Participants:
| Scene Title | Off the Trail |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Raith, having rescued Magnes and Quinn from arrest, ironically gives them another shot at saving the world. |
| Date | March, 2007 |
Desert outside of Cairo, Egypt
There are worse things than being knocked unconscious by government agents and detained for arrest by local police forces. Unfortunately, Magnes and Quinn have the displeasure of experiencing one of those things. When their senses finally come back to them, they don't wake up to stare at the inside of a holding cell, or an interrogation room, or even the inside of some building tied to chairs with the bottoms of the seats removed. For better or for worse, both of them wake up in the back of a slightly-aged, open-top pickup truck overlooking the Nile River, illuminated by moonlight. The great city of Cairo no longer surrounds them, they might infer from the lack of city noise. Sitting up to look, they might infer that they're a few miles outside of it, lights grinning at them in the distance. They might also infer that this fact isn't all that bad, since no one has bother to tie up either of them, although Magnes has been tethered down to the truck bed, likely to keep him from floating away.
Nighttime outside the city of Cairo, no one to keep them company except for sand, some lizards, and the smell of cigar smoke coming from inside the truck's cab.
Magnes, after wriggling out of the tethers enough to sit up, immediately reaches over to cover Quinn's mouth and hold a silently shhing finger to his lips. "Who's driving the truck? I'm warning that I can take control of it at any time, so don't try anything funny. My name is David Tennant, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D."
True unconsciousness is something Robyn Quinn has never honestly experienced, unless one counts the results of spending a night with a pint glass duct taped to one's left hand. The resulting wake up is similar, however, Quinn finding herself rolling on to her back, her head pounding, the back of her neck bruised, and her vistion blurry as she stares up at the moonlit sky. Unlike waking up from such a night, however, rolling over the other way reveals that this does not come with the benefits of waking up alongside some beautiful redhead.
Just Magnes.
She barely even gets to speak before she's silenced again, but in another startling difference from the night she recalls, it's a hand over her mouth rather than… well, anything else. Her eyes fly fully open, the Irish woman squirming, pulling at Magnes' hand. When she hears him speak, however, she stills. Rolling her eyes, she points a finger upwards, a small ball of light forming in front of Magnes - and then expanding out rather quickly in an attempt into blinding him into releasing his grip on her.
"Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.?" It's a familiar voice that issues an answer to Magnes' statement. The initial reply is followed by a brief pause at the sudden burst of light, but whoever is speaking seems to have a level head. He'd better have a level head. The driver side door opens and the driver climbs out before leaning against the side of the truck bed, dinner jacket spotted with a bit of blood and a cigar with a smoldering tip in his hand. The mission has apparently accomplished itself: Jensen Raith found them. And he doesn't look too happy about it.
"Well, good, you're just the man I need. I'm Colonel Fury. Now, maybe you want to tell me exactly what you were doing trying to bring down a large-scale HYDRA operation all by yourself? Make your answer good or you'll be lucky if all I do is fire you." They can be sure they found the right Raith, too. They Raith they know would never have played along like that. But is that good or bad news for them? Hm.
Magnes immediately shields his eyes, moving away from her. But when he opens them, there's Raith, talking. "Alright, alright. We're here to help you. Do you know a man named Kazimir, or a girl named Eileen?" he asks, looking over at Quinn and perhaps hoping she's not going to talk, but who knows.
"Eileen?" Quinn repeats, sounding a little surprised that she might be involved in this as well. Magnes' hand off of her mouth is a relief, and the very first thing she does is lean up and punch him in the shoulder about as hard as she can - which actually isn't that hard in her faux-hungover state, but the effort is made regardless. It's not where she wants to him him, but it'll do. "You are an ass. Call me Catherine again an' see what happens," she intones to him as leans forward a bit, letting her eyes adjust. With a sigh, she looks over to Magnes and shakes her head, then to Raith.
"He's right. We're here t' help you, if you'll believe it." She pitches forward, slipping up on to her knees. "Hopefully without attractin' anymore undue attention t' you or us." Her Irish accent might be an odd pair alongside MAgnes', at least to Raith, but as usual Quinn makes no attempt at hiding her nationality. "You're, like… okay, right? No bad runins or anythin'?"
In typical Raith fashion, the ex-spy does not answer immediately. Raith, he raises his cigar up to his mouth and takes a long drag from it, swirling the smoke around his tongue before very deliberately blowing it down into Magnes' face. "No, I'm perfectly fine," he says, "Only had to kill a few cops and dump their bodies to bail you jackholes out. Naturally, my next question is whether or not you're Volken's errand monkeys. Are you? Because, seriously. Is this the quality of operative I can expect from him? Behind on intel, behind on brains and otherwise talentless, know-nothing hacks?"
"You killed people, to save us? We've completely screwed the past, haven't we?" Magnes groans, hunching over with his head in his hands. "It's over, all of it. First the fire, now this. I'll never see Elaine again, oh god… what if futures can be destroyed? I killed Elaine, my Elaine!" He's getting a bit hysterical now.
Quinn, as is her nature, is much more optimistic than Magnes, though she still looks rather shaken by the fact that cops were killed to save them. "Christ, that's… bad." Statements of the obvious, after all, are common under stress. "Magnes, Christ, get over it. We don't know that yet." Quinn rises up to her feet, looking down at Raith. She takes a moment to rub her hands into her face, sighing. "Don't… don't mind him," Quinn says through her hands, letting them drop afterwards. "He's special."
A bit more seriously now, she crosses her arms over her chest. "I, um… don't really know how t' explain it," the Irishwoman woman says with a visible grimace. "We, um…. don't work for Kazimir, no. Have you met with him yet? We have a bit of a vested interest in makin' sure it happens. Except someone," she looks down at Magnes pointedly as she says that, "decided t' draw some attention t' us we didn't need. So, sorry if that put you in a bad spot." Quinn, ever optimistic, and ever honest, is hoping that someone isn't going to jsut get tired of them and decide they need new ventilation between their temples.
"You're kidding, right?" Raith asks, "You don't work for Volken, but for some unexplained reason, have a 'vested interest' in the things he does, and show this interest by burning things down, and then dragging me into your slap fight with Uncle Sam? 'Special' isn't a strong enough word for either of you, Ginger Snap." Grinding the tip of his cigar into the truck's body, Raith turns and leans back against the driver's door, face turned up to the sky with his palm pressed against. "Christ on a cracker, I don't need this. Listen, let's make a deal. Let's just forget we ever saw each other here. You two go off and be special, and I'll change my clothes, go back into town, and, I don't know. Find a lonely American to have wild sex with.
"I had a chance to do that before you two needed rescuing. Thanks for that. Maybe you and the Incredible Cockblocker there can surprise me on my birthday, too."
"I'm your son from the future, if you don't meet Kazimir, you'll never meet my mother, I'll never be born, and the world will end." Magnes just throws out there, then dramatically points to him. "You don't get to know who my mother is yet, but I need to be born, and you meeting Kazimir is a part of that. It changes your life in many ways." Oh shit, he left his droid in 2007 somewhere. That thought doesn't make its way to his lips. "I can prove I'm from the future. You become a mercenary! You're not a mercenary yet, right?"
Quinn sighs again, her head hanging. "Well, if that was going t' come up, I was hoping t' do it a bit more gently…" she laments, a foot placed up on the railing before stumbles up, over, and out of the truck, trying her best not to fuck up the landing and fall face first into the sand. Because that would so help the impression they'd made so far. Once she has herself upright again, she looks back at Magnes. "Let me talk, Magnes. I… think I know what I'm doing." She doesn't at all, but she's still going to try.
Hands slip into the pockets on her skirt, eyes levelling with Raith. "Trust me, I didn't want t' go through that shit in town either. Got outta my hands, though. But he's tellin' the truth. Not that I can trust it. If you'ev already met with 'im, maybe it's not an issue anymore. But someone that's not us is tryin' t' fuck things up." She leans back a bit, heels digging into the sad as a hand runs down through her hair. "You drive a truck like this one when we met. That guy from earlier was there too." He's not going to remember this anyway, right? "So, how about this deal. Let us hang around for a few hours, an' then you can go find yourself a hot American chick. Hell, maybe I'll come." The last part is a joke, added more for Quinn's sake than anyone else's.
It is without any appearance of amusement that Raith listens to Magnes explain the situation to him. It is with an equal amount of seeming amusement that he then listens to Quinn try her luck before he decides, "We're going with his story. It's funnier than yours is." With a creaking groan, the ex-spy opens the drivers door, reaches in and tosses to Quinn the items he had earlier relieved of them. "The future," he repeats, "Seriously? Well then listen up, Marty. Why don't you go back to the future if you value it so much? I don't see you fading away, so what're you so bent out of shape over?"
"The future doesn't work that way. We just need to get you with Kazimir, then I can go home, and spend a week under a blanket with my girlfriend and never go on another stupid mission ever again." Magnes stands up, stretching and looking around them in the truck. "Father, we have to do this."
Quinn fumbles a bit with catching her bag, unable to keep some of its contents - bandages, her taser, and a camisole she'd been hoping to keep sand free - from spilling out into the sand at her feet. It's with a groan that she leans down and starts collecting them, trying to keep her eyes on Raith and Magnes. "Did I ask that already? If you've met with Kazimir?" This headache is killing Quinn's ability to think, so it's entirely possible she has.
As the taser is slipped back into her back, she thumbs up at Magnes. "I don't know what he's so upset about. But apparently if we don't see you t' that meeting, it fucks somethings up somethin' fierce. An' if we missed it… well, I feel daft as all hell, an' I'm going t' be yellin' at some folks when we get back home."
Once more, Raith simply stares at the two time travelers. An even, unblinking stare bereft of any sense of amusement. Quinn's headache might be killing her ability to think, but the whole situation is killing Raith on the inside. "Both of you, just, stop," he says. It's a sentence that might bring up feelings of deja vu in Magnes' mind. "I'll make you a deal. A real one. Volken took me out for a very nice dinner. Very nice. Frankly, I'd like to forget everything that happened after dinner, actually happened. So, here's what's going to happen." A pause, perhaps for effect, before Raith continues serves as the perfect opportunity for Magnes and Quinn to take full stock of what he's about to say.
"You two, are involved in some funky shit, and I don't like that. But, you pissed off the CIA, and I do like that, so here's what we'll do. I will go back to my hotel, get a Redactor from the bar, and enjoy it, alone. When the morning comes, I'll leave with Volken. I might even forget to mention that I bumped into you. In exchange, both of you fuck off, and don't bother me again. I've had a really rough year, and the last thing I need right now, or ever again, is a couple of conspiracy-pitching, acetone-huffing whackjobs telling me that if I don't follow the grand plan, the future will unravel, and then getting me involved in a bunch of James Bond hijinks.
"Either of you show up in my life again-" An aggressive, angry, pointing finger is suddenly aimed directly at them- "You mother fuckers, and I'll shoot you in the face. You get me?"
"No you won't, but thank God." Magnes just falls back into the trunk, laying there in utter relief. "Elaine will be fine, she'll be fine. Sable will be there, Abigail, Eileen, the kids. Everyone's gonna be fine…"
Quinn can't help but let out a laugh and a bit of a snort. "With any luck, I have some sorta head injury from bein' pistol whipped, an' I'll wake up tomorrow not rememberin' any of this too." Implying that Raith doesn't have to worry about forgetting it at all. A glance back to Magnes, and then Quinn eyes Raith, giving a small nod. "Sounds like a deal t' me," Quinn says crossing her arms. There's a lot fo smartass comments swimming about in her head, ones she is just so tempted to throw at Raith in rapid succession. However, if there's a lesson to be learned from watching as many action movies as she has, it's that being a punk to the guy who just threatened to shoot you between the eyes might not be the smartest of things to do.
Quinn turns back away from Raith, taking a few steps before she spins back around. "Wait, no, that deal sucks," she rather suddenly states, pointing back at Raith. "At least give us a ride t' the edge of town. I have no desire t' be pullin' sand from between my toes for the next week." She grins, a bit of a forced grin, and then nods. "An' then you don't have t' worry about seein' us or rememberin' us or any a' that crap. Just don't let anyone talk you outta goin' with Kazimir."
"How about you two walk your asses back, or I'll talk myself out of it?" Raith doesn't wait for a follow up from anybody. He climbs back into the truck's cab, slams the door behind him, and starts the engine up. At the very least, he's nice enough to not back the truck over them. For now. But he's serious about them walking, too, because he turns the vehicle back towards the city without so much as a goodbye and begins rolling back towards those distant lights. Jensen Raith: Even in the past, he was an asshole.
"You do realize I can fly, right?" Magnes asks after a few moments of Raith driving off, as if the thought had just occured to him. That's the only real thought he leaves Quinn with, his mind is more on the idea of warming up to a Scot soon.
Of course, once they're back to the future, he'll once again have to worry about his brain issues.
"And you realise we're not flying back to town, right?" Quinn replies with a grumble as she turns towards the city lights and begrudgingly begins walking. She doesn't sound ahppy in the least, something indicated when she looks back at Magnes with a bit of a glare. "I'd recommend staying out of arm's length. Just fair warnin' an all that."
Raith drives away, the truck slowly becoming a small dot in the distance, leaving Magnes and Quinn alone to discuss and decide the best way to get back to Cairo. Flying isn't low profile in any way, leaving walking the only realistic option. Truth be told, there are worse things than being forced to walk through the Egyptian desert at night after nearly dying with the fate of the entire world on the line.
But there aren't very many of them.