Briana considers what Violet says, as well as Pulse and Aegis' information. "Well, I followed the car for about an hour. It just made a whole bunch of random turns, like they knew they were being followed although I'm pretty sure they didn't see me. Then the other cars -- what few there were out last night at that hour -- started behaving oddly. Then the Russians' car just faded from sight."
Violet scrunches up her nose and raps her fingers on the table.
"Definitely a telepath. They made you see what they wanted you to see. Like when everyone thought I was a bad guy, back at the practice in the bunker. The fact none of the other cars reacted to it tells me it was all in your head."
Under her breath, she mutters something about being glad and angry that she's not the only one like her in the world... Words that rhyme with "suck" can be made out.
Briana shudders and rubs her temples. "Wouldn't that mean they were aware of me, then? Why not just zap me out of the sky? Or control my mind?"
Briana shudders and rubs her temples. "Wouldn't that mean they were aware of me, then? Why not just zap me out of the sky? Or control my mind?"
** spoiler omitted **
"I'm not an expert on these things... the only other telepath I've met is Ace, and he and I have vastly different levels of talent... but..." Violet chews on her lip, then takes a bite of her Waffle Tart Sandwich before continuing.
"Iff entirrwy poffi... It's entirely possible that they just couldn't do those things. There are things I can't do. Yet."
Violet slaps another pop tart between a pair of waffles and walks it over to Briana. She takes a bite of her own breakfast and offers the plate to Briana.
"Fwammiff?"
It's okay to be upset. Someone's been messing with your head. I understand. And I'm here if you need to talk.
Aegis watch Violet with disgust as she eats her "food".
"We do have real food. If they have other meta we may have to deal with them when the time comes but for now we should focus on finding a freezer, we can worry about storage after."
< Umm, thanks. It's really weird to be in a situation like that. Those guys must've been armed. And then they have metas too? I mean, you and Whip know that stuff...but I...I'm up against professionals and I just feel naked. >
As the word 'naked' crosses his mind, he clams up again. < Uh. And. I mean. Oh. OK so that other stuff...yeah, good, wecantalkaboutthattomorrow. Or later. G'night! >
Yikes! She just laid it all out there...but still didn't really say what she's feeling. Maybe she really is crazy. I don't know where I'm over my head more: with these Russians or with Vi!
Rocket enters in a blur and shakes his head, saying, "I dunno, do we really want to become meta-jailers? I mean, I don't want to start killing them off either...but it's just so...complicated."
Then seeing Vi hold out the 'Fwammiff', he grins and says, "Whip, if you don't want that, I'll take it. I'm fwamished."
Briana looks at the proffered breakfast sandwich as if it was a snake that could bite her. She shakes her head with a polite "No thanks," and heads to the fridge and gets one of her protein shakes, letting Rocket devour the offending sandwich.
I'll think about it. Thanks.
"Note to self," Violet sighs, handing Zack the plat and sitting back down in her chair. "Never talk with mouth full again. At least one of you has a sense of adventure."
Violet scribbles a few notes down on her clipboard. "What are we doing with the basement level, here? What's under that? Do we still have the option to buy a farm? ... And where's Goo this morning?"
"I'd think being a telepath means never having to stop chewing. Now that I think about it, that would be sooo handy!" Zach grins before devouring the poptart-waffle splendor.
"And when have I ever said no to food? Speaking of which, I'm gonna make some eggs. Anyone want some?"
As he zips about the kitchen (getting out a whole dozen for himself plus whatever others ask for and cracking them into their biggest skillet) he says, "So what do we do now? It seems like we can scan the news and police blotter--or ask Whip's cop friend--to find out about other odd reports of cold damage.
"Then I guess we can start looking for industrial freezers that a bad guy could get away with staying in. Maybe meatpacking facilities that are closed down, if we can find one?"
"Should probably look online for that sort of stuff, as well. You'd probably be faster at it... and less at risk of nuking the whole thing." Pulse says with a grin. "And no thank you on the eggs." she responds as she eats her peaches and cream waffles on the opposite end of the table from Violet. It wasn't her fault the other girl had mentioned them, thus targeting Hotaru's sweet-tooth.
"You're all overlooking the more important question, though... at least to me. It seems like a very bad idea to cross the Russians, but it also seems... wrong... to hand someone over to them." she says, digging into the peach slice as she cuts along the lines of her waffles. From her position, she was able to somewhat see how Whip must feel, given that the tables were turned, about handing over metas to Ace and crew.
Whippoorwill agrees to some eggs while taking a seat at the table. "I'll reach out to Sean, sure. In the meantime, since I missed out on your conversation with the Russians, you can fill me in on what you learned.
"And please tell me you didn't bring their phone home with you."
Hotaru pulls the phone out of her hoodie pocket and places it on the table. It has singe marks from where she'd fried it on the bus. "Kind of." she replies.
"Ivan speaks a lot of languages. He prefers German over English. He doesn't mind giving lessons in a foreign language. They know about Metas. They call them freaks, blessed, or cursed, depending. They know that Snowjob has to sleep in cold places. Vi is pretty sure they had a telepath with them. They want us to help capture him, hand him over, then get him back. I get the feeling we won't get him back whole if we do that..." she says, as she fills her mouth with another square of peach, cream, and waffle.
After she swallows, she adds, "Snowjob is a... - Polish? - merc... and I don't really remember much else that you missed."
"They want him for a while, and we get the pieces? Payback, I assume."
She shakes her head. "I agree; I don't feel very good about doing that. Same freakin' story, just a different player."
"We're not equipped to keep them, though... and I'm really not okay with killing him. So do we set up something to contain him, or do we have any other options?" she says, looking to Whip as she chews on her lip. "And I'm also not okay with just ignoring the mob. I mean, we can always point out that we specifically did them a favor with getting them closer to the girl, and then we hopefully get the girl back in one piece... which then leaves us as firmly in their good graces, unless they consider the girl as less important than the sentiment..." she adds, shaking her head. Then she finishes off her bit of breakfast.
"The mob shouldn't be a problem like frosty, we can always beat them down and turn them into the police but storing metas in general. Even if we could build and hide an area that could hold them and keep them fed then what? We just keep them forever?"
Briana looks at everyone as she runs through their options for the hundredth time. "I suppose I could mention this dilemma to Sean. He might have an idea or two. But I can't think of a single ideal solution to this. Whoever we hand him over to, we'll have given a live grenade. It'll either blow up in their hands, or they'll use it as a weapon against someone else."
When the plate of eggs gets set down in front of her, she eats slowly, her appetite having left her. In the middle of the meal, she sends Sean a text, asking him to meet her at 1 a.m. at the usual spot.
Once it's sent, she has a thought. "It might be nice if I had something to tell him. You feel like checking out one of the attack sites?"
"Government is out of the question, from what we were told. So if he'd put him in a prison.." Hotaru shakes her head. "Better to kill him, probably." she responds as the woman texts.
"Maybe. It'd probably help, but it'll probably get harder, and possibly impossible, the longer we wait. The Russians suggested he's probably just going to be in town until he gets paid..."
Topics of discussion for my meeting with Sean: Asking for any strange occurrences of cold weather phenomena, telling him that we're looking into the possibility of werewolf-style metas for the killings he had us look into, and last but certainly not least -- meta containment.
I'm happy to write up a post describing our meeting, or letting you take on the role of Sean so you can give me the info he knows. If I do it myself, I'll still need to know what he can tell me regarding the containment and the clues to Snowjob.
After gorging herself on delicious sugary breakfast treats, Violet takes out a note pad and starts noodling up various designs for group costumes. Some of them are remarkably detailed, while most others are little more than stick figures with blocky outfits scribbled over them. Anyone who gets a look at the margins of her pages see words like "unity" and "teamwork" featured prominently.
Rocket pokes around, finds a couple long PDF essays about conducting internet research, and plows through them faster than most people could register there are words on the page. OK, those are some interesting tips. Lets see what I can do.
Then he opens up his laptop and his phone simultaneously--fidgeting from one to the other while the next page on each one loads--and starts scanning various news sites, industry forums, and real estate sites, looking for mentions of business closures, facilities for sale that could potentially have an industrial freezer that could be used unobtrusively, or other potential clues to Snowjob's whereabouts.
While waiting impatiently for a page to load, he asks Pulse, "Hey, can you listen in on the Police blotter? Or even more private channels of theirs? I wonder if there are any mentions of odd cold damage? Or odd fights? Or even just damaged property? It's possible that Peaches wasn't his only target."
"You may want to look for other break ins, he might be pulling small jobs near his house to last him until pay day."
Hotaru nods, "Shouldn't be too much trouble, but I can do all of that outside the base. I really only have the computer while I'm here."
Whippoorwill glides through the night sky and spots a Crown Vic idling in the park. She alights next to it and raps once on the window.
Sean O'Brien steps out and gives Briana a big hug. "You know I came this close to convincing myself that whole night was some big hallucination," he jokes after they separate from the embrace.
Briana shakes her head and sits on the trunk of the car. "I still wish this whole thing was a dream," she confesses. "I'm still not really used to it."
After a silent moment where the two old friends are unable to find any worthwhile small talk, they laugh at the situation then get down to business.
"You've opened my eyes, but there's still nothing official about 'metas' on any of the books," O'Brien tells her. "There's a group of detectives and uniforms that handle Special Cases that I'm starting to take a closer look at. I used to think they were cops with too much imagination -- or not enough. Now, I'm not so sure. But they're a tight-lipped bunch, and I've got to earn their trust before they'll tell me their real theories."
Briana gives him an encouraging smile. "Good luck, but hopefully it won't be hard. Based on the numbers I've heard, there are a lot more than just a handful. I'm amazed there's not widespread knowledge, but there's a lot more who know than I feared. We encountered some Russians. One of their princesses was kidnapped; we got involved because of the telltale signs of a meta -- someone with ice and cold powers."
"Is that the frostbite case?" Sean cuts in.
Briana nods. "Yeah. The girl he was with was Russian, and taken by the cold meta."
"I didn't know there was a kidnapping. The kid hasn't woken up yet. And you're saying the Russians are involved?"
Whippoorwill grimaces at that. "Well, we're looking for her and the meta, and so are they. Like I said, they weren't surprised that a guy with ice powers exists. Apparently he needs to stay in cold areas -- really cold. Like walk-in freezers and such. We're trying to narrow it down, but it's taking time. Any ideas?"
Sean shakes his head. "Not off the top of my head, no."
"Well, we're hoping that finding the meta will lead us to the girl. And then have something on the Russians. Who might have a meta working for them."
O'Brien does not look pleased. "This just keeps getting better."
Briana sags, matching his look. "It's worse. Even if we find him, we've got to beat him. Then, we have to figure out how to contain him. The Russians want him for окупаемость , which I'm not sure I agree with. I don't see how the city or county jails can hold him, and we don't have anyplace to keep him -- assuming that's the right thing to do, which I'm not sure it is."
There's a prolonged silence as O'Brien digests this information. "You just love to make my life difficult, don't you?" he finally says.
Briana can't help but smile at that. "It's what makes life worth living."
They bounce a few more ideas off each other without arriving at an ideal solution. Sean plans on making more headway with Special Cases, and will check around for possible cold hideouts, but can't make any promises.
Briana through gritted teeth explains that they will be exploring the possibility of a werewolf meta for the strange killings he had dropped off with her, and will keep him updated once they learn anything more.
After a farewell hug, Whippoorwill takes to the sky as Sean stares at her, still amazed at the spectacle and wondering if he'll ever really believe that it is real. He shakes his head, gets back in his car and heads home.
"So any other leads or do we start kicking down doors while Pulse scans?"
Rocket finds several places that are cold. However, the ones that seem to be best possibilities are an old meat packing plant south of the city, the hockey rink down town, and a shut down ice cream plant west of the city. The packing plant went out of business 10 years ago and hasn't been sold due to the cleanup required by the EPA. The hockey rink is open currently and actively showing games by the River Otters. The ice cream plant was shut down 2 years ago over contamination and the company is going through bankruptcy and the property is tied up in court.
"So any other leads or do we start kicking down doors while Pulse scans?"
The next day, Whippoorwill steps into the common room after her early-morning workout, holding a steaming mug of coffee. "Well, my contact doesn't know much new, and doesn't have any solutions for our containment problem. Which won't be a problem until we actually find and catch a meta." She sighs.
"One thing's new. There's apparently a group of cops that call themselves 'Special Cases' that seem to know that there's something weird going on. Maybe we'll get some allies after all. Anyone interested in blowing some cops' minds?"
Hotaru shakes her head. "Not particularly. That seems like a great way to get shot... and if we're extra unlucky, dealing with the government. This guy is your friend... but they're not, I'm guessing?"
Briana shakes her head and sits down. "No, I'm kidding. It's too much, I know. But at some point, it's got to get out, right?
"And yes, this other group of cops, I don't know them. But you have to think that there's going to be clues as to the existence of metas out there."
Violet, having spent the entire previous day (and night?) filling notebooks with team costume designs, looks up from her laptop (where dozens of browser tabs are open to various fabric shopping sites) when Briana mentions dealing with the "Special Cases" unit.
If Violet slept at all since yesterday morning, it's hard to tell.
She looks at her screen, rubs her eyes, looks back at Briana, and says with an incredible earnestness:
"I'm really good at doing official agency-to-agency liaison work. And I can dress the part. I have five pairs of Manolo's and a suit so sharp it makes executives nervous."
She then blinks at the time, opens the pizza box sitting next to her at the table, and devours the last piece before getting up to make a new pot of tea.
Briana shakes her head slowly. "I got the distinct impression that they're not official. Just a group of beat cops and detectives that probably believe in metahumans, or aliens, or conspiracies, or something like that. Sean wasn't one of that group, but he's going to try to get them to talk. I don't know if they're ready for an 'official' liaison yet."
Violet looks genuinely forlorn. "That's too bad. I'm a little tired of being dead weight."
She pours water from the kettle into her tea pot and moves back to the table. "I could be a secret informant! Shadowy alleys and mysterious phone calls! I think I'd make a great 'Deep Throat' type."
Immediately after the words leave her mouth, she blinks for three beats and shakes her head. "Bad choice of words. Never mind. I need a nap."
Hotaru snerks at Violet's new codename, "That's something I could get behind. There are things we won't be able to do anything about... that we can definitely tip off the cops to. And we still need to determine what we're going to do about Snowjob and Ice Princess's family. Which... we also need to get to." she says, casually closing a Chrome window... and allowing all of the tropes she was reading about to disappear into the aether. Also recent tabs.
Hotaru grins, swapping back to the previous topic as her various trains of thought swapped rails again. "Bonus points that Vi is the person here most likely to be able to blow their minds."
"Have you heard anything about them finding metas or what they do with them when they do? Maybe we just steal their plan."
"No, sure haven't. Might be worth it, though I'd just be excited to find out that they have a plan."
Rocket comes buzzing in with his laptop under one arm. "Guys, I think I might have some leads! Look here,"--he motions for folks to gather around the screen--"I found three places that I think Snowjob could possibly sleep: an old meat packing plant south of the city, the hockey rink down town, and a shut down ice cream plant west of the city. The packing plant went out of business 10 years ago and hasn't been sold due to the cleanup required by the EPA. The hockey rink is open currently and actively showing games by the River Otters. The ice cream plant was shut down 2 years ago over contamination and the company is going through bankruptcy and the property is tied up in court.
"I figure the hockey rink is the least likely since it's the most public, but we could go snoop around the ice cream plant and the meat packing plant. Does anyone know how to pick locks or otherwise break in somewhere unobtrusively? I wonder if Goo can turn into a key?"
Whippoorwill raises her hand. "I know my way around a lock."
"Probably, yeah. Though there are benefits to areas where you can come and go while being watched without raising suspicion. And a Hockey Rink is going to be more loud than the other places. We should still check those first. Since you can unlock things: Cool. Knocking down a door is a good way to give the bad guy warning. We should still be extra careful when we go in. Defenses up and all that... which means I should stay near the back unless we want glowy sparkly to give us away."
Looking to Whip, Rocket smiles, "Cool...though I was kinda liking the idea of seeing if Goo could become a skeleton key.
"When do we go? Now? Dusk? Midnight?"
Rocket fidgets a bit more than normal--excited and nervous about a potential encounter with a hostile meta--and impatient as he considers waiting any longer to get going.
"Night mostly guarantees he's home instead of out doing odd jobs, I'd think. I don't know which is really 'better'. Watch for hidden pennies in doors, though."
Violet yawns and while stretching cracks seemingly every joint in her body. "Someone should find Goo first. Has anyone seen him?"
She stares into space for several long seconds before snapping back. "And I need a nap. Nap now. Wake me up when we have a plan."
As she leaves the kitchen, she hands Rocket her tea (still fresh!) and a notepad filled with uniform design ideas. Stopping at the door, she looks at Hotaru and Briana. "Before I forget," she says, urgently. "There's money in my mailbox for all the cookies. They're supposed to come soon. You guys can have whatever you want, but the Tagalongs are mine."
She sways against the frame of the door. "Nap? Nap."
"I think it has to be night, if we want any chance of doing this without getting observed. As for which target is the right one, unless there's some way to tell from here if power is being drawn to the empty places, I think we just hit each one at a time. Or, if Pulse or Violet can sense any activity going on inside, we may be able to get away with a drive-by to avoid having to break into potentially two unoccupied buildings. Less chance to trip an alarm that way."
"Well... if he's making a deadzone line back home, it shouldn't be too hard to spot him in a drive-by... I don't really know how Vi's stuff works, though."
Briana shrugs and gives Pulse a smile. "Yeah, me neither."