nextgenerationmarvel | Call for Help (Sammy)

Joe drove, missing his bike a lot. There was something about having the wind in one's face that couldn't be beat. Still, he at least had good company.

"Penny for your thoughts?" he asked, looking for something to distract him from seeing Melissa's brother again.

"Inflation, goofball. Prices have gone up since you left. I need at least a dollar." She shot him a smirk.

"I'm wondering what you'll use for leverage with this guy. When my next caffeine fix will be, how Marcus and Aether are doing, where I left my spare Glock, and why I don't yet rate a flying car."

"You always tricked me out of my dollars when we were kids." Joe grumbled.

"One: I'm going to appeal to his love for his sister. Two: Probably at the jail. Three: I don't know Marcus or Aether so I don't know. Four: Probably in your underwear drawer or in your cabinet at home. Five: You'll get it when you're Director of SHIELD." Joe said, covering all of Sammy's questions.

"You were an easy mark," Sammy countered. "It was practically cake."

"One: I hope he has some left. Two: I hope they have decent coffee. Three: Marcus Whitman, aka the Black Knight, is the guy I'm sleeping with and Aether is his flying horse. Don't cringe, I'm all grown up now. Four: This is when I say I'd have to wear underwear to have an underwear drawer, but you're driving and I don't want to end up in a wreck while you bleach that out of your brain. Five: You just asked what I was thinking, you didn't say you wanted it to make sense. I want a flying car."

Joe still cringed a little. Sammy was the little sister he never had and the idea of her sleeping with a guy tripped him up a little. Yes, she was all grown up. No, he was not okay with that.

But then she mentioned not wearing underwear and Joe had to keep his eyes on the road. "I really didn't need to know about the no-underwear thing, not from you at least." Joe said.

"Besides, where would you even get a flying car? What's wrong with a regular ground car?"

"Relax, I'm yanking your chain. Of course I wear underwear." She paused for effect. "Marcus has great taste and no problem going into Victoria's Secret to buy them for me."

She put her PDA down. "What do you mean, where would I get one? Dad has one. Mom has one. I want one. A regular ground car has to share the road with other cars. The sky is traffic free."

"Wait a minute. They let MEN in there?!" Joe asked, incredulous. Melissa had tried to get him to go into a Victoria's Secret once, but the idea didn't sit well with him.

"You know, if you and all the people who want flying cars get them, the sky is going to get a lot more crowded. Besides, I've seen you drive. The idea of you with a flying car is really, really scary."

"Of course they let men in there. Men spends lots of money on slinky nighties and satin undies. Marcus does, and he even gets my size right." She said it with relish, evilly enjoying Joe's discomfort.

"My driving is fine. You know, it was while driving when Dad and I discovered I could stop time."

Joe's worldview has been altered a bit with this conversation. He didn't know about Victoria's Secret. His mind wandered a bit to buying something for Roxanne...and he immediately shut that idea down. This car ride was uncomfortable enough.

"Your driving used to be Mario-Kart style crashing when we were kids. But it seems like stopping time while driving would be a little scary. How did he handle it that first time?" Joe asked.

If he hadn't been driving, Sammy would have elbowed him in the side. Hard.

"My driving is a lot better than you remember, especially after I got a pilot's license. Dad's been understanding. All his history with the mutants prepared him to handle me. Plus his history with you and your dad. You grew up knowing you'd be special with the super soldier serum. All I knew was that I was going to head up SHIELD, not a mutate."

"That makes sense." Joe said, nodding his head. He couldn't imagine being a mutate, though it didn't make him see Sammy any differently than he saw her now.

"Leavenworth is up ahead. You ready to do this?" he asked.

"That's a question you need to ask yourself, Joe. I have no emotional connection here. No matter what he says, it won't affect me like it will you. He can't play games with me."

"I'm ready, Sammy. I've got no choice." Joe said.

He pulled up to the guard gate several minutes later and indicated that both he and Sammy were from SHIELD. The guard asked for ID, which Joe showed, the radioed ahead to get things in place.

Twenty-five minutes later, Joe and Sammy are checked, their weapons confiscated and they are moved into a visiting area.

Jason Landon is brought in shortly after. The man is 6'2" and easily 230lbs. His ice blue eyes are calculating and cold. He wears what Sammy would recognize as an inhibitor collar around his neck, indicating that he is a mutant.

Jason's eyes look over Sammy with all of the emotion of a shark evaluating a meal, before he looks over a Joe. There's a very subtle change in his body language.

"What do you want, Rogers?" Jason asks, sitting down and glaring at the man with pure malice.

"Someone robbed Melissa's grave, man. The knife I put in with her at the funeral is gone. Someone stabbed a friend of mine with it. I need you to tell me where she is so I can find these people and stop them."

Jason looked at Joe for a moment.

"No. I'm not helping you." the man said.

"You might reconsider your answer," Sammy said in a reasonable voice. "Somebody robbing your own sister's grave doesn't bother you?"

"I was starting to wonder if you'd found another woman to con, Rogers. Looks like you found yourself a sucker." Jason said.

"Watch it." Joe said warningly.

Jason looked at Sammy. "My sister wouldn't be in a grave if not for this piece of human garbage here." he said, nodding toward Joe.

"You put her in that hole in the ground and /now/ you care what happens to her? I told you what was coming. You're getting it." he said.

Joe looks at Jason in disbelief. "I had no idea what would happen to her! You brought this on her by getting her involved in your crap, man!"

"Well, I don't know what's going to happen to your friend. I mean, here you are talking to me about this and she's at home. Alone. Where anyone with some bad intentions and a little know how can just walk right in and...nevermind. I want to go back to my cell now. Go to hell, Rogers and take your friend with you." Joe said, rising from his chair.

Sammy slipped between the seconds to walk around the talk, shove the prisoner back down in his seat and his face into the table. Time resumed when she was back behind Joe.

"What would you know about his friend getting stabbed?" she asked, still in her reasonable voice. "You here in prison, with no visitors that we know of. And what are you doing here, anyway?" She tapped her neck to indicate that she referred to the collar. "You should be in the Vault. At least the Raft. Maybe the latest one that's off everyone's radar and under particular directorship."

Before Jason knew what was happening he was sitting down again and his face was slammed into the table. He yelled in pain and covered his nose, though when he was able, he glared daggers at Sammy.

"You might want to start talking." Joe said. "I'm the good cop. Guess what that makes her?"

Jason, for his part, smirked for the very first time.

"He said you'd come here looking for answers. Demanding them. He was right."

"Who said we would come looking for answers?" Joe demanded, grabbing him by the collar.

"Jason did. He hasn't been here in quite some time. He asked me to stand in for him because you'd be here soon. And he had a message for you: None of you are safe. None."

And then Jason Landon changed into the form of a pale-white skinned mutant with an elongated neck and long slender fingers. It looked like the TV version of an alien, with bulbous black eyes.

"Looks like you guys lose."

Joe looked at Sammy in shock. "Damn it. We've got to get the Colonel on the line."

"Looks like Leavenworth is up for a federal review, with some SHIELD assistance. We'll get him on the line as soon as we're out of here."

She took an un-moment to slam the mutant's face into the table twice more. Once for not being Jason. Twice for being a smart ass about it. How sweet it was to be her and time walk when she didn't want to be seen.

"How long have you been in Jason's place here?" she asked. "And keep in mind I'm the bad cop and I have all the time in the world with no video proof to spend getting the answer out of you."

When Sammy restarted time, the mutant felt even more pain than before and his nose, such as it was, was truly broken.

"What the fuck?! Okay, okay! It's been about three months! He said if I played along, I'd get out early! All I had to do was sit and wait for this guy to show up." he said, pointing at Joe.

Joe was angry. "Where. Is. He?"

"I don't know! I haven't heard from him! You guys can't do this to me. I've got rights!" the mutant yelled.

"Crap. I should have known it was him behind this." Joe said. Then he cursed.

"Oh no, you're a mutant found impersonating another inmate. That can automatically put you under SHIELD jurisdiction. Once I explain it to the warden and make a few calls, you'll be moved by specialists, with a nice bunk waiting in the Vault."

Sammy wagged a finger at the mutant. "It's not nice to interfere with a SHIELD investigation. It gets you noticed. And documented. And on Joe's shit list."

"H-hey! I didn't have a choice. Do you know what that guy can do? He killed two of my friends in the yard for looking at him wrong!" the guy said.

Joe just stared the guy down.

"You better hope I don't see you again, pal. Or you won't have to worry about what Landon will do to you." Joe said.

"Come on, Sammy. Let's get back to New York. He could be after...anyone." Joe said, though a few particular faces came unbidden into his thoughts just then.

Roxanne. Sammy. Mom. Dad.

If anything happened to them, any of them, because of him...

Joe turned and left the room.

Edited 2012-12-03 03:47 (UTC)

"Then you'll be safer in SHIELD custody. You can look wrong at all of our other guests and see what happens." The scared look was nice to see. SHIELD should cause fear in the right people.

She followed Joe out, running after him with his long strides. "Three months. That's an awful lot of time to be free and causing trouble. No clue up to now?"

"No, none. But some of the stuff that happened before you showed up suddenly has a little more meaning to it." Joe said.

"He was out there this whole time, probably watching and waiting. But why hit now? He might have gotten me awhile ago and this whole thing would be over already." Joe said sadly. He was tired of this. Tired of the guessing, the looking over his shoulder.

He was tired of feeling guilty.

"I left Roxanne home alone. If he's watched her at all, he knows what she can do. He might have back-up for that."

You have back-up now, Joe. Little Sammy is watching out for you.

"As soon as we're out, you call her. I'll call the colonel. By the time we get back to New York, we can have some of the prelim done. You better start thinking up every detail you can about Jason Landon for the hacks to work on."

"Got it. Melissa talked about him all the time, but I know that he's ex -Special Forces. And I know that he can kill people as easily as looking at them but Melissa never let it slip that he was a mutant." Joe said, looking to one of the guards.

"You want to talk to the warden while I bring the car around?" he asked.

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agent_timeout - 2012-12-04 09:22 (UTC) - Expand