+ The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to You +

[vitaelamorte]

Who: EVERYONE!
Where: EVERYWHERE!
When: Saturday, May 19th - Wednesday, May 23rd.
Rating: PG-13, warn if you're gonna go higher!
Summary: A catch-all for the Kyln / Sierra Madre event!
The Story:

For the duration of this event, the entire mansion will be part space jail, part apocalyptic wasteland desert with an abandoned hotel/casino. On the third day an escape route not previously discovered in the Kyln appears and breakouts can be planned...

...Only for everyone to find themselves walking through a large glass prison toward the toxic gas filled wasteland of a desert, the Sierra Madre. Does the prison look better than the toxic cloud outside? If you're stuck in the prison after dark beyond day 3, you'll be forced into and locked in your cell for the night. But at least locked away, nothing from the outside can hurt you. If you try to brave the actual elements in the desert it might be a little hard to breathe. The air has pockets of toxic gas and even a few seconds of exposure could prove deadly. And watch out for the Ghost People.

Inside the abandoned hotel/casino you'll find shelter from the gas and ghosts, but beware the holograms that are 50/50 with their attitude. Prison beatings, a beating from the holograms, which one Would You Rather? And whatever you do, don't try on the collars lying around unless you like to explode. Literally.

[ This is a catch-all for all your prison/desert needs! Please mark your threads clearly in the subject line with your character's name and either a cell number or just a location if you didn't feel like randomizing it or you're making a top level for a public place (like the dining hall or wandering the hotel/casino). Here's the plot post if you need it!

Have fun! ]

Comments

[hypoxic]

I don't know that I'd have access to much other than water here, but... [ but he'll give her his at once. ] You ought to stay hydrated if you can. The event can't be on for much longer, and then we can treat you properly -- hopefully before any infection's had the chance to set in.

[ that isn't how infections work. Nothing is sterile here. Jemma will likely shove her full of antibiotics just as a precaution. ]

[mucked]

[ there's a not-so-subtle way in which he takes responsibility for her. and, listening intently to his words because doing anything else simply hurts too much, peggy is forced to realize that professional claims cut both ways. whatever possessiveness she feels for the shield agents, they might indeed feel in equal measure for her.

what a terrifying thought.

so she shakes her head; the room spins. peggy is quick to take a drink of poorly filtered water and the taste of it somehow reminds her of france. star-systems away from earth and (somehow) dirty water is disappointing everywhere. perhaps there are such things as universal truths. ]

I'm being well cared for. [ being henpecked, more like. or so peggy sees it -- upset that rip won't do the clever thing and leave on his own two feet while he still can. and in point of fact! ] What the devil are you still doing here?

[hypoxic]

[ he watches her drink, hoping that the act of desperation isn't a Trojan horse set to allow new toxins into her body. She needs a better environment than this. ]

Me? [ the distraction startles him before he can think upon who might be caring for her, exactly. ] Ostensibly, repaying some societal debts. Daisy and Jemma seem keen to leave, though.

[mucked]

[ he talks about what's ostensible and peggy doesn't have the patience left to listen through nuanced chatter. sometimes, it's as good as a game -- a puzzle to pick apart. she grimaces her way through a second drink of water (wishing it were whiskey) and pushes both slop-tray and bottle away in the next movement.

it's not like her to leave a meal unfinished. either the food is just that bad or (more likely) the act of eating just that painful. ]

But you're not. [ keen. ] Why haven't you scarpered?

[hypoxic]

[ the ostensibility in it is just semantics. His debts aren't owned to whatever prison has descended upon them, but instead to the underlying community. ]

It's just an event. It'll be over before long. It could be a quiet one, if we let it stay quiet.

[mucked]

[ a quiet one, he says. worse yet -- there's an ounce of truth in it. surely, if she'd staying put, she wouldn't be in her current predicament. eager the leave, but barely able to walk more than five feet unassisted. it's another reason why she's simply been sitting here. the inconvenience of keeping herself sat up doesn't sting half to much as trying to return to her cell would. eventually, rip will find her and harangue her back to somewhere quieter and more horizontal.

for now, however, she'll distract herself by arguing with fitz. it's always a coin toss how such moments might unfold. ]

I think you know as well as I do that this isn't any old event. [ her lip might be split and swollen but there's nothing stopping her brows from raising. the upper half of her expression turns incredulous. ] You felt it, didn't you? On the first day?

[hypoxic]

[ the accusation is startling. He grimaces. ]

I felt it. It's ours.

[ and it's made him mostly sure that someone further along than him has been withholding the full scope of the apocalypse he's sure he's bringing to Earth. ]

[mucked]

I don't even know what I've lost. [ the word she's forgotten. ] I half suspect it's something I never knew to begin with. Given our surroundings.

[ because she's never seen a prison like this. it's eerie, really, to see tech she considers so advanced but -- in context -- it appears almost antiquated within this institution. rusted and ill-used. bottom shelf. just enough to keep the prisoners inside and corralled.

but she doesn't ask fitz if he's familiar. indeed, the question seems not to occur to her. ]

[hypoxic]

Always a possibility, of course. But events don't seem to discriminate with vocabulary lost. I'm missing something that I'd consider to be a basic noun. We might not know until we reach for it and can't find it.

[ their surroundings could be anything. Futuristic? Alien? So much is falling apart at the seams, it's impossible to tell what's to come. ]

[mucked]

[ her assumption is based purely on conjecture -- conjecture rooted in the many many months that followed the last time she'd woken up like that, in the wake of the convergence event, where peggy had put herself through something of a vocabulary gauntlet in search of whatever was missing. she couldn't figure it out then; she suspects she won't be able to figure it out now. it's a suspicion built on a faulty premise, perhaps, but it's one she's clinging to with unspoken desperation.

more importantly: ] It's tough to stomach that all of this comes from our -- universe.

[hypoxic]

I believe it. [In a heartbeat. He runs his fingers along the edge of the table in front of them.]

Aliens have been manipulating our world since we were cavemen. I've got no doubt that this has another species' hand in it.

[Potentially the hands he's been leading to their planet, a bullseye he actively constructed.]

[mucked]

[ despite the injury, despite the pain, she's been doing the conversational equivalent of limping along -- holding a few shards of her old facade in place, glued together through sheer willpower. all of it falls away, just now, when fitz's offhand comments sounds a touch too familiar.

a myth from the east of a star that fell from the heavens. ]

Blue angels, [ she's reciting someone else's words -- no doubt about it, ] who came bearing a gift for all mankind. Meant to save the world.

[ but history got the details wrong. ]

[hypoxic]

"Blue angels."

[He makes eye contact with her then, his head snapping up.]

You know something about the original Kree invasion? The one that created the Inhumans?

[mucked]

[ inhumans? that word she knows, at least, courtesy of daisy. kree too. but before now there hadn't been an appropriately made link between what peggy had heard, once, and the intel she'd gathered in bits and bobs from other people.

without pen and paper, she'll depend on her memory to keep these details straight. if only her head felt clearer. ]

I know there were elements within HYDRA who put a great deal of stock in such stories. [ but they're not stories, are they? the nuance of her frown is lost in the swell of her injury. ] When we were mopping up Europe, [ and failing to eradicate the enemy completely, ] I interrogated a high-ranking officer who had staked his whole career on that belief.

[hypoxic]

Of course it was a high-ranking officer... They're the only ones with enough access to know about the creature.

They aren't stories, Ma'am. It's the history of an entire hybridized race. We were invaded by an alien race that attempted to enslave us. They subjected early africans to monstrous experimentation and left their DNA altered. In their descendants, this manifests as natural superhuman ability. The community members call themselves Inhumans.

[mucked]

[ monstrous experimentation? so is that what reinhardt had been doing? following in the kree's footsteps? ]

I watched all his home movies. The officer's. Experiments of his own -- all in pursuit of...of Inhumans, I suppose.

[ she didn't know it at the time. back then, it had simply seemed gross cruelty and sadism. those verdicts don't change, now, but instead take on the chill of pure and unrestrained science. progress with no ethics. ]

Werner Reinhardt. We tossed him in the Rat. Which, as prisons go, wasn't much more hospitable than this place. [ ... ] I promised him he'd have no second chances.

[ but given how his name had cropped up in fitz's report -- attached to an alias no less -- seems to have rendered that threat rather toothless. peggy doesn't even begin to understand how reinhardt even survived into the 21st century. ]

[hypoxic]

They're quite like cockroaches at times. Always seem to find a new bit of wall to crawl into.

[There's no reason for her to blame herself over an escaped hydra agent. There always seems to be a new disturbance wearing an old face.]

[mucked]

-- That's an insult to cockroaches.

[ she shifts, hissing through the hurt spiking through her torso. this conversation started in a place where fitz was trying to explain away alien fingerprints all over this particular event. does he not know?

she's surprised. she didn't realize the information was so poorly dispersed. ]

But this hasn't got anything to do with the Kree. [ easy, then, to fit that word into her vocabulary. she'd better learn and use it because, god knows, one day she might lose it. ] At least I don't believe it does.

[ LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW. ]

[hypoxic]

Why wouldn't it? I'm almost sure we're due another visit from them soon, given what we know about where things are heading.

[Peggy vocalizes some pain, and Fitz tenses with worry. He should bring her back to her quarters. She'll need help.]

[mucked]

Because. [ she rushes through her explanation -- keen to dangle information in place of him fussing any further over her injuries. ] I know who we've got to thank for this event. And it's not me. It's not anyone in SHIELD. No one from Earth, really.

[ it's a gambit, but not a new one. espionage sleight of hand -- when she wants him to stop paying attention to one thing, she teases another. ]

[hypoxic]

[As usual, it works exactly as intended. Fitz's eyes grow wide.]

You've met one of the extraterrestrials from our dimension? They're here?

[mucked]

You have met Rocket. Haven't you?

[ -- she could have sworn she's heard a derisive remark or three lobbed from either side of that particular scientific divide. ]

[hypoxic]

[Derisive, frequently. But though Fitz and Rocket have massive ideological differences, Rocket's stopped short of actually offering his name when they've interacted.]

I don't believe so. Tell me about him.

[mucked]

[ oh, this is easily done. ]

He's the chap who looks like a raccoon.

[ it took her ages to come to terms with this. there might be a little bit of satisfaction, now, in foisting that task onto someone else. ]

[hypoxic]

[He pauses then, stuck in an attempt to process that.]

I. Sorry, I don't think I heard you quite well enough.