Participants:
| Scene Title | The Ranger and the Princess |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Newly partnered agents Lu and Sawyer get to know each other a little bit and neither is particularly happy about the fact, it looks like. |
| Date | May 30, 2009 |
Curt sits in the armory feeding ammo into the almost ridiculously long clip on the table before him. It's one of 6 similar clips. He does it with the speed of a practiced hand, the click click click click making an almost hypnotic rhythym. "So what's your story little girl? What makes you a Company kid?"
Veronica snorts, puffing up a piece of glossy brown hair, while she watches him load his gun. "You been on desk duty so long you don't have ammo any more?" Like she should talk. She has a brand new gun and brand new tranq gun in her holsters, after having them taken by Adam Monroe himself. She leans against a wall watching him. "I was recruited from college. Was a criminal justice major at Cal." Her arms cross. "So explain what you mean about me dying faster with you around. I want to know what you can do, so I can trust you."
Curt snorts, "I don't usually have to carry a weapon." he states simply, "But they make me feel all manly and stuff." he jams the clip into the Glock 18, which for the uninitiated in a machine pistol. A wee pistol that can fire fully auto, like an usi but without /looking/ like an uzi. He puts it in a shoulder holster under his coat and then starts to load the other clips, "You'll never trust me kid, no one does. Part and parcel of being my partner is understanding not to trust me." he pauses and eyes her, "It means that if you're in trouble, I can't come save you, you have to save yourself. It means if I'm in trouble, you can't come save me because it'll get you killed. It means that any wounds I take are automatically transfered to the person nearest to me." he points, "Which is why when we go into combat I always take point and you stay back at least ten to twelve feet. Am I clear princess?" now he's giving orders. Listen to him go.
She raises her brows as he explains his power to her. "You can't turn it off and on? Have you tried to … train it?" she asks. "And listen. I may be younger than you, but I'm not a child, and I'm certainly not a princess. I was top in my class, recruited by FBI and CIA and pretty much every major city's police department before I agreed to join The Company. I can get out of trouble by myself. Most of the time." The addendum is because lately she hasn't quite managed to do that. "But I get it. Anything else?"
Curt eyes her, "Lady, I've been trying to turn it off since before you were born. Doesn't work like that, I think that's why it falls under the 'Unconcious' ranking in the ability structure. Look on the bright side though, if I get close enough to Doyle all you have to do is shoot me." he grins, "Or better yet if we can get puppet boy to be all cocky we might be able to trick him into making you shoot me. Either way, he goes down… so long as he's closer then you." his smile is a cold and hard one as he slides that clip away into the BDU's he wears. "As for you being a kid," he shrugs, "deal with it. I've got a daughter older then you."
Veronica's brows knit, and as usual, when she looks confused, she looks all the younger, all the more innocent. "I … how is that possible?" she asks. "As for the Doyle thing, not a bad idea, except that he might try to have us shoot each other, and then… well, you'll be fine, and I guess get all the glory for the job while I'm in a morgue unless you have any other tricks up your sleeve."
Curt chuckles, "Well think it through sweet checks, unconcious cellular damage transfer." he stands as the last of the clips is slid into it's place and buttoned in. He stands and walks over, "You don't feel it?" he smirks, "Aging is just cells dying and being remade. Long as I'm in range you age twice as fast and I stand frozen in time. Don't worry, the effects are really noticable unless we spend every waking moment together for a few years. Which I doubt. The Company moves me around a lot so no one can worry about it." he walks away then, heading for a tranq gun and a few rounds for it too. He pauses, grabs a tazer as well. Apparently he likes to go /well/ armed.
She frowns at this news. "Well, I didn't actually see your file, remember," Vee points out, while stepping away from him so that she's now against the far wall, about twelve feet away. "Great. First a golem… now a grandpa…" she mutters more to herself. "Then do me a favor and stay as far away from me as you can unless we need to be close for the case, all right? I don't expect to live very long, not doing what I do, but I'd like to at least look good as long as I am alive."
Curt chuckles, "Don't worry kiddo, you have more then a few years left in you before you have to start worrying about laugh lines. First of all, you'll have to start laughing." he smirks a bit and once armed he heads for the door, not seeming to care that this puts him closer to her, "Come on, we have research to do and you look like an idiot cowering over there." he's found calling people names usually makes them surpress fear of aging in exchange for anger.
"Seriously. Why can't I ever just get the nice normal people for partners? Someone who, you know, can see through a wall, or someone who can set people on fire," Veronica grumbles as she follows him out the door. "So just how old are you, Grandpa?" she asks, letting him pass her and then waiting until he's several feet in front of her to begin walking down the corridor. "You know, I can research just fine in my office. You can go to yours," Veronica adds.
Curt snorts, "Sure, but I've been on assignment in Canada for awhile, don't have an office anymore. Which means I share yours until they set me up a new place…. So yes. I agree. We should do research in our office." now he's just being mean. "At least you smell better then my last partner, that guy bathed twice a year, christmas and his birthday, and he was born in January."
She still smells fresh from the shower, so a mix of lemons and vanilla. She has no make up on, which actually makes her look younger than her actual age, which probably doesn't help at all with the generation gap between them. "Or you can take a laptop and go sit somewhere else," she says with gritted teeth. "I don't know where Doyle's been since he broke out. I checked back at the park but he wasn't around. You know, Len never really did say what he thinks they're planning…" she says with a shake of her head.
Curt shrugs, "I'm not that hot with computers anyway, but you need a radio rigged up out of a coat hanger and a nine volt battery? I'm your man." he eyes her, "I can make some phone calls though, talk to some people I know who are in the life. If he has a crew then that means he needs gear. Be it guns or safe cracking tools, he'll need /something/. Be helpful if I knew what I was looking for though." he admits, "See if you can't poke Len into coughing up at least potential jobs. We need some place to start then just 'catch this fat man'."
Veronica nods. "We should meet April too… It sounds like the whole time-space continuum thingy doesn't work like you think it does, so hopefully… it won't alert future April to us…" She sighs and leads the way to her office, apparently going to have to share space with this man. "I don't think we'll need radios out of coat hangers or anything, but uh, thanks for the offer. Maybe we should see about getting that bug to put on April though… requesting that from the resource office."
Curt nods his head, "I'll let you handle the technical stuff. I mean I can if I have to, but frankly it out paced me a little while ago. I just now figured how to get my fuckin' IPod to work." he sounds disgusted by that for some reason. "And I keep losing my damned cell. They make it any smaller and I'm having someone sew it to my hand."
"I still have one of those Nokia bricks you can have, if it'll help you keep a handle on it," Vee says with a shake of her head, making a detour to head to the requisitions department. "But I don't think those can be secured like the newer ones." The requisition clerk hands her a form, and she fills something out. "Sooner the better, like yesterday, if you can," she says with a wink to the man, who is fairly handsome in a nerdy-desk-job sort of way. He grins and nods.
The clerk blushes and goes about processing the request, as Veronica turns with narrowed eyes. "You'd think an old man like you would have learned a bit of manners at some point in his long, long life," she all but growls. "We'll call Bradley and see what she can tell us about… well, herself. Stuff that's not in the file. I mean, certain things may not have changed, aside from the fact she's gone from the white hats to the black hats for no obvious reason. It might give us a clue as to what she likes, where she might be hanging out."
Curt nods his head, "Sure, let's sit around and play nice with the boy. I'll just stand here and wait for you both to work out a time and a place and all that for your date. I mean it's not like I'm getting any older." hey, she wants to make shots about his age, he'll throw them right back. "What's she do anyway?"
"File said force fields," she says with a shrug. "So… great… neither are the easiest targets, but again… with your ability, we might be able to handle it. Me shooting you, while they're close by… that kind of thing might work. And would be fun, to boot." The last bit is said with a bit of a smirk, her eyes sparkling with amusement, if not quite merriment.
Curt snickers, "Force field won't protect her from me." he says as their minds get to the same place instantly, "Of course I make the same deal with you I make with all my partners, any of my clothes you put holes in with bullets or whatever, you buy replacements." he smiles wanly, "And I like Armani." which is obviously not the case, cause… well, most of his clothing is military issue. Except the coat, that's prolly expensive.
"Armani my ass. More like Army-Navy Surplus, buddy," she says with a shake of her head and leads them back to her office. She pushes the spare chair way back by the wall. "Your chair." She walks back to her desk, and pulls it closer to the wall it sits in front of, for a few more inches. "Damn. That's not like ten feet, is it." Maybe eight. Nine, possibly. "You could sit in the hall…"
Curt just grins as her and plops down in the chair, his boots ending up on the very edge of her desk, "Rangers, 1st Battalion out of Hanoi." he says, "I was one of the first SpecOps Rangers under The General." as if somehow that should mean something to someone young enough to not even know where Hanoi is, "Deal with it princess, it's not like I'm over here cutting myself or something, you'll live." he pulls out an old banged up Army lighter and passes it through his fingers.
"Don't you even think of threatening me," Veronica says with eyes narrowing. "I may not be all special and powerful like you, but I can find ways to make your life miserable. I guarantee it. Consider it my ability," she snaps. "Call me silly for not wanting to look like Grandma Myrtle by the age of thirty, if I live that long."
Curt barks a laugh, "Not even thirty and doesn't think she's a little girl. God, you are just to cute. Could put you in a pocket and take you around. I take it back, my daughters not your age, she's older." he grins wider, "Hell, how old are you? I might have actually been with the Company longer then you've been breathing."
"And yet… relegated to desk duty of late," Veronica points out, while opening up her laptop and turning it on. "Maybe you're getting senile in your old age, Dorian Gray." She types in her password and begins to search for any information on their targets. "I'm younger than thirty but old enough to drink and do whatever else consenting adults can do. So you can quit calling me a kid, Lu."
Curt just grins at her, "She's still my baby girl so until you're older then her, suck it up." he points at the laptop, "You gonna email Len get me that info on what sort of things I should be looking for, maybe they need special tools or something for this job of theirs, I can maybe track those down while you twitter or facepage or mybook or whatever the hell it is you do on there."
She just stares at him a moment before shaking her head. "I'm 26, not 16, Lu," she points out. "And I'll ask him, but you know, he probably told us everything he knows. I'll see if I can pick his brain some more. And while I make myself useful, what do you plan on doing?"
Curt shrugs, "I guess I could sit here and make jokes about your age or your sex or maybe even your sex life. But I won't." he pushes himself to his feet, "I have some people I need to call, let them know I'm back in town and that they still owe me favors. Reestablish my base of CI's and put the fear of me back into them. All that fun stuff. Also I gotta read your file." he grins, "Somehow I imagine it'll be an easy and shorter read then mine." he winks. "Later princess."
"It will be short. Mostly because they put me on all the important cases, and the information is simply not there to be had," she calls after him. "Shut the door on the way out, and try not to let it hit you, because I don't want to be bruised."