Participants:
Scene Title | GPS Locator Training |
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Synopsis | Anne grabs Liz for panic button training and a friendly conversation. |
Date | February 25, 2009 |
The request to mee with Anne was a surprise, but not unwelcome. Elisabeth has been completely strung out since getting Teo's message that Trask is alive and has been located. There's a massive headache pounding behind her eyes. Elisabeth told Harvard she'd be out on the streets today, keeping her profile in the office low, so she can get back to her apartment to meet Anne easily. When the teleporter pops in and the two women pop back out, Liz's eyes are squeezed shut as they 'land'. "Bleah"
"It's a good thing my 'porting isn't one of them turn-your-stomach-inside-out things." Anne replies with a little bit of cheerfulness in her voice. Not too much, though, she doesn't want to be downright evil. "Can I get you anything? Water, maybe?" Liz kind of looks like she needs it, and if there's going to be any sense done she probably needs some brains as well. That, and Liz is a friend. That last one is growing evermore important, these days. "How have the streets been lately?" She wonders, while waiting for the other woman to make up her mind about things. "I haven't exactly walked around on them /too/ much." There hadn't been time for it. Not with all the work she'd been doing lately. Messages. Transporting food. People. That kind of thing.
"A glass of water would be nice, thanks." Liz grins at Anne. "I'm damn glad to see you finally… We thought you might be dead for a short while there." She shakes her head. "The streets are a mess, don't go out there. Really." Running a hand through her blond hair, she looks around the safehouse idly for a moment, and then back to Anne. "So since I'm reasonably sure this isn't a social call - much as I'd prefer it to be, mind you - what's on your mind, m'dear?"
"Not more than I have to." Anne promises with a slow nod. "But.. we don't have the luxury of anyone replicating things for us anymore. That means a bucketload of work for me." And if she didn't do it, people went hungry. Those aren't very good options. She takes on a more cheerful note after that, though, heading into the safehouse kitchen to get a pitcher of cold water and a couple of glasses. One for Liz, and one for herself. "Unfortunately.. no. Not a social call. Teo mentioned it might be a good idea if I asked you to run a background check on someone, though."
Looking unsurprised by the idea that the young woman handling replication may have gone walkabout, Elisabeth nods a bit. "Who do I need to look into? And for what purposes?" She clarifies, "Personal interest, recruitment, what?"
"Neither of those two, actually." Anne replies with a bit of a smile and settles down on one of the chairs. "Actually.. a friend of mine got me in touch with a smuggler he knows, and I talked to this guy a bit. I think it'd be a good idea if there'd be a coverstory as to why I occationally have things I shouldn't have. You know, smokescreens in case folk find out more about us than they should." Smugglers might not be an awesome thing to talk to Liz about, but.. then they were terrorists already, supposedly. "Not for major stuff, of course. Just like. Potatoes and such." The occational chocolate bar. "Teo liked the idea, but wanted me to run it by you too. His name is Jack, sans surname, though I can give you a good description of him as well as his boat if that helps." If it's enough? She doesn't know.
Elisabeth frowns. "So…. wait. What are you looking for? Whether a smuggler is trustworthy?" She pauses and says, "You realize that's something of an oxymoron, right? I can check all the usual background sources on him, but you'd be better off speaking to the OTHER side of the law." She pauses and comments quietly, "A month ago, I'd have said 'have Conrad chat him up.'" Not an option now. "We've got enough contacts to do that, though… It'll help if you tell me what you're looking for here. I mean… if you're planning to tell him what you do or what have you, most of what I find won't help you much. I can tell you if he's got a record, but sussing out 'trustworthiness' is more a personal thing."
Anne turns her palms upwards, at this point. "Mostly, I'm following directions here." As per what she said earlier. "But I suppoooose that if he has a record of talking to the cops at first sign of trouble, it's a bad thing." Snitch, that is. Unless he's one of Elisabeth's, of course. That would be slightly different. But only slightly. "And yeah, I realize what kind of weirdness it sounds like." SHe shakes her head a bit. "I am not trusting him."
Elisabeth grins a bit. "Fair enough. All that kind of thing, I can definitely get for you. I was just pointing out that if you're planning on telling him anything, I can't tell you that part. It's part spending time with, part faith." She shrugs. "I can check into his status as a snitch, though. It'll take a little time."
Anne nods a bit to this. "There's no real rush." She notes, brushing her thumb along the rim of her waterglass. "I mean. It's not like I intend to sit in his lap for the next couple of weeks, and it /is/ a ruse rather than a real deal. Just need something to be able to point to, you know?" In case all things go sideways. "Seriously, though. How've things been for you? Can't be easy, what with all that's happened and you getting half locked out of operations anyway." What with being a moley type. Couldn't go announcing things by hiding, then. Or be seen too often with Phoenix folk.
There's a pause and a grimace when Anne asks her that. Elisabeth seems uncertain how to answer, taking the glass of water now and sipping from it as a way to kill some time. "I worry about everyone because I can't check in as often as I'd like. I worry about what the damn HomeSec telepath might pluck from my head and use against my friends. I worry that I'm being followed and that I'm going to expose someone." She shakes her head. "Shifts are nuts, I'm exhausted, and I'm feeling pretty pissy most of the time," she admits, forcing a smile. "You?"
"Tired, but really.. aside from that I'm mostly good. Been doing a lot of work for the gang lately, and it makes me feel needed." And that, For Anne, really helped a lot. As opposed to being just some kind of superflous extraperson. She pauses for a moment and studies Elisabeth. "You know." She says after that pause is at an end. "I'm pretty awesome with headrubs, and I hear they're rather relaxing. If you'd like, we could just take an hour or something for chatting? You need to hear the run-through on the gps device anyway, and you definitely need to not explode."
"What I need is a life," Liz shoots back mildly. "I need to get laid, I need a couple of full days off where I can just sleep the whole day away, and I need my lover and my best friend not to be dead or missing." Her tone isn't sharp, nor is there self-pity in it. She's … sort of pragmatic about it, right now. She has to be. "Since all of those are pretty much off the menu at the moment, though, a good masseuse would assuredly come high on the list of things that would be nice," she says with a faint smile. "Tell me about the GPS and how it works."
Lover and Best Friend. Anne was new enough in the organization not to have known about those two things, and there's a flash of sympathy in her eyes before she falls back to pure motherings instead. She pulls Liz with her over to the couch and down with her head in Anne's lap, and starts by moving hair and such away from her face. Gently stroking along the lines of the muscles, just to spot where the tension is at, and if there are any irregularities. Meanwhile, she moves on to the explanation. "It's really pretty simple, designwise. You hit in one of two short codes. One for Oh my GOD if I'm not out of here in two seconds I'm dead meat. Or .. you know. I've had my head picked apart by evil mindreader. Or something." The situation could indeed depend. "There's a second one for when you got a few minutes, but you're still in a hurry. At present, we should be careful with using them, and once used a specific gps locator needs to be tossed. Preferably broken, too." Just in case. "Are you aware of my limits in carrying capacity?"
Getting tugged across the room, Liz allows herself to be nudged into a prone position and Anne's hands soothe across her hair and face. "Well, I know some, from the work we did on the bridge. Is there more I need to know about your capacity?"
"Aside from the number of people I can take at once," Which Liz already knew, from the other time. "There's a bit of a time delay, in the jump. With one passanger it's just a second, with two it goes up to three or four depending on how heavy they are, but. After that, it get exponentially worse. At my max of four passangers, I need thirty seconds to leave. That's a lot of bullets, in a hot situation." But Liz knows that already.
Elisabeth nods a bit, feeling her tension easing under Anne's fingertips. There's just something about people playing with your hair that is hypnotic and relaxing in the extreme. At least to Liz. "Check. So if the situation's hot and I'm alone, we're good. If it's hot and I need me and other people, I need to buy you 30 seconds."
"Exactly." Anne says with a soft smile. "I think it'd.. suck pretty bad to get shot while we're all staying still for the transport. Though, technically, I'm the only one who needs to focus that hard." She pauses there for a moment. "You know. I can teleport while falling from extreme heights. I /should/ be able to do the same if carried around. Never tried, but it's a thought." A thought for another time. For now, she starts massaging Liz's temples in an even rythm, counter clockwise.
There's a surprised look, but Liz grins up at Anne. "Now that's an idea, lady. Throw you in a backpack carrier and just tote you around while we play gunfire games. Neat!"
"Aw, yeah right!" Anne has to laugh at that. "No dignity for me, that's for sure. Hoisted around like that." She shakes her head a little bit. "Not to mention I'd be shot to little bloody pieces and leak all over the floor. It'd be gross, and ruin the carpet." And kill her, but this was not for serious so we don't mention that part. Not right now. "I should treat you to one of my counter-country travels, though. Fifty two stops up in the air, falling down towards the earth. Occational longer falls where I'm catching my breath… I've been told it's good for adrenaline."
Elisabeth snickers quietly. "You don't think I have enough adrenaline in my life right now?" she asks the teleporter with an amused expression. At the very least, though, the stroking hands have eased the lines of tension that have seemed to permanently etch themselves into Elisabeth's features lately.
"You've got a point there." Anne admits with a bit of a nod. "But there's a difference between adrenaline and adrenaline. With this, it's like a ride at the carnival. You know you're going to come out alright, no matter how much your stomach is tickling in the various loops and turns." So it's not quite the same as when you didn't know if anyone was going to survive until tomorrow. Not the same at all. Her hands move to massage the scalp, as well, moving it around a bit on the top of Liz's head.
Elisabeth mmms softly and closes her eyes. "Seems to me right now like my adrenaline — and probably my blood pressure too — is sky high all the time, so… maybe when things settle some, I'll take you up on that," she murmurs. "Damn, Anne… maybe you should go into business doing this."
"And give up my current career? I think not!" Anne replies with a soft laugh. "My taxiservice is the best in town. Just a li'l cheap to pay the rent, is all." But she's joking, truly. And obviously. She intends to do something about that blood pressure of Liz's, though. "If you'd pick one thing that really makes you relax, what would that be? Tell me about it, and.. when was the last time you took the time to do it?"
Liz snickers at Anne's comment, and even offers a flip response to the question. "Sex of course! Not for a month or so." Her eyes darken, though, and she closes her eyes to keep Anne from seeing it.
Maybe it was fast enough and maybe it wasn't. Either way that goes, Anne starts humming in the back of her throat, a soft melody. There's nothing wrong with being mostly quiet for a while, though there is a light chuckle at the flip reply. Sex, indeed. "I kind of miss that too, yeah." She agrees. "Lord. It's been more'n a year." And there's a tang of pain for her as well, though not as fresh as that Liz carries.
"The thing that really makes me relax, I'm not sure when or if I'll find again. My friend, the one I mentioned? We used to go to concerts in the park all summer long. I loved those. It's always amazing to hear the music out there."
"Mmmm… you're preaching to the choir there." Anne murmurs with a soft smile on her lips. "But that I relax with music is hardly that much of a surprise." Not really. Not from someone with her former occupation. "The summer will come again, though.. and while it's not the same thing I know. We could go, if you'd like. Just let it flow over us, whatever it is they're playing."
Elisabeth smiles slightly at that. "If the park's still standing by then, lady, you've got yourself a date," she tells Anne. Opening her eyes, she looks up at the musician. "Been thinking that if I live through all this and don't get jailed but I need a new occupation, I'm thinking that I might go be a singer. Guess we'll see."
"You know you've never let me hear you sing, right?" Anne says. "Sometime soon, not as far away as the world being saved, you need to sing for me." She rephrases that. "Rather, I'd really like to hear it. I only play to my own ears these days, and don't have much time to listen to others. But you? I'd love to hear you."
Elisabeth mms softly. "The problem with me doing it is that I have, in the past, layered my ability into it. So maybe, if I have to go into hiding, it wouldn't be as good an idea." She grins a bit.
"Maybe." Anne replies softly. "I don't know how you sing. But, if you can manipulate sound, maybe you can make your voice sound different than it did before?" This is a complete guess from her end, as opposed to a solid theory. She doesn't know that much about the other woman's ability. Not enough to tell for sure. "There are a lot of options these days, anyway. For hiding." With the ferrymen and Sonny around.
Elisabeth moves now, sitting upright and looking thoughtful. "Possibly," she says. "I figure I can cover my bases, though. If I have to go underground, I'm putting some things into motion to do that." She shrugs a little. "Never know, I might be the next door neighbor." She grins.
February 25th: A Storm Is Coming |
February 25th: The Human Aspects |