5994/1000 Faces: And The Earth Screamed

1000 Faces: And The Earth Screamed
Date of Scene:	20 April 2021
Location:	Lone Pine, California
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Melinda May, Loki, Jemma Simmons, Peggy Carter, Daniel Sousa
Tinyplot:	1000 Faces of Death

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Jane Foster has posed:
Lone Pine, California marks the last waystation of humanity before dessicated scrub and desert claim the Golden State. Two hundred miles out of Los Angeles, the old mining town clings to the dry valley beneath the dominating bulk of Mount Whitney and its lower sister peaks. What attracts attention by encroaching evening isn't the gorgeous sunset or silver mines, but dancing needles and crackling warnings.

A siren rolls off the lone cop car around, and the sedan goes rolling down the heat-cracked pavement cleaving through 'town,' if a skinny string of worndown roadside attractions and weathered motor inns count for much. Blue and red lights flash over adobe and stucco on the western movie museum as he fishtails southbound to trouble. A man thoughtfully uses his fork to cut into his blueberry pie in a ramshackle diner sheathed in corrugated tin, the kind of place where time stopped around 1962. Phone reception is terrible, but his text message goes through on the third try.

It takes a few minutes for anything to happen. So a disruption comes as a nasty surprise to the staff at "the Inn," an elegant hideaway from the Twenties tucked away in the valley. Tourists are slow in the shoulder season but a trio of hikers emerge from their room as general chaos erupts from one wing of the old resort. They race past confused housekeeping, bags on their shoulders. Where starlets once romanced leading men and bankers, white smoke rises. More pops blast a wall and send the general manager scrambling for a phone. Charges go pop in quick succession. Explosives in Lone Pine are as old as the mines themselves. Hand-mortared stones around the outdoor fireplace crash into an aquamarine pool. Old plaster crashes to the floor while he blindly and roughly dials a short code. It's one he repeats again with desperation from behind the desk as another explosive goes off and the building shakes. The mountains around him shudder.

While the Ricter scales start shivering across California and Nevada, a prerecorded message flashes, carried to Los Angeles, rebounding to New York and Paris. <<High Sierra breached, the Black Rock in play.>>

Two great plates locked together start to grind and buckle, and the series of microtremors swiftly grow in strength. Lone Pine shakes.

Disturbances wobble through the Astral like someone dropped a lead weight on jelly.

Melinda May has posed:
Over in Delaware, deep in the Playground, SHIELD becomes aware of the plate shift through satelite feeds. That and a communique from Commander Hand aboard the Helicarrier. Hardly back from the mission to Miami, May finds herself, still in her wingsuit, and still with that thruster pack, heading towards QJ-01, since QJ-02 is currently being refueled. The mission? Observation-meet-mountain-S&R. She tosses the thruster pack into a storage container, but leaves the wingsuit on over her tacsuit. "Wheels up in 5," she tells the crew coming with her.

Forty-five minutes later, they're back across the country, the cloaked aircraft hovering over the town as its pilot starts funnelling readings from both the still-available satelites and the quinjets own sensor suite to tablets and onboard analysis. "What are we looking at?"

Loki has posed:
When exactly //isn't// the astral plane rung like a gong, summoning all within the sound of its call? Last Tuesday, around 4 pm Pacific, no doubt.

Maybe.

Still, this particular disturbance is an annoyance, to say the least. Particularly to one Loki Laufeyson, who has much better things to do than to be summoned to Dry Gulch, RFD. Pulled then from other studies, Loki is inexorably pulled through its vortex and summarily dropped in the middle of the road with a *pffft* of dirt billowing from the fall.

Picking himself up, and dusting himself off with flat hand, the suit he wears would have been considered impeccable if it didn't have the red and tan sand of bygone era. Once the Asgardian has cleaned himself up enough, he sets towards one of the buildings with an annoyed expression, his pace deliberate.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Well, seismology isn't necessarily my forte..." The familiar tone of Jemma Simmons chimes in from her seat on the quinjet. "...but since it appears that the seismic event was caused by a sizable force of demolitions, perhaps we should look for a point of origin for that?"

Yes, that is the obvious observation...somehow sounding rather serious and somewhat intelligent. Credit the British accent for that one.

Otherwise, Jemma is observing....and not much else. She is not even using her normal tablet. Perhaps today she is preferring to just work naturally.

Peggy Carter has posed:
While Daniel was still getting a few certifications, he was up to snuff on enough things that when the call goes out, Peggy looked over to him from the dinner table, "Feel like some field work?" She asks with a flash of the smile. "Lone Pine, California. You ight remember the place, even. See what you can remember about the place and dig up in the old files while I shot gun for May." And with that, their dinners were left behind, Peggy strapped quickly into a tac suit, and they were on their way.

Peggy looks every bit the modern agent this evening, in her armored flight suit and with her dark hair slicked back in a tight tie, finally long enough she can get in a pony tail again. She's not been bothering too often with make up as of late, since they really couldn't afford to be recognized, so those faint burn scars down the left side of her face are more obvious than usual. She's in the co-pilot seat next to May, but as they start getting closer, she calls back to the unfamiliar (to most) man in the back, "Sousa, what'd you get dug up about High Sierra while we ere flying? Give everyone the brief and refresh my old mind because I remember there was a big file but I sure as hell don't remember what was in it." Peggy admits with a little laugh as she goes through their post flight checks, other than what they need to remain hovering and cloaked.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
Daniel was an old hand at switching gears from downtime to action, and so his fork is set down and he's on the way with few words and little complaints, grabbing the file and some gear before heading to the hanger for the waiting quinjet. Greetings are given to May and Simmons before he sets to reading while they fly, Peggy's question the first time his head has looked up since they took off. "Lone Pine is a stretch of desert big with the Hollywood types in the 30's for filming Westerns, not much too it after that but an old inn owned by a German engineer Carl Ganz a real genius, who jumped ship to come work for us in the war. Bought up all sorts of art recovered from the Nazi conquests of Europe and the Jewish diaspora, apparently believing his hands were safer than anyone else. It was on the SHIELD books, code named High Sierra, I came out here once to make sure all the pieces were accounted for and he wasn't selling them off on the black market, didn't strike me as the type to sell he really loved all the stuff he had stored away, including this one piece this Faberge Egg, he called Black Rock, never let us see it, but it wasn't a big deal so we let him be weird about it."

He looks around. "Probably not a security issue, but if this place is becoming geologically unstable might be good to get whatever's left of his collection out of here to somewhere safe. Guy apparently died in 71, I don't think there's going to be anyone to argue about it."

Jane Foster has posed:
Lone Pine is a bit better than a one-light town but not by much. The three traffic lights it boasts on cables sway back and forth from weathered poles. In front of the western museum, the concrete base of a horse statue cracks apart and sends Silver plummeting to the ground. Shiny eyes stare at Loki as he too picks himself up, proof the Wheel of Fortune spares no one even if you buy a vowel. Hanging baskets drunkenly swing. A sign for the Dry Gulch Motor Lodge smashes to the ground in a burp of neon.

A modest airport to the immediate east offers a good landing spot for conventional craft or one hover-capable Quinjet, occupied by a single lonely crop-duster outside a hangar. Scrubby fields in fleeting green offer another spot to drop. Salt pans stretch between the dry, rugged mountains to the verdant hollow where a pale tendril of smoke rises over The Inn. From the air, it all looks sort of normal.

Until the tin roof caves in on an old corrugated building with a faded "For Sale/For Lease" sign. Several residents stumble out to stare around, not staying safely under a table or desk. A woman holds a broken jar of jam in one hand. Another man peers to the west, and doesn't notice the loose tiles above his eave dislodged by some ephemeral shaking. They come straight down. He falls an instant later.

Inside the Inn, the manager jabs fingers on the phone buttons to no avail. There's no signal on the other side. He slides it away and shrinks behind his desk, holding his breath. Down in the dusty corridor, more sounds of charges going off throw plaster and dust into the air. A housekeeper covered in grey stumbles through the gloom blindly, muttering prayers and clutching her badge like a rosary. Knocked down as the ground shakes, she gets to hands and knees to crawl. From where she's come, the ground is torn open.

Melinda May has posed:
"How weird are we talking?" May asks. The thing in Miami was linked to a weird mask, after all. And she's done too many missions with WAND to assume that Black Rock is nothing more than pretty, decorative bauble. "WAND level weird?" Yes, she's entirely justified in asking this!

Especially as the ground starts opening up and buildings start falling apart. Admittedly, this town doesn't have the latest and greatest in earthquake-proofed engineering. Even so, May circles the town, observing from above. The airport is safest, but the salt pans are closest -- and they read as stable. "I'm setting down," she tells the others. "Prepare to deploy. There are people out there that are going to be scared, trapped, or worse." She's already seen nearly 300 deaths today -- at least one of which, she can claim as her own fault. She's not keen on seeing more. She's not keen on *feeling* more.

Being an empath sucks.

The sensors give her the heads up about that vortex that appears and disappears, which only reinforces her worry that they should have brought someone from WAND along with them. She files a note in the back of her mind to make sure she gets several WAND operatives STRIKE qualified. Because this is getting ridiculous.

"What's the call, chief?" Yep. She's not top dog, here. That's Peggy, now.

Even as she says it, she's touching down and stabilizing the jet to standby in case they need to take off quick.

Loki has posed:
It's not a step or two before the temblors catch the Asgardian, and putting his hand out to balance, it's almost impossible to keep a footing, even for him. The destruction of the buildings before him offer no protection, and from the look of things, offer no sense of explanation either.

At least there is some sense of balance in terms of a good lean against the now stricken form of Silver. Even that isn't too stable, but given options?

Loki looks out as the runmbles and explosions drive through the town, and something draws his attention around. Creasing his brow, though a half-smile finds form on his face, he pushes off the horse, looking all the world as if he stumbles like a drunk away from the buildings now. There's no sense in them, no reason; he doesn't care about the calls for help, the cries of pain and fear.

Go west, young god.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
Jemma may not have her tablet on her, but she does have her smartphone. And seemingly, a number for the US Geological Survey....though most likely it is just the website that Jemma uses. Oh, hey...they have an app? That's convenient! A little quick ping with the GPS satelites, and lo and behold, there's information to be had.

"Well, now isn't this interesting..." The statement is given as a fact. There is no questioning given to it. "According to the United States Geological Survey, earthquakes are forming about three kilometers east south east of Lone Pine. Wait...another about 7 kilometers in the same direction. And yet another 2 kilometers east of Lone Pine. Recent measurements include 3.1, 2.6, 2.8, 3.7, 4.7, 4.9. 21 incidents within 24 hours, 25 in the past 7 days." Jemma scrolls as she rattles off more numbers. "57 in the last month. 1,425 in the past year." She frowns as she compares events to what she is seeing on her new app (gotta love 5G), the confusion felt by certain empaths, but nothing major. A little work...and Jemma comes back with an answer.

"It appears that Mount Whitney has something to do with things. It is shockingly easy to track the concentric rings signifying the quake readings."

Peggy Carter has posed:
It's been a long time since Peggy's been genuinely in charge. Sure, she's ran a few teams in the field since coming back, but being the absolute top call on a mission is still a bit of a surprise. It only gets a single blink from Peggy as she starts going through the landing procedures with May. "I want all our sensors on Mount Whitney, then. I somehow doubt it's exactly natural what's causing this, but I could be wrong. Keep scans running for people in danger. First priority is to rescue any civilians before anyone is really hurt, second priority is to shut the disturbance down before *more* people get hurt."

She frowns in consideration of the black egg. "Considering HYDRA... maybe that egg was more that we first realized. We didn't have a WAND division back in the day, though I wish we had. Jemma, grab all the reading equipment you need, ask for help if other people need to carry things. I want to localize this closer than a *mountain*. And..." Peggy's eyes narrow at what readings she's seeing on the screen in front of her. "Is that... a man with a... Horse?" Maybe she's seeing things. She redirects what scanners he has to try and be certain he's not in trouble or danger, looking for civilians herself while Jemma looks for the actual problem.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
"It wasn't the Black Rock that was weird it was Ganz, he was an obsessive, and the Black Rock was the prize of his collection," he says. "Anyone read the Hobbit? Think Gollum and that gold ring."

Jemma's report gets a frown from Daniel, "That's a /lot/ of earthquakes for one area, even in California," a beat. "Unless that's changed in the last sixty-five years." Once you get pulled through time by a magic mirror just about anything seems possible. "Could be, we were looking for plutonium and Nazi wonderweapons, not voodoo dolls and magic lamps," he says of the thing being magical. "We have a way to check if it is if we find it?" he asks,

When Peggy points out the man with the horse, he looks out the window and nods. "Yep, man with a horse, they start filming westerns out here again?"

Jane Foster has posed:
Shaking convulses the earth for another ten or fifteen seconds, and tapers off. Brutal efficiency drops the decks and tears poorly constructed porches of a few older homes. Those built up to California's code sway on their foundations. Tears rip into the battered highway and stretch through the earth like someone punched the landscape a few times. Things might be mildly worse in the mountains, but mountains don't contend with broken water and sewer mains. A cracked gas line swirls in stinking sulfuric clouds on the north side of town and it's only a matter of time before a spark ignites a fire. Soon, it'll all burn.

But not yet. Right now, civilian casualties barely register and the heist runs as planned. Mostly.

Visible distortions await the passengers in the cloaked Quinjet landing on a salt pan in sight of the Inn. Heat shimmers up from the engines vaporizing the minerals, leaving a weirdly burnt aroma.

The Inn's plaster, stone, and rock cannot withstand the two-proned assault. Explosions and tremors crack the tumbled stone facade open, exposing white walls and breezing linens. Terra cotta tiles rain down like splinters on the broken pool deck where craters up to two feet deep expose concrete and tangled wires. One of the hikers kneels down there, goggles on, mask over his nose and mouth. He rapidly chips away at a large gouge sinking under a partially collapsed chimney. Another figure slips out from an arched window overlooking the Stargazers Deck, a flat patio recalling the glamour of Hollywood past. If glamour involved firing a rappelling line down to the lower level and snapping a pair of metal clamps over the line. A moment and he drops, travelling at speed with a zinging wail before hitting the ground. He disengages and rolls away, sliding along a plaster wall and kicking at it until a panel falls.

Melinda May has posed:
Man with a horse? May glances out the window and sees the horse statue. Then, she sees the well-dressed man lurching away from it. The hair. The sculpted features. That damned silk scarf. "Oh, *hell* no," she growls. She pushes out of the pilot's seat, now that the quinjet is down and safe, and strips off her wingsuit. She then moves to the center of the aisle between the seats that line the fusilage wall and kneels to pull out one of the heavy weapons from beneath the floorboards. "That's no man. That's Loki -- Thor's brother." Then, for Daniel and Peggy's benefit, "The bastard who opened the skies above New York and dropped an alien army on it. We still have an outstanding warrant for his arrest." She slings the light cannon over her shoulder, fastening it by a strap, and then proceeds to check her ICER and other weapons and equipment. She even includes a rescue harness since, really, Loki is a secondary, possibly teritary priority, and she knows it.

Unless, of course, he turns out to be the one at fault here. In which case... Hello plasma cannon!

As she arms up, she answers Daniel. "We won't need a way to check to find out if the thing is magic," she says dryly. "It will become very, very apparent very, very quickly." A beat. "Hell, with Loki out there? Ten'll get you twenty that's our confirmation right there. Magic, or alien. Take your pick. That's even odds." So says the one field agent here who's actually lived through the past thirty years of SHIELD history chasing down any number of 0-8-4's.

"We need to move quickly," she says, rising and heading to open the hatch for everyone. "When this situation goes south, it's going to go south at lightspeed."

Loki has posed:
The ghosted smirk still plays upon Trickster's lips; hard to tell if he is aware of the QJ or not, and he's not telling. No.. not until he pauses in his step and turns around to face the area where the agents have touched down. It's a gesture, nothing more, before he turns back around, showing them his back, and continues on his path. He can hear the veritable klaxon of warnings passing through the Astral plane, and he is drawn towards it regardless of what is occuring behind him.

The movement of mere mortals is of no real concern to him; the wails, cries and yes, the thievery go unheeded.

Once free of the horse statue and he's further afield, a cane appears in the man's hand from seemingly nowhere, now used as more than just a piece of ornamentation.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
Whatever reading equipment Jemma would need. There is a minor flash of panic...just a quick flicker, before Jemma shoves that down. Most likely due to the fact that Jemma really doesn't know geology as well as biology. But again, there is convenience with having the resources of the USGS at her disposal. So, rather than opting for her own equipment, Jemma seems to trust the USGS.

"Well, judging from the sensor readings of the USGS, the epicenter of these recent quakes are not that far from where we are now. These are rather minor tremors, too. Nothing too dramatic. Sorta like what you would expect from a mining operation. Really close to the surface."

Another pause, then more information. "Not really at the mountain...but along the western flank and moving towards Lone Pine." She hmms softly to herself as she traces her finger on the phone...then looks up and out, wandering off the Quinjet as she does so. "I would say....somewhere this way."

'This way' indicates towards the east. But...there isn't anything more precise coming from the good doctor.

Peggy Carter has posed:
A double take is given as Peggy's brain registers just how *big* the horse is. "What in hell is going on..." She mutters beneath her breath. But then her eyes drop to the readings on the screen in front of her. "There's a group of people in the inn moving... fairly smoothly, and at least one is going *into* the damage, not out. They could be victims but I'm putting money on their here for whatever is causing this, just like we are. Maybe they're even working with Loki. Come on, let's move. Simmons, stay close to us keep your eyes on any scanners you have, don't range too far ahead. May, come armed for bear." She nods in approval to the heft of the plasma cannon. It might be annoying to tote around, but it could be quite helpful as well.

Peggy is then standing up herself, making certain she's got her own weapons strapped in and the tac suit is settled well in place. She flickers a momentary worried look back to Daniel, knowing they still haven't quite gotten his leg up to spec for modern day. But she took him in the field with it decades ago, this isn't much different. "Alright, everyone armed? Let's go." Peggy leads the way fairly quickly down the back hatch of the quin jet, nodding after Jemma's back. "Follow that scientist. Nothing touches her. Nothing even gets in ten feet of her, got it?" Peggy commands the team, her ICER in her hand but pointed to the ground. Still, she's ready to act when needed. "If we can pick up Loki along the way, great, but he's not our priority right now." She mutters as the range into the area.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
"I saw the video when after you and Peggy recomended it, that guy is definitely bad news," Daniel says of the Battle of New York. "Makes me wish I had a bigger gun," he says pulling his jaket out to reveal the ICER pistol at his side. That's when May pulls out the plasma cannon and he remarks, "Maybe not that big, but if you've got another one of those I'm not going to complain."

As for the Black Rock, "So assume it's magic until proven otherwise, got it," Daniel says pulling on some gloves, having learned his lesson the last time he touched a magical artifact.

When Peggy takes charge he nods to her. "Right, nobody touches Simmons," he looks to the scientist. "Don't worry we've got you," he says drawing his ICER keeping it by his side as he moves towards the back hatch, ready for whatever comes next.

Jane Foster has posed:
The Inn is a respectably sized, two-storey resort with a central building and a long wing stretching through an actual palm grove. From the SHIELD agents' perspective, access points are pretty straightforward. Follow the slope up to the pool facing the salt pans or take a winding path around the manicured grounds to reach the ruined wing. The hiker there has found his hole and shimmies in to the corridor revealed by a panel. The other man barely shows up on the scans, a blip of heat vanishing as he too goes underground.

The guests are going down, the staff is on the run, and SHIELD is here to party with Loki, right?

In the lee of the smoke and trees, they might spot a garden with a mission-style arch open to the sky. Nothing disrupts the arch except a swaying bit of rope fallen free and a dry granite fountain, jarred aside by a rift leading into darkness.

Debris patters down as another shudder hums through the ground with an eerie wail, this time considerably stronger than before but much shorter lived. Enough to knock the unsteady from their feet, the quake coincides with rocks splashing into the sloshing pool and a ghostly-grey housekeeper in a splotched dress running for dear life out from the wing. She trips and grabs the nearest wall for safety.

In the city, a chance spark ignites a leaking gas main. The rupture sends a column of flame through adjacent houses, and blaze happily takes hold for lack of any fire suppression.

Melinda May has posed:
May, standing in the hatch as it lowers, doesn't miss the fact that Loki looks right at them before he deliberately turns his back and walks away. It takes all her self control not to swing that cannon off her back and fire at him. Because she's had a really long day already and she knows damned well that was the Trickster's equivalent of flipping them the bird.

"There's a second one just aft of the first," she tells Sousa, with regard to the cannon on her back. "We always carry two." As Peggy well knows, since the pair have double-teamed with them well before now. But it's probably sufficient that they just have the one, for now.

She waits until the others are off the jet and steps off the ramp, allowing it to close by remote, leaving it cloaked. She then takes up the spot at the rear of the party, since Simmons has point and someone needs to watch their backs. She keeps an ICER in her hand for now, as they move, reserving the cannon for when it's really needed... if it comes to it.

Loki has posed:
Could Loki care less than he does about the presence of SHIELD? Probably not. He's really not giving them any of his attention; instead, he walks a few paces, pauses in his step, his head cants, brow beetles, before he begins anew into a slightly different direction. Each time, however, it does bring him closer to the Inn.

Once near its hallowed halls, a hand flies up, but if anything happens from the gesture, it may not be registering. At least not immediately; soon enough, it's obvious that it's a minor shield. He's done with dust, debris and pieces of building falling on him.

Suddenly, however, Loki's pace speeds up a little and through the door, dodging debris, he may very well fall out of sight from the outside.

Peggy Carter has posed:
As the sensors in the Quinjet light up just as Peggy is about to leave with the team, she swears at the sight of a very large fire that is about to start. She looks back to her team, "Keep Simmons safe and get to whatever it is. I'm going to go handle this fire and see if I can get you more information from the Quin jet sensors. I'll stay on comms. May, field command is yours." And with that, Peggy is double timing back up the ramp and the Quin Jet is readying to take off within moments.

She'll remain cloaked as best possible, when pouring mass amounts of water out of the belly of the jet. It won't be that effective and it is definitely risking their secrecy, but she can't stay still while peoples lives burn. So, she pilots in the direction of the gasline, opening up all the water resserves of the jet onto the fires. At least, that's the plan. As she goes, she keeps scanning the area for her team behind.

<<It looks like you're going to need to go underground. Two of the entry points lead there. Looks like you need to get beneath that pool. For a team your size, take the panel entry. Someone rappelled down that way, but I've lost sensor readings once they went beneath. Still, it's access. And if that's where they are going, that's probably our target.>> Peggy's voice comes over the team's comms.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
Daniel checks out the second rifle, "Noted," he tells May, but doesn't reach for it. Maybe next time right now he's got his cane and his ICER and that keeps his hands plenty full despite feeling lightly armed for their potential opposition. As Peggy opts to take the jet to put out the fire, he gives her a nod briefly meeting her eyes, "Good luck," he tells her before hustling as fast as he after Jemma, weapon ready. "So, we going the route Peggy suggested?" he asks May as they move.

Jane Foster has posed:
First, the Quinjet takes to the sky on a low hum and pivots above the shattered salt pan. A swift eastward dash crosses The Inn's property, revealing the blown out front of the wing where once Carl kept his seclusion beneath the mountains and blue sky. Piled furniture, bright red pillows and a rug now flutter to the grounds, tossed or shifted out through the shattered front. Rooms yawn open where explosives tore away the outer walls.

Peggy won't take long to reach town, an elongated strip of the Main Street highway easily visible where rolling black smoke and orange flames lick along three or four points. Houses and businesses show signs of quake damage and now fire besides, a dim echo of an Francisco's destruction at the turn of the last century. Water dropped from the craft draws a stark distinction, poured in abundant waves until it smothers several of those patchy fires trying to eat up a hostel-general store and someone's home. The owner hasn't fared so well, lying face-up in the street and staring at the sky. His eyes are black. Further along, two more residents are buried in rubble, one with her head sticking out. Eye sockets, black and stained, nothing at all like someone punched or given a bad job of mascara.

Loki roams through grassy lawns green and fair on his preamble, making that cane unnecessary but helpful. Simmons on point has to cross over a pleasant path, and then brick pavers on the deck no matter where the agents turn. Elegance awaits them in decadent ruin, with nothing to surmise where the two guests have fled off to. As the housekeeper regains her footing, she weakly stumbles away through the palms to the driveway. No doubt somewhere is a car she can use.

Either wound carved into the plaster wall or the ground offers refuge in the dark.

Melinda May has posed:
"Copy," May says, as Peggy retreats. She keys her comm as the chief powers the quin back up. "Use the foam suppression system. Also, remember: if you can hit the gas line further up, a good explosion will suck the air out, stopping the burn and letting the foam do its work." She's done the S&R thing before.

She moves ahead, then, drawing abreast of Simmons. She's a helluva lot more comfortable taking point than she is letting the younger agent wander blindly after her USGS app. She trusts Simmons to actually tell her if something bad starts heading their way. But, really? There's probably not much the USGS app is going to tell them *ahead* of time. Goverment is much better at reaction than proaction.

Still, she frowns faintly as she draws closer to the young woman. She's faintly concerned about Jemma at the moment, since the Brit somehow seems vaguely distracted. Out of her element, perhaps, being asked to do a job that's normally more in Fitz's wheelhouse, perhaps. That could be it. But, then... May really doesn't know. The woman's emotions are always sucked away just a second or so before they really register.

Well... Hell. That's something to file away for later.

"Yeah," she says to Daniel. "We follow the chief's suggestion." Because she knows the quin's eye in the sky is a damned sight better than what they've got here on the ground. Smoke billows up in the desert breeze, stirred by collasping edifices and the smoke of the fires that have begun, proving her silent point.

She watches the housekeeper flee for a brief moment, but decides it's better to let her try to escape than to divert. Thus, before much longer, they reach the access point Peggy suggested. She takes a moment to check the rappelling line. "Alright. I'm on point. Sousa, you've got our six. Simmons, keep an eye on the sensors, but let's focus on just what our diggers are doing down here." That said, she then double-checks that line again before using her own climbing harness to descend.

Loki has posed:
Loki may be leading curious SHIELD agents on a merry chase; after all, isn't it difficult to make the choice between mission and having //that// wanted criminal behind bars once again? The Asgardian Embassy can't help him out here, right?

But, he's away from them, and for the moment, it doesn't appear as if they're following him. Casting a glance over his shoulder, green eyes narrow before he changes his direction and heads towards that arch that caught his attention only moments earlier. His steps are surer, the click of the cane coming occasionally now as he moves. He's quick, and can move silently when he wishes, and in the next heartbeat, the cane is gone.

He too is gone, down a rabbithole, as it were, dusting himself off once more after landing. Green eyes peer, and a softly glowing magelight is incanted, now bobbing to his side.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Oh, right. Of course, Agent May."

There is a hint of that distraction as Jemma tries to make sense of the geological updates she is seeing of her smartphone. But...that isn't really needed for the whole tracking down the diggers. With that in mind, the phone is set to alert if anything major is on the way, though they will probably feel it a lot quicker than the app will register it.

In the meantime, Jemma pulls out her own ICER. Everyone else has something out, so she probably should, too. Still...when they come across the hole in which the climbers possibly made their descent, the ICER stays out...but the phone makes a return appearance. This time, the light on the phone is used to attempt to illuminate the hole...and quite possibly make them a sitting duck target, should anyone be watching. But...how else is one going to see how deep a hole is without a measuring tool...

Peggy Carter has posed:
Tracing the fire back towards the source, Peggy swears beneath her breath as she catches sight of those bodies on the camera below. She zooms in a bit closer, not getting any life signs from the blackened individuals, but she needs a better look than what the initial scan can give. <<There's a few dead from the explosion and they don't look... Right. Completely blackened eyes. Black stained skin. This is definitely unnatural. Keep your eyes open. Stay in contact on comms as long as they stay live.>> Peggy calls down to her team, but she's remaining above. <<Copy on the foam system, May.>>

The next pocket of fire she reaches gets the specific foam suppression system. There is no way the townspeople can just say this was a random shower now, but it's better to help save the lives and houses she can. She's then scanning for the gas line farther up, looking for a place fairly far from any people or houses that she can target with a single, focused explosion. It'll mean the gas line for the town is out a while, but it'll stop the fires. As soon as she nails down that location, she drops a small bomb, not much bigger than a grenade, on the remote section of gasline. Hopefully it doesn't send the already fragile, shaken land too much more down on people. Or her team.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
"Got it," Daniel says of the plan looking at the rappelling line, and the deep hole illuminated by Jemma's phone. Then as May heads down, Daniel covers her from above until she's far enough along he'd likely risk hitting her if he tried to return fire. He pulls out his own light to illuminate the hole and nods to Jemma. "Go on, I'll be right behind you." He was taking the rear after all and his climb was going to be slow as hell as much as he wished otherwise.

Jane Foster has posed:
Much of that team is now underground, groping through the dark to find their way towards a suspicious chamber buried underground for no good reason. No one just sets up tiled mineshafts, but Carl Ganz wasn't exactly a normal man. A partially tiled aisle underneath a fancy resort lies within reason, but where does it lead? Using phones or flashlights in place of old-fashioned torches delivers them into a chamber -- but after a certain wandering Asgardian prince has gone ahead of them and found it first, a place full of racks stuffed by banker's boxes and organized crates, plastic containers from the mid-century period, and the like. Most of these haven't warranted any attention from the two hikers found down there.

Goggles and masks for hygienic reasons also obscure their appearance, and wearing hiking gear is just a reasonable precaution. One has broken into a metal safety deposit-style box, pocketing a velvet pouch. The other has already dumped the contents of a case, ignoring a heap of gemstones and two coins incongruously thrown there. He's snatched something else up instead, turning no doubt to leave. So much for that.

At least the agents can hear it in the confined space below the earth, though how much comfort does that bring when murmurs, groans, and hisses begin rumbling through the bedrock and the roof? Creaks and growls are the stuff of a miner's nightmares. Dust tumbles down onto them. The earth grinds, rumbles, and hisses when roused.

And when she screams...

Loki has posed:
Magelight isn't anywhere near effective in the inky blackness. It's a bother, but in terms of the Astral plane? Loki continues moving forward, his feet not making a sound now as he does so.

The other magic tickles the nape of his neck, causing the hair on it to rise slightly, and he cants his head as he strains to understand it, to recognize it, to catalog it. "Oh.. this is indeed a surprise." It's one of the first times he's spoken since arriving, and his clipped English accented words are for the masked man before him. "I'll have that now." It's a suggestion, a command really, couched in dangerous politesse.

That snake, however.. the magical serpent that he sees, that he //feels// as present is met suddenly with a rapid rise of his hands as some of the non-magicked furniture suddenly turns into something of a large serpent.

Loki likes snakes. He really does.

Melinda May has posed:
For all that she came equipped for search and rescue (and for throwing down with a now unfindable Asgardian, damnit all!), May didn't come equipped for spelunking. Still, she grabs a light off her belt and snaps it onto a velcro patch on her shoulder. Yes, it makes her a target. But that's a risk they simply have to take, not having night vision goggles. That's another reason she goes first.

Because May can cast her awareness a good couple hundred yards or more ahead of them to sense the unique emotional signatures of the others beneath the ground with them. "<<Quebec juliet zero one,>>" she says subvocally into comms, calling the quinjet as the others join her and they start moving through the earth, "<<This is ground team.>>" She can sense greedy urgency up ahead, but she can't pinpoint its source. Others, though... there are at least two others she can feel. Distinct. Accomplished. Triumphant. That doesn't bode well.. "<<Not sure how stable this tunnel is, Peg,>>" she tells Peggy, entirely uncertain if their radio signals are making it above ground. "<<But I can sense at least two others down here. They're after something. And they may have it. But there's something weird...>>"

Which is another of those famous May understatements. Of course, this time, it's entirely unintended. The trio arrive at the chamber at the end of the tiled corridor. The spill of Loki's magelight is the first indication she has of his presence there. This startles her, her ICER sweeping up towards him simply because of surprise. Loki is a highly emotional creature. She *should* be able to sense him.

She cannot.

But that snake thing? She can't 'see' it, but she can sure as hell feel it. "<<Aw, hell...>>" Her ICER sweeps back towards the forming pile of snakey furniture, which also isn't quite the urgent presence she senses. Then, she finds herself wondering if maybe the cannon wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Peggy Carter has posed:
There is a sinking feeling in Peggy's stomach, as she watches the blossoming explosion from that small area of gasline and sees more of the world shaking around it. Did she just bury her team -- a team with her husband and best friend on it? Her first field mission as Chief and she may have just killed everyone. But then the fire dies out -- entirely. No more licking gas flames, all the oxygen sucked clean. The plan was successful, but at what price?

<<May. Sousa. Simmons. Anyone. Do you copy? I've got the fire out up here but I don't know if that affected the underground structure at all. Are you there? Do you copy?>> Peggy's voice rasps across the comms. Why does it always seem to end with dead air radio for her? She turns the quin jet back around, staring new scans for survivors -- her team included.

But then there's something. It's crackling and unclear, but something. She recognizes May's voice. She doesn't get everything clearly, but they're still alive. She lets out a breath of pure relief, <<May, it's hard to make you out... But if you hear this, recover the objects. Just get them back to the quin jet and we will analyze later. Over. Do any of you read? Recover the objects, the main goal, and get out of there. I repeat. Reover the objects and get out.>> That's what ICERs are for, right? Peggy doesn't seem to totally realize they are in other people's hands right now, but the orders are given.