2013.04.07 - Finding Hope?

Studying his handheld unit of Cerebros once again, Doug Ramsey sighs. He'd been healed -just- enough before he was on the trail again of that strange mutant who'd set off multiple alarms. Now why -she- would wind up in Hell's Kitchen was anyone's guess, but he wasn't taking any chances, considering what had occured -last- time he went looking.

While certain people had proven unavailable, there was still the new presence -at- the mansion that he knew nothing about.

Well, no better time to learn than to hang out and find out exactly what she was like in the field. She -had- to be something, right, if she was really a Summers.

"Right now, Cerebros is showing her presence -somewhere- here. She seems to have a thing for really screwed up slums or ruined landscapes..." Doug informs Rachel as he scans around. "It's like she's drawn to places like that. She looks -kind of like you, actually, now that I think about it..."

She doesn't stay at the mansion very often, frequently out and about doing things she doesn't talk about, probably because it might give her not-quite-father and mother aneurysms if they knew. The timelost freedom fighter known as Rachel Summers agreed to the tracking mission with a hint of trepidation, but she's trained long enough with both her parents that she doesn't go all stupid when it comes to hunting her own kind, since this is for a Good Reason, rather than what she used to have to use it for.

"I don't sense her nearby, at least, nothing that screams 'family genetics'," the redhead comments. "And it's possible she's a clone or avatar or any number of things other than someone sharing my and my mom's genome..." While she walks with the other in a seeming casual manner, her eyes are continually scanning around her, and so is her mind, being the sort of person who doesn't like being surprised right now, even though Hell's Kitchen is kindergarten to her experiences.

Is that person somewhere in Hell's Kitchen? Maybe.

But then again, is it really Hells Kitchen without Chef Ramsey?

...Maybe. But lets keep that chefs hat off of Doug for now, just to play it safe.


 * COUGH*

Anyways...

Anyways... The girl in question, Hope, is in the Kitchen. And it may be possible to get a reading on her. But for the moment she is up on a roof top. Resting against an idle air conditioner unit/big green roof box thing. All though she is close enough to the edge that she can glance down, over the side, before blinking and frowning as she watches people walk past down below.

It might help Rachel in that this Doug seemed more interested in finding the strange young girl to -assist- in dealing with the powers, particularly given how strong it appeared on Cerebros.

"Eh, it's probably coincidence. I mean, the world's got to be what, 10 percent redheads? I wouldn't read too much into it," Doug grins, as he glances about. "You've been around places like this before? I usually don't... just your basic middle-class suburbs." Glancing around, Doug scratches the base of his neck. "Don't venture into these areas very much, unlike..."

Doug pauses as Cerebros suddenly pings. "Oh good, getting -some- bars of connectivity again... and... Huh. She's right on top of us?" Wrinkling his nose, Doug glances at Rachel, points Cerebros towards her, and adjusts. "... Nope. Still around here somewhere."

And then Doug glances up...

"The future wasn't exactly a golden age," Rachel says quietly, her gaze also tracking up and around the same way Doug's is. "There's someone up on the rooftop nearby, not a critter, an actual sentient mind," she then adds casually, pitching her voice as if discussing the weather. While she could just whip out her PDA from the future, she lets Doug handle the techie stuff. This sort of gig is low-end for her, since she's had much more difficult missions in the future time, her past. For a few moments, she continues walking, hands in jacket pockets, her guard /seemingly/ down, but much like Han Solo flying Shuttle Tyrdirium, she's flying casually. All part of the plan.

And as Hope looks down, she blinks once. Then quickly gets up, and turns, walking more towards the center of the roof top. And hopefully out of sight. She doesn't exactly run, but well...

She kind of waits to see what happens. Especially since that guy down below sort of, kind of looks familiar. Not that she can place from where right now.

"The future is what we make of it," the young blonde replies as he looks back down., apparently quoting something from a book he's read. "If we can move humanity, we can alter it."

Any further discussion is tabled at Rachel's quiet words. "I see," Doug replies coolly as he looks at his device, fiddling with it lightly. "See if it's our friend. Let me know if you can make contact peacefully."

"She's made us," Rachel murmurs to her partner du jour with a nod. "I'll take the fire escape... no sense in revealing our hand unduly." Again, something her dad taught her. She leaves Dougie behind and nimblely starts climbing up the fire escape after a nice leap up (only slightly aided by telekinetics) to grab the low-hanging railing, because the ladder was juuuuuust out of range (like anyone locally cares about adhering to the building code other than the actual residents whose lives this could save). Her psi-shields are tight, keeping her thoughts to herself, but still questing in slight search for their target, a light tag attempting to simply keep track of where Hope is without being intrusive, just in case.

"Hey, we're friends, no one's gonna mess with you," she says aloud as she clambers up the steps of the fire escape.

And those few words do give away just enough. Which is almost too bad. because if Rachel had tried a different approach, she may very well have gotten a different reaction. Then again, she could just as easily ended up having a reaction of her own, so...

Yeah. As she hears those words, Hope more or less figures that the guy she saw down below recognized her. Thus the person on the fire escape must be with him. Thus well...

The young woman rushes towards the door to the staircase, and just kicks it open, trying to rush inside the building itself, and down to the lower floors. Rachel Summers mindflashes Doug. << She's rabbiting. You want me to stop her? I've got her mental scent, I can track her anywhere. >> Not entirely true, but no sense in waffling on the matter in the middle of a tense situation. She scrambles up onto the roof, body crouched in a combat posture, all sense of flying casual gone. Now she's at work, and playtime is over.

<> Doug says. <>

Already heading into the building, Doug checks quickly for the stairs, and starts running up it. C'mon, hurry, hurry... how many stories? She must be... he should be expecting to meet her about 1/3 of the way up, so get ready and... pray like hell she didn't have concussive powers or something really nasty.

Concussive powers? Not likely. At least not right now. But as Hope races down those stairs, she tries to do so any way she can. Jumping down multiple steps at times, slamming into the ground with a heck of a lot of force. All though as she gets closer to the ground floor, as she /thinks/ she spots something or some one there, And as she turns and just thinks about who's probably still up above, she lets out a faint curse. Albeit in a curse that is in a language taught to her by her father, that probably no one in this time knows anyways.

And the curse is met with a <> by the linguist in Askani. <> Hands up, body language at ease, Doug approaches the stairs much more slowly, trying to get close enough that she couldn't just do a running leap and bowl him down the stairs. <>

Rachel Summers doesn't run like her quarry does, she takes her time, does this methodically. Not slowly, but definitely not trying to chase Hope like someone from the government used to do to mutants all the time back... err, forward in the day. "Seriously, all we want to do is talk," Rachel's voice echoes through the stairwell in a calming fashion, and while she /could/ back it up telepathically, Doug is the one in charge, and he said no powers. "You know, talk, have tea, do our nails, talk about boys behind their backs... Or to their faces, especially when they're talking space French or something, whatever the hell purple cosine he's off on right now..."

There are relatively few things that can catch Hope off guard. And /THAT/ is one of them.

"A language that doesn't exist yet." is said in response to Rachel, even as the redheaded girl just stares right at Doug.

"And sorry. Can't talk right now. Might be the right place, but it's not the right time."

<> Doug replies, before rubbing his neck, giving Rachel a look. "I am -so- not talking about doing my nails -or- talking about boys... if that's what you want to do, I can introduce you to -plenty- of those girls... including -her-, but... hold on. Wait, a language that doesn't -exist- yet? You're from the future? Look. Name's Doug Ramsey. That's Rachel Summers. And we just wanted to make sure... well, that we could help you with whatever you were running from..."

"Oh good, another person from the future," Rachel says with no sarcasm in her voice, taking the notion of a future language well in stride. "That makes things all red parallel." Her steps continue to avoid being hurried, although she does tend to keep her guard up and moves with purpose. "So what's the right time?" she prompts of Hope once Dougie goes and hands over their names like pieces of candy. He gets a frown for that.

"Nathan was... Kinda. I don't know his full story." is said before Hope just eyes Doug. "I might be. It's... Look, if you're mutants, just get away from me. Forget I exist. Try to make the world a better place and all that. Okay?"

Then slowly, she cranes her head to try and look in the direction of Rachel.

"I don't know. Nate never told me. We were on our way /back/ to the present when we got separated thanks to a nut job. All right?"

Looking up towards Rachel, Doug gives a furtive shrug. Sorry, they weren't doing this as X-Men, were they? Just for the Institute.

"Fine, so if we're mutants... we're supposed to make the world a better place, -especially- to keep people away from nutjobs..." Doug says softly. "So why don't you give us a chance to help you deal with... whatever it is you're dealing with?"

"Who's Nathan?" Rachel asks somewhat blankly. "Nate Grey?" The not-really-brother from some weird-ass timeline she met a few times. She trades a shrug with Doug, she's not one of the X-Men in this time. "Yeah, helping folks is kinda what we do, regardless of where and when in time we are, I s'pose. That's what the Professor taught everyone before they killed him in my timeline."

And The Professor may very well have been killed in Hopes timeline too. Not that she knows it.

Instead she says, "Because he's also a mutant. And he's doing what he's doing because he thinks it will /save/ Mutants from some 'bad stuff'." as she continues to try and watch Rachel.

"Grey? No. Don't know any Nate Grey."

All though that 'Grey' name does sound familiar.

"But right now, helping you is keeping you guys as far away from me as possible. Because if certain things happen things go to hell. And that's all I can say about that."

"Damn it..." mutters Doug as he glances towards Rachel. "By killing other mutants...?" Now looking up towards Rachel, Doug frowns. "But why would they want to kill you and... Nathan...? How is that supposed to help? Oh... hell. You know, if they're chasing you down through -time-, they would have already found you a while back. So running isn't going to do any good -here-, unless you've found a way to keep running through -time-. He'd just strike when you're alone. Right, Ray?"

"Bad stuff?" Rachel echoes with a furrowed brow, nodding to Doug's logic and finally settling down on the stairs, not moving toward Hope, just sitting there for the moment. "Sort of end of the world nuking half the country just because the big bad mutants were getting uppity and didn't like being second-class citizens kind of bad involving concentration camps and open murder in the streets, or something a bit less alarming?" she asks, adding her own brand of perspective into the mix. "'Cos I've lived through one of those eras, I'd rather not live through it again..."

"He did find me. Multiple times. Each time he's tried to kill me. He just hasn't found me since I got here. /YET/." is said to Doug, before Hope lets out a snerk at Rachel.

"No... Australia was nuked into oblivion. Asia was wiped by bio-weapons. All the water in Europe was poisoned. Some sort of super napalm burned SOuth America to the ground. Africa was hit by other toxic weapons. Oh and North America? To survive the 'President' had the people combine their DNA with cockroaches, who then fed on the humans that didn't splice their genes. And /THEN/ the continent was nuked to kill the bugs. /THEn/ the survivors managed to fill up /TWO/ cities. Then those cities fled into space, only to be killed off by aliens known as 'Brood'."

"And you want to know the real kicker? Aside from the Brood bit, and maybe the bugs, the guy who's after me said he set all of that in motion just so he /could/ kill me. All spread out over a couple of thousand years."

"... that's all kinds of screwed up," Doug mutters. "If he wanted to do that and could do all -that-, the best time to do it would have been when you were -born-." Running his hand through his hair, the young blonde looks towards Rachel. "What do you think?" he asks, out loud, at the same time he sends a mental <>

"That's all kinds of..." and then Rachel says a brief sentence of a future colloquialism that's a much more... colorful... variant of what Doug just said. "Anyway... not to put a damper in your 'must play this video game solo' thing or anything, but something like this sounds like it'll threaten /all/ of us, not just you... it's a group quest, heroic content, whatever you want to call it. So let's say you run and you keep running and eventually you run out of time, of space, whatever... and he gets you. What then? What's to stop this jerk from coming after the rest of us? Who is this guy and why's he after /you/ specifically? The salvation of mutantkind is BS, considering what he did to that one slice of life you mentioned, so what's his real game?"

And here's where Hope takes a deep breath. She's trying not to react too much. Trying to find a way out. She's said too much already. The more she says, the more things could change in ways she can't predict.

But at least she managed to avoid the big issues. Both of them.

"Sorry. I can't say anything else, besides the fact that he wants to kill me."

"As for killing me when I was born? He was with others, and couldn't get there. heck, he might not of known exactly when I was born. But other people did try to kill me because of what I represented. Heck, that's when Nathan first rescued me."

Looking towards Rachel while Hope was occupied, Doug thinks, <>

Out loud, Doug runs a hand through his hair. "Well, then... look, it'll be better if you can contact us if you -really- need the help. I just think that if the guy's prepared to destroy the world to get to you, we'll be stuck anyway, so we might as well know -what- we're preparing for."

Rachel Summers watches Hope carefully, although she doesn't appear to be doing so, glancing around once in awhile as if checking out the decorations. << Generally once I have someone tagged, I can keep after them... I was the best at that sort of thing back home. >> Not that her mental tone to Doug is cheerful about that fact, more like a bit of melancholy and even shame mixed in there. << But yeah, she /seems/ to believe her story. Hook her up with contact info, and if dad has a fit about it, too bad. I'll take the responsibility. >>

"And you can be damned sure we wouldn't go down without a fight either," she adds aloud to young Master Ramsey's comments. "However, you really need to toss us a bone here... hard to prepare for the end of the world if we don't know what we're facing... might as well sign our death warrants if he decides to go stupid on us here."

As she's been talking, something has been happening. Something slow.

<> is said, telepathically before Hope even realizes that she's doing it. Which kind of causes her to freak out.

"Okay. I need to get out of here. Now." is said as she tries to push her way forward. Past Doug if she can.

There's a slow blink as Doug processes that there's a telepathic girl, but she's freaking out, from the reaction. "What are you, a chameleon...?" Doug begins, before stepping out of the way automatically rather than get in the way of a freaked out mutnat. "Wait... can we at least give you a contact...?"

Rachel Summers shoots to her feet, but still follows orders, since Doug didn't tell her to stop the other from fleeting again. Instead of trying to telekinetically stop Hope, she instead reaches out telepathically in an attempt to deposit safe contact deets in the other redhead's mind, shortcutting the flight or fight responses. Telepathic business card, incoming.

And as Hope rushes off and out the building...

As Doug moves out of the way...

As Rachel plants that information in Hope she may pick up a few facts.

One is that the guy who has been trying to kill Hope her whole life was once a member of The X-Men, even if it isn't clear based on her memories which one it is or if they're even a member right now.

And the other thing is a name. Her name.

Hope Summers.

"Well... at least we got -one- thing out of it..." Doug sighs. "Better than that psychotic mutant on the rail." Rubbing his healed abdomen absently, the young blonde mutant looks up towards Rachel. "Bet things were crazier where you came from, eh?" Doug says, a small melancholic grin crossing his face for a minute. Black humor, at least.

Even with the revelation of Hope's name, Rachel remains where she is, glancing with some concern to Doug at his absent gesture. "And she knows how to find us if she needs to in the future... and now we have a much bigger problem... one of our own is the bad guy... and we don't know who it is, other than a guy." The Summers generally known as Marvel Girl jokingly by her X-Men peers in the future lets out a long sigh. "Her mind, what little bit of it I could see, was as bad as mine, her memories are as out of focus as mine sometimes."

And Hope... Is gone. She just keeps running. Eventually the powers she unwittingly copied fade. By the time she reaches a block or two away, she mentally cursing herself.

"I said too much."

"... But without proof, we can't just look at everyone," muses Doug. "I think this needs to stay between us, at least till we have an idea -who-. Otherwise..."

A mere block or two away, and Hope is still on Rachel's radar, even though the timelost one isn't actively tugging on that linkage to make the other more aware of her presence. Rachel sits back down on the steps she was on earlier. "And to make things entirely horribly paranoid, we still can't rule out the women... if someone is as powerful as she said, able to manipulate things that badly, then it could be /anyone/... even us. Maybe not you or me or any of the X-Men /here/ in this time, in this reality, but maybe an alternate of any of us. No wonder she was freaked out so badly."

And Hope still didn't bring up the two big issues.

One of which might hit home for Rachel more than a bit if revealed.

And the other probably would just freak out any Mutants that knew it.

"... great. Just -great-. So not only could her villain be anywhere... it could be anyone -anywhen-... I hate time travel," Doug replies. "No offense, Ray."

Rachel Summers shrugs at the linguist. "You and me both. I mean, this time is a lot more hopeful, hah, no pun intended, than mine, it's not my home and I miss my folks. Not knowing if they're still alive or wondering if my absence is causing them grief? Yeah, not so green tangent, but we cope with the cards we're dealt, hmm?"

"As long as we're not stuck with the old maid at the end..."