport a city away could likely be fine tuned to teleport the pieces on the other end into the needed positions as well. But it will take a lot of fine tuning and very current data like a live feed of the location with precise measurements for basically /everything/. But I think it's possible, particularly if we all work together."

She then turns her attention specifically to Magik, "I imagine to work your magic the way you do, you must be very knowledgable in spatial mechanics, that would be invaluable assistance." And Nadia might get some insight into how Illyana's magic works! But she isn't saying that part out loud. "Anyway Cyborg is right we'll also need teams of technicians and engineers standing by at all of the locations just in case there are any glitches that need to be repaired locally once the pieces are beamed back into place."

Vic's 'Cromulent' comment earns an extra bit of side comment from Nadia, "Or a delicious pastry!" she counters the sex act point, "Like I would like three Cromulents and a croissant please."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Unable to keep from cracking that sharp smirk back at Vic, Illyana says, "Da, you see the point then. We can use our regular words? Good, I did not wish to offend anyone by preferring it." These points matter! She has to be polite, after all, instead of the Russian young thing she is, seated in an uncomfortable chair against a blue wall and relaxing as much as one can under the circumstances. "Cromulent sounds like someone took a rake to Cromwell and won, though it is probably deserved." She cannot quite resist adding that slight suggestion in edgewise. The moment will pass, but he invited it.

"Coordinates, please?" she asks Nadia politely, content to play that point while idly stirring up more of the coffee into the borrowed cup. It's a tasty, delicious drink that needs to be savoured, and she does nothing of the sort. "Crumpet, da? That would be the right food?" Who cannot bond over food?

"Best we are not asked to fix pipes. It is not our specialty, is it?"

Samuel Morgan has posed:
    "If I have my guess right, someone will already have made measurements of the hole in Brooklyn. Like you say, Vic, more than likely the public works department, but I wouldn't be too surprised if one hero team or another had been doing the same thing trying to figure out what just scooped up a whole area." Despite introducing the cromulent fun, Techno is back to being more serious, even if he's also petting Bear just below the frame of the shot. "It's going to be harder with Genosha, they've already started to partially rebuild. And I didn't see anyone actually measuring the exact dimensions of the crater that was left when I was there..." implying at least one visit to the stricken mutant nation "... so anything relating to Genosha is going to have to be done with someone who can actually make decisions about the country."

    "We also have to accept the possibility that we may have King Magnus in one of these... bottles. And we really, really don't want anything to go wrong with that." Now he looks at Nadia. "It would help if we could assess the structural integrity of what was shrunk down, and see how the people are doing in there. Are they in stasis? Do they have enough food? Drinking water? Time might be of the essence here, in which case finesse may have to go by the wayside."

Victor Stone has posed:
"Oh, Magneto's in there somewhere," Vic confirms, nodding over at Sam. "We were getting transmissions from him before the fight. Assuming somebody didn't blow up half of the island during the rescue, or something, he'll be in there." He snickers for a moment at the silly hypothetical. Then, with a glance at Illyana to verify his suspicion, he ventures, "I'm guessing we don't know which chunk he's in, though? Regardless, if we need executive decisions made, Genosha has got a queen."

He leans forward, resting his chin on one metal fist with his elbow on the tabletop. "Still, at the end of the day, our top goal isn't making sure the geometry is perfect or worrying about internal politics; it's preserving lives. The most important concerns are that everyone is safe through the process and the area is livable when we're done."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Nadia picks up her suits helmet and briefly checks the HUD display inside before rattling off a series of coordinates for Illyana, "Do you have a phone number where I can call you, too if something comes up so we don't need to go through the hassle of the conference call tech every time?" she asks Illyana, or maybe she just wants her phone number. She really does seem quite interested in Illyana and what she can do, maybe it's the Russian thing, she did live most of her life so far in Russia after all, even if it was a gulag.

She nods in agreement with Techno, leaning back in her chair. "They are not in stasis." she says with certainty, "SHIELD recovered a bus that was affected by the Brainiac's beam but due to being in motion at the time managed to clear the area teleported to his ship. I helped them restore those people and they all made it out fine. Though that method required a non-standard use of Pym Particle tech and the city's entire power grid for just a bus. The refinements in Brainiac's own technology are amazing. Anyway the people should be fine and living their lives. Though I could actually enter one of the cities and see how things are if you like, or I could even probably bring others with me if they don't mind entrusting their fates to my shrink tech." She looks at Cyborg and Techno and even Illyana with a big grin, she does love her tech.

She turns her attention more fully to Cyborg, "If he can get a signal out, we can get a signal in. Without Brainiac's interference it should be possible to open a line of communication, further we could probably trace his signal to locate which bottle he is in."

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
"Everyone wants my phone these days. You say my name three times backwards, I will hear," murmurs Illyana, and it may be with a trace of irony or without a hint of truth in it. If Vic gets to be smarmy and smart, she gets to have a little moment too. Such as they let her, away from the usual rogue's gallery of her particular acquaintances and companions.

THey, they are the smart ones here. She gets to witness and see how it is. A rattle of digits are offered, corresponding to an area code in New York, although nothing special in the patterning. Easy for her to to arrange that for them, giving Nadia and Vic both the opportunity to claim they got the phone number of a demon queen. Make the most of what they want, she listens with a straightforward clarity and writes down whatever they tell her. Perhaps, if numbers are shared.

"Do they know they are reduced? In a bottle, not in Genosha?" she asks, finally. This is something worth considering. "I expect that Erik Lensheer is capable of making his will known using what technology he has. I could attempt to extract him but he would not leave his people. Not leave that way." She shakes her head slightly, blonde hair swaying. "I may be wrong. His generation is different. But here we are. Open the communication and I can possibly extract him at his request."

Her eyes flash to a brilliant white for an instant and the hologram possibly projects that saturated flame. "Everything is delivered, by the way." Yeah, big old tower, big old other-stuff.

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic flashes a grin at the 'three times backwards' joke. He has more than a passing familiarity with dark sorceresses, after all. "Does it still count if I reverse it digitally, or is the dark one old school?" he asks, waving a palm to show off the speaker built into it.

A quick flash of metal fingers on a gauntlet keypad will suffice to record her actual contact information, and he willingly shares his own. "Although I guess if you've portaled the tech into our labs that easily, you could always just come say hi in person," he observes. Then, with a wince and a raised finger, he appends, "Just... stop in downstairs for a visitor's pass first, if you do, or the security system will go all 'intruder alert,' and that's a whole headache for everyone involved..."

Her question is a significant one for their next steps, and he answers, "Magneto's message indicated he was aware of Brainiac, maybe even that they were not on Earth, so they have at least some awareness of their situation. I guess we'll make an attempt to contact him, and see if he does the same."

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
Those with very good hearing might be able to make out Nadia whispering under her breath "Anitupsar Anaylli, Anitupsar Anaylli, Anitupsar Anaylli... test? Test?" As she seems to have taken Illyana entirely at face value, heaven help this child dealing with a Demon Queen. She may be a super genius but she can also be seemingly quite naive at times, too. It's questionable if she's even picked up on the whole 'Demon Queen' thing, seeing instead Cool Magic Portal Girl.

When Illyana starts giving out her actual number Nadia perks up again and pulls out her phone entering the digits into its memory. "Thank you!" she chirps. Though rather than say her own digits out loud she instead fires off a quick text message to Illyana's phone with her contact details, like the tech savvy teenager that she is.

She shakes her head at Illyana's question, "I don't know. I havn't been inside a bottle, the bus wasn't in one. So I don't know if the walls are transparent or if Brainiac may have used some kind of artifical scenery to line the interior." Though she nods when Victor fills in that blank.

Nadia is visibly surpressing the urge to shout 'that was so cool!' at Illyana's flame glowing eyes, as she tries to stay with the seriousness of the situation, but it is written all over her face. "Excellent! Then we'll get right to work and hopefully have good news for you soon!" a pause, "Do either of you know someone with an aircraft, like bigger than the T-Jet, big enough to mount Brainiac's tech on once we have it back together and have done some tests?" she asks curiously.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
Queue coffee and a thoughtful glimmer in her eyes. "Digitally is acceptable. We are tolerant of the variations necessary on our names, da?" Illyana does not dispute or refute those ideas which traipse over the line, though she rests her chin upon the padded curve of her palm once committing phone numbers and coordinates into... well, hopefully there is a phone.

It would be most concerning if, say, she were asking a demon to currently remember such things, or silently voodooing up a curse on a telephone so it cannot forget. Alas, such matters invoke a particular style.

"You asked they were sent? I understood this to be an immediate consideration when you are best positioned to take advantage." She tips her head thoughtfully. "Would you prefer I remove it? And thank you. A visitor's pass, I would of course do this. Understandable that you prefer I stay at a wide range considering the volatility of the situation." The nice way of saying 'Bottle with Magneto in it.'

"I might know a dragon."

Victor Stone has posed:
Vic laughs, shaking his head. "Nah, it can stay. We had the containment systems ready to go -- you just work fast!" He cocks his head to one side, wondering how seriously to take the offer of a dragon as an aerial platform, and then decides to just let it ride. "We could also check with SHIELD about a helicarrier. Don't even give me the idea of building an un-shrink ray blimp, or something, because I will if they let me. And I mean, you could build something to take advantage of the tension in the envelope to make it double as a speaker, and can you imagine what a great sound system it would be?" He's already getting a little bit starry-eyed, thinking of the possibilities.

Nadia Pym-van Dyne has posed:
"A dragon?!" Genius girl hadn't even considered that as a possibility and she is /torn/ but eventually has to shake her head, "I don't think a dragon would have adequite stability for precision firing." she makes a face when Victor mentions SHIELD also, "As amazing as Dr. Morse is, and I love her to death, I am not sure I want to trust SHIELD with this kind of technology. There is no telling what they would do with it." Says the sixteen year old girl with her own shrink beams. "Maybe the Avengers have something they could give us." In Nadia's mind it seems whatever vehicle they use is coming into their possession rather than the other way around handing over the tech.

Illyana Rasputina has posed:
A dragon! Yes, a dragon. Illyana nods simply, and adds, "I would have to ask. Dragons differ in their nature and temperament. Some are more stable than the atmosphere itslef." Don't ask how these things are known, and she accepts a simple nod in the back and forth about who should be asked about weapons platforms such as shrink rays or embiggening zappies. "The Moon is too far. It is unfortunate we are limited to launching in the atmosphere but that is the way of it. We cannot just rebuild the ship, I suspect."

Tony Stark 1, Ship 0.

Victor Stone has posed:
Victor nods through the discussion of potential platforms, then finally speaks up: "Well, we're all creative people; I'm guessing we could go around for days thinking of different options. Might be a better be to just ask around, see who's willing, capable, and available, and then make a decision from that shortlist."

He purses his lips and raps one rigid fingertip against the table for a second, considering their statements. "I think Nadia's right that we probably don't want Brainiac tech getting spread around, so when we ask, a condition should be that they don't get to operate, study, or keep the projectors. Then when we're done, honestly? Not to be all Frodo about it, but the responsible thing to do is probably to destroy them."