Participants:
| Scene Title | Like St. Joan |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Endgamers gather to discuss Cardinal's plans and Luther's involvement in such. Luther is, unintentionally, hilarious. |
| Date | November 04, 2010 |
Redbird Security: Lobby
"…anyway, I've got the paperwork to put you on staff — officially — as a janitor." The words drift into the empty lobby of the building as Cardinal pushes open the newly-unlocked door and leads the way into the lobby, "If that's all right with you, Luther. Do, uh, you do have another shirt, right?"
He pauses at that, turning a bit to look back towards Luther with an eyebrow's slight raise. He's really not sure if the other man does have another shirt. Has he ever seen him wearing other clothes? Damn his lack of fashion radar!
He has another shirt now, as Monica makes her way into the building with some clothes tucked under her arm. Mens clothes, even. She's just way too used to taking care of her family and Redbird has turned into her proxy. "Alright, look, if you're gonna go out and get your sell all beat up, can you at least spare the clothes? My stash is going to run out one of these days and the thrift store guy always gives me a creepy leer every time I go in there." HUFF. "Hey Rich," she adds as an aside.
"I'm sure we can find a budget for a few polo shirts, maybe with a spiffy Redbird logo on the chest," Peyton says with a smirk. "I can order like a dozen — they'd be good to have on hand if we need to do hire some freelance rentacops or something, anyway. Something simple. Black with the logo? You want a couple for you, too, Card?"
Shockingly, Peyton has picked up the art of being charitable without seeming like she's pitying the person she's trying to help. It wasn't part of her skillset in her socialite past, but characteristics that had long lain dormant have come to the surface in the trying times she's had since manifesting in 2009.
With that blood-stained, fire-singed outerwear being a little conspicuous, Luther gives Cardinal a rather helpless shrug of things. "I had the one I came in here with, but I wasn't sure where the girls had put it," refers the man of the even dirtier (and smelly) rag that had been his primary mode of clothing previously. "But if it's alright with you, I'd be more than happy to be on as a janitor. Anything that pays the bills, Mr. Cardinal." And at this point, he probably owes a lot to Redbird in terms of rent, New York City rates. Monica and Peyton both get another one of those head-ducks from the man. What's a guy to do after you've been in the battle of your life?
"It's not a job where we'd have to look too closely at your registration, so…" Cardinal's hands clasp behind his back as he stops in front of the painting in the lobby, showing a view from the roof of the Deveaux Building with the ruins of Midtown covered in overgrowth and vines. He falls silent for a few moments, and then asks, "I know you're probably exhausted from… whatever you were doing for Hiro, Luther, but…"
He hesitates, "Explain to me how your ability works again?"
"Not a bad idea, Pey," Monica says as she walks over and hands Luther a set of clothes. "They say the uniform makes the army," she adds with a crooked smile.
When the attention turns to Luther's power, Monica lifts and eyebrow and looks that way. She's curious. "Maybe without the blinding this time, though, okay?"
The mention of the blinding gets an audible wince from Peyton, eyes darting to Cardinal and then dropping as her cheeks color. Not one of her finer moments — bringing home the stray and then fleeing the scene when things went badly. But all's well that ends well, right? "I'll order one for everyone. Just don't expect me to actually wear one. A polo shirt? Only if it's Anna Sui or something," she quips.
"I was… it's a long story," Luther admits to Cardinal's remark about what he was doing for Hiro. He gives a little shrug, receiving the clothes gladly. More free stuff! Score! Peyton's comment gets a little grin out of the man, something about her note making him smile fondly.
Then, it's back to business and the subject of powers. "From what I've figured, it's like a change of energy type. Conversion, is what this one guy wrote about. Not in Dr. Suresh's book," fumbles the man with a scrub of his hand on his head. "I take energy of one kind and change it into another. And a good part of that usually comes from the sun, these days. Before, I used to… I used to go to Midtown and just soak it in a while. And then went back home, and found out I could make fire without any matches. Or light up a room if I needed to see at night." He glances around amongst the trio - the more knowing. Brows raise - did that make any sense?
"We probably could use some shirts and stuff around here," admits Cardinal, glancing back to Peyton with a wry smile tugging up at the corner of his mouth, "Do it. And I wouldn't dream of trying to get you to wear anything that wasn't designer. Unless it was bulletproof."
That said, he turns to regard Luther, head cocking a little to one side in thoughtful attention. "So you can convert radiation to… something else? Could you take something irradiated and clean it, in theory?"
"…Wow. you used to soak up the radiation?" It's kind of badass. Monica blinks for a moment, then she smiles brightly. "You're like, the missing link to all the alternative energy attempts, Mister Solar Panel." She seems a little unable to stand still, Monica does, as she moves to the desk to fiddle with things. Nervous energy, maybe? The prospect of action lying in the near future, it tends to hype her up a bit.
"Bullet proof vests mess up my silhouette," Peyton says in a feigned haughty voice that is probably not too far from how she used to talk about such things. But she moves toward the receptionist desk to grab a pen and a Post-It pad and jot down the the reminder to herself to design and order later.
Her eyes flit back to Luther, curious. "That's an amazing power. Man… we could have used you back when people were living in the library, especially during the winter."
Luther swallows down a growing lump of discomfort as the focus turns to his power. His hesitance is obvious; he isn't familiar with the terminology or the sheer amount of interest in his ability. Shifting the clothes in his arms as well as his feet, he nods, albeit slowly. "It was a little tougher the closer I got to Ground Zero, but I could manage a few minutes there. Thing is, for some reason it doesn't affect me when I'm focused."
"If we got an augmentor to help you, though, or some doses of amphodynamine…" There's a pause, then Cardinal stops essentially thinking out loud, regarding the other man in contemplation for a moment. He sweeps one hand towards the painting on the wall, then, inviting, "Have you seen this before? It's a print - not the original, I'm afraid - by an artist named Thomas Brill."
"Do we… have doses of Amp?" Monica looks at Cardinal with widened eyes and then over to Peyton. "Like… lying around?" And then back to the boys again. It's always worrying when Cardinal starts thinking, frankly. She moves to sit on the desk, looking over to the painting as it's mentioned. Still, she has to pick up a pencil to start tapping it rapidly on things. The desk, her leg, the pencil holder…
"I don't care what Magnes said, I want to try it," Peyton says. Not really shocking, given her drug-abusing past, truthfully. The only reason she didn't get addicted to Refrain was because she really didn't have very many good quality happy memories in the repertoire to pull from — so while it was a good trip, it was a bit sad upon sobering up. But amp? "I wonder what it would do. Like, could I see people from photos or just by knowing their name or something? I wonder. It'd be good to know what my peak is — then I'd know what I could work toward."
Her eyes fall on Monica's fidgeting and she shakes her head. "No, we don't have them lying around. Unless Card isn't tell me something. And no more coffee for you."
There's that word again. "Amphodynamine," echoes Luther as he starts to look a little worried. He hasn't heard of the drug, it seems. He's avoided drugs this long, perhaps involuntarily due to financial hardships. Turning to look towards the painting, he cocks his head to study it. The man's no connosieur of art, though, and after less than a minute he turns back. "I don't think I've seen it before, no. S'nice though." There, see? Diplomatic and non-insulting of any art collector's taste.
"No, but I can probably lay my hands on it." Of course he can. Cardinal was, before all this, a rather skilled thief after all. "I'd prefer to use Gillian, though."
His head shakes a little at Luther's words, then, "Thomas Brill was a precognitive. His works helped us bring down a company and a man that was very close to turning the world into his own fascist empire… but anyway, that's a whole story. The thing is, not everything he had planned was bad. One of his plans involved cleaning the radiation from Ground Zero… and turning Midtown into a garden."
"It was called the Mother Earth Project."
"You know, I always wondered if amplification would even do anything to my power. I mean… what's it going to do? Make me learn… faster? I don't know." Monica looks down at her fingers when Peyton mentions the coffee and she grasps that pencil in her other hand as if to forcibly still it before she slides it back into the pencil holder. "Sorry," is a whispered word. And embarrassed. Which is probably why her head is ducked a little as she turns back to listen to Cardinal explain things to Luther.
"Well, Gillian augmented me once, but I was still really new then. I'm way stronger now," Peyton murmurs, grinning at Monica so the other woman knows she was just kidding. She nods toward her office. "I'm going to see what I can dredge up on that woman, and we'll figure that out maybe tomorrow? I promised the boys on Staten I'd help them with more of … you know, that thing, later tonight, so I should get some work done if I'm heading back out that way." She gives a little wave and moves toward her office, pulling the photo of Wheeler from her purse — time to earn her keep.
"Amping your power'd probably make you up to be like that one St. Joan girl in the comics, you know?" Luther notes at Monica, thoughtfully. The whole 'use' verb begets a turning down of Luther's mouth corners, but he doesn't speak up in protest. Those same corners flatten out with the intrigued notion of a garden at Ground Zero. "I'd like to hear more," he says tentatively at Cardinal's explanation. "But I guess it's gettin' late from the looks of things. And, I should probably get out of these clothes. The blood's not mine." Ahem.
At the mention of St. Joan, Cardinal makes a sound in his throat that's distinctly a laugh that he tried to suppress, one hand coming up to briefly cover his mouth. "Mm. Yeah. Probably." An amused glance over, then he nods to Luther, "We'll talk about it later… I've got some people I'd like to introduce you to."
And Cardinal's sound is joined by Monica coughing suddenly, like a beautiful melody of amusement and shock. "Yeah. And you know what? I… gotta go with Peyton!" Because she's not sure she can have a proper conversation after that comment. And all that pent up energy hops her right off the desk to skitter after their resident visionary.