glowfic | business meeting

Entry tags:

business meeting

Emma's father gets the phone call just after lunch on a Saturday. The Indian company he's been trying to attract has a VP in town, and would he like to set up a meeting? (Yes. Yes, he would, yes please and thank you.) So he and Emma rush into his office, and Emma waits outside the lobby while her father scrambles to collect paperwork, contracts, whatever it is he needs for this deal.

Usually, it only takes him five minutes to do this kind of thing. But this deal is last minute, and after twenty minutes, Emma's restless. Jerhattan's gotten a lot of rain recently, and the bench by the door is too wet to sit on, so she's just leaning awkwardly against the wall while she waits. There isn't even anyone to talk to; the office is totally dead on weekends. So Emma dips a toe in a nearby puddle and starts drawing patterns on the ground. It's something to do, at least.

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Well, he's being very cooperative for a possibly insane Talent, but she's still not going to just hand over her phone. (Even if he could probably just lift it away from her. That's a thing kinetics can do, right? Man, those vidcasts did not have enough information.) She pulls up a map of Jerhattan and shows it to him. "We're here, and the Center is outside the city here," she explains. In Urdu. Without noticing.

"I see," he says, also in Urdu, because if she would like to speak that language he can speak it too, he doesn't mind. "And what's in it, besides having other kinetics?"

"It's- uh, full name, full name, Center for Parapsychic Talents-" When she gets to the Center's proper name, she notices the language change; confused once she thinks back and realizes what she did, she switches back to English. "-it's just. What Talents do? If the Center tests you and says you're a Talent, you register with them and then you're one of theirs. Training, housing at their compound (which looks really nice), you can draw on their accounts, they're the ones who manage all the job contracts and emergency teams and legal protection and stuff like that." She looks envious. "And the contracts pay really well, too, I've seen some of Dad's contracts with them."

"What happens if I don't want to be 'one of theirs'?"

Edited 2015-12-06 02:06 (UTC)

"Uh. I guess it depends. Generally nothing? It's not illegal or anything? You'd have a hard time finding a teacher, outside the center, if you wanted one. If you want to work as a Talent, it'd be, uh, pretty weird. I mean, I'm not an expert or anything, but I think most companies would rather hire from the Center. If you do something normal-illegal, you deal with the LEO same as anyone, but if you do anything with your powers the LEO will call in the Center to find you, so. Um. Don't steal things, or anything." She tilts her head at him. "There's vidcasts explaining all this stuff...?"

"Sorry for the trouble of explaining all of this to me," he says, kindly. "I think I lack a lot of the background information to get a lot from vidcasts. And - I don't think I need training, unless they're very very good at it - what's the upper limit on what kinetics can do?"

Emma peers through the glass doors- still no sign of her dad, okay, she can explain for a bit. "I haven't met any, before you, so, uh, grain of salt. But I know they can float things around? Dad's company uses them for precision work, but the vidcasts have some example video of a kinetic racing a forklift and a body builder." She grins slightly. "The kinetic wins by a lot."

"Taking it all with a grain of salt, not to worry. It's good to know, though. Do you know if there's a size or speed limit?"

She frowns, trying to remember the contract details. She hasn't had to translate a contract involving Talents in a couple years, but it's happened. "I don't think there's some limit everyone has. The contract I saw had something about calories...? I think it's kinda like working out?"

"Hm," says the possibly-confused but still very cooperative Talent. "I see. Any limits that you do know of?" That he can disprove.

Emma grimaces slightly. She hates not knowing things. It happens regularly! But she doesn't like the feeling. At least he's not making the mildly exasperated, disappointed face her parents would. "I don't know precisely. I know there's nothing too crazy. No one's teleporting to Asia or flying or lifting buildings or anything? Uh, I think almost all of them need line of sight? At least a lot of the detail work does."

"Ah." He considers technically blowing his cover with her. ... Later, maybe. He knows how. Just fly and she'll probably believe him. Or he can injure himself and heal pretty obviously.

He smiles encouragingly at her. "What about the others, do you know? Precogs and finders and telepaths?"

She thinks back to the vidcasts. There was a whole section on 'signs you should get tested', if she can just remember it. "The vidcasts say, uh." She tries to recall the phrasing. "Telepaths can project or receive or both, usually at touch or short distances. Empaths about the same but just with projection. Finders and precogs usually have specialties, some finder woman does kids and is on the news sometimes. Finders use objects, precogs use dreams." She makes a face. "Being a precog sounds awful, lots of the legal stuff the Center has is to protect them."

"From people that take issue with them?"

"More like, didn't do enough or fast enough? The last big case was something about a canal with an oil fire that wasn't. I think, uh, companies with diverted boats were angry? It's hard to say 'this is how much worse it would have been' when the alternative never happened."

"Ah. That's a bit messed up."

She shrugs and starts to reply, but there's movement inside. Finally! She waves at her dad.

Her father emerges, looking slightly frazzled but with a packet of papers under his arm. "Okay, all set. Sekhar should be here soon and we can get started." Then he notices the stranger, and eyes him warily. "Emma, who's this?"

Emma immediately discards the thought of mentioning the teleporting. Her dad is fine hiring Talent, but he's always been vocally suspicious of them as a concept.

"He asked me for directions, and my language skills impressed him," she says. It's the truth... ish. "Um, but I didn't catch his name." On an impulse, she lets herself switch to one of his languages at random (it turns out to be Romanian). "He's a bit weird about Talents," she warns.

"Noel," says he of that name, smiling. "Pleasure to meet you, sir. Sorry for the trouble, I just have a bit of a passion for practicing languages, and I rarely get someone else who knows as many as I do." He smiles at Emma like she's been testing to see if he can understand her instead of giving him a warning. Covering for her, is the term. "Understood that, too," he switches to Mandarin, "I hope my accent isn't too atrocious?"

His accent is not atrocious. Actually, he sounds like a native speaker.

The excuse passes muster. "Good job, it's always good to get more practice," he says, slightly distracted with his eyes on the road. "You know how important these contracts are. Wouldn't want to get out of the h- oh!" He spots a car turning a corner and waves. "That must be the bigshot from Delhi."

A tall man in a suit gets out of the car and heads for their group, followed by two larger men in suits and a smaller man wearing a badge proclaiming him a working telepath. The man in the lead looks Very Official; definitely a bigshot. Enough for his own entourage, and higher up in the organization than advertised, if he had his own telepath.

He walks up to the group between Emma and Noel; he hesitates for a moment as he almost walks into Emma- him clearly expecting her to move, her too frozen in nervous surprise to move fast enough- then switches paths to go around Noel instead. Just as he tries to walk around, a gunshot rings out.

Well, the Very Official man is officially very lucky, too. Noel considers himself also very lucky, even though he was the one who was shot. He's immortal. He can take it. Better him than someone else, even if it stings like a bitch. He stumbles a bit from the bullet, and he'll have a bruise, but that's the worst of it.

"Ow," he growls, looking for the shooter. Fuck subtlety, someone's got a gun, and his summoner is in the line of fire, if she dies he can't stop the gunman. First priority: protect the squishies.

He picks up the car. He's very fast about this, but when he sets it down in between the squishies and the gunman he's got enough practice to not damage it. Something big and made of metal to hide behind, sure, but if he can avoid it he won't break someone's car. "Behind this, all of you. I'll take care of it."

And up he flies. Where is the idiot who thought shooting someone in front of him was a good idea?

The idiot is on a nearby rooftop. He's tall and awkward and doesn't seem to know precisely what he's doing. When he sees the flying man, he screams and drops his gun and starts mumbling prayers as he turns to run.

Meanwhile, Bigshot's entourage has formed a defensive shield in front of him and are hustling him inside the vehicle. They seem to have a fair bit of practice with this scenario.

Edited 2015-12-07 03:12 (UTC)

Emma just screams and clings to her father. There are gunshots and flying people and this is not okayyyy what is going on?!

Edited 2015-12-07 03:17 (UTC)

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