Scene #8199: Winter Holiday

Owner	Pose
Tony Stark	For the world, it begins with several events that normally herald the bi-yearly apocalypse fended off by the many heroes of the Avengers' Earth: The activation of several of the Avengers from Paladins duties to handle it. Steve Rogers and Tony Stark leave to commit their full attention to a conflict over a cube that had an ill history within the multiverse: the Space Stone, formerly encased in the cosmic cube known as the Tesseract, formerly used by the Nazi organization HYDRA in an attempt to dominate the world. The Space Stone, formerly in SHIELD's hands for various semi-legitimate world government purposes, had rendered it and Loki to the Asgardians, and then the Asgardians had problems (when the Bi-Yearly Apocalypsii feature Thor prominently, it tends to bode ill for more than one realm). Ronan the Accuser, of the Kree Empire, had acquired the stone and, seeking to defeat the traitor to the Kree, Captain Marvel, had come to Earth to kick her ass. During the extended Kree invasion, the Avengers were very, very busy, and several wartime laws were enacted by the World Security Council, emerging from the fires of global catastrophe as a more united (and more authoritarian) front. With a very juicy movie budget, the Avengers, led by Captain Marvel at the fore, countered the power of the two cosmic stones and allowed an everyone-gets-a-piece beatdown notably featuring the arrival of the Xandar fleet in the aid of Humanity brought by the Guardians of the Galaxy at the last minute. It was a wonderful time last summer, but the winter brought dissent. For the subjects, it begins with a Paladins-alert band transmission, though not one that either recipient is probably expecting. Steve Rogers - Captain America - calls James and Lilian to JFK International Airport on the Friday before Christmas Weekend, in blizzarding upstate New York. A sleek Quinjet stealth superhero transport waits idling, behind him, as he stands with his thumbs in his belt, in full gear save for helmet. His shield rests attached to his back. Steve has seen better days, two days of stubble runs along his jaw, and his dirty brown-blond hair is raked back rather than parted. "Tony said if something went wrong to call some people." He begins, with a tired puff of a sigh his period. "You're who showed up. Who... I hope I can trust. Tony's gone off to Siberia, which isn't a problem, except. . ." Captain America very much dislikes these words, mealing around in his mouth uncertainly - if he speaks them, then he's not alone and he can't bear it all himself after that. His eyes look, deliberate, at James, and then Lilian. His eyes close with his exhale. "We're missing a stone again. And the last person that had it--" Tony.
James Bond	James arrives in a company car--the usual black Aston. The door closes behind him and the car proceeds, without a driver, someplace out of sight. In his hand, retrieved from the passenger seat, is a duffel bag. No doubt a change of clothes and some equipment are tucked inside--something more appropriate than the tailored grey three piece suit he's currently wearing. "Rogers," says Bond, professionally courteous. You look like hell. A glance towards the Quinjet, as Steve explains. "Then let's not waste any time. You can brief us on the way there."
Lilian Rook	Lilian has told a score of people already that her family does not celebrate Christmas. This is true. She has also told people that she, personally, hates the holiday. This is also true. And yet, she is still a sort of low grade pissed about being dragged out here that she doesn't even bother to fully hide; and that comes from a girl who can hide just about anything. The deep red SH-marked turtleneck sweater, and extra bag still half-full of newly purchased rice wine, probably has something to do with that. It also communicates, quite effortlessly, just how seriously she must be taking this, if she showed up on this notice at all. "Rogers. Ah, no wait, you preferred just Steven." greets Lilian. Her head tilts slowly one side, than the other, as if sorting a hundred different thoughts printed on marbles to shake out one to actually speak, upon which she chooses, "You look like shit." and entirely ruins Bond's professional man to man courtesy. "And you don't usually. What happened?" she asks, truly not having the slightest clue how males communicate on their invisible wavelength. The answer is quick and painfully Rogers-brand honest. Lilian sinks a tooth into her lip to keep her expression neutral. "A stone? One of those? After all that? With Strange too? What in god's name is--" She lets the rest of the air out at once, rather than wasting it on words, running her fingers back through her hair under the pin. "No. No, it's Stark. I'm certain there's a perfectly good reason for it, and like the man he is, he has simply decided that no one else needs to know. "
Tony Stark	Steve nods back to James, a wry smile. "James." He extends a hand for a warm handshake, always a fan of the earnest classics even in a crisis. "Siberia used to be a lot longer of a plane ride, it's amazing." "Steve." Rogers confirms to Lilian, extending the same hand for the same handshake, though the boyscout instinctually goes a little easier on the squeeze for Dame Rook. "One of those. The scary purple one, and the annoying blue one." He cavalierly sighs. "Shockingly, both terrible to get hit with." Wry humor. Lilian's absolute faith in Tony causes a sympathetic look out of the Captain, as he turns away. Moving to the jet at a strong walk, he steps up the ramp in two paces and plants a foot on the inside hinge, raises his hand to grab a hanging handhold, and turns back to make sure his two flight companions make it on-board. Last up the ramp, he reaches a hand over to a digital panel by the entry and toggles the door closed. "SHIELD hasn't had contact with Tony in thirty-six hours. We've not been able to confirm the Space Stone's location for about the same time," Dire, the Captain lifts to a moment of dry confusion. His eyes rise. "I've seen what these stones can do to people. Something changed when Ronan came to Earth. Tony was different." Steve pauses, moving to the front rather than standing there talking the whole time, and begins entering co-ordinates into the flight computer. Rogers continues, still grave, memory slowing him, and the quietly pausing way he tried to get the wording right. "He said that there was a reason, for everything. For why he came back." His hands move with as much practiced rote as any kind of direct entry. Until he gets to the map screen to type in peckingly S-I-B-E-R-I-A, and then pinches-and-zooms and selects a grid area. He definitely had to be taught. The jet begins automatically plotting a course to take off, a commercial jet being Unfortunately Delayed By Weather Conditions suddenly ahead as the jet taxis for immediate takeoff. Steve winces anyway. Lilian gets spoken to a little more, as Captain America tries to find himself to, as far as the man was aware, the only woman of any kind that Tony Stark actually showed any interest in after what had all happened. "Lilian-" It's personal names now. "We haven't been able to get a hold of Doctor Strange either. It's why we're flying as blind as we are. Carol" Danvers, Captain Marvel. "-is off-planet, trying to get a handle of the other Stones so we don't have a repeat of last summer. "You both got here as quickly as you could, which is why I waited. The World Security Council made a personal request to me to not have an international incident or an alien invasion people have to evacuate for on Christmas, and I'm trying to keep Santa's job easy." "We're going to get Tony back, and the missing Stone." Steven Rogers cracks a smile. "Home in time for Christmas, even if Tony's making terrible surprise holiday plans for us all. Well." "Taped baseball stays taped, so it'll keep."
Tony Stark	SIBERIA, NOT TOO LONG LATER. . . The Quinjet cuts through the banks of white mist and diamond dust hanging over Siberia, angling in on a seemingly-blank dark cliff curtained and draped in quartz ice grey and powder snow white. Closing, what seems to be a dark fissue is actually two massive camouflage doors that have been breached or pushed open, curled inward from the impact of some great force. Closer to the entrance, all around the icy facility are wrecks and ruins of bipedal mechanical drone-frames, more skeletal than Tony's signature line, all featuring prominent asymmetrical claw-attachments on one arm, if intact. Several such claws smoke in the ground, melting dark pools around themselves with a perpetual 'heat' and giving lasting pockmarks to the icemelt over tarmac. The large, multi-story door inside emits a detectable radiation signature, which is picked up by the Quinjet on final approach, touching down with the nose facing the door (and the automatic weapons live and tracking for threats). "Exoenergy-" Even Steve uses the term when it's all Tony will call the stuff. Sometimes you give because it isn't worth the fight. Plus, that's what it's labelled on the screen. The engineer had an opinion. "-readings are coming from inside." There's plenty of radiation around from the claws and previously active battle now iced and snowed over, as well, but that's less interesting. On the screen, though! "Do you have cold weather gear? If you do, suit up, otherwise..." He isn't talking to 'his' team, so he just nods. "Let's go." Cap heads to the ramp, pulling a blue-white winter helmet off a rack in the jet's gantry area. The other two are welcome to carry on, but Captain America makes a direct path out of the jet and towards the massive Siberian compound-doors.
Lilian Rook	Contrary to ninety five percent of woman one can meet in this field, Lilian receives Steve's handshake as softly as he probably subconsciously expects. Her eyes flick up from his hand to his face, and a little bit of her icy semi-frown thaws away, apparently more than content to experience a little taste of Captain America's legendary sense of chivalry. "What a coincidence." she says. "I've been in and out of Siberia lately myself. The cities are surprisingly nice, but the region as a whole is bloody miserable." Lilian smiles. "If that's where we're headed, I don't blame him for not phoning back." Tension-moderating levity interspliced with honesty. "Ah, but beg pardon, would you mind telling me more about Ronan? I'm not unfamiliar with the concept of power you can hold in your hand and the costs of doing so, but those 'stones' never quite struck me as that sort of thing. What do you mean by 'different'?" asks Lilian. A very different sort of miniscule frown creeps back onto her lips. "Please understand that I'm asking politely out of respect for your habitual honesty. It takes a bit of effort not to find out 'the other way'. I want to hear it from you. The words you choose, Steven." Her eyes lose their foothold on his face, and slide inexorably past his looks at the mention of Strange. "I know." she says. "He said it would be a long time. I, personally, plan to be alivve that long. But I understand." Lilian takes most of the ride in oscillating quiet, spending a great deal of it in episodes of half-waking meditative unresponsiveness; the look that belongs to the slightly eerie opposite counterpart of the TV psychic. When she hears the word 'exoenergy' though, Lilian suddenly wears a small, nostalgically pained smile, and murmurs the words "Boat ghosts." just loud enough to hear. Then, upon being asked a direct question, it's all business. She practically bolts up out of her seat. Her sweater is stripped and stuffed into her bag, revealing the sleeveless white blouse and subtly cracked swordfighter's physique for just long enough to say "If you lose these, I'll destroy Manhattan myself for Christmas." like she means it, and then condense her henshin out of the requisite particles of black-gold matter and light, putting on her very own super suit with its iconic black antler and gold lily. "I'll manage." says Lilian, oddly taking her original messenger bag with her before sliding down the exit ramp.
James Bond	Lilian piercing through the invisible walls of Male Bonding causes a smile to spread across the secret agent's face as he shakes hands with Steve. Inside the jet, he waits for takeoff before standing from his seat. "Well, here's hoping 'Santa' returns the favor. I've peeked under the tree and I'm rather unsatisfied." There's a pause, as he rifles through his bag, looking for a moment over his shoulder. "Do you suppose 'different' means 'compromised?' ...Look away, Lilian. Or don't." The duffel bag is unzipped, a coathanger procured and hung upon a handhold. Bond's clothes are shed and replaced one at a time with winterized tactical gear, leaving the three-piece and tie neatly put away on the hanger, with his dress shoes placed in an empty seat nearby. SIBERIA Bond's preferred pistol sits in a shoulder holster. Today, it's a sidearm--playing second fiddle to a black carbine that's like a shorter, more compact form of a quite ubiquitous marksman rifle Steve is likely familiar with. Bond affixes a suppressor, then pulls back an ambidextrous charging handle. Down the exit ramp and into the biting cold, Bond slips on a knit cap and files in behind Cap. "These don't look like Stark's work," he says, stepping over one of the drones. "Design's too aggressive."
Tony Stark	The path through the snow is easy in gear. "Those claw drones keep popping up in HYDRA bases. Whenever we investigate them, we find the name 'Omega', but no context. SHIELD hasn't put a pin in it - but their claws are radioactive, and kill most people on contact. Nasty pieces of work." Captain America explains, pulling his shield off his back while he paces at a covered forward jog. "Ronan the Accuser was. . ." Steve has to explain simply, Lilian's 'I could read your mind' having drawing only the lightest quirk of the brow. "The Kree are a complicated group of aliens the politics are difficult." He doesn't know. "But a very strong. . . blue. . . large man appeared on Earth, with a new Infinity Stone. We thought the Tesseract was the key to unlimited power, but-" Captain America is forced to purse his lips and sigh again. "-they made rocks complicated, Lilian." Steve Rogers complains, and continues. "Ronan believed that Carol Danvers was a traitor to the Kree Empire, because they lost some. . ." Captain America is forced to explain boat ghosts and simply does not have Tony's gift for the airt. ". . . magic. . . bracelets. But not Asgardian ones. Space. . . Bracelets." Captain America continues, explaining the complexities of the Deep Avengers Lore with someone who missed quite a few movies. "The whole galactic community came together to stop Ronan from wielding the Space Infinity Stone, which he stole from the Asgardians, and the Power Infinity Stone, which he used to--" A distant look. "Make his hammer more dangerous?" A wince, sympathetic for the ache of ribs. "Really dangerous hammer. Blasts. Direct, for a complicated rock." After a moment, he laments. "I didn't pay attention during the doctor meetings, it's not worth the fight if I'm right or wrong, so I just hit people and shout." The path into the facility is dark, no functioning lights on but enough ambient from the outside to see at least into the entryway for. To either side are enormous scaffolding-sets. Suitable for rolling missiles out of large racks, or things of about the same size to great intercontinental cold war era rockets, the locked-in loading arms mostly hold nothing, with a single bay at the far back having a large dirty glass tank locked into position, with a bolted-down chair at the center, scoured to bare metal skeleton surrounded by broken glass. Thick signs of battle warp the area, a full arsenal clashing and still-warm. Recent fighting. Distantly, the bubbling-crackle of cosmic power can be faintly heard, diffused through rock and metal and broken doors. The next area, a greatroom with high ceilings full of tangled cables among reinforced metal spoke-pylons, a large central tube - shot through all in the center so a large zone of empty air splits another broken-glass tube top and bottom. Panels and machinery and ancient computers are torn and laser cut and smashed, great cold war era capacitors that once held great power thrown haphazardly through mountain-facing walls and lodged there, where the structure didn't turn to metal flinders and hot scrap to rain down, perhaps hours, perhaps minutes ago. In this room, where Captain America stops and sucks in a breath, is one of Iron Man's extra-over armors in gold and carbon black. Smoking and hulled out, the armor stands, slouched forward with one remaining arm planted into the ground in a standing fall-to-rest. From the empty socket, and the headplate, metal smoke that burns thick and black and rippled with veins of blue-shifted glimmers in the air. Lilian would know it from her studies of the material Tony had entrusted to before - burning Vibranium, superheated to ignition temperature. The nigh-invincible material smokes like abused circuitboard and so much scrap.
Tony Stark	"Tony designed that one to contain an Infinity Stone's power for when we needed as many people as possible able to bear a stone." Steve adds, shocked. "He's actually using one." He makes quick time through the area after a cursory check goes to confirm that Tony's not still inside. He barely gets to the semi-obviously abandoned wreck of mecha-hulk when a terrible ker-THOOOM ripples through the air. Audible and potent, nearby. Steve Rogers is shaken, throughout, spooked to an increasing degree while he traverses the surroundings. If Lilian looks - if Bond considers - it has the exact character of a ghost he had been hunting. One he didn't have time to spare for now. Pain, and memory, and the surge forward. "We might not be too late. Let's go!" Captain America shouts, running towards the sound. THE SOUND comes from a full-blown red banner and carpet swastika-squid draped great hall that was once a training area, with bloodstained floors, and renovated into a science criminal's throne area. The whole area suffers the lightest fighting, largely smashed columns and blasted back and side walls. There are three figures. A giant, the match of the mecha-hulk in cold skeletal silver and plated chrome exoarmor, with a glowing red gloved right arm, each finger a wicked claw, wreathed in purple Kirby Crackle, thick dots of energy wreathed in a corona of might. On the back of the glove is a purple stone - the Infinity Stone of Power. The mecha-giant has a helmet that ostensibly contains a head in it, but what is more notable is below it. In the chest is a second stone - a surpassing-yellow gem at the solar plexus. Below, at the center of the mecha-giant's barrel chest is a screen, and that screen has a face in digital green, with red 'eyes' filled in with angry slats. The giant towers above the standing red and gold of Iron Man, armor worked with searingly blue spiderwebs of breathing cracks that spread from the front-center of its chest array, where the primary reactor is back. In the clear back half of a fight, Iron Man struggles with the third figure for a moment, a wheeze-whine coming from the staggered power suit. Hidden slightly behind Iron Man is a dark-masked caucasian male, this mask one with black goggles visible through it. Wearing a black tank top in the middle of the Siberian Winter, even inside, the man wrenches a silvered cyber-arm free of the front of Iron Man's armor, a burning and Kirby Crackling second (third?) power stone sending new spiderwebs of breathing-widening cracks through the cyber-arm all the way to the shoulder. The Winter Soldier howls, throwing back his head and shoulders and screams as pain becomes his universe. And then, he stabilizes, head lolling. Tony falls backwards, barely active, armor gutted. Captain America shouts, but, you're faster.
James Bond	The facility isn't unfamiliar, even if Bond hasn't been to this exact one. It wasn't so long ago that he was skulking through places like this, with racks like these very much in use. His concerned frown is visible in the dim light as the broken tank grows closer. His boot testingly brushes aside broken glass, and he casts a concerned glance to both Steve and Lilian. Another room, and another, larger tube, equally as broken. This one looks like it was broken from the outside. "Probably still nearby," notes Bond quietly, nodding towards the smoke. Whatever other thoughts he might provide are interrupted and overridden by training the moment he hears the much closer energy discharge. He tucks into a roll, checks sight lines around a bulky computer. 'Let's go' is followed half-consciously, eyes flicking over briefly to spot a haunted expression. Following behind, M6 shouldered and ready, he crosses the threshold into the fight. A quick scan picks out three figures. Stark and two more. By the time Steve has shouted, Bond has affixed and primed an underbarrel attachment. A telling 'thoonk' reverberates through the hall. The grenade sails through the air towards the less obviously human of the two hostiles, exploding into a rapidly expanding foam that quickly dries and hardens. It won't hold for long. Not with the size of that thing. It doesn't have to--only long enough for his superhuman sprint to get him to Tony, and for the suppressed bark of his M6 to get the other assailant running for cover.
Lilian Rook	'but their claws are radioactive, and kill most people on contact.' "Why in God's name?" Lilian whispers to herself, trudging through the snow, not sounding in the slightest bit Christian about it. "If they're mass-manufactured by your obnoxiously resilient super-Nazis, what exactly do they need that for? A big gun also kills most people on contact. The only reason I can think of to try and radiation poison someone is--" she glances at Steve, but doesn't stop talking. "--fighting people they don't expect the weapon itself to work on, but are happy to trade the expensive robots for the later kill." '-they made rocks complicated, Lilian.' "Don't look at me. Your generation invented collect-the-whole-playset dynamics, you know. You'd have been fifty something for the matched sets of colourful objects with silly names craze." 'I didn't pay attention during the doctor meetings, it's not worth the fight if I'm right or wrong, so I just hit people and shout.' Lilian does her very best to laugh sympathetically. "Deep down, it doesn't really get better when you do pay attention. Gripping those specifics and unravelling them into their constituent threads is often useful tactically, but the people who pay the most attention don't typically intend to use them. They're more the sort who need to be constantly reassured that they won't be the bad guy next." She pauses a moment to consider as the darkness encroaches, summoning her will-o-wisp lights with a sparking fingersnap. "I think you understand it. On a more gut level, perhaps. That being the good guy and doing the right thing is the company you keep and the cause you follow, more than it is any of the fiddly little bits that change from crisis to crisis. If you have to hang on every word and chew it up in your brain, that means you aren't certain about where you are, who you're with, what you're fighting for. It's fine, I think, to decide that 'someone is invading my home and about to kill a lot of people' is enough. It's difficult to find a more axiomatic reason to fight than that." 'He's actually using one.' Lilian is already busy examining the suit up close. It doesn't take her long to simply utter a sigh of compound relief; first, when she sees the hole that indicates Tony is clearly not in it, and second, when Steve sounds shocked instead. "Good. I was a tiny bit worried, when I heard 'exo-energy'. There were many, worse possibilities. Using the magic rock because he already had a plan and a suit for it is still archetypally Tony." she says, apparently forgetting to use his last name in the moment. ker-THOOOM Lilian looks up. She glances to Rogers. Her expression tightens. "Steven, why are you . . ."
Lilian Rook	'Captain America shouts, but, you're faster.' "Yeah." Lilian says to no one in particular. -----[stop]----- Lilian takes a deep breath, looks once around the room. Her gaze lingers hesitantly on the huge infinity-stone-studded robot (?), then finally settles on the cybernetic stranger currently frozen in the act of taking that power from Iron Man himself, and she whispers "Let's try not to make myself a liar within barely two minutes." to herself. She still has her bag on her. Normally it'd be three standard tabletop turns to retrieve, activate, and plant the prepared runestones from it, but Lilian has never respected timing rules in her life, and sliding beneath notice with Bond's grenade frozen in the air, properly sanctified chunks of primordial iron lay noiselessly at the giant's feet. "Let's see about you." Lilian says to the black-masked and silver-armed statue, like a rubber ducky at her desk. Despite her thoughtful tone, she is anything but leisurely in her brisk and efficient motions. "Bond can have you fast enough." she says first, planting her boot to the slumped over Iron Man's back to push him forward into the path of James' sprint. "And let's do a bit better than suppressive fire." she adds next, drawing out black metalloid ribbon and using the moment where the mystery assailant's muscles are slack to quickly cross it over his chest and throat, and loop both elbows together twice, all so she can physically grab him herself, in a classic restraint hold from behind, and turn him towards the bullets, fully bracing herself for the moment he gains his strength back. -----[start]----- The foam grenade explodes an instant before the roughshod splinters of columns and wall around the giant are scraped away and gathered up in stony clouds. Destroyed --and thus unworked-- stone snaps together as if by magnetic attraction, forming obnoxiously resilient, though still mundane, pillars of rock, in every single place that the giant probably doesn't want its personal bubble to be filled; at least buying a few more precious seconds for the foam to expand. Iron Man mysteriously lurches forward. The assailant is turned away to bare his chest to the hungry muzzle of the carbine; at least for an instant. Black cable and armour strains against his cybernetics, the former opportunistically siphoning away what energy and willpower it can over time.
Tony Stark	'Steven, why are you . . .' Steve Rogers's shouders tense in motion. A deep well of tangled, tortured, true friendship that was on the line. A second. Captain America lags behind a step as James is the faster man at the draw, the stickyfoam grenade bursting over a - rather surprised! - digital face that is immediately gummed up, foam expanding in a cloud behind the crackling Winter Soldier. Earthen pillars reshape on the spot into binding, gumming works, as binding points are stuck up and locked down in every way. A giant, even a giant wielding absolute Power, required 'leverage', and for a moment, it was denied that initiative force. Even in the agony-throes of cosmic power, the Winter Soldier's battle programming brings his humming cybernetic arm rotating up and couching broadly across his side, neck, and vitals, the fanning articulation of silvered plates purging heat with a Krackle-thick exhaust. James Bond is a moving, visible, active target that uses weapons the Winter Soldier understands. He wrenches his arm into place, blooming with a shade of absolute blue that blooms near-black and bubbly-dark at the edge. In its wash, Lilian's pace through space leaves a hazy imprint in the air, like a dander outline drifting through the air for the help of an invisible audience. But the Winter Soldier can't react to stopped fucking time. Wrong universe rock. Lilian's enhanced strength wrestles from an immediately advantageous position and there is still a struggle, the Soldaten programmatically waist turning to correct and adjusting the impossibly powerful for its weightclass cybernetic into a better alignment. Bullets ping across the surface of his metal arm and bury themselves in a ballistic vest underlayer to his top that scores dire hits. Draining Willpower from the Winter Soldier is drawing from a frozen lake, under which is a man - James Buchanan Barnes - desperately screaming for freedom while weeping for the things a man with his face has done. A face-taken screaming lifetime of moments, and every moment is the cold execution of tragedy. The lake is frozen, but yet Lilian draws, and she understands the absolute ice of executing on a mission like a program, perfectly, flawlessly. She understands it, most likely. She knows. Draining Energy from the Winter Soldier is bypassed. Lilian drinks absolute blue dots, gets tingles that jump through bone, and sees Space for an instant. For a moment, everything is stars. She understands it, most likely. But it is a rush. The Soldier closes his fist around the stone and disappears from Lilian's grip in a collapsing pouf of vacuuming atmosphere as he ~ba-mf~'s across the room to where a pillar had been, but no longer is. Dropping to a shielded crouch he takes aim at James and whips up a pistol from a leg holster to return fire. The bark of his side arm pops dull against the crackle emitting from the cosmic power stone blazing in his closed palm. The extremely enhanced arm takes the stone's power better than flesh, but it's still connected directly to the man without a buffer-layer or intended device. The giant, behind, strains and heaves against the foam and stone, raised death claw in triumph stymied by thick foam goop and layers of rock. The fingers struggle, but there is a lot of bought time! Time for the VILLAIN to open their PIE-HOLE, dear reader!
Tony Stark	"Ha! Aha! Haha!" The giant laughs, bellowingly, airlessly and without need of breath, a digital eruption of sneering victorious triumph. "Hahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! IS THIS IT, CAPTAIN AMERICA? You make it so easy! You Americans always letting us win!" "You truly are pathetic. Bringing Stark's pathetic reject of a replacement daughter and Ian Fleming's best idea of a 'man that is cool' won't stop me," He parenthetically adds his name to his rant for the new people, as branding is ever the most important battle goal. "-Arnim Zola," His rant continues. "-it won't stop Baron Omega, and it will not - it will NEVER - STOP HYDRA! I know all, see all, and your minds are open before me!" The yellow gem on Zola's chest glows through the sticky. "I am the master-mind! I am the supreme intelligence!" He digitally howls, drunk on power and cosmic rays and the raw force of two taps into the local universe currently integrated into his body. Mind and Power together did not instantly grant eloquence. "It was trivial to manipulate Stark, and all of you! Here, failure-heroes, to experience the last moments of false history!" Captain America is second to Tony's side, bringing his shield up as cover for James and Tony and deflecting the suppressing bullets from the Winter Soldier while he checks Iron Man's vitals and daringly touches his gloved fingers into the shattered chest reactor's de-powered central array to feel around for the damage while he keeps his eyes on Zola and the Winter Soldier. He has to use all of his senses to get a handle on the real situation - the health of his friend, the usefulness of his weapons, and the enemies right before him. "I don't know what you're talking about," Steve begins. "-but I can tell you're with HYDRA, which means we have to stop you. Whatever you're planning, with those stones, it won't go the way you want it to!" "BOLD WORDS FROM A MAN WITH NO STONES!" Zola challenges. Steve rolls his eyes behind his shield. "Just the two I was born with, Nazi putz. Figure we're square actually." Cap grunts under his breath. Tony gasps, faceplate popping off of his armor. "Steve, hey, you made it-" He begins, chuckling into a pained gasp. "Good, you ignored me clearly leaving on my own. Patch me." Captain America balks. "Stay down, Tony." Steve councils. "We're here now, it's not over. You need to stay down, I've seen what happens to people who use those things." Tony Stark coughs, burned lungs not really cooperating. "Come on, Steve, just get me up." "I can't. It matters." Tony looks down, collar and helmet complicating catching Steven Rogers in the eye. In James's. Tony Stark cannot stay down even if it kills him. Zola, the stoppered giant, who had held frustratingly still for long and giving moments, finally rotates his mechanically-enhanced radiation-death-claw hand at the wrist and shatters the bindings, closing a fist and building power and leverage. Opening the hand and dragging down the crackling claw through the front of the sticky grenade's stopperage, he closes his fist, and strikes ring finger down on the inside of his Death Claw palm in a metal-click of a snap. The foam explodes off of Zola, freeing the giant completely in an instant of power-bloom. "SOLDATEN! BRING ME THE PROPER HISTORY! BRING ME TIME ITSELF! BRING ME A HISTORY! OF HYDRA!" Howls the truly maddened Zola, mechanical belly-face in a spectacled too-smug grin and digitized chin. Levelling the radiation hand 'down' the room, Zola hurls a nebula of electric crackle that bursts and sears and burns as raw destructive sizzle-sauce, pulsed through by curling bolts of bright purple lightning. A harm-power that wished to ground itself in the harmable. The Winter Solder's cybernetic hand snaps his fingers, and the Winter Soldier disappears. Zola's plan was probably to do this all along. Now he's just buying time as a telporter fetches his prize.
James Bond	FOUR YEARS AGO MI6 - "Estate" Bond sits at a long conference table, in the bowels of an English country house serving as one of several worldwide nerve centers for his organization. Outwardly, it has all the trappings of its presentation, from a gate guard to 'waitstaff' to 'guests' on the green, engaged in a bit of equestrian sport. All of them, from the chefs in the kitchen, to the groundskeepers, to the men on horseback, know a litany of killing techniques, are trained to report anything even slightly unusual. Here, in this conference room, everyone at the antique dining table is focused on the northern wall, where a projector displays grainy slides. The light of the projector gleams softly on a coat of arms for a family that never existed. At the head of the table, surveying everyone before her, sits a woman with hair the color of hickory and eyes like a frigid, becalmed ocean. A lit cigarette smolders slowly between two of her fingers. "Next item--another bit of flotsam has washed ashore from Project Paperclip," she announces cooly, as the slide changes to a grainy photo of a man in street clothes. His hair is shoulder length, his eyes at once haunted and driven. He's clearly used to traveling in public in the surveillance age, wearing clothes that occlude his profile and minimize the amount of his face which can be seen. Given his body language in-frame, it's likely that the picture was only captured becuase he had no better route to take. Even then, the sea of humanity around him does a good job at keeping most of him obscured. "He looks a bit young for that," notes a 00 at the table. Alec Trevelyan. "Cryogenic stasis. Accidental, but effective," M replies. "Real name James Buchanan Barnes, world of birth Earth, variant Origin. Served with Captain Steve Rogers during World War Two. MIA, presumed dead at the time. Picked up by the now-defunct KGB subdivision 'Red Room,' a super-soldier program inspired by the success the Americans had with Rogers." She takes a moment to pull on her cigarette, as everyone at the table, Bond included, flips through prepared manila folders. Bond, in particular, searches for associations with Paperclip--the Soviets had nothing to do with that. He spots the link on the third page. A paperclipped photo of a weaselly little man with beady eyes and glasses, putting on a show of being afraid. But the eyes can't hide a certain smugness, despite the affectation. "Arnim Zola," he reads aloud. "Scientist affiliated with Nazi organization HYDRA. Granted amnesty by the American government after the war, shuffled into the nascent SHIELD initiative..." Looking up, across the table at M, "You think there's a connection here." More on the next slide, garnered from one of this world's most invasive surveillance entities. A dot-matrix printed map of the world, with points of interest marked out. Cold War missile silos, monitoring stations, some of them familiar, some not--all showing signs of activity. Test transmissions not cut off in time, power grids going momentarily live. They've been careful--but not so careful that the most paranoid empire of another world can't catch a rare mistake or fluke.
James Bond	Taken individually, the incidents could be presumed the actions of world governments repurposing old and forgotten things. But the timeframes, supplemented with newspaper clippings of terror attacks included in each folder, tell a different story. "Zola wasn't the only one to jump ship to SHIELD," M concludes. "And now we're very possibly looking at a resurgence, armed with the resources and technology of Origin Earth's most widespread intelligence and intervention agency. Barnes is to be considered a HYDRA asset until proven otherwise. 003 has returned from a fact-finding assignment in Moscow, and will provide more information on Barnes specifically. Mr. Rodriguez?" "Thank you, ma'am," says a blonde-haired man with a boyish face. Just like everyone 00 at this table, Tiago's use of the word bends close to 'mum.' His accent is a half-point between a Londoner's English and Madrid Spanish. "The aim of the Winter Soldier program was to do, with mental suggestion and cybernetic augmentation, what the Americans had with Rogers. Fear and hesitation conditioned away, chaotic engagements rendered into sight lines and firing angles." He makes a few tasteless pop-pop motions with a finger-gun, which earns him a commanding raised eyebrow from M. "You'll be fighting a computer, more so than a man. But computers do have an off-switch. Theoretically," he adds with a raised index. "There's no indication it was ever in need of use--and if he is a HYDRA asset, they may have wiped it clean. Consider his suspension phrase a last resort, if you're unable to neutralize him by other means." Bond's eyes skim across the folder. A series of words--meaningless to him, but holding immense, invisible power over the man paperclipped to the dossier before him.
James Bond	NOW Bullets rip through the air where Bucky Barnes stood. It's Barnes--no one else could provoke that kind of response in Steve Rogers. Like he'd seen a ghost. A piece of hardened foam embeds itself in the wall. He's gone. Bond's slide across the floor saves him from intercepting it with his head. The M6 is pointed towards the howling scientist, the fire selector set to full automatic, the trigger squeezed as he careens across the floor, sliding behind one of the stone pillars. But he'll be back after he's run Zola's errand. Bond's watch fires a grapnel at the ceiling that yanks him first onto his feet, then into the air, pummeled by the last of the debris but avoiding the more direly dangerous energy blasts. Zola will run his mouth as long as he thinks he has the upper hand. I can't keep him out forever. If he's got the Mind stone, or some other way to actually 'know all and see all,' he's got enough to trump Bond's counterintrusion training. Eventually. But long enough, absolutely. Bond swings along the line, releasing at the apex of his jump to send himself flying towards one of the HYDRA banners. His combat knife rips into it, slowing his descent. Let him keep thinking that. He won't fight half as hard if he thinks he's exulting in some inevitable victory. Energy strikes the spot just above him, sets the banner to burning, molten fabric eating holes into itself until the whole thing drops, and he drops the rest of the way with it. The spent M6 is clipped magnetically to his chest. Sidearm out, as he falls, muzzle flashing as the covert pistol barks its report on the way down. I just have to say something pathetic enough not to give it away. "I think it's hilarious, the way you talk to me," Bond fires back, hitting the ground with a roll that places him behind a blown-out computer terminal for a quick reload of the M6. "You wouldn't say that to me in public. I'm in great shape. I wear the best clothes, eat at the best restaurants and I spend time with the best-looking people. You're pathetic, Zola." He's biding time. Waiting for the moment when Barnes returns, using his conditioning and stamina to keep himself moving from cover to cover, keeping his gadgets under wrap until then. Let him think the guns are all I've got. The moment Barnes returns, Bond is on him--a taser dart fired from his watch, with just enough charge to stun him for a precious few seconds. His boots stamp against the floor in a frantic sprint. A leap carries his knee into Barnes' center of mass, rubber soles skidding across the floor for one to plant itself between the Winter Soldier's legs for a rapid takedown, palm slammed into his solar plexus the moment both boots are planted. An elbow to the jaw, hands checking Bucky's arms with rapid swipes to keep his analytic, fearless mind guessing, stop him drawing and limit the movement of his biggest tool. All the while, he recites, from memory. "Udovletvorennost'! Bezuprechnyy! Sem'desyat odin! Sumerki! Obogrevatel'! Shest'! Zlokachestvennyy! Vyyezd! Nul'! Lokomotiv!"
Lilian Rook	The giant is briefly immobilized. She has the cyborg. The bullets are already here. Everything is going to plan. And then Lilian's vision is filled with deep, vertiginous blue. Somewhere in the same heartbeat, she notices that the man is not just wrestling against her, but actively succeeding. His arm is moving. Powering through. She hears the telltale sound of jacketed slugs spanging from angled metal, and compresses her profile behind him by reflex, pulling the line harder and using the stranger as a living shield without thought. It occurs to her, when the next synapse fires, that she knew roughly how strong Tony Stark robotics are, and her mistake was assuming this enemy would be far weaker. Even before factoring in the Stone, which she knows nothing about and Stark himself has not been so kind to inform her. Feelings like 'sympathy', 'worry', 'anger', . . . 'fear?' --no, not a chance-- had leapt to the forefront of her mind, when she had come across the man she knows and respects, beaten within an inch of his life by these two. But as she cracks the floor under her not-quite sabatons, digs her weight in, winds the metal string tighter around ehr shaking gauntlets, and tries to wrestle with the cyborg for a few more futile seconds, Lilian begins to start feeling things like 'confusion', 'hurt', and 'suspicion'. Just before the essence of space --deep, vast, infinite space, and the three dimensions in which all things that exist are reduced to sublimely identical coordinates-- rushes through her linkage, and she rocks forwards into the empty space left over, action twisting to stay on her feet whilst her hands both smoke with blue crackling energy residue. "Steven! Colour codes?!" Lilian barks out, as Captain America rushes onward to cover. "I count three! Location on assets four and five?! Come on! Give me something!" Her hand flies to her pendant, jingling free of her armour suit by some unknown path. She snatches it, clenched fisted, by finely engraved crisis habit. And then the giant breaks free. Booming, villainous laughter. Lilian calls out "Stark! Is--" 'Bringing Stark's pathetic reject of a replacement daughter' Her lips go still. Her eyes widen. Dilate. Focus. On him. On his face, not whatever she was thinking about. Something important. Zola is laughing evilly and laughing triumphantly and bantering with the heroes and shooting cosmic power from every robotic pore into the room; a walking disaster that calls for the entirety of the Avengers, on the cusp of a dire victory that they might already be too late to prevent without a second to waste, and when Lilian's mouth moves again, the only way she can finish that sentence is . . . "--that . . . true?"
Lilian Rook	She's nearly blown out of frame by the second, much more dangerous blast of energy; of purple power. Debris shatters on her shoulder, splintering amidst a splash of golden toku sparks, and spraying through empty air. She reappears once, right in Zola's field of view, moves as if to attack, and then blinks away from another crawling blast of cosmic lightning. And then she doesn't reappear again. Just out of view? Moving too fast? Behind him? Not even even in the room-- no, Stark is still there, right? §Let him keep looking for me, and give James his chance. Or let him forget I exist and watch James instead, and give me mine. Even if that stone really could read my mind, even if he can, he clearly doesn't know anything. I can take advantage of that. I know he knows nothing, because--§ Bond's taser dart teleports right under Barnes' guard. Lilian power slides in from off-frame, sweeping out his shins at Bond's approach, and body blocking a superhuman dodge or counter from the Winter Soldier with her braced arms from behind, throwing him into the former 007's combination attack. A magic circle from four rapid gestures and her open palm, slammed against the back of his shoulder; a shearing wave of shredding temporal distortion, aimed through human muscles rather than vibranium prosthetic. She frame-skip vaults over his back with that same hand, rolling over the much larger man's upper arm to get between Bond and Zola. §Getting to be someone's daughter for the first time just makes me want to fight even harder.§ Night Mist erupts from its glamered form into its full greatsword profile. Lilian grips it with both hands, and scarlet red light flows down its floral geometries. Whatever Zola throws at Bond in that moment, she is prepared to meet it with equal force. The words "Cleasanna Lilí Dubha!" promises it.
Tony Stark	Steven Rogers, faced with an impossible choice, goes with his gut, and reaches to unclip something from his belt and place it into the broken central reactor terminal he had felt out. Waves of energy pour over him, and again - once again - his back and side is scoured, oncoming, as a single disc of safety is ringed with still-human-enough vulnerability. With Tony slid away on the floor, Bond firing at Barnes, and Lilian engaged, Steve tries to react to what is going on without losing his head. Lilian asks for guidance. The context. "Strange has the Time Stone!" He confirms. "But we had a reality event-" Multi-property-line crossover events. "-and there was a Wizard Tony, with a second Time Stone!" Zola, a mechanical giant with enough cosmic power and bulk to trade hits with Stark Tech and win, is turned on by Lilian. Stark, struggling, regains suit power and immediately gasps as mechanical motion returns to important parts of the structure of his armor, compensating for several injuries. No longer helpless, it's still on Rodgers to explain while Iron Man gets his knees under him. Dry-lipped, Lilian faces her true 'first Avenger-level threat', one of the ones that counted, and asks her question. One of the ones that counted. With his armor re-activated, Tony Stark's answer comes as a barely-above rasp. "I wouldn't... ever say 'pathetic excuse'." Steve barrels on like it's not happening because camera cuts come at you fast and this is an action shot. "He said the second stone was too dangerous, and couldn't be used!" When the All Of Time cosmic object Wizard told you 'maybe not that one', it carried weight with Steve Rodgers. In the rear of the throne room as Lilian blazses golden and sparking in her armor, Zola relentlessly blasts away with the unlimited cosmic tap straight to All Power, only as directed as a hurricane of atomic knives or a cone of diffusing radioactive crackle. Closing to melee with the giant--
Tony Stark	A gate in space, a portal in crackling absolute blue, splits open and what comes from it is hell itself in barb and lash and momentary jumping zap and enervating beam and untouchable Thing. Lilian would know it as the precise feeling of seven hundred and seventy seven curses firing at once, all aimed at a daring thief. But the thief had the advantage of Space itself, and all of the haste of the devil. A machine who executed the mission flawlessly, even if the lake of ice was drawn thin, the Winter Soldier crossed out objectives with machine perfection. A gate opens, and what comes from it is awful, and what James Bond would know is that some lunatic just did a smash and grab at a museum that mattered. He came back very hot. Tumbling through the generated space-portal effect from a familiar-air'ed sanctum to the transformed Lilian, the Winter Soldier comes back with his clothes engulfed in open smoking flame. His cybernetic arm, holding two Infinity Stones in a carrying-closed grip among fusing armor-articulated fingers, is worked by two sets of breathing-burning veins of colored lights. Green lines fracture silvered metal, dripping glittering emerald like an unclean effluence from seeping wounds. The Soldaten tries to hold the power of something he Should Not and suffers greatly for it. The item in question, the corruped Time Stone of the crazed alternate 'Supreme Stark' that had appeared for what was at the time a portent of doom that had never come to pass, was a questionable artifact that had been entrusted to the local Time Stone-bearer and Sorcerer Supreme, Stephen Strange. Held in the Sanctum Santorum, and the order of Sorcerers, and the ancient Masters. It was as safe as safe could be. . . Except from more Stones. Convoluted, to move around the threat of the Doctor Stephen Strange, but when the biggest hammer of Time was required it was truly simple as well. Arnim Zola used the Winter Soldier to manipulate Iron Man and Captain America, two of HYDRA's greatest foes. With Tony's post-Ronan 'different' and erratic behavior leading him to trying to close a prophecy hammered into his skull, the Mind Stone's effect had brought all the others together for one, terrifying gambit. Failing, in multiple ways, the masked Winter Soldier is reduced to howling in burning agony, closing his arms around his chest and then throwing them wide-out, venting an open-mouthed scream that is lit from within. Panting and hyperventilating, the mask burning away from his face, his mind and focus narrowing to fulfill a single objective. The stone. Time. All of time, ill, malformed, twisted in some arcane way. Leaping and sizzling in his arm, the world narrows about the part, and the realms of possibilities expand. Words hang in the air like constellations, written in blazing Yellow on a background of soft, permeable-clay Orange.
Tony Stark	Udovletvorennost'! Bezuprechnyy! Sem'desyat odin! Sumerki! Obogrevatel'! They hang like a dipper, a spoon made of Russian, lines and bars and swooshes of language, chain links and shackles. The dipper of words scoops strangely into the floor, leaving water-ripples, and draws out other words, scintillating-psychadelic. A smug surgeon's tones. Familiar - Stephen Strange. "It's not what you do in one timeline. That's wizard business. It's what you do in every timeline, every universe. It's as simple as one moment, one decision." Storytelling, Strange relating to a tape recorder. "We met the Winter Soldier once before. Steven was there, as well. And in every universe where I'm Sorcerer Supreme, I ask for help from the stars before we leave." Sad, wistful. "Do you think every Sorcerer Supreme takes that mountain, the same way I do? To Siberia?" Time advances now only for Lilian in spurts of crushing turbulence, and for everyone else with each staggering footfall of the Winter Soldier. He contorts, as he tries to raise the stone and use it -- quit himself of it -- release himself from the curse he took with him. Miraculously, it leaves his hand, and goes airborne. It travels, and as it arcs in slowed motion, time is a molasses. Words, once again real to the air, fall in clatters of letters and tumbling perception as reality kaleidoscopes and tubes out to a point-towards and a point-away. Shest'! Arnim Zola's terrible Klaw reaches out to yet another stone to change history. Zlokachestvennyy! Captain America hurls his mighty shield. Vyyezd! Tony Stark aims a charged blast at the tumbling stone. Nul'! Lilian's sword sings a pure-felt violence. Lokomotiv! The world comes to a snap. And with a flash of absolute Blue, a scorched hand reappears in the mix, with a different will. Zola's voice screeches, electronic, modem-like, headsplitting tinnitus. "THE HISTORY OF--" The world goes black and lurches. The world goes white, and falling in a gentle snow. It is dark, like a forest. A noise has just occurred, loud, and there is a metal clicking and shifting as heat transfers take place. The smell of old, impure gasoline just after the lead was removed. In the very near distance, just down a dark forest road, a headlamp from a motorcycle is visible. The rider on the bike turns around, approaching the noise that just occurred. The engine of the motorcycle cuts. All timepieces read December 16, 1991. It is nearly midnight. TO BE CONTINUED ==>