Rooms

[The night of this indie show starts off with a bang. One of the wrestlers, Ezra Bard, who had been suffering from quite possibly the worst sneezing fit known to mankind, dropped an elbow from the top rope and the whole place exploded. Literally. It literally exploded. The ring suddenly gives out with a loud BOOOOOOOOOOM, sending the corner posts flying and the ropes snaking through the crowd like that one movie Ghost Ship. You know the one. Like, it was just a regular ghost story and then all of a sudden there was piano wire, WHY? Anyway. So, a bunch of people get hurt, there's structural damage (though the building somehow stayed standing) and the wrestler that caused the blast goes missing.]

[Leo C]

You don't happen to have a show on Tuesday, do you?

The girl at the carnivale with the kitten.

You there?

[Ronan X]

Just checking in.

[Just after he gets home from his shrink eval.]

[Locked to Meredith J]
You back where you belong yet?

[After this conversation.]

I hear you might decide to be our neighbor. [Easily, like there's no hesitation on 'our'.]

[A note left for Neil on the kitchen counter, where she knows he'll see it. The handwriting's normal, nothing out of the ordinary to tell that anything's amiss.]

I joined a book club here in town and we're meeting this afternoon. There was talk of grabbing something to eat afterwards, so I might be home late.

Love you.

Mere

[After forty-eight hours solid of designing cryptographic hash functions, social engineering, and hybrid network penetration to decrypt salted rainbow tables, Tony gets into places where he doesn’t belong, and learns things he has no business learning.

Several things happen at once:

Furious, Tony debilitates every SHIELD scientific archive involving Carnage in one strike that, in digital terms, is practically atomic. They can’t fail to notice.

The new containment design he’s been working on for weeks is out of autonomous production back at Tony's lab.

An armored transport carrying the creature that consumed Gwen Stacy joins the speedway from Washington DC to NYC.

Fully aware that HYDRA (under the guise of SHIELD) is using a previous containment design that the symbiote has plenty of practice escaping, Iron Man picks up a spare Winter Soldier and heads that direction like a bat out of hell.

Under the assumption every hero in a hundred miles is coming hot for their new prize, HYDRA gives up on subtlety and calls in a miniature army, which converges on the transport via motorcycle, car, helicopter, tank--you name it. American intelligence, security and military alarms lights up.

Another crew, this one more silent and precise, with successive backup waves, hits Stark Tower and starts killing their way up, tangling with Tony’s increased security. This fight has yet to set off alarms at this time.]

[Comm to Pepper P.]

Pepper. I need the containment unit in my lab, and I need it now. How close are you?

[Avengers Comms and Transcribed to Public.]

Hi, I accidentally kicked an anthill named HYDRA and they’re pissed. Backup might be nice. [Explosion not transcribed, but it’s on the news by now.] Lots of backup. Tons. I’d take your grandma with a slingshot. Ow!

[A good 15 minutes after Tony calls for help, JARVIS in Stark Tower issues a general distress alarm and the building goes into lockdown.

Fire breaks out on the lower levels, and anyone already in the building is locked where they are as a several highly-trained teams, in successive waves, attempt to get up to Tony Stark's lab, storming each level one at a time.

JARVIS issues informational calls to NYC law enforcement and fire dispatch. Local heroes are also connected with those on site. Known heroes who volunteer help on the journals are issued a phone number of instructions that guide them to earpiece comms, if they don't already have them.

JARVIS, broadcast NYC-area comms:]

Be advised that an unknown hostile force had opened fire in Stark Tower.

[Locked: Pepper Potts - timeline fuzzed to before the splodey times]

Hello, Ms. Potts. My name is Evangeline Sablier, Eddie Nigma told me that you might be able to help me find a job in New York? I'm sorry to bother you like this, but my situation has become rather urgent. If you have any time you would be willing to spare, I would love to talk to you.

Thank you.

[Graham R]

I'm bringing Joy to you. The city is apparently falling to shit. I'm asking Jake to tag along. Where am I gonna find you?

[Jake R]

I was watching Joy for your daddy when all hell broke loose in the city, I'm taking her to him now. I'd like it if you came with us.

[Cris M]

I'm taking Joy to her daddy, and then coming back to the city. I don't know if you got called in - but be safe.

[Bruce B]

[Tentative.]

Bruce?

[She doesn't go to see Shane and Graham. These posts comes about an hour after she leaves this meeting, unaware of any Marvel insanity. A little sloppy.]

[Locked to Penny R]
Hey. You're Cris' old partner or whatever? I couldn't find any other Penny's on here.

[Locked to Cris M]
It says I missed a call.

[In-person: Meredith/Sam]
[True to her word, Sam left the bar she'd been drinking in, some hole in the fucking wall that nowhere near the bright lights of the strip, and she wandered a few steps until she found another bar, one that had speckled cream cups alongside the shot glasses. Coffee, yeah? She wasn't drunk, but she'd forgotten to take the tourniquet off her arm before wandering in, and her ditch was droplets of blood.

In a now-filthy tank and boxers, she bellied up to the bar, red boots untied and white socks to her shins. She still had Neil's glasses on her head, using them as a headband, and she leaned heavy on the tacky wood without looking at her day-drink companions.] Coffee. Black.