Participants:
| Scene Title | Expected Arrival |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Montag arrives in NYC. The Company dispatches Heather to pick him up. |
| Date | November 7, 2008 |
Despite the increased airline security, courtesy first of the bomb and now of potential local terrorists and the Evolved in general, JFK International still sees a great deal of traffic. A massive number of planes move in and out of its airspace, and even more passengers arrive and depart by them. The buildings are immense structures of steel and glass, although more horizontally stretched than most in New York, which tend to the vertical mode. It is full of shops, restaurants, and people — always the people, from security guards to travelers, thronging the halls in search of food, souveniers, and whichever place it is they're supposed to be.
Tall, pale, lanky, tired, and recently arrived, Gavin stands upright before the slow churn of the baggage claim belt. Flat, charcoal grey over cornflower blue and a darker tie, his suit manages more of a sense of formality than he does. His shoulders are a bit slouched, and he has an undead quality about him indicative of his dislike of flying. Or perhaps airports in general. He's distinct at least, height, build, and facial structure all what one might expect from whatever documentation the Company has on him even if his back is mostly turned to the stream of bag-rummaging traffic.
One might expect the person playing chauffeur to be dressed up in a suit and tie. Yeah. Heather doesn't roll that way though. She's got just your basic jeans, sneakers, and white t-shirt on. A blue jean jacket covers the t-shirt. Coming in through the doors to the baggage claim area, she's not even holding a sign with Montag's name on it. Just a file folder with his basic details. Despite the large crowd, she scans it methodically, as though looking for her charge. Ah. There he is. "Galvin Montag?" she asks, approaching him with a smile.
Montag half turns at the sound of his name, astute enough despite his groggy state. Granted, it helps when you know there's going to be someone looking for you. The fact that the someone in question is Heather, though, earns a moment's bemused pause while he takes her in and turns himself the rest of the way around to face her. "I am. Who are you? Someone's daughter come around to pick me up while everyone else is busy?"
Heather quirks a tad bit of a grin at the comment. "I'll let that one slide." she replies, humor ever present in her voice so as to assure him she's not offended by it. "Actually, you're partially correct. Some big meeting at the office. So they sent me." She extends her hand out in a cordial gesture. "Heather Noyes. Agent-In-Training. Well, if you consider four years still in training." Yeah, they haven't promoted her yet.
Gavin smiles when she does, which comes as something of a relief given that he was having a hard time suppressing it anyway. He takes her hand in his own, grasp firm without being overbearing, and nods to the offer of her name. "Gavin. But you already know who I am, I'm sure." A look is tipped to the file folder she brought along, and he straightens away to glance back to where baggage that isn't his continues to chug merrily along behind him. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Heather Noyes, Agent-In-Training, if you consider four years still in training. Which I…will say I have no opinion on, given that you will be driving."
Astute. Keen eyesight. The folder wiggles in her hand as he notices it. "A little bit. Not much though. I don't have full clearance yet." She glances to see how much luggage the man might have brought with him. She imagines traveling from London, he might have a fair amount. "Trust me, my driving skills are quite up to par. Can I give you a hand with anything?"
"Tut," says Gavin, who's still squinting at the persistent chug of lumpy baggage and the people who occasionally brave the flow and reach in to grab their own. "You really are fresh picked from the grove. Or orchard. Or wherever they're stealing you rowdy kids from today. Ah." And there is his bag — singular, because he seems ready to move on once he's leaned in to leaver a rolling block of luggage off the belt by its half-extended handle. "No, no. They fucking lost the rest of it. Put it on another plane, they said. They'll send it along later. How you put bags on the wrong plane I'll never know — it's not like they fucking scurry off and cause mischief while you're trying to load them on."
"Well, almost correct." Heather grins. If she has to, she'll explain later on the drive. Once he's recovered his solitary bag (thanks airline people), and mentions inanimate objects causing mayhem, she grins. "Actually, you'd be surprised. I remember my parents telling me about a baggage operator with telekinesis. Got bored one day on the job and luggage just started rolling around and knocking people over." She waves a hand towards the exit. "The one nice thing about the job…I get to park curbside." Yeah, the white Crown Victoria. That's hers.
Brows lifted in a look that can't quite achieve surprise for the extracurricular activities of the bored baggage operator, Gavin hefts his luggage along in Heather's wake with a little more ease once he's succeeded in jerking the handle out the rest of the way. "Sounds like an excellent way to earn a spanking. Although with your new commander in chief, they might just give him cake and send him on his way." A dry sniff follows that, and he glances suspiciously aside after one of many (probably) innocent airport employees near the exit. It is an exaggerated sort of suspicion. Hopefully. "I dunno about you but I still think some sort of private helicopter would be preferable."
Heather manages a small laugh at the jab at their new President. "Yeah, I'm not quite sure how I feel about him just yet. Only time will tell." Passing through the exit, she presses a couple buttons on the key fob and the alarm disarms at the same time the trunk pops open. "I'll mention that to my superiors for next time. Though, I can definitely assure you my driving skills are much better than my helicopter piloting skills." Her hand is offered out for his bag after she opens the passenger door. "Want me to toss that in the back for you?"
"No ninjitsu crouching tiger hidden helicopter piloting classes in your schedule yet, hm?" The alarm confirms which car is what, as if the lengthy presence of the Victoria needed further confirmation. One hand braced against the door she's opened for him, Gavin nods and swings the bag around off its wheels for her to take. It's heavy enough to call into question the physics of just what sort of densities and pressures this particular bag is capable of containing, and he twitches his shoulder back into a roll once he's relieved of the weight of it. "I trust that you do have your full license."
"Alas, no. Perhaps later down the line in my training. But for now, they stick me to land vehicles." Heather grins, and then grunting as she's passed the bag. "Oof! Wow. Not a light packer are you? That certainly wasn't mentioned in the file." Fortunately, those extra gym classes at the Company gym have paid off and she manages to get the bag into the trunk with the lid shut. "For almost four years now." she replies, slipping around to the driver's side.
Montag scoffs, though without real energy under jet lag's mighty thumb. "It isn't as if I'm just dropping in for turkey and Christmas. I've got lots of important stuff in those bags." The reminder of their limited representation at current is enough to prompt another resentful look back at the people still milling around inside, and he swings himself heavily down into the passenger seat to start working at the stiff button of his collar. "Christ. Twenty, then? Twenty-one?"
Sliding herself behind the wheel, Heather nods. "Twenty-one. But if there's one thing this job has taught me is maturity." Basically she tries to act older than she really is. Doesn't always work though. She notice the look back inside, sure that it's about the missing luggage. "When we get to the office, I'll make sure to get someone to work on getting your missing luggage. I'm sure we can get it here faster." Maybe hijack the plane it's on. Or something. Slowly she pulls out into traffic and starts for the lanes leading out of the terminal.
"Oh yes. Maturity. Me too. I've got loads of it." Clearly evident in the way he hikes one overlong leg up to plant a foot against the dash so that he can frown at a bit of gum on the side of his shoe once he's finished loosening his collar and tie. "I appreciate your consideration, Heather, but I did already threaten to feed one man his own balls. If any of them need more motivation than that then this city has fallen into a sad state of fearlessness indeed."
Heather didn't know that it had been put to someone quite that way. Yet, she can't quite stifle a snicker at the thought of it. "Yeah, I would hope. Though I don't put faith in the airlines being the fastest at recovering misplaced or misrouted bags." Merging onto the expressway, she bring the big land yacht up to the speed limit. So far her driving is pretty much spot on. Nothing is said about is mannerisms or the foot on the dash. It's a Company vehicle. They'll clean it up. "I remember taking a trip to California for spring break. Had to buy all knew clothes when I got there because they misplaced my bags and couldn't find them by day two."
"I don't travel very often." A grunt marks his effort to manuver himself back into a more normal car-riding position, with both feet on the floorboard. Only then is he able to actually fasten his seatbelt. Either he has more faith in Heather's driving ability than he originally indicated, or he simply doesn't care. "Not to this scale, anyway." A half-hearted effort is made to brush away from the scuff he's left on the dash, but he's quickly distracted by the passing of other vehicles and people and signs and buildings lights and — basically everything, so that he's silent for a good two or three minutes before he speaks up again. "Somehow I imagined it with the skyscrapers all still smoldering and radioactive zombies lurching around on the sidewalks."
As he's glancing out the window at the scenery, a rather large truck goes speeding by with a bunch of teenagers hanging off the rollbar mounted in the bed of the truck screaming and generally looking like they're smashed. Heather ughs as they go riding by. "I really wish they'd crack down on that a bit more. Local college kids." Herself excluded of course. She'd never do anything like that. Anymore. Maybe. Mention of the bomb causes her to fall silent for a moment. "Aside from there being no zombies, it was like that for a short time. I remember seeing it first hand when the Company flew me by after it killed my parents."
"Yes, shame on them and their unsafe driving practices." Gavin lacks sincerity. He often does, but there's a skepticism to the knit of his brow when he looks over at her that makes it a little worse than it has been. "That should probably be you, you know. Bouncing around the back of a truck in a drunken stupor, flashing your tits for honks. It was certainly me. Minus the bit with the tits, obviously." A brow tilted up again for his own correction, he thumps lightly back against the headrest once the thing with her dead parents has had a moment to sink in. "Sorry."
Heather chuckles, veering the car towards the exit she needs to take. "That /used/ to be me. But those days are behind me." She takes a moment to recollect those days, before the bomb. "Nothing to be sorry about. You couldn't have possibly known they were part of the collateral damamge. Though I'm sure my dad would have loved to meet you. He had cryokinesis as well." At the bottom of the ramp, she starts to naviagate the city streets.
"Really?" Well, that's only slightly awkward. Gavin's eyes turn to trace back over her face while the rest of him remains facing forward, and exit reached, he lifts his hands to start buttoning himself up again. "I'm sure he'd be proud of you, considering. I do hope you manage to find time for fun every once and a while, though. No twenty-one year old should be talking of parties in the past tense."
"Yeah. Both my parents were Evolved. Dad had cryokinesis. Mom had pyrokinesis." Heather's not telling him anything he couldn't find out if he were to check the registry, much less access Company information. A few more quick turns and she pulls the car into the parking lot of Primatech Paper. "Oh, I do still have some fun. I hang out with my friends and classmates from Columbia University. When we're not all in classes." Placing the vehicle in Park, she kills the engine. "Well, we're here."
"That seems somehow appropriate." Difficult to tell whether or not he's being sarcastic, as his voice is muffled down into his attempt to see what he's doing while he tugs a fresh knot taut against his throat. "I hope so. And thank you again. For driving and for tolerating me on the way over. And for not getting into any terrible accidents." Cue fumbling for the door handle's location once he's unbuckled his seatbelt.
Heather can't really tell, so she let's it go and slips her way out of the car while popping the trunk. "It was no problem. Beats sitting in the office and doing paperwork like they normally have me doing lately." One can easily get the impression by the way she says it that she really wants to be doing more field work. As she rounds the back of the car, she gets his bag back out of the trunk and has it ready on it's rollers for him.
There's a muffled, "Fuck," from the car's interior before Gavin finally managed to figure out how to escape. Once he's shouldered the door open and unfolded himself from the Crown Vic, he's around the back quickly enough to resume control of his luggage, and for all that he just finished re-getting ready in the car, he doesn't look much worse off than he did when she originally found him. "Paperwork makes the world go round. Though, I admit, I'd rather have my head bashed in with a rusty pipe than have to worry about fucking with it these days. Thanks again."
"Yeah, but I doing enough paperwork in school. Papers and suck, you know." Heather grins, shutting the trunk with one hand as Montag claims his luggage. "Anytime. It was a pleasure meeting and talking to you." She points towards the door leading into the building. "If you just go in that was and give the receptionist your name, she'll see that you get right back to the offices." She still has to return the car and check it in.
"The pleasure is all mine, rest assured." Montag's last smile is a friendly one, tipped off with a mock salute before he turns to move for the facility in earnest. "See you around, Heather. With any luck, I won't have to wade through waist-high stacks of paperwork to find you."
Heather chuckles and shakes her head. "If my intelligence is correct, you won't have much paperwork at all." she answers, watching as he heads for the door. She in turn, heads back and climbs into the car. Backing out, and heading for the back of the building the last image she sees in the rear view mirror is Montag heading for the door.
 November 7th: Somebody and Nobody |
 November 7th: Three's a Crowd |