Participants:
| Scene Title | Worst Recruiter Ever |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Following Teo's orders, Owen tries to approach NotSylar (that's Miles) and winds up rescuing the body thief's latest vessel from Elvis. |
| Date | December 7, 2008 |
The middle-eastern Joe Sixpack man reaches into his pocket to pull out his wallet, he pulls out some cash and asks the clerk over as to pay for his drink. "That's some really good coffee you got there, here's a little something extra for you." He smiles with the exchange of tender. Miles glances around one last moment in his current vessel before he decides that he's best off jumping ship, sort to speak, into a new body. His hand brushes against the clerks and now he sees the shop, and the world, from a new perspective, figuratively speaking of course.
'The Clerk' Miles takes the cash, lifting his head back and looking around the shop again. The middle-eastern man just sits there for a moment longer, looking a bit lost or confused, staring at the cup of coffee in his hand.
Unaware of the swap, Owen steps out of the men's room at the back of the shop and quite boldly sits down on an empty stool next to 'Joe'. "That was a nasty spill you took earlier," he says to the disoriented man. "Are you okay? You look a little…out of it."
The middle-eastern cab driver gives Owen a funny look,"Who are you? What're you talking about? Do you know how I got here?" The man asks questionably, giving Owen a rather lost and confused gaze.
The youhtful clerk, Miles, leans on the counter and says abruptly,"You drove here in your cab man. It's parked right outside, are you okay? You've been acting kind of weirdly ever since you've showed up. You might want to go see a doctor, of some kind, dude." The clerk, Miles, smirks a bit mischievously, glancing over at Owen briefly before standing upright again and asking,"Can I get you anything else, sir?"
The foreigner looks around for a moment or two trying to gather his wits it seems before he rises up from his seat and heads out of the door and to his cab without further ado.
Owen gives the clerk an incredulous look and mouths the word 'Wierd?' before glancing sidelong toward the cab driver to watch him take his leave. "Hey, wait!" he slides off his stool, clearly not enthused by the prospect of accosting this potential boogeyman…who…seems to not be smiling or acting coherent anymore…but bound by duty to at least try. He holds up a finger in a bid for patience to the clerk. "Hold that thought."
The cab driver is given a curious glance, before Elvis slips into the coffee shop. She'd left her helmet back at her bike, but she was still sporting her bandana over her face. With gloved hands stuffed into pockets, fingering collectively four pounds of steel and lead in either pocket. She files into line a bit back, watching Owen out of the corner of her eye for a moment before looking to the menu to seemingly ponder over it. Now she just needed some direction, and this would go nice and quick."Hrmm…"
Miles, the clerk, shakes his head,"Dude. He's not the one you're after." He states rather bluntly before Owen goes chasing after 'ghosts' sort to speak. He smirks a bit mishievously, tilting his head to the side. "You want another one of those rice krispie things?" The clerk reaches into the bin to pull out a treat and sets it on the table,"Take one. It's on the house."
"Oh, and your friend needs to see a shrink. For real. She's just a little bit too paranoid for my tastes." He chuckles lightly, and then he fixes himself an expresso and downs it. "Ahh.. That stuff is awesome."
The acne-plagued youth, Miles, turns his attention to the 'new customer', Elvis, and asks,"Can I get something for you, lady? I think you're looking for the bar a couple blocks that away. We don't serve alcohol here."
To the unaware, it often seems that Owen adapts with alarming quickness to sudden and jarring changes in the status quo. The truth is, he spent a stretch of seconds doing the math on this one, hanging in the doorway with his lips parted to try and get the cab driver's attention. The world around him crawled at a liesurely pace, giving him plenty of time to get his bearings. So now that the world's caught up to him he lets go of the door and shrugs, sounding as if this were an everyday occurrence. He still has his mission, but now he has a better idea of what's going on. "She didn't take her medicine," he obediently lies. "Normally she's much more coherent. You missed the part with the bugs." Okay, now he's ad-libbing. He shrugs, disinclined to turn down free treats, despite having Abby's unfinished one in his pocket, and reaches for the offered square. "Thanks." He's shooting glances toward Elvis, which convey in their brevity the indication that he -thinks- they're okay. A surreptitious shrug and a subtle thumbs-up go a ways toward backing this up.
Thats it, thats all she needs. That swagger, her paranoid friend. Sylar the shape changer, the guy who blew up New York and here she was. Talk about a Rush. Elvis Calmly steps up to the counter, as if she was going to order. She half turns to glance over her shoulder, as her hands drop from her pockets. Then, theres really no choice. She's been riding on this high since she got the call.
In a flash, she swings out with her left hand to grab Miles by the shirt collar. To call her fast, is an understatement nor is she anywhere near as weak as her size might suggest. Her right arm drops free, before quickly drawing back. Armored motorcycle gloves, wrapped in a pair of high carbon steel knuckles weighted with lead shot. "Fucker!" is the most intelligent quip she can come up with on such short notice!
Miles grins at Owen, shaking his head,"You seem fairly calm, assumingly, for somebody that has just discovered, well you know." Miles raises his eyebrows to Elvis as he waits for a response, which comes almost immediately as soon as he turns his attention to her he is grabbed by the shirt collar,"Whoa…" Is about all that comes out of his mouth before imminent impact of a fist to this acne covered face.
Its picture perfect, first her feet start to shift. Then the power rockets from her legs, through her back and then that arm is coming in a left hook right at Miles' face. The point of aim is just barely above his cheek bone, and now normally with her bare fists this would produce a one hit knockout. With gloves, it'd be a hospital stay. This however, includes a particularly nasty pair of brass knuckles she'd machined from an old panhead harley's destroyed engine. This was not a swing to knock anyone down, she was aiming at knocking him out of this world.
When that steel-knuckled fist completes its arc, there isn't any meat dangling off of it, no shower of gore, no satisfying crunch, and no fatalities. There is a bit of fabric hanging from a clenched and otherwise unencumbered fist.
There's a rush of displaced air, whoosh, back and forth, that sends rumpled plastic wrap fluttering lazily back down to the counter when it subsides.
There's a Starbucks' employee with a disembodied Evolved inside of him laying on the floor, cold from the pressure of tile upon an elbow that's probably bruised, chilled from the press of his cheek and forehead to the metal cabinet doors under the counter, and a bit breeze from where a hole has been torn in his layers of clothing, where fingers had gripped him.
And there's Owen, wisely doing all of his fussing from just out of reach, flailing his hands as he staggers to a stop back on the customers' side of the counter. "Whoa! Hey! Quit! Chill! No! Um….stop! He's alright!" There's a deceptively momentary pause in which Owen seems to flicker from one posture to another, suddenly thoughtful. "I think. Anyway…yeah. Um.." He looks around abashedly at the scene inevitably being caused now. "Great."
He doesn't even have time to make a sound as he's forced out of the way of that flying fist of death. Now he's on the floor, looking around a bit confusedly,"Uh, okay." He pushes off the floor to sit up first, and then rises up to his feet, brushing himself off, he glances at the shirt he's wearing and sighs,"Damn. You ripped his shirt."
Finally, Miles gets his bearings and turns his attention toward Owen and Elvis rather disheartenedly, he frowns,"Man," he whines,"That was not cool." He sighs, shaking his head,"This is getting out of hand. I think it's time I left." He starts to move, aimed in the direction of the back exit.
"Fucking hell!"Yes, Elvis is a woman of wise words. She isnt going to linger, she isnt going to play games. She doesnt know Owen, but she does know Sylar has friends and thats an aweful lot what Owen looks like right now. Theres the briefest of pauses, before she rocks back onto her heels and swiftly bolts out the way she came in!
Theres no talking, no deposition. Once Elvis is outside its a dead sprint, at an entirely superhuman pace despite her heavy motorcycle boots!
"That was random," Owen says mildly, flinching away from Elvis as she bolts from the shop and then standing in place for long enough to let out a sigh, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. He gives the clerk a head start, so as to grab his krispie square off the counter, and then lets out a frustrated groan as he gives chase.
Assuming Owen is fast enough to catch up to him before he reaches the street — where there is a buffet of bodies for him to choose from, that is where the clerk was heading as he walked — not ran, from the scene in Starbucks through the back alley to the street.
Having figured out that his quarry switches bodies, Owen keeps a close watch on the clerk, intent on heading him off before he can reach the street. He appears in the back alley, framed by the light from the street, seeming to resolve from a blur of motion, like a smudge of ink spreading in reverse across the scene. "Hold on, I'm just supposed to talk to you. I swear! I don't know what that-" he gestures behind him, in the vague direction of the last place he saw Elvis, "..was all about, but it wasn't part of the plan."
Well, Miles was about half way from the Starbucks to the street before Owen spoke to him. "There's a plan? A plan for what exactly?" Miles responds, glancing over his shoulder as he continues to walk toward the end of the alley, he stops to turn around then to look at Owen completely, folding his arms across his chest. "Why did she run away from me, calling me Sylar? Why did that other girl attack me for no reason? All that is not part of your plans? Or someone else's plans? Huh?"
"Dude," Owen replies, shaking his head, "I don't know." He takes a moment, frowning, biting his tongue, to collect his thoughts, and then clarifies. "I mean, all I have is what I've heard, okay? Apparently you scared my friend, and she assumed you were …him. I'm guessing you're not because we still have our brains and nobody's dead. But I think it's because you…because of what you do. Looking different every time someone meets you? That. As to why that girl attacked you…….." Owen gives Miles a wide-eyed, helplessly clueless look and shakes his head, blowing out a sigh. "This guy's pretty scary. Being mistaken for him is not healthy, unless you are him in which case you've already killed everybody and stolen their brains…or blown up Manhattan again. 'cos he did that too."
"If I were him, you'd be dead, by the sounds of it." Miles chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief. "You know? You people shouldn't jump to conclusions so quickly, it's not healthy, for you or for anyone else." He tilts his head to the side slightly, studying Owen momentarily, almost sizing him up in a way. "Who are you? And what do you want?"
"Preaching to the choir, man," Owen confides, throwing up his hands as he rolls his eyes. "My name's Owen. I'm just here to talk to you. And since I don't really know who that was in there, I probably have to do a lot more talking. I thought they were with me, but I don't think……" He shakes his head and holds up a hand.
"Since you're not Sylar, would you mind telling me who you are? Any chance I may have had at subtlety pretty much went out the window, but there's stuff I won't tell you unless I know I can trust you. I'm not stupid enough to think this is one-sided or anything, although to be honest I'm less likely to give you the benefit of the doubt because that body-trading thing is creepy and I don't like it. It's only fair that you know that. 'kay? Now, tell me a little bit about yourself, and I'll see what I feel safe letting you know." As he says this, he fishes a spray can from his backpack, beginning to decorate the brick wall next to him in broad, swooping arcs. He's keeping a watch for Miles though, loath to become a host body for whatever he is.
Miles smirks deviously, watching Owen momentarily, he takes a single step forward, unfolding and dropping his arms to his sides. "Trust? Creepy? Man, you talk alot, and fast too." He chuckles at that,"Let me guess, you're an evolved, that's why you're not freaking out knowing the fact that I can jump from body to body." He lowers his head slightly, narrowing his gaze on Owen intently,"Yes that's right. That's my ability, Owen. And that's all your going to get from me, unless you give me a reason to tell you more." He runs his tongue over his teeth, his mouth staying closed while he does it, his grin creeps more to the right side of his mouth as he then lifts his head and says,"So what's your ability? And you mentioned you were on a mission, a mission to do what exactly? Find out who I am? Find out what I'm capable of? What?"
Miles relaxes a bit, seemingly confident in his position,"Oh, and I'm sorry about startling your friend back there. That was unintentional. Most people are just tell me to fuck off, they don't know me." He laughs at that.
"I'm a peripheral visionary," Owen replies, continuing to outline an abstract shape that's an even distribution of bubbly curvatures and sharp angles, an inward, churning labyrinth of vague shapes. Either he's switching cans very quickly or the one he has is somehow changing colors. The former is infinitely more likely. "I can see into the future. Just…way off to the sides. Anyway, when we called for help because Abby thought you were Sylar, I was asked to test your temper, see if I could goad you into doing something violent. Of course," he pauses to purse his lips in consternation and shake the can he's holding, definitely different from the one he had a moment ago, "the person on the other end wasn't here when everything was happening. I figured tripping you with the chair was enough, and we could give you a break." He steps back from his handiwork-in-progress and offers Miles a rueful look. "Clearly someone else's idea of 'break' differs from mine." He shrugs, pokes his tongue from between his lips and resumes his graffiti.
Miles leans his head back a bit, giving Owen a funny look momentarily, then he laughs at Owen. "Miles. That's my name. Not that it'll matter, cause I can be anyone, anywhere, at anytime. Even you if I so desired." He then happens to look around curiously,"So, where did the rest of your friends head off to exactly? You aren't planning on ambushing me or something are you?"
The person on the other end? So he is following some kind of orders, Miles muses,"Mmm. Well then. Pleasure to meet you." He lifts his hand, giving Owen a saluting wave and then he turns to start walking away.
Owen makes a skeptical sound in the back of his throat as Miles says he could be him. He seems to be satisfied for the moment with the doodle he's left on the wall, so he packs away his spray cans and zips up his backpack, moving to follow along. He makes a point of not being slow enough to get caught. "Last time I checked we didn't ambush anybody. I…I really am sorry for what happened back there." He's keeping his distance as much to give Miles some space as to give himself some peace of mind. "I mean, I don't even know if I'm at all to blame, that's how confusing that was. But that looked like it would've hurt. I hope you care enough about the people you become that you wouldn't want them to die." He pauses a moment, deciding that's a very good question. "How do you feel about that, actually?" Apparently he missed the bit where Miles was trying to take his leave.
"Well, I hate to lose a body, if that's what you're asking." Miles arches an eyebrow quizzically at Owen, turning his head to look at him as he moves around. "You can stop that. I have no intentions of posessing you. Right now." He smirks a little mischievously at that.
"But other than that they don't mean anything to you?" Owen asks, seemingly hung up on that notion. "I mean, these are other peoples' lives…" He doesn't rise to the bait, or stop 'that' either. He'll keep some room between them.
Miles stops moving again, standing now to face Owen,"What does it matter? You going to judge me for mistreating other people's bodies? Is that it?" He scoffs,"You gonna stop me? I'm just living my life to the fullest after all. Just consider me a drifter." Who knows how long that'll be, possibly immortality can be a very long time, but Miles doesn't necessarily know that now.
"Look. If I can help it, I don't trash the bodies I'm in, and I don't seek to ruin peoples' lives, that is, unless of course they want to fuck with me first, then they're simply getting what is coming to them, that's all." A smile creeps over his features.
Owen gives Miles a flat look with a slight, unamused twist of his lips. "Alright, alright," he says, rolling his eyes. Clearly he's decided there's only so far to ride that particular horse before calling it dead. "Whatever. It's your thing. I've already told you I don't like it, but I wouldn't have come back if I hadn't been asked to. We don't have to be friends, but I can assure you that nobody I talk to is going to suggest harassing you again. I didn't want you to die back there and I'm pretty sure you would have. You're Evolved, I'm Evolved, and the country doesn't like any of us very much. What's your take on that?" He is quite possibly the worst recruiter ever.
Miles pauses, narrowing his eyes on Owen intently for a moment, he then relaxes, his features lightening up in a sense as he asks,"Is there a point to these questions? You're starting to sound like a really bad interogator or a really lame interviewer." He sighs, shaking his head,"Woo, I'm evolved. Big freaking deal. I thought it was all, woo hoo, awesome at first, but things happened, changed my opinion, now I kinda you know, have to live this way. I'll tell you something right now, if you or your friends go looking for my real body, it's gone. Ash. I don't have a body of my own anymore, so I'm kinda of forced to live in others' bodies. It's a pain in the ass, if there was another alternative, I wish I knew what it was. As far as the country not liking it? Well, that's why I try my best to keep it a well-known secret. People think I'm dead, better for me if they go hunting for my rotting corpse, cause they won't find jackshit. And I'm sure you can put the pieces together rather easily, but with my ability, I don't really have any concern about what others think, because I can be somebody new tomorrow if I wanted. I have no ambitions other than to live how I want to live, I don't need a government telling me how to and how not to use my ability and frankly, that kind of peeves me a little, but then again, I could be somebody in Congress, or even the President if I wanted and do something about their stupid 'Frontline Act'." He shrugs his shoulders,"Why, is that what you're getting at? You want me to help you and your friends to prevent something like that from happening?"
"I honestly can't see why you would," Owen admits, upon hearing Miles' piece on the matter. It answers just about all his questions, and clearly this relaxes him a bit as well. As to being a lame interrogator, he pleads his guilt shamelessly with a shrug.
"It doesn't sound to me like anybody could do anything for you. And there's not much reason for you to want to do anything for anyone else. That, I don't hold against you. It's the plain truth. I respect that."
He chuckles softly, and once the sound has tapered into silence he says, "It's not about what I want. But because I like who I'm with and what they're doing, when someone asks me to do something like this, I do it. Before you got attacked I could've taken or left this, but now I feel sort of responsible. I can't think of any reason why you should trust me or anybody else. So yeah, I'm a shit recruiter, I won't lie. I'm more of a-"
There's an odd, resonant hiss, the sound of dozens of spray cans going all at once, and a cloying cloud of paint and aerosol castoffs that precede the formation of a Phoenix insignia upon the wall next to Miles, and there's Owen, standing next to that, zipping up his backpack, "pathfinder, I guess. Whatever you call people who..uh..mark things. I could let you meet people who can do a better job of this if you want. And maybe I can make them apologize. Someone should. I'm not sure how I feel about you, but I do think you've been done wrong tonight."
"So I'm right. You are apart of some kind of group." Miles shrugs his shoulders helplessly, tilting his head to the side slightly,"Well, I suppose it couldn't hurt anything to at least meet somebody that knows what they're doing. No offense." He smirks a little at that. "So, where to now, my speedy friend?"
"None taken," Owen replies with a grin. "I have no idea what I'm doing. Just wait here a sec, okay. Stay-" he gestures furtively, "-..you. So I can find you again. I've got to go get something." His backpack sits on the ground a split second later, presumably to serve as assurance that he'll be right back. When he returns, he picks up his backpack and, warily, sets a cell phone on the ground in its place. "Okay, that has a contact number on it that you can call to leave us a way to get in touch with you. Then someone else gets to have the fun of trying to do your background check or..whatever. And then they'll meet with you, and—okay, just don't body-jack my friends, please? They're good people, and someone might actually be able to help you."
Miles starts to take a step toward the backpack, but stops instantly when Owen comes right back in a flash, figuratively speaking. He smirks a bit and nods his head, he moves over to pick up the cell phone, looking it over. "Alright," he winks at Owen,"Only if doing so proves useful…….." He pauses awkwardly, and then busts out laughing. "Joking! Well, until I meet them, I won't know who they are, but we'll keep that in mind."
By the time he gets back, Owen's had figurative hours to ponder this subject, as well as plot out his final coursework and run through as exhaustive a recollection of A-Team episodes as he can. Over that time, which was seconds in real-time, he's decided to cut the bodyswapper some slack. He actually grins at the joke. "Har, har," he replies. "Anyway, it sounds like your predicament kinda sucks, so I hope we can help. If we wind up working together, I'll have your back." With that, he fires off a quick salute, tapping two fingers to his brow, and then starts to jog away before picking up a more customary speed and disappearing in a blur of motion.
 December 7th: Of Hugs and Car Jackings |
 December 7th: Show and Tell |