Participants:
Scene Title | Birthright |
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Synopsis | As foretold by Kaito Nakamura, Hiro's birthright returns. |
Date | May 23, 2009 |
Tokyo, Japan
Having sent Magnes home, Kimiko is now alone. She has no idea of where her father's body is, nor does she have any idea of where Hiro is, or if he is even alive. She's not even sure trying to reach out and contact him is safe, given the lies being spread about him. Behind her unruffled veneer she is shake to her core, and so she steps out to the family garden, walking past the stone fountain and its colorful fish, turning past the veranda where she and her mother often worked on their ikebana, to a stone archway leading to a family shrine. She kneels before it, head bowed, but rather than pray, she wishes.
There is a sense of being not-alone that has only a bare second to register before it turns into the obviousness of Hiro alighting in the garden. He looks like hell, and that's not just from what he's wearing. Fortunately he's had a few days and in that time has long since changed out of the scorched ruined clothes he was blown up in. But the anguish shows on his face that he wears like a wound. His hair is a mess, looking like he's been rained on and let it dry as it would. The coat he wears is gray and cheap. Not the sort of thing the Nakamuras usually have to stoop to buying. Odds are he got it from a charity organization. Or bummed it off of a poor person somewhere. In the crook of his arm, Hiro holds a small white plastic case with his name on it in Kanji.
It's about impossible for Hiro not to be noticed, but when he opens his mouth to say something, nothing comes out. And he just shuts his mouth again.
Kimiko looks over her shoulder immediately, as soon as she has the sensation - she refuses to be taken surprise again. Rising, "Hiro!" she takes quick steps toward, holding her hands out as if she almosts expects him to stumble into her or against her. Her hand slides to his shoulders, and she looks at his face. Within seconds, she mirrors it. "Yes." she says, despairing. "I know." But wheeling him gently around, she moves to guide him toward the house.
Quite like expected, Hiro does indeed fall into his sister's arms and hug her tightly for a long moment, refusing to let go for a few breaths. He doesn't try to explain anything, or protest. Instead he asks, "What is there to eat?" Seems such an out of place question in the circumstances, doesn't it? It's actually quite a relief that he's led back to the house, because there is a real chance he'd just stand there all day and night otherwise.
"Come along," she murmurs, as if suddenly, they were twelve and eight again. "I'll make you waffles." Kimiko probably hasn't done any amount of serious cooking since she was in her teens, but her brother's favorite breakfast? Yes, that's still in her capacity to manage. There can be a few moments spent in the simple harmony of a mundane task, before they must seriously confront the demon of their father's death, both in and of itself, and the monster who brought it forth.
The plastic case is pressed into Kimiko's hands by a Hiro who looks at her with bleary eyes. "He left us this message. Or me. But really it's for us. He knew, Kimi-chan. You were right." And then, perhaps a little disturbingly, Hiro grins about it. Like it's funny. He even chuckles briefly. "He knew. And now we are on a treasure hunt." Waffles? The slack-jawed expression that ghosts across his face betrays some kind of visceral craving. Waffles. As far as Hiro is concerned they're better than sex right now.
Thank god the meta-audience can't really hear character thoughts, because if they could? Petrelli-cest would have itself a new rival ship, one equally gross. Kimiko leads Hiro into the kitchen - all the servants have been dismissed for the day, and she indicates where he should set the box down. "Can you open it?" she asks, not immediately going for utensils and ingredients required.
Hiro sits simply where bidden, like a lead weight. He just plops down there. Then sets the box on the tabletop and looks at Kimiko while he perfunctorily just pops the box open. Inside is a DVD and some photos. He nudges the thing toward her. "They are of some place in America. I recognize the type of place. It had to be an internment camp for Japanese Americans. In World War II. I've been to one of those before." Though it just now occurs to him that he never told Kimiko about that adventure. How he came to learn English and oppression first-hand. "But everyone in the photos is a white man. So probably it was taken after the place was repurposed. I wonder if Father took these himself."
Buildings, all laid out like a nice, quaint neighborhood in America from the nineteen sixties. Little dirt roads between the houses, lined with white stones, against the backdrop of some great American desert. Men and women, children and scientists in white labcoats stand in these collections of group photographs, none of the faces particularly jumping out.
There's a haunting quality about the imagery, the way in the background high fences can be seen, ones designed to keep people in rather than keep intruders out. Some of them feature American military officers patroling in the background, while all of them are taken in front of the same sign. The same location that gives this place a name, a context, and a title to be shoved under a rug for generations to come.
The sign reads, Welcome to Coyote Sands.
"Coyote Sands." Kimiko reads outloud in English. She frowns a moment, and exits the kitchen, leaving Hiro momentarily to his own devices. Hey, what about the waffles?
She returns a few moments later with a slim laptop, no bigger than a purse. Sleek and small is the way to go in Japan these days, you know. Opening it up and logging in, she takes the first of the discs and slides it into the player, waiting to see what comes on screen.
Hiro waits until Kimiko returns to say it, but say it he does. "What about the waffles?" He's watching the wall as if there's someone looking back at him there. Maybe a hungry ghost. Like himself.
Kimiko's expression grows tighter and tighter as she watches her father's final missive. Is she grieving? Is she angry? She becomes more inscrutable by the moment, more Kaito's child than Ishi's as the moments pass. Once the message finishes, she stands there for a moment, and then without a word, turns and walks to the refridgerator to begin quietly pulling out the ingredients for Hiro's waffle.
There really isn't much to say. Hiro's had a few days to absorb this thing with the DVD message from Kaito. Kimiko's had that same amount of time to register merely the fact of their father's passing. He isn't going to press her on it. Though when she goes to work on the waffles, he looks at the photos and watches them closely. Very closely. "We need to get my powers back."
"How do you propose we do that?" Kimiko's tone is soft, reserved. Like their mother's. She doesn't turn from her chores as she pulls out utensils and begins prepping the ingredients. Flour. Eggs, whipped just so. A bit of sugar, a bit of baking powder. Some vegetable oil. "In America, they are calling you a terrorist. I am certain that Takezo Kensei helped himself to all he thought was his at the Yamagato Foundation. I am not sure where to turn, or what we must do."
"Phoenix." says Hiro, eyes on the photo. Thinking. Concentrating. Reaching, just in case of the impossibility that if he tried or believed hard enough he could fly through time and space as he once did instead of merely through the air. "Peter Petrelli."
A soft, pinkish glow is at first hard to notice as it flickers up and down the backs of Hiro's hands. Then, a few darker red sparks, crackling and zapping between his fingers, each one larger and longer than the next. Finally, there is a few sparkling motes of crimson that dance up from Hiro's shoulders, popping and zapping before — finally — a ruby hue comes over Hiro's irises followed by what feels like an expulsion of static electricity from Hiro's body in harmless bolts that arc a few inches off of him, and then dissipate entirely.
In that moment, in that release of pent up energies bound inside of Hiro's body, he can feel something change, feel an emptiness filled with a familiar warmth, and he can feel as though something that was entirely wrong, very quickly becomes entirely right again, in slow, throbbing pulses of static that leave his fingertips in light motes in the air.
Father was right. What was gone, a birthright would return again in time.
"Uh-tud-tuh…" stammers Hiro quickly, throwing the photo across the room and jolting to his feet. The table jumps across the floor as he knocks it with his thigh and then trips over the chair he was sitting in. And then he's holding his shin and hissing because he hit that on the table leg. Ahhh…
Kimiko turns around amidst her work, her eyes wide with shock. "What was THAT?" she gasps in surprise, shoving the bowl to the counter behind her and moving to crouch and frown. Her brother, the time-space manipulator, her brother the flying speedster, her brother, the great hero…
…her brother the klutz.
Hiro hisses through his teeth briefly, because it HURTS to bang your shin on a hard object. He doesn't answer right away. But stares at the floor. And then looks at Kimiko. And past her, where his eyes are frozen on something. "Kimi-chan. Look." He points then.
The photo he threw hangs suspended in mid-air, mid-flop. Suspended not from gravity, but from time.
He steps around the table he almost wiped out and plucks the photo from the air, looking significantly at Kimiko, who is quite securely in relative timeflow with him. And he grins. "Yatta."
Japanese is a funny language. Pronouns often apply to the same word, so when he says it, she breathes in wonder, "Yatta!" at the same time. You did it. She smiles at the wonder of it, and then catches herself, peering at Hiro. "But I'm not frozen." she points out. "Shouldn't I be?"
Hiro is quick to shake his head, his mood much lightened by this. This time the smile is more or less genuine rather than some processed grief, like before. "No, I pulled you with me. I can do that…but I wasn't touching you." He holds up a finger and shakes it, thinking to himself as he turns and looks around the room. "That is different. Something I haven't done before on purpose. Not since with Ando."
Kimiko's expression grows thoughtful. "Then we must do as our father wished and go back to this time. This…Coyote Sands." She looks at him. "What do you think we should take with us? Anything?" What do you pack when you're about to visit the 60's? Gogo boots? Bell bottoms?
"Better clothes. Swords. Binoculars. And Google Earth printouts of the area. We can buy maps when we get there. And you will have to teach me to ride a motorcycle." Hiro says, quickly making a list, and he grins, "But first I really do need something to eat. Seriously. I feel sick from it."