| The Brits |
| Summary: | Pete Wisdom and Peggy Carter meet in a strange land. |
| Date: | 2017-02-02 |
| Related: | None |
| NPCs: | None |
| Scene Runner: | NA |
| Social/Plot: | Social |
| Players: |
 .. .. |
The night was young. Too young, for the average New Yorker. Only around eight PM. So not even the bars were full. Evening gym rats and folks walking dogs. The end-of-workday crowd is busy doing their thing. Which includes Pete, as he's headed away from Central Park, and the museum he was visiting. Probably the MET, or sommat. But he's headed east, towards a little park alongside the river. Carl Schurz park, to be exact. Just to try to get the hell away from the hustle and bustle of things, and maybe to ogle attractive women in running tights. It was cold. So running tights might be more common than running shorts.
Chalk that up to a win for Pete.
Well, Peggy isn't the average woman running fashionably these days. No, the wardrobe that Hellstrom had magiced into being for her tended towards her old fashioned tastes. So, in achingly old fashioned sweats, the woman is running in some efforts to clear her head of the struggles that she's been trapped through since she came here. The sweats have the old SSR logo on them — perhaps actual recreations of what she would have worn in basic training when they all made it back from the war. Daimon has an odd sense of humor like that. But in a city like New York, it's just another random sweat suit attached to a slightly too curvy to be fashionable brunette who is jogging her way throug the park. And a bit too determined to run JUST a bit faster than any man who is also jogging.
Leave it to someone who's been trained to recognize faces very well to notice something that may not be afoot, but is afeet! Wisdom had to doubletake. What Brit hasn't seen a photo of Peggy Carter?
"Gordon Bennett!" exclaimed Wisdom, stopping in his tracks. "Carter? Is that you?" Wisdom, of course, bore his north London (Essex, really) accent, sounding just a bit posh, but right now he behaved as though his breath was taken from him.
Of course here, in this world, this Peggy Carter was in her 80s. Or supposed to be. Retired, even if she was still a bit of an ass kicker, the woman here looked like Peggy Carter flush in her thirties, as healthy and hearty as she's ever been. She's not supposed to be this young. But this world wasn't suppose to function the way it did either. She skids to an almost stop as the man calls her name in an accent she recognizes, even if the voice isn't one that she does. Slightly too wide dark eyes flicker back in his direction, torn as to how to answer. No one save a single half demon had recognized her here. "…Do…I know you? Who is asking?" Her own clipped voice asks quietly.
"Oh- oh, dear," Pete said, going from surprised to positively exasperated in a moment's time. He looked at Peggy, like his job just got a lot harder, and a lot more sad. "You're not - ah - don't get upset, please. You're not from around here, are you? And I don't mean New York." He cleared his throat. "Sorry. Pete Wisdom. MI-13." He stood straight, falling easily into a professional mode of tone and poise, as he produced an ID badge.
Since when was there an MI-13?
"…when did MI-13 come into being?" Peggy clips out, all too well versed in her world's British intelligence agencies, but not that one. She's only slightly winded from her run, but she's also so relieved to hear someone else from the mother country that she's allowing herself to be stopped. "…Ah… Mr…Wisdom. Yes. I.. I am Margaret Carter. Peggy… regularly. And… I do not quite know what trouble it might get me in admitting that I may or may not be from this world…" Peggy admits, a touch wary about it, but that implication alone might prove she is not.
"After various agencies came and went - Black Air, RCX, the WHO, that sort of thing… the stuffed shirts got their heads out of their arses and realized something proper needed to be done. MI-13 came into being. Ah, uh, Grimsdale was the head of it. But he turned out to be a Skrull. So I am acting director." A pause. "Ah… every British super hero is officially under my command. But only under my discretion, I tend to have a pretty loose leash. I think we need to talk. Ms. Carter. I don't mean to interrupt your run."
The woman's dark eyes narrow a bit tighter, staring over the man, trying to figure out if there is any deception here. Anything that should worry her. But nothing in his words or demeanor is setting off any alarm bells. If anything else, he almost sounded too good to be true, the promise of being useful again when she's been wandering, so lost, since she got here. "… You must forgive me, Mr. Wisdom… as much as I want to… absolutely dive in, because I am going stir crazy here… I need some sort of proof before i just… disappear away with you."
"I can't exactly magic you away - don't have the materials right now. But, ah, hmm." Wisdom handed over his badge. It was certainly modern, and certainly authentic. ID card with royal insignia and other such things. He even pulled off his sunglasses, so she could see his eyes. "I'm not trying to get you to take the piss, Carter." Such language! But he was sincere. "Just… the you, here, is about as old as dirt, and not quite infirm, but close. Which means if you're here, then she's missing."
"…yes, most likely. That is what I've been told about how this.. reality hopping works. And if I'd not ended up frozen for a good almost fifty years, I'm sure I'd be old as dirt and infirm also… But… I was. And now here I am." Peggy seems to at least be on the edge of trusting him enough that she's at least confirming that she is not from this place, and even giving a hint as to how she's so young and vibrant. She accepts his ID card, looking it over, her careful fingertips inspecting the insignia, logos she knows but are slightly changed, the chip and confirmation seals… It all looked quite real. She sighs and hands it back. "…I have no reason to think you are taking a piss…"
Taking the piss was a British slang term, also known as blowing smoke, or pulling a leg. "Too right, you don't. Here," Wisdom said, as he also produced his cell phone, and quickly Googled 'Peggy Carter recent,' as she was indeed a celebrity of sorts. To show this Peggy the… native, Peggy. "It's all a bit of a shock, I'm afraid. But here you are, all the same. Lucky for you, since you're her, you can take her lodging as you like. But she's missing now. And that's a problem. But I can't quite tell you why yet, as I need to make sure you aren't, well." A shrug, and he said quite bluntly, "There's lots of realities. And in yours, you could have joined HYDRA, back in the day, or sommat. Frozen for fifty years and all raises eyebrows, and more questions, you see."
A slight huff escapes her lips, especially as he exclaims the same worries that SHIELD had. They had no reason to trust her and things were too different around her and changing to bring in anyone new. That frustrates her all the more, and with Peggy Carter's frustration comes a stubborn defensiveness. "Come now. I'm the one who is supposed to be interrogating you, not the other way around!" She's only slightly teasing, though a moment after she says those words she understands how ridiculous they are.
"Ah-ah," said Wisdom, waggling a finger. "Don't be silly, Ms. Carter. It's my job to *know* things. And I *need* to know you. Mind you, I'm not quite so armadillo as some bastards out there," and he coughed, mixing a, "SHIELD!" in with the cough. "But I think it may be easy enough to vet your sincerity. After all, I'm not going to dangle you over hot coals and demand who your boss was or whatever. Not my style."
A slightly skeptical look tugs across Peggy's dark eyes, but she isn't turning to walk away. She keeps her arms folded across her chest, her run completely ruined now. "…Alright. What… Is your style, then? Let us get this over with. I would like to keep up the calesthetics, if nothing else? It's at least something protective I can do in this… half hell of a world." Peggy's frustration and loneliness just slightly cracks through the surface there.
"Would have been a Hell of a world if I let Mys-Tech get away with the bollocks they were trying to pull," said Wisdom coyly. "But no. Just need to give you a quick brain-scan sometime, check for any embedded software, and maybe have someone look in there while you're asleep for any deep Manchurian Candidate type stuff. Who knows what random string of words might set off the killer inside?" Wisdom said with a bit of a spooky wobble to his voice, partially joking about the matter.
He knew full well Peggy was a badass. But it might be a good idea to try to make her smile.
Of course, that only slightly helps if a woman hadn't spent a good two years handling a certain Winter Soldier with such programming. Her shoulders stiffen, jaw setting a bit more, "Trust me, I know my own mind and no one has had near a chance to do the programming on me they did to Barnes or anyone else. While I appreciate your paranoia, can even respect it, I am *not* letting someone root around in my skull while I sleep. I'll find an organization that will let me earn my stripes again through hard work, not the bearing of my mind and soul.
"A pity," Pete said. "A quick analysis of the soul would be enough to show me that you're indeed loyal to the Crown, and not… well, y'know. Sort of, 'let's see if you're pure of heart and not a murderous sociopath in a very good act,' kind of thing."
Said the former wetworks operative to the famed hero.
"…I will not understand what obsession you men have with looking at my soul, but you would think a soul was the new bossom the way you and Daimon go on about it." Yes, Peggy's soul has been *thoroughly* oggled by more than one person since coming here. It's just a strange concidence, but it's getting old in her head. She sighs, staring hard at him for a few heartbeats as she debates between this all. "…You have ten seconds. See what you can… And *don't* go picking around my head. Soul gazing only. Or…whatever you do."
"Oh, good lord, you're getting on with Hellstrom?" Nobody names their kid 'Daimon' these days. "Unfortunately, I don't have the means at this time." Pete shrugged, but he squeezed the bridge of his nose, thinking about Hellstrom. "I'd ask you to come with me on the next flight to London, but I don't want to put you off. O can give you a quick lookover lickety-split, as they say. No harm done. But… Here," Wisdom reached into his coat pocket, and handed her a business card. Sure enough. Peter Wisdom. MI-13. Director. And some contact info on it. "I can force you as you're a Briton, but I won't, as it's a terrible show of faith. So contact me when you'd like to be seen. And I can try to start the process of… integrating you here. But the good news is, if you ever come to the Kingdom, there are no more Skrulls, and no more vampires. Ever again." Just a lot of other bad stuff.
"He… or, part of him, at least… recognized me from… Home. He understands this multiverse thing better than anyone else I knew, so… he was a place to start, at least. I can't say we're getting on but… he's nicer here than home. It's… strange." If anything, Peggy actually looks a bit disgruntled that Daimon is a nice guy. It's throwing her off. She also looks a bit disappointed that he can't give her immediate answers here, but she accepts the business card, looking it over with a quiet frown. "…If you can't give the look over… How do you handle it? Who does?"
"I know people, Peggy. That's what I do. Like I said. I know things." And people. "I'm just a very, very smart mutant. I know a fellow, O, who can just look you over like that. Or maybe Tink can see into your heart of hearts, as only faeries can. But I'd rather not pull that card. I don't like talking to my wife if I can help it."
…Oh dear.
"You… are married to a… fairy." Peggy state flatly, both brows arching. She then clears her throat with a small chuckle and gives the most brief of nods. "Well then. I shall keep that in mind and give you a call when I'm up to being… soul scanned. Or whatever you do. But… I'll end up flying on your dime. I don't exactly have a paying position here yet." SHe's staying on the charity of Daimon Hellstrom, something that is, no doubt, ruffling every metaphorical feather she has.
"I am married to a fairy because Avalon and the UK needed diplomacy," Wisdom responded quite matter-of-factly. "And of course you're going on my dime. My dime is Her Majesty's dime. And as you are an asset to the Crown, it is only right and proper that we bring you back safe and sound. Understood? Once you're thoroughly vetted, we can get you proper, and comfortable, and rightly English accommodations according to your tastes and good sense." No doubt anything would be better than staying with Hellstrom.
"Hmm. Yes. Well. I'll keep that in mind. I… suspect you will hear from me, soon." Once Peggy does her own checking in on the man. With that, she gives him a little salute and turns to go back to jogging, soon enough disappearing into the night.