You can check out anytime you'd like.. [Hotel Corona Mingle]

[thespaceopera]

Who: The Fleet!
Broadcast: If you want
Action: Hotel Corona or Planet Ikke
When: December 7th onward



[After the mystery and isolation of their last destination, the Marsiva seems determined to head to brighter, busier territory. After a long journey through remote, nebula-painted space, speeding along at a brisk pace for the Host ship, the Marsiva brings her Fleet to a sudden and prominent point of traffic.

It seems that the Fleet has happened upon some sort of vacation destination! Maybe Atroma thinks that the passengers deserve some rest and relaxation... or just wants to distract them with something huge and shiny.

Welcome to Hotel Corona! Feel free to enjoy yourselves and enjoy the sites! If a hotel resort isn't your thing, you can head on over to the nearby planet and explore it's icy wonders.

In order words: it's a mingle!! Everyone get in! ]

[>> Plot Post]

Comments

[mucked]

We found a girl left wandering the facility. [ although, she supposes she ought to clarify: ] It wasn't really decommissioned. I doubt it. More like a well-spread table, left for us to find. It's where we located Doctor Fenhoff in the cells. [ right where leviathan wanted him to be found.

but she digresses. ]

She stabbed Dum-Dum Dugan. The girl, I mean. Barely came up to his knee and -- [ a shrug. she's not really surprised by it anymore. ]

[outstandingbalance]

He underestimated her. That's the idea, isn't it?

[She says it as a question when it's anything but. They both know that it is, that Natasha had done as much herself given the opportunity.]

It's not hard to picture exactly how that happened. It was a trap.

[Both the girl, and the facility.]

[mucked]

One that was terribly well set. [ regret stretches into her voice. ] It gave us much of what we needed to start clearing Howard Stark's name -- at the time, he was up on treason charges for selling weapons to the enemy. When, in point of fact, one of the women trained in that facility had infiltrated his vault.

[ -- there's enough heavy suggestion in her voice that she doesn't need to explain how that infiltration happened. ] Stole the whole lot.

[outstandingbalance]

From what I've heard about Howard, he would have been the ideal mark for a Black Widow. As hard as it might be to believe looking at my current resume, but we were always spies first.

And if Howard was anything like Tony, he's not all that hard for a well trained spy to manipulate.

[mucked]

Idealer than ideal. He barely remembered having brought her back to his private hangar. The whole bloody time he could have informed me of our best guess at a suspect, and it had barely registered with him. [ offensive, certainly.

only it gets worse: ] In the end, we tracked her down only because he makes a point of sending out a specially commissioned diamond bracelet to each of his -- companions. To commemorate their time together, apparently.

[outstandingbalance]

That's convenient. And also, possibly worse than Tony.

[As hard as that is to believe, somehow.]

Was that as demeaning as it sounds?

[mucked]

[ oh, he's absolutely worse. and yet somehow also better. it's a strange fine line. but peggy suspects things go south later on in the timeline.

as for how it sounds? ]

Well. I got treated to watching each girl we visited turn around and slap Howard's butler over the whole ordeal so -- yes, I imagine it's precisely as demeaning as it sounds.

[ poor mister jarvis. ]

[outstandingbalance]

[Not that it makes taking advantage of him better somehow, but a person like that was a weak link. Natasha could easily imagine how the Widow who ended up with the job would have viewed it.

And it's hard not to think someone was going to hit him like that eventually.]

At least his insulting habit came in handy in the end. It's just too bad that someone else had to pay for it.

[mucked]

[ don't worry; peggy's socked howard enough times that it shakes out, eventually, karma-wise. as for the man who did take those hits over the bracelets? ]

I wouldn't feel too bad about it. Mister Jarvis would endure that and worse for Howard's sake.

[outstandingbalance]

Must have done something right if he inspires that kind of loyalty.

[A lot like Tony, then.]

So the trap worked, but you were able to identify the agent and stop their plan?

[mucked]

In the nick of time, so to speak. [ she nearly leaves it at that -- the cheery happy ending. but peggy shakes her head. ] And not without loss of life. Howard was innocent of the charges laid against him, but it's hard to argue he quite deserved the depth of defense he got. In the end.

[ howard's a dear friend. truly. but some days, she struggles to justify the lives given so howard could go on turning a profit and living as though the rules never apply to him. ]

[outstandingbalance]

Sometimes it's less about protecting one person, and more about preventing what else will happen if they go down.

[Ever the realist, Natasha knows exactly how that works out.]

[mucked]

[ a hum of assent. ]

Precisely so. Quite apart from anything else, it shouldn't sit right with anyone that the SSR would be so hungry to slap a treason charge on anyone. [ and so here are sprouted the seeds, it seems, of her disagreement with the agency itself. it sort of makes shield's founding into a self-fulfilling prophecy. ]

[outstandingbalance]

There was a lot of suspicion in the air back then. And it'll get worse before it gets better.

[mucked]

[ a huff of a sigh. she nods. ]

Like the Hollywood Ten.

[outstandingbalance]

Exactly like that. And it was no better in Russia.

[mucked]

No, I imagine it wasn't.

[ culture wars go both ways. ]

[outstandingbalance]

[And sometimes even more than that.

Natasha lets the thread of conversation drop there, though. Probably not the most relaxing topic for their spa day.]