log; peggy and sam conquer the world Who: Peggy and Sam What: Catching up on where Peggy's head is at, kicking of asses, exploring of places. Where: Gotham. Dun dun dun. When: Recently. Rating:Maybe A lot of swears. Probably safe enough.
Getting the lay of the land was standard practice before going on campaign. Peggy decided that she wanted to go about her life like it was a campaign, a thing to be conquered and saved, supported and made successful. Yes, Steve was here, and Steve was certainly a shining light on her life, but he wasn’t the only light. Peggy wasn’t going to wait for him to fill every space in her life, because he could not, and that was a compliment to the both of them. She had to do something important, something useful, something for herself and those around her that deserved it. It was about improving the world, her little war for freedom. Winning it wasn’t about violence for her.
That was what made this particular encounter a little ironic, she thought, as she slid down an alley wall and tried to catch her breath. Her blue suit was getting stained with more unspeakable things she was acquiring from the pavement, and there was blood coming off her lip and dripping down her shirt. She watched one of the men that hit her curl protectively over his genitals, and then she watched the other one get up. It was a difficult day.
In the first few weeks in the future, Peggy got to know the world she lived in. She read up on history, as chronologically as possible. She didn’t bother trying to learn the new technology, the new weapons, the new clothes. Instead she focused on the events, because she knew those would lead her to the place she needed to be, and the place she needed to be was the present. Chronological books brought her through the Cold War and the Vietnam War and the wars that came after. She sank a little deeper in contemporary (to her) history that she had not been aware of before, aspects of the war and the politics that were going on in other countries and other divisions. Many little mysteries were solved, and the more that were, the more sad she became. Maybe life was made for some mysteries.
The future had many mysteries as well, darker ones, and as years unraveled before her, weaponry evolved. It did do that, always becoming darker and deadlier and more efficient; HYDRA was proof of that. She didn’t think it was possible to stop it, and found herself sad and frightened both. You could not stop evolution; you could only hope that it led to a good place, and not a bad one. That giving people the freedom to choose would not lead to them making decisions in fear or confusion or hatred. Larger questions to which Peggy, intelligent woman though she was, had no ready answer.
She focused on herself, on being the person she wished other people to be. She educated herself to the best of her ability (she was still working on the technology, and counted herself fortunate that by and large, her fashion was in fashion) and moved on with finding a purpose, exploring the doors and reading the journal. The journal’s world was privileged; she might not have place or status in this future, no importance or special abilities, but in the journal world couldn’t have had more than a hundred people talking on it at any given time. Assuming there were, say, two or three times that many who simply ignored it, that was still a small population, filled with intrigue and dangers unique to them.
Perhaps there, Peggy could help.
She started investigating the doors. She wasn’t an idiot; she didn’t just walk through them. She did a little research, did what she could to find what was what. She observed through a door before wandering through, and started with the ones she watched people leave. She got to know the hotel very well indeed, and that was only a beginning.
She was still canvassing Gotham, a much darker, uglier New York than the one she knew. It had its own heroes, but they were also dark and ugly. Monsters with pointy ears fought different monsters in various forms. A minute ago, she had been walking on down the pavement, a woman in a city, and she met two of them. Skinny and pimpled and riding high on their various chemicals, looking for an easy victim. She was teaching them different, she decided. If only to punish them for their disgusting neon shirts and for putting their grimy hands on her like she was an object meant for nothing better. She stood up and spit out some blood. She kicked off the one remaining heel that she was still wearing, and then she picked herself up off the wall and went to work.
The hoodlum ended up skidding out of the alley on his backside, at the cost of a couple more punches' damage to her face and her best heels. She couldn't imagine how he'd managed to kick so high in his glued on jeans, the little bastard. Peggy staggered out of the alley on her stockinged feet a moment later to make sure he was down.