14887/Benton's Time Capsule

Benton's Time Capsule
Date of Scene:	10 May 2023
Location:	Benton, Pennsylvania
Synopsis:	Alura, Kara, and Divine go to a small town celebration for a slice of American Apple Pie life and instead stumble upon a forgotten cold war past.
Cast of Characters:	Alura In-Ze, Kara Danvers, Divine

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Alura In-Ze has posed:
It's not a -big- festival, but it's one that Benton celebrates annually - the founding of Benton! Alura wanted to see what smalltown Americana was really all about and this was the closest little celebration happening. With banners everywhere, market stalls hugging main street, the roads closed and people milling about. There's a stage set up with a brass band playing and a microphone for the mayor when the time comes.

Alura is dressed very differently. She's trying to 'blend in' so she's wearing blue jeans, a red blouse, and black leather boots. Nothing too fancy or over the top - though her belt is still her own personal one with the tiny S logo upon its buckle. A fashion accessory - nothing else.

The smells of food fill the air along with the sweet sounds of the music and the people milling about. "I admit," she says to her daughters, "this is rather nice. Big blue skies, not a cloud in sight. People are just... happy."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara, taking Alura's lead, had worn something suitable for blending in. A t-shirt with Chip and Dale on the front and a pair of blue-jeans with sneakers. Her hair is pulled back into a ponytail, dangling from a high arc on her head, and a pair of red framed glasses sitting high on the bridge of her nose. Meandering with her mother and sister down the street with a big grin on her pale pink lips as they took in the sights of small town America.

"I smell wieners." She muses with an even bigger grin when the aroma of block party food assails her senses. "That way." She points at one of the multiple booths offering foods.

"This is nice." Added with her hand slipping into her pocket, "Everyone seems very happy."

Divine has posed:
Divine is, well, almost as alien as her ...mom and sister. Mostly because she was raised in a vat. It's not conducive to knowing all the ins and outs of human society. Thusly, she's never really celebrated a holiday, and she's certainly never been to a town festival like this.

Unlike Kara and Alura, Divine is -not- exactly dressed to blend in. Sure, she's not dressed for combat or whatever, but her usual style does not blend in. Though she has gone a little casual with it. Tight, artfully ripped black jeans, a black band t-shirt over a long sleeve fishnet shirt, her favorite stomping boots, and giant black sunglasses.

The fact that she's well over six feet tall probably doesn't help either.

"It's ...Interesting. I think I understand why they celebrate, but I'm not sure why they choose to do so like -this-," she says quietly.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"Traditions? Culture? Celebrations on Krypton were a great deal bigger and simple couldn't work like this." She took Kara to plenty of them as she was growing up. The size of the celebrations would boggle the mind of even the avid New Yorker on New Years Eve.

Alura smells the meat but chooses instead to approach a nice looking husband and wife with an assortment of home made cookies on a table. She looks them over and picks out one short bread with icing and fishes out some coins to pay for it.

The pair look on expectantly to see if Alura enjoys their creation. She's about to bring it to her lips when she spies a man in what looks like a retro space suit climbing out of the sewers. "Kara, is that.. normal for these sorts of things?"

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara grins up at Alura at the description of such celebrations back on Krypton, "Oh, they were much bigger than this, yes." She does a little twirl, arms out wide as they bypass the meat counter in favor of cookies. "I remember a few years ag-..." It was significantly longer than a few years ago, but to Kara? Who had been suspended in cryo-stasis.. She frowns, nose wrinkling and shakes her head.

Then again when Alura directs her attention to the spaceman crawling out of the sewers. "Not unless they're engaging in live improvisational theater." Hands on her hips, watching him for a moment.

"So.. no, this is not at all normal."

Divine has posed:
Wonders of an age gone that she will never get to see. It's sad, but then again, she did get to see Krypton in it's burgeoning heyday -and- punch a god in the face. So that's cool. Plus she's got the sun belt to prove it!

Still, this is nice. Happy people, even if they do stare at her a bit, don't bother her. No one is needing her angry attention. At least until a retro spaceman starts to climb out of the sewers. She squints, dropping her sunglasses to the tip of her nose. "You don't see that every day."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
The celebration starts to notice the stranger in their midst. Not Divine, no, the retro space man outfit wearing guy who has climbed up out of the sewers. Staggering, he struggles with his helmet and takes it off. A middle aged man - the scent of ye olde cologne hits the noses of the Kryptonians.

He looks around in horror and confusion before he summarily flops down on to the ground, dead. Alura's eyes widen and she rushes over to him, turning him over. His lips look slightly blued and all three of them can smell the distinct scent of almonds.

"He's dead," Alura says to the crowd that is quickly gathering. Someone has run off to get the sheriff. She looks to Kara and Divine before her eyes turn back toward the sewer opening. "I don't see any stab wounds or bullet holes..."

Kara Danvers has posed:
Kara rushes up beside the man alongside her mother and kneels down to inspect him. Staring intently at his internal organs with a growing look of concern when she notices the obvious cellular degeneration around the heart and lungs. The bluing of his lips and the unmistakable aroma of almonds over the ye old spice of old man cologne.

She peers at her mother, then over at Divine, "Cyaonide." She murmurs quietly, staring at his mouth. As if expecting his teeth with her vision peeling away layers until she can see any caps in the molars like she'd seen in several spy movies.

"This is... not normal at all no. For their safety, everyone should probably step back." Said to the other individuals who may come up to see what happened to the older gentleman. "Until we can determine whether it's something in his suit."

Divine has posed:
Divine gets to watch the man die. This is decidedly unpleasant. For her, time slows as he jerks and falls to the ground, each fraction of a second feeling like minutes. She looks stricken at his foaming death rattle and has to shake her head to clear it as Alura and Kara rush to his side. A horror show she didn't need.

Unlike the other two, she's not a scientist. Clever and cunning, absolutely, but decidedly lacking on the book knowledge. Still, she steps closer and shifts her body language. She goes from 'Tall Cool Goth Chick' to 'Will Twist Your Arms Off' in an instant, trying to use her physical presence to keep people clear.

"This is really weird. Like, really weird. Who climbs out of a sewer in a weird suit like that?"

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura looks rather concerned at the assessment. Cyanide. She read about it but this is the first time she's seen it. She wonders what Kara is staring at for a moment before she follows the tubes back to a tank on the mans back. Pulling the tube free the waft of almonds dissipates in to the air around them.

"Poisoned by his own oxygen supply..." She looks at her daughters and then back to the sewer. "Let's retrace his steps." She leaves him as the sheriff starts to push through the crowd and drops down in to the sewer system below.

Like all sewers there's a certain smell to it. She waves a hand in front of her face, "Ylrk. The smell of humanity they don't write about in the brochure..." A bit of space travel humour. The darkness is not a challenge for their eyes though but at first glance it seems like any old sewer system.

Alura adjusts her vision and tries to look through the walls. The thick Earth is good at blocking their vision, but several tunnels away something even better is blocking their vision - what looks like a large vault door in a staging area.

Pointing she states, "Yeah, that seems a little out of place in a town like this. May be it's part of an old bank?" She rises up in flight to hover above the sewage water as she moves down the tunnels toward the anomaly.

Divine has posed:
Divine gives her sister a look and a smile as she sticks around to handle the Interaction With Authorities. Of course the tallest one is going down into the cramped tunnels. She's going to need like four showers after this.

She just walks out over the open manhole and descends after her mother, taking her sunglasses off and hanging them from the collar of her shirt. Could she still see fine with them? Of course. It's silly, though.

"Bank. Fallout shelter, maybe. Humans love making weapons to destroy themselves."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"A fallout shelter hadn't even crossed my mind. That makes a lot of sense." Of course, Divine has lived in secret facilities so this is all too familiar for her. Alura, on the other hand, stops before big door and the antiquated 60s era control systems.

"Definitely not a bank vault. What could be so important that they'd kill to keep this a secret-" she wonders out loud. Her hands cup the limited leverage of the vault door and she shuts her eyes as she begins to flex.

The housing of the door and the door itself begin to groan in protest as the internal bolts that hold it locked in place are put under immense stress. They need to bend, but they cannot, so they heat up - and in heating up so weaken until with a violent and loud boom the door rips off its hinges.

They are greeted with the sound of klaxons and flashing red lights. Fallout shelter seems to have been right on the money but there are several bodies in environmental suits laying on the floor inside with bullet holes in them.

Divine has posed:
Boy, has Divine spent a lot of time in creepy bunkers. At least they flooded the last one. Thanks, blonde twin. Good job. Still having nightmares about it, though. She shivers involuntarily as they make it to the door. She almost moves forward to do it, but, well, mom has it handled.

She grimaces at the piercing alarms, and the expression stays for the bullet riddled bodies. "This is...weird. What's in here that's worth killing over?"

She doesn't even wait. She just skims along the ground, going into the vault.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura shakes her head as she looks at their unbeating hearts. "I don't know Divine.. let's find out." Her feet touch the ground as she enters in to the underground facility. The next door looks like an airlock and she kicks it open, followed by the next.

There, a dozen men in old US military uniforms reminiscent of World War 2 holding machine guns and wearing masks open fire on the pair. As the bullets bounce off of them Alura looks down through the floor. Lots of metals make seeing through it difficult but what she does see makes her gasp.

Hundreds of floors of people, a whole city under the Earth. "Disarm them," Alura says as she moves past them in a blur and bursts out in to the open space of the vault, floating in the air.

Divine has posed:
Aw man. Bullets! A bunch of old dudes unload on her and Alura, shredding her cool band shirt artfully, AND the fishnet underneath. She briefly considers just melting the guns, but the last time she did that, Karen got mad.

Instead she just blurs around the room, taking the weapons from the old men as gently as she can at that rate of speed. There might be a couple broken fingers, but no one dies. Unless they have a heart attack from sheer terror, and that's not her fault.

"Settle down, Grandpa Squad. I don't know what racket's going on down here, but, uh, you probably shouldn't be doing it."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
"You've let the contaminated air in - we're all going to die! what kind of soviet monster are you?!" One of them yells through his gas mask nursing his broken hand.

The hundreds of people on the higher floors gasp in awe at the floating woman. Little kids pointing. Alura takes in what she's seeing and starts to form a picture of what's going on. "People - the world outside is safe."

The loud speakers raise a klaxon and people look unsure if they should run for gas masks and safety or believe the flying woman.

"There was a war a long time ago - but the world was not destroyed." She read the hallmark points of Earth's recent history. So many wars. So many violent weapons. "It is safe to come outside. There is a small town built above you called Benton - today, celebrating, their founding day. I imagine many of you grew up there..."

An old man steps forward letting go of his son and his wife and their three kids in the process, "I grew up on Benton.. but my family has never even seen the sun. Or a tree. What are you - a god?"

Alura shakes her head as she's asked this question. She flies over and lands before him. "No - that's a long story. But I assure you, it's safe to go outside."

There's a stillness in the large fallout shelter as whispers make their way down from floor 1 to floor 100 far below. Slowly, some of the residents decide it's time to find out the truth and begin making their way up to floor 0, to the exit.

Divine has posed:
"The hell is a Soviet," Divine asks the old man. She truly has no idea. "The air is ... Well, it was probably cleaner when you holed up in here, but you're not dying from breathing it, that's for sure."

She regards the old soldiers quietly. "I was ... born in a place like this. I never saw the sun until I was an adult. ...If you want to see it again, I can help get you out of here. There's nothing to be afraid of up there. Not right now. It's a beautiful day."

She's picked up on this Spreading Hope thing pretty quick.

Alura In-Ze has posed:
It's a strange sight for Benton's anniversary as hundreds and hundreds of people - old and young - make their way out of the sewer systems. The street celebrations turn in to an emergency rally. Food, blankets, explanations and communication as a lost part of their history reconnects with the present.

It takes most of the day to convince and help everybody out of the fallout shelter. A massive construct built by a coal tycoon after World War 1 who believed the end of the world was coming. And when the first nuclear bomb was dropped, he convinced much of the town to disappear beneath it believing that it was only a matter of time before the weapons would be used on them.

As the last of the power is shut down from the facility, Alura helps their lead engineer out by flying them all one hundred floors back up to the top. Alura rejoins Divine and Kara.

"I see it now - " she says motioning to the way the people are helping each other and bonding. "What Kal sees in the people of this world. Remove the paranoia, anxiety, and satisfy the basic needs and these people are good. They were so afraid that the world above them was poisoned, they killed to protect their people."

The sheriff is already interviewing people to find out who committed the killings. Alura turns to her daughters, "There's not much more we can do here now. The law will take its course and these people will have to adapt to a new world. Much like we three are still trying to do."

Divine has posed:
Divine, of course, helps ferry people out of the hole. She is, after all, strong and tireless. By the end of it, the band t-shirt has been swapped out for one of the town's souvenir shirts because while she is bulletproof, her clothes are not. The bright colors and quaintly tacky design of the shirt clash very hard with the fishnet, but no one is going to tell her that.

No one not related to her, anyway.

"I've met more good people since I've been loose than bad. Lots of desperate, hurting people, but the actual bad ones are few and far between. ... Like the guy with the Black Kryptonite gun." She grinds her teeth. That was a terrible experience."

She nods about Kal, though. "He's right a lot of the time. After all, he -was- the first to sit and talk with me. He's a pretty smart guy," she says with a grin. "And I'll never be able to repay him for it."

Alura In-Ze has posed:
Alura wraps arms about Kara and Divine and smiles, "You're repaying him right now - doing things like this."