Participants:
| Scene Title | One Last Look… |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | … never hurt anyone. Parkman sees something unexpected with his. |
| Date | January 8, 2008 |
Central Park has been, and remains, a key attraction in New York City, both for tourists and local residents. Though slightly smaller, approximately 100 acres at its southern end scarred by and still recovering from the explosion, the vast northern regions of the park remain intact.
An array of paths and tracks wind their way through stands of trees and swathes of grass, frequented by joggers, bikers, dog-walkers, and horsemen alike. Flowerbeds, tended gardens, and sheltered conservatories provide a wide array of colorful plants; the sheer size of the park, along with a designated wildlife sanctuary add a wide variety of fauna to the park's visitor list. Several ponds and lakes, as well as the massive Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, break up the expanses of green and growing things. There are roads, for those who prefer to drive through; numerous playgrounds for children dot the landscape.
Many are the people who come to the Park - painters, birdwatchers, musicians, and rock climbers. Others come for the shows; the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theater, the annual outdoor concert of the New York Philharmonic on the Great Lawn, the summer performances of the Metropolitan Opera, and many other smaller performing groups besides. They come to ice-skate on the rink, to ride on the Central Park Carousel, to view the many, many statues scattered about the park.
Some of the southern end of the park remains buried beneath rubble. Some of it still looks worn and torn, struggling to come back from the edge of destruction despite everything the crews of landscapers can do. The Wollman Rink has not been rebuilt; the Central Park Wildlife Center remains very much a work in progress, but is not wholly a loss. Someday, this portion of Central Park just might be restored fully to its prior state.
It's evening, and the sky is taking on that multicolored look it gets as the sun is starting to sink beyond the western horizon. Light is still present, it isn't yet difficult to see, but it won't be that way for very much longer. The park has the kind of activity one might expect at this hour on a Thursday.
She approaches the park at an unhurried pace, arriving just a handful of minutes after she left the lab. The five foot three inch woman with the lightly olive-hued complexion, dressed for work in an office setting, approaches a tree and looks it over. This isn't so much unusual for a person to do right after work. The unusual part is her method of travel.
She descends from the sky at the pace of a feather floating to earth and hovers about ten feet off the ground.
One last look never hurt anyone. It's one last look Matt Parkman is taking before he gets back in his car and drives home after a long day at the metaphorical office, which really encompassed several offices and a few labs. She had a violin… she must be playing for money somewhere, right? Parkman has never been homeless, and even with his various and diverse experiences with the Department of Homeland Security and the NYPD combined, he doesn't have a very in-depth understanding of what indigent life is like.
His stroll through the park is a steady and calm one, and even without the pretence of looking for the fugitive turncoat, such a thing could be just what the doctor ordered for the overworked agent. His gaze sweeps those still in the park in the foreboding yet mystical twilight hues, but they snag on the young woman in the air. It really shouldn't be that odd, really, but it is rare for Parkman to see such open use of Evolved abilities. How can he be blamed for staring?
She hovers there looking at the tree for a few moments longer, her back to the agent, then lifts a few more feet from the ground to pull level with a branch. This limb, once chosen, is used to sit upon. Maria sits like a woman does, but given her method of getting there it's perhaps equivalent to the mind with a bird in the form of a female human settling onto a perch as a bird might. Only then does her gaze find and settle on the man below. She watches him in return, her features taking on a bored expression of a sort. "Great," she murmurs. "Another one."
It might be the tone in Maria's voice that prompts Parkman's actions, or it might be because he's had a long day wherein his actual control over his environment and security in his job performance was too lacking. It might also be Maria's flagrant exposition of her ability, though their isn't really a law against that.
"Ma'am?" Parkman says with a tired sort of sigh that is so characteristic of authority, "I'm going to need you to get out of that tree." His hand simultaneously pulls out his bi-fold badge wallet, which is flipped open to show the clout with which he makes such a command, from his inner coat pocket.
He steps toward the tree, even though it is only a short distance away, but he doesn't stop beneath it. Parkman keeps his distance, allowing the woman to have the space she may need in order to land on the ground without feeling threatened. The last thing Parkman needs or wants is to have her fly the coop, as it were.
Her expression remains bored, if it shifts at all with his request it's to one of resignation. She doesn't come off the branch right away, though she does demonstrate her intent to do so by moving closer to the edge. One hand dips slowly into her messenger bag so he can see it, and carefully pulls out a wallet. Maria opens it so her driver's license and registration card are easily visible. It's then she moves again, rising off the branch and drifting to earth with her legs extending beneath her.
Seconds later she's standing on the ground before him and looking up. A woman of between twenty-five and thirty years, olive tinged skin, dak hair, five feet three inches tall. She stands like someone accustomed to authority of her own, suggesting a police or military background, and extends the open wallet for him to take and peruse even as she herself is studying his displayed badge and making a judgment as to its authenticity without a word.
The driver's license is from New York state, issued in June. The registration card similarly was issued in June, perhaps a renewal done when she moved to the city in that month. According to them she is Maria C. Delgado, born April 28, 1981. Brown hair, brown eyes, five feet three inches, organ donor, resident of Dorchester Towers, doesn't require corrective lenses, has powered flight, and is Tier 0.
Rather than wait for Maria to be done with his own displayed identification, Parkman simply closes and returns his wallet to his coat when he has finished going over hers. "Do you read the papers, Miz Delgado?" he asks, his tone as dry as a traffic cop's. "Watch the news?"
"I do," she answers with an eyebrow raising. "Is there a problem, Agent Parkman?" Her wallet is tucked back into the messenger bag and she remains watching him, looking upward due to her lack of height.
It wasn't the answer Parkman was expecting, and so he's a little off put at first. He squints, both studying the woman and sneaking a peek into her head. What are you thinking, bird-lady?
"I'd think that a sensible looking woman like yourself'd pay a bit more attention, then. There're a lot of people in this city who'd shoot you right out of the sky. I'd like to see that not happen, if the both of us can avoid it."
She's thinking, without realizing he's taking a look into her mind, Here I go again. Another person who just doesn't get it. I'll have to explain to him how I can't hide my skin color, and I've been hassled for it here and there all my life. Flying is much the same. I won't hide that either. If someone kills me, they kill me. I won't cower in fear. Beside that, if you could fly, you'd do it as much as possible too.
As the thought is being formed, she's also saying exactly that in a calm, quiet voice, while standing at parade rest.
If being nuts were a crime, half of the Big Apple would be in jail.
As it is, Parkman can only stare at the woman in disbelief and confusion, his eyebrows furrowed with the effort it takes to make sense of her claims. "Don't mix up bravery with stupidity," he says simply, his sense of duty tainted with slight but audible exasperation. "You'll live a lot longer in this place."
"I'm Hispanic and Persian," she states calmly. "I can't hide that, Agent Parkman. Some people would accuse me of being an Arab. I've always been a minority, and I always will be. Lots of people would kill me for just looking like I could be some nutcase who claims to be Islamic, or for being a spic in Angloland. I just have to deal with it. It's the same with flying. It's part of who I am. I couldn't not be me if I wanted to, and I won't let anyone make me try. If I do, if I give in like that, they all win." She looks at him, her head tilting, as if to see whether or not he's getting it. "Isn't that why you stood up when Senator Petrelli outed all of us and declared yourself live and on camera?"
That last jab at the end of such a twisted line of logic has Parkman's lips twisting into the beginnings of a sneer. He inhales sharply, then pops his eyes a bit wider. "If you want to be a victim, be one," he says somewhat sharply. "It's your right to feel whatever way you want to, and it's not my job to stop you." Parkman shakes his head as he steps back, then turns to walk briskly down the park's path.
She watches him go, and also shakes her head. "Central Park sucks sometimes," Maria murmurs to herself. "Conspiracy theory nuts and HomeSec agents who can't see common sense, even that one who stood up and declared himself before the whole world. What happened to make him so defeatist?" As he trudges away she watches for a short time, before lifting into the sky and gathering speed. Her messenger bag is shifted around to her back.
In short order, the small woman is a few hundred feet above ground, and then she displays perhaps an unspoken reason for her lacking fear.
She jets away on a diagonal heading to take her steadily and swiftly higher, soon reaching four hundred miles per hour and still accelerating as she heads out to overfly the coastal waters.
 January 8th: Executive Rights |
 January 8th: Tinkerbell |