Participants:
| Scene Title | Rough Times Ahead |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Emerson and Curtis assess where they stand. |
| Date | April 04, 2011 |
Textile Factory 17: Conference Room
It's been a few days, now, since Hannah Emerson found herself inside of the Textile Factory's Conference room. In fact, the last time she was here, she was meeting with Elisabeth Harrison to discuss matters of Mission and Conscience. Funny how all of that had turned out, wasn't it? The last few had been hectic, following the upheaval of Liz being outted for terrorist connections - something Emerson hadn't expected even after their last talk. The note she had found, taht had cleared up the matter rather quick, and left Emerson a bit unsure what to think.
What she did know now, though, was what she was going to do next.
But before she can stick her foot so far up the ass of whoever deplyed those robots that they can smeel her boots, there's something else she needs to tend to. She's be no means team leader, but with Liz gone and Felix seeming to have taken his leave as well, she finds herself rushing around the base as if she were one. TO which, she has taken herself a moment ot summon the other from the protection detail to visit her in the conference room. And so she waits, sitting in a chari with legs crossed as she watches the wall, dressed in simple BDUs.
Curtis comes in in his plain black BDU's as well. He's been active around HQ as well, trying to help get things settled back down after the charges and Liz's subsequent flight, as well as Felix leaving. Most of the experience in FRONTLINE now gone, leaves the new people to pick up the slack and move things forwards. His hand pushes open the door, and he slips inside, letting the door close behind him with a solid click. Then Mister Autumn turns, and makes his way to a chair next to Emerson, the large man settling himself down into it with a squeak of protest for the man's weight. He winces slightly at the noise, but relaxes, to a degree, then lifts his eyes up to the woman he was paired with for that bothced as hell protection detail. "Emerson." He offers with a respectful nod towards the woman, another career soldier and fighter much like himself.
"Autumn," Is replies in return, Emerson still staring atheat the wall. There's a few moments silence before she lets out a bit of an exasperated sigh, leaning back in herseat just enough to swing her feet up on the table. She should at least get to be comfortable. "Hell of a situation we're in right now," she says, looking over at him with a bit of a smirk. "Are you doin' okay?" After the other night, that is. Emerson was lucky enough toa void getting shot by the Ferrymen or by her own side, but she knew her partner hadn't been nearly as lucky as she. "They're keeping you busy, I'm sure. I still haven't finished all my reports and paper work."
Curtis doesn't lean back fully into his chair, keeping his back and spine straight, and his body ready. There's relaxation, but he's still very much alert. He watches her when she swings her feet up onto the table, a lift of an eyebrow at that, but he doesn't say anything. The eyebrow remains raised as he peers at her, though there's a look of bewilderment for a few seconds before he chuckles. "I've been through immensely worse than the other night Emerson." He offers her a small smile, a touch of amusement in the man's eyes. "But yes, I'm doing okay." He presses his lips together, blood draining from them from th epressure as he ponders her statement. "I finished mine, but I spent the entire day after doing them. I have been keeping busy since then yes." Both of his hands slip down into his lap, fingers lacing together as he regards the other FRONTLINE officer. "I'm somewhat worried about Elizabeth's possible replacement though."
The redhead can't help but laugh a bit at "I've been trhoguh worse". So has she, really. But that doesn't make what happened the other night any less tough, at least in her opinion. Fired on by their own side? Then the loss of the CO she trusted enough to not give it her all on a strict protection detail. And teh chaos that has ensued around teh office afterwards, none of it sits well with Emerson.
But really catches her attention is the mention of a possible replacement, her eyes widening a bit as she looks over towards Curtis. "You've heard more than I have, clearly. I haven't even haearrd who's relpaceing Felix, much less who might be replacing Liz." The fact taht Curtis is worried about, though, that's enough to make her feel a little uneasy about it too. She sighs again, shaking her head. "I'm unhappy about this entire weekend. I'm still trying to find out who dispatched those robots. I want to shout out them a little. Make sure they know that the Ferry were not our worst enemy out there that night."
None of it sits well with Curtis either, not a lick of it, but it is all a mess, and in the end there's very little that can be done about it all, not until things settle down and get back to a semblance of normal. In so much as an HQ for a paramilitary group of Evolved soldiers sanctioned by the governement and geared by the army in the latest of combat technology can get to normal. "The way I'm looking at it there's really only one obvious replacement. They could bring in a non obvious one but… Heller… seems the most likely. And him and his team are very very bad news." He grinds his teeth a little bit before letting out a faint sigh. He lifts one of his hands up, unlacing his fingers and rubs the tips at his right temple. "I would love to know who sent those fucking robots. Going to kick them in the ass hard enough to leave a boot print on their damned brain." His voice is a low and angry growl at this point. "We could have dealt with the damned Ferry. But those robots? They scrubbed that mission the moment they showed up. And you'd think if they're going to disrupt our mission they could at least field something worth putting out there. I've never run across those things before and I took that piece of junk apart like it was a play toy…" He snorts in disgust and shakes his head. "But yeah, when you find out who we're supposed to shout at, please tell me, so I can join."
"Heller? The guy who runs FRONTLINE OS?" She knows next to nothing about him or his team. Names, really,s ince they've never actually had to work with him or the team he keeps on Staten Island. Which is apparently a good thing? "What makes him so bad?" she inquires, looking at him with a raised eyebrow. "Really, I'm just… I'm worried because Liz was outted for her supposed connections, they're going to give us a total… I don't want to say hardass. But Harrison's attitude, it worked. It was how this group needed to be run, to make sure that everyone, evo ot not, stayed safe. I'm worried that's going to change with whoever we get next. Not to mention I'm worried we're going to get pulled in because we got sent on that protecection detail. I think we're fine, though. I know I volunteered, so…"
Curtis nods his head, very slowly to the question that the woman puts before him. "yeah, FRONTLINE OS team commander Heller. His team is made up of … we'll just call them bad people. And he is not a straight arrow himself, at all. He does things dirty, and alot dirtier than I'd even be comfortable with. And I was a Marine for a very long time, and undertook more than a few missions that would be considered illegal and immoral by most." He shakes hsi head, slowly. "We won't get pulled. We'll be questioned, maybe investigated, but they won't find anything and that will be that. We did what we could out there. Not our fault someone sent in a damned terminator extra." He rolls his eyes and looks about the room some, eyes roaming from place to place. "They will give us a hard ass. But things won't work beneath them and something will happen that will see them gone, and we'll get someone capable of running this thing again. It's going to be rough for awhile, but I've seen this kind of shit time and again. And you probably have too."
"Oh, that sounds just thrilling." Sarcasm practicaly drips from Emerson words as she speaks, a bit of a worried expression on her face. "We don't need someone who does things dirty. It only makes things worse. Extra curricular activites or not, things worked while Liz was here. We did what we had to, what we should, but it was never too much." She wets her chapping lips a bit, her gaze returning to the wall ahead. "God, A Terminator. Don't even joke like that, Curtis. That's the last thing I want to deal with right now. Those things need to go back to the Goddamn drawing board though, I don't care who I have to go through for it. I'm not going tos tand by and let things like that injure and kill good men and women who don't deserve it."
Curtis sighs again and lifts his hand up, fingers lowering down to settle on his thigh, one hand on each as his head gives a slow nod. "Yeah. He and his group are a nasty bunch. And for me to say that it's saying something." he leans forwards, resting one elbow on the table top, the other on the arm rest of the chair he's in. "Things did work with Liz. I saw that rather clearly, even though I've only been here a short time." He glances down at the fingers of his right hand, his left hand lifting, fingertip rubbing at a mark on the back of the other hand that is unmistakeably a shrapnel scar, unmistakeably for anyone that's seen such scars. "Well, unfortunatley it's a reality Emerson. I'm not joking. That was more like one of the sentinels from X-Men, only hunting mutants, but the sentiment is the same. They are out there, right now, with the possibility of terrorizing people, and killing innocents and bystanders. That thing did not care who it shot in that cluster fuck. It cut down our own men to take out the enemy. That is not how we work. Even in special and black ops missions that is not how we work. We meaning the US military…" He sighs a bit and looks to the table, fingers tapping on it's surface.
"You're God damn right it's not how we work," Emerson issues in quick response, swinging her feet off teh conference table. "You're lucky my younger sister likes comics, otherise I wouldn't understand what the hell you just said," Emerson notes with an amused smile, before she leans back again in her seat. This time, her feet stay on the ground. "God, that infuriates me more than you can imagine. First thing tomorrow, I'm filing a complaint and seeing what I can find out. This cannot keep on going like this."
Curtis smiles lightly at that statement, his eyes going down to the floor. "I never read comics myself… it's…" he puffs his cheeks out, then glances up to her. "You ready anything from my file?" he asks, somewhat out of the blue, a curious question. "Well, there's a rather simple solution to the whole thing. THey send robots without telling us they're going to be there. We blow them up. THey tell us about them, and the robots inflict harm on civilians or our own people? We blow them up. The robots do anything that we don't like and look at us cross ways? We blow them up. They'll get the idea eventually. I mean… if your complaint doesn't work that is." he flashes her a grin. "What are they going to do? PUbliclally disgrace their public super hero team because we blew up their secret robots that kill the good guys? Yeah, not fucking likely." He offers her a smile and then pushes up and to his feet, the chair squeaking again as he stands, taking his weight off of it. He moves around a few steps, then pauses, and leans back against the wall.
"Or they'll just fire us and put people on the team who won't blow up their robots," Emerson notes, "Particularly if this Heller guy takes over, that's not going t' fly. Don't get me wrong, I openly advocate taking one of those things the fuck out any time it starts doing that again, if we see them again. But I'd rather get right to the source and tell them it doesn't work." A beat. "Then if they keep it up, we can fuck them up as indiscriminately as they shot on us. As long as I'm on this team, as long as I am protecting people, I will not stand for it. And I'm glad to know you won't either. It's going to make this whole transition a lot easier."
Curtis lets a light laugh leave him at what he hears, his lips quirking at one corner. "I have seen my fare share of blood shed, and innocent and wasted death. I have seen a lifetime of it you might say… and I won't stand for it. As Elisabeth mentioned to me before… I took an oath when I joined the military originally, to protect this country from threats both foreign and domestic. And I hold by that oath. If these robots present a threat to the American people, then they die. Simple as that." He doesn't smile with that statement, there is a very calm, and very serious tone to his voice. "And yes, I will back you up on that, as will most of the team I would imagine. And Heller.. Heller won't stand for his men to be shot at, so he might actually be on our side with that. We'll see. I'm pretty sure he will be Liz's replacement, but I can't be sure…" he frowns, then shakes hsi head a touch. "We'll get through it, though I doubt we'll get through it the same as we went in."
"We''ll see," Emerson echoes, head tilting so taht she's staring up at the ceiling. "I hate that phrase. I'm not sitting by and waiting. Tomorrow I'm putting in word and finding out what I can," she repeats, shaking her head. "Because I took an oath like that too. And I don't mind going after Messiah and Humanis First types. But I'll be damned if I let these robots kill men our own men on our own soil." Huffing out a breath, the Sargeant rises up to her feet, grimacing. "I'm going to go find out anything I can about Heller, if only so I'm better prepared if he repaces Liz. Is there anything else you wish to talk about, Calvin?"
There's a flicker of emotion behind the man's eyes when Emerson mentions Messiah. His face goes pensive, but only for a second, no more, and then it's back to normal, and he doesn't comment or anything in regards to it. He pulls in a slow breath, then exhales, his eyes roaming about the room some, then settling on her once more. The LIentenait pushes off from the wall and nods his head to her. "I'd do your research, and no, there's nothing I can think of that we need to talk about, other than making sure you bring me in on any chewing outs of government people responsible for the termibots showing up." He turns towards the doors and begins to walk that way, his pace slow though, face thoughtful.
"You know, I think I get to actually dismiss someone for once," Emerson muses, watching amusedly as Curtis turns to leave. She's not in charge, but she did ask him to come by there. That counts, right? "Dismissed!" she announces, if only for her own amusement. She's always wanted to do that. But that feelting moment of amusement passes, her hands sliding into her pocket as she turns back to face the wall she had been looking at earlier.
"Rough times ahead," she says quietly to herself, before shaking her head. "I hope you're doing better than we are, Harrison."
Curtis glances over his shoulder to Emerson, a smile touching to his lips at her announcement that he is dismissed. "I miss that. Getting to dismiss my team after a mission. Was always a good feeling. Meant I brought men home out of a damned dangerous and more often than not suicidal situation. Meant I got to dismiss men that should have in all likelihood died in other countries, thousdands of miles from home…" He offers her a slight nod, then slips out and through the door.