checkingout | a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

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a gent of good intent who's content to be ( OPEN )

Who: Everyone!
Where: The initial arrival rooms, the main lobby, all over the place.
When: March 3rd
What: Welcome, newbies.

ARRIVAL.

you wake up when you hit the floor in a dark room, and the air is knocked out of your lungs. the carpet is threadbare, worn with use, kind of dusty. and you're not the first person to endure this crash landing. nor will you be the last.

once your vision rights itself, you can see the well-lit hallway through the doorjam straight ahead of you. not to say there’s monsters in the shadows, but something propels you towards that door and out into the bright hallway beyond.

and once outside your room, you can hear it: the steady thrum of rain outside.

MAIN LOBBY.

there's a staircase at the end of the lengthy hallway you tumble out of. grab your suitcase and follow the dull green exit signs on the ceiling until you reach the disappointingly bland stairs that lead you down to the ornate old fashion hotel lobby.

to your left is a warmly crackling fireplace, to your right is a lobby desk. straight ahead are three large sets of doors, though only one of them is open to the public. and outside the few (curtained, permanently dark) windows is the continually steady hiss of rain. once you leave the hallway you wake up in, you won't be able to return.

welcome to the hotel.

FRONT DESK.

though there is a bell and a plaque designating the desk to be the main desk, the customer service desk, there are currently no staff members behind it. none shall answer your calls, either.

terribly sorry for the inconvenience.

SCREENING ROOM.

on a long pull-down screen, a silent version of the phantom carriage will be playing on loop. at the back of the room, between the neat rows of fold out chairs, mounted on a wobbly table is the old-timey projector, and mounted on the walls are some rather old speakers that warble out "terrifying" old music.

along the curtained windows is another long table, with a large bowl of popcorn and a large hot drink dispenser full of hot water, but without any tea or hot chocolate packets around.

OTHER.

the ballroom is currently closed, and the grand doors locked.

there is no main door leading to the outside, good luck trying to find one.

the doors to the courtyard and breakfast hall are unlocked, but looks like you've missed the morning meal. sucks for you.

ROOMS.

you've a room key with your assigned room number on it. all the new guest residences will be located on floors three and four. while there is an open elevator in the main lobby, and the buttons light up inside, the doors will not close. all in all, you'll be better off taking the stairs.

while they're the same stairs you undoubtedly came down to get to the lobby, the door to the endless hall everyone woke up in will not reappear between the main floor and the subsequent residential halls.

there are twenty rooms per floor. feel free to get to know your surroundings; or your neighbors as they trickle in around you.

EXISTING GUESTS.

it's late when the newcomers arrive, there's a good chance you'd been about to go to sleep (or just waking up, who knows, your mom's not here to tell you when to go to bed or get up). but if you're paying attention, you might hear the hustle and bustle in the lobby below; or maybe you're just drawn there because your gut told you to go join the commotion. whatever the case may be, go mingle!

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No one plans on staying at all. Think Hotel California.

[ She arches her eyebrows like she's shooting for some level of enthusiasm that she doesn't quite reach. ]

Any time of year.

[ … You can find us here, comes the bitter thought. But she wears a cavalier smile, despite her discomfort. ]

Rogers is here too. If you don't believe me, you can ask him.

Such a lovely place.

[ Somehow he doubts he's getting the song out of his head anytime soon, or that he'll ever get to enjoy it in quite the same way. ]

Guess I've stayed in worse.

[ And yet it doesn't make him feel any better for being apparently stuck here, but he's not going to lie down and give up. ]

Good call. Guy can't lie worth a damn. [ Casually turning back to the screen. ] Guessing you've got a good idea who I am.

[ She nods, keeping her eyes on the screen as she does. Her hands fold in front of her, holding the calm posture of an agent, and a genuine smile breaks through. ]

Agent Barton.

[ She states the name as a greeting, but there's no muting the fact that she gets a little thrill out of saying it. Mostly, there's no need for titles, or being spooky about it, but she gets a kick out of it and it's a lot like wanting to put on her mom's makeup and play dress-up. Things feel a little less out of control when she opts to go through the motions. ]

Name's Skye; I'm with SHIELD. What's left of it, anyway.

Well, that explains it.

[ Despite his distrusting nature, Clint doesn't doubt for a second she's anything but S.H.I.E.L.D., though he'd put money on her being new to the gig.

What she says last wipes what amusement had been on display at being recognised and in such a way that he's not all that used to, because he knows he's as much to blame for their losses as Loki had been. ]

S.H.I.E.L.D.'s seen worse. It usually recovers. Not sure I'm as happy as I thought I'd be that Mulder was right about the aliens, though.

Aliens didn't destroy SHIELD. HYDRA did.

[ And that's how she'll keep selling it, no matter what Bucky wants to call it. She won't accept his truth that HYDRA wasn't just inside SHIELD; it was SHIELD. The version that's rising from the ashes has to be proof that there was more to them all than that. ]

[ It's rare for him to be so careless with his expressions, but there's definitely surprise and confusion, to name but a few, hanging out on display for all to witness.

Wiping everything clean, Clint turns, leaning with his arm against the wall, now, as he faces her; the screen, and the film in general, are completely forgotten. ]

HYDRA took down SHIELD? [ He's already worked out that the people being brought here are from all walks of life, and from varying different worlds, which he managed to swallow easily enough. But he never considered differences in timelines, which was a rookie move now he thinks about it. ] What year are you from?

2014.

[ She says it quickly with a shrug. A beat later, she realizes why he's asking the question, and fills in the gaps for herself. After all, the Chitauri invasion had been what prompted her to join SHIELD in the first place. ]

You ... You're talking about New York, aren't you? [ A beat passes. She tries to find the best way to say it. ] I can debrief you on what you've missed, but it's gonna be a long one.

[ Two years. He wonders how that works, if he disappears from the moment he was trapped here or if that moment gets frozen until he's returned - if he's returned. He abandons the thought for another time. ]

Debriefs usually are. But it's not like I'm going anywhere, right? [ With a smirk: ] Feel free to leave out the boring parts.

It started with AIM and something they called the Extremis serum. According to SHIELD's records, it was supposed to imitate the serum given to Steve Rogers, but used to cure crippling disabilities. They realized they could make super soldiers with it, but the compound was unstable. Their soldiers gained superhuman abilities, but they also combusted.

[ She tries to keep it to the broad strokes, the important parts that build to what was going on with Garrett and HYDRA. She doesn't have the full story about Pierce or Fury's end of it; only what she saw. She has to stay focused there. ]

So they took their studies through a shell corporation called Cybertek, funded by Quinn Worldwide. They rooted out desperate souls with no better options, recruited them into testing. Pumped them full of unstable Extremis formula. Mike Peterson was one of the test subjects.

I was working with the Rising Tide, hacking SHIELD, trying to find out what they were burying about New York and get the truth out there. We both wound up tracking Mike Peterson at the same time, and he kidnapped me. SHIELD used a neurotoxin to take him out, and it wound up accidentally stabilizing the Extremis serum in his body, as well as saving my life.

[ Listening, Clint keeps a watchful eye on the room around them, and, more specially, the people, but no one appears to be paying them any attention; he doesn't suppose it matters all that much what anyone overhears, but after years of the habit, he hardly notices he's doing it.

He makes a noise at the word combusted, something between a wince and a huff of amusement; he holds back on the comment about Banner. ]

Sounds like SHIELD, recruiting someone who managed to hack them. [ Well, it sounds like someone who would have both the mind and heart to trust someone enough to switch sides, to trust them with the truth before offering them a position and knowing they'd make the right choice. ] You must be good.

I am.

[ Modesty would just be disingenuous and waste time. Rather than mince her words, she accepts the compliment. And draws a breath to keep her cool as she processes that Hawkeye just gave her one. Not fangirling? Way harder than it seems. ]

Anyway. We put Mike Peterson on the Index when we noticed he retained his abilities from the Extremis serum. Started training him as an agent while my team tried to track down Cybertek. When Cybertek realized Peterson survived, they cornered him into going with them by kidnapping his kid. They installed something in his head to force him to take orders, and we found out too late who was in charge of Cybertek's Centipede Program.

Agent Garrett of SHIELD was moonlighting as an operative known to his associates as the Clairvoyant. It turns out, he'd betrayed SHIELD and turned to HYDRA in an attempt to fix some Frankenstein injuries he'd received during training; he thought he could use the Extremis serum to do it, if they could just figure out how to make it last in anyone other than Peterson.

And he wasn't the only one. HYDRA agents had been hiding within SHIELD ever since it was created. [ She shakes her head, discouraged and frustrated to this day. ] Well-known, high-ranking, it didn't matter how loyal they seemed. [ Her own S.O. ] HYDRA had its coming out party, tore the organization apart from the inside in an attempt to take over it. We lost Fury, and a lot of others.

Edited 2015-03-27 03:30 (UTC)

[ Being the guy watching over the action from a safe distance with a deadly aim, Clint doesn't get to enjoy too many people admiring his bow skills all that often, so he has no problem receiving positive feedback from the fans. Still, if SHIELD went out on a limb to hire the enemy, she really must be good. But if she ever feels the urge to prove it, he's always open to seeing what she can do.

The mention of a kid being involved to entice the players on the board to be moved gains a seriously pissed off scowl from him, though it might appear more mild than he imagines. But at Garrett's name, he raises his brow. ]

Never did like Garrett. The guy always had to have the best stories. [ But to learn he was a double agent, working SHIELD for HYDRA? He never would have called that. But if anyone could pull it off, it's probably the loudest guy in the room, trying harder than most to drive home their loyalty. He would never be thankful to have learnt of Coulson's demise, especially since he played his part and he knows it, willingly or not, but he's glad he wasn't around to see this.

But then-- ] When you say you lost Fury, you're talking misplaced, yeah? [ Because the thought of that on top of everything else? Not something he wants to think about. ]

[ She softens, dropping the all-business briefing voice. Lifting her gaze to meet Clint's, there's an apology written in her eyes. ]

I'm sorry. I know he spearheaded the Avengers Initiative; I can only guess how close you two were. [ Shaking her head, she opens her mouth to continue with a party line that leaves a bad taste in her mouth. It's what Coulson instructed them all to sign up with. As long as Fury's dead, he's below the radar. There's no way of knowing who to keep out.

But she can't do it. She can't stare Clint Barton in the face and tell him that Nick Fury's dead. When Coulson took over SHIELD, levels were abolished. They decide who to trust with information. It's not parceled out. That was the old SHIELD. The one that was everything she'd accused them of being from day one. This is Coulson's SHIELD. She levels her gaze on his again and sighs. ] ... I can't do this.

[ Realizing the abrupt change of direction is perplexing, she grimaces slightly and goes on to explain, slightly guilty, ] He's not dead. I only met him for a couple minutes, but Fury's fine.

When SHIELD fell, he just took a step back, handed the keys to what was left over to a new Director to rebuild and dropped off the radar for a while. The situation with HYDRA had SHIELD branded a terrorist organization. Being dead ... makes things easier.

Edited 2015-03-28 04:51 (UTC)

Fury's made a lot of questionable decisions, but I've always respected the guy. [ He gave him a chance that no one else ever would have, gave him purpose in his role and something to hone in his skills on; he gave him a way to make up for things. His usually carefully constructed default expression that gives little to nothing away is no longer in play, although he's thinking of Natasha over his own feelings, because they were always closer.

But as he watches her, he can see pieces of a battle that's going on behind her eyes, looks at her questioningly, but she speaks up again before he can ask about it. And an actual smile breaks out, because a dead Fury is one thing, but a Fury pretending to be dead? Well, that sounds more likely. ] If you're worried about my ability to keep the secret, I'd say I've got a better chance of keeping quiet than some people that could be mentioned.

[ He should probably be concerned about how easily she caved in and told him, but he's glad she did; he knows a SHIELD that's been broken down from the inside is a changed SHIELD, but the thought of Fury being entirely out of the picture is more than a little bit disconcerting. The government turning on them doesn't surprise him much, the line between SHIELD and the rest of the agencies was always a tense one. But he is curious. ]

Who'd he pick to hand the keys over to, Hill? [ She's a good agent, one he trusts well enough not to have been on the side of evil, but he knows she would never have been first choice if things hadn't gone the way they did with Loki. And he's not sure he wants to think about who else might have been playing the other side right now, so he holds off on asking anything more, except... ] And I don't suppose you've had a status update on Romanoff?

[ Gulp.

Double gulp.

Truthfully, she knows she should leave that to Rogers to explain. She and Fitz had really screwed the pooch (well, she had) with breaking it to Cap already. This secret is a much bigger one to be keeping. Fitz's chastising voice rings in the back of her mind, and she grinds her teeth, biting it back.

Secrets were always her problem. Once upon a time, she'd been the biggest pro-transparency advocate around. Rising Tide. Insurgent. Recently, she's been keeping them from even her team, chasing ghosts with Coulson.

Well, those ghosts just bit her in the ass—big time. ]

I don't know the situation with Romanoff, but she went before a grand jury after she leaked SHIELD's files online, so I know she's alive. [ Deflecting to answering that question helps her gather more time to find out how she wants to tell him about the Director. Finally, she settles on: ] You should hear it from him. When we get out of here, I guarantee that you will, but until then, believe me when I say he's exactly the man you want for the job.

[ But wait, there's more! ]

HYDRA didn't fall with SHIELD or with Garrett; they just slithered back into the shadows. We've been on their heels ever since. Turns out their new head was a guy named Whitehall, served personally with Red Skull back in World War II. The Director took him out in San Juan before they could find a way to use some alien tech to create a biological weapon.

[ He feels the familiar sensation of guilt bubbling up to the surface as he stands there, eyes never leaving her, though they do soften, and a smile toys around his lips, to let her know he's not exactly in the position to call her out for letting slip secrets he knows he would find a way to learn if things were different anyway. It's not as if he hasn't prove his own loyalty to the organisation several times over.

He's almost tempted to ask why Natasha would leak highly secret data onto the Internet, of all places, but he doesn't; if she happens to follow them here, though, and she's in the know, he's definitely going to annoy the reason out of her. ]

It's like that, huh? [ He huffs a sound of amusement, shaking his head, because he's already got plenty to think about without finding out more than he probably should, and he definitely doesn't want to let his curiosity get the better of him and ask about his own future status. ] Can't blame you for being cautious.

[ He nods, a little disheartened by the knowledge of HYDRA still being active after breaking down SHIELD, but it's hardly surprising, not if they really have managed to survive all these years underground, slithering undetected into the agency that's supposed to have taken them down; it's actually quite a smart move - it's what he would have opted for in their position. ]

Well, you weren't wrong; If he's competent enough to track and kill Whitehall, he definitely sounds like a guy I'd want leading me into battle. And if you get out of here before I do? Kick a little extra HYDRA ass for me.

Nothing personal.

[ Skye offers it with a shrug. In truth, it's the opposite: she can't be the one to tell him about Coulson because it's very personal. At least, that was Fitz's argument, and she trusted him more than she trusted most anyone. The caution is afforded out of respect to Coulson's relationship to the Avengers, not out of any fear or mistrust. ]

And believe me, I plan to. [ Kick HYDRA ass, that is. Already had, in fact. There's no way Ward made it out of San Juan, HYDRA or not. She refuses to stop moving long enough to wonder if that was the right decision, if his choice to defect in calling off the attack on the Bus was genuine or another ploy. Looking back is a luxury she doesn't have. ]

Something tells me you're slightly more adept. [ She cants her head, smirking as she emphasizes, ] Slightly. [ Understatement of the century. ]

Never usually is.

[ To start with, anyway, but he knows from experience that it usually always ends that way. But he doesn't take it personally, and he offers a shrug of his own to express as much; he knows he would do the same if he were in her position. ]

If Rogers is here, someone should break it to him gently. [ He's been keeping an eye out for any of the others, doubting they would be here and pleased he's not seen them so far, but at the same time, he's also a little disappointed; he might have better luck of getting out with the others around.

He smirks, giving another shrug. ] Usually get the job done. But if we're here long enough? We'll have to find out the old fashioned way.

I wouldn't worry about that. [ She clarifies, stuffing her hands into her pockets. With the worst out, there's more ease in her disposition. ] He knows. James, too. [ A beat passes, and she looks at him. ] Do you … know a James? Dark hair, big metal arm, real hate-on for HYDRA?

[ Because it occurs to her that although she's gotten used to him, he's not exactly part of the Avengers line-up, yet he seems to know Cap personally. ] Friend of Rogers'.

[ He looks thoughtful, intrigued, but shakes his head. ] Doesn't sound familiar. And I think I'd remember the arm. [ But if Captain America trusts him and he's out for HYDRA blood, then who is he to question him. ] Gonna keep an eye out for him, though.

[ He doesn't know Steve well enough to know each and every person he's come into contact with, but he doesn't remember any mention of friends, except for the sarcastic outbursts he applauds making jokes about the people long gone while he remains the same. Still, there's the issue of timelines here, and the fact he's certain he's missed more than he's caught up with. ]

He got a surname?

Didn't catch it.

[ The way Skye shakes her head, it's obvious she doesn't think that's an accident. He's cagey, James. ]

Definitely outside of SHIELD.

It's a small place.

[ And he still hasn't run into Steve yet, so he'll make it a plan to track them both down. ]

And something tells me HYDRA must have made more enemies than SHIELD with a comeback. Still, doesn't mean we have to trust them.

Maybe not, but this HYDRA enemy happens to know Captain America. That might just earn the benefit of the doubt.

It's not as if we have the option of shooting first, asking questions later. But, if it helps, I'll be keeping an eye on him.

[ She nods resolutely. ]

It helps. And in case it wasn't obvious, just lemme know if you need anything. I don't promise I'll have a solution, but if we can't count on each other to at least try, we're really screwed.

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bettercallit - 2015-05-14 22:21 (UTC) - Expand

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