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| Scene Title | Time Travelers Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Planning begins to go back home to 2009 |
| Date | May 6, 2019 |
Village Renaissance Building, Cat's Penthouse
Arriving by any of four elevators, visitors will find they open into three foot corridors facing wide double doors made from sturdy southern pine which swing outward and have the strongest locks available. The stairs lead to single doors, also outward opening, at the end of three foot corridors. Entry requires both a key and a keycard; other security measures are a video camera and voice communication terminal at all doors. The 4th Street side has floor to ceiling windows interrupted only by the access points. Cream colored curtains are normally kept closed.
This level has enough space for sixteen apartments. There is an office space with reception area, conference room, and executive office; a room for archery practice and other forms of physical exercise; a very well appointed kitchen and dining area; a music zone with an array of instruments, electronics, and amplifiers; an entertainment area with an HD set covering an entire stretch of wall from floor to ceiling; a locked room where security footage for the building is recorded and can be monitored; a laundry room; a staircase for roof access; central air and heating; the main bedroom and a few smaller guest rooms; plush deep wine carpet everywhere except the kitchen, laundry room and bathrooms; and track lighting everywhere overhead. The light levels can be lowered or raised in the entire place, or selectively by segments. The overall decor suggests the occupant is a woman.
Those of the eight that seemed trustworthy were reached out to. Some have made it, some have not. Either way, Cat's made sure that food and drink is available to folks, and Helena has taken a seat on the couch, expression thoughtful and distracted even as she greets those who make their way to the meeting.
Cat's penthouse is familiar surroundings for Elisabeth. She's puttering through the place making coffee for people, leaving plates of coffee cakes and muffins — yes, even in this day and age, she still bakes when she's stressed — out for people to nosh on while we talk about this pretty much life and death situation. It's something to keep her hands busy while we try to save the world… again. She hands Helena a cup of coffee as she walks by her.
Near Helena, Cat seems calm and composed as she normally does. Professional attire is eschewed for this function, an old Yale t-shirt and shorts are the order of the day. She briefly considered having this out on the roof. The display of her iPhone says it's 18:00. Leaning over toward Helena as that cup of coffee is handed off, she quietly invites "You should let me give you the airborne view of the country before you go back. I'm a decent enough pilot, Helena."
Seated on the couch, Gillian looks quite different from the last time many of them saw her. For one, she doesn't look as dark around the eyes, or as gloomy. Her hair is pulled back out of her face into a clip-comb that keeps it out of her eyes, without technically being a ponytail. Rather than the dresses and skirts she would often wear, she's dressed down to a pair of black slacks and a dark purple top, and no bracelets on her left wrist, leaving one of the few tattoos she'd kept visible. A napkin holds a half eaten muffin, which she still picks at as she listens and waits.
"Maybe?" Helena says with a faint smile after murmuring a thank you to Liz. The cup in front of her had snapped her out of her reverie. "It's hard for me to really want to do much right now."
"Yes," Cat insists. "You get to see how it all looks now from the air." She is apparently not taking no for an answer. One hand holds a bottle of stout, the other a steak sandwich. Eyes settle on Gillian, she makes mental note of the seemingly less dark mood.
Little Sicily is dragging himself in on the quiet tread of a bobcat over snow. He is somewhat late, he gathers, but his superpower allows him at minimum the pretense that he hadn't missed much. He glances across his erstwhile co-leader on the couch, pauses to allow Elisabeth-traffic to bustle by unimpeded, before leaning his long axis against the wall near Alexander. His shoulders hike up under his ears, zipped up in black canvas, buzzcut head tilted forward in ghostly reminiscence of the thug he'd been once.
At rest, Teo looks more like something discarded in the corner than a proper participant to the ensuing conversation, his pale eyes flat, clear, as quietly watchful as glass panes.
"You shouldn't worry too much about how it looks now," Gillian says after a moment, looking at the young girl who's needing to get back to the past where she belongs, her own present. "You have to worry about your own. And we have to figure out how we're going to get you back before we can even think about joyriding."
Helena nods wryly to Gillian and looks around the room. "Well, okay." she begins. "As far as the rest of the eight go, I don't know about you guys, but I want to go home. And I'm pretty certain that Arthur Petrelli will do everything he can to stop us. But I've spoken with Gillian and Peter," a nod of grateful acknowledgment to Gillian, "And they've agreed to help us. Here's the tenative plan - we're looking into finding someone who has an appropriate ability that will allow us to create a circumstance that will determine the right moment and place for us to make our attempt. Teo's been working on that, so hopefully he has something for us." She gives Teo a hopeful smile. "Once we have those details, Peter will use Gillian's help to gestalt us back to where we belong. Obviously this is vague, and obviously there's risk, but no one's being forced to go back if they don't want to - but you all should know, all of the seers who've been contacted have stopped seeing futures for this timeline. That may change if we leave. It may not."
Not really having anything to add at this point, or comment upon, Cat holds silence.
"Kaito Nakamura's dead," Teo says plainly. "From natural causes. Mr. Nakamura was the Evolved probability predictor you guys were hoping to get the trail from, but it seems like he'd seen this coming. Seen you guys coming." Clarification comes with a glance across the room, between the Phoenix operatives past and still-'current.'
There's a disconcerting level of deja-vu involved here. Teo's brow furrows slightly. "He left the most intricate imaginable trail of papers and proxies— seemingly to keep Arthur Petrelli looking, but Wireless was able to locate a digital recording he had stored away. She's decrypted and studied it already. Mentioned that go-time is coming up in only a week, and the address is— sensitive. The recording itself is due to be uploaded to Catherine's personal computer within the next fifteen minutes. And that's it."
Teo's face goes a little blank when he rounds off on that note. With a week left, his friends' imminent departure isn't so very imminent, but it's trickling colder and closer with every passing second. This is it.
As she listens to everyone talk, Elisabeth is actually somewhat thoughtful. "You think Arthur Petrelli's going to keep all of you from going back? It seems… counterintuitive, considering that your presence in the past is … sort of what started all this. Keeping you here may, in fact, be the reason that our precogs are not seeing a future for us. I think the only hope we have of keeping this future is to send you back and ….. " She looks at Alex, at Helena. And then says more quietly, "And as much as it sucks, to let nature take its course as it was meant to."
"Peter's going to need more than my help," Gillian says softly, putting her half eaten muffin aside and sitting up. The plan sounds much like how it should, but there's a lot that hasn't been said. "Peter can't teleport you back right now. Possibly at all. He can't time travel anymore." Her voice is calm, but there's tension around her eyes as she speaks. "There's a lot of secrets that my husband has been keeping that are coming back to bite us all in the ass. At this exact moment, the only person who has the power to send you back, as far as I know… is Arthur Petrelli."
Helena sighs. "Elisabeth, I know Arthur Petrelli is going to try to stop us, okay? He was pushing for me to resign myself to living in this timeline as it is." Her eyes draw to Gillian. Her expression says it clearly: oh shit. Back to Elisabeth. "If he's got the power and thought we should go, he'd have sent us back right now. I don't want to waste time arguing about his motives, I prefer to act with appropriate caution. Then, "The smartest thing to do would be to go ahead and see what Kaito's video has to say. At least then we can determine what we need to do, and what kind of steps need to be taken. Maybe…maybe we won't need to deal with Arthur."
"It's possible," Cat remarks with a tone of some slight hope to her voice, "if Kaito knew we'd be at this situation he may well have anticipated needing a carrier to accomplish the task and given directions on finding one." She rises from her seat, leaving the group behind to enter her office and wait for the electronic arrival. When it comes she will transfer it to a portable and bring it out for general viewing. It takes close to sixty seconds before she's out of view.
After a few seconds of thinking about the black death of the future and the approaching departure of his friends, Teo decides he needs some coffee. He shoves off the wall with a flex of his shoulder and lopes off to pour some from the table over, giving Al a wordless glance, brief, to see whether or not firecrotch wants some. "Arthur took Peter's space-time manipulation from him?" he asks. There's a quaver-beat's silence, and a grunt: he isn't surprised.
Evidently he does. Al nods grimly at Teo. It's like old times, with the redhead sitting with his arms folded, looking exceedingly dour and displeased with the world. He doesn't want to go, no matter how necessary it may truly be.
With the information that Arthur is, in fact, the only person who can help, Elisabeth simply sighs. "Well, now…. that's a serious wrench in the works, isn't it? It's never simple, right?" she murmurs with a rueful smile. To think, some part of her was nostalgic for all the cloak and dagger shit not so long ago. Right about now, faced with the passion of Helena's conviction, Elisabeth just feels old. "Let's hope we don't need to take on Arthur Petrelli head-on…. that is practically suicide," she comments, glancing at Gillian. Then she looks toward Teo and sighs heavily. "There's also the issue of… what happens if we send certain of this group back. Elle Bishop is a Company agent. She could derail everything."
"Daddy P just /loves/ us oh so much." the female voice from the corner says. Isabelle Ashford leans forward. Dressed in a black tank top and black cotton pants the pyro looks fairly relaxed. She runs a hand through her long dark brown hair and her grey eyes study the people in the room.
"Easy.. shut her up." In regards to Elle Bishop, Izzy grins darkly.
"That's close enough to the gist of it, Teo, but not the complete story. Either way, Peter can get timespace manipulation back from him, but he has to be able to get close enough to do it… and you're right," Gillian looks toward Elisabeth, though she barely knows the woman. Arthur isn't someone anyone wants to take on. Much less his own son. The talk of Elle Bishop, and the possibility that she could derail things, and that they'd need to shut her up… that makes her shake her head. "I think there's enough that's been derailed already."
"I don't want to kill her, especially since we don't know if she might be key in some way." Helena says. "Or if having everyone alive and breathing is necessary." Which might imply Helena's entertained the thought. "However, I don't trust her, and I don't trust Jessica. So I'd like everyone to consider them on a need to know basis; summarily? They don't need to know. Not until we're a lot closer to making this happen." She takes a breath. "There's one more thing people should be aware of. Peter suggested I contact Gabriel Gray and ask him to help us. In this timeline," she adds for the benefit of the Timelost, "He's been rehabilitated. So he'll be around, and possibly his wife Eileen as well." Yeah, Eileen. Crazy world, innit? She continues, "I'm still going to keep my eye out for trouble. I can't escape not trusting him entirely." A flicked gaze is given to Gillian, faintly apologetic.
There's no real surprise in Teodoro's face when the names of his former allies are evoked, but then, everybody knew he kept some damn strange company before he slowly transitioned into keeping practically none at all.
He takes up the two cups of coffee, both of them equally dark and only faintly sweetened, and strides back across the floor to give Alexander one. The other, he nurses in the hollow of his hand. "I'll help you work with Gabriel and Eileen. We're still on better than speaking terms. Unfortunately, I don't know any other space-time manipulators, so it looks like getting Peter's ability back is the only visible route.
"Long, short, sounds like a scrap. Preferably between some of the most powerful Evolved in the world." Deadpan. Teo could be talking about golf tees or the construction of origami animals. He says, flatly, "I don't think Arthur even fucking sleeps anymore.
"Whether it comes to blows or not, you'd all do damn well not to let on anything you're planning— make him think you're happy to stay in 2019. He—" Words hyphenate, cut short in a click of teeth. His mouth finds a hard line and he recedes, again, behind that same arm's distance of practical secrecy that's characterized him for more than a decade.
Al summarily dumps sugar and cream into his coffee. He frankly sneers at the mention of Gabriel. "Gray? Really? Will wonders never cease?" His voice is a rasp. "Haven't we got someone who can mindwipe the touchy ones before we go, if we gotta take 'em back?"
"It doesn't matter whether we tell them anything, Helena — most of the damaging information, they can pull right off the 'net at the local library," Elisabeth comments. "They already know what's coming, it's not like anyone's kept them in the dark for the past month. So I'm certainly all for the idea of keeping them in the dark about the specifics, but I should point out here… it is entirely possible that they could have made any number of contacts with people we've got no clue on. No one's been tailing either of them 24/7, although Trask's been making at least an effort to keep tabs on Elle." Her expression flickers briefly into more emotional territory — sadness and some level of disgust for her erstwhile lover's choices — but she opts to not say word one.
"So besides the realization that we're entirely up shit creek with maybe an inflatable paddle… do we have any clue how we're going to wage global thermonuclear war on Arthur Petrelli and come out unscathed?" And now she fires Helena a grin. "Sorry… yeah, I know… retreating into old mindsets," Liz offers.
"Oh no no, there will not be any killing. None at all." Isabelle folds her arms and rises from the chair to lean against a nearby wall. "How do we want to go about /getting/ Peter's ability back? Sounds like the most logical way to go.. if not impossible though."
"I'm sure a telepath could have them not remember anything.." Izzy tilts her head. "It would make things easier to deal with when we got back." With the notion of fighting Big Daddy P on the table Isabelle shrugs. "He has /a lot/ of power, right? Wouldn't Gabriel be able to match that? That's only if he would help us, am I right?"
"Don't give me that look, Helena," Gillian says with a shake of her head. While she loved Gabriel in past, this girl's present, it's the past, and it doesn't necessarily mean she trusts him as much as she tried to then. Now there's actually anger under her eyes. "What you do with people from your own time is your own business. It's your future you're fucking up once you go back. So you're the only ones who can really decide what you do with it." Their future, as far as she's concerned, is a wavery thing indeed. She's long since accepted that, even with her son in mind.
It's a bit like conducting an orchestra, as Helena addresses each person in turn. First, Liz: "Hey Chicken Little, it's been ten years and the sky's still not falling. We'll be okay. You say this stuff all the time and we still pull it out of our asses, time to have a little faith, you think? Though umm…how close are the tabs that Sergei's keeping? Nevermind, don't answer that. Still, you're missing the point - the damage isn't done as far as the plan to get back. That's what I'm talking about regarding a need to know basis."
Then to Isabelle: "I want to see what Kaito's tape has to say before we decide what we're going to do about Arthur Petrelli. And I don't think mindwiping is a common telepathic skill, but we can look into it." Gillian gets a wry expression. "We might fuck it up if we go back, but if we stay here, we'll probably die. But I know, preaching to the choir." Only then, does she look to Teo.
"What is it?" she prompts, gently but firmly.
Rough fingers flex around the teacup in Teo's hands, and he meets Helena's gaze with a wry twitch at the corner of his mouth. "There isn't anybody that can't be killed with the right tools. Volken showed us that eleven years ago. Bring Sergei. Get Gabriel on your side, if you can— and I'm pretty fucking sure you can." A shrug seesaws through the breadth of his shoulders. "Time it right, you'll get what you need. It's never as surgical as we want it to be, but we've gotten the fucking job done in the end."
Bitter? Naw.
"Bishop, I figure you could lock in a basement for awhile in 2009. Telepathic mindwipe, or get Kinson on her. Feed her to Arthur in Pinehearst during your own era if need be. He might be able to brainwash her into doing something useful against the Company. I don't know. Her little problem doesn't have to be solved now." Or he's merely forgotten where the moral demarcations that Phoenix once operated within fall. Teo's brow furrows faintly and he takes a drink of coffee.
Alexander is just silent. He likes the idea of working with Gray about as much as he likes the idea of sutures without anesthetic. Not quite sulking, but clearly, he's here to listen. Not much use for him as the muscle, in this period.
Emerging from her office, Cat returns to the group with a portable computer in hand, opened and booted up. She sets the device where all can see the screen, and shares whatever she has on it from Kaito.
"You don't want to know," Liz assured Helena. There's a bark of laughter as Helena calls her Chicken Little… cuz damned if the young woman's not right. "It's called 'preparing for the worst, hoping for the best,' young lady. And yes… we do always seem to manage to pull it out of our asses," she chuckles. But she looks around the group and says softly, "Gabriel will help any way he can. I don't know about anyone else, but I've already talked a little to him too. Hell, if we can get HIM anywhere near Petrelli, he might be able to take the power too." She shrugs. "We've got some options here. So… let's see what Kaito Nakamura's transmission adds in terms of options, and work from there." Down to business.
Saying nothing further, Izzy just lifts her head to watch the transmission. "Where's the popcorn?"
With nothing more than a nod at the observations made so far, Gillian retrieves her muffin (which isn't popcorn, but works okay) and tilts her head to watch the screen. Like everyone else, she's interested in seeing what a dead man has to say about all of this.
Helena murmurs faintly, "'We're so fucked' is not preparing for the worst." but she doesn't pursue it. Izzy's given a smirk as she too turns her attention to the screen.
There's a router down between here and Israel, somewhere. Normally, not a problem, but Hana Gitelman is quite a practical creature at her core. Though she could mentally relay every decrypted bit she had pulled out of the ether using her ability, securing the transfer of an E-mail is far easier to handle while multi-tasking with slaying terrorists. The transmission itself, the original file, is a long time coming.
There is, however, a simple text summary available of the message's important contents. Teo lopes over to toggle the file open with a rapid keypress of passwording, careful to hold the coffee up and out of the way. Stands back, stepping out of the way, that his companions might have a look. The alphanumerical string is ignobly brief, brutally simple, and doubtless chilling for the necessities that it intimates.
Temporal displacement origin — 05/14/2019 — Pinehearst Tower
The bartender tilts her head at the screen and blinks, "Hm?" she says aloud as she focuses in front of her. Isabelle blows a strand of hair out of her eyes.
"Pinehearst Tower— fucking appropriate," Gillian says with a hint of a laugh, shaking her head. "Really was too much to hope that some dead guy was going to just tell us everything that we needed to do."
Helena eyes the information with a mix of relief and dismay. "That doesn't tell us what we need to do." she says. "Or even where in Pinehearst Tower we need to be. Or the conditions or - or anything!"
"The rest of it is probably in the recording, if it's there," Teo says, tilting his head to study the text, from the empty lefthand margin to the blinking cursor to the right. His right eyebrow mounts a ruefully quizzical angle. "Pretty fucking straightforward to infer that you're going to need to get into the ironclad belly of the Petrelli fortress for your departure, though. That's going to be fun."
There probably isn't enough actual sarcasm in Teodoro's voice to reassure anybody immediately present. He lopes back to his spot on the wall just off Alexander's shoulder, tipping more coffee into his mouth.
Al is trying not to pout, really he is. But his lack of enthusiasm for a frontal assault on the Pinehearst building is crystal clear. Another dangerous battle for a goal he doesn't particularly care to reach.
Elisabeth hasn't had much to say as they've watched and… not gotten much for it. Especially since Helena pretty much spoke her thoughts aloud anyway. "What ever happened to Anne? Or hell…. I mean, teleporters to get us into the belly of the beast can be found. Worst case, we could freakin' well hire someone. Once we're there, though, basically it's all or nothing, right? We've got to get in there, WITH someone with temporal displacement powers, and hope that between Gillian's amping and the person's control of the temporal situation, we can get people back to 2009…." She pauses. "And bear in mind, we're not even sure you're from OUR 2009. I mean…. in our timeline, the raid on Moab failed dismally."
"It is what it is," Cat observes, her eyes still lingering on the single sentence as if expecting there would be more. "Eight days. Getting in might not be so hard. I think the difficult part would be getting out." Attention goes to Teo. "Is there supposed to be more to this, Teo?" she asks.
"Obviously we are meant to be there.. whatever the answer is to our problem.. it's in that building." Izzy says and folds her arms. "Fucking.. great. But it can be done. If Daddy P wants to keep us here, why don't we.. stage a false meeting with him? While he's preoccupied with the meeting, some of us snoop around. See what we can find." Isabelle points out to the others and looks thoughtful.
There's a knock at the door. If attendance has already been taken of those assembled, that might make it relatively easy to guess who the latecomer is… assuming they're on the 'guest list'.
"I know a couple teleporters, and there's a possibility Peter will be able to teleport for it as well," Gillian says, though the use of the words possibility it doesn't. "But she's right, your future isn't ours anymore. Not if the raid wasn't a complete fuck up. And that means everything that comes after is your future." Not theirs. Pretty much exactly what she was saying before. "We'll just have to figure out how to get out after we get in." And everything that comes after— if anything comes after. At the knock, she glances over, then looks at Cat. Her place, after all.
Helena gets up at the sound of someone at the door. "You don't have to go, Elisabeth." Minnie tells her. "You're not essential and while you would be helpful, if you're concerned you have too much to lose, you don't have to." Her eyes take in a few people as she crosses over and checks the door monitor. Oh, okay. She opens the door. "Hello, Lucrezia." she says softly, and steps aside to let the Italian woman in.
"Zia Lucrezia." Teo's greeting is prompt. He downs the rest of his coffee in one go, puts the cup down on the low shelf near his shoulder and goes to his family to drop a kiss on her duskier cheek. She's invited to the chair that he'd rejected earlier with a motion of his hands, even as he angles a glance up at Catherine. "There are probably more words to it, but I don't know about the other information he has to share.
"I told Hana that you were looking for a physical and temporal point to jump from, since that was the original order. I figure that's probably why she culled that out of her decryption and put that in the summary. She might have transcribed more if she knew we were a little more thoroughly fucked than that." He's being either flippant or factual. Possibly both.
Alexander reflexively stands up when Lucrezia appears, though he doesn't offer a greeting beyond that. Likely the only woman he still thinks to do that for. He doesn't look all that sanguine about the chances for the raid, still.
Elisabeth looks toward Helena, her voice quiet and matter-of-fact. "No matter which way this goes, I'm going to lose, Helena. I'll do whatever it takes to get you guys home…. in the hopes that this future and the people I love in it don't cease to exist." And with that, she heads for the kitchen to refill her coffee cup.
"Buona sera," Cat offers to the new arrival, before commenting again on the issue at hand. "We'll need to find a person who can do the transporting," she opines, "for a redundancy assuming the most likely outcome of not being able to get the ability from Arthur. And we'll need one for at least keeping Arthur busy if he finds and opposes us making the attempt. It doesn't say where in Pinehearst Tower people need to be. We might even be able to secure invitiations for all of us to see the place, perhaps acting as if they've accepted staying here."
"Then let's get a move on, eh?" Izzy nods at everyone. "We need to get in contact with her teleporters." Isa jerks her thumb towards Gillian. "Hook up with Peter Boy and get this show going."
The woman stands to stretch and she looks at Lu as she walks in, the Italian woman is given a nod in greeting. She doesn't know much about her, hasn't really taken the time to find out anything either. "Exactly, Cat. Let him think we're gonna agree to his plans. He should be happy to welcome us to the building."
"But we should also consider the option that Arthur has a contingency plan for this, in case we don't agree to his actions and try to go against him. He may try to trap us in the building."
"Buona sera, buona sera…" The sulty starlet of days gone by offers neither excuses nor explanations as to her tardiness. She merely enters into the penthouse and proceeds apace as if this was the precisely appointed hour for her arrival… four hours after everyone else. Lucrezia always did like to make an entrance. Or, at the very least, completely monopolize the attention of a room for a moment or two.
She lingers on the periphery for only a moment before spying a place to sit that allows her a vantage point from which to keep an eye on nearly everyone else in the room without turning her head. It is notably not the chair that Teo offers. No more than a minute passes before she's extracted a slightly rough-edged package of brown-papered cigarettes from the pocket of her jacket — it's so vulgar to tote the pack, you know, but she has yet to find the time in order to purchase a proper case — and summarily proceeds to set one ablaze so that she might have something to suck on while everyone else speaks. She doesn't ask to be filled in on what she missed, though the reason for this makes itself more or less obvious when a small white moth emerges from beneath the lampshade of an unilluminated light and flutters its way across the room in order to alight on the unoccupied fingertips of its mistress until she dismisses it in the direction of the door.
"I do work at Pinehearst, so getting inside won't be that difficult for me. As one of the head archivists I might even be able to get you to the upper floors as guests, if teleporters don't work out… but I think I need to talk to Peter— see exactly how far he's willing to take this," Gillian says quietly, looking at the others. Even with the newcomers to the meeting just showing up, she begins to stand, taking a moment to finish the last of her muffin.
Elisabeth's retort is heard, but Helena's on to other things. "We're missing something important." Helena says, crossing back to the couch and scooping up her coffee cup. She sips, and then turns to Gillian. "What is Arthur's ability? I mean, what specifically does he do that makes him so formidable? Aside from having a lot of material wealth and power?" She does note absently to Cat, "I bet he can read minds, and if he can't, he probably has people who can." But it's just a thought to put out there, her focus is mostly on Gillian for an answer. But she does note quietly, "He promised."
Though recent experience has shown that Teo is at times lacking in the perceptivity department, he notices that something is off about the new arrival. This strain of disharmony has him looking at her from as many angles as he can for a few seconds— and given the number of eyes that the other guests place on her in those few seconds, that's a lot of angles. Unable to immediately determine any physical ailings he can think to attack, he installs himself at her shoulder, hands in his pockets.
It takes him a few seconds to recalibrate his mind and rejoin the conversation. Chicken Little gets a ghost of a smile; a promise they'll talk later, if not a guarantee for anything greater than that. He studies Gillian briefly, considering the risks that she and her husband will be putting themselves at. For the first time since the meeting went into session, he looks—
Worried. Shakes himself slightly, before looking at Helena. "He takes people's abilities. Absorbs them through touch, and then he can use them afterward. A little like Gabriel, a little like Peter. All the control of the former, but the process is as quick and effortless as his son."
Trask comes in part way, leaning on a back wall he locks eyes with Liz and nods, then just listens.
There's a faint smile toward Trask as he joins the group, but Liz looks back toward them and listens silently.
"So we'll need to gather more information, the means we had hoped to use aren't available," Cat concludes, "and we'll need to keep each other informed, possibly reconvene to finalize the plan. For now, it seems best to adjourn."
"It's time for some food." Izzy says with a grin and rubs her hands together. "We shouldn't hesitate on this.. the faster we can get back to our time, the better I think." Izzu looks at everyone as she says and smiles softly.
"I'll be damn if he gets to take my ability though. That's kind of like.. a thief." She points out.
Lucrezia's expression remain little more than a mask as she quietly exhales a mouthful of thick, spiced smoke. Her head is temporarily wreathed in it; the mist worn like a halo momentarily before it dissipates into nothingness, ascending ever upward toward cathedral ceiling. Meeting's over? Well, at least she could find the time in her extremely busy schedule of doing God only knows what in order to make a cameo, eh? She makes no eager jerk or gesture for departure. She has a clove cigarette to finish before she'll be willing to consider relocation.
"Arthur takes abilities from people like us. Not exactly in the way Peter does, because the people he takes powers from… they don't get to keep them afterwards. It's the reason Peter can't time travel anymore," Gillian explains simply, looking at the blonde woman from the past from where she stands. Yes, she saw that look. "What happened to Peter is complicated. But you can pretty much say that Arthur can do everything that Peter could— and a whole lot more."
There's a pause, as she hesitates on something, then moves closer to Helena before she says, "I know he promised, and I said I would send you back to. But what I meant… I need to find out if he's willing to help take down— or even kill— his own father in order to keep his promise to you."
Helena hesitates at that…and nods, eyes darkening. Then, "Lucrezia, Sergei - I can go everything for you. And Sergei, I need to talk to you in private, a bit later."
Nor does Teo seem inclined to retreat from his aunt's side now, despite that the rest of the conference is drawing to a close. He watches the trickle of smoke column from Lucrezia's hand — or else, he's watching something else much further afield, somewhat absentmindedly. "Please give him my regards. Peter," he tells Gillian.
Trask says, "So How does killing our only ride out of here exactly help us again?" Trask came in late maybe but even he has problems putting 2 and 2 together here."
She continues to project calm and confidence as is her fashion in discussing operational matters despite having suggested things be adjourned and reconvened after assets are found and a plan of sorts nailed down. Being negative won't help anything, there has to always be the projected expectation of success. To do otherwise invites self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Cat moves to occupy a seat near Gillian. "I'd hoped we'd have been able to talk more and earlier this past month."
Isabelle is silent but she walks over to stand next to Teo. "Psst.. by the way Teo.. ten years has done /nothing/ to your figure." Izzu grins and leans against the wall. Was she serious?
"No need to trouble yourself," replies the Italian woman with a smile tempered in cold cast iron. The butt of her smoldering cigarette held barely more than a breath away from her lips by rigid digits while she sits perfectly still and considers the awkward occupants of the room, all now milling uncertainly amongst the remains of a dead conversation. Isabelle's invasion of her personal space via proximity to Teo is tolerated only for as long as it takes to fill her lungs with another unhealthy mouthful of clove-scented smoke. She's on her feet again and traveling, headed for the doorway she only recently darkened in arrival. Coming, going. Transition from here to there, then to now. It's all universally meaningless in the scheme of things, at least in so far as Lucrezia Bennati is concerned. She's off to once again resume taking up space with her own shadow on the fourth floor.
"Well, it sounds like we've both been busy," Gillian says, looking over at Cat moving to sit nearby, even though she's already gotten to her feet herself. "Hopefully when this is over, we'll be able to talk to each other about things that are less 'oh fuck, the world might be ending and we have to get these people from the past back where they belong.'" It's said with a familiar smirk that makes dimples appear. Though it's a smirk that would have been less and less common these days. "And we'll be able to talk about that— after I talk to Peter. Once we know more we can make a plan of what to do. It's good to see you again, Teo," she adds to her old friend, before giving each of the time travellers a glance over and a nod. And with that, she starts to the door.
"Lucrezia, you need to know what's going on - " Helena says, as Lu waltzes out the door. Helena's nostrils flare a moment in indignation, and she looks over at Teo and Alex, as if Lucrezia is all their fault. Sighing, she looks at Trask. "Before I answer your questions? What's the situation with Elle?"
There's a reciprocal wink for Isabelle, albeit one short-lived because of— other factors.
The wrongness of his aunt's actions and reactions keeps sinking its teeth deeper into the fabric of Teo's mind. He stares after her abrupt departure with a blank expression that fails to catch color even after Phoenix's inimitable leader calls after her and finds herself summarily ignored. People have different reactions to death. You can read about it in books— there's an arc, stages, a grieving process of reasonable accuracy written by Kubler-Ross.
Somewhat less thoroughly explored, reactions to their own. His brows tighten into a thoughtful knit. Half-listening to Trask and Helena's conversation, he steps over to Alexander, offers the redhead one callused hand.
Trask looks at Helena, "She is under control, she hasn't stepped out of line yet, she was actually in a good mood for the last couple weeks, though she is more pensive the last few days, I think the fact that she realizes she has no place in this world is starting to get to her.
"I don't believe Miss Bishop will be a problem," Cat says as she has a number of times over the past month. She knows Arthur planned to speak with her, but not if it actually happened, and she's had plans to make whatever she does irrelevant anyway. All the data she's been compiling so Primatech can still be exposed to the public if Roger Goodman is neutralized.
After making that statement, she returns attention to the computer screen, hoping more of what was found from Kaito arrives.
Helena is still looking directly at Trask. "Elisabeth had kind of a funny look when she mentioned you keeping an eye on her." Helena says. "I can still trust you, right," noticing everyone's gone now, "Norton?"
Trask raises an eyebrow, "Is my loyalty in question? Do you want to tie me to a chair and draw a circle around me? I think I have some hand cuffs if you want to replay old fantasies" He waggles an eyebrow at Helena.
She doesn't study the screen long. There will or won't be more, Cat opts not to wait for it. She can check later. At present she becomes pensive, considering the matter of how to pull this off and overcome Arthur's opposition if needed, soon wandering back toward her office area to compile more data for sending back with the displaced persons.
Helena lifts a brow as she resumes a seat. "I'm not even going to bother to pretend how perverted and gross that is. I just want to know that I can trust you to do what may need doing, rather than having your face in Elle's rack or whatever."
Trask settles in opposite you, "Sergei's a perv, isn't that what you use to say?" He leans back, "And what do you think needs to be done with Elle?"
"I think that Elle needs to be left out of knowing our plans until the last possible moment. Jessica, too. But you haven't bothered to answer my question, and that has me worried." Helena replies.
Trask says, "Yes you can trust me, and yes you can count on me…and if it really is a question in your mind we have a lot more problems then Elle Bishop."
Helena's mouth presses into a thin line. "The moment of disgust on Liz's face when I asked about you in context of Elle was pretty telling, Trask. I just hope that psychopath didn't distract you with her feminine wiles." She leans back. "I don't know if I can go over this again right now, but I promise I'll get you caught up shortly."
Trask raises his eyebrow at the term disgust, "I see…know this no matter what has happened, I havn't compromised myself. But if you really think I might have, you know what my advise would be, You look out for the end goal first, don't risk anything on me, get our people home.
"I may not have a choice." Hel says frankly. "I may need you in a big way when it comes to Arthur. Do you have my back, Norton? All of our backs? Before Elle Bishop's? Maybe even at the sacrifice of Elle Bishop's?"
Trask leans forward, "I want to see all of us go home, I want to put history right, but if it is a question of you or Elle, you know which side I fall on, I will always have your back. I don't think it is going to come to that though, unless you force the issue.
"I don't know, or I wouldn't feel the need to ask." Helena says frankly. "I'll hold you to it, Norton. I…I want to go home. I'll do anything I have to."
Trask rises, and gives you a long hard look. "You never have to doubt me Hell, I would follow you through you if I had to." He smiles softly, "Just let me know what we are doing and I have your back.
Helena nods. "Let me get as much of it together as I can, and I'll have it all for you and everyone else who didn't make it in time to hear it as it was laid out. And keep in mind, do not let Elle or Jessica know."
Trask says, "We are taking them with us, right?"
Helena nods. "As of right now, yes. I just don't know how motivated they are or how inclined they are to take things into their own hands. They're both psychopaths, and that makes them unpredictable."
Trask nods, "I havn't seen much psychopath from Elle so far, but that doesn't mean its not there.
Helena makes a face. "I think trying to kill me twice and Peter at least once qualifies her in my book."
Trask grins, "I am only going by what I am seeing, I am not disputing you."
Helena snorts. "Apparently you didn't see her when we raided the Company. She was there that night, you know."
Trask says, "I'm afraid not…I was with Mohinder aka Sylar and Peters team for that one."
Helena points out wearily, "Trask, so was I."
Trask says, "Hell, We will get through this, you guys are going home, one way or the other no matter how many people I have to go through to get you home.""
The video begins with grainy footage depicting Kaito Nakamura seated at a desk. Despite the attempts at seeming that business is as usual, it's obvious that the desk has seen better days, and the cracked, concrete wall behind Kaito shows water stains of age. He is a thinner, more drawn-out man than he was ever seen as before, hair nearly completely white, eyes sunken deeply into their sockets. Behind Kaito, a medical stand holding an IV bag casts a shadow on the wall, narrow and dark.
"If you are seeing this message," Age has not dulled the sharpness of his voice, "then I am dead. My health has finally failed me, and a group of people loyal to myself have taken up my identity in an attempt to distract Arthur, to lead him away from the truth— that I am truly gone." Folding his hands on the top of the dust-powdered desk, Kaito's dark eyes stare piercingly ahead at the camera. "But even if I have passed, there is certain information that must be relayed to others in order to save the future. To prevent the trade of one evil for another."
Breathing in a wheezing breath, Kaito's brows lower, creasing his weathered brow. "To those receiving this message, it is imperitive that Peter Petrelli be made aware of the temporal displacement origin, on the roof of Pinehearst Tower" his head tilts to the side, "one which will take place on May Fourteenth, Two-Thousand and Nineteen."
Squaring his shoulders, trying to look confident and strong despite his condition, Kaito continues. "It is imperitive that those of you listening to this message rescue Peter Petrelli from Pinehearst tower and relay to him this message. He must find Stephen Canfield, to do so is to ensure there is a future for us all."
With a stern look in his eyes, Kaito's words turn a strange touch soft, "I have never doubted you, Peter, in your capacity to do the right thing, and make difficult decisions. Do not prove your old mentor wrong, and do not be afraid."
From off-camera, a voice called out, 'Kaito— we have to hurry, I think they're coming." Kaito's head tilts into a nod, and his eyes focus back to the camera, lips pressed together in a thin line.
"May Fourteenth, the roof of Pinehearst Tower, with Stephen Canfield's ability. It is the only place and time, Peter. Just remember, when you are in doubt — think of the place where you dreamt of true strength."
"Kaito— Kaito we've got to go!" The sounds of popping gunfire fills the background of the video, shortly before it fades to static.