Starring:
Summary: Something is amiss in the Kingdom of Peterdom. Unknowingly, he goes right to the one person who can help put an end to the situation he's found himself in.
Date It Happened: December 24th, 2007
Off Button
Rochelle's House (and the Phone)
It's late in the Christmas Eve. Many children are already in bed, dreaming of Santa. In a certain place in the city, close to Long Island, Peter stands in a red Santa cap, leaving a department store that's crazy with last minute shopping activity. In a whim, he reaches for his phone, thumbing through the phone book until he calls back a number that called him about comic books what seems like ages ago. He's been meaning to call, really, but time never seems to move in the right way.
Peter, you move through time- what do you really need to worry about it for?
When the call pulls through to the other end, the wireless phone chirps alive in a house some distance away. It rings a few times, and when it gets picked up, there is a musical racket of some kind in the background before Rochelle is able to pipe into the reciever. "Y'ello?" The greeting comes a second after said racket disappears and the woman on the phone has moved away from the source.
"Merry Christmas!" Peter exclaims into the phone, sounding fairly enthusiastic and happy. She may not have heard his voice enough times to even figure out who it is. "Sorry, it's Peter Petrelli. I was just thinking about— I kept meaning to call, set up a meeting time so you could help with the Sylar situation. I hope I'm not calling too late in the evening for you?"
She's usually good with voices, but his catches her a bit off guard. Merry who-a? There's a suspicious silence from Rochelle until Peter clarifies. "Oh. Oh. Hi! Merry Christmas, Peter." She laughs into the phone, and just like her voice, it is rather throaty and lower in tone- but still female. "It's not too late, nooo. I've been up late anyhow, the last few days. Nothing to do at home, no work, but I lose track of the clock anyway… Y'ever do that?" That is only half of a real question, the rest being a simple observation. "How ya doin'?"
"All the time. Earlier today it was like it was May," Peter says, almost offhanded in his comment as he wanders down the street in that direction. There's a ringing of a bell, one of those Salvation Army donation guys, and he stops to drop some money into it and chime out a cheerful, "Merry Christmas! Stay warm," to the poor guy manning the bucket. He keeps walking. "I'm doing okay. Sylar hasn't tried to escape once. I keep expecting him to, but he never has." He says it as if he doesn't quite get it, but at the same time, he's grateful. "I've actually needed to talk to you about that. There's a little something I might need your help with, if things with you work like we think it does."
"Did you feed him or something? I hear they like that." Yes, Rochelle just paralleled Sylar with a forest critter. Is he a raccoon, or more of a fox? Weasel? "How do we think it works?" She settles down a touch, and the rattle of something metal chimes over the line as Rochelle finds a seat. She's in her basement, if it matters at all. "Off button?" Maybe. "So. How can I help you?"
"Fed him, gave him books— I even took him shopping yesterday. In Arkansas. I don't think he knew we were in Arkansas, though." Peter says, not even seeming to think how silly the idea of shopping a thousand some odd miles away yesterday would sound. They could have flown, but more than likely he couldn't get a serial killer on a plane. Looks like a little Hiro-magic was called for, in this case. "But yeah, you're the off button. If we need it, you could just… move closer and cut off anything dangerous. We'd need to find out how close you need to get, though. Measure it out."
Yeah. What? Rochelle just chooses not to ask about Arkansas. Or anything else. Brain is moving on! "It was about from end to end of my living room, wasn't it? I'd say mid-teens, if I had to guess. It's apparently invisible though, so it might never be accurately measured, in terms of space." Estimation of measurements comes with the construction shindig- it is at an instinctual level. "I think it's safe to say a room-length in any direction."
"Yeah, everything turned back on when you went upstairs," Peter says, thinking back on what happened when he stopped feeling tired in her house, when everything started to come back. "Just a minute. I'll be right back." He hangs the phone up, giving her little time to respond, before he teleports midstep and appears just outside her house. The cellphone Company? It really, really hates him. Really hates him. Phones have GPS signals, especially when turned on. He just jumped a rather large distance. The phone dials for her to pick up again, though now he's standing right outside her house.
"A-" Click. She really doesn't have time to respond. The off button is pressed, and she waits a moment for it to ring again and pick up the second time. "Thanks for the warning, Petey." Rochelle drawls into the receiver this time.
"Sorry. I didn't want to teleport while on the phone. I tried it one time and it dropped," Peter says, a hint of a frown in his voice. From the sound, he wants to apologize more than he already has. "I'm right outside your house. I can go if you'd prefer." And then, on a total tangent… "I should really introduce you to Hiro. I showed him the comic books and he got all excited and went to The Liar to get all of them."
"You're- what. Huh." Rochelle even looks up at her basement ceiling as if she would suddenly have x-ray vision. "Did he?" The woman laughs again. "Somehow that's fitting. …So do you want me to, like, come up there now, or are you just… warning me before you try for my coat closet?"
"I don't know what's in your coat closet— you might have a bunch of weights in there." Peter says, voice earnest and genuinely concerned about such a thing. He's probably not sure what would happen if he tried to teleport into something that he doesn't have the room to actually fit. Not that he's a big guy, really, but there we go.
"It is a coat closet." Besides, he knows what is in her living room. What's he on today? Christmas crack? "…You can come in, Peter."
"Yeah, but— you obviously lift weights and…" Peter trails off, sounding a little quiet. "All right. I'll just… go into your living room." Hopefully she's not too close. "I'll be right there." He hangs up the phone and closes his eyes, teleporting into the house— at the very inside of the door. It's definitely warmer in here than it was out there… "Hello?" he calls out, looking around for rather large muscled woman and big dog both.
Oedipus? He is stretched out on the sofa, upside down, all four gangly legs sticking in the air. When Peter pops inside, he opens his eyes and lets out a long 'rrrrrruh?' in question. Not getting up. Perfectly fine over here, thank you very much. Rochelle never said he was a guard dog.
Only after she hears the greeting does the woman in the basement hang up the phone and wander over to the stairs that lead up. Clunk-clunk-clunk. Stone steps. A door at the other end of the front hall swings open for her. "I do. Which I keep down there." Why would she put them in her coat closet? Yes, Christmas crack. Peter is on it.
"Ooh, I don't lift weights very much," Peter says, as if that wasn't completely obvious from his physical stature. Not that he's completely unmuscled, and he obviously stays in some kind of shape, but… he sticks his phone into his pocket and starts forward…
And vanishes. Poof. Not the closing eyes and squinting thing, not turning transparent. He— quite literally— just seems to poof out of existance. There's a thunk. One thing hits the floor rather heavily. A small, solid object. His cellphone.
Rochelle does Absolutely Nothing for the next ten seconds, staring into the hallspace as if he might pop up again at any thought. He doesn't.
Maybe it's disbelief, or something else- but the first thing that the big woman does when she steps forward is reach out with one arm and wave it around in front of her. Nope. He's gone. All gone. "Oh, you've got to be f***in kiddin'me." After a few seconds of zombie-hands to check the open air, Rochelle squints in irritation and steps over to pick up Peter's cellphone from the floor. Well, that was no good, was it? Uh oh.