Participants:
| Scene Title | Lollerskates |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Some time after the bagging but before the tagging, Rami initiates Magnes's preliminary interview and is later relieved by Montag. Both wind up leaving to attend to other matters, but not before Magnes admits the secret source of his super powers. |
| Date | December 6, 2008 |
The poor kid gained consciousness in a sparse, but not particularly uncomfortable cell. After about a half an hour, he was lead down to an interrogation room where he's been left to stew for almost another half an hour. He's got a pair of blue hospital-type booties in lieu of skates and, no power.
At almost precisely the half-hour mark, the door opens and in walks Agent Rami Hollingwood. He's minus the suit jacket and has untucked his shirt, rolled up the sleeves and mussed his hair a little bit. Something about his intuition tells him Magnes will respond to him better that way. He's carrying two bottles of water and a folder. "How are you feeling, Mister Varlane?"
Magnes is startled for a moment, the whole experience a bit overwhelming, but he's had time to think about it all. "I'm alright, I think. But I'm about to be cut open and experimented on, aren't I? I didn't even do anything, and I'm not dangerous because you guys took my skates away, so I can't use my powers!" he defends, obviously feeling his life is in danger.
"Calm down, Mister Varlane. You're here for your own protection. We're here to help you." Rami sets the water bottle down in front of Magnes, then sits down across the table. He sets the folder down and knits his hands together. He leans in. "We need to determine the extent of your ability so we can help you control it. Once we find out all we need to know about what you can do and perform a few simple, non-invasive tests, we'll let you go."
"But my powers don't do anything dangerous." Magnes believes as he cautiously takes the bottle of water, twisting the top and smelling the liquid inside. "So you'll give me my skates back so I can use my powers?"
Rami's brows arch. "Your…skates?" Does this kid honestly believe his skates are his power? That would be a new one. "You don't think your powers do anything dangerous. You can't know for sure. That's why you're here. So we can determine that."
"I can't use my powers without my skates, I've tried before." Magnes answers, then takes little sips of his water, trying to be absolutely sure it's not drugged. "I jump really high and walk on walls and stuff, what's dangerous about that?"
The water's just water. If they're going to drug him, he's going to get a pill shoved down his throat. "I see," Rami flips through the file. "Like I said, Mister Varlane. That's why you're here." He raps his fingers on the table as he reads. "So. How long ago did your ability manifest?"
"Well, back when I was a teenager, at like sixteen. I was skating and then when I was gonna hit the ground on a half-pipe, I started falling really slow." Magnes answers, finally taking one long drink, feeling more comfortable with the situation. "Why did you guys capture me? Why didn't you just ask me to register?"
"Did you ever consider that the fact that you can only uses your power when wearing your skates might be a mental block?" Normally Rami'd worry about handing out tips, but Magnes isn't going to remember any of this anyway. He looks down at the file again, moves a paper, then looks up at him again. "If you were going to register, you would have done so by now. It's not optional, you know."
"I don't know, I don't think about my power that much, I just use it to skate and deliver things." Magnes looks around the room, curious about his surroundings, possibly a way out. "Can't I make some kinda deal? I don't want the whole world to point at me and know I have powers. Oh yeah! I know, you're the government! I met people who know that guy, Sylar!" he suddenly remembers excitedly, figuring he can get a benefit from this.
"You don't need to worry Mister Varlane. We -are- going to let you go. You won't be registered either." Not…officially. But he will get a nice fun tag under his skin. Rami opens the other bottle of water and takes a drink. "Though I hope you would do your duty as a good citizen and get yourself registered." At the mention of Sylar, he looks a little closer at Magnes. "Oh? Do you know where we can find him?"
Suit prim, hair lank, but reasonably orderly, and posture caught in its usual paradox between upright and ganglingly casual, Montag opens the door behind Rami and waltzes on in without having made any physical concessions for Magnes's age and disposition. "Hellooo," greased off to both captive and captor, he stays up on his feet a short distance from Rami.
"The Doctor…" Magnes idly says when Montag enters, then focuses on Rami and his questioning. "I run into these guys who are connected with him sometimes. They seem like they're all on different sides sometimes, it's all complicated, but I delivered to this one guy once, kinda thin, older guy, and he's really grumpy. Then there's this cop who said he got beat up by this guy named Peter Petrelli, and this girl. They were saying how it was dangerous to hang around Sylar or something." he explains, sounding like he was a third party in all this, but apparently not enough of a threat to them to be shut up.
"Well. I'm afraid you'll have to provide us with more concrete information than that if it's to be of any help," says Rami. He glances up as Montag enters. "Please. Have a seat. I was just having a conversation with Mister Varlane here. Apparently he knows friends of Sylar."
Hands rumpled down into his pockets, Montag listens in astute silence while Magnes goes on about grumpy people, cops, and Sylar, with only the slightest of skeptical brow lifts before he follows along with Rami's offer and drags a chair out for himself. "Friends of Sylar," he says, more to himself than Rami or Magnes. He sounds impressed. "I didn't think he was the sort to have a lot of friends."
"Well, only guy's name I remember is the cop's, he said his name was Felix, like the cat. He was fighting this guy named Peter Petrelli who has telekinesis. We were all in this church up in Morningside. Then the older guy came out and they started talking like they didn't want me listening. The older guy said the Felix guy is FBI, and then I think they were saying how Sylar would kill the girl after a while for working with him, and um, they kept telling me to shut up when I asked questions, and then there was something about Peter not letting Sylar go to court, I don't really know what they were talking about." Magnes gives his long winded explanation, just spilling out everything he can remember to try and get himself off the hook.
"Oh, and the older guy hangs out with this crazy black chick who makes me feel like I'm gonna piss my pants."
Rami just listens to the ramble. He makes a few notes in the file. Doesn't sound like anything that will actually help them locate Sylar, but, if the rambling helps him… "Well. This…Felix guy you mention. He was recently murdered. And we are aware of Mister Petrelli." It's nice to be able to interrogate knowing the subject won't remember any of it. He looks to Montag by way of inviting him to ask questions.
"Bled to death out his leg," Montag elaborates, leaning forward enough to lace his fingers together on the table once he's settled down into the chair. "Sort've a miserable way to die." At the string of names and descriptions Magnes keeps going with, he looks sidelong over at Rami, matching look for look until his attention turns grudgingly back to Varlane. "What girl?"
"Well, just think, they said all this stuff in front of me and let me go, and I run into this one guy all the time. I could like, wear a wire and totally report to you guys, then I don't gotta get experimented on and stuff." Magnes still firmly believes he'll be cut open, that much is obvious, and he seems desperate to bargain. "Well, the girl, she was kinda pretty, thin, she had big eyes and looked maybe mixed with Israeli or something, but she was definitely a milky white color, dark hair too. But man, she was kinda scary, she kept giving me threatening looks when I asked questions, I think they were implying that she works with Sylar."
"We're not aliens, Mister Varlane. We're not going to experiment on you." Not this time anyway. Rami closes the file. "What we're really interested in is you. What you can do." That, and to tag him like a dolphin. "We are of course, also interested in any information about Sylar and his associates."
"Names would be a tremendous help," Montag reiterates, perhaps in the thin hope that pushing just that little bit harder might squeeze more knowledge out of the boy's brain somehow. Regardless, he unwinds his fingers to splay his left hand flat over the table surface. Gradually at first, but with increasing speed, a thin layer of frost spiders out away from his palm, thickening into the crackle and pop of ice at its epicenter. "I've been here for decades and so far they haven't cut out anything I can't live without. If you cooperate this will be easier for all of us."
"But what if I don't know how to control some things, or don't even know how to make some happen?" Magnes asks unsurely, then starts trying to remember a name, name, what was the name they said… "I think they said her name was Elaine."
"It's a big city. First names aren't a lot to go by." But Rami opens the file and writes it down anyway. He glances to the side at Montag's little display. He picks up the file so it isn't flash-frozen. HIs water bottle might not be so lucky. "Please. Describe your abilities in as much detail as you can."
"Our methods were designed with inexperience in mind, to better help the average Evolved explore their full potential regardless of their respective levels of personal awareness." The way Montag says it almost makes it sound sincere, as opposed to recited off of some long forgotten poster in the office kitchen. The ice doesn't stray far, touching upon the bottle just enough to thicken at its base before Montag stays its advance.
Magnes looks down and flinches a bit when he notices Montag's ability, but he tries not to seem /too/ alarmed. "I don't think I heard any last names, but I could totally find that stuff out if I just look for them! I can easily get anywhere in the city. See, I can change what direction is up and down for me and stuff I'm touching, and I can jump really high and fall really slow. Sometimes I get super heavy or make things float or get crushed, but I don't know how to make that happen."
"Don't…." Rami puts up a hand. "…go looking for Sylar, all right? That would be very bad for your health. It…" Then he stops and shakes his head. None of it matters. Once The Haitian is throuigh with Magnes, he won't remember he offered. He turns to Montag. "I have a briefing to go to. I'm sure you can handle things from here." He pushes the folder towards Montag. "I'll be seeing you again, Mister Varlane." He stands.
"Your faith flatters me," Montag mutters, taking the file once he's flicked a bit of melt off of his fingertips and swiped them down across his lapel. A pen is drawn out from the same region, and click-click, he's ready to go. "Would you say your ability has some capacity to change based upon instinct and necessity?"
"I think so, my falling slowly started with not wanting to fall, then after a while I just stopped falling 'cause I didn't wanna fall, I don't gotta be afraid anymore. But some of the other abilities are kinda hard to explain, sometimes they even get weird around girls." Magnes answers as he nervously wrings his fingers, left alone with the scarier of the two men. "But like I told that other guy, I can't use my powers without my skates, so I can't show you."
"You know," begins Montag now that Rami is gone, ice still patched glistening on the table between them, "when I was your age, before having super powers was really a thing, I had a special pair of underwear that I thought gave me my ability." He writes as he speaks, expression betraying no sense of humor at all for the story he's currently relating.
"How did you learn to use them without the um, underwear?" Magnes asks, curiously touching the icey table with his bottle of water. "Oh, and can I ask you something? Do you know a crazy Asian guy who has a weird smokey power and shoots people for fun? And possibly throws people out of windows…"
"You're a bit of a fuckin' idiot, aren't you?" Well, that's nice. Montag halts in his note-taking long enough to scratch the butt of the pen over his brow, watching the prod of water bottle to ice with distant tolerance. "And…completely…serious." Period. His pen dots neatly at the end of that observation. "Well. Rest assured, if anyone out there is capable of sorting out the relationship between your ability and these magical roller skates, we are. And no. I don't. Another nameless friend of yours?"
"I think I'm pretty smart, except I'm not so good at physics." Magnes doesn't question what Montag is writing, he mostly tries to focus on memories, information, anything that can save him in this situation. "He's not my friend, he shot me, I didn't really tell the police about the ability thing though. But come on, can't I get like some kinda formal government deal? Like, I get it sealed in a contract that I absolutely wont get cut open or anything, and I totally lead you to all these terrorists?"
"It is a gracious offer, Mr. Varlane, and I will pass it onto my superiors, but I'm afraid I have no say in the matter. I merely work here." Nothing further is written right this second. Montag studies what's already in the file, click-clicks his pen, and then click-clicks it once more to underline or scratch out something or another in the frustrating manner of everyone ever who has taken notes about a person where they cannot see them. "How high would you say you are capable of jumping?"
"Thanks, I mean, I didn't register mostly for my own safety, but I'm not above serving my country." Magnes states quite seriously, sitting his water down and crossing his arms. "Well, I can jump really really high, I guess it depends, I never really paid attention. Usually if I'm going up a very high building, I'll make one long leep, land on the side, then jump again the rest of the way. I like doing lots of jumps because doing long jumps is kinda scary. But as far as changing what's up or down for me, I could probably /fall/ all the way up to the sky, it's a really scary thing and I don't like doing it."
'Very high buildings,' Montag writes with an air of resignation. The ice on the table has begun to melt. Slowly but surely, crystaline frost fades and a lip of water gathers on the fringes of the thickest buildup. He ignores it. "You have yet to refer to any of these acts as a form of flight. Is that intentional, or has specific classification merely evaded you?"
"Flying? I don't think I can fly. I mean the closest thing to flying I can do is fall. Let me see, how can I explain…" Magnes points up at the ceiling. "I could jump up there, then change it so that's the floor, and down here will seem like it's the ceiling. If I do that outside with no ceiling, it's basically sky diving. And the jumping is like, well, moving around in water, except it's a whole lot easier." He can't exactly compare it to jumping on the moon, he's never been there.
More writing. Montag takes a lot of notes. Unfortunately, before he can polish them off, there's a buzz from the region of his pants pocket. Pen dropped onto the table, he reaches down to retrieve his cell phone. It's flicked open and pressed to his ear with a simple, "Montag," followed by a lot of listening and very little talking. Serious business.
A few short one word answers are given, and he hangs up, already pushing to his feet. The pen is retrieved as he goes. "Sorry. I've been called away. Someone will be in to take you to your quarters shortly. If you touch anything in the interim, you'll never see your precious roller skates again, alright?"
Magnes quickly nods in agreement. "And um, don't forget to talk to your superiors about me helping, I mean, if you want…" he reminds, not wanting to seem too pushy with a serious looking guy who can freeze things.
"Forget? No, no no. I'll put in a memo on my way out," Montag assures with gravitas, not even bothering to lie particularly well at this point. "Remember what I said about cooperation, and have a good night, Mr. Varlane." Without further delay, he turns to head for and out the door. The lock turns heavily behind him, leaving Magnes alone with his booties within the confines of the interrogation room.
 December 6th: Trust |
 December 6th: Coffee and Changeling |