Participants
| Scene Title | Goodwill Ambassador |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Arthur sets the first phase of his plan to gather information on the intruders into motion. |
| Date | January 23, 2012 |
Pinehearst Tower
Arthur's Office
“So… it’s real.”
Standing as close to the window in his father’s office as he can, Peter Petrelli looks down the full height of the Pinehearst Tower to the distant street more than a hundred floors below. His forehead rests against the glass, brown eyes downcast, weight fully on his neck at the odd angle he stands at. It’s nearly a slouch, but not quite. It’s the weight of truth weighing down on his shoulders. Most of it, anyway.
Behind Peter, his father paces like a caged lion. Hands folded behind his back, Arthur too looks down at the floor as he considers the possible responses and reassurances he can afford his son. “It is,” winds up being the best he can do. Peter lifts his head from the window, slowly turns and regards Arthur with an uncertain look that is fraught with both questions and emotions in equal measure.
“How’s it possible?” Peter asks in a hushed tone of voice, to which Arthur’s only response is a shrug of his shoulders. Making his way over to the window, to his son’s side, Arthur brings out an arm and wraps it around Peter’s shoulders as they both lean back against the window. “What do we know?”
“Almost nothing,” is Arthur’s unfortunate response. It’s immediately evident that he doesn’t much like that answer either. “We know from the young Miss Baumann that something happened on the roof of the Deveaux Building and we know from Molly that there’s dozens of them, out there somewhere, walking among us.” Arthur’s concerned eyes search for Peter’s, then follow the younger man’s stare off to a distant point in space. “We were able to piece together some of their identities once we tracked down the school bus that took them from the Deveaux Building to Penn Station, but due to technical limitations we weren’t able to identify them all. We don’t know their intentions, we don’t know if they’re hostile… we just know that they’re a variable.” Arthur squeezes Peter’s shoulder once and starts to let that arm slip away. “And we all know how dangerous a variable can be.”
“You sound like Edward.” Peter adds wryly, to which Arthur levels a rather dead-eyed look back at Peter. “Sorry,” he quickly backpedals from that point in the conversation. “But I just… how do we approach this? Who are the ones we were able to positively identify? What do we know about them?”
Moving over to his desk, Arthur motions to a folder and it lifts up into the air, carried on a telepathic tug toward Peter who snatches it out of the air with one hand. Opening the folder, Peter is presented with a single photograph and partial dossier. For a moment there’s a look in Peter’s eyes, a tension and uncertainty, mixed with curiosity. The blonde woman in the blurry photograph with a bandage down one side of her face looks harrowed and broken.
“That appears to be NYPD Detective Kaylee Thatcher,” Arthur raises his brows as if to imply if you believe that. “Outwardly her appearances match that of Detective Thatcher, except that at the time this image was taken, Detective Thatcher was across the city working. This woman — based on what we can extrapolate from MBTA Bus CT1 — is likely the Kaylee Thatcher of another reality.”
That assertion causes Peter’s eyes to alight to Arthur’s. He looks back down at the photograph, touching his fingertips to the image. “I… must’ve met her before somewhere. I mean — this world’s her. She seems… familiar.” Arthur steps closer, eyes angled down into the folder. Peter flips to the next dossier, showing a dark-haired man in workman’s overalls.
“That is Mateo Javier Ruiz,” Arthur’s brows furrow. “He died on January 12th in his Brooklyn home, and yet here he is… alive and well.” Peter flips to the next page and finds no more dossiers, just information on Mateo Ruiz including a seemingly unrelated photograph of Kazimir Volken.
Peter looks up to Arthur, nervously. “He was Vanguard?” At his son’s worry, Arthur smiles only just so.
“Now you see why I’m so worried. If we have an…” Arthur motions with one hand in the air as he dithers, “…an invasion of Vanguard from another dimension? Another reality? We could be dealing with a full-scale war on our hands. We were lucky to put them down when we did. Can you imagine the damage they could cause if they were able to set down roots?”
Exhaling a deep sigh, Peter closes the folder and Arthur pulls it back to his desk with a motion of one hand. “So, what do we do? Do we pick them up?” Peter asks, overwhelmed by the myriad possibilities.
“No,” Arthur asserts flatly. “We don’t even have exact numbers on how many of them there are. We’ve got to be careful about this. Thatcher is a telepath, which means there’s only one person we could safely put in range of her, and that’s someone like you.”
Peter tenses, looking from the floating folder to Arthur. “What do you mean in range of?”
“I mean, I want you to figure her out.” Arthur breathes in deeply and tucks his hands into the pockets of his slacks. “I already have Molly figuring out where she is, I just need you to play the role of a goodwill ambassador.”
“You want me to… to pretend to not know who she is?” Peter balks at the idea, eliciting a patient but frustrated look from his father.
Arthur approaches Peter to lay a hand on his shoulder, squeezing it firmly. “I expect you to be charming, polite, and keep a critical eye open. Earn her confidence and find out whatever you can about the ‘others’ that may have come over.” The reassuring hand is anything but, though Peter’s tension still evaporates at its touch, even if he isn’t entirely sure this plan is sound.
“What about Ruiz?” Peter asks of the second photograph. But all Arthur has for that is a smile as his hand falls from his son’s shoulder.
“Let me worry about Ruiz.”
He knows just what to do.