Sixth Iteration Logs

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WHERE: (Where the post takes place)
WHEN: (When the post takes place)
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thegreatexperiment

WHO: Samantha Moon
WHERE: Various parts of the Inn
WHEN: December 2-10
OPEN TO: ALL
WARNINGS: Standard language warnings for Sam; nudity and sexy in thread with Danny

Sam had many talents, but tracking the lunar calendar wasn't necessarily one on her resume. Nevertheless, it was December and she decided that meant Hanukkah was on the way. Her second one in the fucking clown rodeo. Something like her fifth or sixth since dying. Which was just depressing as all hell. As if she needed something else depressing to weigh on her mind.

Last year, she'd cobbled together a menorah out of bolts and spare wires and broken bottle necks. It looked steampunk as hell, but when she managed to pull together enough candles to light the thing up, she had to admit, it was kind of cheery. It was about as out-of-place as they all were, trapped in this Skinner Box of doom, so in that sense, it was perfectly at home. So she lit it every night in the common area of the Inn, on the window ledge.

Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai
E-lo-he-nu Me-lech ha-olam
Something, something
Something
Soooomething
Something, something
Le-had-lik ner
Shel Cha-nu-kah.

Okay, so she didn't remember all the words. It was the thought that counted, right? Sure. Why not.

When she wasn't lighting the candles, she sometimes slipped into the kitchen. The year before, Erik had taught her a recipe for latkes. She remembered most of the basics and tried her hand at it a few times. Not that she could fucking eat any of them, but after the first couple of failed batches, they started to smell pretty amazing. And she left them out on a plate for anyone who came by.

And feeling particularly in the holiday spirit, she set herself up at her favorite table in the corner, with her box of colored pencils. She'd saved scraps of paper where she could, stealing napkins, starched fabric, and what remained of the book Jude had put together for her. On one of the napkins, she wrote "Free Portraits." Back home, she'd done some unofficial work as a police sketch artist. They didn't have photographs of the people they'd left behind. But she could do pretty good approximations. She'd hung up one of her sketches of Avery as an example.

living_proof

WHO: Liv Moore
WHERE: House 42
WHEN: 28 Nov 2018
OPEN TO: Bucky Barnes
WARNINGS: n/a

After Ravi disappeared, after I spent the better part of several days looking for him, waiting to see if he'd pop back out of the fountain, something occurred to me that he and I both missed back the first time Major went: There's a list of everyone in the village on our smart watches. If someone's not there, it's a good bet they're not just lost.

And yeah, I said 'the first time' up there. As in there's been a second. As in, I woke up today and all of Major's stuff he arrived with was gone, and guess what? He's as absent from that list now as Ravi.

It's been a couple of hours since then, and the truth is, I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to feel. Objectively, if this was happening to somebody else, I'd probably tell them that they're allowed to feel however they feel, that's nothing's right or wrong. But Major and I have been complicated for a long time now, and mostly what I feel is scared.

There is no one else here anymore who is a zombie or half-zombie or has actual experience with zombies. There's just me and my freezer full of squirrel brains.

Because it's Major, and because it's complicated, I wait longer to text Bucky than I probably should. Even then, it's brief and a little ominous: Major's gone. We need to talk. I just don't have the energy to clarify my muddled emotions via wristwatch right now. He'll figure it out quickly enough when he gets here.

ex_enlisted288

WHO: Steve Rogers
WHERE: House #18, Village Environs
WHEN: Late November/Early December
OPEN TO: Steve + Bucky, Steve + You
WARNINGS: PTSD and associated triggers

( don't let yourself go 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes )

nonstopnarcissist

WHO: Tony Stark & Co.
WHERE: North West Mountain Range
WHEN: November 5th - 8th
OPEN TO: Open to all
WARNINGS: Language, canon typical violence

( I'm digging for fire )

tothefly

WHO: Natasha Romanoff
WHERE: South Village Fountain, Inn, Town Hall, aroundish.
WHEN: afternoon of Oct. 16th, the few days after
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: none yet, will header in comments if anything pops up

Fountain arrival: open to first two

They had been in Wakanda. She's sure they had been in Wakanda. Barnes had just gone back into cryo while they waited for test results, something to undo what HYDRA had done to his mind for all those years. Steve had been with him. Natasha had been...she'd been...

She hadn't been underwater, and now there's water all around her, and she's choking on it as instinct kicks in and she propels herself to the surface, all thoughts of where she'd been and how she'd gotten here lost for the moment in the rush for oxygen and survival. There's the surface, and she breaks through with a gasp and a choked cough, and every limb feels so heavy she could just sink right back below the surface, but there's an edge right there--is she in a pool? It doesn't matter, she hauls herself to the edge and then out, sliding to the ground and waiting for breathing to feel a little less like a foreign concept. This is definitely not Wakanda, she thinks, and she is definitely not where she went to sleep the night before. There's a lump behind her back--a backpack?--and she immediately pulls it around, going through the contents looking for answers and finding nothing but more questions.

If T'Challa had wanted her out of the country, he could have just offered her a ride, she thinks, vaguely ironic. It's fine. It's fine. She'll take a moment here to catch her breath--just a second--and then she'll be on the move again. She's woken up in worse places before.

Inn: OTA

It hadn't taken long after that first conversation for her to start feeling the itch to move, the exposure in the open space highlighted by the chill of damp clothing. The inn had been the obvious answer, and the bathroom upstairs had afforded her a better look at herself and the contents of her pack before drying off and changing into a fresh set of scrubs. The color seems to mean something, if what she's seen so far is any indication, but what exactly it's supposed to mean still evades her. At least she's always looked good in black. After a quick change, Natasha makes her way back downstairs. She isn't in Wakanda, she isn't anywhere anyone seems to have heard of, but that doesn't mean anything. Time for a little recon of her own, she thinks, and starts her exploration in the front room downstairs. It doesn't take long before she finds the village census and public records. There's a lot of information to unpack here, but she keeps finding herself going back to the same pages, over and over. How is her name in this book, if she's never been here before? There have to be answers somewhere.

Open locations: OTA

It doesn't take long for Natasha to start trying to familiarize herself with her location. Even if she's stuck here, that doesn't mean she has to stay blind. You're likely to run into her over the course of the next few days in any number of places, both public areas and maybe a few less-public. Empty houses are also a safe bet, as she tries to find a place to set up a home base, as it were, and frequently the inn, as she keeps returning to study the public records and census. No information is bad information, right? Anyway, before she goes looking for this bunker she keeps hearing about, she wants to have a better idea of what to expect out there, which means approaching people (more often than not the ones she doesn't recognize) to ask questions and hear about other peoples' experiences with the uncomfortably-named 'Observers.'

freightcars

( You're about to view content that a community administrator has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

killorder

WHO: (Who is making the post)
WHERE: Around either village
WHEN: The early part of October
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: N/A Will update as needed

( Lift me up towards the heavens )

our_promise

WHO: Natalia
WHERE: The village gardens
WHEN: The first week in October
OPEN TO: Bucky
WARNINGS: Sex talk

In her quest to make herself useful Natalia has picked up every odd job available to her. There's no single place that needs her the most, which means she has no choice but to learn every skill that she can.

Today she's helping with the harvest. It doesn't seem like such a difficult task, picking apples especially. You just find a ripe-looking apple and pick it, right? Right. But there are a lot of apples to pick, and some of them are easier to reach than others. She makes a valiant effort considering she's nobility, but after a while she has to take a break. She sits under one of the trees, looking at the sky through the leaves above her as she tries to catch her breath.

This is much more work than I expected it to be, she thinks to herself. At least, she thinks it's to herself.

sixthiteration

WHERE: Hot Springs
WHEN: 21 Sept, after sunset
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn in your subject line as needed
NOTES: Details found here

It's been a strange, rough couple of months for our intrepid villagers — Bunkers, superpowers and clones, oh my! Perhaps the Observers are sympathetic to their plight, or maybe they just have a peculiar sense of humor. At any rate, they've set up a gathering space chalk full of summer camp goodness, no strings attached. Not that anyone knows that part.

Just before sunset, a cheery message pops up on wrist devices all across the settlement and beyond. The instructions seem simple enough, although one does have to wonder at what dubious gift awaits them all after everything is said and done.

Marshmallows are on the house, so grab yourself a stick, strap on a sash and get to roasting, villagers. Skinny dipping, sing-alongs and friendship bracelets optional.

killorder

WHO: Jake Jensen
WHERE: Bunker, Around the Village
WHEN: Around 9/20
OPEN TO: All
WARNINGS: PG for possible language. Will update as needed.

( It's incredibly frustrating when seeking revenge against one )

ex_enlisted288

WHO: Steve Rogers
WHERE: House 18; River
WHEN: Mid September
OPEN TO: Friends / OTA
WARNINGS: Nada, will update if necessary

HOUSE PROJECT

[ Steve has never had his own place before. Not one he picked out himself. His mother rented the one he grew up in, then he moved into an orphanage after she died, then he and Bucky moved in together after high school. In the Army, he took whatever tent or barracks they assigned. After the defrost, SHIELD found a temporary apartment in Brooklyn, and again in DC when his orders sent him to the Triskelion. Nick Fury found him a place once they'd demolished one of the world's foremost law and order organizations. Long story short - he's been jumping from one bolthole to another without really caring whether it not it's really his.

The island is different. (He's not entirely sure it is an island, but exploring that far afield is for another time.) There are no barracks here, no footlocker full of mementos from home or a uniform. Not a real set anyway, the scrubs don't count until the Observers appear and line everyone up according to color code. If they do, Steve plans to start a rebellion immediately, because he's seen what happens to people forced to wear different colors. It's one of the things that makes him uneasy about the scrubs. Like he's waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Until that happens, though, he's chosen one of the empty houses, so another room at the inn is free to some future arrival. Over the course of the last several weeks, Steve has hauled water from the river in a borrowed bucket and scrubbed every inch of his new home. Floors, walls, windows, wiped down what furniture came with the house. Cleaning is an activity he likes, which might seem weird to anyone else, but he was so sick, or frail, as a child that housework had to be done in little bursts, else he risked a coughing fit or pushing his heart to the point of needing a hospital. It's just really nice to be able to perform tasks that everyone takes for granted. Something he tries hard not to.

And the last few days have been taken up with laundry. Stripping the beds, dragging them down to the river for cleaning, and tossing his extra set of scrubs in the process. He's strung up an old-fashioned laundry line across the front porch and rigged some pins to keep the sheets and clothing in one place until they're all dry. Interested parties can find him sketching on the porch or puttering around inside. ]

FISHING PROJECT

[ As far as city living goes, Steve likes to think he's fairly self-sufficient. He's known how to get around one since he was a child. Public transit doesn't bother him. Neither does shopping at local grocery stores. (Although modern prices are still outrageous.) He can winter a weather without heat, has made a candle almost from scratch but prefers flashlights these days, and can handle himself well in the concrete jungle.

But this place is different. He's not accustomed to living off the land, and what knowledge he has of that is paired with the depths of human misery on the European front during World War II, because the Commandos scrounged what they had to when the going got tough. So he's got a tiny bit of woodsy experience. However, that is definitely not the same thing as being able to provide a service to the village outside of drawing pretty pictures. He needs to be useful.

Therefore Steve has been trying to teach himself to fish. Loitering around the Inn week after week, listening to snippets of conversations, has gleaned him just enough information to make a fishing rod from the branch of a young sapling. And he found a sharp, pointy rock on his daily wandering, tying it to the stick with a bunch of badly woven grass. So far, his spear-fishing skills are not that great: he's caught two fish in the last week, and one of them was mostly an accident.

But that won't stop him from heading out again after breakfast, determined to learn this valuable skill for his community. ]

markwatney

WHO: Mark Watney
WHERE: Town Hall & Inn
WHEN: 6 September 2018, Evening
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Warn on your threads, please. PTSD is probably a given.
NOTES: Support group mingle! If your character needs some support after the latest meta plot or just generally, send them on over to Town Hall. Also, feel free to do top levels having to do with signing up for a tube monitoring shift. Please let me know if you want a Mark thread, I have notifs off for the post.

So, I have been down to what we all seem to be collectively calling the Bunker. It is... something, to say the least.

For some people it feels like hope and for others despair, and I can honestly see both sides of it. Some people need to feel like they have some control, even if it's illusory — Having a puzzle to possibly solve makes them feel less adrift. For others, it's too much reality, or the perception of, anyway. I can't say I'm personally convinced by any of it.

See, I've been here since the start of whatever this is, with a group that's almost entirely gone now. It's been five months since we were birthed into this expanded world, and I don't know if it's any more real than the last. That isn't me putting on a tin foil hat, that's just respecting the environment. Mars was the same way: You do what you need to do to eke out a life, to survive or even thrive, but it's dangerous to think you have any real control. Everything can go to shit in the blink of eye, and then you're tumbling around in an airlock while your entire food supply is turned to dust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying people should stop hoping to get home, stop trying to figure it all out. I'm just saying we might all be a little easier mentally if we could express how scary it is to know, deep down, that the rug can be pulled out from under us at any moment... And then to accept that feeling that way is okay.

With that in mind, after a little meditating during my daily work in the fields, I put up two notices on the blackboard in the South Village inn:

Volunteers to monitor the bunker tubes for new arrivals, please sign up for a shift on the paper on the bar.

That's one thing we can do, at least. Just the illusion of control, but still important to some people, and definitely helpful for anybody new.

Below that:

Support Group Tonight
Town Hall - 7:00 PM
Everyone Welcome

I don't know how many people will actually show — We've got a surprisingly stubborn, resilient group, in my experience. But even if it helps just one person, it's worth doing.

nonstopnarcissist

WHO: Tony Stark
WHERE: Tube Room in the Bunker, Inn, Forge
WHEN: September 3rd onward
OPEN TO: Initially Bucky Barnes, then Everyone
WARNINGS: Descriptions of Dissolving, Canon typical Violence, Language, Blood, etc.

( so you take another breath. )

sixthiteration

WHERE: The bunker & elsewhere
WHEN: 1 September 2018
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn on threads
NOTES: Plot Details | Bunker Details | Bunker Map & Key
Threads may take place ANYTIME during the plot, including before, during and after the tubes have been opened, just please do not godmod tube arrivals without explicit permission. Related threads not in the bunker are welcomed, as are general bunker exploration/reaction threads that have nothing to do with the arrivals. Please reference the bunker key doc for what is and isn't available to explore at present.

Deep under the mountain, tucked away in the newly-discovered bunker complex, there is a room where everyone begins. It is filled with equipment — Computer consoles, monitors — but the point of it all resides within ten vertical stasis tubes lined neatly along a far wall.

One of them has been cracked and lies dormant, dry. In six of the remaining are bodies, unconscious and floating in their familiar vari-colored scrubs, vital signs ticking calmly off on their respective readouts.

In the corner, near the cracked tube, the ceiling has shattered and tumbled inward, across the floor and over the largest console in the room — The one flashing 24 HOURS UNTIL STASIS FAILURE.

sixthiteration

WHERE: Anywhere
WHEN: August 25-26
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Mental manipulation, drowning, death
NOTES: Details here. This post is for EVERYONE, not just the affected. Please make sure and note if your thread is locked for plot purposes.

It began slowly.

A wisp of song or familiar sound on the breeze swept in from the lake. No source to be found, only the uneasy feeling it had been heard before as it coiled itself steadily inside the minds of the chosen. The sound was a mantra, pulsing soft at first and then louder, growing over days until it seemed to fill the skull, relentless. Come here, the lake whispered, cajoled, shouted. It is cool and quiet beneath the waves.

Come here, it presses now in time with the melody until there is nothing but to blindly follow. The water is calling.

3ofswords

WHO: Kira Akiyama
WHERE: Midland river island, ruins, southeast of the Southern Village.
WHEN: Late August / early September
OPEN TO: Bucky Barnes
WARNINGS: Possible drug mentions, definite snakes, hallucinations, peril, PTSD.

( no love i believe )

living_proof

( You're about to view content that the poster has marked as potentially inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

sixthiteration

WHERE: 6I inn front lawn
WHEN: 4 August, all day
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Some mentions of drug use
NOTES: Full plot details here. List of favors here.

The fourth of August dawns pleasantly mild and clear, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Which is good, because it means there's plenty of sunshine to see the riot of color that has errupted on the front lawn of the inn.

The general set-up will be familiar to those who've been in the village long enough — Tables and chairs from inside the inn set up outside for a party by the time everyone wakes. This party, though, seems to have been turned up to about 11, and the theme is definitely new: Balloons, streamers, party favors, and everything in a rainbow of colors that villagers have come to know extremely well.

Each place is set with its own (occasionally large) goody bag and birthday present, each in the color belonging to the owner on the tag. One place, done up all in silver and gray, is set for the lost.

The tables are piled high with the sort of fare you'd find at a children's party: Cake, soda, hamburgers, pizza. Not a beer or cup of coffee in sight. And on the edge of the lawn, beside an area possibly kept clear for dancing, is the most bewildering, magical thing of all, no pocket change needed.

Tuck in and let loose, villagers. If you're lucky, maybe someone will spike the punch.

freightcars

WHO: Bucky Barnes
WHERE: Kira's Pad
WHEN: 07/29 just before dusk.
OPEN TO: Ma Boi Kira
WARNINGS: Probably just language tbh

Someone alert the media, call the press, schedule a conference, James Buchanan Barnes is voluntarily going to get his hair cut. It's after about the seven hundredth comment that he could use a trim, and honestly that's not even what pushes him to take the plunge, it's the fight with the Wendigo that does it. Falling just beyond his shoulders, it'd gotten matted with blood and dirt in a way that never impacted him up until this point. Begrudgingly and with with a little anxiety about the matter, he makes his decision.

Distantly he remembers a hazy offer on his first day in town. I'm really good with haircuts, he remembers hearing it but with the stress of a new place and the new faces he'd seen that day, he can't remember which person had offered.

He consults the census, and Kira winds up with a knock on his door sometime in the early evening. Early enough that the sun's still bright an clear, but everything's soaked with orange and shadows stretch around them waiting to fan out into darkness. Vaguely, the thought crosses his mind that maybe he should have, you know, texted first.

Too late for good manners.

sixthiteration

WHERE: 6I Village and Inn
WHEN: 27-31 July
OPEN TO: ALL - Mingle
NOTES: The Wendigo threatening the village will be killed mid 28 July, with a Blue Lily, per these threads. Plot details here. Note: The final fight is close enough to be seen from the upstairs inn windows.
WARNINGS: Wendigo attack mingle, please warn in comment headers if discussing violence, gore, or related trauma. Possible mentions of character death.

The urgent warnings come from villagers returning south from the lake: a creature twice the size of a man, antlered and voracious. Larger than any they've seen on the plains, stalking its way to the main village. Some might have their own names for this hunger in a skin of shadow; others might remember that it was the first to claim a life, in their village's short history.

Whatever context one has for it, best to secure all pets and loved ones before it arrives. With weapons and food stores at the inn, the call goes out to gather — And to bring back any tools, because there's no telling what doors and windows can do to stop such a creature.

Sixth Iteration

Logs

Entries tagged with marvel: bucky barnes

Credits & Style Info

If you really, really wannakah/Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Hanukkah [OPEN]

[LOCKED] It feels so close, but always disappears;

when the day is long and the night is yours alone

[ MINGLE ] MINING EXPEDITION

01. arrival

Spooktacular

You remind me of the truth

I used to be a frail and silly thought in your mind

[MINGLE] Scout's Honor

A world too far gone and all alone

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in

[MINGLE] Post-Bunker Support Group

Look out to the future, but it tells you nothing

[MINGLE] PLOT: Down the Tubes: Alarm

[MINGLE] PLOT: Siren's Call

[closed] there's no sure footing

[Closed] Thoughts and dreams that scatter;

[MINGLE] EVENT: Birthday Party

give him a mullet;

[MINGLE] Wendi-go-go to the inn