El!
El has been with the site for nearly two years now and has continued to prove her value. Currently, she is heading up our site event, Battle for Liberterram, on top of keeping up with her own personal plots.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peggy Carter!
Lux's posts are all wonderful to read. She has done a wonderful job of grasping the new universe and incorporating Peggy into it.
CHARACTER
SPOTLIGHT
Peter Parker!
It's good to see Spidey back on the site. Watching him deal with the universe shift in his own snarky way has been nothing short of entertaining.
THREAD
SPOTLIGHT
Eight O'Clock on the Dot!
El and Lux are making magic in this thread. Straight up fireworks, and the way they've played with drawing out the reveal is top class.
Post by Alice Moore-Stark on Dec 7, 2016 3:46:39 GMT
The mansion was not a familiar place, and Alice was confused and concerned for her cat, which she did end up finding lounging in a sun room. Yeah, that was definitely her same black and white terror that she’d come to know and love. As she moved about, she noted several other things were out of place, especially considering the family picture she’d stumbled across. It was weird, to her. She’d had no connection to these people previously, and so felt really nothing at their return to life; they’d been a part of history, and not exactly a large one. Except maybe Howard, but that was mostly in connection to World War II and Steve Rogers.
But aside from ‘those are people who were dead and are now alive again’, she didn’t have a real connection to them. Mostly, she was just trying to figure out where her mother was; not replying to texts, and the phone just went to voicemail. Well, that was a bust. Hopefully she could locate her mother via public records. She wasn’t sure if she still lived in the same place or not.
Or whatever was going on; Alice was getting the feeling, even looking in the backlog of her texts to other people and their responses, it suggested that her mother was elsewhere in the world. She didn’t think Tony was having any issues; she had surmised she was at his house after all, though thankfully she seemed to be alone. At least, that’s what she’d thought when she almost stepped into a room that had some sort of butler looking man.
Yeah, that was weird and she quietly made her way out of the room, edging closer to get out, before she heard her name called by a female voice, and it certainly wasn’t the one that belonged to her mother. She froze for a bit. “Alice! You’re awake. Now, you might want to get prepared to go to a Charity event.” Maria said, continuing although Alice was looking a bit confused at that.
What? She turned around, about to deny ever agreeing to this and that she wasn’t going, but before she could get a word out, Maria cut in again. “You’re doing this, and yes I’m aware that you hate these events and you don’t want to go. We’ve been through this before.” Maria sighed; why did her granddaughter have to be more like Howard and Tony, and not….well, not the Tomboy that she was. “So, I would rather not have to fight with you on this, but you’re going whether you like it or not.” Maria stated firmly.
Alice was not convinced, but that definitely meant she couldn’t stay there. “....Ugh, fine. You win.” Alice said, in a resigned sort of way, as Maria seemed happy with that. But as she’d just gotten up, she was only semi-dressed. “I’ll just get ready.” And by that she meant she was definitely leaving the premises. She grabbed what she found were the first few clothes that didn’t seem like they needed to be washed and had grabbed a pair of discarded shoes and socks, and she was out the window in a flash. She left her phone at home, just because she was aware enough that it could be used to track her.
And also it made ignoring phone calls and incoming texts a hell of a lot easier. She supposed she should take it, and that she should be more weirded out being outside on her own, but that seemed to have gone away…mostly.
She was going to focus on a different track of thought, such as how she was going to get down from about two stories up? She needed someway down, and she edged along the side, finding eaves and hand holds as she did, and scampered down a gutter pipe as quickly as possible. Through several more similar feats of parkour, she found herself on the ground.
Time to start exploring and thus avoiding Maria. It didn’t seem to matter much; no matter where she was, she always had an annoying, pushy grandmother. Alice was glad to see that some things hadn’t changed. Time to go looking around New York, maybe figure some things out about this strange new reality.
It took a while to break free from the clutches of his suddenly-alive Father and apparent girlfriend, but eventually Tony was left to his own devices. From conversation with Howard, he deduced that at least he wasn’t alone in this strange, different reality as apparently James was here as well - and just as confused by the alive-ness of Tony’s Father.
There were theories, of course, on dimensional travel and multiple universes, but Tony had never been incredibly interested in those, as he’d preferred to be focused on tech that was less theoretical. And yet here he was, in what appeared to be one of these alternate dimensions.
The only thing that he could really do was see what was going on in this world and figure out who was here with him. Clearly Kayley and Howard were not from his home dimension; they didn’t realize how messed up this world was. And from brief internet searches, he did find the divergence point that explained both Howard being alive and James’ apparent presence in their lives. However, that same search also told him that in this world he wasn’t an Avenger, the entire structure of the continents was incredibly different, and apparently America didn’t exist, but some country that some idiots had put Howard Stark in charge of was.
He really needed to find more people that remembered the real, not-insane world.
But first, he hit the streets. Strangely, Manhattan seemed mostly similar to the one that he knew and loved. Some of the same hole-in-the-wall restaurants were tucked into the same places, while others didn’t appear to exist any longer. Another quick phone search showed that Stark Mansion was now outside the city limits, almost in its own little compound, and that Jarvis - the man that had really raised Tony - was both still alive and younger than Tony would have thought. In fact, his parents were younger than Tony would have thought as well. The whole thing was just downright odd. It seemed that things were far different here than he’d initially assumed.
And in a city of millions of people, it seemed odd that he happened to run into the one that he wanted to see. Alice. Something in him desperately needed her to remember their old lives; their real lives. He’d been glad to see that she still existed in this universe and a bit confused at how he’d managed to find her earlier than he had in his home world. But there she was, looking confused herself.
“Alice,” he called out, jogging over to her, “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.” He just really, really hoped that he wasn’t stumbling into an interaction with a different version of his daughter.
Post by Alice Moore-Stark on Dec 18, 2016 3:27:09 GMT
Alice, meanwhile, was surprisingly doing very well. Despite all the crap that had happened in the past week or so, and especially after the harrowing adventure of being the damsel in distress one time too many (once was more than enough, in her opinion). There was still some shock weirdness to her, and she was still hyper-aware, but it didn’t hurt to breathe. Her ribs weren’t cracked.
It was also slightly disconcerting to realize that she didn’t have some of the relationships in this strange parallel world that she’d had in her previous ones. Or that some of her scars didn’t exist in this one. It wasn’t too much of a shock that weird parallel worlds existed; if aliens did, why not parallel universes? Science Fiction had never held as much appeal as it did right now.
Besides, focusing on how amazing this all could be was helping her ignore how terrifying it all was. What if she was alone in remembering things differently? What then? How would Tony take all of that? More importantly, how would her mom? Alice was still concerned over that, and made it a point to try and locate her as soon as possible. Walking through town, it was very much the same as much as it was different.
Certain things were gone, vanished entirely, while the Happy Lucky Sticky Bun, Chinese Take-Out, was in the same place it always was. But this wasn’t the New York she remembered. A thing called the Shadow Province apparently existed and...wait, was that a poster depicting dinosaurs as real? That was ridiculous. She was glad to see that the ridiculous things still existed in this world too.
And at least her favorite music and band still existed. Okay, so that wasn’t as important as some people made it out to be, but to Alice it was extremely important. It was something to hold on to, something that had helped her through tough times. She wasn’t sure if she could stave off a freak out without.
That or she was just wandering around in shock.
Though the Pop culture might end up being significantly different. Maybe there was no ‘Dicks out for Harambe’ in this world, because that event might not have happened. There was just so much wrong with this world, and specifically with her life. Or how coincidental things turned out to be. Small world, Alice thought to herself as Tony seemed to come up out of seemingly nowhere.
“Yo.” Alice said, with a small wave of her hand. At least she seemed to be relatively the same person here…potentially, she’d left a lot of things unanswered back at the mansion. Not to mention that house didn’t feel all that comfortable. Or maybe that was just her. Though she wasn’t sure if this was the Tony she’d come to know, or a different Tony. “Things are weird here, right?” Alice asked him, hopefully sounding vague enough that she could play it off if he wasn’t normal Tony, but Parallel Tony.
“Why are you in sweats?” In public. Tony almost never wore super casual clothes in public. Alice was definitely hoping this was normal Tony.
It was terrifying to think that everything that he'd worked on his whole life was gone now. Sure, a lot of it existed in this world, but it wasn't his creation. It was some other Tony's, and that other Tony had other memories and a whole other life than he'd had. Different experiences causing minor differences in invention. He'd already noticed that his JARVIS AI didn't exist here, replaced with a female voice calling herself FRIDAY. She seemed alright, really, so he couldn't be too mad, but it was further proof that things weren't the same and that this wasn't his world. This wasn't his life.
How could his life and his accomplishments simply disappear overnight? He'd gone to sleep as himself and woken up in the body of another. Or, well, the world of another at the very least. It was insane - far more insane than he was used to and he'd battled aliens on multiple occasions at this point.
His excitement at seeing Alice deflated a bit almost immediately, as he wasn't sure how he would deal with it if it turned out that she wasn't the daughter that he remembered and very much loved. He approached her anyway - slightly more cautious than his initial greeting.
"Yeah, things are weird," he replied with no small amount of relief. He glanced down at his unimpressive outfit before shrugging a bit and giving her a sheepish smile. "I woke up kinda out of it this morning. With. Y'know. The weird." He still wasn't sure that she meant the same weird that he did, but he really hoped that she did. Because he needed someone to talk to.
Tony sighed a bit and glanced around them before looping an arm over Alice's shoulders to lead her to a slightly more secluded piece of sidewalk. "So on a scale of one to this-is-not-the-reality-I-remember, how weird has your morning been?" he questioned, hoping that if this was not his Alice, she would write it off as Tony being Tony or hungover or something. There were plenty of options when one was an eccentric.
Post by Alice Moore-Stark on Jan 17, 2017 6:21:09 GMT
Thankfully it was Tony who broke the whole suspicious circle they were going around in. At least someone remembered what the world was supposed to be like, and thankfully it was Tony. Someone she had more of a connection with than say, the Hulk or Clint, who would just be the worst person to remember the same world with. Or that she even knew Tony in this world; she could’ve been dumped back in her crappy life, with memories of something better.
That would truly have been horrific. To have experienced a completely different life, only to have it ripped away from you at the last instant? What cruel world would that be like? Would it be like ‘oh it was just a dream’ but a dream you long for?
“With the whole ‘It’s a brave new world’ weird? ‘Cause I gotta say, I’m not exactly thrilled with it.” Alice mentioned. “I mean listen to me, all I have is a twang, no Brooklyn accent to speak of. Weird.” Alice said, very aware that she no longer sounded quite like your usual girl from Brooklyn anymore. She didn’t have the tough voice. “Also, woke up in a totally different place from my usual one….what’s up with your mansion and why are your parents alive? My…grandparents, I guess.” Alice continued. She was rambling, it seemed.
“I don’t think I like the mansion much, though considering I woke up in ‘my’ room…” Alice said, putting quotation marks there to emphasize the fact that it wasn’t her room, it wasn’t hers at all…but yet it was. The world had completely changed. She didn’t like it. “Also, dinosaurs are apparently a thing now? What?” Alice exclaimed. “….Can I have one?” She added on. Perhaps this wasn’t the place or time, but she just couldn’t deal with the overwhelming shock of things changing this much.
It was a relief to hear that it wasn’t just him; that Alice remembered the way the world was supposed to be as well. Maybe there were more like them, too. The more people they could find that could tell them they weren’t crazy, the better he would feel about the whole thing. The better he’d be able to fight it. Oh, god, he hoped that he could fight it. He didn’t want to get sucked into the wrong of this place, where he clearly made some pretty bad decisions.Not like his past was spotless in his home world, but at least he’d gotten sober and wasn’t dating a 22-year old. She was 27.
“It is pretty weird,” he agreed to the change in her accent, hugging her to himself tightly for a long moment before letting go a bit. “I’m so glad you’re normal. This place is a disaster,” he grumbled. It turned out that Alice already knew at least some of that as well, having woken up in Stark Manor. Hadn’t Howard said that Mom was there? So she’d met Maria Stark. He wondered how that had gone. Likely not well.
He nodded a bit as she mentioned his parents and the mansion. “I’d always felt the mansion was too cold, growing up, so I moved out as soon as I could. Apparently not so much the case here. And the alive-parents thing… well, I’ll get back to you later on that one. Nothing weirder than your dead Father trying to talk you through a panic attack.” Except, maybe, for the fact that it had worked.
Tony had done enough looking around on the internet to know about the dinosaurs already, otherwise he might have fainted at the thought. “Depends on which one you want,” Tony replied about the dinosaurs, “Did you know Jurassic Park was never written in this universe, and therefore never made into a movie? A lot of the big movies still exist, but not that one. I guess because Dinos never went extinct… do you think we could train a velociraptor to not be murderous?” Jurassic Park was the first thing he’d looked for after reading that dinosaurs were real.
Post by Alice Moore-Stark on Mar 5, 2017 4:41:42 GMT
Thankfully for Tony, Alice had yet to learn about that facet of this weird world yet, or else her displeasure would’ve been known to hell and back about that. First of all, the same age as her and it being the waste of space Kayley? That would be a recipe for disaster. The amount of changes, however, amounted to having an information overload on her part. She was only vaguely familiar with a few things, and the Savage Lands and Shadow Lands had caught her attention first.
That and the fact that America apparently didn’t even exist in this universe. What kind of mad world was this? At least Tony seemed to realize it wasn’t their world. How terrifying would it have been, had it been just her alone? Alice knew a lot of things, but getting back to the right universe was not one of them. She didn’t have the means, and if Tony had been the Tony of this world, who was to say he would believe her? Who was to say that they all just didn’t think ‘it’s only a phase’?
Plus, she’d have been too paranoid to bring it up more than once. Alice was in no way taking a trip to the psych ward of a hospital because even if she knew she was right, that would’ve just sounded insane. Hence why she’d sort of slipped out without telling anyone where she was going. Tony hugged her for a long while, and it was something she was slowly becoming more comfortable with. She still wasn’t quite there on ‘touchy-feely’ stuff, but she was better.
“I’ll say. I mean it’s like Earth as we know it doesn’t even exist. If it ever existed.” Alice said in reply to that statement. Alice almost ask what had prompted the panic attack, but that seemed a silly question. It was a totally new universe and alice only knew that he’d met Howard at this point in time. “Uh, well...That’s new.” Alice said, because she didn’t have anything else to say to that.
“A velociraptor. Or a pterodactyl.” Alice answered, perhaps a little too quickly to his statement about dinosaurs. “What? No! It’s a goldmine of pop culture references.” Alice said, half-joking but half-serious as well. Actually that was terrible; she loved that movie. “I dunno. We’d have to look more into dinosaur biology and stuff.” There was a pause. “Did Austin Powers still get made in this universe?” Alice lived and breathed pop culture, but that was apparently from the old world and not the new one. “Or Star Trek? Star Wars?” There were so many movies to think about their existence.
Plus it helped keep her mind off of more serious issues about the world shift. “But anyways, let’s keep moving. I don’t think grandma will just sit back and take my wandering off well.” That’s what happened when you ran off and didn’t tell anyone about anything. “So….Howard, er….Grandpa is alive then. That’s uh….weird.” Alice commented, sounding awkward as she kept their conversation on a moving pathway. “So, any ideas on why the universe is so out of wack?” She asked him.
Tony was the science genius after all, not her.
Tony Stark OMG ERIN IM SO SORRY THIS IS SO SUPER LATER I THOUGHT I'D REPLIED AGES AGO
The hug did a lot to make him feel better. For one, he now knew that he wasn't alone. For another, he had always been the kind of person that took comfort in that kind of thing - one of the reasons that his childhood had been so bad for him was that he was a touchy kid in a non-touchy family. Luckily he'd had Jarvis for hugs when he was in a mood. And occasionally his mother, even if it wasn't her favorite thing to do. Howard, however... well, their interaction earlier today was the most touching Tony remembered in a single interaction between them, ever. Maybe things were different here, though.
Maybe.
He snorted a bit. "What do you think caused the panic attack?" he replied, trying to lighten the whole thing with the slightly-flat joke. "It took an hour on the internet to convince myself that I had not been kidnapped in some weird HYDRA bid to get information out of me," he added with a small sigh. It had been an informative hour, at least.
"I could go for attempting to train a raptor. It'll be hilarious when it mauls us," he replied with a wide grin, "Plus, they're smaller than Jurassic Park made them look, so they're really perfect house-pet size. For a dino." He chuckled a little at the thought. Oh, man, if Steve got wind of this... of course, the Steve in this world might not be the Steve Tony remembered. Damn.
"Star Trek and Star Wars survived, thank God. Haven't actually watched enough of either to see if anything is different about them here. Although there was a curious lack of complaining about not being able to watch the originals since Lucas updated them for their DVD release..." Maybe the original versions of 4, 5, and 6 without the 'enhancements' were easier to get one's hands on here. That would be neat.
He shuddered a little. "Ew. Don't call him that. Call him Howard," he replied, weirded out by the idea of applying any kind of remotely paternal term to the man. "I'm sure Mom has called him to complain by now. I left my phone in the tower, though, so we won't be hearing about it anytime soon, hopefully. As for ideas... not a clue. Except for the short-lived thought it was HYDRA's doing. Did you know they have their own damn country here? A Nazi country, can you believe that?"
Post by Alice Moore-Stark on Apr 11, 2017 4:32:50 GMT
“Yeah, that’s not really their M.O., though. Wouldn’t it just make more sense to stick to the ‘eeeevil’ bit of their thing. I mean, I can’t imagine that was a great plan to get whatever they would want from you.” Alice said in response. She still didn’t quite understand why with the panic attack. Then again, Tony wasn’t used to certain situations and he wasn’t used to calming himself down. It was a wonder how no one noticed how much mental trauma that man had to have gone through, what with the kidnapping, betrayal, battle of New York, etc.
“A real screamer.” Alice deadpanned. “Plus, y’know, they’re tiny. How about a small dinosaur?” Alice suggested instead. It had been more of an offhand joke in the first place. She wasn’t really sure she even truly wanted one. Where would they keep it? How trainable were they even? “Maybe just a quick visit, you know. With, like, stuff to punch our way outta any problems we might run across.” It didn’t exactly seem like it was a safe area to visit without that sort of stuff either.
“Well, I got a lot of pop culture to catch up on, then. Jeez, it’s gonna be from like the 80s onward too, just to see what’s changed.” Perhaps not the best thing she needed to waste her research on, but she was going to do it, gorram it. Hopefully Firefly still existed in this day and age as well.
“You call your dad by his first name?” Alice asked Tony, before realizing the irony of the situation. “If you use my case as a basis, I’m gonna tell ya that you’re wrong; I didn’t know you were my dad for like, twenty years.” Well, eighteen but she was using an approximation, not going to the exact date of the reveal. So it was still odd to call Tony 'Dad' at times. “Besides, I’m sure he expects ‘Howard’ not ‘Grandpa’.” Alice mused.
She shrugged at that. “I don’t like girly things, surely this carried over. If not, well, I’m here now, not... other me.” That had to be strange; what happened to their other selves, when they’d woken up in this reality? Why them, specifically? Tony continued on “Yes.” Alice said without any hints of joking around.
“Uh, quantum physics? Parallel dimensional shift? Maybe somehow we tumbled through a wormhole? I mean, this is so different from our earth that it stands to reason that there are other earths. Especially after the confirmation of aliens thing.” Alice started, thinking on the possibilities. “Bagels?” She asked Tony, because she was getting a bit peckish.
"I guess that's true enough," he admitted, "It still took a while to convince me this wasn't a trick. I always figured that I'd realize it if I traveled between realities, I guess. Not that it would happen overnight." He'd wanted to be the one to discover how to do it before traveling through dimensions. Instead, he got a fairly unwelcome surprise that he had no clue about.
He nodded a bit as she suggested perhaps just visiting first. "We can take the Iron Man suits. Then adopt a dino later, after getting a feel for them," he agreed. He was totally adopting a dino, though. That was a thing that was happening while he still had a chance. Anyone that thought otherwise clearly didn't know him well enough yet. "I think I'll name it Steve," he added with a small snicker. He would do it just to amuse himself by ordering the dino to do things while Steve was in the room.
Tony really hoped that there wasn't too much of a change as far as pop culture was concerned between worlds, as he'd really hate to have to re-do his entire catalog of references - but if Jurassic Park no longer existed, then he supposed all bets were off. He'd have to painstakingly look into this, wouldn't he? Maybe he could get Rogers and Barnes in on it and kill two birds with one stone. They needed to catch up anyway.
"Maybe doing the catching up together will make things easier to bear when we notice disappointing differences," he offered, as he wouldn't mind using it as bonding time with his daughter either.
He snorted slightly at the idea of calling Howard by anything but his name. "We never had a good enough relationship for me to call him anything else," he replied, "Mom was always Mom, though. Or Mother, in specific company." His childhood had certainly been... interesting. In regards to his parents.
"I'm sure Mom will complain a bit when it comes time to something formal. She's... a bit proper. Old money and all that," he replied with a shrug to her mention of not doing the girly things. It was possible that they'd already had arguments about it in this universe, if Alice was anything like the one that he'd gotten to know. He hoped she was.
Tony supposed that upon thinking about it, a country of Nazis made sense. It had happened before, after all. Didn't mean he had to like it, though. Maybe he could convince everyone to help him wipe them off the map. That could be a nice bit of stress relief.
"No, I don't think bagels would do it," Tony joked with a smirk before pulling out his wallet and handing over a credit card, "But have at 'em." He followed her to the counter, sure that he should eat something as well even if he was too nervous to be all that hungry. "I'm thinking it's just a dimensional shift, but I'll have to do more work on it. Hopefully Reed Richards here is just as much of a genius and less of a jerk..."