sixthiterationlogs | something for nothing

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something for nothing

WHO: Logan Howlett
WHERE: The Inn, poking about outside any of the empty houses, woods - pretty much getting the layout of the land
WHEN: December 14
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: Surly mutant Canadian man is super grumpy.
STATUS: Closed

Had Logan been anyone normal, he might have found the irony of his arrival to the village marginally amusing. Only he wasn't normal and there wasn't anything funny about being made into some ugly rebar art sculpture, thrown across a city and into a river to sink to the bottom of.

That was before cresting the surface in the fountain with a sudden loud growl that quickly turned louder when six certain claws didn't extend when they should have. Instead Logan was hollering from the pain and intense pressure radiating through his fists and up his arms.

Hours later, Logan emerged from the woods again dressed in the change of clothes provided to him in the waterproof backpack. None of it made any sense and that didn't improve his mood by any stretch. The mutant knew, however, that he wasn't going to learn anything about the place unless he asked questions. So, he moved around unseen until someone stuck out in a way that would suggest they knew something.

Unfortunately, asking nicely where the hell he was and who brought him here was out of the question.

[Later - Inn; Around the village]

Besides being told the same thing by three different people, Logan was still hard pressed to believe it. As far as he was concerned, this was about him. And it wasn't the first time his mutation had been screwed with. In fact, as he sat at a table in the Inn, everything that happened in Japan shoved its way back to the forefront of his mind.

From there, he wandered, keeping a face on him that suggested he wasn't in the mood to talk. But that never worked for Logan in the past and he was sure there'd be that one person (or, three) who had to stop and talk to the apparently obvious new guy in town.

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Peggy gives him a wry look over her shoulder as she pours water on to boil, feeling like this is a particularly nasty little joke that people keep playing on her, but she keeps being asked to explain things that she's currently being run around about. "Well, I don't know how much you're going to like this, but details are scant, even for me, and I've been here months and months and have been aiming to find answers since the first day."

She sets her cup down in order to settle at the table opposite him. "You can ask and maybe I'll have some answers, but I can't make any promises."

Eyes watched and followed her until she sat down. It was hard not to scoff, or show disdain over that fact, which happened to be made clear with the two people he tried to force information out of. Maybe he wasn't threatening enough anymore. Maybe it was more they really didn't know anything; a fact made even more truth in talking to Peggy.

"How 'bout you tell me what you know. Sounds like you've done it a few times now."

And he could ask questions regarding things that weren't really clear after.

"Unfortunately," is her calm, even reply when he remarks that she's got quite a bit of experience in this avenue. She tips her head to the side and debates what she does know and can tell him. "We all arrive in the same way. I've yet to meet anyone here who didn't come from the fountain. None of us understand how it is we've managed to get there and no matter what we do, no one can find a means of escape."

"There are limited supplies, but rather confounding arrivals of packages every now and again, addressed to us," Peggy shares. "It makes no sense," she says. "That's the main thing I can tell you about this place. None of it makes any sense. For instance, most people here aren't from the same year."

"So someone is watching." Logan surmised aloud. That seemed to be the running theme for him nowadays. Why stop now? Yet that wasn't the part in all of this that confused him the most. The question he found himself asking was who was powerful enough to bring in people from different years to this place, and for what reason?

Logan glanced around. "Someone who has a lot of power." A beat. "And what are year are you from?"

"Most likely, yes, but we've never come into contact with them, unless someone here is an incredible liar," Peggy replies, and though she's not ruling it out, she'd like to think that after her experience with Dottie, her radar for such things has been heightened enough that she would notice. "I'm from 1947," she replies, giving him a curious look.

"If you're anything like the others I've spoken to here, you're going to tell me that you're from much farther in the future than that, though."

There was a fairly lengthy pause, long enough for the woman sitting across from him to know that by the look on his face, that particular year (and the all the years leading up to it) was one that held significance somehow. Meaning he'd been living during that time.

"I'm not like a lot of people to begin with." Logan offered, not too keen on offering much more than that right then. Even if the woman looked friendly enough. He'd been betrayed by pretty faces before.

Logan lifted his mug to his lips and paused before drinking. "And it depends on how much farther into the future you're expecting me to say."

Peggy hears the tea beginning to boil in the time they're waiting, fetching the pot in order to pour one for herself, lifting it up to offer it to him as well. "Do you want some?" she offers, a curious look on her face, though she's not meaning to force it on him. "Peggy Carter," she introduced herself, setting the pot of tea down on a makeshift coaster at the table, in case he decided he wanted some.

"Well, I'm from 1947 and most everyone I've met tells me they're from 2016, with a few exceptions," she allows. "But only one man has been here that came from anywhere within a five year range of me and he's gone now, to where? I have no idea."

Logan gave a nod, downing what was left in his cup before setting it back down on the table. When Peggy returned, his expression turned into subtle curiosity, though he was sure once he shared the next bit of information that it could possibly render the other woman speechless.

"Technically, I'm from 2023. But when this place brought me in it was 1973. I was sent to the past to try and stop something from happening and secure that future for my kind."

His eyes met hers as he reached for the tea pot.

"I can't recall where I was in '47, but two years before that I was in Nagasaki."

Peggy tips her head as she tries to work that out in her mind. She's finally getting accustomed to the idea that many people here are from the future, but she hasn't quite managed to come to grips with the idea of people hopping back there to the past before this place. "Nagasaki," she echoes, suitably respectful now that he's mentioned that name. "I've heard stories about Nagasaki." None of them good, is the unfortunate truth of the matter.

"Your kind?" she echoes, trying not to sound too sharp. "Who would that be?"

A lot of his past was nothing good and it would go unsaid. Nagasaki was one part, just as all the other wars were another. The personal stuff, things he knew happened but had no recollection of had been a battle all on its own. And it was nowhere near over. No matter how hard he tried to escape it by isolating himself.

"Mutants." he answered, sparing a half second thought of further defining that, but decided against it. She looked smart enough to take that word and apply it to humans. "You familiar with someone named Charles Xavier?"

Peggy shakes her head, not entirely sure what he means, though she has suspicions. While she might not use that particular word, Erskine's serum could be seen as a sort of mutation to a person's bloodstream, evident in both what it's done for Steve and Barnes. "I'm sorry, I've never heard that word before," she apologizes.

"You speak about that in the generic sense, though," she says, her mind processing as quickly as she can, "it's not surgically applied? A medical enhancement?"

"No," Logan started, pausing to take a cautious sip of his hot tea. "It's genetic; apart of any mutants DNA and it's triggered by some sort of emotional, or mental stress."

He remembers the night it manifested for him; the first time the bone claws came out and he killed the man responsible for killing his father. Of course, it wasn't just that. He had the regeneration. Or, did.

Logan paused to look at his hand down on the table as his fingers curled under and into his palm.

"Some have been enhanced, mostly by the military or government specialists who want to know more."

It was clear enough that he spoke from experience there, if the scowl on his face said anything.

She can't imagine that there's some genome dormant in Steve and Barnes, because she'd also seen what the serum had done to the man they'd come to call Red Skull, but 'mutation' is certainly the best word for it. "I knew a man, barely ninety pounds soaking wet, who underwent a procedure and mutated, for lack of a better word, but he had nothing in him that would have caused that."

Besides that, if it had been emotional stress, Peggy is sure Steve would have manifested a long while earlier. "What happened?" she asks calmly. "With the government, in your world?"

"When?" Logan answered sarcastically. It was an ongoing battle between humans and mutants.

After deliberating, he lowered his cup, keeping his fingers around the handle. "It started with experimentation. Government got their hands on one mutant named Mystique who could shapeshift. Once they got her DNA, they installed it into robots called Sentinels so they could counter mutant abilities and wipe us out. Which they came damn close to doing."

Logan took another drink of the tea, regarding her.

She raises her brow as a chill runs down her spine, knowing all too well what that sounds like.It's the sort of fear-mongering and hatred that no human being should have so firmly in their heart. "That's monstrous," is what she says, sharp and accusatory. "No one was able to stop the program? Appeal to wiser heads? I'm sure not everyone in a position of power supported this program," she insists, mainly because she has to believe that's the case.

"It's a bit hard when half of it looked at us like the enemy. You know what they say about understanding and fear."

Logan glanced away thoughtfully.

"I'm not sure how things went. Ended up here instead. But the plan to travel back in time was to stop Mystique from killing the head of the Sentinel program. She's the reason our future was.. well, it wasn't."

Peggy's still getting used to the concept of time travel, quite honestly. It's not the sort of thing that comes so easily, but she likes to think that she's making an honest job of it and getting there. "Well, for everyone's sake, I hope it worked," she says. "I can't even begin to imagine a world like that, where the hate and fear wins out. After the war, things might be bleak for people like me, but at least we felt like we'd vanquished a larger evil."

While Peggy spoke, it became apparent that she wasn't just some regular person. Knowing that she had some kind of experience, be it scientifically (which didn't exactly sit well with him), or just in passing, it was clear the government in her world wasn't much better.

"Yeah? And what sort of evil was that?"

Truly, he was curious.

"In my specific case, a man who thought he could take a serum and make himself immensely powerful with it," she says. "It turns out that the serum looks at you with a critical lens," she says with a gesture to her face. "Everything sort of sloughed right off, leaving a rather demonic looking beast behind. Red Skull was an apt nickname," she feels compelled to note.

Changes to a person's looks wasn't new to Logan either, though he supposed anyone with the power and capability to enhance what they were fell under that 'power' umbrella. So he simply gave a nod. Regardless, Beast came to mind just then. As well as Nightcrawler and Colossus.

Those ones were on the side of good, however.

"Spent a lot of time dealing with guys like that. And I'll probably deal with them for awhile more." Logan shared. He took another drink of the tea.

"If I can say that about where I'm from, I'm sure that larger evil you're talking about is far from being dealt with. Something else always comes along."

"Unfortunately, but yes, I suspect you're right." She's finished with her tea and she fears she has nothing more that she can offer him, which makes her feel somewhat useless, but perhaps he's feeling more acclimated. "I can't speak for everyone here, but I know this place isn't like that, not from my experience. Not that I'm anything apart from ordinary," Peggy admits.

"Still, it's not so bad," she manages.

"I can stand a little bit of the ordinary life." Logan thought aloud. After that, he downed the rest of what was in the cup and set it back on the table. "And I appreciate the talk. It helped."

His tone didn't really say it did, but Logan wasn't anyone who could be defined as genuine. Or, appreciative for that matter. But he showed it more right then with Peggy than he had anyone else he'd talked to so far.

She sort of reminded him a little of Storm now that he thought about it.

As he got up, he looked at her again. "Nice meeting you, Peggy."

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