Participants:
| Scene Title | Elvis Is In The Building |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Alia knows Cardinal's home, comes with a report. And Elisabeth lays out the resources. |
| Date | Oct 10, 2011 |
It's some point in the day after dawn, but well before noon when Cardnial's phone plays a ring tone that, knowing Cardnial, he'd not even know it had. "Shave and a Haircut, two bits" rings to life. ALong with a text message from, according to the address book, D.Crypt: 'Coffee, Donuts, And Welcome back.' It seems Alia still has some of her sense of humor despite everything else that's gone on…
"…I hate technology," Cardinal mutters as he regards the text message luminous on the face of the phone before setting it back down on the table and heading into the bedroom to fetch some more clothing, bruising mottling down his side and across his face. "Liz! Alia's here!"
Elisabeth is finding coffee when the ringtone happens. She jumps just a little at the shout. Laying both hands on the countertop, she looks at the ceiling. "Lover…. I'm an audiokinetic. I can hear you whisper from three floors away. Please don't shout." Her tone is mild, and sleep has gone a long way toward making the ever-present buzz lighten up some. Since she's wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt already, she goes down the stairs to let Alia in. "C'mon up," she invites.
Alia grins as she steps in carrying… wow, that's three big cups of coffee in a tray, and a bag of donuts to boot. Fresh, warm donuts by the smell of it. Alia herself however… is wearing perhaps the most plain of clothing anyone's seen her in. No nerdy labels. No references. Just a solid red hoodie, and black slacks. She smiles however, as she follows inside. "Good news?" She asks Liz, before setting the goodies down.
It's in a pair of black jeans and a t-shirt that Cardinal strides back out into the open, waggling the phone in his hand. "Hey Alia," he greets, before asking in Liz's direction, "Where do you keep the hammers?"
Donuts. Oh, Alia… you're a sweetheart. Liz takes the bag with a grin, and then she pauses. "Well… now that it's just hit me. How did you know he'd been returned to the timeline?" No, wait…. "The phone?"
As they regain the main level of the house, Liz looks toward Cardinal with a puzzled frown. "Hammers?" It appears the blonde is not quite all the way awake. Apparently she slept REALLY hard, because she actually still looks rather bleary-eyed. "Richard, why do you want a hammer?"
"The phone. Not tied to his name. But his." Alia nods. Did… Alia pull a devious act on the shadowman and he just now realized it? Probably. "Had to have some way to track potentially stupid things?" Alia offers as her explanation, in her tradtional few words as possible, even as she hands a coffee cup to Cardinal. "other than me, and Liz, nobody knows, phone, yours."
"I've got some modifications to do," is Cardinal's easy response to Liz's question, laying the phone down upon the counter before stepping over to accept the cup of coffee. He's looked better. Nose broken and recently re-set, he's moving with the careful motions of someone still healing from other injuries as well. "And— good. I'd rather keep my return quiet for a bit, since Joshua did try and shoot me in the face. He'd probably do it again."
"He might," Elisabeth agrees mildly. "He's pretty pissed at Ezekiel." There's a sadness to her tone. But she says nothing else about her thoughts on the matter. "You're not smashing the phone. There's no point. No one else knows you have it anyway," she points out reasonably.
She studies his movements, pleased to see that he *is* moving easier. Though the two shiners he's sporting are pretty impressive. "Alia," she says, moving the topic away from the future son of a Richard Cardinal and an Elisabeth Harrison who don't exist. "We weren't expecting company quite so soon … what's up?"
"…Happy to know he's back." Alia notes, though… there's more to it then that, her tone conveys that. "…and. applogize. Digital trails? easy. Physical paper." She sighs. "Blew it." Alia slumps against a wall, sipping her own cup of coffee. At least she admits the shortcomings.
Cardinal makes a face at Elisabeth when she forbids him from smashing the phone, and instead just takes a long sip of coffee, his eyes closing. "…we've all made mistakes recently," he says quietly to Alia's words, "I've been gone for six months, apparently. Status report?"
It's not that Liz's report wasn't good, it's just that Alia tends to be less person-oriented and more goal-oriented in hers.
There's a small frown at Alia's reaction. "What happened?" Liz asks quietly. She doesn't seem upset, merely wanting to know what went wrong. "I was worried about the physical aspects of the drop anyway — it's a lot harder to try that. And complicated too. The digital footprints are actually more important anyway." But she stops talking so that Alia can formulate a report. Elisabeth does, however, glance at Cardinal without comment.
Alia picks her words carefully. "no good outlets. Big names don't want to believe. Resources scattered." Alia frowns, and digs her laptop out of her backpack. She pulls up… bless her soul, is that a digital recreation of the spiderweb of threads that was in the basement at Redbird? Yes yes it is. What's even more interesting, most likely, is that Alia has gone a step further, and linked those data points, at least the oens that are on people and places and events that already happened, with relevant records from, of all things, the Catabase. "Physical drops never happened. Couldn't find anyone to try my end. Other half… out of contact." She shrugs. Yes, she has no idea where Monica is.
The sight of that digital web-recreation brings one of Richard's brows upward a little, but he doesn't comment on it. He did burn it for a reason, after all, but…
"Alright. It was kind of a Hail Mary play anyway," he admits, lips twisting in a grimace, "We'll need more. As for the other half… what do you mean, out of contact?"
A glance to Liz, then back to Alia, brow furrowing.
The subtle bass thrum becomes perceptible again — so much for a good sleep and a little cuddle with a time-lost lover to create relaxation in the blonde. Elisabeth's head comes up sharply. "Monica's out of contact? For how long?" she demands. Setting her coffee cup down, she moves to grab her own phone, fingers flying as she fires off a text. "Where was she last you knew? And what was she doing?"
Alia shakes her head. "Lost track of in…" She waves a hand at the web, or maybe it's at the world outside. Either way. "Other half of hail-mary." She sighs and rubs her forehead and, from her own expression, is cursing her own deficits that make this harder. The easiest way to get her point across… an article from the catabase leaps to the front, about the attempted assassination of one Mayes. Apparently that's related to the last she knew about Monica
Cardinal brings a hand up, fingers rubbing against his forehead. "Shit," he breathes out, "Temporal inertia. And the future refused to change — Alia, if you can get into the records for Eltingville, see if she's there. And someone make sure Jaiden's not off the grid too."
"*Shit*," Elisabeth hisses. And the subtle hum increases just a hair. No, no, no! More texts fly out, probably Liz making all of their operatives check in.
"Jaiden and Devon brought in one of the spider bots from Midtown. I want you to take a look at it and see if you can sort out a way to corrupt those fuckers, okay?" the blonde instructs the technopath. "If Wireless is available, you might see if she's got any insight on it — I know the Ferry has been actively assessing the 'bots. Warren may have some insight as well. Do you think you can get in contact with both of them?"
Alia says, "… Can ask Wireless, but she's.. grumpy. Logan." As if that explains much of anything. You can almost hear Alia slot a call to Warren into her to do list. "Cats. Spiders. Dear me." She pauses, then frowns. "Etingville. On it." Alia isn't happy about it, but she'll do what she can there."
A chair's finally pulled out, and Cardinal drops himself down into the chair, leaning back with a heavy sigh as the others start making their plans. The coffee cup's cradled in his hands, and he considers it for a long moment in silence, his lips pursing in a tight line.
He's thinking, don't mind him.
Glancing at him, Elisabeth asks, "What are you thinking?" Because he's often thinking, and she can't keep up. "I'd be interested to hear about what you learned of the future while you were there," she admits. "Especially if it has some bearing here."
Alia remains quiet as she puts her laptop to one side, watching and listening for the moment. She doesn't dare poke systems from here, after all. It's part of the safety net.
"I'm just thinking about something Edward used to say, is all," is Richard Cardinal's response before he brings the coffee cup to his lips for a slow, slurping sip, his eyes closing. "I found out… well. A lot, but not a lot that's useful. A lot about a future that won't ever happen. A lot about the atrocities that I— that he— let happen. That he made happen."
Elisabeth nods slightly, though he can't see her with his eyes closed. "It's not about what he did. It's about stopping him. Stopping all of it," she reminds him quietly. There's a hardness, a visceral hatred that sends that bass hum throbbing, when she speaks. "It's all going down in flames. Very very soon." He hasn't felt this level from Liz in a long while, and it's clear that although her powers took months to return to normal after the riots a year ago, they are now in fine form.
"Spiders, like cats. Scrambling not hard. Just need to poke them -carefully-" Alia frowns. "Hope not like -last- spiders. Those.." Alia frowns and pulls up a short writeup she wrote on -those- ones. The ones that Alia found were likely meant to have someone like her driving them. Weaponized technopathy is something that Alia obviously has some… fright over. Still she looks to her two friends, and voices, softly. "Flip table, new game, same end goal?"
The edge of the coffee cup is tipped ever so slightly in Alia's direction. "We've… well, we're out of time for our more subtle plans," admits Cardinal in quiet tones, "We'll throw all in with the attack - it's too late to cancel that even if there was a reason to - and we'll sort out the table afterwards. I'm tired trading moves with this asshole. The things he did, he…" He trails off, grimacing, "They were unforgivable."
Looking toward him as he speaks, Elisabeth seems to relax just a little. As if the decision is one that she was fearing he would balk on. "Good. Because we're already all-in," the blonde says. She walks to him and leans down to put her hands on either side of his face and kiss him, relief and hope all wrapped up in that lip-lock. When she draws back, there's a small smile on her lips as she looks at him. "I. Love. You." SHe didn't want to fight with him over this.
Alia just smiles a little, then nods her head. "Less subtle. Where we hitting, when?" Alia is, it seems, quite willing to help knock things to flames to rebuild from.
A wry look up, Cardinal's lips crooked in their smile before they're kissed—and he leans up to return that kiss, one hand raising to brush against her cheek. "I love you too," he says, letting his hand drop then, "Yeah. Give me the details. Where are we hitting, what are our resources?"
With a sigh, Elisabeth sits in one of the other chairs, where her laptop is sitting. "Well… I can give you the basic rundown of our stuff. But the Ferry resources I won't know until we meet with Raith and Ryans," she tells them. She lists out for them their resources — the full schematic blueprints of the Arcology, three (3) prototypes of Warren's Horizon-template exo-armor (including Elisabeth's), the two Horizon exosuits that Liz and Felix stashed under a bridge the night they ran (which were never retrieved and are now in storage hidden away), and a couple of armored vests based on the same ferro-fluid metal that also comprises the full-body exosuits.