Social Engineering

Participants:

eileen2_icon.gif kara_icon.gif warren_icon.gif

Scene Title Social Engineering
Synopsis Warren kidnaps himself.
Date February 7, 2019

Pine Barrens


It's taken a while for Warren to figure out how to actually find where the Four Horsemen might be. A lot of asking around people who might have some idea. Though his reasons are primarily within the realm of wanting to see that armor he laid eyes on, the one that seemed so familiar, yet so alien.

He unfortunately doesn't exactly find them, but he does find himself wandering in, unknown to him, Providence territory. It's as far as asking around got him.

He's in the Pine Barrens in the middle of the day, with two rather normal .50 caliber Desert Eagles strapped to his waist as if he were a cowboy, his robotic golden arm, and all black biker gear that most likely has some sort of lightweight armor plating under it, but nothing like battery powered AEGIS armor. The most notable feature of his attire is the black motorcycle helmet with the dramatic red stylized tentacles on the front of it.

Anyone watching the area most likely would have heard the motorcycle he keeps zooming around on whenever he walks back to the road to try looking at a different area, but he's been walking deeper into the area for a long time now, until he finally comes across a farm.

While having no particular idea who the farm belongs to, he tries to stay out of sight of people, sneaking around until he comes across a broken generator behind a barn. This immediately distracts him entirely from his personal mission, removing his helmet and leaning down to start whipping out tools, starting to dismantle the generator to poke around at it as his eyes shift chromium.

He's not even quiet about it.

Which makes the first distinctive noise he hears behind him: "I'm not sure what you're doing so far away from home," along with the click of a safety. "But if you'd like to be making it back, your first move will be to disarm."

Kara is standing a good distance away from Warren as she warns him of that, eyes sharpened in their narrow. Her feet shift in the mud as she strafes a step to the side, sidearm still trained on him.

"You can follow that up with stating your purpose."

"People are always pointing guns at me!" Warren says, sounding annoyed as if someone keeps bothering him when he's trying to work. He puts his tools down and clicks the button on his belt, allowing his guns to fall to the ground. Then he grabs his tools again and starts going to work on the generator.

"I'm working on this generator! It's broken. Why would people have a broken generator in the middle of nowhere? Someone should be fixing this!" he bends a few things, then something pokes out of his golden finger like a tiny soldering iron, welding something together. When he finally feels done, he closes the generator up, then it begins to start up. "There, done!"

He looks up at her again, tilting his head as his eyes shift from chromium to blue. "Oh, here, uh… why did I come here…" He takes a moment to think, tapping his chin. "Oh, the future armor! The one I think I made but didn't make. I need to find The Four Horsemen so that I can see their future armor!"

Holding up his hands, he laughs. "Don't worry, no one knows I'm here, so you could actually murder me and no one would have any idea!" he points out, as if he's helping. "My brother finished his mission to get the woman he loves back, so I don't really care about you guys anymore. I just need to see that armor. Also I'd like to upgrade this generator because I really like the design. I want to add a clapper! You know, clap on, clap off?"

Is this guy for real?

He certainly is. And with questionable levels of sanity. There was more to the world than just his motivations and desires, and Kara sincerely wonders if he's ever lived a day where he's been faced with that.

"You know, it's always boggled me, that nickname. Four Horseman? For a group of people trying to stop an apocalypse from happening? If anything, the Horsemen were you, your brother, your sister, and Bellamy." One guess as to which one she envisioned played the role of War. Kara shakes her head and gestures with a glance to the generator. "Shut it off. Gas is too valuable to leave that thing running." Though now it did work, so there was that.

The muzzle of the gun remains trained on him, almost like it has a mind of its own to do so. "So, you want to see some armor. I'd like to hear why we'd have any inclination to help Raytech?" It's said with almost a laugh, but none of the tension leaves her.

Warren reaches over to switch the generator off, staring at it as his eyes fill with chromium again. "Let's make solar panels!" he excitedly suggests, seeming ridiculously unaware of the gun until he finally stares at it with those eyes. "We could upgrade your gun too! Have you considered high pressure non-exploding piercing rounds? It's like shooting stabs at people!" I.E: The most impractical bullets humanly possible.

"Huh, well the Four Horsemen is just a name, like a looming darkness from nowhere! And an apocalypse is subjective, you know. Sure, for you, the universe being destroyed is an apocalypse, but Richard needed his girlfriend back, that's his apocalypse. Sometimes you have to break a few eggs." he shrugs, finally standing up straight and stretching his arms, despite one of them being entirely mechanical.

"Besides, we were in a time loop, that was all inevitable. My father predicted it, but I don't think he gave Richard the full details. If Richard knew so many people would die, he wouldn't have done it. And if my father gave me the predictions, I wouldn't have cared enough to do it anyway. Plus I didn't believe it until my brain got spread across all time and space and looped in on itself into infinity." He starts to walk a little closer, until he remembers the gun, then he stops and idly looks around. He's still using his ability, and he seems significantly more distracted when he does so. "We should build a house. If you give me a chainsaw I could build a house out of those trees."

"Oh yeah, the armor!" he says as if he just remembered why he's there, again. "It's not helping Raytech, it's helping me! I want to know what I made, or didn't make, I don't know, I'm confused about the armor. I have to see it! Richard will be pissed if he knows I'm here, but that's okay, I have my own life, you know?"

He seems to think on this for a long moment, and finally decides, "If you let me see the armor, I'll kill Desmond Harper!" As if he didn't already want to do that, but she doesn't have to know! "And build you a solar powered microwave that shoots microwave radiation at people you don't like."

"Your motivational skills are top-notch." Kara decides drily. She's not serious. Really, she's not sure who Desmond Harper is supposed to be, in the first place. Though, the second suggestion was amusing, in its own right.

She sighs, lifting a hand to the small headset hanging from her ear. "He's talkative, disarmed, and wants to rebuild everything in sight. What's the verdict out there?" It wasn't just her decision to make, after all.

«I think enough people have already died, don’t you?» It’s a joke, but there’s little amusement in Eileen’s voice heard over Kara’s headset. She just sounds tired.

A few moments later, the sound of leaves and small twigs crackling under the Englishwoman’s boots reach Warren’s ears, and she appears some twenty feet behind Kara. Snow peppers her dark hair and the dense wool material of the coat fit snug around her small, compact frame.

She isn’t hefting a rifle. Probably because she doesn’t need one.

“I’d really rather you didn’t have a look at it,” she admits. The armor, she means. “Your brother’s company is doing quite well without appropriating other people’s proprietary technology, but if Raytech is willing to pay for a viewing— well. Seven or so figures might convince us otherwise?”

"Oh! You're the giant bird!" Warren says, before the chromium in his eyes recedes, returning to blue. "Oh, no, you're just the Dark God's messiah." He may have had particular experiences in the battlefield that made him interpret Eileen in a… slightly misunderstood way.

"I don't know, people die, it happens. Life is fragile! You should appreciate every moment. This is one of the only worlds where I don't die building my stepmother's stupid machine!" he rants a bit, sounding a little bitter on the topic of Michelle. "Anyway, it's over now, we're out of the time loop, my brother got his girlfriend back, and stuff didn't quite work out. But you tried your best!"

"But uhh, I don't think my brother would pay that. They don't even know I'm here. Actually, they don't know where I am at all! But, but." He holds up a single finger. "When I saw the armor, I had a feeling, like, deja vu! I must have worked on it. Who cares about money! If I can see the armor, I'll just live here for a while and build enough stuff until I've built a million dollars worth of stuff!"

He holds out his golden arm to Eileen. "What do you think, Messiah?"

Not that Warren would know the trigger for it, but Kara looks discomforted when it's Eileen's voice first in her ear, and Eileen who steps from the trees. The reaction is mostly reigned in, even if they weren't face to face. There are birds around, after all.

His excitement does bring a deep furrow to her brow, though, bringing that effort to a halt. Bringing up the strange, barely-explained events that happened at Sunspot, and likening it in such a way… "All right, that's enough of that." Kara decides.

"He's offering himself up like a piece of equipment? Fine. We use him and throw him in the refuse when we're done." The prospect of additional solar panels was appealing, even if it meant acquiring the materials to build them from scratch. The matter of if he gets to see the armor or not is left ambiguous. "That's my vote."

She backs it up by gesturing with her gun for Warren to get down on the ground. "Arm off, hands up."

Eileen’s other self, the one who exists only in hazy memories, would put a bullet in Warren’s head for the crime of sharing someone else’s last name. It’s fortunate for both of them that she’s still standing several paces behind Kara so the blonde doesn’t see the sympathetic look she gives him from beneath her frosty lashes.

The sigh she presses out through her nostrils is thin, inaudible, made visible by the freezing temperatures and the excess moisture in her breath.

He’s making it very difficult to save his life and maintain her cover at the same time.

“Do as she says,” she suggests. “You’ll not see that armour, but maybe you’ll see your brother again if you’re as useful as you claim.”

"Hmm…" Warren considers the situation, pressing a series of very difficult to notice pressure points on his arm. When it dislodges and hits the ground, all that's left is some sort of black polymer covering his arm, and what looks like short wiggly mechanical worms sticking out of said polymer.

"I'm not sure if I've ever been kidnapped before. I do remember that time the Devil stole my ability, or maybe that was Arthur Petrelli, I can't ever keep the two straight in my head!" He gives that a moment, then nods. "Right, right, it was definitely Arthur Petrelli!"

"God, it's almost like a sleepover. I don't really remember being a little kid, or a teenager, but I've seen it on TV! I wonder if I'll get stockholm syndrome…" he seems to be in deep thought, getting excited about his future prospects. Anything could happen! "Okay, I accept your terms! Let's see where this goes. But I need my arm to build things, so you should give that back later."

Stockholm Syndrome will be the least of his worries, Kara thinks to herself as she fishes ziptie from a pocket on the side of her darkened cargo pants. As she binds his hand to a beltloop behind his back, she casts an already-wearied glance over his shoulder at Eileen.

Tonight, a new betting pool will start: who will be the first to lose their patience and shoot Warren Ray.

Kara gives herself only a week.

And that's being generous.


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