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| Scene Title | The Good We Do |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When the plan to repair the hastily worsening weather finally comes to a close, one organization that has been waiting to get their hands on Liette makes a valiant effort to secure her secrets about the Institute. |
| Date | May 20, 2010 |
«Well, if you're hearing this broadcast then you're one of the few people left in our broadcast range that still has electricity or batteries for their radio. Count your fingers and toes folks, because you might not have them much longer.»
They call this place the Morgue, and unlike many of the other Ferrymen safehouses, it isn't a literal definition of a location. This unassuming two-story residential building frozen into Staten Island's southern coast got it's name in a more harrowing way than by simple occupation. When the safehouse's operators first claimed the building, they had to clean the bodies of two dead residents up from the second floor. The name was a joke at first, but as time passed and word of mouth spread it stuck, for better or worse.
«This is WBNY, 91.3 FM, the Bing! Buffalo's original alternative radio. We're here, sitting on the edge of this storm, looking out at the rest of this once fair stare and just shaking our heads, listeners. It's a grim, grim looking sight out there.»
Seated at the kitchen table downstairs, around the battery powered radio tuned just right to pick up that distant Buffalo radio station, the Morgue's two operators seem tense. It's understandable, given the girl seated at the table is — by their estimate — half to blame for everything that's happened here in the last two months. Liette Fournier look, to her credit, partly aware of this personal responsibility. Bundled up against the cold as she is, she listens to the broadcast with a heavy heart.
«We've been going all-talk for the last thirty days, doing the best we can to spread information out there to the people without electricity, to the people who haven't fled the storm, to the people who might need to hear the voice of another human being. I hate to be the bearer of bad news to everyone here, though, but according to the National Weather Service, people in New York City near the epicenter of the storm have just tonight hit the triple digits. No, I'm not talking positive, minus one-hundred degrees folks. We're officially Antarctica.»
The noise of the front door opening has Liette rising up off of her chair, and behind her, away from the kitchen table the noise draws the attention of those who have been waiting here with her further into the kitchen. Jensen Raith, Eileen Ruskin and Lorraine Fournier were having a conversation in confidence before the arrival brought everything into perspective.
«Best as we can measure, the storm's only been intensifying over the last few weeks. It took a severe down spike two days ago and it just… sitting there. We have reports that the Hudson river has started to freeze over up near Yonkers and I've heard scattered reports that the river might even be partially frozen over down by Manhattan as well. If we have any listeners alive out there, and you have a way out of the city, go.»
Warm air impossibly blows in through the doorway when it opens, not a polar chill of Antarctic memories. Warm air prefacing the arrival of Helena Dean, Michelle Brennan and Catherine Chesterfield. Liette's silent, watching the three come in, and the creak on the floorboards overhead is the silent reminder that there's three more people to this show having their own conversation on the floor above.
«Our thoughts and prayers are with everyone here in the northeast suffering through this storm. We're with you, Evolved, Non-Evolved, whoever you are. And we're asking, like we do every night… if there's someone, anyone out there with the ability to undo this weather. We need you.»
Booted feet come clomping down the stairs after the creak, tired posture and sunken eyes frame Peter Petrelli's state of being on his way down from the second floor. Dressed for weather as cold as this, dressed as he was at the bottom of the world, Peter offers an unfamiliar look to Michelle when he sees her, but a passably polite nod of his head in greeting. It's only when he sees Cat that he offers a smile, to both her and Helena. It's almost like the good old days in a way. Behind him, Gabriel Gray and Gillian Childs make up the final components of this proposed conclusion to the weather, as insane as it is.
«Please, if you can stop this, we need you.»
"Someone shut that thing off," is Peter's dismissive greeting, brown eyes leveled on the radio over the top of Liette's head.
'Shut that thing off' is not what Raith does: Not when Eileen is closer. Rather, he does something else that will most likely be appreciated by all present and silently snuffs out his half-finished cigar in the ashtray he brought with himself (just in case they needed one), leaving it there while he casts a glance back towards the small, insulated duffel bag that carries and partially protected a handful of guns and ammunition from the cold, keeping lubricants from freezing. With the weathermen present, weapon failure becomes even less likely, and that puts Raith further at ease. It's getting difficult to know who to trust anymore.
But that's done and over with, and Raith is satisfied. One hand comes to rest on Liette's shoulder as a deliberately casual reassurance for the girl. Everyone is nervous, even Raith. But it only takes one of them seeming confident and in control to bolster the spirits of everyone else, and to that end, he is happy to bear the metaphorical standard.
Twisting its knob between two frostnipped fingers, Eileen snaps the radio off at Peter's request but does not raise her eyes to look at him or even acknowledge his presence apart from this simple gesture. In the dim light of the kitchen, the petite Englishwoman presents a trim, utilitarian figure dressed in heavy clothes woven from robust and resilient materials paired with durable leather boots, softer gloves and a headscarf that covers dark hair she wears tied back and away from a face that's gone gaunt and pale with a tense jaw and slices of raw marble for cheekbones.
Whatever she, Lorraine and Raith were discussing, she doesn't appear particularly enthused or optimistic about it.
"-ey are adoring spending time in their father's office. I think that he will be finding candy everywhere and little notes from the girls whenever he actually gets back to it. Though they are tiring of this 'adventure' of theirs." Michelle's soothing French tones, no drop of stress despite the weather, separation from her husband and the displacement of her family from their home coloring it. Off comes gloves as they go, the large radius of heat that travels with her despite traveling with Helena filling every corner of the room, leaving the other atmokinetics to pool their energies while her own does this automatically.
Jacket, hat, all find their way to a pocket as the wife of Brenna lets gray green eye's take in all who are there, look for familiar faces. Of which really, Liette and Eileen - she gets a inclination of head in greeting - are. "Liette!" It's been months since she saw the young girl and face tilt down and to the side, fixing a look on the young woman. "Too thin pauvre. Far too thin. You need to eat hmm? Need to tell your sister that this is childish" Booted feet make their way across the floor of the 'morgue' and slides a hand to the side of the young blonde and pink haired girls face, dropping a kiss on her temple. "So good to see you hmm? Maybe instead we shall tell your sister to stop this nonsense" Away from her face she pulls her hand, tapping the young girls nose with forefinger and then back to Helena's side with a dip of her head to Raith, having noted the hand on liette's shoulder.
Dressed drab but warm in indefinite shades of grey and— darker grey, Gabriel's entrance into the room is swiftly followed by stepping aside and out of the way. Familiar faces are skimmed over, unfamiliar faces briefly studied before dismissed, and if he seems at all concerned about being recognised, it doesn't show on the distinctive collection of features his face arranges into a neutral expression at best. Haggard and quiet, even those close to him are more or less ignored in the same fashion as everyone else in the room.
Then again, those close to him can probably see a mood downswing in the serial killer when it's there. He does, however, flick a glance over where Raith stands with Liette, before casting his attention away once more. His movements are slow, tentative, but not necessarily pained.
Like the others downstairs, Lorraine has grown quiet, leaning back in her seat. Only a few people would know she's now one person where she once was two, wrapped in multiple layers of warm clothes and scarves, glancing at the radio, and then up at the man upstairs. There's a long look at the other French woman who enters, but she stays silent, much like the others she'd been sharing words with moments ago.
Though the radio gets shut off, Gillian's the one to speak up, with a heavy slap landing briefly on an 'armored' Petrelli back. "Radio guy's talking to us, though, fuzzyface," Gillian says, playing up an attempt to act like a friend. They never really got to be friends, but it's the only way she can manage to be around him right now— when they never even got to be friends in the first place. "Everyone should make sure they're bundled up, cause this could mess up royally."
Especially if they resort to any kind of augmentation loop. Last time it happened on Staten Island, the house that her and Gabriel were standing in, and the whole block got bulldozed by an expanding forcefield. Adding weather in, they could end up in Oz via house-picked-up-by-tornado. Either way, being bundled seems a good idea to her, as she zips her coat up to her neck.
ORDER: It is now your pose.
In the presence of Helena and Michelle, Cat also has elected to dress lightly. Only one layer of outergarments under the USMC provided parka now worn with the hood down. She is armed, the weapon well concealed on her person. Brown eyes settle on the assembled persons one by one, Petrelli's smile met by one of similar nature. Words, however, are eschewed. Center stage is left to the more primary performers in this concert.
There's Eileen, Raith, Gillian, and Gabriel too. Fortunately, she muses inwardly, the shark is left out of this partial Apollo reunion under Antarctic conditions.
But she did see those penguins again in Greenwich Village when she set out.
Grimacing a bit sheepishly at Michelle, Liette tips her head down and offers a somewhat weary smile to the Frenchwoman, embarrassed enough by the flock of strangers and nervous enough about the proceedings to be shy against the greeting and remain silent. With the radio turned off, the only sound aside from the clunk of floorboards and the din of voices is the howling wind that drives temperatures down to minus one hundred degrees fahrenheit outside, the city simply can't survive this getting any worse.
Clutched in Liette's hands is a small red notebook, one page folded over and a simple warning message written sideways across the page in sharpie marker; If you can't remember where you are, trust Raith and Lorraine. It would seem, at the very least, that Liette's flagging memory problems are at least up to speed on who those two are, and while the past and present cognitions holes are getting closer together, she seems aware and alert at the moment.
"If we're going to do this let's do it now before something else goes wrong." Always the optimist, Peter's bitter assessment of the situation has him squirming. With the temperature indoors rising slowly from the presence of the atmokinetics, Peter reaches up to curl gloved fingers around the red fabric of his scarf, tucking it under his chin and loosening it from his throat some. "Gillian and Gabriel told me what we're doing, I just need to know who I'm augmenting."
Liette and Peter do share something of a look between one another. It's not one of scrutiny, but one of passing familiarity, in all the time he spent in Pinehearst, it's no surprise that the two know each other. However, there is more awkwardness reserved for the woman he knows as Nurse Moon, given that the last time Peter saw her he was in a wheelchair.
"We'll be upstairs," Martha, one of the two safehouse operators states quietly, nodding to the other as she clears the downstairs for whatever needs to be done. "Try— not to level the house?" There's a wary look to Gillian, of all people, before she and her assistant head towards the stairs and up.
Helena has settled comfortably in her chair. "Gabriel," she addresses quietly, "Is there anything you need to make this easier for you?" She's operating under the assumption that he is going to be joining the atmokinetics, but she doesn't know who he's going to…synchronize?…with, for lack of a better word. Her power begins to reach out, her expanded senses spreading as far and as wide as she can push them comfortably within her own limits. After all, soon there will be others, and beyond that, soon there will be others who can push her ability further. "I've already got my reach established." she confirms, and then turns her gaze to Michelle. She does note to Peter, "If you do need to add atmokinesis and you likewise need my help, you might want to work with me. But Gillian and I have worked in concert before. I'll leave it to the two of you."
"Is there anything that can be done to make this easier in general?" Raith asks, "This isn't exactly a family picnic in the countryside. If me climbing on the table and Riverdancing while calling on the spirits of the four watchtowers will help, I'll do it. I'll feel really stupid, but I'll do it." Of course, he really won't. Even Raith has to have standards. Everyone hopes he does, at least.
Eileen's contribution to this clandestine little operation is minimal. Her ability, crippled by the storm, offers no assistance, and unlike Raith and Lorraine, she has no interest in becoming close to Liette. The last time she allowed a child within arm's reach of her heart, she ended up returning him to his mother — it's not a mistake she intends to repeat twice, even if the girl is already in the custody of both her biological parents. She watches in silence with eyes grayer than green, as they often are.
It's neither the time nor the place to offer Gabriel comfort or support, and although she can sense something dark hanging over him, she limits their interaction the equivalent of a breath blown through the hair at the nape of his neck or fingertips following his spine's taut curvature. One psychic touch, a graze, and that is all.
"You can help by being quiet," she suggests.
"While I much appreciate the offer of you dancing upon the table like the man with the oiled chest who is so full of himself, it would be far more distracting than helpful, perhaps you might.. scrounge up something for all of us to drink while we do our work?" Michelle inquires of Raith with gently raised brows, taking up her own seat. There's a glance to Helena, the feel of her power pushing on the edges of her own and normally, perhaps in another time and place, it might be rude, but here, it's just settling in.
"But like the young lady has said, quiet would be good as well. Don't need silence, or at least I do not, but, no riverdancing on the table" She offers a wink to the mercenary, and like Helena, she too is settling in, expanding her sphere, letting her own ability loose and to play with Helena's, twist and turn, weave with the other woman's down here instead of far above them. All little lines ease in the doctor's face, eyelids closing for the initial concentration, relaxing. "Whomever will be augmenting me, if they would do just a little? So that I may get used to it, I would greatly appreciate such. It is not at all that I get to play with the likes of Gillian"
Gabriel's posture straightens a little, perhaps in tandem with Eileen's empathic reach, perhaps not. He's focusing on Helena right now, dragging his heels forward in a few steps further into the room, arms bundled in a fold across his torso. "I can handle either the weather or augmenting," he states, a look between Helena and Michelle, as if sizing the pair of them up as the champions versus the augmented weather outside, the Frenchwoman in particular getting a slightly narrowed look before he moves on. "It's in my capacity to mimic powers. Temporarily." This is news — to those in the room, a lot of things will be news to them regarding Gabriel's habits and skills.
He doesn't, after all, keep up to date on Twitter. But it's also news to Eileen and Raith. Either a recent development, or he's good at secret-keeping. "We have an uneven number for this waltz," a glance towards Gillian and Peter, a head tilt towards the two atmokinetics.
At the words of a man she knew but barely knew quite a few years ago, Lorraine is laughing a little, the tense expression fading. Though Eileen's suggestion might be the most helpful, she leans in close to say to him, "If nothing else, you broke the tension a bit." The mental image alone. Joining him in being quiet is about all that she can do, though she reaches out to touch her daughter's upper arm gently, to offer some motherly support.
"I can augment both of them at once, as I'm used to splitting between others easily. But I think the girl needed some augmentation too," Gillian says, looking over at Liette, and then at Cat. That had been what they discussed. "We already did augmentation of the weather manipulators and that only made it a little better for a short time. Even if all three of us augment… Maybe I can augment the girl, and help her, and one of you helps Windy, the other helps Mrs. Brennan."
"She does," Cat provides quietly. "The issue here is not just reaching through to her sister, but overcoming her sister's strength if necessary, and the sister is on a drug called Amp. I don't quite know the full composition yet, but part of it may be Refrain. It may also be of assistance if she duplicates your ability into herself, Gillian, so she can augment herself as well as being boosted."
Silence is lapsed back into, with Cat certain Liette will expound on the topic further and being quite glad there aren't any time/space manipulators around. One of the rare occasions she wouldn't invite Hiro Nakamura.
The very thought has her eyes going distant, staring at a wall, as she recalls waking up at CO/KS/NE.
"The plan, Liette instructs with a sharpness, because someone is talking about oiling up her dad! "Is that someone needs to augment me, then I augment them back, and we form a loop that gives me enough strength to pull the atmokinetic power from… uh," Liette reaches up to hold the side of her head, counting backwards in a sharp whisper as she rests her hip against the kitchen table. "We— um," her eyes flutter shut, forehead strains a furrow of thin brows and she looks to be trying her damnedest to concentrate on what she was just saying.
"I— oh— uh I was— " there's a look of blue eyes at the floor, vacant and distant before she hastily tacks on, "augment me, so I can steal atmokinesis from my sister. Then, it's just a matter of manipulating the entire east coast's weather pattern, which— will probably require all of you working together."
There's a look from Liette to Gabriel, brows furrowed, "Do both, you can do that now. Weather and augmentation," she admits in a hushed tone of voice, all the while Peter is just staring at Gabriel in stony silence. His lips downturn into a frown, and there's something like a touch of jealousy in his eyes as he turns his back on him.
"I'll augment Helena." Peter states flatly, shaking his head and breaking away from Gabriel's side, coming over to stand by Helena, offering her a dark-eyed look that is a touch softer than it was before, then looks out at Eileen with a touch of nervousness and uncertainty. He can feel the tension between them, knows its source, but this is neither the time nor the place to bring it up. Furthermore, this whole situation seems like a recipe for disaster.
"Gillian, um, was it?" Liette offers a look to the brunette. "Just— be careful, okay? Start out low, and let me get used to your power, then— then we'll work our way up." There's a nervous smile to Gillian, and Liette offers a quick askance look to Raith and Lorraine, her brows lifted, before she settles her attention on Gabriel again, thankfully. He knows what for.
Working with Peter or Gillian is old hat for Helena, and she gives Mountain Man Petrelli a nod from her seat as she keeps her senses expanded. "We're waiting on you, then." she tells Liette, not unkindly. "Once you've taken your sister's power, reach out for me and Michelle and whomever else is out there. We'll be waiting for you."
Working with Peter or Gillian is old hat for Helena, and she gives Mountain Man Petrelli a nod from her seat as she keeps her senses expanded. "We're waiting on you, then." she tells Liette, not unkindly. "Once you've taken your sister's power, reach out for me and Michelle and whomever else is out there. We'll be waiting for you."
Raith, perhaps thankfully, doesn't add any more of his own thoughts to the situation. What he does do is simple, and perhaps profound, giving Liette's shoulder a squeeze. "No problem," he says to her, offering a hand, "If it starts getting scary, just squeeze my hand hard, and you won't be afraid. That's a scientific fact. I did the science myself, so you know it's good science. 'kay?" Confidence is key: If Liette doesn't think she can wrest control back from her sister, then no amount of augmenting is going to help.
Eileen's footsteps carry her around the table, past Liette and the others. She has the easy job of occupying the doorway with her lithe frame swaddled in fabrics with contrasting textures and varying thicknesses. Even with the presence of multiple atmokinetics in the room, she's more comfortable in multiple layers than just one or two, including an extra large sweater that looks like something a Norwegian fisherman might wear. Given the extent of the Vanguard's reach, it's entirely possible that the coarse garment was even purchased from one.
The collar of the cotton blouse beneath it is briefly visible when she slips her hand into her coat, sheepskin against wool, and retrieves her pack of Camels from the same silk-lined compartment her pocket watch resides in.
Thanks to Raith, the kitchen already reeks of cigar. Any reservations she might have about smoking are offset by her desire to take some of the edge off. She's anxious. Can't imagine anyone who wouldn't be in this situation.
If this doesn't work, they're out of options save one.
"Yeah, Gillian. Nice to meet you, kid. No self augmenting, unfortunately. The energy has to come from somewhere, it doesn't just appear out of thin air," Gillian tried to explain that to Cat, but people just don't seem to listen sometimes! It seems to be one of the most common missconceptions about her ability, when people thought Gabriel only wanted her for it… "We have to be extra careful cause— once it starts it's hard to keep it low," she adds to Liette, removing the glove on her hand and shoving it into a pocket. "And I'll need one of your hands. Jensen can keep the other, though." Since— Jensen's Jensen. One of the two who saved her from being mauled to death, the one who carried her back to the Lighthouse.
"I'm going to sit down," she adds, pulling a chair over before she holds her hand out. "My ability is like a flow, and you have to knot it up and keep a piece of it for yourself. Don't loose it all, hold as much back as you can, but if you can't, I'll try to be the one to hold the most in." Gillian's not as confident as Raith, but she's dealt with kids for the last few months pretty much fulltime— it's the same voice she uses with them. She's banking on her control and state of mind being improved since the last time she got caught in a loop. The first time had been an experiment gone horribly wrong, the second one had been… She knows her mind is in a better place this time. That's got to be enough, even if her emotions aren't quite.
Lorraine smiles at Raith's words, and reaches out to touch his wrist. Not his hand, but a intimate gesture of sorts nontheless. The girl has plenty of parents in this place to support her.
Silent, staring at a wall, Cat is still replaying her temporal displacement experience.
One well-defined, thick eyebrow goes up at the notion of willingly getting yourself in an augmentation loop, and Gabriel sends a considering glance Gillian's way, but this isn't his plan. If he has anxieties about whether it will work— well, he seems to believe it ultimately stands a chance. This clue can be taken from the fact he's not fleeing. He sends a look to Liette, but decides not to remind her on his power that had gotten stolen just the other day.
There'll be time. If this works.
Squeezing Raith's hand tightly, Liette looks up at the old soldier with a smile that tries to offer reassurance to Raith despite that she's the one who needs it. Her fingers are so tiny in his, and it's hard to imagine that a man who devoted the lion's share of his life to murder could have created something as complex and varied as life, like this. Her blue eyes soon find Gillian's, nodding curtly to the explanation of her power. "P— " she hesitates, "D-Doctor Luis talked about you before, you're the only registered ability augmenter in the state of New York as of 2010."
There's a faint smile across Liette's lips, and she lets her other hand come out to lay in Gillian's, her fingers lacing with the brunette's, eyes closing and breathing in a slow, sharp breath. There's that purple glow again, and from his distant view beside Helena, Peter offers a brow-furrowed look at Gillian and Liette sitting at the table. He looks down to Helena, resting a hand on her shoulder and squeezing.
"You know," Peter offers quietly, "I hate the fact that no one will ever know what good we do." There's resentment in his voice, brown eyes moving from Helena out to Liette. Reaching down to his side, Peter tucks a gloved hand into his pocket, withdrawing a cell phone that's vibrating quietly. His brows furrow, thumbs brush over a few keys and he tucks it back into his pocket.
Breathing in slowly, Peter exhales an unravels the knot of amplification in his mind, letting a wave of power go out towards the nearest greedy tug, one coming from Helena. His power filters down through her, crackling and tingling, like a warm electric charge in her veins. He breathes in slowly, then reaches out towards Gabriel with the same ability, letting the barest sample of augmentation wash over him before retreating. If he is able to mimic powers, that's more than enough for him. Don't want him pulling a Brian and spitting out another clone.
"I— I have it," Liette murmurs, and Gillian can already feel the like magnetic ends tugging at each other. Liette's back tenses, straightens up, and her lips part as she closes her eyes. Then, here, begins the true light show.
It starts as a circuit, a purple glow spreading from Gillian to Liette, then cycling through her and coming back to Gillian half again as big, which multiplies by a factor of fifty percent what Liette gets, and the radiance swells and swells.
Each pass between the two, the light becomes less purple and more white, a coloration of Gillian's power Helena last saw before she parted way with 2019, this very cyclical augmentation what was necessary to open a wormhole in time with Stephen Canfield's power.
Liette sharply squeezes Raith's hand when the light turns white, and her back stiffens, her eyes open and she's shedding a colorless radiance from her irises. Even without trying to share, everyone in the room is beginning to be augmented. Eileen can feel the area of effect of her avian telepathy rapidly expanding to encompass vast areas of Staten Island and beyond, Helena can feel Peter and Liette's energy coursing through her, such as can Michelle feel her atmospheric influence broadening. Gabriel feels it differently, like a well overflowing with water, and his manifold powers begin expanding outward, each of them grasping a little differently at the new scraps of energy.
Peter tenses up, feeling his augmentation heightening unexpectedly, his hand clamps down on Helena's shoulder, and Cat is suddenly thrust into the moment of that memory she was reliving, detail crisper, more fine and in seemingly hyperrealism, able to shut out all external stimuli while she lives in this psychic projection of the past in her own mind, making it hard to distinguish from reality itself.
Helena remembers the whiteness. How for a few seconds she could feel and control the weather patterns of the entire Eastern Seaboard. She also remembered how that version of Gillian tried to kill her. But she's better prepared now. A little older - maybe, maybe, a little wiser. Her opposite hand begins to slowly lift, creeping across to rest on the hand at her shoulder, her fingers starting to lace with Peter's. She makes a small noise in the back of her throat, like she's been over-stimulated.
But Helena's been starved, beaten, tortured, depressed, despairing, hopeful, triumphant, at peace, joyous, paranoid and proud, and all of this has led to the awareness that she can command the forces the her genetics were designed to control. Augmentation will not rule her, she will rule it.
"Easy, Pete." she says very softly, and as her senses spread like a blanket over the tri-state area and beyond, her gaze grows distant.
Liette's hesitation when speaking of the mad doctor doesn't quite sit right with Raith, but he doesn't call attention to it, shoving it aside with thoughts of Peter's remark, just in case Liette happens to pick something up the way she appeared to do weeks earlier with Lorraine. Maybe no one will know, but at the end of the day, what matters is never what it famous, but what is right. What makes the world better for everyone, no matter how small or obscure.
When Liette's grip on his hand tightens, Raith tightens his own grip on hers, although not nearly to the same degree, not enough to cause pain or even discomfort. Enough to tell her that she doesn't have to be afraid, because he's there. Everyone is there with her, and she doesn't have to be afraid. Liette doubtlessly has her own opinions of herself, but in Raith's mind, even if it chances to be a manufactured thought, just in case she hears it, he has been given the rare honor of standing next to Supergirl as she battles the forces of darkness for the good of all mankind. And that alone can be some pretty powerful medicine.
The cigarette that had been suspended from Eileen's mouth, not yet lit, dangles precariously off her lips as they open around a quiet sound of strangled shock. It's accompanied by a serrated hitch in her breathing as the cigarette tumbles down the front of her coat and sweater before it glances off the side of her boot and rolls a few inches away. She does not bend or stoop to pick it back up again; sometime during the interim, her hands have formed fists and drawn themselves into her chest, one clutching the other.
She's been augmented before, but never to this extent and no amount of lifetime jubilation or suffering can prepare her for the spectacle happening behind her eyes when her reach swells, drawing not dozens or hundreds but thousands of avian minds into her field of awareness. That she doesn't immediately pass out is a testament to either the strength of her will or the damage the Institute has wrought on New York, leaving her exposed to only a fraction of what might have been if the city and the majority of its feathered inhabitants weren't buried under enough snow to collapse its entire infrastructure.
It's never been like this before, even with Gillian that one time in her own home. Good thing the girls aren't here. Michelle's back straightens a little more over time as the ambient augmentation makes it's way into her and into her ability, enhancing it and strengthening it. Each degree of temperature in the house, outside the house, Staten and beyond felt by the older woman and control over it heightened. She remains silent, lips pressed together and eye's closed, waiting instructions.
Gabriel's eyes slide shut at that glimmer of power that tugs at his varied abilities, awakening them all like stimulated nerves, but he has the control enough to put a leash on all of them — save for those he doesn't. Telepath of the avian kind and the human kind makes fluttery white-noise at the edge of his senses, nose wrinkling as he pushes them to one side— save for one lingering tremor of heightened awareness shared with Eileen, and it's a certain kind of controlled calm that he sends to her. But he attempts to, mostly, sink into the correct powers, augmentation already copied, and now the feel of the weather control.
It's testing, what he's doing, eyes sliding shut just a fraction as his senses expand to feel the range he now shares with Helena — not affecting it, not until it seems right to, but simply getting a grip on the way this ability works. It's not intuitive aptitude and the immediate control that grants him, or even the awakening of learning the way he gains through empathy.
This is like having all the tools at hand. In the dark. But he knows augmentation, a little, but doesn't contribute it right now, not with the spread of power flowing around the room.
Suddenly, Liette has two mothers in the room. Each wearing less clothes. Lorraine doesn't even seem to realize it happened at first. Then suddenly there's two more. Again, their clothing seems to be thinning, one's just wearing a tank top and underwear. It's like the clothes can't decide who to go with… She'd told Cat and Liette she could only do two at a time, but this… Special circumstances as power leaks out of the two like a fusion reaction. There's a surround sound of soft curses (all in French) and then their hands meet in the middle, and they all snap back into place. Their clothes don't reorganize as well as they could… Under things on top of outer things— but abilities sometimes have a sense of humor.
Meanwhile, one of the two sources of the chain reaction of Evolved augmentation, slumps a little in her chair, breathing haggardly. The first time it happened, it went so fast that Gillian was clinging to Gabriel in exhaustion before she managed to even figure out what happened, couldn't slow it down or stop it. Second time she'd been electrocuted, and not had the strength of mind to stop it..
Just as she thought, holding it back would be difficult. In fact, damn near impossible. Teeth clench down as she closes her eyes and tries— tries to hold some of it back. It's like trying to stop a freight train. It takes everything she's got just to slow it down a little. And even then, the glow remains white when her eyes open again and she looks at the room. Likely, this won't be able to be kept up long…
It all intensifies suddenly, the imagery she's viewing. And it shows in Cat's demeanor beyond staring at a wall. Suddenly she winces, and her left arm goes slack. It hangs at her side as if injured, because in her recollection which has become some factors sharper, there's a bullet caught at Moab in that shoulder. And she lifts her right arm toward her face, as if shielding herself against some bright light in darkness. Squinting too. The head turns left, then right, face shifting into what might be mild alarm as if she might be surprised and seeking some place to hide from whatever approaches.
Just as she seems to collect herself to face whatever's being witnessed, there's a Lorraine right next to her. Bumping into that left arm when she moves, and pulling Cat back toward reality a bit. She isn't shot, and the contact doesn't hurt, that's the key. "Damn." Her head shakes a few times. Force of will is used to chase that memory away, and to control it somewhat, until an idea strikes. Call up a much better memory and let it ride. What's chosen brings an elated expression, like she's on top of the world.
The perceived time and location: The summer of '04, Madison Square Garden, for an Eric Clapton gig.
While some people choose to lose themselves in the moment of augmentation, Liette has found herself embroiled in something different. Amplified as she is and radiating a corona of colorless illumination, her hands are trembling, body tense and shoulders squared as waves of Gillian's power radiate outward from their binary star-like arrangement.
Teeth clench, Liette's neck tightens and her jaw sets, eyes wrench shut and fingernails bite into Gillian and Raith's hands individually. There's a pain, an ache in what she's doing, but outwardly it doesn't have any sort of visual cue. A keening, weak noise squeaks in the back of her throat, tears well up in her eyes and roll down her cheeks, and it is only Michelle, Helena, Gabriel and distantly McRae that feel what happens when her eyes snap open and she breathes out an exasperated breath.
The weather snaps, like a broken rubber band, everything becomes a chaotic tumble of air currents, cold fronts, colliding warmth and driving winds trimmed on the edges by rapidly forming thunderstorms where heat and cold meet one another. They'd been held back by Julie, but now on the periphery of a storm eight hundred miles long, there is a massive storm front brewing and no one is at the wheel behind this tempest except a very confused mother nature.
"I have it! I— I have it! Quick!" Liette stresses the urgency, clamps down on her fingers, breathes in deep and knows that not only does she have to snatch the power up, but she has to hold on to it as well. It's ultimately a game of tug-o-war, her neck muscles tense, pain is shared through the empathic link as Julie Fournier claws at the back of her sister's mind for her stolen ability.
But it isn't all that Liette is taking away from her twin, there's another keening wince of pain, and then the augmentation levels suddenly reach a plateau, a level of elevated capacity but no longer wild fluctuation, she's actually manipulating Gillian's levels of power as well, controlling both up and down. She understands the power now, intuitively, and she understands her own better than Julie does now, and with Liette the stronger of the two, she's forced to do something she does not want to do.
But whatever it is, it's happening behind closed eyes.
"Oh…!" Helena's gasp and sudden clamp down on Peter's hand is entirely involuntary, and she stiffens for a moment in the chair like she's having a seizure. Slowly she settles back down as she takes stock, but her muscles are very tight, very tense, and she's just-barely-shaking from the effort this is taking - and they've only begun. She hasn't started to bleed out of her nose yet, they haven't reached that point, but once all the atmokinetics are interlaced, the process of working through the cold fronts can begin. The Great Work, such as it is, begins, with metaphorical fingers beginning to weave an atmospheric travesty as quickly as they can without making a mistake.
"Atta girl! Yes!" Praise is unsurprisingly the first thing to come out of Raith's mouth. What Liette- and indeed, everyone- has just accomplished is not small feat. If it had been easy, they'd have done it a long time ago, before things got as bad as they did. But it wasn't easy, it was hard. For now, they've won, and as small as the victory is, Raith knows to cherish it like every other one: Even the smallest victories only come to those who fight for them.
Now comes the harder part. What they have just unleashed on the world is not a herd of bulls, but a flight of dragons, and it will take everything the small group has to offer to bring them under control and avert global catastrophe. It would be fair to call the task impossible. But this group, even before Raith came to them, has proven time and time again that doing the impossible, whether saving the city, saving the world, saving the universe, or even saving just one man, is one of the things that they do better than anybody else.
Gabriel's calm does not act as a pacifying agent. Instead, it provides Eileen with an undercurrent of strength she can tap, steering her own consciousness back into the room before it buckles under the strain and ejects itself into one of the warm bodies roosting in the safehouse's heavily insulated attic or — worse — those with only the cover of ruins to shelter them from the high winds and temperatures that until only a few moments ago had been continuing their determined descent into the triple digits.
She communicates her gratitude with a solitary thought that does not require any attached words to convey the relief shuddering violently through her once she's in control again and able to appreciate the full gravity of the situation.
I have it, Liette says, and the sigh that explodes from Eileen's nose and mouth is audible to everyone.
It does not, unfortunately, last. Gray eyes grow sharp, honing in on something that isn't as far away as she wishes it was. "Shit," she rasps, voice gone thin and hoarse. There's a strange quality to it that, of everyone in the room, Raith and Gabriel are the best equipped to recognize. Fear abruptly tremors down the empathic link she shares with one of them. "Get down—"
"Well now" Michelle's voice is low, almost in contrast and awe of the presence of spare energy just whipping around the room, and directed. Well now. They got part of it done it seems. She's never felt her own control this far around her, the eddies and currents of the air of the city and beyond. This will be a thing to tell the girls some day. Her head cants to the side, eyes still closed, leaning towards Gabriel as she feels the directed feed towards her of his own augmentation, the corner of her mouth curling up just a fraction and accepting it, using it. As if she really had any choice. "Now, what is the pla- Pardon?" One eye opens to look at Eileen with confusion.
The subtle glow to Gabriel's skin is the same purple that Gillian emits when she sends power someone's way, and when his eyes open, amber irises are tinged the same violet as he boosts Michelle's ability. For a moment, he doesn't hear Eileen at all — the feeling of the immense change occurring in the sky is enough for him to put out a hand on the empty back of a chair and lean, more or less following Helena's lead in her reparation, feeling his ability lace in with the other two in the room as he simultaneously lends power to Michelle.
It's a slow, but steady drain. Worth it. But it's Eileen's alarm that sends a shock through his system, enough that Michelle and Helena will feel his disturbance in the force as he sends a look her way. Eyes then widen in comprehension, and his hand goes out, grips the Frenchwoman's forearm, and backpedals both her and himself back towards the nearest wall.
As Liette gains control of Gillian's power, controls the ebb and flow of energy, the glow changes, becoming crackling lines of energy, like white lightning that dances around their hands, the older woman's grip weakening, while the girl's nails dig in. The electrical lights pop and spark and snap for a moment. Fitting, considering the fixing of the weather, but reminiscent of the red lightning once wielded by another man with a similar ability. Similar, and so very different. Slumping even more into the chair, she lets out a startled gasp, and then is basically forced to just ride along with it. Fighting against it does no good… The young girl controls everything.
Get down? Gillian doesn't even hear the warning over the roaring of energy in her mind.
But Lorraine does. In the short time that she's known the young woman known as Eileen, she's come to trust one thing— Raith listens to her and she often seems to know what she's talking about. Rather than duck, she does what comes naturally to a mother— though a little odd in it's own right. Suddenly one of her is moving towards Liette, to get even closer to her in protection, while the other moves back a bit to look around, backing once again into poor Cat, lost in her past. Both are dressed somewhat awkwardly, but dressed.
Reduced awareness at a time like this is not good. Cat's enjoyment of the recollected Clapton concert is barely affected by Eileen's warning. Her head turns in that direction, and her lips are moving. 'She don't lie, she don't lie, she don't lie… cocaine!'
Getting down, for Cat, happens when an iteration of Lorraine Fournier collides with her. She stumbles backward and lands on her backside. And that snaps her back to the here and now. "What the hell?"
In a moment that seems almost impossibly choreographed, there is a sudden crashing noise at the roof, a splintering of wood at ceiling level and a scream of shock from the operators upstairs. The floor above the kitchen buckles and cracks, breaking apart after bowing out, and with a hail of floorboards, shattered timbers and a smashed coffee table raining down around him, Jensen Raith is reinitroduced to a creature born out of one of his worst nightmares in Pinehearst's basement.
Allen Rickham.
Pulling Helena back towards himself and turning his back to where the ceiling explodes open, Peter shields Helena from the falling debris and clattering boards, one hand at the back of her head to hide it against his shoulder. He turns, sharply, brown eyes wide as he stares out at Rickham, and Rickham stares back at him. "Wh— what." There's a look of confusion on his face, guilt and something more like shock that paints over the rest of it. Drawing in a sharp, frightened breath, Peter keeps Helena close and holds out one hand, warningly. Though really, what's he going to do, heal him to death?
The kitchen floor creaks and groans when he hits it, feeling like it's about to break. The dark brown trenchcoat Allen wears covers his iron-clad body, a bright crimson scarf wrapped around the lower portion of his face like a muffler, tucked in to the raised collar of his jacket. He lets out a sharp, mechanical-sounding bellow before flipping over the wooden kitchen table and sending Gillian sprawling onto her back as the table collapses on top of her and sending Liette crashing against one of the nearby walls with a squeek of fright. In the same motion, Rickham backhands Lorraine away and when his metal hand connects to her face, it sends her spinning to the ground with a crash.
Rickham turns with backhand, opening one solid iron hand and grabbing Raith by the front of his jacket, lifting him up and slamming him against the wall before tossing him over handed towards where Gabriel and Brennan are like a human missile.
With that moment of distraction, there's a bright crackle-pop of pinkish-red light as a young man in a black leather jacket, red scarf wound around his face comes exploding into the room in a trail of colorful energy and sizzling heat. Kris Bender's brown eyes focus up on Liette, he looks dazed by the ambient energy in the room, crackling pops of pinkish light everywhere around him. "Oh— Fff— Fuck! Fuck— Fuck what is this— Fuck!" He curses, staggering around and swatting at his head as he flickers like a candle in the wind, popping back and forth in erratic teleportation. "Shit!"
"You idiot," Rickham bellows, pressing Raith harder against the wall. "West get down here! Get the girl!" There's a rush of air down thorugh the hole in the ceiling, a brush of polar chill as a young, dark-haired man in a black winter jacket descends like a falling stone with a long trail of red scarf fluttering behind him like a tail where it is wound around his throat, only to evenly displace himself in flight before zooming across the kitchen to grab Liette by her jacket's collar. The girl, still crackling with power, reaches up and paws at West's face, trying to extricate herself from him. "Ow stop— stop— God damnit!" West yanks her around, wraps his arm around her midsection and gets only halfway back towards the hole in the ceiling in mid-flight as Liette stares over his shoulder, fingers spread and hands grasping for Raith of all people.
"Daddy! Help!"
Never was there a more heartbreaking sound.
There is so much to do; so much complex action to take, but then chaos and destruction are happening and Helena is pulled toward Peter, and her focus shifts to the here and now. Augmentation offers more power, more skill, and the interference has caused their collective effort to start to falling apart. McRae's still out there, but who knows if he can keep together. And Peter…he saves her. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. Because it used to be the way of things that she was either saving him, or he wasn't letting her. What kind of crazy shit world is this? Oh, yeah.
It's a world where young women are parted too soon from their fathers. Literally, metaphorically, Helena's head turns against the crook of Peter's shoulder in time to see those faces, those familiar faces - Rickham, who she so admired - and who like Peter she's previously saved, in his dreams. And West. West, who used to sneak out with her and Claire at night. West, who snuck them all beers at a karaoke bar while she and Claire would sing Abba. West, who walked out on her with half of PARIAH and took Claire with him.
Because young women should never be parted too soon from their fathers, and because right now she is being augmented so powerfully that she can control the winds to within a razor's edge, West Rosen is so Helena's bitch right now.
The upsweep of wind actually angles at a curve and then slams down, intent on taking Claire's flying ex-boyfriend with it, angled so precisely that when he hits the floor - and it will hurt - he'll be cushioning Liette's fall - which will hurt him even more.
This is so much better than praying that birds poop on him.
The sudden arrival of Rickham and the whirlwind of violence that immediately follows does the unthinkable and catches Raith off-guard. Being hefted up suddenly, slammed against a wall and then thrown doesn't help the situation any. Just this once, Raith spends an instant wishing he was not the only unevolved who'd been in the room, that he'd had some ability to soften his fall. But only an instant. The rest of his flight, short though it is, is occupied by the ex-spy rapidly twisting, perhaps in the way a cat might. He doesn't land on his feet, not by a long shot, but he does manage to change his orientation so that he doesn't hit the floor head first, but with his back to them. It will lessen the force of his face somewhat. No matter how you slice it, he's still hurt.
"Liette!" he shouts, even if her exclamation of 'daddy' doesn't quite register in his mind. He shouts and coughs, choking on pain and trying to suck air back into his lungs so he can function, rolling and trying to assess the situation. All he can assess is that Liette is being forced to exit, stage up. "Teeth! Bite!" he shouts between gasps. He can only hope that she hears him. Biting the sumbitch that is carting her away might not stop him, but it sure is going to make his day that much more miserable. At least, until Raith can catch his breath and get back on his feet.
And then, everyone not on his good side is //really/ going to have a miserable day.
Outside, the sky is humming with vibrations. MESSIAH take note: West isn't the only one who can fly. Pieces of glass glittering in her hair, freed of its headscarf, Eileen turns her face toward the hole in the roof and what she can see of the clouds churning overhead as, fueled by augmentation, she reaches out to every bird in every crumbled building within her swollen sphere of influence, gradually transforming the sky from mottled gray to swarming black with only flickers of pale sky shimmering in between razor-quick flashes of wing.
If Helena can keep West on the ground, she'll secure the safehouse's perimeter.
When her attention shifts, it's to what's across from her rather than what's above. Her balisong cracks to life in the palm of her right hand, silver handle vibrant and shining in the gaps between her fingers as she advances on Kris — one booted foot in front of the other, each step more purposeful than the last with double the strength and power behind it until her strides are carrying her toward him at a rolling lope.
As Raith is flung into Michelle and Gabriel both, it's really— only Michelle who gets the brunt of it, as Gabriel vanishes into inky smoke, insubstantially breaking up around Raith before rolling away like ink through water. His tangible reappearance is quick to follow, teeth bared in what could qualify as a snarl at the sudden chaos that's been unleashed in the room. "Gillian!" he cries out, a harsh demand, but it's already happening before the last syllable of her name is uttered.
Power. His hands spread out like starfish, as if he could tangibly rip the light from the air. Once, he had this on easy-mode. Now he has to do it the hard way. The light in the room seems to do strange things, dimming , brightening in patches, before weak, tendrilling and looping red laser light starts shifting around the room in the same motion of seaweed, harmless until he pitches their trajectories towards Rickham.
The lasers start pulsing purple by the time they lay into his steely flesh like whips. His teeth show in a silent, pained snarled.
My hero! Michelle might jokingly say. That is until he disappears and it's a speeding Raith, flying through the air with the greatest of ease thrown by Rickham. Down goes one of the atmokinetics, the temperature in the room fluctuating as there's a grunt from the dark haired Frenchwoman, head connecting with the floor and stunning the woman.
One of the Lorraines is not doing well, knocked back and bleeding on the floor. Her face is battered and broken, but she's not dead. It might have been easier on her if she were, in this case. The other yells, "Liette!" The offensive nature of her ability is limited to the picking up of the radio that had once been on the table and lobbing it at Rickham. Not going to do much good in thise case, but she actually has a good throwing arm.
The connection is broken with Gillian, but the spill of energy doesn't die out right away. It fluctuates and pulses, for a moment. A yelp of pain came when she hit the floor, rolling towards her side, body weakened by the drain of power, knocked around by the thrown table and topling chair. There's a lot worse pains in the world, but that—
This wasn't supposed to happen. As soon as awareness hits her, she gathers up everything she has left, and has thrown it toward the one person she trusts above all others to fix things.
Gabriel Gray.
Even as she does this, her eyes dart around in confusion, looking up toward the sky as the girl is getting pulled away. Raith yells to bite. Unaware she's looking right at one of the last people to see her clone alive, she yells up at her, "The energy! Take it— take it from him." There's one aspect to her augmentation, new and little known as it may be, that she's just beginning to learn. Maybe she hopes Liette, with the way she mastered control of her ability so quickly, can do it better.
Her eyes dart around quickly as she brushes away debris created by the sudden Rickham arrival. They take a measure of the situation. Eileen seems to have Kris in hand. West is on the floor struggling with Liette. Lorraine, at least one of her, down. Gillian advising to take energy away. Raith pitched into Michelle, Helena grabbed by Peter, and the wind. Cat gets to her feet, and at this point in time she's perhaps angrier than anyone here has likely ever seen.
But then, that's not hard to achieve for a woman so often stoic.
She stalks over to West and aims a boot sharply at the man. Not to kick him in the crotch, which is tempting, but to instead impact the head and render him unconscious. At the same time she's bellowing. "Allen Fucking Rickham! If you take the girl from us, nothing keeps her sister from taking back the weather control Liette snatched from her! Goddamned idiots!"
Laser-light crackles through the air as a radio smashes over Rickham's metallic body, the lasers slice ribbons through a brown techcoat and red scarf, scarring through metal just as easily; the radio just breaks. Rickham can't feel pain, but he can feel horror when he sees his body slashed through by the same man who did this to him in the ruins of Midtown over a year ago, the same man who — in a future he does not know — permanently trapped him in his iron body by his badly the lasers mangled him. The effect is similar, a scarring of thick cuts up the side of Rickham's face, dividing his jaw and carving into his forehead, slicing across his midsection and lopping off his left pinkie when he tries to shield his face.
It's hard to say when in that chaos Kris actually noticed he was stabbed, but suffice to say it comes as a shock to him to find Eileen's wicked knife driven into his stomach. He lurches forward, scrambles for a moment and before Eileen gets that flick of the wrist left that it would take to eviscerate him, there's a brilliant pinkish-red crackle-pop of sparkling fireworks like light that sends Eileen across the room in a strange juxtaposition of spatial orientation leaving her holding up her knife just like she was, blood running down the blade but no one on the end of it.
Kris reappears several feet away from Eileen, ducking behind Rickham and clutching his stomach. "Fuck! Fuck she stabbed me! That— that bitch stabbed me!" Rickham is staggering back at the same time, watching as Liette climbs atop West and rakes her fingers in a clawing motion across his forehead, purple light turning dark violet as she diminishes his power. There's a scream from West, a boot lifted back and a kick planted to Liette's stomach to try and get her off of him, but in all that he fails to miss the swift kick Cat is delivering to him.
West yelps from the stomp, eyes blearily focused and nose clearly broken. Had they knowledge of other cells of Messiah, this might not have happened in the same way, they might have called on Gabriel for help, as if he would have.
"Kris, we need to leave!" The tables have evidently turned on them, and for all their shock and awe, they couldn't have planned for the augmentation chain-reaction that accelerated the powers of everyone in the room. Rickham's order comes with a sharp hiss from the bleeding teleporter, and with a flicker-crack he disappears from where he was and reappears down by West, in mid-motion for a sucker punch to Cat's midsection, just enough to send her staggering backwards from the unconventionally timed attack.
There's another crackle-snap and Kris reappears in a flourish of pinkish light by Rickham, leaning back to back with the metal man, breathing heavily and blood flowing from his stomach, holding West under the barely conscious flyer's arms.
Nothing is said, no retort to Cat, no justification of their actions, just Rickham delivering a long and silent glare to the other side of the room before he disappears in a flash of sparkling and popping thermal energy, like a rose-hued campfire's embers swirling in the air.
Sitting slouched back against the wall by the stairs on the floor, Liette is panting heavily, eyes wide and tears glistening her cheeks. A single board comes clattering down from the hole in the ceiling, and the young girl shudders against the sensation that she was almost just kidnapped.
"You alright?" is all Peter can quietly ask to Helena, one hand trembling at her shoulder and an arm still protectively around her, his brown eyes wide as he stares at Liette sitting with her back up against the wall. Throat tightening, as he swallows, his augmentation never having broken. "Is— is everyone alright?" is offered shakily.
"We're fine," comes from upstairs, hesitantly. Maybe Peter was asking about the safehouse operators. They're too frightened to say otherwise.
"I'm fine…" Helena is more concerned with Liette, though, and there is a brief fumbling of her hand in his, re-orienting so she can step away from him without disconnecting their contact. In fact, she pretty much gives him an expectant tug to follow her, mama duck making baby duck follow. (Yes. Peter Petrelli has just been equated to a baby duck.) She takes a few steps toward Liette and says softly. "It's okay. It's okay. They're gone." She lets her eyes dart toward Raith expectantly, tilts her head toward Liette. Go be her father. And abruptly, she turns away at an awkward angle, the holding of hands with Peter nothing more than a connection to maintain her augmentation, so he can't see her face, and the sudden shudder as her own father-daughter issues crash down on her.
Three seconds. She lets the emotional pain wash over her for three seconds of shaky breaths, and then, lifting her head, she looks to the others, and asks a necessary if possibly callous question: "Do we have it in us to keep going after that?" Her tone suggests that she does, but as if in preparation, she starts to untwine her fingers from Peter's.
By the time Raith is back onto his feet, or at least onto a foot and a knee, the havoc has ended. His coughing has ended too, brought back under control by a combination of adrenaline and force of will. Rising up the rest of the way, the ex-spy takes shaky steps towards Liette and, more importantly, Lorraine. The one with the broken face, that is. The situation outside, in the world, can wait for a moment. "Can we fix that?" he asks, dropping to his knee once more, this time next to the more broken of the Lorraines. But his attention is only there for a moment, before it shifts and he makes a sweeping gesture with his healing arm- now free of a cast and held in a brace instead- towards little Liette: Come here, it's okay now.
Eileen drags the flat of her blade over her coat's sleeve, wiping the blood off so it doesn't damage the tool when she snaps it shut again. A thin gash oozing red on the left side of her face is the worst of the injuries she received in the initial attack, too shallow to require anything more than soap, a basin of hot water and some disinfectant to guard against any bacteria that might find their way into the wound between now and the next time she returns to the Dispensary.
Through the hole in the roof, the flock continues to roil, creating a vortex of roaring wings with the safehouse at its center. The Englishwoman's eyes close and her back finds the nearest wall, miraculously intact. She leans against it rather than slump. Raises the hand still clutching the knife to wipe at her cheek. "Do what you need to."
Gabriel's collapse is— not dramatic. He finds a chair and everything, one that's somehow managed to keep standing, and sits down heavily into it, fingers up to rub around his eye sockets. Hands dropping into his lap, he blinks his eyes and— it's not pretty. Red has bled all through the white of his eyes, though it leaves his brown irises clear — a typical looking case of subconjunctival hemorrhaging that doesn't leave him blind so much as—
Kind of itchy. And a more than a little gruesome to look at. That, and the massive headache — but none of these things are as so bad as the usual blindness that comes with extreme photokinetic useage, thanks to the feed of augmentation.
Largely ignoring the aftermath, Gabriel stoops to pick up a seared shred of red scarf, feeling it between his fingers. Helena's question, though, has Gabriel steering up his bright red-shot eyes, which don't really mesh well with the half-feral smile he beams at her, nor with his reputation. He lets the red scarf fragment fall through his fingers. "I've got nowhere to be."
Michelle is agape, laying on the ground in the remains of the room, blinking back all that has just happened. What did happen. Eye's rapidly glance here, there, people paired off and looking after loved ones, liked ones, children and .. wives? Possibly. Gabriel's scleral bleeding is given a glance at from afar, dismissed and Michelle starts to gingerly and delicately pick herself up from the ground. "Does anyone need medical help?" Not that she has much to work with, but, there does seem a high probability of chance of injury, gooseeggs on some people's foreheads as well.
One Lorraine doesn't move, except to breath, seemingly having lost consciousness from the blow, the other moves between her and Liette, so the girl doesn't have to see. "I'll be fine…" Just not right now. A glance says a lot. There's a way to fix this, but she's not about to do it here, right now, in front of their daughter. It also won't be pleasant for her, but— she's pretty sure her jaw is broken. That would take a long time to heal… Even with proper medical attention.
When the augmentation isn't needed anymore, Gillian rolls onto her back and closes her eyes, grateful that the situation has been remedied, but also feeling the blast of air coming down. They're not done yet…
"Now I kinda wish we'd captured one of them…" She could use the extra energy… Pushing herself up on her glove covered hand, she starts to move back over to Liette. "Let's finish this, so I can pass the fuck out." (Brian would wash her mouth out, hopefully Raith is forgiving of language.)
Deposited on her rump again, Cat remains seated on the floor. Her eyes open and close, she pants to try catching breath. Speech is difficult, but still attempted. "Got… keep going. Thirty-five… degrees?" Helena is looked at with the question. "Power… powers safe from being… retaken?"
Then the questions stop for a bit, she taking time to get her breath back more fully.
But they do resume soon enough. "Rebel found us. Did someone bring a phone?"
Cautiously tucking his phone further into his pocket with one gloved hand, Peter takes a few steps across the room behind Helena. "We have to keep going," he insists, tendrils of his augmentation still tethered around Helena, suffusing her with a greater scope and understanding of the weather patterns around her.
Letting out a soft whimper, Liette looks up to Helena, offering her best impression of a stiff upper lip despite tears streaking her cheeks. She scrambles over to Raith, swallowing tightly as she stares down at Lorraine's broken, bleeding face and just buries her face in the soldier's chest. There's an erratic flagging of her augmentation, but her part in this is nominally done, at least for the moment. "I…" Liette tries to say, but finds herself buried in Raith's jacket. She looks up, blue eyes wide and chin trembling as she addresses Cat. "Julie— won't— won't be coming for my abilities again…" there's a certain emotional content to that, a tightness in Liette's throat, but whatever she did at a distance while so thoroughly augmented and in possession once more of intuitive aptitude could've been anything.
"Jesus Christ…" Peter breathes out, staring up at the hole in the ceiling, looking up at the wide-eyed safehouse operators staring down at him. His jaw sets, fingers curl around Helena's again and he offers her a look she's seen him give before, back during the PARIAH days, the look he usually gave her before he said something he knew she wasn't going to like. Curiously, he doesn't actually say anything of the sort.
"Let's part those clouds…"
Everything else, can come later.