Shadows of Prophecy

Participants:

cardinal_icon.gif eve_icon.gif gillian2_icon.gif

Scene Title Shadows of Prophecy
Synopsis The shadow man meets a woman who can see the future in her dreams, finally.
Date August 13, 2009

Mas Mechanics - Oracle Room

This room has no curtains covering the window and nothing has really been done to change it. There is just tons of paintings and folders with papers in them around the room, a few paintings sit on easels here and there. The room is strange in when a sound is made it echoes throughout the whole room.


Candles are lit all around the place, Tiger prowls around the Oracle Room, his golden colored eyes staring at his mistress. Nanai lays curls up on one of the shelves and she flicks her tongue out every few seconds.

The mistress in question is Eve Mas, who is currently lost in a painting that she is doing? A few other new paintings can be seen around the place.. two of them of the same thing. Icy blue eyes, the eyes of Peter.

She wears a black dress and her feet are bare. Head tilted to the side and eyes glazed over. She makes a few frantic brush strokes on the canvas.

At the gate, which is unlocked as of right now, the two Huskies sit waiting for someone.. or something.

If only she'd gone to a healer first, Gillian could have walked. Instead she asked Brian if she could borrow a different car than she'd been using recently, and drove that out to the Ruins. Paranoia, worry, it's not going to go away, especially not with pain to remind her of the dart-caused bruises in multiple places of her body. It wouldn't have been so bad if they hadn't been fired at point blank range, chipping bone in places. The car is parked outside the gate, fitting in quite nicely with the husk of cars on the street. It doesn't look like it runs.

The only reason she continued to call for the meeting would be because of assurances that it would be okay. Doesn't mean she's not glancing around at everything that seems to move. A bag held against her chest, with one hand already in it, she limps toward the front gate, and the two big dogs. She's honestly not sure her body can handle getting knocked off her feet by them this time… "Stay." Please say they're trained…

The two dogs whine but bark briefly before running into the warehouse, Eve hums softly as she continues to paint. She knows who is coming but she is too busy right now to come and greet anyone, they will have to come to her.

Tiger meows and rubs himself in between her legs before moving on to another part of the room.

"Thank god," Gillian says when the dogs choose to run away from the gate instead of through. She takes in a slow breath and continues in her slow limping through the gate and toward the building. From the way she limps, she's not injured just in one leg, but perhaps both, as well as other clues to give away injury. What's visible of her arms show that her tattoos have not been fixed, and near twin bruises peek out under the short sleeves of her blouse. As she makes her way inside, she checks for the snake, for new animals, and starts to work her way through the garage toward the rooms she's been shown. "Eve? Is Cardinal here yet?"

Cardinal is. He just doesn't reveal that fact yet, a shadow that spills over the floor like a shifting of light to coil into Gillian's own and hide within it, tailing her unseen, silent as she makes her way within.

Gilly's getting closer.. closer.. bingo! She's found the seer, who is still humming and painting. Tiger purrs at Gillian but seems to sense something else as he hisses and jumps away.

It's then that Eve is out of her trance, done painting for now. "Yes, I'm sure he is." Is the answer to Gillian's question. Eve's wild gaze turns to Gillian and her eyes widen. "I didn't dream this.. who." Is all she asks in reference to Gillian's injuries.

Unaware of the hijacker, Gillian nods at the words from the fortuneteller. "Supposedly he's pretty sneaky," she says, looking around for a moment, but not thinking to look at her own shadow. Awareness of someone's ability doesn't always help in thinking exactly how it might work. Arthur's use of it had been far more dramatic. "I— I'm okay," she lies, shrugging, but even that shrug makes her grimace. "I'll stop in and bug one of the healers soon. There's a couple of them out there…" She's reluctant to talk about it, but she doesn't let go of the back, or loosen up. There's even the occasional glance around.

"I was trying to find Peter on my own and someone followed me. Was looking for… for Gabriel. Not by that name, though. Could have been any number of people. I— Brian's worried he might be following me. If he would be coming after you, you'd know about it, wouldn't you?"

"It may have been," says a voice both hollow and raspy from the ambient darkness, as a shadow splits away from Gillian's own and bleeds up the wall in the silhouette of a man, arms rising to fold across his 'chest', "One of Feng Daiyu's people, if they were looking for Gabriel and the Remnant. Are you all right?" A hint of concern in Cardinal's tone, even if the voice is difficult to recognize.

"I'll have forewarning, don't worry." Eve says putting her hands on her hips. The seer's eyes travel to the wall with Cardinal on it and she shakes her head and sucks her teeth. "Off the wall, you're scaring my babies."

Narrowing her eyes, "Who is this Feng?" Apparently he's at the top of Eve's list now. "The Remnant?" Eve knows about the Remnant, she just doesn't know that they have a name.

"Fuck, shadow-man… you could scare the crap out of me if you do that without speaking first," Gillian says, but from the way she jumped a bit and started to look around, he scared her anyway, even with speaking first. Eyes settle on the shadow form against the wall, reminded of Arthur's many shadow clones a little too much.

"Remnant…? He was looking for Sylar specifically." While she's not a fan of using that name, it's the name he used. It could be important. "Didn't bother to question me about anyone else. When he found out we weren't together anymore, he said he would go barking up different trees." It took a whole lot of darts before he got to that… "Is Feng the CIA guy that I heard about? He didn't look like a Feng… wore mirrored sunglasses, aviator style. Knew how to handle the gun, too. I figured he could be one of those, or— maybe part of the Company. They use darts sometimes."

The blackness stretches outwards, wrapped about the shape of a man as Cardinal pushes himself off the wall and into three dimensions, fading from black to monochrome to colour in a slow shift of hues and light until he looks at the pair with a wry half-smile, "Sorry. I wanted to make sure I wasn't being followed… hm, could be someone else, but could still be one've the spooks. The government's put together a task force to head after them— Gabriel, Eileen, Holden, the King of Swords, and every other Vanguard operative still alive."

A smile quirks to his lips as he looks to Eve, offering casually, "Hi. Richard Cardinal. I've heard a lot about you."

"Eve Mas." The woman nods her head and then fixes Gillian with a stern look. "Sit." Is all she says as she gestures to a group of armchairs in the room. As she gets comfortable, "So they are going after the last of them.. how does that connect to my dreams.." Eve wonders aloud and then she shakes her head. "King of Swords? Well that's a great superhero name, huh?"

Richard is given another stare. "Gillian has spoken of you briefly.. what is it that you want?" The seer tilts her head with a soft smile on her lips. Nanai slithers into her lap and Tiger nuzzles her feet.

There's a small nod in response to Cardinal, as Gillian's hands go up in a gesture of 'fine, fine' before she goes to settle into the chair. The sitting makes her grimace as much as the walking does, but she bites down and leans back. "Could be I got the one looking for Gabriel specifically, then. I should be grateful I didn't get one anxious to go straight to bullets during questioning." No harm done. Yeah right.

"Your ability, the dream I had with it, it led me to him," she explains to Eve, perhaps a partial repeat of things. "And I thought someone with your ability could help him out. You've never been keen on going to Phoenix, and maybe you should have an alternative. Doesn't hurt to have two people with forewarning about some of the shit that keeps happening around us." And by people, she means groups.

"You," Cardinal states, thrusting a finger at Gillian, "Are going straight to a healer after this, for fuck's sake, you look like hell." That said, he walks along over towards the armchairs himself with a casual slouch, his head shaking slowly before he sprawls out in one, stretching his legs out a bit and kicking one ankle over the other, "As for what I want? I want to keep Staten Island from sinking into the sea. I want to prevent the Vanguard's Final Solution. I want an all-weekend pass to an expensive spa, I think I could use a pedicure."

Looking at Cardinal in a approving way, anyone that shows concern for Gillian is a winner in her book. "Yes.. all these issues coming up." Eve runs a hand through her hair and chuckles. "A manicure too, please." The singer looks to Gillian and then Cardinal. "You with him too? His people?"

Eve pets Nanai and makes cooing noises at her before looking back up. "Is that Final Solution that you dream of.. this?" she says as she points to the paintings of the dreams she's been having, one of the city underwater and the next of the mushroom clouds in the Ruins of Midtown.

"What exactly are you planning? In terms of.. goals here? Your like Phoenix.. but different how?" An eyebrow is raised.

"I'm just bruised in a lot of places," Gillian protests, but leans back and let's Cardinal answer her questions. There's a lot going on there.

"The nuclear one," admits Cardinal in quiet tones, gazing at the paintings for a long moment, "The other…" He hesitates, "…that's probably Norman. He's an— incredibly powerful terrakinetic, and if we don't stop him, he'll wipe Staten Island off the face of the Earth." A bit of gallows humor, then, as he notes with a jerk of his chin towards the flooded streets, "I imagine that'd cause a few waves comin' up from the beach."

He turns his attention to Eve, then, expression wry behind the shades he's always wearing, "I don't give a shit about politics is the difference. Phoenix, they're— political, divided, they aren't really sure what they want. I'm just a troubleshooter. The future needs to be put on a better track than where it's going, because otherwise we're all dead."

Taking the information in, Eve nods her head and slips a hand under Nanai. "Norman.. first time hearing of him." She admits and looks up towards the ceiling. "I must admit that I don't know much of facts, just my dreams. Since I'm not actively tied to Phoenix."

The artist places Nanai in her tank and puts the lid over it. "You want to change the future, are you ready to accept the consequences? For every good action, something bad happens. It's the balance of things."

"I already have." Cardinal leans forward, arms folding on bent knees as he regards the artist with a rueful expression, "We've already changed things for the worst; I killed Arthur Petrelli, but all the threats that he would've prevented are still at large out there in the world because of it. We stopped Tyler Case from empowering everyone in a city— and now the force that could've stopped those threats won't exist. Butterflies and hurricanes."

The ex-convict closes his eyes, "I just have to believe that I can still steer this ship the right way."

"First lesson in dealing with the future, it is not a one man team. There is no I only we. Nobody is powerful enough to change the whole course of history and the future on their own." Well unless your Hiro.. "Good that you are ready for that, then I'll help you." Eve says simply and grins softly at Cardinal. "I don't trust anyone enough anymore to have my full loyalty. Consider me a freelance prophet. I'm not an active member, I help you when something comes up. Or if you need me for something you let me know." Eve doesn't mean to sound harsh but after what happened with PARIAH and Phoenix she's slow to join any other type of faction.

"I have a few combat skills.. firearms, hand to hand. I can fix a car or two.. any of these skills are yours to use." Eve says and looks towards Gillian.

"She's teaching me to handle a gun, not that it comes to matter most the time," Gillian says, having listened quietly for a time. The grimaces aren't quite going away, and her voice is still raspier than normal. There'd been times when she could handle some pains, but this is different than getting a new tattoo. A lot different.

"Norman— the terrakinetic. He's one of the ones we ended up springing from Moab, isn't he? You can blame part of that on Arthur. He told me my ability could bypass the drugs keeping their powers inactive. It happened cause I augmented Peter, and he augmented me, and you heard what Ray said could happen with two people with the same power looping in on each other. He used teleportation— teleported everyone. I ended up in Antarctica. Which is as fucking cold as you think it is."

A faint chuckle, as Cardinal admits wryly, "Well, obviously I mean we - one man in the right place can do a lot, but it's going to take a lot more people in all the right places to take care of all this bullshit." He nods to the pair then, saying quietly, "I appreciate it. Right now I'm working out of the old Midtown library…" Like PARIAH, like Phoenix, like Edward Ray before him, "…I've been using it as an operations area and somewhere to sleep for the time being, for me'n a few others. I've been working on infiltrating all the other organizations on the chessboard too, but it's slow going…"

He turns a slight grimace on Gillian, "…yeah, he is. I've gotten a hold on Phoenix's copy of the manifest, I'm trying to match up names to the prisoner numbers, but it's slow going. Norman's a complete fucking lunatic, and he's going to kill over fifty thousand people if he's not stopped in time." At the explaination, he lifts a brow, "Guess that explains why people are still popping up here'n there. To be honest, I'm not sure if we shouldn't've let Ray carry off the power loop…"

"So it would seem that on your list of things to do, Norman White is on the top." Eve says and places a hand on her other arm. "Anything else? You have files I may look at, so that I can better help you?" Head tilted.

"Shoulda, coulda, woulda." Eve waves her hand off. "Are you working on ways to locate him now?" The woman is thinking and as she does she looks to Gillian. "Are you leaving Phoenix for his lot? Or just an associate?"

"I'm not leaving Phoenix," Gillian says with an obvious grimace that has nothing to do with the physical pain she's under. There's a lot of reasons why she might want to leave, and a majority of them are rather petty. That he has the manifest that Phoenix got already— well it doesn't surprise her. She just knows she didn't give it over. "I guess you already got a mole in there, so an offer to share info would be a little redudent." That'd been part of the reason she had stayed.

Part of it. "I do want to make a few changes in the way they deal with certain things, and I can't do that if I quit. They try so hard to do everything that they end up getting to the point where they do one thing and ignore everything else they could be doing. Even their political agenda got pushed aside when Pinehearst devoured all of our attention, and Cat worrying over the prophecies are doing it again."

After a few moments, she gives Cardinal a look, and a smile, "I see you took up the chess metaphors." It's almost a joke at him, considering his reaction at first when she brought it up.

"That's my point… they're unfocused, and they're going to fall apart if they don't get on track again," Cardinal agrees with a tight shake of his head, "Their work's important, but I think they should focus more on the political than the dangerous; otherwise, the government has all the reason they need to dismiss any good they do by pointing out the bad." He pushes both hands back through his hair, "I don't really need a mole for most of it, Cat's pretty good about sharing information lately, so long as Dean doesn't get in her way. I can always use someone keeping an eye on things, though, the more eyes the better."

A nod, then, to Eve, "I've got some files you can look at. You have any more paintings or prophecies on hand? The more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle… the better."

Just listening, the woman nods her head and points around the room. "These all the paintings I've ever painted. I don't know which ones go to the puzzle yet." Eve says and nods to Gillian. "Help them." Is all she says while she goes back to gazing at her paintings. "So many pieces.. so little time. I assume you'll want to introduce to your people?"

"A little bit of focus doesn't hurt anything. I may not be the best freedom fighter on the planet, but I was a librarian, and I can tell you that if I ignored book stocking and only sat around taking late fees, I'd have been in a pretty shitty library," Gillian says, then looks back at Cardinal. "Did you check the library for bugs? Phoenix abandoned it when we found out HomeSec had been there after the bridge incident. Cause hell, if there aren't any, I might want to go back and look through the shelves in my spare time. I only got through two sections on the inventory before the world went to hell."

The Library is also where she touched Edward Ray's hand, where his plan came to fruitation.

"I'll let you know what Phoenix lets me know, if it's relevent and if they're not planning to act on it themselves. Helena can get a little territorial." Especially when someone's chasing after her boyfriend… Speaking of which, she glances at the new painting, with blue eyes, and then looks away. Any chance of a smile is gone.

"Edward Ray was operating out of there during the recent time travel crisis," says Cardinal with a slight shake of his head, "So I'm assuming it's safe— if there's anyone who knew how to operate securely, it was that paranoid sonuvabitch." Circles and cycles; perhaps her touching his hand and him taking up residence there wasn't so coincidental. Cardina pushes himself up from the chair, stretching slightly before approaching the paintings, "I'll get everyone together for a… meet'n greet… also to clean the fucking place up, it's a mess. I'm also hoping to get some cross-training going, some of my people don't even know how to fire a gun."

A phone's pulled from a pocket, snapped open before he glances back to Eve, "You mind if I take some pictures? I can go over them later, see if… I can fit some pieces together."

"Pictures are fine, yes." Eve nods her head and stands to go and lean against the wall. "I'll have to ask you that you don't tell anyone where I live, please." Eve looks at Cardinal and then at Gillian. "A meet and greet will be nice, do you have many members yet?"

"Yeah, he'd have picked a different place if he thought he had to," Gillian says, still frowning a bit as she avoids looking at said paintings. "You know I'll help if you need it," she adds, furthering her offer, to both of them. "But things I can offer are pretty limited, anyway, so as long as you're aware of that…" There's only so much she can do… "And I have to help Brian out at the Lighthouse. He can split himself into two pieces, but I'm not that lucky anymore." Just one place at a time.

"Won't tell a soul," Cardinal agrees easily, "Try not to spread around where I'm working out of yourself…" The phone camera's used as he moves about the galleria, his head shaking a little, "Five or six… and more people who don't exactly know what they're helping with. There's others I'm hoping to pick up."

He looks back to Gillian, then, one brow lifting. "I killed Arthur Petrelli," he notes, "I'm not exactly Chuck Norris, and I didn't have any powers that helped me do it at all. They're useful. But they're not everything. You are more than the sum of your ability, babe." A grin, then, "And if nothing else, you can keep an eye out for Norman White on Staten Island. Would suck to do all that work and then have the Lighthouse sink."


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