Participants:
| Scene Title | Speedsters' Tango |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Daphne throws caution to the wind in trying to help a stranger and instantly regrets it when she finds the fellow speedster she catches up to is a cop/fed/Frontline mix. |
| Date | July 25, 2010 |
Fel's a grim and practical creature, these days. But…..sometimes you have to do something for the sheer joy of it. So, Fel's nominally 'training' or practicing'. But honestly, he's tear-assing around Central Park, in sweats, t-shirt, and very beat-up sneakers. Just for the joy of it - he's a breeze and a flash of gray, and that's all. To the mortals with ordinary vision, anyway.
When that streak of gray goes flashing by, Daphne is actually sitting for a moment, taking a moment to eat lunch as she sits on a bench. The day is clear for once, though the humidity makes her short blond hair stick to her cheeks and the back of her neck. The wake of Felix's speeding body blows away the wrapper of her sandwich and gives her a little respite from the damp heat — with the burst of dry heat.
"Holy shit," Daphne intones. Sandwich in hand, she is up off the bench and tearing after the blur of gray. She has never met another like herself, and now, just a couple of days after telling someone she'd be on the lookout for some guy named Edgar, here is a speedster, like herself? Daphne doesn't believe in Fate, but if this turns out to be the man Lydia is looking for, she might just change her mind.
"Hey! You!" Daphne is fast — is Felix faster? For once in her Evolved life, not counting the past winter when she was ill, Daphne may have met her match.
He's obviously not working flat-out. Once she's dialled up her own speed, it's like they're just a pair of ordinary runners, racing through a world of human statues. Of leaves that fall in slow, slow motion, pigeons caught between the beat of one wing and the next. He doesn't see her, not yet, smugly wrapped in the conviction of his own invincibility.
Eventually her legs fall in line with his, much like a soccer player overtaking another, and she tilts her head to peer at his face, dark eyes seeking his through a shock of platinum blonde, before she realizes he is the cop from the Nite Owl. Well, shit. She could peel off and away, and maybe he won't have seen her. But she promised that tatooed woman she'd keep an eye out for this guy, Edgar, and while she's "All about me" a lot of the time, once she's made a promise, well… there was something lonely and sad in Lydia that Daphne can empathize with, and she's not going to let her down. If it's not Edgar, she'll get the hell out of dodge and hope their paths don't cross.
Again.
"Hey. You Edgar?" she asks, the question terse, but only due to the fact that the less said at high speed, the better — the wind tends to capture the words and pull them away.
Daphne's treated to the Russian's frozen mask of surprise, and he stops in shock. An instant, and she's yards ahead of him, with only the after-image of lucent blue eyes wide and amazed. No answer from those parted lips, as he stares after her. Not all that prepossessing figure; he's painfully skinny, almost gaunt, hair cropped back to the scalp, much shorter than it was when she saw him in the Owl. Like a soldier's. He's also shaven off that goatee he was wearing.
Either he's never seen a speedster like himself either or he is Edgar. Daphne's brows rise, and she's curving around in a U-turn, a streak of lime green and white and that off-white of skin and her nearly-white hair that makes it's way back to him, suddenly stopping, the blur suddenly snapping back visually into a solid Daphne Millbrook.
She tips her head, ignoring the people who stare at the two blurs that just unblurred. "Now we're making a scene," she points out, a finger reaching up to tap him in the chest. "Are. You. Ed. Gar." She says each syllable in slow staccato, though she's sure he can keep up if she speaks her usual mile a minute jabber.
He's still blinking at her, like his brain was left waaaaay back there. "No," he says, simply. "I'm Felix." He gives it the Russian pronunciation, more faylix than feelix….and indeed, all four syllables were distinctly accented. As if he'd just gotten off the boat a few weeks ago.
"Oh," Daphne says, wrinkling her nose. She ran after a cop who could actually catch her for not being Registered and it isn't even the man she's looking for. She really is losing it in this city. Saving people, playing hero, putting herself on the line for a stranger. "Stupid," she mutters, than winces. "I mean, me, not you." She takes a step back, brows knitting together. "You were in the diner that day," she points out.
She's treated to a rather blank expression. Physically, fast. Mentally….not so much, clearly. He lifts his brows at her. "I was. I've been going there for twenty years. They know me there," The cop, if that's what he is, speaks in a carefully neutral tone. There's that keener look in his eyes, though. Like he's trying to figure out where this is going.
She hadn't planned on going back there, but now it's scratched off her list for sure. "Do you know anyone like us by the name of Edgar? I'm sort of trying to help someone find him," Daphne explains, though she takes another step back. Like two steps are going to help at the speed the both of them can apparently run. Like she's really going to keep asking random people if they are this guy Edgar, either. She could be sedated by now and in a van for the nearest police station, she realizes. Daphne glances down, realizing she's still holding the half of the sandwich she was eating, and reaches to toss it in a trashcan on the side of the path.
Felix shakes his head, innocently. It doesn't seem to be uppermost in his mind, if she's Registered or not. He looks weirdly young, with the haircut, though he's got lines at the corners of mouth and eyes. Something in the expression. "No. I can talk to some people, see if I can find him," he offers, gently. "You mean another speedster?" That seems to intrigue him, and he takes a little half-step forward. Like the beginning of a dance.
"N-no, don't … I mean, it's nothing like a missing person's report or anything like that," Daphne says, her eyes not leaving his face once the trash is thrown away. "I don't know the guy. Someone thought I was him, and then I saw you, and I had told that person I'd keep an eye out… now you'll probably do the same thing next blur you see. It's a whole domino effect thing!" Not that she's ever seen a blur that turned out to be a speedster until now. Just herself. She takes another step back. If they move in the other direction now, it could be a tango.
"Hunh," he says, thoughtfully, wiping at his brow. His shirt's soaked with sweat. Another pace forward, apparently unthinking. "No. Don't know him. Only met another like me a time or two. Who's looking for this Edgar?"
Her nose wrinkles. There are more? She's gone from being unique to being one of two to being one of three to one of four or five? "How many are there? I never thought to look on the Registry, mostly because I figured it's not up to date," rather than that if she didn't register, she figures no other speedster else would have! "I guess hoping I was a unique special snowflake in the world is too much to ask, huh?" Another step back.
"Hey, lady, is that guy bothering you?" a voice calls. It takes Daphne a moment to realize she's 'lady,' and she looks around.
"Oh. No, no, I'm good, thanks!" she lifts a hand in a wave.
He grins at that, a feral lift of his lip, though it's more impish than vicious. Just now. "Enough of us. Too many," he says, teasingly, as if he could gauge the drift of her thoughts.
"So…" she draws it out, another step back, but now it's almost as if they're simply walking and talking and she's walking backwards so that she can see him better, "You're a cop, right? What kinda cop are you? That kinda speed… you must have a really good catch rate, yeah? Lots of guys in jail probably have you to thank for their life behind bars?" Another step back. No, Daphne, that's not suspicious at all. She would have turned and run a long time ago, but knowing he could keep up has thrown her off of her normal game. Modus Operandi not an option.
It's like trailing a string before a cat. It makes them focus all the more. And indeed, the blue eyes are no longer so amiable, but now contain that predatory keenness. "I was a cop," he corrects, standing lazily hipshot, as if that might reassure her. "But yes. Never lost a footrace with a perp. I was NYPD. Then an FBI agent. Now I'm FRONTLINE."
Well, you're about to lose a footrace with me, Daphne thinks, though even in her mind, the statement lacks confidence. She nods with each of those agencies mentioned, each feeling like a stone dropping into her belly, weighing her down with worry. NYPD. FBI. FRONTLINE. Capital lettered organizations, heavy and ominous and dangerous.
"I…" she begins slowly, but the two words that follow come fast and frantic, "gotta go."
With that, she pivots on that backward stepping foot and once more throws herself into high gear, a streak of green and white and off-white.
It's a challenge he declines, though. There is no sound of feet pounding after her. And she leaves him in the dust. He watches her vanish, fora long, thoughtful moment. And then pulls out his phone and starts dialing.
The pixyish speedster doesn't stop until she makes it across town, checking often to make sure he hasn't followed her. She finally comes to a stop in an alley in Little Italy, resting her head against the brick wall. Her eyes closed, her heart pounds, not because of any such thing as exertion but because of the adrenaline racing through her body.
"You, Daphne Millbrook, are an idiot. This is the last time you try and help a stranger," she mutters to herself before making herself walk around the corner. The bar on the corner is one she frequents, one home to her fellow thieves and fences, a place that she can have a beer and try to shake the fear out of her system.