2014.01.15 - Rabbit Hole

Legion HQ - LSH HQ Lobby

The lobby is two stories tall and fills the entire first level of the building. It is predominantly white with stripes of Legionnaire colors (black and gold) though out it for both accent and function. Blocky columns around the room, supporting a balcony circling the lobby at the second story level, have bands of gold with writing on them. A wide golden line leads from the main entrance to a desk and similar lines lead to escalators which climb to and descend from the mezzanine, a few smaller side entrances, and the bank of transport tube entrances on the far wall. Parts of the side walls are covered by large holographic screens. A semi-humanoid robot sits behind the desk to greet visitors when Legionnaires are not present.

During the day sunlight streams though the bank of glass doors at the entrance and at all times the lobby is comfortably bright with the lighting provided by narrow bands of light which are reminiscent of florescent bulbs and run across the ceiling in broken lines parallel to the front doors.

Thing with the Mission Monitor Room in LSH HQ is that it's got a camera trained on the lobby, too. The lobby's open to the public, after all, but there's not necessarily always someone there to contact. No receptionist, in other words. But there is always someone on monitor duty, and lately it's been the Legion's resident dad.

As soon as anyone comes in and looks like they're looking for someone, Rokk Krinn, bored out of his skull, forwards all alerts to his tablet and comes out to the lobby-- every time. This time'll be no different, except for the fact that instead of his uniform, he's gone Power Rangers Civvies-- comfortable street clothes in black and dark purple.

It's hard to miss the Legion's Headquarters building. It's also hard to miss the scowl that's planted upon Kwabena Odame as soon as he lifts the motorcycle helmet to reveal his face. Eyes flick upward in rapid motions until he's taken in the entire building, then dart around behind him when a cab driver lays on the horn.

"Hey dumbass!! Double park it somewhere else!"

Up comes a gloved hand. Extended is a middle finger. Then, the cab driver's spewing vulgarity is drowned in a cloud of exhaust as the Harley he's riding goes tearing off around the corner in search of a real parking spot.

A few moments later, the African comes striding into the building's impressive lobby. When at first he's greeted with silence, he elects to look about with one eyebrow cocked up into the air; but soon enough there's another person walking into the lobby to meet him.

There's no shortage of speculation in eyes of brown and silver. They're looking Rokk Krinn up and down as he comes over, though at least Kwabena has managed to conceal the scowl from his face. He doesn't quite enjoy big, open, exposed spaces like this, especially ones so heavily 'on the grid' in regard to the metahuman community. Is that a spider in the back of his brain, telling him that somehow, this is going to end up with him on some government watch list?

Again?

Naaaah.

Oddly enough--

--government watch lists are super unlikely on the Legion's part, though poor ol' Shift would have no way of knowing that.

The man with the tablet, held somewhat carelessly at his side, approaches shift with an expression so friendly it could belong on a Guthrie. "Hey," he says cheerfully, sounding Space Canadian and extending a hand, "I'm Rokk Krinn, with the Legion. Can I help you?"

Hard face to read, it's so square-jawed and responsible-looking. Bearing of a jock, but the kind that in high school was the quarterback who was friend to children and small animals and helped little old ladies across the street and never bullied anyone.

In other words, dear god is he even real.

Took the words right out of our fingers there.

It's with that 'dear god is he even real' expression that Kwabena walks forward, offering his still-gloved hand in greeting. To be fair, it's fingerless, and that middle finger has gone back where it belongs. Short-lived is the expression, and there's a momentary silence where something seems to go rushing through the visitor's mind before he offers at least a courteous smile and answers, "Kwabena Odame."

There's a brief silence as he looks about with his eyes, then they fall back upon Rokk with an expression that quite clearly screams 'let's just get down to business'.

"Angel McGuire."

It's a name Rokk is sure to recognize. 17 years old kid from Gotham, with an Hispanic mother and a drunk for a dad, who just happened to have found himself upon a time vortex he accidentally created in 1977 when his X-Gene manifested during his father's most recent bout of drunken screaming and furniture-breaking. Granted, Angel hasn't used his power for ill will, aside from a few experiments in manipulating space-time around his immediate vicinity -- makes for a great way to get some extra studying in after all -- but he's been living at this place ever since the time vortex dumped him out in a world of cell phones, Instagram and Miley Cyrus.

It also seems that his parents conveniently learned of his existence recently, and after filing with the probate court of Gotham County, was remanded back into their custody about six months ago.

The change is remarkable. As soon as the name comes out of Shift's mouth, the impossibly unreal demeanor vanishes, leaving a man with a sharp and canny expression, shoulders straight and motion conserved, restrained. Almost military. "Right," he says, then gestures toward the door he'd just come from. Krinn is still utterly polite, but his tone and body language indicate he's quite used to command. "Let's speak in private, please."

The change in Rokk's demeanor is actually welcomed, but there's nothing to really show it. Kwabena's expression is, if anything, less standoffish. He remains utterly silent until they are inside that office, the door has been shut, and privacy (well, relative privacy, considering he's quite sure the place has security measures out the wazoo) is granted.

Now, at this point, Kwabena has gotten so deep into the investigation that even he is not sure yet who he can trust. Especially when it comes to Angel McGuire. Therefore, he remains silent still, leaving the ball squarely in Rokk's hand. His mis-matched eyes never stray away from those of his counterpart, however, as if he's searching for something, anything that might be found in a nervous tick or wayward glance.

It is, in fact, past the bank of projected gesture monitors and feeds that Rokk leads Shift, into a door marked in another language that the Legionnaire has to give what looks-- though it's altogether too fast-- to be a retinal scan to open. But open it does, and it leads into a modest office with a black desk and a couple of hoverchairs in front of it. He gestures for Odame to take a seat, then goes around the other side and activates the display.

Fishing through the resulting projection with his hands -- that other language, alien letters, scrolls past -- and with a gesture it's in English and it's brought up the Legion's file on young Mr. McGuire. "We don't," he says as he's scrolling, "tag people. We do give them emergency hyperspace beacons, but McGuire didn't activate his, so we can't find him."

The Braalian glances up, and his expression is measured, tone even. "What do you know about him, Mr. Odame?"

Curiosity is quite evident on Kwabena's face. The technology is beyond him, beyond even much of that which is at the Xavier Institute. He's also eyeballing that alien language, for it doesn't look like anything familiar to him. "What if he doesn't have de beacon anymore?" he asks, not sure how 'hyperspace' works beyond the obligatory Star Wars reference.

It's a rhetorical question, perhaps. Kwabena seems to pay it no mind, as if he didn't expect Rokk to answer it. Instead he leans forward, now fully trusting the hoverseat beneath him not to crash to the ground or wobble him off balance, and while his hands fold together, the harshness of his face softens just so.

There's a familiarity to the way Rokk speaks of his people.

"I know dat he was taken from you by de courts. I know dat he was remanded to his family." He gestures by way of explanation. "It's all in public record." Hands fold back together and only now do his eyes squint. "Only I had to dig quite deepah to get anything else." Reaching into his jacket, he produces some old microfilm, setting the tiny panels onto the desk and sliding them over towards Rokk. "Gotham Public Library. 1977. Some few writeups in fringe publications talking about de boy's mysterious disappearance. Same name, same parents, same address, same lienholdahs on de goddamned residence since 1973."

Kwabena reaches out to tap the microfilm three times with his finger. "He was seventeen den. He's seventeen now. And I have some idea of where he may have gone to."

Which would... technically... be impossible, considering time travel and no triggering of Angel's emergency hyperspace beacon.

"Like I said, we don't tag people," Rokk says, finally, swiping the holos aside and dimming them, then sitting down and crossing his arms on the desktop, sitting forward. He doesn't seem to care if the question's rhetorical, because its answer lends itself to the rest of the discussion. "So someone could've taken it off him. It's small enough his parents shouldn't've been able to find it, but if he were scanned for any kind of tech, it would've shown up."

The Legionnaire listens to and dismisses, one by one, the things Shift lists knowing about Angel McGuire. These aren't things that concern him, these aren't things that are impossible to him. The method of Shift's investigation and the medium in which the results are presented earn, in turn, looks approving and then startled. He picks up the microfilm like it's a precious artifact, studying it for a second before the last thing Odame says.

Then, then Cos focuses again, piercingly sharp: his gaze is now almost overwhelming with the sheer presence behind it, and he's clearly weighing the X-Man in front of him, reading him. It's kind of like facing down Magneto, actually. Except with less crazy. Which might be worse.

"Do you?" he asks, tone mild. "Are you going to tell me, or is this the lead-up to something else, Mr. Odame?"

"Well, I wouldn't want to be 'tagged', myself," answers Kwabena. It's possibly about the nicest thing he's said, too.

Now, this... this is an expression Kwabena is familiar with. The presence of mind, the devotion, the sheer weight of emotion that drives it. For a moment, just a moment, a smirk curls at the African's lips. He's unfaltering in returning the alien's gaze, either. Perhaps there's some sick part of him that's quite honestly enjoying the way he's stringing Rokk along, in his own home.

A small part.

Suddenly, that smirk fades. He's reading something of his own in Rokk's reaction, and it's encouraging. With a sharp and abrupt inhale of air through the nose, Kwabena leans back and reaches into his jacket again, this time producing a series of photographs. They are spread out next to each other in a fashion similar to one with a mild case of OCD. Each is a photograph taken from a great distance, each from a different angle, with the imperfections inherent with a high zoom, but the images are clear enough. Two men seated in the front seat of an SUV, wearing sunglasses and black suits. Bruiser builds, with the emotionless facade of well-paid-for thugs.

"Dey're watching de family's house, 24/7." Kwabena taps the photographs. "Same two dudes who are watching here..." Out comes a photograph of an apartment building in Chinatown. "Here..." Another shows a small apartment above a record store in Akron, Ohio. "...and here." Finally, a run down old house on the wrong side of the tracks in Smallville, Kansas.

"Not de same dudes, but de same riggings. Suits. Ties. Shades. No plates on de cars. All keeping dere eyes on places where oddah metahumans have been taken from dere families. Only the thing is, dese oddah places? Not 24/7. De McGuire house?" He nods his head. "Different story."

Leaning back, Kwabena folds his arms and fixes Rokk with narrowed eyes. "Mistah Krinn, I think dey've taken him to New Horizons."

It's with amazing self-restraint that Rokk waits out the smirk, and he's rewarded with part of an explanation, or at least some background for the concern. As Shift's speaking, pointing things out, the alien from the future (he looks so normal) (Kwabena's an X-Man) looks over the photos. He twists his ring around and holds it over each one; background tabs open as attachments to the dimmed file in the air to the side. Ringcam! "I figured he'd opened another time vortex. But when you came in here--"

Krinn shakes his head, mouth a thin white line. "That doesn't make sense. Why would whoever this is be on high alert, watching his folks'? Because of his ties to us? Expecting we'll come looking? Or keeping his parents from talking to us? They wouldn't have to worry about that." That last, accompanied by an exasperated and mirthless laugh. While he's asking, he's gestured another display frame over, keying in 'new horizons' without looking; as the results come up, he glances to the projection and it brightens. He squints. "Behavioral health clinic? Why the sprock would he--"

Again, the change is abrupt: from worry and impatience and business to carefully bridled fury. "I can think of a reason. Please tell me you have proof."

"Nancy Kim's father tried to shoot me for asking about her." Kwabena's tone of voice has grown bitter. "Dese families are being silenced."

The African casts his eyes toward Rokk's holographic display, where the all-too-familiar images come popping up. "I don't. And that's what's got me worried." Leaning forward again, Kwabena shakes his head and gestures toward Rokk with a suddenly less guarded manner. "At least a dozen, perhaps more. We're still looking. Every single one of dem was claimed lawfully, by court ordah, sentenced by de state to undergo treatment at New Horizons. Except... for Angel. De only thing I've got are dese two men." He taps his fingers on the photographs again.

"I don't have proof, but... I'm going to go and I'm going to get it."

That very last sentence, there, that's the one that makes Rokk open up. He's still angry, but there's none of the impatience anymore, and there's no ire directed at Shift. He relaxes just a fraction, pulling the last photograph up, and he slides the paper copies -- and the microfilm -- back toward the X-Man. "I'm coming with you," he says, like it's a matter of course. "Who else are you working with? Do you have anyone inside the government, or in any oversight organizations? Anyone that can locate a paper trail?"

The papers and photographs are collected by Kwabena, moving them back toward himself with one hand. Only then does he relax further still, a grin of irony spreading across his face. "Krinn... de government's involved. None of de people I know are in a position where dey could expose it." He shakes his head. "Dey'd be grasping at strings." He folds his hands, sobering up a bit more. "I've got friends. X-Factor. Oddah's who aren't afraid to take de law in dere own hands. We'll run de papah trail til it ends, but I have a suspicion dat I'll have to 'walk de line' if I'm going to blow dis open."

He lifts his eyebrows, adding, "You come with me? I can't guarantee everything we do will be exactly 'legal'."

"If the government's in on it, by nature legality's in question," the thirtysomething Braalian says reasonably. "The paper trail's going to be necessary either way: something to align with whatever gets blown open. So no one has to be a scapegoat." He sits up, now propping himself on the desktop by his elbows, and idly regards the display. "I can also provide your strike team with technological telepathy, invisible environment suits, and potentially transportation, for the duration. Hopefully you have a teleport, but if you don't, I'm pretty damned good at group getaways, in case we get made and subtlety goes out the window."

Steadily, a dubious expression grows on the Ghanaian's face. He couldn't have said it better himself. In fact, he probably is not educated enough to put it that way at all.

When all of those toys are offered up, however, Kwabena's grin grows a bit more rueful. "A quieter approach might be more effective," he offers. "At least at first. Given de right leads? I and my people can be very good at going in, getting what we need, and getting out without a second glance. We get as much inside info as we can, paper records, security footage, eyewitness reports... we bring it back and collaborate it..."

His eyes sparkle.

"Den we find out how deep de rabbit hole goes. Blow it open, and get dose people out."