1964-11-16 - Max of the Red Death
Summary: Goodbye, Attilan.
Related: If there are no related logs, put 'None', — please don't leave blank!
Theme Song: None
maximus vesper 


Schrafft's isn't the epitome of fine dining in New York, but on a geneticist's salary, it marks a good experience all the same. Gilt and lace are probably to Gallic tastes, but it could also be that Vesper secretly has lunch in Versailles when no one notices. Her options are broad. Either way, a phone call to Maximus served as the invite and the bait is actual good food, drinks, and something of a deep soda jerk menu if he's inclined. She is not; red wine or water, those will be the choices.


Maximus does show up. He has some friends with him though…or, rather, not friends but 'tails', following him wherever he goes, like it was in the royal days. Apparently the Genetic Council has seen fit to guard his ass, though who knows what sort of alternate instructions they have. One is a large man with greyish skin, who remains outside. The other, a 'normal' looking fellow with dark hair, comes into the place and takes up a seat where he can see Maximus and any threats, clearly. Maximus himself is dressed in all black, with a white scarf around his neck. The suit is impeccable and modern, without a hint of Attilan in it except for the man who is making it look good. Steel eyes cast about for Vesper once he arrives.


Whatever threats fans of the World's Fair are, they might react a bit strongly to someone with grey skin. Otherwise the main issue is an attack on roast beef sandwiches, a popular choice given the cold weather outside. She is already seated at a table in the thick of the dining room, sipping water from a glass. The other side of the table is set waiting for more, and the menu propped up just so. She has a notepad to entertain herself with, already a few lines written. Maximus' appearance causes comment. She nods to him; as good an invitation as any.


|ROLL| Maximus +rolls 1d20 for: 9


The former king comes over and takes off his outer coat, then folds it over one of the extra chairs as he takes the seat across from her. "I suppose there is some reason for this request…have you found your wayward brother, yet?"


The French woman replies, "Bonjour, Monsieur Boltagon." Vesper epitomizes chic, the slim black dress and a gold necklace around her throat terminating in a Roman cut glass cameo pendant. "Bury the hatchet for the good of the country, is that reason enough? Or we could talk about the suspended ice particles shepherded by a small moon around Saturn, and how that somehow keeps order to a chaotic system. I doubt you would be interested much. The view is spellbinding, extraordinary. Sights defy description. Alas. No one lives there, though Mars is another story."


"Travelling the universe with your newfound powers. You did manipulate me /expertly/ to get them." Maximus seems to compliment with that action. "I find the universe fascinating…but I am yet to leave this planet, unlike so many others who have been bouncing alllll around the cosmos." He gestures with his hand and there's a rejected bitterness behind it.


"Limited reaches of the cosmos. Most of them are terribly, terribly noisy about it." Vesper raises her glass to her lips and takes a sip. "I do not think I could reconstitute you yet. You might go, but you would not come back. Be glad of your terrestrial pinning. This is a pretty planet." Cosmonauts, if not turned to ash, might tend to agree. American space-goers are still a thing of the future. Nearly, anyways. She taps the menu. "Shall we order? You can be angry at me still. I do not control your emotions. How productive our relationship can be for our people, though, is another matter. That is your choice too. I must do something with this, and doing so in a way that helps all of us would be ideal."


Maximus presses his lips together. "Allllll of this /serenity/ is maddening." He leans back in his chair and snaps up the menu. "Tell me…what do you have in mind, then?" He diverts his eyes to the quest of deciding what he wants to eat.


"Would you prefer a screaming fit, tearing hair and clothes, a slap across the face?" Could the pristine ballerina really pull that off? Questionable. She sips her water again. "I don't believe you deserve that." The possibility is probably there. Her gaze avoids attracting a server hovering nearby, ready to refill coffee, dish out butter, and provide ice cream if someone wants dessert. "The means to stop throwing undesirable results when subjects are exposed to certain techno-organic compounds. Near term results would diminish the effects. Long-term ideally would stop them altogether. No more primitive throwbacks."


Maximus stares at her for a long moment and lets the menu fall slowly forward. "Are you suggesting…" he pauses while the server is there. He orders a wine. Then he waits until the server goes away before he continues, "Are you suggesting that you want to /shape/ terrigenesis?"


"How many attempts fail?" Vesper's question comes in earnest. She is not lightly approaching the matter. Her order is simple from among the many sandwiches — roast beef, horseradish, au jus. Of course her British education shows there. "I know how to do that. The key limiters are equipment, samples, and exposure of samples. The latter could be done with other candidates. A few dishes in that environment would display the biological reactions. With all the modeling done beforehand, and some markers put onto the code, it should be more than possible to anticipate success or deficiencies. Unless you are willing to supply me microamounts of the compound."


Maximus just…/stares/. "You are insane. If you control the terrigenesis, you destroy its beauty, and its purpose. Our codes are flawless, even if /some/ do not see it that way. All of our gifts…for a purpose. We are determined to have a use. I am certain that the woman who suddenly becomes a monster might wish she could have had /wings/, but I am quite certain that the Genetic Council will agree with me that to /predetermine/ what someone's gift would be, would be heresy. Imagine…a boy who cannot speak, and whose very utterance of any sound would destroy Attilan if he shouted loud enough. That boy…would never have been sent through, and /then/ where would the people's /hero/ be?" Maximus snatches up a piece of bread. "You certainly do take after them though, acting like gods." He cuts his eyes sideways.


"There's no way to predetermine it. You are mistaking it." Vesper doesn't sound terribly bothered by this. "We agree the potential someone has lies in a specific sequence. A good number of candidates are forbidden from the process because their genetic sequence is deemed flawed, dangerous, or likely to produce unwanted side effects." She rests heavily on that, reaching for the notepad and flipping to a new page. She draws a flower in the middle of the page, surrounded by a jagged ring of thorns, twigs, leaves in quick sketch. Not an art masterpiece, but it's not supposed to be. "The seed of potential is here, created when someone is born." The pen taps the flower. "The debris around it, the bad code, prevents the full effect of the flower from coming through during the transformation process. Hence why a candidate deemed unacceptable can't be exposed. The matter of choice whether they want to or not is essential, from a bioethics perspective, and I assure you I am incredibly sensitive to that." Blue motes float in a sea of chocolate, eager to surge together and drown the whole, but they don't. "As it stands, a man or woman who in all other ways is suitable cannot undergo the process because this — the junk left behind in their flawed genes — gets in the way. It's the same reason that many diseases appear; there are incompatible genes, or there are warped branches that cause inhibiting side effects. Holes in the spinal column. Cystic fibrosis. A long, long list of genetic maladies that ruin the quality of life for people, our own included. I'm not suggesting I selectively decide what someone can be based on pruning their genetics in a way or another. That's absurd. I can see a way to correct the extraneous bits of genetics that were tacked on where they shouldn't have been. Those are the volatile bits of the genetic code that react badly to the process, and stop the patient's genetic code from functioning the way it was intended to. Remove the debris or the warped part that wasn't theirs in the first place, they can be what they've always been."


"Take it to the Council, if you want. Is that why you called? You see that I can provide another route to /power/? I am not addressing any of this with you until you /admit what you did/, and /apologize/." Max throws the bread back into the basket. "Blah blah blah /genetics/. Didn't they outcast your heretical family for a /reason/?" Now he's just being mean.


"I don't care for power." Vesper inclines her head carefully. "I care that we have people at home who do not have a chance to be what they want, because they have a deficiency that should be easily correctable with the right method. If two people in ten cannot experience the process as it's a risk, does it not help our society and our people to reduce that to one in ten? None in ten? We're blessed by an important birthright and denying access to that because bad DNA resulted from conception is a mystery to me. We fix it. Let people choose how to live their lives." She reaches for her water, and doesn't respond to the taunts. She grew up overseen by nuns. They are a scary power in their own right. "I understand if it does not make sense or meet with your won goals. I thought you more than anyone else would understand the ideas and see the results." She folds her napkin.


Maximus starts to tremble as he looks at her, as she ignores him and continues on with her own quest. He curls his lips and fingers. "People do not have a chance to be what they want…because a city full of powered people would be stupidity. Powered or not, we are all Inhuman. If they fix their DNA, they still do not have a choice. What you are saying sounds very familiar, though, like it would fit in nicely with the /dissidents/ that plague Attilan…and so curious that the one that tried to /kill me/ has the rare ability to become invisible. Something /you/ can do. Were you not simply content to pretend to like me, to make me fall for your…pretty…/face/ and confused looks?! You used me just to get what you WANT!! Then you sic your brother on alllll my wooork…all while very suddenly not having any affection for me at all." He leans over the table, with one hand pressed to its surface. "You are a traitor, a deceiver, and you are going to pay for it."


Vesper puts down the glass of water she was holding. "I trusted you. Cared for you. You struck me down in your apartment without a word." Sunshine at lunchtime is still perfectly suitable for the brunette. Photons answer the call, bombarding her like any other object. She doesn't have to think anymore to tap in to them. As she speaks, her physical form is gone. Everyone else in the building be damned, they're probably staring in wonder at the glowing sunlit saint floating above the ground. "I won't waste my life fruitlessly trying to change your many mistaken notions." Faster than any eye can follow, she's to the window. "You don't listen. Goodbye, Maximus. We won't ever talk again. Vive l'Attilan."

1.3 seconds and she can be anywhere on Earth. Anywhere off it.


The moment that she starts to get all light-y, Max's eyes glow and he latches onto nearby human minds. He's not entirely certain if he can affect hers, or not, but he knows he can leverage innocents. "YOU WILL SPEAK WITH ME!!!!" He shouts as she starts floating towards the window.


The young woman glows all the brighter for a moment, the flicker flash of sunlight bending through her. Vesper stares out into the street, the invarying scintillations dancing off her fingertips. And then she vanishes altogether.


|ROLL| Maximus +rolls 1d20 for: 13


Maximus doesn't murder them. That's nice. He does, however, push over his table and throw a wine glass, all while making an agonized sound. There's nothing worse for his tempestuous mind than to be dismissed, and he flails that frustration all over the room. Those he has latched onto get up as well, throwing things, pushing other patrons, while the nearby waiter makes some startled sounds, drops her food and looks around with wide-eyed confusion. She's forgotten her whole life. This also gets the attention of Maximus' guards, and the tan-suit comes up closer to him, though, also /warily/, holding out both hands. Grey skin guy outside, opens the door to come into the chaos that is their former King building up to an unleashing.


Somewhere the confounded looks and the horrified responses for those outside reach have to begin. People scatter where they can. Crossing the street becomes advisable when the average New Yorker knows the weird feeling of fear in their gut. They've experienced aliens. Mutants. Riots. All sorts of impossible things cause mayhem and it's just in their best interests to get out of there. Someone eventually will call the police.


|ROLL| Maximus +rolls 1d20 for: 1


Before the end, it gets bad. It gets real bad. He wasn't nicknamed Maximus the Mad because he like futuristic apocalyptic movie concepts! The range of his effect changes as he moves forwards, towards the outside. Eventually grasping the drivers of cars, and buses. His eyes are brilliant in his aching, and were he in Attilan, alllll of this would be nicely controlled, through soft talking and placating, but he's not in Attilan, and those that know the protocol aren't around except for two people. And one of them is new.

The man with grey skin tries to grab for Maximus and he immediately gets swatted at. The man in tan has dealt with this a lot, lot longer. One of the Royal Guard, he speaks calmly, while drawing out a small device. "Get the car." He snaps at the man with grey skin.

People are running and screaming and…thank the ancients that no one can just record things, but the witnesses are sure going to have a story about a man with blue eyes…and losing their control for a moment. Bloody noses. Bloody fists. Wrecked cars. Water starts spraying from a hydrant. PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF. Sirens are wailing from a few blocks over. WEEOOOOWEEEOOO!

That's when the man in the tan suit comes up behind Maximus and taps him with small, disc-like object, in the neck. Immediately, Maximus slumps into the man's arms, apparently unconscious. Tan starts hauling him to the corner to get picked up by the car before police start locking the place down.


Whatever manipulation of technological objects Vesper can do is a far, far cry from her brother. For one, she needs an actual object around to work. That object has to function in a fashion that makes any sense. Advantage of being raised in human lands for her formative years is with her. But not so much quick understanding at an electrical or mechanical engineer's level, especially when the relative angles are essentially a maze to run to find the right spot. Something without throwing unwanted forces in the wrong direction and without getting stuck — as happens four or five times. Retracting one's route is easy at speed. It is not easy figuring out the way a transistor operates, and by nature Vesper has a rather storied dislike of crystals. Being inside them, anyways, is different for her than anything else. It's all in a day's work for someone to figure out how to silence the Mad, non-apocalyptic horror liking man.

White noise radiates from the speaker, and that's not definitive. The next throbs and thumps the whole radio inside its metal carapace. Shaken, not stirred, and that just about sends the thing over the edge of whatever shelf it was stowed on.

«Zut alors.» Another squeal, a pop, and then a vituperative crackle of Gallic poetry one doesn't need to know follows. But too late. Oh well!


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