jumpscares | ( OPEN ) GAME START.

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( OPEN ) GAME START.

▶ WHO: Everyone.
▶ DATE: July 9th, 2015 (Day 1)
▶ WARNINGS: Blood, violence, general zombie horror.
▶ SUMMARY: You've met with a bad... however that line goes. Welcome to Earth.

GOOD MORNING!

Please try and ignore whatever it is that you just heard. It should only last for up to a minute... maybe.

It... it is morning, right?

There are no windows.

There's a light, but it's barely considered one. The compound runs on a solar generator, but that doesn't mean it has a lot of power. The light seems to be hanging from the ceiling, swinging precariously. That's when you might actually start to wake up, sit up, find the things that are familiar to you... and then some of the things that aren't. It'd be wise to explore the small room you're in before leaving through the steel door, but there's nobody around to tell you that.

Outside is a tightly knit compound, just as dark and metallic as the room. The hallway you're in houses dozens more doors identical to yours, and if you're unlucky there may be more people poking their heads out through them, just like you. There's a dull glowing sign that reads MEDICAL BAY but not all of you remember being hurt. Some of you may be just fine, apart from the memory of the sound you heard when waking up.

The Medical Bay is stocked with enough medicine to last a couple of months. There's almost everything that can be found in a hospital. Somebody was thinking ahead.

Outside of the Medical Bay are more doors, some are even locked—many aren't. There are living quarters, a food storage, a kitchen, some laboratories; even a room full of computers and nothing else, all with a screen asking for a password. There's only two doors out of the compound, a vehicle bay with what appear to be a few military jeeps and trucks, and the front doors. It's on the inside of the front doors that something is painted in bright red, flecked with what smell like blood:

DO NOT GO OUTSIDE WITHOUT A GUN AND WATER.
GUNSHOTS ATTRACT THEM.
HOLLOWS IS 1.3 MILES NORTH OF HERE.
GOOD LUCK.

And on the outside of the doors, if you choose to open them:

THE WORLD ENDED JULY 3RD, 2015.

Now... how long ago was that? And where is this place? Luckily for you, Hollows is a small town that can be raided. It hasn't been too long since the apocalypse—surely you'll be able to find something there. Batteries, food, weapons, maybe some people—and what you're guaranteed to find. Them, whatever that means.

Outside of the compound there's a fence with a single gate. Nothing can get past this unless you let them in for tea, so be careful. There's a shooting range and a large shed full of weapons and ammo, enough to last two months if you're careful. Guns, knives, anything that would be used by the military and police is hidden away in the shed. There are even a few hunting bows with arrows.

If you climb up the ladder to the top of the wall, there's enough room to walk along the top. There's definitely something moving in the distance, something you should definitely be worrying about. Maybe it's time to get a good look with a sniper rifle...?

Oh.

It's gone.

Maybe it was just a trick of the light. Regardless, it's impossible for everyone to stay in the compound forever. There are nefarious things at work! The choices are to go to Hollows, stick around, or go somewhere else. Really, the world is almost a blank slate. Maybe more of a used slate, but still yours to explore.

When the night comes, you should be hiding. The screamers, the ragers, whatever the hell they are, are running full tilt through the streets and across the landscape, running through anything in their way, ripping apart anything alive. If you don't make any noise, they won't notice you. Especially since they're stuck listening to each other. But if you get noticed by one, it won't be long until a horde forms... you might be able to outrun one for awhile, but they don't seem to let up on their breakneck pace. Maybe someone should have told you how to kill them.

OOC NOTES.

There will be zombies in Hollows. Whether you meet them on the way there is up to you. Apart from the undead and the animals (maybe somebody should let those poor creatures out of their houses) the town is completely deserted. In fact, the closest thing you can find to a human are the bodies of those who died without being bitten, and there's even few of those. You can find anything you'd find in a normal town here, and are free to loot and raid the houses and stores—the cops won't be coming, after all. The power is OFF apart from what you can find that is solar powered or still has a charge. If you're lucky and find another town while exploring the first few weeks, you might find an area that still has power—thank hydroelectricity.

Just keep in mind travel time... and travel expenses.

You have creative freedom over everything else. The world is open. The only stationary places are landmarks and cities—if you want to go to Texas and talk to the poor astronauts stranded up in space, it's there. (Might be a long trip, though...)

If your character can figure it out by geography before getting to Hollows, the compound is located a few hours from the west coast, in California.

The way to kill a zombie is blunt force to the head. The head doesn't need to be removed, but significant damage needs to be done to it. This does not include the throat—it needs to be a headshot.

There's also a glaring hint. The computers in the compound, asking for a password. It is impossible to hack at this time. There will be more on this later!

Finally, if your character is exploring outside of the compound (or extensively inside of it) there's a comment here for linking me the thread. You can also PM me! I'll be ducking in with what your character may or may not have found, via a response to the actual RP thread.

IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS please direct them here!

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Cagey as all get-out was right. He did make a face when she called him lamb-like accompanied by a hesitantly argumentative sound. He wouldn't quite go with lamb-like, but he was certainly at a disadvantage without access to his suit. Something he'd tried to call to him once already when he saw the sign about the dangers beyond the gates. That did make him quite exposed. However, not that he'd learned much humility in his run as Iron Man, he did learn when not to advertise it. It had a tendency to prompt some people to shoot rockets at your expensive Malibu estate. So he settled on a 'who knows' shrug and replied just as dodgy,

"Something like that." He hardly paused between thoughts, however, "No, you strike me as a Queen and Country kinda gal. Or maybe that's just the accent." This time it was more of an observation than a barb. "So I take it you don't work here. Shame. You probably woke up in one of those rooms, just like me, meaning neither of us has any information from an official source. --I'm Tony, by the way. Does the lost little lamb have a name?" He slipped is hand back out of his pocket and held it out to her casually.

All she'd learned so far -- all she could be certain of learning -- was that it was prudent to play ball with all those she encountered. Reuniting with Steve had emboldened her (as if she ever needed to be bolder). So, hopping gracefully from truck-bed to ground, she pressed her palm against Tony's and offered a firm handshake.

"Peggy," she offered as much and as little as he did. She was no more Margaret, she supposed, than he was Anthony. And surnames could be left to the wayside. Only: "And it's King and Country, I'm afraid."

Kindly skirting 'round the truth. She worked on American soil, these days.

Tony shook her hand then slipped his back into his pocket. "Is it? How long have I been out?" He was only half kidding. One of them was out of place here, or maybe both, but he had a feeling she was a little further displaced wherever the heck they were. It wasn't unheard of for someone to, oh, say, sleep for a couple decades in ice anymore, so why not? Neither of them were Super Soldiers that he knew of, but Steve had been right on one front: the days where Captain America was the weirdest thing science created were long gone.

"Okay, Peggy, you wouldn't happen to know who thought it was a good idea to kidnap a government worker from abroad and the head of a multi-billion dollar company without so much as a ransom letter then fail to detain them, would you?" Because they really weren't detained, in all honesty. And he really didn't remember volunteering for cell block A, so he was going with kidnapping for now. "I have plenty of enemies, but none of them are this... casual. And this just doesn't feel like an 'enemy' sort of deal, so that leaves me more perplexed. Plus the ominous warning about leaving without rations and a weapon."

Bloody hell, but Tony used a whole mouthful of words to get his point across. Peggy listened patiently through every wry twist of his theory -- and as theories went, it wasn't precisely the worst she'd ever heard. And yet it remained far from the best.

"Less a kidnapping and more of an aggressive recruitment campaign, I think." She answered (thoughtfully) as she considered his claims. Multi-billion dollar company, hm? Well, didn't he just go and make himself sound a shot more important than her. It should have caused a bit of pique but it didn't. After all, she'd been the first to downplay her position.

If he sounded like he wasn't quite taking her job seriously, well, that was because he partially wasn't. Nothing personal, Peggy, but she didn't give him anything to go on and for all he knew, she could be a postal worker or she could be MI6. Fact was, that he didn't know which end of the spectrum she fell on. Tony on the other hand didn't down play his, he just left an important detail out. Which brought him to his next barrage of questioning.

"You really don't recognise me, do you?" It wasn't immediately obvious if he was disappointed by that or just surprised, but either way, it was more than obvious that he wasn't used to it in the least. "Okay, the living example of the clean slate protocol. I can live with that. I think. We'll see." He shrugged it off. "So, aggressive recruitment? You think they want all of us to take care of their little infestation? Then they should've given me my suit. I'm not gonna say I'm useless like this, but I'm not much of a fighter without my toys."

Edited 2015-07-17 19:13 (UTC)

She heard every word with measured thought. Measured consideration. Peggy was far more interested with talk of infestation and whatever it was this Tony fellow considered to be his toys -- but digging her nails into such obvious bait would do her own career a disservice.

So (arms propped up with palms on her hips) she tackled the other spotted elephant in the room: "Ought I recognize you?" She asked, chin tilted just so.

"I'm kind of a big shot. My name's among the top in clean energy and tech. Who am I kidding, it is the top. I hit the international news quite a bit. Both for good and bad reasons. But hey, in the here and now I'm just an engineer without a workshop, so it's mostly irrelevant." He shrugged it off easily. Yeah, you accidentally destroy half a village in Wakanda trying to stop a rampaging Hulk and unleash a 'murder bot' as Banner put it, not in that order, does give you some bad cred. So he would happily skip right on past that.

"This is new to me, though. But I am curious how something this large and open exists, 'recruiting' people against their will while flying under the radar."

-- Wasn't it just her damned luck to be plagued by cocky genius 'round every corner? Peggy might have been more keen to learn exactly what business in which Tony dabbled, but the words clean energy were enough to curl her lip. It made her think on the Tesseract. As noble a quest as clean energy was, it settled poorly in her stomach. Shame, really, because one minute more spent dwelling on the problem might have reminded her of Howard.

Instead: "It was only a theory," she clarified in a curdled tone. "It might not be recruitment at all. It might be some...terrible misunderstanding."

But Peggy's voice betrayed her. She didn't believe the whole affair could ever be so innocuous.

Tony sighed and braced himself for his own version of a Cap speech. "A terrible misunderstanding is screwing up a few verb tenses and pronouns in French and offering to eat the waitress for dessert in front of your fiancée. Or completing a botanist's life-altering theoretical serum for her after a drunken one night stand and she thinks it means something more. This," He waves both hands out to indicate their entire surrounding. "is a bit more than that. You believe it's a misunderstanding about as much as I believe you're just some government nobody." He shrugged and dropped his arms again.

"Whatever this is, I'm getting to the bottom of it and I'm getting us out of it because it's what I do." He stepped closer, not threateningly, but for her full attention, trying to lock his gaze with hers. "There is a room full of computers just inside," He pointed towards the building subconsciously. "and I'm the guy that doesn't like when information is withheld. It's a," He rolled his eyes. "thing with me. Working with SHIELD made me a paranoid bastard. I just need to find an interface and strong-arm my way past their security protocols. Bada-bing, I'm in. Bada-boom, everyone else can go home. My team and I take care of the mess."

And that was Tony in a nutshell. Arrogant, annoying, sarcastic, but he really did want to help.

-- He might as well douse himself in hubris for his cologne. Not that Peggy found pride to be a fault. Understanding the breadth of one's capabilities could be a virtue, after all. Unfortunate was the lip that went with it.

SHIELD but barely blips upon her radar. Not yet existence: barely more than inchoate unnamed ideal hidden away at heart.

"You have a team?" At least this was promising. "Are they here?"

"What, you thought I was just another pretty face? Yeah, I have a team. I'm one of Earth's Avengers--or, I am with my suit. Like this, though? I'm just the genius billionaire, Tony Sta--wait a minute, that's a good question. If I'm here, my team or at least some of it may be too. If Romanoff or Barton are here, they may know a bit more about the situation. It's... what they do." Tony did straighten up and cock his head to the side. "I don't remember seeing any kind of communication system and this antiquated phone has no connectivity." He said, pulling the blackberry out of his pocket and flipping it over in his hand.

Whatever else the man had to say, it seemed suddenly not to matter. So far, his strange resemblance had thrown her for half-a-dozen loops. But all it took was a portion of a well-known name to prompt her, with some alarm, to exclaim: "Stark!"

Her jaw worked loose. Genuine surprise flooded her face. Peggy took a wide step backwards and -- suspicion in every inch of her posture -- watched him with care.

"How very odd. You look so much like him."

He was already five subjects from his name, he was momentarily baffled by the exclamation. Then it occurred to him that he hadn't given her his last name fully, so she wasn't yelling to shut him up entirely. It was realisation and that amused him.

Unfortunately, however, they still weren't on the same page, but at least now they were reading the same book. "That's... because I am him. So now you recognise me? Yes, Tony Stark. Stark Industries. That's me."

He gave her posture and body language a once-over and sighed, shaking his head. "Relax, okay? Look, I know I have a reputation, but I'm with Pepper now. No more womanising even if you are cute." Tony, just shut up.

Cute? Cute? Bloody hell, she might have snapped and snarled had she not been so thoroughly flummoxed by every other aspect of this conversation. With a bounce of curls, Peggy shakes her head. "Only it's not. Not you. Stark Industries--"

Of course! Unexplained phenomena. Peggy ought to have known that the root of this problem is likely bad science. Blame Stark for somehow bringing a cadre of innocents here. Her lower lip juts, and she demands: "Where's Howard?"

Tony blinked blankly for a moment, thrown for another loop. Not him? But then she said that name and all the pieces seemed to fall into place more or less.

Yep, everyone always blames a Stark. It's not always his fault. If he'd known she was mentally blaming him, he would have gone on the defensive, but instead, he just shook his head trying to follow her question.

"Wait, I look that much like my dad?" He took in her appearance again, looked her over thoroughly. She'd said her name was Peggy... He thought hard, trying to remember anything he could of his father and mumbled a name under his breath. "Carter. Peggy Carter. This is so far from possible..." It was his turn to take a step back, closing off entirely in his demeanour. "D-December '91..." He began but aborted the thought quickly, looking away. "He's not here unless he fell out of whatever temporal rift sucked you here too."

Dad. Howard was -- Peggy swallowed hard, already acutely aware that this place (this whole situation) had a great many more hang-ups to it than what first met the eye. But to hypothesize about Howard having a son: grown and abrasive in his own right...God, it defied all rational thought. Earlier that day, she'd been invited to accept that some portion of Steve still lived on. And now she had to wrestle with the prospect of her dear friend Howard...what? Settling down? Having a family? Raising a boy to be what this man was now?

She nodded. Yes, she was Peggy Carter. And whatever December of 1991 had to do with anything, she couldn't say. All she was left with was to softly bemoan the absence of the smartest man she'd ever known: "I'm afraid not. I haven't seen him since -- well, if he were here I think we'd all know by now."

Eyes narrowed. Bloody hell, how old was this Stark?

So this was the Peggy he'd heard about from time to time. That was oddly nostalgic even if this whole thing was still pretty surreal. Like Cap, this was someone who had worked close and personal with his father. It was weird to meet people who knew Howard better than his own son.

"Would we? So he was the type to announce his presence? Makes sense." Tony was like that. He supposed he had to get it from someone.

-- Peggy felt instant turbulence when Howard's son betrays a gap in his own knowledge about the man. Ordinarily, it might be chalked up childish regard for a parent. But the Stark who stood across from her wasn't some knee-high boy. Surely, he knew of his father's bombastic personality. Surely, he know of...

Ice gripped her heart. Peggy pursed her lips and shook her head. Perhaps it was denial that prompted her to ask: "Don't tell me Howard mellowed in his old age?"

She sounded hopeful. She wanted Tony to tell her that the once dramatic young genius had grown old and sensible -- and that the question, on Tony's part, had nothing to do with the man not seeing his silver years.

"I wouldn't know. He wasn't exactly around much and when he was, he was... distant. Our butler, Jarvis, raised me mostly. Couple years after I graduated MIT... he uh," Tony was used to being forward, crass. He wasn't used to considering others' feelings or even acknowledging his own, so when he stumbled here for a moment, he decided to change the end of his sentence. "...we stopped speaking after that." Which wasn't a lie. He took in a short, quick, refreshing breath and exhaled sharply with a shrug. "So you'd know him a bit better than I would."

Speaking of being mellowed, Pepper had mellowed Tony considerably in their time together. A few years ago and this conversation would have been far less kind. He'd also discovered a few things about Howard since then that left Tony feeling a little mixed on the subject.

"--Mister Jarvis?"

She seized upon this name. Perhaps because she also cared deeply for the man in question -- or else because it allowed her a distraction from the fraught subtext of what Tony nearly explained about Howard and his paternal absences. Peggy understood the weight behind the word 'distant', and she could curse the man in question for behaving so pursuant to his nature. But a mention of Jarvis brought a sudden nebulous smile to her face.

"That man is loyal to your family to an absolute fault, I'm afraid. And yet what a good man he is. What I wouldn't give to have his support in this minor crisis as well, Mister--" Mister Stark? Bizarre, really, to afford any Stark that level of detachment. She pressed her lips together. She tested out the proper name. "Tony."

No. That wouldn't do. Not at all.

The slightest hint of a brightening to Tony's mood sparked in his dark eyes when Peggy showed recognition of Jarvis. He smirked lightly. "You knew Jarvis? Well that almost makes you family." A pause and the smirk flickers slightly playful. "I'm sorry." He added. "No one should be cursed with such a fate." More teasing at his own expense.

He nodded his approval when she called him Tony, much preferring that to the inevitable 'Mister Stark' that had been about to slip out. She didn't work for him, so the formality wasn't necessary. "Yeah, it'd be nice to have him around again right about now." Well, either Jarvis at this point... "He was a good man. Always picked up the pieces after dad's brief visits." Always coddled Tony when Howard upset him and, at the time, Tony thought he was just making excuses for his father. Now, he wasn't so sure.

"Yes. Well. Howard had a knack for convincing others to solve his problems for him."

Burned bridges had been well rebuilt between herself and Howard. It would have been impossible to talk to him over the radio and coax him into flying back to the landing field had she not felt a fair shred of affection for the tycoon. And yet she didn't shy away from displaying a little bit of bitterness in her words. Howard had still used her and sullied her better nature in the process. The sin was forgiven, if not forgotten. But!

"--And I count Mister Jarvis as a dear friend. I know the lengths to which he'd go for you family. For me, as well, I'm honoured to say.'

Edwin Jarvis had put a great deal on the line for Peggy Carter. She may never be capable of repaying him for that kindness.

This was something he didn't think he'd ever get and he wasn't quite sure he wanted it, but the opportunity to truly learn about his father was standing in front of him, making him feel some sense of fondness. He caught himself as his expression softened, almost betraying that feeling before he brought back his carefree guise and cleared his throat.

"Good ol' dad. He left me a video reel asking me to solve one of his problems. Solving it actually saved my life, so I can't say I don't owe him for that knack."

"There aren't too many people around like Jarvis. He was something special."

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( OPEN ) GAME START.

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(I'm so sorry, Peggy.)

( it's alright; she's used to it. )

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Sorry about the huge delay.

it's all good. c:

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