Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 27

Thread: Mistaken Identity

  1. #1
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest

    Closed Roleplay [X-Men] Mistaken Identity

    JFK International Airport, New York

    If he had tried, Dan was fairly sure that he could not have felt more out of place and uncomfortable. His surroundings were almost but not quite entirely alien: it had been almost eight years since anyone from his world had set foot inside a building as large as an airport without it being half-collapsed and stripped clean by scavengers.

    Hell, he mused, stealing a glance out of the gargantuan bank of windows at the city in the distance, Where I'm from there isn't even a New York City any more.

    The outfit was worse. Though not physically uncomfortable per se, the United States Air Force uniform that General Heller had provided felt even more out of place on his shoulders than he did in these surroundings. The Captain's bars especially weighed heavily; an elaborate half-lie that he felt neither qualified nor worthy to display. It was his own fault though: in uttering his own name in front of crowds and cameras, he had subverted his counterpart's place in this reality. His name, his face, his powers, and his actions would all go hand in hand in the public's mind, regardless of the fact that there was a real Captain Daniel Myers out there somewhere.

    The fact that somewhere was as specific as he and SHIELD could manage to be was concerning all on it's own. The day after Dan had arrived, Daniel had fallen into the custody of a quasi-military organisation called Vanguard, and hadn't been heard from or of since, despite General Heller's best efforts to root out leads. Something in the back of Dan's mind half-expected his inter-dimensional twin to jump out of every shadow he saw, and fight him for the rights to his name back.

    Dan bundled up those thoughts and shoved them deep into the back of his mind, turning away from the concourse to head through a security door that two armed guards were holding open for him. They didn't stop him, speak to him, or otherwise acknowledge his presence aside from a few curt nods and muttered "sirs". The perks of a military uniform and a SHIELD ID badge, he supposed.

    Out of sight of the every day public, the architect had clearly rationed his creativity for use elsewhere. The corridor was a narrow, sterile, faded white affair, lit by those irritating artificial lights that flickered intermittently. There were no windows, save for the tiny portholes in each door so that you could look through and make sure no one was lurking with a shiv on the far side. It reminded him a little too much of the mental hospital they'd hunkered down in for a few nights to dodge the imp raids back in '03; though fortunately without the blood smears across the walls.

    A left-turn brought him face to face with a probably not as young as he looked man, whose slightly less snazzy than Dan's suit bore a badge that proudly proclaimed FBI. Dan assumed that this was the Agent Kane he'd been told to expect, but in all honestly he wasn't feeling particularly inclined to make the effort of squinting at the man's name tag to confirm that.

    "Agent," he greeted curtly, deftly sidestepping the name issue.

    Agent FBI threw back a nod. "Captain Myers, I presume."

    Something about his demeanour suggested a distinct lack of enthusiasm for what was going on; Dan suspected it was frustration at the futility of his interrogation efforts, and based on what Dan had heard during his rushed briefing, he sympathised. Apparently, the man in the room wasn't particularly inclined to saying anything all that helpful.

    A clipboard was pressed into Dan's hands, covered with surprisingly neat handwriting. "All we've managed to ascertain so far is that he's not the 72-year-old Swedish woman that security in Zurich seemed to think he was." The agent uttered a sigh. "Here's hoping you have better luck than I did."

    "Thanks," Dan half-muttered as he skipped the agent's notes, only a few lines in and already feeling his eyes glazing over. Giving up, he offered a thin smile as he passed the clipboard back and, without bothering with any more unnecessary talking, stepped past the agent and into the room beyond.

  2. #2
    Boyd
    Guest
    It was difficult to fault Agent Kane's deductive insight. The man sitting in the interrogation room was most definitely not a twenty-two year old woman.

    Whether he was Swedish was hard to say, at a glance. He had the same disheveled look that many international travelers wore: clothes rumpled, hair unkempt,and eyes full of the resigned weariness that comes with being shuffled endlessly from one security checkpoint to the next. Underfed and overtired, pale enough to be from some part of the world where summer was a thing of fables and legends and thin enough to be conceivably running on a diet primarily made up of coffee, cigarettes and not much else.

    His shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing elaborate black ink tattoos that covered almost every inch of his forearms. Interlocking geometric patterns, peculiar symbols and shapes, words written in languages that the human eye felt uncomfortable, even queasy, to look at. He flexed his wrists, feeling the profiled edges of the handcuffs that the FBI had thrown on him twist smoothly over his skin. The chain link between the cuffs was an inch long, just long enough to make picking the lock... difficult.

    The door behind him made an almost inaudible squeak as it swung inward on its hinges. Boyd smiled.

    “I do hope you've brought me my coffee, Captain Myers.”

  3. #3
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    That was something else drastically different about this world than his own: coffee. It had been a slow process at first: when the war had started, priorities shifted; importers were more worried about getting the hell out of the way than they were about shipping in the essentials. Then the borders had shut down; the government had shattered and ultimately collapsed; smugglers tried to bring the stuff in from Mexico and Hawaii, but marauders across the borderlands made sure there were fewer and fewer of those each day. People tried cultivating it on US soil, in farms, gardens, and ultimately hydroponics when staying out in the open became too foolish for even the stupid to engage. But, it was hard to justify expending space on a worthless bean when you could use it on crops of real substance. Some people sought their caffeine and their stimulants elsewhere; others simply stopped bothering, weaned off by the war.

    It was a mindset - that he could just walk into a room and then walk out again with coffee in hand - he'd have to train himself into, if he was going to be stuck here any longer.

    Dan didn't bother to look up from the clipboard. "Do I look like a barista?" he half-muttered. "Because I'm pretty sute the uniform I put on this morning was blue rather than green, and didn't have 'Starbucks' written on it."

  4. #4
    Boyd
    Guest
    “Ah,” he breathed, the word almost a sigh. “I have missed the.. warmth and hospitality that your country is so renowned for.”

    His accent was not Swedish, but unmistakably British. As for the passport that had been confiscated from his person by US border forces, that was neither. From front to back, its pages were blank. No personal details, no visa stamps, no awkwardly posed photograph. Just dogeared pages of paper bound together by thread, a strong contender for the least convincing piece of forgery to pass through the Bureau's hands.

    “I've waited here very patiently for you, Captain. The least you could do is afford me the same degree of.. courtesy.”

  5. #5
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    Dan replied with a sigh of his own, and eased back slightly in his chair, hands falling into his lap as he slouched in the polar opposite posture of what a military officer should probably have.

    "Sorry," he shrugged, sounding more lazily sarcastic than genuine, "But I'm afraid here in America we don't all have butlers to run around doing stuff for us."

    That he was British was a guess, but an educated one: he was either that or Australian, and Dan doubted that anyone could set foot down under and still maintain that sickly pallid complexion. He supposed that it might not matter if the person opposite was some sort of vampire - he'd seen weirder things, and it'd certainly explain the creepy penmanship all over his arms - but somehow, the idea of a vampire demanding coffee just didn't sit right. Even so, he was beginning to wish there was some sort of mirrored surface somewhere in the room, just to be safe.

    "How about we cut a deal?" Dan continued. "I will get you your coffee; but in return I want facts and answers from you that aren't total bullshit."

    Not sure of what to do with themselves, his arms subconsciously folded across his chest. "Starting with a name."

  6. #6
    Boyd
    Guest
    Cut a deal. The words sent a shiver up his spine. Deals, he knew all too well. The terms were arguably more generous than bargains he'd entered into in the past, on the surface at least. Names did carry power in them and although Dan Myers didn't seem like the kind of man who would know that such power existed, let alone how to manipulate it, seeming and being were not the same thing.

    “My name is Boyd - and I'll take that coffee black, with no sugar.”

  7. #7
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    Boyd.

    Dan tugged out the ballpoint from the little loop holder on the clipboard, and flicked of the lid that looked like it had been mauled either by a small terrier or a distracted civil servant agent. Plipping to a fresh page, he carefully wrote those four letters at the centre: carefully, because living in a war zone didn't provide all that many opportunities for handwriting practice, and he was a little rusty. Even the feel of the pen in his hand felt weird.

    "That's a start," Dan uttered half to himself, ignoring Boyd almost completely. He glanced up briefly, now hunched forward a little over the table in what felt like it was the sort of writing posture he vaguely remembered. "Is there a last name to go along with that, or do they not have those where you're from?"

  8. #8
    Boyd
    Guest
    With a fractional tilt of his head, he watched the precise way that Myers made a note of his name. Forming each letter with care, like a child unaccustomed to the dexterity required for the task. Odd. The officials and agents who had watched and questioned him to this point had been individuals of impeccably straight posture, men and women whose spines must have been locked in place with stainless steel rods and whose eyes rarely only skimmed across the surface of their notes before returning to Boyd himself. Myers, by contrast, could not have looked more disinterested. How... rude.

    When it came to the question of his name, Boyd consider the question with another tilt of his head.

    “Even if I had another name to give you - which I don't - you wouldn't find any use for it. I'm not in any of your... databases, captain. Your colleagues have already confirmed that.”

  9. #9
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    "You'll have to forgive me if I don't take you at your word on that."

    Dan wasn't particularly surprised that there wasn't anything to go along with that. The prevailing theory in his mind at the moment was that this Boyd character was some sort of mid-level psychic, capable of altering perception or projecting illusions, or something along those lines. In his experience, anyone with powers in that kind of ballpark often shrugged off their "mortal" identity in lieu of some sort of alias that they felt represented them better; and while most still had fingerprints or birth certificates lying around to be uncovered if anyone had the inclination or the resources to search for them, it wouldn't be too hard for that brand of psychic to ensure that such things were sponged out.

    The only thing that surprised Myers was that, despite presumably having the ability to be called whatever he wanted to be, this person had settled on something as unexciting as 'Boyd'.

    "Alright then," Dan began again, with a faint hint of a sigh. "Lets jump straight to the big question: if you're so fantastic and can slip through airport security with nothing but a 99 cent notebook, how come you got caught at this end? You having some -" He searched his mind for the most scathing terminology he could think of. "- performance issues, or are America's hyper-paranoid security measures just too much for you to handle?"

  10. #10
    Boyd
    Guest
    How had he been caught? On the surface, it made about as much sense as the symbols tattooed onto his bare fore-arms. How could such an elaborate disguise and deception fall apart at the last hurdle? It wasn't the how that bothered Boyd so much, however, as the why. There was a question that he'd been asking himself ever since he'd boarded the flight to JFK in the first place. The muscles in his jaw flexed as he thought of the self-satisfied, tight-lipped smiles he'd been given as the cuffs had been slapped onto his wrists. It bruised his pride to think that mere airport security would think of themselves as responsible for apprehending him, as if he hadn't willingly allowed them to discover his true identity – or lack thereof.

    He knew the answer to the why, of course.. Now was simply the time for this little interchange to happen. It was easier to accept them than to admit that he couldn't stop it. Even if he'd wanted to continue the charade he'd started in Zurich, from the moment they'd landed on American soil, Boyd had been unable to conjure even the most feeble of illusions.

    Shifting in his seat, uncomfortable with that ever looming fact, Boyd forced himself to smile a thin smile.

    “Consider this a gesture of good will,” he said, sitting forward, mirroring Dan's posture. “You and your.. employers will need my help soon – very soon, in fact. It is my choice to remain here until it is no longer.. necessary or beneficial for me to do so.”

  11. #11
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    Oh great, he's one of those guys.

    Dan's eyes would have rolled up inside his head, but in order to eye roll sufficiently they would have needed to steadily rotate for a good ten minutes, and that would probably have meant they'd start generating gravity or a magnetic field, or whatever the hell it was that the Earth spinning round actually did. Dan didn't really know, and didn't really care: he just knew that he didn't want it going on up inside his face.

    He'd met these predestination mystical bullshit type people a few times before; people who decided that because things like powers and abilities were difficult for them to understand, they must therefore be magical. Dan on the other hand chose to remain firmly on the side of science, attributing the stuff he didn't understand to the fact that he was kind of an ignorant dumbass with that sort of thing. Okay so sure, there were mutants out there who did stuff that seemed like magic, and there were people whose abilities let them make alarmingly accurate guesses as to what might probably happen; but he remembered a half-drunk T.J. Harriman hammering on about how it was all just Heisenberg uncertainty fields, and also something to do with cat's in boxes and necromancy that honestly Dan had sort of zoned out for.

    At any rate, the point was that as far as the - comparatively - enlightened denizens of the Church of Scientific Mutancy were concerned, it was all just a matter of prediction and strategy. Back before the War, when he'd been a hockey Captain instead of a resistance Captain, it had been a challenge he and the coach had wrestled with. You could predict what your opponent was probably going to do all you liked; but you couldn't play to that guess, you had to live in the moment and react to the stuff that was actually happening, just in case your predictions weren't as on the money as you thought. It seemed like common sense, and on those rare occasions where Dan perceived himself as having more of that than other people, he felt pretty comfortable allowing a smidge of bonus better than you arrogance to cultivate in his brain.

    Wisely though, he kept that very far from his expression; feeling marginally more comfortable with his writing endeavours, he scribbled down crazy magic guy underneath the part where he'd written needs haircut.

    "So just to be clear here," Dan finally spoke, adopting the kind of tone usually reserved for bank tellers trying to communicate with half-senile old ladies who wanted to open a new bank account with two thousand dollars in quarters. "You allowed yourself to be captured by airport security in one of the most paranoid nations on the planet, just because you want to work for -" He caught himself glancing down at the ID badge dangling from his jacket, to remind himself of the name. "- S.H.I.E.L.D?"

    Dan's brow furrowed into a disbelievingly puzzled expression. "Was there some reason you weren't able to fill out an application form like a normal, not totally crackpot-crazy person?"

  12. #12
    Boyd
    Guest
    Boyd frowned too, though in irritation instead of confusion. “Not for S.H.I.E.L.D. With them.”

    The distinction might have been a matter of perception to some, but not for Boyd. Especially not when his stock-in-trade was perception. Wherever possible, he would avoid working for anyone. Not because he was lazy, but because of the obligation that working for someone brought with it. Stay in one place, do one thing, repeat ad nauseum, and for whose benefit? No, a bargain was always better than a contract. Well, almost always. A bargain had lead to his meeting the charming Dan Myers.

    “We don't have the time - and I don't have the patience - for the usual admission process, captain. By all means, though,” he parted his hands as far as he could, cuffs permitting, with palms upturned, “Let's both of us sit here for the rest of the afternoon and fill in the necessary paperwork while an extra-dimensional creature beyond your plebeian comprehension demonstrates how woefully unprepared and unaware this paranoid nation of yours is. If my time-keeping is right, New York City has about... forty-five minutes of normality left before the crackpot-crazy starts.”

  13. #13
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    An extra-dimensional creature.

    It was a bold strategy, trying to not seem like a raving lunatic by talking like a raving lunatic. Under normal circumstances, he would have just shrugged it off as crazy talk, and called for a telepath to come and induce this guy into a coma so his clearly damaged brain could recover. But this was far from normal circumstances, and there was one exceptionally important detail that gave Dan pause.

    Technically, isn't that what I am?

    Within that one thought was a tiny kernel of hope. One extra-dimensional being was a fluke; but if this Boyd guy knew enough about them to shrug it off like it was as casual as discussing a few roaches, then maybe it wasn't so absurd. Wasn't so unusual. Just because Doctor Harriman back in LA, or the scientists over at SHIELD didn't know a damned thing didn't mean that no one did.

    He was grasping at straws though; and his experience it wasn't worth pinning your hopes on anything unless it was built out of bricks; out of something concrete.

    His hand went for his pocket, eyes not deviating from Boyd as he pulled out what the SHIELD techs had assured him was a perfectly normal consumer cell phone, but that Dan was convinced had been swiped from the set of some scifi movie or something. He fumbled with the lock, the pin, the speed dial; a particularly gormless image of Michael Beckett appeared on the screen as the phone successfully dialled.

    "Mike?" Dan spoke, still focused on Boyd. "Are you guys still in New York? I could use your help with a 0-8-4."

    He hesitated, eyes narrowing as if he could somehow stare through Boyd's skull and read the thoughts from his brain on his own.

    "I need to borrow your sidekick."

  14. #14
    Sidekick...?

    Sidekick.

    Oh Captain you are going to pay for that gem.

    It was going to be one of those days, apparently. Though she did have to admit that being able to flash a badge or just point to the emblem on her shoulder to work her way through airport security was pretty awesome. A girl could get to like this sort of thing. It didn't make up for the rest of the day though and the last thing she wanted to do was play good-cop/bad-cop with Myers. He wouldn't get a choice in who he was going to be though, if he'd been bad she was determined to be worse.

    The door to the interrogation room opened and in she walked: SHIELD uniform still pristine, head held high carrying theperfect I don't have time for this shit look. We'll see who the damn sidekick is.

    Kara eyed the other guy in the room - Okay so maybe her day was looking up. Helloooo tall, dark, and dreamy. - and leaned against the wall so she was situated perfectly spaced between the two. Her arms folded across her chest before she pulled overly cold eyes away and over to the Captain.

    "This is what you brought me in for?" Achievement Unlocked: Perfectly Executed Disinterest.

  15. #15
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    While Dan may have lacked the real military standing and experience that his uniform attested, what he didn't lack was the genuine authority that came along with it. SHIELD hadn't just shoved him in a uniform to look the part and maintain his cover: as far as military databases, service records, government paperwork, social security, and all of that stuff was concerned, he was Daniel Myers, and none but a select few were permitted or expected to know any different. SHIELD's latest recruit, a petty crook with potentially useful psychic abilities, did not have the Level 7 clearance necessary to know that sort of thing.

    "Specialist Hawkins," he replied, hands clamped behind his back as he fixed her with a stern look. His voice was quiet, but he put enough of an edge in to emphasise her vastly subordinate rank. "I was under the impression that you were out to prove yourself as a useful, contributing member of this organisation. Sergeant Beckett seems to think that you aren't a total waste of everyone's time; so I suggest you drop the attitude, and start acting like a SHIELD Agent instead of just playing dress-up as one."

    He let the words hang for a moment, drawing in a slow breath before throwing a gesture in Boyd's direction.

    "This man has no ID; and yet he walked onto a plane unchallenged in Switzerland, and has some pretty interesting claims as to how and why he pulled it off."

    His tone softened a little: stern had always been TJ.'s leadership style, not his; unfortunately, whacking someone upside the head probably didn't fly as part of an official military scenario. "Your file says you're a low level telepath as well as a telekinetic. I need someone to tell me whether or not his story is a pile of crap:that in your wheelhouse, or do I need to find someone else?"

  16. #16
    Boyd
    Guest
    Brows pinched together, Boyd mouthed an ooh and winced on the new arrivals behalf as Myers gave her a deliberately public dressing down. Was a low level telepath the best that S.H.I.E.L.D had, or merely the best that Myers had at his own beck and call? Either way, it didn't bode particularly well for their impending trip to the city.

    “Ordinarily I'd expect to be taken out to dinner before putting out like this,” he paused, favouring the redhead with a smile. “But given the circumstances, I suppose we can skip the.. perfunctory foreplay.”

  17. #17
    Dan Myers has learned Verbal Bitchslap. Dan Myers has used Verbal Bitchslap, it is ultra effective.

    Well fuck, maybe there was more to Captain tightpants than she thought. Granted she didn't know much about the guy except from the tiny bit of info from paperwork handed down to her by SHIELD but damn if he hadn't manged that same maneuver that General Heller had practically perfected. Okay then boss, we do things your way.

    "Yes'sir." One word that should have been two, mumbled but wanted to be said all snappy. Greaaat. The semi-apologetic glance she gave to Myers was even worse. How the hell did these military guys DO that?

    It almost was enough to make her forget about what had come pouring from the mouth of the other guy in the room. Almost. When a somehow perfectly disheveled guy with a downright sexy accent - No. Really. What was with British guys' ability to kill an American girl's willpower? Uncanny. - was talking to you about foreplay... Really? reallyyyy? How are you supposed to act?

    ...like the damn Captain expected you to, Stupid.

    Kara gave a small nod to Myers before pushing herself off the wall and rounded on the other guy. Go big or go home, Hawkins.

    "I haven't been informed of anything about you. Not because they don't trust me," She couldn't help but cast a glance over at Dan again. "But because any sort of information given would no doubt color my little world view. So why don't you run whatever you've told the good Captain by me without any added theatrics and we can get on with this?"

  18. #18
    Boyd
    Guest
    Boyd sighed. A small sigh – smaller than it ought to have been. What was the point, exactly, of drafting in the services of a telepath if you had to explain – out loud – to her the very details that she was supposed to be picking out of his brain like a psychic finger buffet?

    In less pressing circumstances, spending an afternoon meeting minds with an attractive redhead would be rather appealing – but with Captain Myers peering at them both and the an extra-dimensional arsehole barging it's way into the world a matter of miles away, it was hard to relax.

    “I used a magic to.. blag my way through customs, so that I could warn your employer about – and generously help them to deal with - the... thing that's going to be punching its way through the basement of a New York apartment block in... nineteen minutes time.”

  19. #19
    He made that face. The one that had been made a few times when she'd tried to explain that she was rubbish at actually reading people's minds. It wasn't just that damn easy and no one seemed to get that every time she actually really tried to get into someone else's head it resulted in an explosive migraine that made her want to curl into a ball and die. It wasn't that it couldn't be done, it was just god damn difficult and practice had never really been a high priority, and she wasn't about to try and waste time, or the rest of her day, on this guy.

    But whereas diving into someone's mind and gathering all their innermost secrets was miserably hard to do, for some reason, pulling the general feel of things wasn't. Try explaining that one... No sir, I can't tell you what you're thinking about in the deep recesses of your mind but I can tell you if you're currently thinking about having lunch because you're so focused on food that you aren't projecting a damn other thing. Not that this Mystery Man was thinking about food... He was however very concerned about something and that something seemed to coincide perfectly with what he was saying. Which was downright crazy. Magic. Things coming from somewhere and only 19... no... 18 minutes to spare. Kara wanted to think the guy was off his nut, but she knew what that felt like... She'd once encountered a homeless man who was anything but sane and while he seemed to know a lot of things, his mind had been the equivalent of an open infected sore. It had been awful. More to the point it wasn't what was going on with the guy in front of her now. 17 Minutes.

    He wasn't giving up what it was that was coming, but god damn if Kara didn't get that very distinct impression that it was bad.

    "We need to go." Her voice came out hollow sounding, distant... And then she snapped out of it and looked directly at the Captain. "He's not crazy. Well, not like that but he's not lying. And we're losing time."

  20. #20
    Captain Dan Myers
    Guest
    Dan Myers might not have really been in the Air Force, but he really was a Captain. It wasn't in the same league - hell, not even the same sport - but out on the ice with the puck rattling around at blinding speeds, there wasn't time for thought. There wasn't time for contemplation. There was only time for instinct. Dan had carried that over to the resistance, and while he often clashed with the more qualified cell leaders, it worked for him.

    Right now, his instincts were telling him that he needed to make a call. Nineteen minutes, sans however long it had taken for Kara to root around in Boyd's brain, was not enough time for strategy. He needed to think fast; and there was only one thing he could pin his decision on.

    Kara.

    Did he trust her? Did he trust the untested skills of an untested stranger? Should he put his faith in a girl who wasn't even sure what she was doing?

    His gut settled on an answer.

    Yes.

    He tugged his phone from his pocket, and punched the speed dial for Sergeant Beckett again. "Prep the 'jet," he ordered, no further instructions required.

    His gaze flicked to Kara. "Bring him." A curt nod was all he offered, and yet it managed to convey his respect and gratitude all the same. "I'd give you the keys to his cuffs, but from what I read, you won't need them."

Page 1 of 2 12 LastLast

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •