Participants:
| Scene Title | Not the Happiest Reunion |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Hephaestus comes calling on his daughter Vette to grant her demigodhood. |
The door from the alley opens into a small room or short hallway in this brownstone. At the far end is an antiquated lift that looks like a birdcage, complete with manual levers for operation. Dispite its age, the mechanism appears to be well cared for.
At the bottom, the lift opens into some sort of antechamber from one corner of the room. Before the open cage door is a plain, unornamented wall of what appears to be granite with a thick wooden door set inside it. Engraved above the door archway is "Special Immigration Office: East"
Access is only granted with the proper key. Once opened, the granite door swings inward as a computerized neutral voice intones, "Provisional Access Granted. Containment and Research are currently under lock down. Efforts to penetrate secure doors will be discouraged." Through the doorway, there's a large console in the middle of the chamber with a three dimensional display of the New York City atop it. The holographic display is a fairly complete representation of New York City and it's environs. Mostly there is a very simplistic representation of structures, although the map does have a few colored markers. Numbers and figures at times scroll past, apparently having meaning to someone. Computer workstations hug the walls, along with filing cabinets and desks. Several cots and assorted supplies are pushed into out of the way corners as well, with the idea of long stays. The room is some sort of think-tank, apparently. The only other unlocked door leads to a small kitchen and dining area, which are well-stocked.
From somewhere, Vette has acquired or made what looks like a rifle scope without the sniper rifle. She's laying on a building top, watching over one of the streets below with eerie, quiet precision. She's dressed in the same smoggy gray color as the flat rooftop she's found for herself, and has all of her red hair tucked under a similarly colored stocking cap.
Quietly, behind her, she'll hear the soft, metallic clank-clank-clank and click-click-click of tiny legs skittering across a rooftop. When she turns to look, she'll find a small mechanical spider, about the size of a baseball with legs, looking back at her. Made of dull matte steel, it blinks a single ocular shutter lens at her before a robotic voice intones, "Vette. Go back to the hub. Your father wants to speak to you."
Blink. Blink. "Alright," Vette says quietly. She gets lightly off the rooftop and starts climbing down the fire escape. She's only a block away, so it won't be long. Her /father/ wants to speak to her? Her eyes are a little wide.
The spiderling watches her go, turning on its legs, before it skitters away and leaps down the rooftop, disappearing from sight.
And when the lady returns to the hub, Hephaestus is already there. Seated at a chair in front of one of the consoles, he looks like a giant of a man made of muscle and bulk, hunkered down in front of one of the computers. "Primitive," he grumbles. "Who designed this damned operating system? Bill fucking Gates?"
"I do not know," Vette admits, hunkering down beside her Dad and honestly feeling a real thrill at doing it. "We sort of inherited it." She suddenly says, shyly, "I made a little relic off the technology inside once. It was just a little one." Like a little girl saying she'd made a birdhouse.
He grunts as she seats herself beside him, paying more attention to the computer than to her. "So I heard," Heph rumbles, his voice low and booming like the stirrings of an angry, irritable volcano. "A tiny relic." He pulls himself back from the machine and then spins slowly around in the creaking, agonised swivel chair to peer down at his daughter. Thick, bushy eyebrows knit together, and his dark eyes are piercing and bright as he studies the little Scion.
Vette studies him back, resisting the urge to chew on her lower lip. "Is something wrong, Father?" she asks hesitantly. "I mean. Besides the Atlanteans and dark prophecies and the like." She takes off the stocking cap, letting her own brilliant red hair flow over her shoulders.
They're such a contrasting pair. Him with thick, black hair and a huge beard, and she's got all her red hair. "Hmph," he grumbles. "You take after your mother in the face, I see. Those are her eyes and her hair." He leans back. Then he scowls all the more blackly. "Something wrong? What, the Atlanteans coming back to rear their ugly heads and dark prophecies aren't reason enough to scowl? /Should/ there be something more wrong, daughter? Guilty conscience over something?"
"No guilty consciences here," Vette says quietly. She leans back in her own seat and folds her own arms. She only tilts her head though, rather than scowling back at him. Like a little bird. She simply waits for the man to say something after giving that comment.
"Hmmmmmm." He stares at her for another long moment before he draws back, turning away from her to the computer. "The first time we met, I told you that you were wasting your time with this… dancing thing you were doing," Hephaestus rumbles, waving his hand around in gesticulation. "It looks to me like you've turned your attention to better, more sensible things now. Tell me, Vette. How do you feel about the way your development has progressed?"
"I am quite happy with it," Vette replies. "I have found purpose and uncovered much more of my true personality." She still does dance, as a hobby, but only to blow off steam, and she sees no need to mention that. "I feel far more confident then I did when we first met, and I believe I have accomplished much. I intend to keep in the direction I am going. As it turns out, you were right."
Hearing he's right is a good way to get on Heph's good side. What little he has of one, anyway. Grunting again, the man rests his ham-like hands on his thighs and stares at her for a few seconds longer before turning back to the computer. "You've got a long way to go yet," he informs her. "But I /have/ noticed some improvement, enough that it's time to further stir the ichor in your blood, daughter." He holds out his hand to briefly touch a fingertip to her forehead.
Whoa, what a rush! Vette's eyes widen as she feels that ichor stir and grow. She hadn't imagined what it would feel like to feel /even more/ more human than she already did, but she's now tasting it first hand. "Thank you," she says, her eyes still quite wide.
Hephaestus does not answer the woman as he pushes forward a couple of trinkets for her, one of them being a pistol and the other being another puzzlebox charm on a chain. "These are for you," he tells her, perhaps unnecessarily. "Try not to lose them or break them," he drily adds.
"Thank you," Vette says sincerely, taking the puzzlebox and threading it onto the same chain the other two are on. Then she replaces her pistol with the new one. Then she gives her father a hug and a kiss on a cheek. She's still his little girl. Or something. She wants to be, anyway.
Hephaestus looks… rather bewildered by this, as bewildered as any overgrown man-bear would look at Goldilocks giving him a hug and a kiss. WTF? He scowls up at her as he sits on that chair in front of the computer console, grunting at her. "Hrmph. Don't make matters awkward, Yvette." And with that, he disappears.
Any additional notes fall to the bottom.
