Participants:
| Scene Title | Bird of Prey |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | A perplexed Perry finds Huruma perching. |
| Date | July 27, 2010 |
Abandoned Railyard
Five seperate rail tracks converge here on a derelict factory structure situated on the water of the Howlad Hook Facility's ship berth. Designed for intermodal rail shipping of freight directly from seagoing vessel to train, this massive railyard building is three stories tall and features an extensive catwalk system and old derelict conveyor belts for the movement of ship-borne cargo. The building itself was in the process of being torn down when the fallout from the 2006 nuclear explosion in Midtown drove the Howland Hook workers away from the facility.
Now the building rests in partial disrepair, with sections of the corrugated metal walls removed to reveal steel girder skeletons and expose the inside of the structure to the elements. Concrete walkways are cracked and split, vegetation growing up between the fissures. Some steel drums and old metal shipping crates are still present here as well..
Solitude isn't always what you need when you most want to seek it.
The trouble with Pericles Wilson is, he's not so good with the other human beings things.
So it's alone that Perry arrives at the abandon railway station where he has gathered with others before, to talk. He's not seeking others right now. Which is stupid because he feels alone, and doesn't particularly like it. But you can develop a taste for bitterness, and glut yourself on it.
Yes, these are actually the kind of thoughts he's having right now. It's sort of an angst-fest. But on the outside he just looks sort of gloomy, slipping out of his truck and making his ambling way into the station proper, to go look at the wreckage of modern man and brood. Gotta get your kicks somehow.
Unfortunately for Perry, someone is already there. In a sense. Huruma has placed herself squarely in the business of the railway building, balancing in a sitting position on one of the many steel shipping barrels. God only knows what she's doing- up until Perry might get close enough to see that she is on her cellphone. It looks rather new, actually. Knowing vaguely what she does, he may also realize that she must know he has happened inside- or not.
"I don'know anybody named …Cranston? Per'aps you lost him." A tinny response in the speaker to her ear is masculine in timbre. "I don'know how. I am jus'telling you tha'he may have been misplaced."
Perry does not imagine he has come upon Huruma unawares. There is a 'oh, maybe I should go before she spots me' moment, but his knowledge of her, limited but understood in some practical sense, steps in to correct him. Too late, likely.
And anyways, this is someone he hasn't put his question to. Perry makes his slightly ginger way towards the woman enthroned atop barrel. He takes a curving course, allowing himself to enter Huruma's line of sight some time before he reaches her. He lifts a hand in greeting, and then halts, shifting slightly from foot to foot. He makes a motion, hands to ears - 'should I not listen?' and waits for a reply.
There's something amiss after he is able to observe her there. She peers along after him, her eyes a deceptive shade of hooded brown. The talk on the other end of the phone does not stop, and she listens. While she is doing so, that feeling that there is something else going on makes itself apparent in a fussing jostle coming from below her coat. Kasha's there too, in a baby sling on her foster mother's torso. Still listening to the phone, Huruma peels back her coat to find the blonde baby's face, if just perhaps to calm her.
Her conversation does not need to be interrupted by a baby. Not with who she is talking to. Perry, on the other hand- the dark woman does not care if he hears, sitting on her scuffed metal throne and essentially only giving him that first look.
"I don'know how you misplace a man, no. Did you check Faratsiho?"
This is… an interesting conversation. Perry is, at least for a moment, is distraction from himself. His brow furrows. Now what is going on? He folds his arms and waits with an intent expression, not really hiding the fact that he's trying to make out the words on the other end of the line, however fruitlessly. He does spare the baby a glance, and crosses his eyes for it's benefit, smiling a bit after, then adjusting his glasses nervously as he realizes… oh wait, Huruma saw that.
Maybe she is used to people doing that, because she does not give him much more than a short squint. Kasha, however, is peering out at him ever so intently. What are you doing with your face-
"I have someone here." A short pause, muffled words. "I know he does. But do you?" This next pause is much longer, and the response nowhere near as audible. But, it makes Huruma ghost a smile over her lips. "I will get back t'you about this person. Ask a second time in Faratsiho. Go eat breakfast." No time for an answer, as Huruma cuts the call short and reconverges her eyes onto Perry.
"Yes?"
Oh, crap. She addressed him. As long as she was on the phone, he was off the hook, however much he was biting at it. Perry clears his throat, trying to regain the measure of intensity, the force of his discontent, that he was able to kindle so effective when left to his own thoughts.
"Why are you doing this?" comes Perry's question. It's presented with a touch of formality, a touch of pedantry - it sounds rhetorical, but it's not. He actually waits for an answer. Or he does, until he realizes… he's being unclear. "I mean, why are you with our group? This group? Why do you… kill? What does it matter enough? I…" he pauses, "How does it make sense to you? What… code are you following?" another pause, "Do you think about what we're doing?"
So… that's actually quite a few questions. Can of worms, opened, to mismanage the fishing metaphor.
Huruma's brows lift slightly as she watches him, her stillness quite unearthly when contrasted to the wriggles of Kasha to her front. The brown lenses afford her some measure of normalcy. one hand on her knee, the other holding her phone, Huruma seems like a guru atop a temple stair.
"Why am I wit'Messiah? I have little else t'do, that is why. I kill either out of need, desire, or mercy- th' essential human reasons for such an act." Maybe, just maybe, she was ready for something like this. If not him, it is always going to be someone. If not him, always another. The field surrounding her has him enveloped, and the empath is not only able to know the oncoming moods, but the ones she creates with her answers.
"But you kill with skill," Perry says, immediately regretting the rhyme he makes but too late! He is not satisfied with this answer. He's frustrated in fact. "You have been killing for some time. You have been fighting for a long time, you must have. Why this path? Do you ever… look at yourself and wonder 'why this'? I… I'm sorry," he rubs his brow, "I need to be more logical in my progression here."
He takes a moment to gather this thoughts, then speaks with as much clarity as he can manage. "I spoke with Melissa Pierce. I tried to… press the question of philosophy. She said she wasn't interested in it. And I thought: this is someone who kills without thought. Not even that - someone who does not think about what leads her to think killing is necessary. This is someone, with a remarkable gift, who seems not to ponder how it makes her different, how it makes her very way of being in the world different. I can't… imagine. It makes me… angry," and she can feel it, "It feels like ignorance to me. But you…"
His eyes lift to Huruma, "You are not thoughtless. You can't be. You don't falter. You act. How do you do it? How do you act clearly without lapsing into ignorance?"
"I was on my own when I was eight years old. Fight or die, Pericles." Huruma's answer is solemn to begin, and while her velveteen voice goes, she observes him closely with both her eyes as well as her ability. "I was fifteen or so when I manifested. One would think I would remember exactly. It took my mind and created something magnificent, on top of what I knew."
"I act because I must. I act on what presents itself because He asked me to do so many years ago. I act out of repaying my debt to a greater force. My philosophy in doing such a thing is obviously predatory- but of course-" Huruma's hand finds the backside curve of the baby at her torso. "I do have a system of honor. Of worth, of other debts to be paid."
Perry listens with focused interest, his gaze almost unblinking as he receives Huruma's words with earnest intensity. It's not a show - he's not a showman. Huruma can feel his need to find some connection, some sign of fellow feeling, or even a guiding light, something to help him along the path he's losing.
And then that one word: 'predatory'. He lights up, inside and out.
And that's when he begins a recitation. Utterly unfaltering, and entirely from memory. And all with conviction and offering.
"It is not surprising that the lambs should bear a grudge against the great birds of prey, but that is no reason for blaming the great birds of prey for taking the little lambs. And when the lambs say among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and he who is as far removed from being a bird of prey, who is rather its opposite, a lamb,—is he not good?' then there is nothing to cavil at in the setting up of this ideal, though it may also be that the birds of prey will regard it a little sneeringly, and perchance say to themselves, 'We bear no grudge against them, these good lambs, we even like them: nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.'"
She can feel a single hope in him - that she will understand, and agree.
"He has created me as his mirror, as his vessel, t'give his compassion an'mercy to a world tha'so desperately needs it an'has no idea." Huruma softly closes her eyelids, a smooth smile over her lips. "While I have th'capacity t'see this world in good and evil- tha'does not mean that it is what I believe t'be true." She opens her eyes again, a heavy breath coming into her lungs.
"I see th'world in his brilliant colors. Never black an'white. Never a place where I am 'evil' and another is 'good' simply from need t'label such things. Survival is about being fit enough t'do so. And I do what I must."
It's only right that the words of Neitzsche should be answered with like mysticism. Zarathustra is not a person, but a moment. A state of mind. A mode of articulation. Also sprech er. "So this is a matter of survival, to you?" Perry says, pressing on the issue, eager, keen to come to an understanding, to interpret Huruma's words into terms that will fit his disposition for a certain logic, the completed circuits of an electrical engineer's mind. "You do what you must, and what is within your power, to persist. Is that all?" A touch of the skeptical, even challenging. He dares to be aggressive on this, one of his few home grounds. "What about your desires, your passions? The expression of your power? Do you take pleasure in it, beyond simple persistence? Do you think it's right to take pleasure in it? To be as strong as you can be?" Again, he's hoping the answer is yes.
"Yes."
It is exactly the thing that he wished to hear, as succint and as straightfrward as she has already been thusfar. Huruma watches the young man with a vague interest, now, her own wonder puddling around if this is going to be something that he will take to breast as close as he possibly can.
"There was a man that I once knew, when I was still a girl by your standards…" She begins, her words carefully chosen. "He thought fitting to describe me not as man, but as force of nature. Perhaps I agree."
This is an ideal answer. There could be no better, not really. Perry's emotions soar to a sharp peak. Despite his meek exterior, his social awkwardness, he feels with considerable force. And with great speed, given the right trigger. "Yes!" he echoes, "Lightning doesn't flash. It is flashing. We are not actors, acting. We are our actions. We're not empowered, we are power. Or we should strive to be."
"And, of course, the weak will always blame us for merely for being or, rather, for ever daring to more than merely be," Perry says, a tinge of vindictive smoke veils the flame of his conviction, "Ms. Huruma, I…" he finds himself faltering again, "Thank you. Thank you, I needed to know there were people like you as part of this cause. You have bridged theory and praxis. I… I will try and reach the same state. I just need to discover what it is I am."
This is a sore spot.
For minutes, Huruma is content to absorb those spikes and washes of emotion coming out of such a meek-looking man. She is unsurprised at the personal magnitude of his conviction, and perhaps more surprised that he has found exactly what he was looking for. In her, and her words, no less. Kasha lets out a timely burble of noise as she watches Huruma up above her with big blue eyes.
"Discovering yourself takes time. You must b'prepared t'provide time, t'provide patience. Touch th'world, feel it, be a part of it. That is all tha'you can truly do." A ghost of a smile returns to her features, and the spidery, slender fingers clutching her phone bring it back up, thumb spinning over touchscreen.
"Now, then- if y'do no'mind, I need t'call m'son back about a missing liaison…"