Utopia

Paul watched Russel leave, thinking to himself. He could only wonder what the man was thinking right now and judging by how poorly the police handled the situation, I'd say it was that they needed better training. Paul found it hilarious in his otherwise uncaring brain that the police had thought guns would win out. Shaking his head, he watch the man through the window for a second more and slipped back into the shadows.

"Now where did she go...?" Rebecca sighed, since apparently the hospital was still...well, rather unsafe at the moment. Or so she was being told. Ah well, a day off never really hurt anyone. She had gotten changed into a pair of jeans, sweatshirt, and a heavy coat. Oh how she disliked the cold. Yet, she was from Canada. Where they had polar bears for pets and lived in igloos. Well, it wasn't exactly like she remembered who she was looking for. It was such a long time since the tournament, and she had changed her appearance so many times, and had actually settled on this one for the time being.

Well, really anyone that could help her try to remember. It felt like she had seen that flow before...Or rather, felt it before... She wasn't quite sure anymore. But, a part of her memory felt...empty.

Nathan smirked to himself as he noted the way that Luke consumed alcohol. Drinking heavily was all fine and good but Luke couldn't take the liberties that Nate himself could. The rivalry between them still seemed to be innate with Luke, even if it was only subconscious. He kept an eye on Luke and took his drink in one before pouring another one. "You don't have to do anything differently than you do now, you'll just be passing me information and maybe carrying out a few tasks for me." He shrugged to himself and set his drink down. His body blurred and in the space of a single second he had left his seat and returned with some salted peanuts.

After childlishly tossing one into the air and catching it in between his lips. He turned his head back to Luke. "After everything we went through in that tournament? What makes us worthy of leading a village?" He smirked again and took another chug from his drink. "With anyone who isn't me as leader, all it would take is me to throw my darkness skeleton up and their judgement would no longer be clear. And that's just one example."

He finished his glass and set it down before offering the bag of peanuts to Luke. "I'm a busy man Luke, you got any more questions cause if not we'll call this meeting to a close for now."

"No, I'm fine," Luke replied, finishing his drink and getting back up on his feet. He refused the peanuts politely, glancing at the phone in his pocket for the time. It had been good seeing Nathan again, but Luke wasn't naive enough to just trust him outright again. Plus, he'd managed to mooch a couple of drinks off of him, which was always a plus. It didn't hurt to get a glance of where Nathan operated out of, either.

"Give me a call if you need me. If you have a telepath with you, you'd probably be better off using them for communications in case people find your Flow signature. It's pretty distinctive," the light-haired man advised, brushing his hair back out of his eyes wearily. He walked towards the exit, fiddling for a cigarette in his pocket.

-----

Russell got back in his car, nodding to the hooded individual as he drove past. He had a lot of contacts, most who the police didn't know about but who had some extremely useful information if you the money for them. That particular one was one of the best sensors of the Flow in Utopia, and had been able to divulge when the Flow signature of the man who had attacked the hospital had popped up recently.

The most recent one had been in a graveyard in the city, which Russell arrived outside of quite sharply. He kept his gun with him, proceeding with caution as he entered the cemetery.

Nathan smirked and chucked back his own drink before also joining Luke on his feet, he transformed his guise into that of a young man, but relatively well off looking man. With a slight adjustment to his hair color he followed Luke out of the pub. His smirk widened as he watched Luke trying to find his cigarettes. Reaching into the pocket of the hoody this persona wore he pulled out the cigarettes that he had lifted from Luke's pocket earlier and handed them to him.

But not before one had found its way to Nathan's only lips and he had lit it with Luke's lighter. After exhaling some smoke he focused on Luke. "You know I'm going to have to wipe your memory of the bar right?" He voiced the question almost as if it were something he didn't want to do. "You'll remember the conversation but you'll have no recollection of the bar or even the Shima persona..."

"Fine, go ahead," Luke replied wearily, having been somewhat expecting it. Not that stopped him from being childish, gesturing slightly to burn up Nathan's stolen cigarette in an instant, after Luke had his pack safely back in his pocket. He was tempted to singe off his former enemy's eyebrows while he was at it, but he figured it would have been pointless. "Gonna make it pretty much impossible for me to contact you, but I guess that's what you're going for."

-----

Russell entered the graveyard, looking for a part of the pathway that looked like it had been disturbed lately. Seeing that the place was deserted, he holstered his gun, putting his hands in his pocket as he searched. It was the glint of the sun off the bullet on Joey's grave that caught his eye, and he squatted down next to the grave.

"A good old-fashioned clue..." he murmured, wondering what he could dig up about Joey and Erika Hadden. He knew Heidi and Percival would be his best bets for that, but it could wait. Donning a pair of gloves, hd carefully picked up the bullet, his augmented eyes scanning it intently as they glowed blue. Whoever had dropped it hadn't been careful about fingerprints, Russell noticed, now sure it was Nathan. Still, he had to get someone to take look at it later, as good as his eyes were.

Nathan raised an eyebrow at Luke but shrugged it off and pulled out one of his own cigarettes. Once said smoke was lit he exhaled and turned his attention to his friend. With a look of firm concentration he altered Luke's memory and then returned to normal. "I'll find you when I want to." He announced before super-speeding off in the opposite direction to Luke's; still in his current persona.

He had something he needed to do.

Kira stood up, pushing herself off the bench. This was hopeless. Her sitting around wasn't going to bring Luke back. It hadn't worked for the past three years, and it wouldn't work now. Surely he'd poked his head into one of those fighting clubs, maybe she could find some information on him there...? It was supposed to be pretty dangerous, but she could use her Flow to defend herself, so it would be okay, right?

Luke watched him go with a slight sense of irritation. The fact that he had to be mind wiped bothered him, more out of the sense that he wasn't valued than anything else. He lit a cigarette with a small flame from his hand, figuring it would relax him somewhat, and began to walk back to his apartment. He didn't really have anything to do, so he figured he'd check in with his boss and see if there was anything he was required for.

------

Russell stood up, rubbing his eyes with a slight wince. It always felt a bit weird when he zoomed his vision enough to see even fingerprints, as though a normal person had glanced at at a bright light. He took another look around the cemetery, carefully studying all the gravestones there, before getting back in his car and heading back towards the station.

Rebecca was wandering around the town, wearing her jacket overtop jeans and a t-shirt. Since the hospital was recently attacked, the police were probably searching around for the culprits. Though, she did have the feeling that someone had seen her, when there was no one around. What was worse, that person might have reconized her... What if they did...? What would be the point in remembering Sage Eclair? The girl who used to have a magical Flow.

She sighed and walked into the park. She could see several children playing.

Dayton Weyler was of course doing something very important back at the police station. How could he not be? Anything he touched was important, after all. He frowned slightly, drumming a manicured finger on his rather nice desk, feeling a bit bored. There had been some commotion at a hospital, but he figured it wasn't necessary to bother himself with that. The regular forces could handle whatever deranged mental patient had gotten loose.

A vein twitched in his forehead as he listened to the police scanner that was sitting across the room. So, the hospital nonsense did need his help, after all. That was just infuriating. Was he the only one who could get things done around here? He stood up, pacing around the room, wondering when he would get a full report. Then he could do research of his own and get this sorted out for good.

Russell disembarked from his car, taking the elevator up from the underground car park and walking up a couple of floors to his desk. He didn't really like his department, and spent as little time as possible in the station, but sometimes it was handy to get a read on what the rest of the police were doing, or not doing as the case often was, and check the records that they kept. That was what he was doing then, attempting to access the record of Joey, Erika, and Percival Hadden.

Dayton walked out into the main hall of offices, looking rather cross despite the smile plastered across his face. "Anyone back from the hospital yet? I'd like a full report of what went down, on my desk, ASAP," he ordered, running a hand through his hair. It shouldn't take too long now, all he had to do was wait for these buffoons to scramble around and write out the report.

Russell looked up at his boss with disdain, choosing not to mention where he had been and what had happened. He disliked writing reports, and it wasn't like Dayton actually gave a shit about what happened, he just knew that he should know. He looked back at his computer, shaking his head half-subconsciously. He didn't have a lot of time for the Chief, and was nearly always cold and concise in their meetings, though rarely openly insulting as that would probably lead to an instant demotion.

Dayton frowned, poking his head into Russell's office. "I think I heard your name on the scanner, Barksdale," he commented good-naturedly, before heading back to his office. Damn detectives, they were all so cocky just because they had some sort of title to their name. Who did they think they were, Sherlock Holmes?

He sat back down at his desk, going through the scanner records to see if he could dig up some information that he hadn't before, though the scanner tended to be vague at best.

"Yeah, I was there," Russell called after him, though he didn't stand up or go after his boss because he simply didn't care. That in itself was typical of his boss, leaving instead of expressing any real determination or interest in the law. He figured that his boss would come back if he really wanted to, so there was no need to disrupt himself.

OOC: These two are probably going to try and kill each other at some point.

---

Dayton leaned back in his chair as he listened to the scanner report, occasionally spinning around. Swivel chairs were the best. Every chair should be swivel-y, maybe then he'd actually get his fucking report. He spun around on the chair, pondering over the information for a bit.

The address of the hospital wasn't very inner city, so it wasn't like it was a plot to attack government workers, nor were there actually any policemen killed during the attack, just one injured. So it was some sort of display of power. "So we got a cocky bastard on our hands," he chuckled to himself, cracking his knuckles. But if he was gonna put on a display of power, why such a small hospital? Because of the poor security? That wasn't quite big enough of a power display. The only reason that Dayton found himself interested in this case was the fact that the apparent anarchist had gotten away from ten policemen. He could actually be a bit of a threat to Dayton's goals, if he tried hard enough, and that wasn't acceptable.

Russell almost hit his head of a wall at his findings. As a member of the FRU, Percival's record was out of his reach, and Joey and Erika's were lacking anything useful or even any details about their deaths. Nathan's was entirely kept for those in higher positions than him. Russell growled, before deciding to try something.

"try 'Nathan Stanton'" read the email that he sent Dayton.

Dayton looked back at his computer when his email notification went off, wondering if he actually got anything useful. "Try Nathan Stanton," he read aloud, leaning back in his chair once more. Oh well, it couldn't hurt. Maybe he could actually get something useful out of Barksdale after all.

He opened up the records on the people of Utopia or related to it, typing in the name "Nathan Stanton," a bit curious as to what would come up.

The records hadn't been updated well recently, and so only had what had been recovered from the adults own records, and had mostly been by Tom O'Connor's own hand. It gave a brief account of Nathan's time in the tournament, his relationships with people and his Flows. It also included a small note by Tom, stating that when malice towards the city and power were counted together, Nathan posed the greatest threat to the city given Shima's absence. He noted that there were very few outside the adults that could fight Nathan, but that he wasn't invincible. Tom hadn't elaborated.

Dayton frowned as he noticed Tom's description of Nathan. Tom O'Connor had been far from a liar, so he chose to take what he had written for granted. If Nathan was as big of a threat as Tom had made him sound, it would be best to capture him before he did too much damage. He paused in thought for a second, before sending another email back to Russell. "he was the guy at the hospital?"

"might be easier if i could see the file" Russell sent back boredly, leaning back and starting to make himself a cup of coffee. He was curious to see how Dayton responded, though he doubted that he would be allowed to actually see the file. He wasn't sure what attitude his boss had to stuff like that though.

Dayton sighed exasperatedly, running a hand through his hair. Damn detectives. Why should he give Barksdale access to a classified file? He sighed again, skimming through the file, before reluctantly sending it to Russell. There didn't seem to be anything in it that would make Nathan sound like a saint, and he needed Nathan to be the enemy here.

Russell smiled, his boss receiving an almost instantaneous "thats him" bmenail back from the detective while Russell's Intuitive Aptitude committed the file to memory. Now, if only every restricted file was as easy as that to access. He was curious to see if his boss would take an interest in this case, then, since he had disregarded protocol to send him the file.

Dayton couldn't help but roll his eyes at Russell's response, scanning the relationships of Mr. Stanton. He'd been in the tournament, apparently, which gave him teammates. It seemed that most of the Acer leftovers kept close bonds with their teammates, so perhaps Nathan's would be a key weakness. "Luke Evans and Kira Ryneheart..." he mused aloud, opening up their files as well. Luke was a criminal on the run, apparently, so that wouldn't do much good unless they found him. Kira on the other hand, seemed to have close relations with both her teammates. Maybe he could kill two birds with one stone.

He turned back to his email, typing another message to Russell. "bring Kira Ryneheart in for questioning about her teammates. please and thank you. " It was so much easier to just delegate to the detectives.