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| Scene Title | The Fool's Journey, Part II |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Hokuto gives Helena the first clues in the quest to stop the Nightmare Man. |
| Date | December 29, 2009 |
Helena's Dreamscape
Once again, Peter stands at the edge of the roof of the Deveaux building. Bathed in the light of the evening sun shining through the jagged and broken western skyline, this place is a play of long and dark shadows against fiery orange light.
Overhead, the clear skies are strewn with wisps of thin clouds in shades of pink and orange against a deep blue-purple sky. This place is becoming his perch, from which he can view from one side the devastation of midtown and the still smoldering crater that was once the heart of his home, and the heart of all of his ambitions and hopes. From the other side of the building the still thriving districts can be seen through the shattered framework of the adjacent buildings. It is a sharply contrasting view, with the Deveaux building serving as the way-point between the past and the future. It also serves as a fitting place for the meeting Peter called, a place of significant importance to him, and a place that had seen a similar event play out decades earlier.
With his hands on the edge of the stone rail, Peter stands just to the side of an ornate piece of architecture on the rooftop, a round ring of plaster and stone flanked on either side by a pair of small cherubs — one coincidentally looking ahead towards the ruins, and one facing the rooftop and looking out beyond it to the rest of New York. The wind whips across the roof, playing with the unbuttoned and long leather jacket the lone occupant on the rooftop wears. He watches the city below, a thoughtful and distant expression in his eyes.
The sound of glass crunching underfoot crackles through the cool evening air, and a moment later Cameron Spalding steps out onto the rooftop. Like Peter, he's wearing a long coat fashioned from a thick material meant to withstand the elements. Beneath that is a ballistic vest with what looks like a long sleeved shirt and a pair of concealed shoulder holsters, each cradling a TT33 Tokarev pistol — gifts from one of his Russian contact overseas.
He isn't alone, either. Meeting Peter unarmed would almost be as foolish as meeting him unaccompanied. "A little bird told me that you wanted to talk," he says to the other mans back, the scorn as clear in his voice as the contempt in his eyes. "So let's talk. What do you want?"
Daniel follows along quietly, looking quite cool and collected, intense, direct. He's wearing an air canister at his belt, with a firefighter's mask attached to it, the mask around his neck, but not on his face just at the moment. He keeps his arms folded. He keeps his mouth shut.
It's like one of those 'The Right Stuff' walks with the astronauts all lined up looking cool. At the other side of Cameron is Helena. She is also wearing terrorist chic, a long coat and a newsie cap shoved down under her loose blonde hair. The main concession to flash a little personality is the embroidered teddybear sewn onto the calf of her jeans like the remnant of an unfortunate Joss Whedon show costume, though with the cap, one could easily add 'meets unfortunately French based musical waif' to that. Despite the solemnity of the moment, she's smiling, and even gives Peter a discreet little waggle of her fingers.
Looking about as unamused as her fearless leader, Claire brings up the rear, emerging onto the rooftop after the other PARIAH members. Claire doesn't bother greeting Peter, though she's there to see him. But that's the extent of it for her. She's there to see him. Not necessarily speak to him after he left her feeling so horrible in the wake of their reunion.
"Glad to see you showed," Peter turns from where he leans against the railing, looking back towards the demolished framework of the greenhouse that encases the entrance to the rooftop; nothing more than a bent wreck of twisted metal and broken glass. The roof is covered with debris, most of it wood from pigeon coops once kept up here, a tangled mess of chicken-wire fencing stretched between some of the dusty and broken pieces of wood. "I was starting to think you didn't get the message." Sliding his hands into the pockets of his slacks, Peter surveys the small group accompanying Cameron; his eyes lingering on Claire for a time. He looked surprised to see her here, and for all of the tough exterior he was trying to project, there was a moment of softness that spread across his perpetually furrowed brow. When he sees Helena, a brief smile threatens to show on his face, carefully hidden again.
"I've been doing some thinking, since we first met." Peter's eyes flick over to Cameron, "I've been meeting members of your group, people I dismissed at first," Peter's gaze shifts over to Helena for a moment, then back to Cameron, "But after meeting them, I started to realize something— " The scarred man's voice trails off, and he begins pacing across the rooftop, the debris in front of him slowly sliding away before he sets foot on them without any physical contact. "Last night, I finally realized what I've been struggling to figure out for a long time." With his back now to Cameron and the others, Peter looks over his shoulder, "I want to ask you a question — all of you." He turns, standing side-long now to the four visitors, "Do you all believe in this?" One hand slides out of his pocket, motioning around vaguely in the air, "In what you're doing, in fighting the cause? That it's going to make a difference? In… " Peter looks down at his feet, "Do you believe?" He both simplifies and complicates the question, and then slowly looks up again from the rooftop to the group gathered.
The way Peter's eyes lay on Helena is odd, the touch of his stare the way he was back then, on that cold rooftop in the middle of September last year. If this is a dream, then by all hopes and prayers let it stay. Back then, everything was so much simpler.
Helena's been practicing. Short of being someone with a true ability to manage her dreams, she's been doing what she can - returning to old training habits that Claude left like a legacy, reading up when she can on the nature of dreams and how to control them. There's an element of which she's not able to fight and she knows it, but when it comes to those dreams that are echoes of memory, she's gotten better at realizing their nature.
She returns this Peter's stare - funny, she'd forgotten for a while that his eyes could be anything but blue, and cold. "Yes." she replies, but no more. Something in her manner appears less engaged in the scene before her. Peter is scrutinized. So is Cameron. These aren't the people she needs right now. She looks around the roof. Who was she looking for?
Daniel just nods, his chin dipping into the mask, obscuring his expression as he does so, he feels no need to explain further to Peter, or perhaps to anyone. As lookout, he is carefully scanning the streets and alleys, windows and adjacent rooftops, and so it is not by talent or keen wits that he spots Cat, but by caution and by diligence. "Company." he remarks quietly. "But not an approach." He indicates subtly in her direction with a single fingertip.
Somewhere ago, Helena made a comment about her mother's death to Peter. It was the second time he heard about what happened in Sleepy Hollow, to her mother, and he never did find out the truth about Bill. Here, in this dreaming moment, the words go unsaid, and history plays out different.
You don't get as far as Cameron has without having an eye for detail. It takes a conscious effort to keep the expression on his face as neutral as possible when he catches Peter's gaze roving. The muscles in his hand clench, fingers curling into a white-knuckled fist. He doesn't like the way that he's looking at Helena, so it's probably a good thing that his eyes don't linger any longer than necessary; Cameron isn't usually the type of person to lose his temper, but when he does it can be explosive.
Literally. Helena recalls just how fiery Cameron's temper always was. Somehow, it never really frightened her, his warmth was more comforting.
"What the hell do you think, Petrelli? That we just like to blow shit up because we don't have anything better to do?" Anything else he might have said is cut abruptly short as Daniel alerts them to Cat's position. There's little point, at least in Cameron's eyes, in explaining any further. Helena has put it more eloquently than he could. "Keep an eye on her, Daniel. Does she look like she's armed?"
"Cameron," Claire strides quickly up behind him, tone gentle but warning. She rests a hand against his shoulder. She follows Daniel's indication and steps vaguely between Cat's position and Cameron. Her stature may be small, but she makes up for every inch lacking in height with (no, not platform shoes) fierce loyalty.
"I wanted to hear it, directly. It's one thing to assume people believe in something, that they'll give their lives for it. But it's another thing — for me — to hear that conviction, to feel it.", Peter paces back the way he came, and while he doesn't seem directly concerned about eavesdroppers, he does look in the direction of the supposed interloper. However, from his angle, Peter doesn't see anything suspicious or familiar. Sliding that free hand back into his pocket, he thinks for a moment before continuing.
"Two years ago," He seems to shift from the topic at hand, "I was here." Peter stops where he was walking, looking out to the cauterized scar on the land beyond, "I was here, and I thought that I could make a difference — that I was a hero." His eyes begin to narrow, and he turns his head as the wind picks up to look at Cameron. He seems to focus on him intently for a moment before continuing. "I was here, fighting Sylar — fighting to keep this from ever happening… All of this." Peter's eyes close, "There were so many of us back then, and so many of them that…" He dithers, shaking his head, "I thought that I could win, that I could stop the bomb, save everyone." His eyes open again and drift back to the ruins beyond, "You can see how that went."
Peter breathes in a slow and calming breath through his nose, "For the last two years, I've been trying to figure out why I failed," There's a strong sound of guilt in his voice, "Why this had to happen, why all of this had to come to be." Peter shifts his footing, then turns to face Cameron and the PARIAH group again. "Mistakes were made," His brow tenses briefly, creasing his scar, "Bad things happened." His gaze settles on Claire briefly, "But that girl who visited me last night, she finally showed me what Hiro — what everyone has been trying to show me since then. The reason I failed, the reason the bomb destroyed New York, the reason all of this happened…"
When exactly did idealism die? When did his heroic spirit get crushed under the world's heel? When did he stop caring about Helena Dean?
It's hard to avoid this, on the rooftop here surrounded by friends and loves of old. But Helena is looking for someone— seeking someone— but who?
Why?
The rate at which Helena is disengaging from this scene might be almost comical. She continues to look around the rooftop, actually physically stepping away from the exchange at hand, devotion to the scene now rendered to an absent remark in Peter's direction, "You're still going to fail." It's matter of fact and quiet, even as she begins moving around the rooftop, searching high and low. "I'm looking for you." she murmurs seemingly to herself, but for the words that she addresses to the air. "And I know you're here. I know you're listening. I don't remember who you are, but I need to talk to you. This isn't real. And it won't keep me safe. Come find me."
"Just think about the feeling— electricity— the shock, the tingle… the way…" Peter catches something out of the corner of his eyes, and Helena realizes the setting around her has changed— a rooftop, yes, but one far away from Midtown's ruins. Peter's head slowly lifts up as his eyes go wide, mouth opening as sunlight plays on blonde hair caught by the wind. An overspilling of emotions come over Peter as he lets his arms fall away from the woman, who's steely countenance only now becomes familiar as the morning light fully shines as the sun passes out from behind a cloud. The woman of living metal… is Gillian Childs.
Who the - oh. Oh. The worlds by which this is not acceptable are boundless, and there's an abrupt drop in temperature around the blonde, so much so that Helena's breath, when it comes out frosts. She just stands there, and tries to think of something to say that won't sound petty or jealous, and she'd been okay with it while it was a future that she was going to change, but this is her here, her now, and she does not believe in the river anymore, goddamit.
Taking another breath, one that doesn't frost as the air warms and she gets ahold of herself, she offers only one word: "Peter?"
The problem with being metal— Gillian doesn't really feel his hands move away in the traditional way that she should. There'd been no sensation of his hands even being on her at all. As she takes in a slow breath, the crackle of electricity tries to surface from her again, only to fall back in through clenched teeth. Not clenched for any reason other than stress. Mouth opens as if to speak, a disappointment and frustration carved into her metal face, but then she 'hears' a voice. Eyes open, even if that's not what she sees with, and she looks up until she makes out forms. Female. Some familiar, sort of, some not. Recognizing people isn't easy with these senses, something she wishes she could explain.
"What?" she asks, lips moving in a distorted voice. Almost like talking through metal. Still very much female and hers, but definitely not sounding as it should. Instead of answering she starts to move away a little, until the creaks make her stop. Maybe she shouldn't be walking around too much until she gets the changing back part down.
Peter looks so much less like the muscular and healthy man she saw in the future. He's a wiry, thin and broken man who has spent months being tortured and half-starved in a prison. His frame is noticably thinner than even the last time Helena saw him escaping Moab, and the contrast is even sharper to the Peter Petrelli of 2019, he's like a pale, ghostly imitation of that man.
A dumbstruck ghostly imitation of that man.
"Hel— " the name comes choked back with wide-eyed confusion as Peter slowly begins to step around Gillian, glancing back over his shoulder towards her, then back to Helena, and then finally Elisabeth. He swallows, loudly, and anxiously moves to brush one unruly and long lock of hair from his face. In this light, the scar cutting across Peter's brow is so prominent — yet one more feature that delineates him from the Peter she saw ten years in the future.
Helena is looking at herself, younger, just having returned from the year 2019 on the roof of the Dispensary. Yet here, she is beside herself, an impartial observer to something long since played out.
"He's in so many of your dreams…" But she isn't the only observer, "But he's not the one."
Seated on the edge of the rooftop's concrete railing, one pale leg crossed over the other, a parchment-pale woman bears only passing likeness to Hokuto Ichihara, her long inky hair flows around her head as if she were perpetually underwater, black blindfold covering her eyes. She is dressed anachronistically, traditional Japanese attire in the form of a black and white kimono, representing the heritage she has forsaken.
"Hello, Helena… it's good to see you." The dream freeze-frames at that exact moment in time, and Hokuto swings her sandaled feet back and forth, watching the blonde quietly through blindfolded eyes.
"Hello, Hokuto."
Helena moves to join the kimono-clad woman, taking a seat next to her. She does not question the monochrome kimono, or the fact that the woman is blindfolded. She is who she is, in dreams. "Yes. That's Peter Petrelli." Helena acknowledges, though she's fairly sure that Hokuto knows who he is. Of course, given she's been in Helena's dreamscape, there's a brief flare of colors on the young woman's cheeks. It doesn't last long. "But I think the one you mean is Cameron Spalding. My friend. My brother in every way but blood. Phoenix was named for him. He's rescued me." She looks over the building, down at where their legs dangle. "Even after his death, he keeps saving me."
"You're rescuing yourself…" Hokuto explains, crossing her legs at her ankles and folding her hands in her lap. "Which is more than can be said for most people. I felt him, your… Cameron, that time I tried to protect you from the Nightmare Man. I woke up that part of your mind, that… primitive self-preservation instinct." She manages a gray-lipped smile, folding and unfolding her hands, revealing a cat's cradle of black and white threads between her fingers.
"Coincidentally, we were looking for each other." Hokuto seems so different here, in dreaming, more serent and less bubbly. She is more the portrait of a stoic and traditional Japanese woman, were it not for the rather untraditionally revealing bust-line of the open kimono, and the strange black mandala tatoo at the center of her chest. "I… wanted to ask you for your help, Helena. You've already confronted yourself, in your dreams. You've already gained…" she makes a motion with her thread-bound fingers, "awakened yourself. I… was wondering if you would help me afford others who have yet to awaken their own dream selves, to do so?"
Tilting her head back, Hokuto regards Helena thorugh that thin gauzy fabric of black cloth. "I cannot fight the Nightmare Man, not by myself, not with others. The most I can hope to do, to protect people… is to help them help themselves."
Helena is surprised by this. She took comfort in the idea that somehow Cameron was reaching out from beyond the grave, that there could be care and love that transcended death. But the good sense of this cannot be refuted, and she nods. What ennui might come from the truth can be managed later. She reaches out to try and touch Hokuto's bound fingers. "How do I do that? I know of someone else who's been damaged by him. I'm angry." She blinks, repeating as if in revelation, "I'm angry." She sounds surprised by the statement, and then lets it settle around her like a cloak. "How do I reach out to the ones I don't know? How do I find them?"
She's cold to the touch, as cold as the memory of this rooftop is, skin clammy and soft with the texture of a corpse to match her pallor. The strings wound around her fingers though are hot to the touch, like coils of a toaster oven, yet somehow they don't burn her or Helena, just hot enough to warn, to make wary — this tangle is dangerous.
"You can't find them," Hokuto admitswith one brow peeking up from behind her blindfold, "not alone." Fingers weave thorugh the strings of the cat's cradle again, and the pattern in the middle changes. "That is the small comfort I can afford you. I can send you places, ship you from mind to mind, through a…" a faint smile crosses her gray lips, "a lobby of dreams. It appears different for everyone, it is something intrinsic to you. To one man it looked like a therapist's office, to another a lavishly decorated strip club. It is a single room, lined with twelve mirrors. In these mirrors, I can show you the dreams of others…" She looks down to the cat's cradle, changing the weave again.
"Then, like Alice, all you need is step through the looking glass…" But it is there that Hokuto's whimsy comes to a close. She furrows her brows, shifting her weight to one side and rises up to her feet. "Come, I will take you there." The threads around her fingers are unwound, and Hokuto offers her pale digits towards Helena. "There are rules to this place, to the way dreams work. Law to the chaos, and you should know them."
This won't be the first time Helena's been Alice, whether in Wonderland or through the Looking Glass. She rises, taking up to slim white fingers before her with her own warm ones. "Why are you blindfolded?" she asks, as a matter of curious conversation in the process of getting to their destination. "Do your eyes hinder your vision more here if you were to have them? Or did someone do this to you?"
The question gives Hokuto pause, and when she looks to Helena the neuytrality in her expression is somewhat lacking. Confusion, then surprise take turns on her face. There is no response, not immediately, only a lift of her free hand that follows the eerie rise of a mirror from the rooftop. It doesn't so muchs lide up as it does grow, like a multi-faceted sheet of reflective glass with scraping sounds and occasional glimpses into somewhere else that seems on fire, fleeting glimpses of the gutted ruins of Midtown on fire, and then nothing but a smooth reflectionless mirror that serves more as a window, six feet tall and three feet wide, showing an empty room.
"I wear this because I refuse to see." Hokuto finally answers, even if it is much a riddle as it is a response. She reaches out and touches her fingers to the glass of the mirror, and its surface cracks around where her fingers penetrate the surface, yet she is not cut. "Dreaming minds are separated by distance, the further away a mind is, the harder it is to contact. But each dreaming mind has a texture, like a fingerprint, making them recognizable only if you already know what you are looking for." Hokuto's hand disappears up to her arm in the mirror, even her sleeve causes cracks to form as she reaches inside.
"I can reach across the United States, as far as California in any direction. But it taxes me so. Right now, all of our problems lie close by, so I am able to divide up my mind, create tethers or anchors for dreamers to leave in their own minds, as they hop-scotch to another's. But no two dreams operate by the same rules."
Hokuto looks back to Helena, her shrouded stare feeling strangely precise, despite the lack of eye-contact. "This room beyond is my mind, and it is shaped by what I allow in, as all dreams are. Through me, you may access others dreams, a nexus of sorts. While I remain permanently slumbering, I become a hub for those who help."
Withdrawing her hand from the mirror, Hokuto steps back and motions to Helena, then the mirror that refuses to reflect either of them. "Go first, and shape the hub. I will follow behind you…"
[OOC] Hokuto says, "Feel free to describe whatever Helena's "special place" would be in your pose :D"
[OOC] Hokuto says, "You will be able to bring people into it (which is inside Hokuto's mind) when you dream hop."
They leave the rooftop, only to find themselves in a room. It's the room of a young woman, with walls of a pale blue washed with white, of white furniture and large bed and wooden floors covered in well-loved, well-worn rugs. The bed is wide and made of painted white wood, and a pair of large windows open up to look over the backyard below. There's a rocking chair in one corner.
"This is my room!" Helena breathes in delight and longing.
"So it is…" Hokuto states as she emerges through the mirror into the bedroom. The moment the dream-walker enters, the scraping creak of more mirrors begin to rise from the floor and grow off of the walls. Twelve enormous mirrors form in a circle at the center of the bedroom, each facing each other like the monuments of stone henge. The dream-walker turns, slowly, looking from mirrors to Helena with dark brows creased.
Wooden sandals clunk hard on the floor as she walks, and Hokuto comes to brush one hand down along the bed, settling softly into place, one leg hooking over the other as she sits. "This place, my dreams, are receptive to you. They are shaped by your desires, because I trust you in my mind. If more than one person were in here, it would be… a blend of their consciousnesses." Hokuto folds her hands in her lap, looking down at the floor, or at least that is how her head is angled.
"But the minds you will visit through those mirrors, they are not yours, and they are not receptive. The average mind is defensive against intrusion, protected from outside influences. You control yourself and your own form in those dreams, but the dreamscape around you is defined by the mind it belongs to, or the Nightmare Man, if their will is weak." Warningly, Hokuto raises one finger to the air and looks up to Helena.
"Be mindful, though, that the dreams of the evolved can be far different. The mind of a telepath is like a prison, they can trap you, block you out, or perhaps even sever you from your own consciousness. Do not tread lightly into their minds, consider who you are reaching out to before you venture in. I cannot save you from everyone…"
But as her hand lowers, she traces a tiny series of fiery sparks into the air. "…and that is where he comes in." One of the dreamwalker's brows arch at that sentiment. "Cameron, your strength. He is a part of your persona, the you that you are willing to show to the world around you. An avatar of your true self, the self you realize in dreams." Then, furrowing her brows, she adds a more somber note.
"But there is always another, even when I aid you in traveling in dreams. Your shadow." The term is spoken heavily. "A shadow is the part of your consciousness that you refuse, something about yourself — a truth — that you refuse to acknowledge. The Nightmare Man prays on shadows, twists and uses them against you. You confronted your shadow, but others have theirs… and I cannot reach those the Nightmare Man has influence over."
"The Girl I Thought I Wanted To Be." Yes, she says it like it's a title. Helena nods admitting, "I thought she was horrid. And appalled that I'd ever hoped to be her." Helena walks around the room, considering each mirror, her hand trailing over her bedposts and the back of the rocking chair as she moves. "So when I approach these minds, I need to convince them to find their avatars, their True Selves, and defeat or at least resolve their Shadows." Despite the fact that Hokuto can't see her, she looks over her shoulder at Hokuto to see if she's got the right idea. "Will the mirrors show me the minds I'm entering before I try? Otherwise there's no way to assess the risk."
"The mirrors show you…." Hokuto's brows furrow, trying to put it into words, "available minds, dreamers who are awake and nearby. Approaching a mirror shows a dream in progress, allows you to simply observe from a distance if you so like. Retreating from a mirror clears it, and if you approach a second time it may not be the same mind." But she has diverged somewhat from her topic, from what Helena needs to know more.
"If you can help others resolve their inner conflicts, or take control of their Shadows, you can prevent the Nightmare Man from manipulating them. There are some minds, their dreams appear blue-tinted in the mirror, that are touched by a drug called Refrain. Those who have taken the drug, I… I think the Nightmare Man seizes more control over them. Your mind," Hokuto points to Helena, "your mind was blue-hued when I visited you."
Helena's expression becomes oddly ashamed. "My father drugged me." she says, adding quickly, "I haven't had any since. I wouldn't." It's important to her that Hokuto believes that. "My ability." she says. "In dreamscapes, I'm guessing it only works if it's not something the person dreaming realizes they can exert control over. Though in people's heads, I'm not sure how relevant it would be anyway. The point is to - to liberate them." Yeah, Helena can get behind that. "What about when I'm ready to leave someone's mind? Can I make the mirror appear when I need it?"
"Your ability is as much a part of you as your lungs are. And just as necessary in a dream." That latter part is a bit double-sided in meaning. "Because you know it, understand it, you can use it in dreams. Some people can fly in their dreams, but not in the real world. It is the same idea, you simply have… mastery, of the concept." Pale fingers fold together, lacing in Hokuto's lap as she considers the decoration of the room, as if she could see the details despite the blindfold covering her eyes.
"Leaving… may or may not be as easy. It depends on the mind, and if it wants you to leave. Stronger wills can enforce rules on others, but remember that you have me aiding you. The only time that I could not forcibly pull you from a dream is if the Nightmare Man is present. His… his presence blocks me from entering a dream fully. I cannot risk doing again what I did for you once."
Standing slowly, the blindfolded dreamwalker smooths out the front of her kimono, then lays a hand on Helena's shoulder. "You may not have had the blue glow in you recently, but it has left holes in your mind. One time, one taste, has left the portion of your brain responsible for managing dreams vulnerable and weakened. While you are in another's dreams you are safe, but if the Nightmare Man ever cornered you in your own mind again, he may be able to make you do things not of your own accord. He can influence this on others too, and…"
Furrowing her brows, Hokuto seems hesitant when she delivers this last piece of news. "If you are resident in the mind of someone who dies, the shock will likely kill you just as it does them."
Yes, it is a fairly harrowing piece of news, but not one that Hel seems the least bit surprised at. There's always the catch. "Angela Petrelli said there's no real way to end the Nightmare Man. But there has to be something we can do to make all this stop. What about that? Trapping him in a mind that's dying?" It's worth considering, even for a moment, but not the sort of thing Helena would plan for.
Hokuto's expression is an impassive one as Helena offers that bit of advice. Something seems to trouble her, and as she brushes one hand over her cheek, fingers threading up through dark locks of ethereally moving hair, her consideration of it comes with a heavy sigh that slips from gray lips. "That may work…" she admits with some hesitation, "but it would mean needing to find a dying mind, and having someone to trap him there." It is a moral quandary that she — perhaps fortunately — is not armed to make.
"If he cannot escape from the mind as it collapses, he…" Hokuto trails off, nodding her head once as her hand lowers from her hair. "Yes," she seems more affirmed now, "yes I believe that would work. But it is not a cost that I have to live with, for I can neither trap him nor find him. That is a sacrifice… that someone else would need to make."
It's not an optimal solution, and not even one that Helena can actively try to utilize, but if there's an opportunity, it's something she'll keep in mind. The considerations of self-sacrifice are not something she can deal with even if were possible, at least not right now. "Alright." she says. She looks around. "It looks like I'm going to have an awful lot of running to do." She then looks back to Hokuto. "When I wake up," she says, "Do you want me to pass on any messages? To Corbin, maybe?"
Arching a dark brow, Hokuto considers the question and turns her back on Helena, arms wrapped around her waist, hands disappearing into the voluminous sleeves of her kimono. "Yes…" she finally intones with a nod of her head, turning to eventually look back up over her shoulder, flowing locks of ethereal hair drifting with the motion as she turns, her blindfolded gaze transfixed on Helena.
"You can tell Corbin he's next."