Existential Blues

Participants:

curt_icon.gif veronica_icon.gif

Scene Title Existential Blues
Synopsis Curt and Vee discuss their job and Curt's ability. Veronica kindly offers to kill him.
Date June 14, 2009

Level 1 Break Room


Curt sits at one of the tables lounging in a pair of chair. A pair because his feet are propped up in one. He doodles on a notepad as a cup the size of a bowl rests next to him. It's filled with coffee. He doesn't look up from his doodles when Vee enters, "So how were you planning on bringing in the rest of the Time Tards?" that's right, he's named them.

"Well. I think some of the others have the others," Veronica says, heading to the coffee pot and filling up her commuter mug. "I don't think it's necessarily our case to bring them all in, but of course if we find them all, when we find Puppet Boy, we'd do our best. And call for back up. I'm not even sure what the rest all do. I suppose we should look into that." The areas under her eyes are a touch bruised-looking, due to the blow to the forehead she inflicted on Curt, and thus herself.

Curt shrugs, "Doyle's easy to handle. I read his case file. He's arrogant and slovenly. He'll let me get close and then try to puppet me, try to make me do something and prove his superiority, then all you have to do is shoot me." he smiles at Vee, "I'm like our own little suicide bomber without all the virgins and emotional religious baggage."

"Great, Jihad," she says, rolling her eyes as she stirs sugar and creamer into her cup, then lifts it to her lips to sip the brew inside. "If he lets you get that close to him. The last time I took him in, I didn't even see him until he made the break for it. But if he does, yes, that will work," she agrees. She puts the cap on her cup and hops up onto the counter. She's about eleven feet away from Curt — she meant what she said about not hanging out next to him unless she can help it, apparently.

Curt doesn't seem to notice, or he's just very used to people keeping their distance, "I'd suggest a leg shot if the opportunity arises, something to keep him from making a 'break' for anything. Heck, maybe hands. I've noticed alot of the Evo's like to wave their hands around like idiots, telegraphing that they're gonna use their abilities, like April yesterday. If you take the hands out of the equation I'm not even sure some of them could /use/ their abilities. Huh. We should test that later on someone as a thought." he jots down a note to that effect on his doodle pad.

Veronica nods. "I didn't actually see him use his power so I don't know if he needs to or not," she says thoughtfully. "But I'd shoot the leg first, and then maybe the hand, just to be sure he doesn't get away this time. Just gotta be faster than he is if he decides to try to get you to do something to me. If he thinks you're alone though, if he doesn't realize I'm there, he's more likely going to make you try to kill yourself, which would also work for us, as long as you're close enough to him… though not if it's instant, right? If our plan is to get you close and me shoot you, maybe we should be sure you aren't actually carrying ammunition," she muses.

Curt chuckles, "Princess I've survived grenades from less then four feet away, which by all rights should have killed me instantly. If you shoot me in the head and somehow a single cell on my person remains alive for just a few seconds, that damage starts to transfer. The more that transfers, the faster the rest will until I'm back on my feet. Honestly? If I'm in range, I'm not sure anything shy of being tossed into a wood chipper or a thermite bath will actually /kill/ me."

"My point is if you have instant brain death… I would think you'd die before it could transfer. Or you'd both die, maybe, if you had brain death and it still transferred a bit. Don't you think?" she says thoughtfully. "I'm not wishing you dead, believe it or not. Just trying to be safe. A bullet point blank range to your own head — you'd be dead before the transfer began, wouldn't you? Not something I want to test out."

Curt shrugs, "Don't look at me, we got people walking away from head shots on a daily basis. I've been blown up, shot with fully automatic mounted machine guns, burned alive, drowned once, and that was totally the worst by the way, but I'm still kicking. Like I said, I don't know how my stuff works, you assume that my ability is powered by my brain. What if it's not? What if it's written into the genetic code of every single cell of my body? Sure, once your brain dies cellular death /begins/, but unless every cell in me died in like five seconds, the transfer would begin, more that transfered the more cells would come back to life." he shrugs, "Not that I wanna test the theory, I'm just saying, it's /possible/ I could survive a head shot." he brow waggles at her, "Think how confused the /other/ guy could be though. Yikes."

"Weird." Veronica sips her coffee and crosses her legs, dangling a couple feet off of the linoleum floor. "Well, I'll admit I'd rather you not be unarmed, so that's good news, at any rate. I had a negator with me last time, but apparently he was out of range from us. I never did figure out where the hell he was… apparently close enough to the people he was puppeteering but not close enough to us to be negated. He's fat and slow but not stupid. Don't make the mistake of thinking he is."

Curt reaches down into his boot and pulls free his old and worn KBar combat knife. He sets it on the table, "And you were wondering why I carry one of these." he points out. "Because it lets me get in close, which is where I do my best work." he shakes his head, "Not stupid, but he is an arrogant fuck with a thing for attractive women and the built in dislike of handsome men that all tubs of lard possess. If he gets the chance he'll try to make me look like a fool, just to show he's 'better then me'. We can use that… if we're lucky. Still, truth be told I'd rather we just shot him full of tranqs and tazers from like a hundred feet out." he eyes her, "I don't care if it transfers or not, getting shot still itches." yeah, itches.

"I never wondered why you carried a knife," she says, sipping her coffee calmly. "And I agree. If we can get a sightline on him without having to get close, that's our best bet. No fooling around. I also don't particularly care if we kill him or not now. I mean, yeah, Len wanted him alive but I think we have the information that he wanted, how they got here and all… the basics anyway, and he's more of a threat than any sort of asset. We'll try to take him in alive, but if he gets an overdose of tranquilizer just to be on the safe side… so be it."

Curt doesn't seem terribly bothered by that concept, "Listen to you, all grown up and putting on your big girl bra. I like this side of your Princess, suits you better." he continues to doodle, reaching out idly to snag his coffee and sip.

If looks could kill, he'd be a pile of ash right now, cremated and ready to be flung into the ocean. "You don't know the first thing about me, Lu. Don't act like I'm not capable of making those kinds of decisions or that I'm incapable of killing. Just because I didn't fight in however many wars or shit, I'm capable of doing my job," she says in a low voice. She hops off the counter and walks behind him to see what it is he's doodling.

Curt snorts, "You've made how many kills? And I don't mean you made the order, I mean pulled the trigger, stabbed the flesh, broke the neck. Yeah. See, I understand that your capable, otherwise I'd have let you snap my leg in the gym, which would have broken yours, and then I'd have gotten a new partner while you were on desk duty for a month and a half. I get it. But babe, for all your ability you still got weak spots, which is why they paired me with you. You're soft in ways I'm not, which is just as good because I can't talk to people the way you can… At least not good guys. I'm /great/ at getting intel out of scum though." he glances at her and bats his eyes, "Princess, you complete me." his pad is a doodle of a fat cartoony guy using puppets strings to make a military style asian man shoot himself in the head. But the fat man's face looks confused as the bullet seems to enter the asian cartoons skull, but it's the fat man's head that's got a big bloody exit wound. He shows real talent, not like fine arts talent, but cartoony talent. The poses are humorous and the people on the pad even slightly resemble himself and Doyle's file pics.

"I'm not on kill squad. But I've killed people. And I'm not the kind to put a notch in my belt and keep score," Vee says, shaking her head at the comic. Yes, it's rather good but she doesn't find it humorous. She stalks back to her counter and hops back up to sit. "It's not a joke, you know? You can try to make it funny and all, but it's life. And while I'd rather Doyle get killed than escape again, you shouldn't make light of the fact he might die. You might get hurt. I mean… it can't feel good, even if it does transfer. I've felt myself die before. I've felt the pain of being shot and having a bullet rip through me, killing me, even though it wasn't my body… And I've woken up since in the middle of the night remembering that moment at least a half a dozen times in the four months or so since."

Curt eyes her for a moment that seems to extend for entirely to long without blinking. Seriously, the guy is just entirely to intense sometimes. He stands and walks over to the fridge, "You're a child, sexy and smart and tough, but you're a fucking child. Don't talk to me about death. People like Doyle are monsters and should be put down." he opens one of the boxes in there labeled with someone else's name and sniffs the content. "Ooo. Cheesecake." he sits down with 'D. Taylor's dessert and starts to eat it, "And I know what you're thinking, I'm a monster too right? S'ok, I know. And when we're done and all the crazy dangerous Evo's are locked away and the war is finished, and it is a war Princess make no mistake, then I'll let the Company put me down as well. Because I am a monster, and just like Doyle there's only one sure way to make sure I won't kill another innocent person." he holds the cake out in offering, "Cheesecake?"

"You," Veronica begins, hopping off the counter and picking up the cheesecake and returning it to the refrigerator, "need to quit talking to me like you are above me. Most people with your kind of experience are retired and understand that people my age are doing their old jobs and that the world isn't going to fall apart just because they're not in charge any more. Yes, you're a freak of nature, and you think that calling yourself a monster and all this self loathing makes it okay for you to also treat everyone else around you like crap." She leans on the refrigerator, arms crossed as she berates him.

"I have been an adult for almost nine years now. I'm not a child by any stretch of the imagination, and I've seen more in the past decade than most people have in their entire lives. If you really want to be killed, since I guess suicide's not an option, let me know, and I'll do you and me the favor. Just stand still at the end of the shooting range, and I'll fucking take you out now."

Curt pouts a bit as his cheesecake is taken away. Hey! He walked all the way to the fridge to pilfer that! It's like, twelve whole feet! "I'm not talking to you like I'm above you Princess, I'm talking to you the same way I talk to everyone else. The difference is most of them walk away don't have to keep listening to it." he licks the fork thought, so take that! "And no, I treated everyone like this when I was in highschool too, difference was back then it was goofy fun, a joke, I didn't actually mean it. In the war I learned that brutal honesty isn't all that appreciated. People want you to lie to them, to make them feel better. Sadly, I don't give a fuck how everyone else feels anymore, makes for a simpler sort of exsitence truth be told." he smiles warmly at Vee, "You know I've thought about it? But a part of me still wants to serve, and like I said, I'm a coward. Suicide… it's not for me. Not until the work is done. Maybe when the war's over, if you're not all ancient and crippled with age, I'll let you be the one to take that shot. Just for old times sake."

"It's not going to be over, if you think everyone who is Evolved is the enemy, Curt," Veronica says quietly. "The changes… the mutations or whatever you want to call them, they're going to keep happening. Maybe there will be a cure, some sort of vaccine, but you know it won't reach everyone. People still get Smallpox and Polio once in a while, even though those have been eradicated for the most part… because people don't take the vaccines or they don't get to some tiny country somewhere, then those people migrate. This is the future. Trying to keep an eye on the powers that we know of, and containing those who are too dangerous to others. There's never going to be an end."

Curt shrugs, "Perhaps. Perhaps not. What can I say, I'm an optimist." he sips his coffee again and eyes her once more, "I've lived long enough to see the future become the past." he sounds like he's quoting someone and smirk graces his lips.

"Well, technically so have I," she says, sticking her tongue out at him. "So bully for you." She pushes off from the refrigerator. "Come on. We have work to do, Emo boy."

Curt eyes her, "Call me that again and I'll spank you in public." he states as he pushes himself to his feet. "Stupid saying isn't it? The past/future thing? I need new material."


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