Participants:
| Scene Title | Simple Matter of Time |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A SESA agent approaches Des, but not for the reason she expects. |
| Date | April 29, 2018 |
It might be a simple matter for Odessa to sit in a diner undisturbed, usually. Who would even have a reason to bother her during this fine lunch hour?
Rasheed is walking by the diner, his car parked nearby. He's taking a bit of a break from some routine SESA activities. But then something tugs on his mind, feels a bit off, and it's coming from the diner. "Damn, here we go." he says with the tone of someone who doesn't particularly feel like dealing with this at the moment, but this stuff always has the potential to go south.
He enters the diner, follows that feeling until he sees Odessa sitting there. He doesn't recognize her, but he takes a seat across from her, and immediately sits his SESA ID on the table. "Agent Mustang, SESA. Don't worry, you're not in trouble, I don't even know who you are."
Leaning forward, though, hand on his badge, he whispers, "But why don't you tell me about the time travel while I order us some coffee and lunch."
There’s a cherry cola sitting in front of Des as she looks over the menu, swirling he straw through the bubbles absently. When someone approaches her table, her guard goes up. When that someone identifies themselves as SESA, it’s all she can do to keep her expression neutral and not rabbit right out of there.
I don’t even know who you are.
If it’s true, then how does he know about— No. Odessa Knutson-Price doesn’t time travel. Not as part of her ability. And not on any record.
Dark brows furrow together quizzically. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
"Then let me ask you something." Rasheed says after casually reading off his order to the waitress, ordering some waffles, because why not have some diner waffles for lunch.
Once the waitress is gone, his focus returns to Odessa. "Were you recently kidnapped? Did you experience missing time? Met someone suspicious?" he wonders, sounding very routine in his questions.
He doesn't seem particularly alarmed or troubled by her presence. And he also ordered coffee, which is sat in front of him. He starts to prepare it with a bit of sugar, and pours around three cups of the cream into it.
"Make no mistake about it, you did time travel, I'm just trying to make sure that you weren't the victim of a crime, or that you aren't in some kind of trouble." He starts to stir his coffee now, watching at her, his gaze very relaxed. This is all routine. "Time travel is very serious. It's not a crime, but if you have an out of control ability, or someone is victimizing you, I'd rather be the one you tell."
“So you… what? Sense when someone’s—” She stops herself and shakes her head. A display of too much knowledge of this subject is definitely suicide. Des laughs and looks around the diner. “Is this a joke? Did someone put you up to this to mess with me?” She turns back to him and pulls her drink closer, keeping both hands wrapped around the glass.
“I don’t have the ability to travel through time, and to the best my knowledge, I have no recent periods of time unaccounted for.” And if he’s a lie detector, she’s told no lies. As far as she’s aware, she didn’t cause anyone to travel through time, and those lost days from her experiment with Eve are accounted for.
"And yet you've time travelled." Rasheed states, right before taking a sip of his coffee. "I hope you realize that the more things you deny, the more you narrow down the possibilities. Did you know that I literally went to college for investigation?" he laughs a little, sitting his coffee down and taking a moment to look out the window.
It's a pretty nice day out, but he has to focus on Odessa, so he returns his gaze to her. "Well, since you're clearly either holding something back, or maybe had your memory manipulated…"
He stares dead into her eyes now, watching for the slightest tell, even a hint of reaction, his next words meant to give him something of use. "Have you ever heard of or made contact with a man named Adam Monroe?"
Des rises from her seat in an instant. “I’m leaving. You said I’m not in any trouble, so I’m leaving. You’re freaking me out and I’m uncomfortable. Please don’t follow me.” She steps back once, twice, and starts to turn with the intent of making a quick, but casual escape out the diner’s front door. She knows better than to bolt.
"I hope you realize that you didn't give me a 'no'." Rasheed answers with his hands wrapped around his coffee. "In fact, your leaving has told me a lot more than I think you intended, so I'll have to go and figure out a few things on my own."
He doesn't stop her, but before she leaves, all he adds is, "Or, you, someone whose name I don't even know, could cooperate. Up to you."
Des closes her eyes heavily and weighs her options. She could say not here. She could propose somewhere else. It could lead him to her front door. There’s an urge to cry, because she has tried so hard to keep her head down, and her nose clean, but her past always comes back to haunt her.
Her seat is reclaimed and she stares at him with sad confusion. “I just want Monroe to stay firmly in my past. I don’t want to even think about him, let alone discuss him. Please…”
"I don't know much about Adam Monroe, all I know is that the last person I saw who time travelled, apparently got her head cut off by him, if I understood that right. Which means, based on your reaction…" Rasheed takes a sip, allowing the mood to become slightly more intense by a few seconds, knowing all the right pauses to make to shake someone's nerve even more.
"Somehow you have a relation to Eve Mas, and somehow Adam Monroe is tied to your time travel. Am I off base?" He's at least somewhat off base, which should at least be a sign that he doesn't know a lot about the situation. "When I asked Eve Mas about her time travel, we had a bit of a discussion. She called me a Time Fairy."
Eve.
Richard told her that she would be the death of her. Maybe Des should have listened for a change, instead of being drawn in by the — Well, Des would call it charm, but Des isn’t the most well-adjusted person to be assigning adjectives to a person.
“That sounds pretty fantastic, Agent Mustang.” Des leans forward, hands around her drink again. “Let’s say everything you’ve just said applies to me. What of it?”
"I'm interested in Adam Monroe. He's a name I've heard whispered around, but I've never really dug into anything, just one of those names you hear. But Mas didn't seem like she had a particularly good experience with him, and you don't seem to have the best impression of him, and I just want to know…" Rasheed pushes his coffee off to the side.
Because his plate of waffles is sat in front of him, and once the waitress walks away, he continues. "Is Adam Monroe someone I need to worry about? Is he someone I should be looking into? Two people who have time travelled under mysterious circumstances, one of which had her head cut off, and the other seems to be… should I say terrified of him?"
"Let me lay this out, Jane Doe, can I call you Jane? Unless you'd like to introduce yourself." He starts to cut into his waffles. "Who you are, why you're so jittery, I'm not interested in that. I want to know about Adam, what he has to do with time travel, and why he's cutting heads off and making women terrified."
He pours some warm syrup over his waffles, then holds a fork of it out to Des. "Waffle?"
“Jones,” Des modifies. “Plain Jane Jones. Jane’s fine.” She smiles thinly. “Yes, you should be concerned about that name. You should be concerned about that man. I have no desire to cross his path again. He’s a womanizer and charming while he does it.” Which is enough of a strike against him, she feels.
Des looks at the offered waffle and shakes her head. No, thank you. “He’s a tyrant and a fiend. I don’t know why he would cut someone’s head off, but I’m sure he thought it was great sport.” Her responses are terse, her jaw tight. If she looks like she’d still like to run, it’s because she would.
Rasheed sits his fork down to take some notes. A tyrant and a fiend, womanizer and charming, Adam Monroe.
Alright.
Sitting his notepad down to instead take up eating his waffles again, he considers the topic they strayed off of. "And what does he have to do with time travel? You've still carefully left out the details of that. But…"
Chew, chew, chew, swallow. "I'll see if Monroe has a file, call some contacts at the FBI. If he's someone going under our radar, I need to know. It's one of those things… I feel a hunch in my bones."
“You don’t want to mess with him, Mustang.” Des shakes her head again and leans back in her seat, taking a sip of her soda. “Whatever he wants, he gets, and he can’t be stopped.” Except, perhaps, that one time…
“It’s your funeral if you tangle with him.”
"He can't be stopped, huh?" Rasheed asks, before he starts to chew again. He doesn't sound particularly impressed. "You know, I've been dealing with a lot of strange cases for years, I never really got tangled in with the big guys, plenty of people seemed to have that covered. But I probably could have."
He stares at her from behind his mug, sipping. Then, as he lowers his mug, he lets out a gentle sigh of satisfaction. "There's no one who can't be stopped. I've never seen an ability that couldn't be stopped."
There's a slight laugh, pointing at her with the bit of waffle on the end of his fork. "I wonder if people would say I couldn't be stopped if I was some big bad tyrant instead of a chill ass dude from Philly." While there's humor in his tone, this is said with some measure of ominous intent, before he goes back to eating waffle. "Guess I'll stop Adam Monroe. Everyone's time runs out eventually."
"Well, except maybe mine."
Politely, Des listens, sipping again at her soda while she does. He does seem chill, and she chalks that up to the man having no idea what he’s wading into. He reminds her of some of the people she once knew from the Company. Idealistic and so very wrong about how fucked up shit really is out there.
Still, she admires his passion for what he perceives as justice. But it’s his last comment that really gets her attention. Des’ brows lift and she smirks briefly, amused. “And how do you figure that?”
"Everyone has their secrets, Jane. I'm sure Eve Mas thinks she knows all of mine, but I only told her the very surface." Rasheed reaches into his blazer to pull out his wallet, smiling while taking out a ten and some fives. "I've never had my head cut off before, might be an interesting experience."
"Well, not that I remember at least."
He sounds more politely amused than anything, reaching into his blazer for a card now, sliding it over to her. Agent Rasheed Mustang, along with his number and email and such. It's a SESA card. "If you need anything, let me know. And stay out of trouble."
“Everyone has secrets,” Des agrees, “and no one knows everything about anybody. Including themselves.” That part she knows all too well.
The card is slid the rest of the way across the table and into the brunette’s pocket. “You’ve got a pretty head, Agent Mustang. You might work to keep it on your shoulders.” She smiles thinly. “If I need SESA for anything, you’ll be the first person I call.”
"It's never too late, even with your head cut off." Rasheed slides from the booth, leaving the cash behind, then he walks over to offer her his hand. "If Adam Monroe is a problem for you, I'll get to the bottom of it. I've met a lot of people who were victims of other people, and that person always seems like the most powerful human being who ever walked the Earth."
But, he shakes his head. "He isn't. He's just a man."
How wrong he is.
Against her better judgement, Des glances down at the offered hand and then gives hers in return to shake politely, a smile faint. “Good luck, Agent.” The only faith she has is that digging into Adam Monroe will get him killed.
"I'll see you around, I'm sure. Maybe time travel less if you don't want to be found." Rasheed laughs, taking his hand back, casually heading out the door to leave her to do as she pleases.
At least he covered both their checks.