Who: Steve Rogers (616) and Castiel What: A chance encounter Where: Edge of the woods When: Evening Rating: Probably low Status: In Progress/Closed
Towns changed just like people. Or perhaps it was more true to say towns changed with people. Their leaps in progress led to streets not filled with coal-fueled smog and soot. Their growing pains caused closed storefronts and streets some might say to avoid, which Steve never did. A town like a person was more than its sum total, but it still included that total. The good and the bad, the best lit feature and what was trapped beneath basements. Steve was presently at a disadvantage here though in discerning where the features and basements were. Storybrooke didn't exist in his reality, or any other one he'd come across before now. Then again, it wasn't the first place he'd been pulled into with it's elements of magic and the offbeat. Everywhere actually possessed some oddness, he'd only become accustomed now to being privy to it. Ignorance easily shielded eyes. Even after taking the serum, Steve hadn’t expected half the weirdness he’d encountered when overseas and had it thrust in front of him.
Miracles and misappropriations of science. Mysticism and madness. It had all become part of a day’s work. Steve had had the core of his existence shaken more than once, yet somehow kept his footing. His feet remained rooted to his convictions even as everything was uprooted around him.
He wasn’t strolling the streets so much as scouting the perimeter, steps taken with a confident ease that belied a purpose hidden to all but the best trained eyes. His mind made a mental map as it went, filling in details along with the general landscape. Those he passed he gave a pleasant if reserved smile and nod to, acknowledging everyone his eyes met and pausing to chat with a few of them when they seemed inclined to it. He didn’t have an exact destination in mind so much as the general purpose of keeping an eye on the weapons stores and a general patrol of the area given the recent rise in threats while he was trapped here. The area of portals was more the expertise of Bruce or Tony, but Steve felt he couldn’t do nothing. From the time Steve was young, and far less physically capable, knowledge had been his muscle as much as his escape. If one couldn’t bulldoze through a situation, one had to find a way around it, and while cliché Steve firmly believed that knowledge was power. Books, papers, hitting the streets, he was above none of it, if it helped.
It was doing something. Steve didn’t do well with idleness, or taking a situation sitting down.
As he went his instincts felt the barest moment of a rushed movement before a man was suddenly standing in front of him. Instantly Steve felt on alert, although not overly wary yet. Assessing a situation came first. There was little chance that the man had been walking far or long without Steve noticing, but Steve knew more than one person who didn't travel on foot. The other looked a little rumpled to Steve, but that might have just been because Steve's attire ran towards crispness. It was all details taken in without judgment, things small and large noted and filed away without knowing what might be relevant later. The look in the man's eyes caught Steve more, an alertness he found a soldier's kinship in. He wondered if the other was a transplant or a local, and either way, without cause for otherwise he fell towards friendly. “Out for a stroll? This time of night, you tend to beat the rush.”