July Arrivals

[sixthiteration]

WHO: Arrivals
WHERE: The fountain park
WHEN: July 1, 12:00 PM
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: N/A
STATUS: CLOSED

---

In the snug circle of an old park, a fountain sits burbling beneath a broad, midday sky.

Once-neat paving stones have buckled and cracked from the slow nudge of wayward roots. Benches stand covered in lichen and rust. Three paths push into the underbrush like the spokes on a wheel, the encroaching forest creating lush tunnels through the dark.

But the fountain stands singular and pristine, brightly splashing in open rebellion of the deep, muffled sounds of a place long ago gone to seed. A vibration hums through the ground, there and quickly gone, and the water in the fountain trembles, lapping against the high walls of its cool, pale reservoir.

It is the first of July.

It is precisely twelve o'clock in the afternoon.

Comments

[womanofvalue]

'The phone company' lingers on her lips, but that's an old lie that won't work after she's talked about how many enemies she has. After all, it's not like she can cite an envy of a phone company monopoly has somehow kidnapped her and put her here. "I work with the Strategic Scientific Reserve," she says, hoping that she doesn't come to regret this honesty, later.

"Recently, it's become evident that I've had enemies without even realizing it, but they've been slowly pushed to the light."

[dnr]

That's not exactly the answer he was expecting. Police, sure, maybe even MI6 at a stretch; she seems to have the mettle for it. But at that response Frank's head tilts askance, eyebrows knitting together.

"Thought they got rid of the SSR in the forties," he says, with a shift to his tone like maybe he's too polite to say that sounds like a crock of shit, but it kinda sounds like a crock of shit.

[womanofvalue]

"I'm from 1947," is Peggy's calm reply, seeing as she's not entirely sure what his comment means. The SSR is still going quite strongly, though now that she knows about the festering betrayal within it, she wonders how long it can truly last. She gives him a mirror of his own look, but only because she's not entirely sure what he's talking about.

"What year is it that you think the SSR is gone?"

[dnr]

Frank opens his mouth like he's going to have to call bullshit on that right there, manners or no manners— but he stops, because, well. Aliens came through a hole in space and attacked New York not that long ago, and London a little after that, and Frank Jr. used to use a big green action figure of a real live person to knock the toys off the piano bench, and he guesses time travel isn't necessarily the craziest thing he's ever heard. Definitely the craziest that's happened to him.

"Last I looked at a calendar, it was 2016."

[womanofvalue]

Apparently, she's taken zero matter and used it to propel herself nearly seventy years into the future. "That's a little disturbing," she says flat out, because while she's seen the effects of dark matter reconstructing the world around her and Jason Wilkes, she didn't think it could propel her through time like this. There are so many questions she has, so many things she'd like to know, and has no idea where to even begin. "I'm Peggy Carter," she introduces herself, thinking that while her mind works, she can be polite.

"And you, it seems, are from my future."

[dnr]

Frank can't hide the way his expression changes at hearing her name, and he doesn't try to; he's not trying to hide anything from her. Peggy Carter. He isn't one to get star-struck, exactly, but that's an altogether different sort of unexpected, and it catches him a little off guard.

"Frank Castle," he says with an offered hand, because hell if he's going to meet Peggy Carter and not shake her hand. "Seems so, ma'am."

[womanofvalue]

Her brow arches at the sudden appearance of 'ma'am', which is certainly a bit of a polite diversion away from his tone in dismissing the SSR as an antiquated and old thing. She reaches out to shake his hand firmly, her brow going just a little higher at the strength she finds there. "It's quite tempting to ask what happens," she confesses, "but I think we have more pressing matters to deal with."

She'd much rather assess the situation at hand and allow her personal curiosities to run rampant later. "What have you found so far?"

[dnr]

Frank gives a small grunt of agreement - he doesn't know all that much, and certainly not anything that can't wait. Knowing who she is sure makes the decision to trust her easier, though, to the extent that he's trusting anyone right now.

"A fountain that spits folks out at variable intervals without anybody getting dropped in, a man-made park that at least looks like it hasn't been maintained in a while, and a half dozen or more supposedly kidnapped civilians."

A beat. "But no guards." He nods to the trees, then slides his gaze back to her. "And no cameras, as far as I can tell. Awfully elaborate set-up not to at least watch."

Which means someone's got to be watching. Maybe one of them.

[womanofvalue]

No guards and no cameras is a touch of a worry, seeing as that means there aren't as many variables to be able to manipulate or find her way around. It means that someone is very, very certain that they're not going to escape and that sort of certainty chills her to the bone.

"And what do you suppose they want us for?" she asks, because that's the part she's most uneasy about.

[dnr]

"I don't know," he says, but it's just filler, something to take up space while shifts his weight to take a glance around, to make sure they're not within earshot of anyone. He'll answer her, sure, but he doesn't want to panic anybody. "Scrubs point to something medical. Experiments, maybe. Weapons testing. Biowarfare."

He's an optimist, apparently.

"There aren't a lot of reasons to kidnap a bunch of people and then not care what they do next." Frank shakes his head, not loving any of their options. "What do you think?"

[womanofvalue]

"I think that there are any number of people who might want to take me and put me in this situation." Dottie and her ilk rate highest on the list, given the situation. "What starts to trip me up is where you lot come in, especially if you're from the future. There can't possibly be some communal experimental prison across the ages. Can there?"

It all seems too far-fetched, and yet, zero matter has forced Peggy to expand her horizons beyond the normal. Perhaps this is just more of that?

[dnr]

"No offense, ma'am, but if time travel is real, I can't say I'm real optimistic about understanding how it works," Frank says with a sort of resigned incredulity. Seriously, this is some crazy shit. Who knows.

"Hard to say why they would've snatched up anybody until we know more about 'em, either," he admits, and after a reluctant beat adds, "You and me, though, we could have more than Roxxon in common. We were both military intelligence. Recon Marines, for me. Could've come in contact with the same thing, different times."

[womanofvalue]

"I was dealing with zero matter, which had extremely powerful properties," she says. "If you did come into contact with that, there is every chance that we might have been sucked into this strange parallel universe that we're standing in. Of course, that doesn't explain the rest, especially as some of them seem inclined to claim they're from outer space," she says with a pursing of her lips.

[dnr]

A beat. "Some of them might just be crazy," he says. Space, man.

"Just because I don't remember running into anything like that doesn't mean I didn't. We're gonna need more information to piece this thing together."

He nods to the fountain, the damp spots on the concrete. "Looks like there's more than a few of us around, and recently. What do you say we round up who we can and meet back here in twenty."

[womanofvalue]

She appreciates having a plan, to the point it works like a balm on her soul. She needs to keep busy before she lets her mind wander away from her and go mad with wondering and assessing what-ifs and might-bes. "Maybe we should set the fountain up as the emergency meeting place," she suggests. "We can meet here in twenty minutes and anytime there might be something dangerous afoot."

Not that she's hoping for something dangerous, but a crisis might flush out some of the dangers of this place.

slides back here to wrap this up

[dnr]

"Agreed," he says, and it sounds like he's about as happy for it. This isn't the mission he'd been expecting when he got up this morning, but then, when do things ever go according to plan? You adapt. You set new objectives, and you accomplish them. Whatever this is, they're going to figure it out.

"I'll take east," he says with a nod one direction as he steps off. He's assuming that's east, anyway, judging by the angle of the sun. "Catch you in twenty."