A Walk to Remember

Summary:
June 2 2014: Blink takes some time to explore New York and discovers that all is most decidedly not well.

42nd Street, Lower Manhattan

42nd Street. The street that never sleeps in the City That Never Sleeps. In the day, the traffic is non-stop. It's a given that busses will be stopping, letting passengers on and off at seemingly random moments, much to the chagrin of taxicabs and those brave enough to drive.

It's the evening when the thoroughfare truly shines. Literally. Bright neon lights light up the street to where it looks as if the sun simply didn't set on that stretch of road. Theatres, restaurants, shops that remain open late all have their marquis, their flashing lights, their names and offerings done up in brilliant neon lights.


Characters

NPCs

  • Fredrick Moss - FBI
  • Alan Burrows - FBI

Mood Music:
[*]


It's all so… different.

That's Blink's general take on the whole thing. The city, the world in which it exists, the reality in which it exists. Such a strange mix of the familiar and unfamiliar — not that much of this peaceful representation is truly familiar to the magenta-skinned young woman walking the streets of the Big Apple like any tourist might. The Manhattan she knew growing up was a graveyard, a crumbled monument to a dead and dying race. The Manhattan she saw in other realities was often more like this one… but always with a crisis for her to solve. Here and now?

Well, there's ice cream. And ice cream is good.

TJ and Cal said to treat the whole thing as a vacation. Clarice really isn't sure what that means. Sure, she understands the dictionary definition. But, beyond that? No experience. None. Nada. Nope.

Thus, hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jacket, she wanders the city, soaking it up, taking it all in, and trying to absorb as much about her new home as she possibly can.


The foot traffic in this part of the city can best be described as moderate. It's not a crushing press, but there's still a lot of people walking around. All sorts of people too. Professionals moving to or, more likely at this hour, from work, Couriers, tourists, diners, and just plain old passers by. The place has quite a hubbub and it's hard sometimes to keep track of everything that's going on. There's just so much.

One thing does rather sharply and suddenly stand out. A payphone begins to ring right as she walks by it.


Clarice Ferguson is, really, used to weird crap happening around her. It kinda comes with the territory. The ringing phone, though? That's actually a new one. She stops, looks at the phone, and listens to it ring. Although others also glance at the phone, most look more surprised that it's actually ringing — and, really, that it even still exists in the city — than anything else. It's strange enough, really, to let them overlook the obvious mutancy of the girl looking at the oddity. She reaches out a hand and picks up the receiver. There's a beat, and then she says, "Moe's Street-Side Messenging Service. Can I help you?"


The voice at the other end chuckles for a moment. Clearly that was not quite the expected response. "Oh, that's good. I like that. Say, I don't suppose you know a pair of sharply dressed men? Tall, white, about six foot, buck eighty apiece, do you?" She can hear wind on the other end, as if a breeze were blowing past the mic.


Clarice gives a brief grin, and automatically looks around the street — partly, perhaps, to see if she can see the speaker. "Not personally," she says, looking, too, for men that match that particular description. "But, I can ask Moe, if you want. When he gets back."


There they are. About ten yards behind her, one a cell phone, the other messing with some kind of tablet. "Nah. I'm sure he's busy." There's a long sigh on the other end. "I was kind of hoping you'd say you did though. They've been following you for about eight blocks now."


It's not often people can follow Clarice without her noticing. Her glowing green eyes narrow slightly, as she actually does finally notice them. Perhaps she took TJ and Cal's insistence that this world was a vacation a little too much to heart. Either that, or she's seriously slipping.

And that's not good.

"Oh, hey. Look at that. They just walked in. You wanna talk to them?" Because she's happy to lose them in a blink, personally. And then follow them instead.


"I doubt they're taking my calls, somehow." There's another chuckle at the other end. "Do you have a way to lose them? If not I'm happy to assist with that."

There's a crunch on the other end of the line. It sounds a lot like… roofing, actually, come to think of it. There's a few places around here that noise could come from… most of them fairly nearby.


"I'd love to see 'em try to follow me," Clarice snirks, a dry chuckle in her voice. Her pointed ears pick up that sound and she glances up, looking around for some indication of where the speaker is, since he's obviously nearby. He has to be able to see her, after all. "Where y'at, stalker? I'll come to you, and you can tell me who they are while they're trying to figure out where I went."


There's a long pause, as if the speaker is considering the answer. "Mmmm. Your three o'clock, two houses down. Roof of the apartment building." The tone makes it clear he's wondering how, exactly she's going to get up there. "If you don't mind the scent of tar, that is. I think these guys just re-roofed. Better make it snappy though. I think Larry and Curly there are getting ready to see if you need any help with your phone call."


Clarice does another quick visual sweep and notes exactly where her strange, apparent benefactor stands. She flashes a grin and continues looking around a moment or two, like a tourists, clocking the two stooges again as she does, just so that it's harder for them to clock the guy on the roof. "Be there in a blink," she says. Then, she puts two fingers to her lips and lets out a shrill whistle. Grinning at the men sizing her up, she extends the phone to them. "It's for you!" She says. And then…

Fingers flick and a purple portal appears at her feet. She steps and disappears. By the time the men have lunged for her, the portal has disappeared. Blink, in the meantime, drops down beside Aspect from the second portal the first required. "Hi."


He had been kneeling, that much is apparent. She arrives just in time to see him stand. It only takes a moment to take him in. Short brown hair, light olive skin and vaguely middle eastern features. He's putting his hands in the pockets of the unseasonable long coat he's wearing. She can just catch a glow of fading blue light around his left hand as he does. Curiously, there's no cell phone in evidence. "Hello there." The stranger offers her a small smile, turning his head for a moment to keep track of the two down on the street.


And then there's Blink: Caucasian bone structure, slightly almond-shaped but not asian eyes, pointed ears, magenta skin, purple hair, and glowing green eyes. Kinda stands out in any crowd, whether she wants to or not. And it rarely occurs to her to not. She returns his smile with a small one of her own, and then looks out at the street where one of the men slams the dead receiver down on the cradle. "So. Can you tell me who they are?"


"Fredrick Moss and Alan Burrows. FBI." Her companion answers. "Not, I should note, presently on duty." He watches as the two men talk angrily to one another for a moment and then turns back to look at her. "Now, I've looked, so I'm pretty sure I already know the answer to this, but you're not, by any chance, wanted by the law, are you?"

His stance shifts a bit as the men continue to argue quietly. "Mmmm. That's quite a trick you've got there by the way. Nearly scared the hell out of me. Looks like you did a number on them too."

The two feds start back the way they came, more slowly. They'll be passing the building in about a minute.


Blink steps back away from the edge of the building. She's purple. The sky is light blue. She'll stand out. That would be bad. So, she steps back. "No," she says honestly. "At least, I don't think so." Truthfully, she has absolutely no idea if there's a Clarice Ferguson in this world that just might be wanted by the law. Boy. That'd suck. It'd definitely disrupt the 'vacation'. "Maybe they just don't like purple."


"Well, no shortage of that around here to be perfectly honest. But I don't think that's particularly the case in this instance… or at least, not directly." He kneels down, eyes tracking the two men's progress. "I'm Jericho, by the way." He says, glancing back.

The feds take the alley between the building they're on and the next. Blink can tell even if she can't see them because Jericho gets up and follows them along the edge of the roof. There's a place about midway down where the alley opens up a bit thanks to the design of the building. There's a cove big enough for some roll away trash bins and a back door. He stands at the lip watching for a long moment as they pass into it then reaches into his coat. Out comes a suppressed MP5.

Pak Pakpakpak

The little weapon has almost no rapport at all, but the sounds of two bodies hitting the ground are rather distinctly audible to Clarice.


"You did not just kill them!" Blink says, reaching out to grab him by a shoulder to spin him around. "Not for me." Never for her. She was taught as a child that weapons were for killing and that, if she hits someone, she'd best take them down, and take them down quickly. She knows all about killing. She's good at it, in fact.

And thanks to significant experience in recent months, she also despises it in a way she never had before. Thus, her expression is fierce.


Being spun around wasn't *quite* what Jericho expected and given that he's already on the edge, it's a very precarious position for him. "Ack! The hell lady? Yes, I did just kill them and if you don't push me off the roof here, we can go down and find out why."

'Jericho' does look a just a bit uncomfortable. "Look, I didn't kill them for you, per se, if it makes a difference to you." He says in a placating tone.


Blink keeps a firm enough fist wrapped into his coat that he's not going to fall of that edge so easily. Even so, she's perceptibly unhappy at this turn of events. "You shouldn't have done that." Even so, she glances over the edge, opens a portal in the air above them, and steps through, expecting to pull him with her. She steps out, of course, onto the pavement beside the pair, no falling involved.


The portaling experience is clearly a bit disorienting for him, but he's clearly thankful not to have taken a traditional shortcut off the roof. "If I'm right about what these two were up to, and for whom…" He pauses to look at her seriously, "And I'm as certain as I can be just at the moment - Then killing them was the only move open." He moves his hand to her arm and attempts to gently disengage it from his coat. "Let me look, and we'll know one way or the other. If I'm wrong you can do whatever the hell you'd like to me."


Clarice opens her hand and lets him step away, but she still scowls. And her hand curls back into a fist, all though it falls to her side. She watches him, and stares at the two FBI agents. "Okay, so who do you think they are? And who do you think's pulling their strings?" So much for idyllic paradisal vacations. But, then, both Cal and TJ did say there's be heroing to do, if she wanted it. "Are these guys 'Special Response Division'?" She's heard about them, and been told they're none to fond of the obviously mutant variety.


Jericho steps back looking grateful that she didn't just deck him. "Hah." There's no humor in his voice now. "No, I wish." He opens one man's coat and roots around in the inside pocket coming up with two syringes full of a blue-ish fluid. The other one yields the same. He shifts with a sigh and uncaps one of them, squirting a bit of fluid onto his finger and carefully tasting it. His face twists in disgust and he spits it out. Even from where she's standing, Blink can smell the distinct scent of almonds, among other things.

"No…" Jericho says sadly. "I'm afraid this cinches it. These two were working for Hydra."


"Hydra?" Not an organization the young mutant has really tangled with. Blink cants her head, nostrils flaring a little as she scents the almonds. "What is that stuff?" And were they going to try injecting her with it?


Opposite her, Jericho stands up. "Hydra? I'm a little surprised you've not heard of them. They're pretty bad business. Nasty terrorist types with a very disturbing ability to have people everywhere." He's not at all sure why they'd be stalking mutants. That's not usually their line. Jericho doesn't like not knowing things and it shows.

"Well, some of it is cyanide, distilled, I suspect, from cyanogen chloride. But it's been mixed and I have absolutely no clue what the rest of it is or what it's supposed to do." He looks down at the syringes, mulling over just how to figure that out. Chemical anaylsis is pretty far out of his usual areas of expertise and he doesn't really know anyone who could handle it off the top of his head.


Unfortunately, at this point, neither does Clarice. "I've been kinda outta touch," she says with a mild shrug, dismissing her ignorance and making a mental note to hit Teej up for a history primer or something. "Cyanide is deadly stuff, though," she knows that much, anyway. "You think they were gonna use that on me?"


At that Jericho shrugs. "I think they were following you for some reason. They had an unmarked van about a couple blocks away the next street over. I'd been following them since before they were following you. That's how I noticed when they picked you up. Poisoning random people on the street doesn't really fit what I know about their MO. Makes me think that maybe this isn't an ordinary poison. Maybe if they were… I dunno, field testing something? That's the only thing that comes to mind off the top of my head."


Clarice's eyes narrow. "I want one of those syringes," she says now. If they were following her, the most logical reason, given his hypothesis, is that they wanted to test the stuff on a mutant — which she quite obviously is. Which suggests to her that the stuff in the syringe is probably tailored to mutants in some fashion. And, if that's the case, she wants to know about it. She wants others to know about it. And Xaviers must have some way to do a chemical analysis.

She's still not happy they're dead. Indeed, it's not lost on her that that they might have been able to answer some of their questions, which only makes her grumpier about the whole thing, though she's actually keeping that under control for the moment.


He actually hands her two. "Sure, if you know someone who can figure out just what the hell this stuff is I think that's probably for the best. My own resources on that end are a bit… shaky." He shakes his head. That's the understatement of the century. Maybe that red leathered Ren Faire escapee knows someone. Worth a shot, anyway.

"Sorry you got caught up in all this." He looks away for a moment. It wasn't lost on him how upset she was when he killed them. He'd expected shock but not quite that level of indignation. "Probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I doubt very much they targeted you specifically."


Blink actually shrugs at that. "I don't know much about this… city, but in my experience, I don't usually get targeted randomly." Which, yes, suggests she's been a target before and knows it. "I've got purple skin and glowing green eyes. It might just be chance that it's me, in particular, but the targeting isn't random. It's pretty darn specific." In other words, she's an obvious mutant and a lot of people don't like mutants. That's a very specific reason to target a woman who randomly shows up but provides the perfect scapegoat target. And that's without factoring her history back home. She slips the syringe into an inner pocket of her jacket.


Jericho runs his hand through his hear and nods. "Well no, that it's not, I'd tend to agree with you. Or at least, that's the way it looks right now." He frowns and then cants his head slightly, looking up at her. "I'm going to dig at this a little more. These people are quite literally the bane of my life, so I love chances to inflict a little payback. You want me to contact you if I find anything relevant?"


"Yeah," Clarice says. Then, "Um. Crap." Her expression wrinkles. "I'm just not sure how, right now." Because she hasn't got a number and doesn't know the number for Xaviers'. Nor is she so certain about giving out that information. She sighs. "How about I contact you when I get something you can contact?"


"You can e-mail me. moc.ediskrad|tcepsA#moc.ediskrad|tcepsA. The system will tell you the message didn't go through, but I'll get it." He turns to go and then pauses and half turns back. "Oh hey, I don't think I got your name."


Clarice's ears rise as he gives her his email address. "Blink," she replies, figuring the handle's a safer exchange. "Aspect? Okay." A beat. "Thanks." She'll remember the address. She's pretty good with details.

Now, she looks down at the dead Hydra agents. Her lips press together. Then, she flicks her fingers again and they disappear. Where they reappear? Who knows…? "Probably better for both of us if they don't turn up again too soon."


That draws a small smile from Jericho. Same one she saw earlier. "Yeah, good thinking. And you're welcome, I think. I don't know that you really needed my help after seeing what you can do, but I'm more than happy to help deal with jerks." He blinks as if he just heard something and pulls his arm out of his coat, looking at it. It glows blue, projecting a swirling pattern of symbols about six inches above it. She can see his neck glowing as well, little circuit like traces disappearing down under where his coat covers.

"I'd better get going. Nice meeting you, Blink."


"You, too, Aspect," Blink decides. She inhales briefly, shoulders squaring as she rises. "Catch you on the flip side." With that, she smiles, snaps her fingers, and steps back through a portal that disappears with a *BLINK*.


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