Victor Mancha (un_victorious) wrote in parabolical, @ 2008-04-08 15:24:00 |
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Entry tags: | peter petrelli (future), victor mancha |
Arrival
When: About twelve hours ago
Where: ...somewhere on the streets.
Who: Victor, future!Peter
What: arrival, misunderstandings and coming to an understanding
Rated: PG
What the fuck.
What the fuck.
This was... weird. This wasn't the LA that Victor knew. The LA that Victor knew wasn't full of dark and rain.
Well, okay, it had its share of dark and rain, but not for twenty hours straight! And he could still feel the cold, even if he wasn't exactly going to get frostbite.
This was weird, and creepy, and he had no clue where any of the others might be. Or any clue as to whether this much rain would damage him, although it stood to reason that it wouldn't -- he had showers every day, after all, and didn't short-circuit.
Fucking Ultron. He could have at least left an instruction manual.
"Suck it up," he whispered to himself, wrapping his jacket tighter around himself and leaving the meagre safety of the bus shelter. If he could find his way back to the Tar Pits, he could find the Hostel. The others might be there.
There had been a brief, brief break in the rain yesterday. A few seconds. And then the wind and rain had started up again with a fury that had to be sentient. There was no way something could form naturally in that amount of time.
Peter had been out to see it. He still couldn't believe it. Of course, being a native New Yorker and then a transient, he wasn't very experienced with hurricanes. Still, he knew enough that some warning came along with them.
The streets were still flooded in places. He'd gone back to the motel to check on Claire and Giselle before hitting the streets again. He told himself he was just going for a walk, but if downed power lines seemed to flicker out of juice or falling trees seemed to fall just so, that the damage they did was minimal... if those things happened along the route he picked, Peter could hardly be blamed for it, could he?
He turned up the collar of his coat, hair damp but not soaked as it by rights ought to be. Under the outer layer of cloth, he was warm, and he was dry. Peter watched along the street for the usual signs of people watching, eyes honed for anything unusual.
The LA Victor knew wasn't particularly prone to this level of violent hurricane, either. At least, the last he knew, there hadn't been any hurricane warnings.
There didn't seem to be many people on the streets, and that was worrying. LA streets were never empty.
So he kept walking, looking for any signs of life, and trying to get his bearings.
Peter could hear something, chittering away at the corner of his mind. It was strange. Something far more unusual than he was used to hearing. He was having some trouble determining if it was coming from his telepathy or the technopathy... which didn't make sense. If felt like technopathy, but sounded like...
He looked up sharply, hearing footsteps. There was a boy walking, Hispanic looking. Peter dismissed him for the moment, eyes sanning the area openly, looking for the source of the noise.
Hey.
He'd had enough people messing around with his circuitry to recognise it happening again. And it felt weird.
He glanced at the guy nearby, but he wasn't a cyborg, so it couldn't be him. They hadn't put another spy-program in him, had they? It'd been hard enough explaining that the first time.
Victor raised a hand to his temple automatically, wincing.
Peter felt a change in the technopathy, just as the boy in the corner of his eye raised a hand to his temple.
His head turned sharply, looking the boy over carefully. Now he was scanning with telepathy, but only for a moment before diving in headfirst (metaphorically) with technopathy.
The result nearly left him staggering.
"A machine," he said, the words leaving him in barely a whisper. "You're a boy... who's a machine." How was that possible?
"Ow! Get the hell out of there!"
Now he was reeling. Even Ultron had been gentler when he'd been taking over Victor's mind. Had this guy ever encountered a sentient machine before?
...probably not, at that. But it still hurt.
But pain was still pain, and Peter flinched at the echo of it. He hadn't expected that. Not at all. Once he'd recovered, Peter was moving closer, grabbing the boy by the arm and pulling him aside. "You're a machine," he hissed. "What are you? Why can you feel?"
Was this some new test? Homeland Security again? New threats were serious - serious enough that Peter wasn't thinking about whether or not his was his world. His only goal was to make it stop before it could hurt anyone.
"What the hell, man?" Victor tried to pull away, trying not to freak. People who could tell what he was tended to be one of two things: enemies, or one of the heroes who'd try to shut him down until they could work out if he was dangerous. "Let go of me!"
That feeling came again. Technology and thought, doused heavily with emotion. But this time, the emotion was fear. Strong enough that Peter could practically smell it.
He loosened his grip, pulling back slightly, but not enough for the boy to break away. "Stop," he said, though it wasn't completely clear if he was telling the boy, or himself. "Stop, there's an easier way."
He shut his eyes, letting out a breath, before looking at the boy. "I know what you are. I don't know why. I don't like mysteries. Do you want to attempt to explain, or..." He nodded, directing his gaze at the boy's forehead. "Should I check myself?"
"I want you to let me go!"
Sparks shot from his mouth he spoke, and he swore softly in Spanish, trying to keep calm. It was hard; this guy was freaky. Victor had thought the Gibborim were bad enough, but they at least looked as freaky as they were.
"Look, I'm not dangerous." Pleading, and hating himself for it. Thank God the others weren't here to see it; they were used to Victor being calm. He'd read about this sort of thing, hadn't he? But it was different when it happened to you. "I'm not. Let me go."
He nearly let go when the sparks flew. Nearly.
Instead, Peter swore himself, in Japanese. "You're a damn kid," he said, pushing the boy back slightly, releasing his grip. "That's what you are. A punk kid."
"And you're an adult." He made the word sound almost obscene. "You're just like the Pride. You want something, so you use force and threats. Fuck you."
He hadn't worked out how fast he was yet. He had memories of winning races in elementary school, but those memories weren't real. Could he move fast enough to get away from this guy?
Only one way to find out. He ran.
The words, no more than sounds in his ears, fell like weights upon his chest and gut.
force and threats...just like the...Fuck You...just like the Pride...
"Wait," Peter said, starting to follow. "Wait! Wait, I'm sorry. Please? Wait!"
Peter had superspeed. He ran around past the boy, stopping in front of him, with his hands up in offering. "I'm sorry. Please? Wait?"
"Why, so you can 'check for yourself' for some answer I don't even know?" Outrunning the guy was clearly not an option; Victor brought his hands up defensively, trying to look braver than he felt. "I'm not some -- some science fair project you can poke at! I don't know how I work, I just do."
Peter lowered his hands. "I'm sorry. I know what it's like when people are looking for you, trying to see how you work. I won't do it again."
He slid his hands into his pockets. "My name's Peter."
Victor eyed him, still keeping his distance.
Not that distance really mattered to a technopath, but it made him feel slightly less vulnerable.
"...Victor."
Peter nodded. "I'm sorry I upset you, Victor. There have been people after me for a long time. I needed to be sure you weren't their latest attempt."
He stuck his hands in his pockets, trying not to shiver. Since when had LA been this cold?
"They have the technology to build cyborgs?"
Because that was kind of freaky. He didn't think humans could build things like him yet.
"Not really. But they have people who can do things that normally can't be done. I wouldn't put it past them to build a cyborg just to trick the rest of us. There's not many technopaths anymore." Micah was gone. Kennedy had killed herself rather than be used against the Underground when she was caught. And Danny had vanished months ago.
"Huh." Curiously, Victor asked, "are you a mutant?"
He'd heard of technopathic mutants. And people weren't always good about mutants, which would explain the comment about trying to trick them rest of them.
Mutant. Peter had heard the term before. It wasn't one that they tended to use, but it was technically accurate.
"That's one word for it," he said, with a nod. "It's a genetic ability."
"My friend Molly's a mutant. She's really strong."
Molly. And Chase, Nico, Karolina, even Xavin.
But not Gert. Not anymore.
Where were they? This didn't seem like the LA he knew, and he had no idea where his friends were.
Peter nodded, smiling slightly. "My girlfriend has that. The strength. Her name's Niki."
He frowned. "You have somewhere to go Victor? Are you...from here?"
"I'm from LA," he said slowly, "but this doesn't seem like LA, you know? I'm pretty sure it's not nighttime, but it's dark, and this rain -- it's weird."
"This might not be your LA. I got pulled here from Las Vegas, in 2011." He looked up at the skies. "And it's been dark and raining since I got here. No one seems to know what's going on. No one I've talked to, at least."
"Vegas? Seriously?"
Wait. A different world? That was... really kind of bad.
"If nobody knows what's going on, I'm guessing nobody knows how to get back, either?"
"No. Bt we're here for a reason. A purpose, I think. And whan that's settled I think we all go home."
"Wait, hold up." Victor eyed him. "You're trying to tell me that some -- I don't know, that God brought us here?"
Peter shrugged. "It's just what I heard. Rumors, most likely. The Powers That Be. And that's all I know there.
"...right."
He shook his head, stripping back his wet hair.
"So if this isn't my LA, there's probably not much point trying to find my friends, is there?"
Peter gave a shrug. "It's hard to know who's here and who's not. Hell, there's another me hanging around. But there's also my niece, from my time, my world. So it's not totally impossible that you're alone."
"Even if I am, I'll survive."
He might go out of his mind worrying about whether they were okay, maybe, but he'd survive. It was kind of hard to kill a cyborg.
Peter arched a brow at that. It was an interesting choce of words. "Survival isn't necessarily living," he said. "Even for a cyborg."
It was something he knew, and knew all too well.
"Yeah, well." Victor shrugged, uncomfortable. "Make the best of a bad situation, and all that, right?"
He may have looked like a kid, and Peter could guess that he was far younger than he actually looked, but he was talking with the age and experience of one who had seen too much to be so young. Peter nodded. "That's the way it works, I guess."
He let out a breath, giving the streets a long once-over, and glanced back at Victor. "Are you able to talk to other machines or anything like that?"
Victor nodded. "I've got the robot version of technopathy, yeah. And electromagnetic control."
And a few other things, but there was no point putting all his cards on the table. Not yet.
"Good." Peter fished a few bills out of his pocket and offered them over. "This should hold you until you find an ATM. Don't take more than $200 at a time, or they start tracking withdrawls. No need for anyone to know your signature."
He gave the look that wasn't quite a smile, but was more amiable than he'd been. "If you have any trouble finding a place to stay, get in touch with me. I'll do what I can."
The others wouldn't approve of stealing from ATMs.
The others weren't here.
"Thanks." Peter was still kind of intimidating, still an adult, but he seemed decent. "You're... not like the others."
He shrugged. "I know what it's like when you're on your own in... in a place that should be home, but isn't." There was a slightly bitter note on those words, but he glossed over it and went on. "I'm not gonna insult you by implying that you won't make it on your own, 'cause you look and sound like someone who's more than capable of taking care of himself. But, things happen. If something does, I'll do what I can to help out."
"I appreciate it. Seriously."
First goal: find somewhere out of the rain.
The tug in the corner of Peter's lips might have been taken as a smile. "Good luck, Vic. I'll see you around."