8909/Post-Script: Christmas Trees

Post-Script: Christmas Trees
Date of Scene:	02 December 2021
Location:	Rockefeller Center
Synopsis:	Just a little matter about a missing spear, no biggie.
Cast of Characters:	Sam Wilson, Michael Erickson, Michael Hannigan, Peggy Carter, Jonathan Sims, Daniel Sousa, Asariel, Ruby Lasertrava, Jessica Drew

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Sam Wilson has posed:
    Yes, Sam is the grouch in this scenario. He shoves his hands into the pockets of his coat, brow furrowed beneath the brim of his New York Mets cap. "You know that message you passed along to me?" he asks Jon, while politely ignoring Jess and Michael have their moment together. It's part willful ignorance of regulation, part acknowledgment that something strange has overcome them all.

    "I think it's about time I answered that phone call."

    And then the Falcon lets out a great heaving sigh. He seeks out Peggy in the crowd, his eyes skimming from face to face. His hand lifts to his ear. "<<It's a long story. What do you know about the Spear of Destiny?>>"

Michael Erickson has posed:
    "I'm fine," Michael says, gently brushing Jessica's hand away. "It's this...whatever it is. I'm fine." The realization he had been hit by that...whatever it was...turns that wave of love into self-directed anger. Such vulnerability he has shown in that moment, such weakness. His father would have been so disappointed. He takes a deep breath, and pulls the scarf up over his face again. "I'm sorry, Agent Drew," he says to Jessica, taking another deep breath. "This...force...has me quite out of normal state. I ask that you forgive and ignore this." A glance to the other agents. "All of you. It must be my nonhuman nature." Or maybe you're just a huge frigging sap under all that militarism, Cal'hatar. MAYBE THAT'S IT. But in the moment, he shakes his head clear of whatever it was, and stands stiff and straight again.

    His arm's still around Jessica, though. The sap.

Michael Hannigan has posed:
When the interview is over, Nick gives a parting nod as the reporter heads off. When he's left to just him and Buble, he sighs. "Geez Michael," Nick comments, "Do you do this to Luisana?"

Peggy Carter has posed:
As her husband does his best to get her to focus on maybe being happy, Peggy looks achingly tempted, gazing back over to the brightness of the lights on the crowd, then back to the SHIELD agents around her. Jonathan, Jessica, Michael... Some of them looking almost beatific in their happiness. Peggy's brow crumples a bit and she looks back to Daniel, "I love you so much, and I am never happier in the world than when I'm coming home to your side. But this is bloody well f*cked and we have to keep our heads together."

With that, she looks back to Sam, her eyes widening just a little more as she hears that question. "Heard of... yes. And... I'm right, aren't I? We're all proper f*cked." Well, when the Chief is bringing out the real curse terms, things have got to be messed up.

Jonathan Sims has posed:
    Jon's expression falls as his heart falls right into his stomach, between Sam's words and Peggy's response to them. Metaphorically anyway. "Oh. Oh good lord."

    He takes in a long breath and lets it out slowly, then says, "I think we'd better hear more about this, Agent Wilson." He looks at Jessica, expression... tenative. Worried. "There's a reason that angel was looking for /us/, and it can't be just to deal with some impromptu rave in Gotham." He presses a hand to his chest again.

    "Love can lead to sacrifice, after all. 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'" He shakes his head. Long breath in, long breath out.

    "I hate it when they're right," he mutters.

Daniel Sousa has posed:
Daniel's brow furrows. "Well if it's FUBAR, then we better dig into this and figure out what the heck is going on."

Sam's question gets a cough out of Daniel. "The thing the Nazis were looking for back in he day?" he asks about the spear. "If so, I'm with Peg and we're fucked." A beat. "Pardon my French.

Asariel has posed:
Lasariel gets done with donating, but that doesn't make a dent in her accounts. It's good to be wealthy and it's good to give to charity. She does feel that tingle run down between her shoulder blades and there is a pain that she can't explain for a moment, feeling like something is pushing against the skin.

She gives wide eyes to Gio who takes that as a sign that it is way past time to go home.

The white haired woman finds a way back out to the street and through the crowd to try to put distance between them and the crowd, her anxiety going wild. Gio is for once left in the dust, "Whoa there, your legs are too short to be walking /that/ fast!" he calls after her as they head out.

Michael Erickson has posed:
    Michael has no idea what the Hell people are talking about. He doesn't have the context. His gods commanded their created people to go out and subjegate the universe, after all; this talk of sacrifice and...well, he just wasn't around for Bible study and he's not going to piss away everything he's done and gotten for it of late thanks to some divine blender-job. "I didn't give up one set of gods so another can come destroy this planet," he says after a moment, iron setting into his tone. "If 'He' tries, we will stop Him. Even gods can be killed if need be."

    And that's where the alien militarism comes back in. The Klingons killed their gods for being too much of a pain in the ass, right?

Michael Hannigan has posed:
Nick gets an idea.

Nick gets a HORRIBLE. CRAZY idea for how to get out of the situation he currently finds himself in. It's just so crazy, it just might work.

Lifting his upper arms up slowly to where they are in line with his shoulders, he swings the lower forearms downwards, seemingly trying to expand upon his space. And then he strikes.

The lower arms contineu backwards, bring the hands to the Buble's sides. The fingers do their worst, flicking about. As the arms let go in reaction, Nick bolts forward, moving quickly away from the laughing Buble. NO MORE!

Ruby Lasertrava has posed:
Ruby, for her part, has gotten off the trash can at some point. At this point she just sort of ends up in the crowd.

<<Unknown Entity signature logged,>> the VIOLET POWER RING says to Ruby, the voice modulated to be audible primarily on a frequency that is a lot more prominent in the Thiresque auditory spectrum than the human. Which means Ruby hears it better than most.

<<The signature... fading. Commencing triangulation. Encircle the area, Sapphire.>>

"I'm getting a hot dog first."

<<Wise! The air is cold, and the sea is colder, on this axial-tilted planet.>>

Jessica Drew has posed:
Jessica missed the Christian boat entirely. It is only through reading that she has likely begun to catch up with her peers as far as cultural references are concerned, Christianity and biblical references included. In that regard, she knows that Jon quoted the bible but not even which book of the bible it comes from.

She feels no call to any religion but recently has begun to frequent a small group of New York Buddhists. Jewdists some of them jokingly call themselves, that have taught her to sit zazen and about the Middle Way. The first time, she thought, this is it, I belong /here/.

Talk of someone sacrificing themselves for her sins make her as uncomfortable as the love fest they experienced today.

The Agent almost smiles at Michael's ferocity and a return to normalcy. What? Maybe she did prefer the love fest, after all.

Sam Wilson has posed:
    "Proper fucked," Sam confirms. His voice is grim. His expression is grim. His emotions, to those who can sense them... you guessed it: grim.

    He shakes his head, and he's uncomfortable enough that his body language visibly closes off when Jon spouts off that quote about God's love. Shoulders hunch up, chin ducks down, eyes towards the ground beneath their feet, which has gone grey and slippery as the snow continues to fall. John 3:16. Unlike Jess, he can pinpoint just about any Biblical citation. The consequences of being raised by a Baptist minister father. Though he looks up when Daniel evokes Godwin's Law in one of the first instances of it actually being appropriate to do so. "They did more than look for it."

    There's a moment where he hesitates. The people here who know Sam know that he's not the type, because his moral code is so deeply entrenched in his psyche that he rarely has issue making snap decisions. But this is something that is apparently disconcerting enough that he really has to stop and think about what he's going to say.

    The grimness on his face gives way to determination, though, once he's made his choice. "This is going to sound pretty out there, but... well, we all know that the Nazis had a lot of mystical and pseudoscientific experiments running alongside their more traditionally horrifying evils. The Spear featured pretty heavily in their attempts to circumvent their ultimate defeat at the end of the war."

    His tongue presses into his hard palate, another physical sign of his apparent resistance to talking openly. Well, as openly as a huddle of SHIELD agents blocking out the public from overhearing their doomsday Armageddon talk, one supposes.

    "The incursion on Long Island--when the Nazis relocated Wewelsburg across time and space? I felt something like this, then."

Michael Erickson has posed:
    The soldier's mind connects dots in that refreshingly simple way: Is God threatning the Earth? Kill God or die trying. Simple bloody logic. But nobody's speaking to what Michael's saying about deicide, and so he falls silent, not knowing...ah. Nazis. Nazis he knows. Mental note: find out what Wewelsburg is. Locate it, burn it to ashes, salt the earth upon which it stands.

Peggy Carter has posed:
A little groan escapes Peggy's lips as she's shaken off some of the affect now. She rubs her free hand down her face, nodding in agreement with Sam and Daniel's memories about it all. "Yes... and, until recently, that very spear was on loan to the Metropolitian Museum of Art. And the Counsul General Helmut Boeck has lodged a VERY angry complaint to get it, and a few other relics, back. Whether we had the right to loan it or not, I... I'm not honestly certain."

Peggy sighs deeply, shaking her head to the group of agents, "We tried to keep it out of Nazi hands, that was the important thing, but it is an Austrian artifact. Or... so they say. It's a political mess and now, from what I'm hearing, a magical one as well. I want all of you to start looking into this and get reports on my desk by Monday morning. For tonight...if you can keep control of yourselves, enjoy it. If not... go take a few rounds on a punching bag and remember yourselves. Understood?"