2010-06-10: The Naked Gun

Starring:

Felix_V5icon.pngPorter_V5icon.png

Date: June 10th, 2010

Summary:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhower


"The Naked Gun"

Times Square

Times Square….these days it's a huge pedestrian thing. And Fel, for once, is off work. He's not in his 'I am totally a junior G-man suit', for once. Just a plain blue polo and khakis and sport jacket. Totally some boring businessman on the cusp of middle age, save for the FBI seal on that polo, and the gun at his hip, half-hidden by the jacket. He's….just sort of peoplewatching, fading in and out of that cop's fugue of watchfulness. It makes his expression tend towards the predatory.

A white van with no markings edges into view amongst the midday traffic. Every inch of it is dealership-shiny and new except for the plates, which are rusted and dented. It pauses, holding up the flow of vehicles behind it for several seconds and allowing an open space to develop in front. Then, abruptly, the driver accellerates. At the same time, the side door slams open.

Fully nude, Porter is thrown from the speeding van. His eyes flash open just in time to see pavement approaching at alarming speeds. He closes them tightly and mutters a string of curses as he bounces and rolls to a stop. When his momentum is expended, he takes a few seconds to lie still and groan. Precious seconds. Then, with a casualness that belies his scrapes and bruises, he hauls himself to his feet and makes a show of dusting himself off. All of himself.

Meanwhile, the van zooms out of sight.

He doesn't smoke anymore. The wife and the kidlet disapprove, the latter in loud "EWWWWWW, DADDY" kind of exclamations. But….this is one of th ose times when Fel desperately regrets having given it all up. He hurries over to Porter, heedless of the man's nudity. "Man. I though the cabbies in Queens were bad, but that's ridiculous," he says, deadpan, even as he offers a hand up.

There's no graceful way to be naked in public. No secret of Zen mastery. Porter has opted to tuck his chin, thrush his chest out confidantly, square his shoulders, and throw up impenetrable mental walls around these memories as they form. Rangy to the point of being gaunt, battle-scared, and sinewy, he's not attracting a lot of admiring glances. As such, he's doubly relieved to see some help. "Nnnng," he grunts, holding on long enough to steady himself and shake Felix's hand. "Ow. My pieces. You get the license number on that rig?"

"I did, in fact," says the Fed, smoothly. He's looking Porter right in the eye….and then he breaks his gaze to seek out a nearby tacky souvenir stand, and hastens there to negotiate for an overlarge pair of boxer shorts and t-shirt. In bad taste, but better than nothing.

Porter's fully dilated pupils waver unsteadily as he attempt to hold eye contact with his new friend. Smiling loosely, he accepts the offered clothing and begins an awkward struggle to don the shorts. "Do you have a phone?" he asks, his consonants growing a bit blurred, but his tone still light and innocent and a child's. His smile turns a bit lopsided as he unsuccessfully attempts to shove both legs through a single hole in the boxers. "I have a helicopter," he continues cheerfully. "It has rockets. I need to call my pilot. He'll pick me up. Do you know where a helicopter can land around here? It's not very big. And it has rockets."

Ooh, this isn't good. "I have a phone," he says, with the sort of fragile calm one uses for a possible psycho, or an intoxicated fool. "Whom do you need me to call?" He's taken a not so subtle step back. It seems warranted. "No, no choppers landing here. Do you need me to call you a cab, or call a friend with an actual car?"

"Nope!" Porter replies brightly. "I like the helicopter. The GPS can talk. He argues, though." Briefly, the man pouts. His frown turns upside down when he manages to don the shorts. "Whoo! That's better. Mighty breezy, y'know?" His following words are muffled as he next make a go at climbing into the t-shirt. "I really… can't… take a cab back to my… safehouse. Y'know? CIA stuff. Secret-secret. Besides, no money. It's still in my pants with my receiver and my gun and the last of my C4."

We have a live one here. Fel's on the phone with someone - 911, perhaps, or something like. Like, there's gotta be a foot patrol officer somewhere near. "I imagine not," he says, and now his voice has gone very dry, in that way he has when he's trying to humor the possibly dangerously insane. AT least showing up like -that- removes any possibility of a weapon hidden on his person.

"Don't you patronize me. I'll have you know that I'm a captain in the Marine Corps, young man!" Emphatically, Porter points and gestures with his forefinger. "I've been tortured in countries you can't pronounce! If I want to get picked up by a chopper in the middle of— where am I?" With a broad swipe of his open hand, he interrupts himself. "Not important. By God, I'll take a helicopter! I've earned the right to let my dick flap in the wind if I want to!"

Then, grinning maniacally, he inserts his fingers into the fly of his boxers and holds it open, exposing himself. "Take a picture of that with your fancy phone!"

"Awright," says Fel, all of the deference and the humor vanishing from his face. "Hold out your hands, you're under arrest. If you're crazy and escaped from some institution, that's not my problem." ….where did he produce cuffs from? Nonetheless, they're there.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Thoughtfully, Porter purses his lips over and over, producing a popping noise that can just be heard among the buzz and murmur of an increasingly interested crowd. The drugged fortysomething points with his index finger one last time. "No," he says.

Then he turns on his heel and runs away. More precisely, he lopes away in an ungainly fashion, slowed by a considerable stagger and a noticeable limp.

Or does, until some cosmic joke puts the smack on him. Fel watches him go….and suddenly, it's as if gravity decided to get involved, personally. Porter more or less just stops, feet stuck to the ground, and Fel comes up at a pace that might seem arrogantly leisurely to most of the observer.

"I can't move my feet," Porter plaintively informs Felix. "Can I not move my feet because I can't feel my feet? Because that wasn't stopping me a second ago. Nnnnnnnnnnhhh. Mmrrrrrrrrr!" No matter how he tugs or strains, he's not going anywhere. "If my helicopter were here, I'd shoot you with a rocket," he pouts.

It looks like bad performance art. "Listen. Don't fight when I cuff you, it's just gonna go worse if you do," he says, in that flat tone that indicates Porter is treading on the thin edge of his patience. There's already a uniform heading their way.

Porter exhales, seeming to shrink a bit in the process. Slowly, he holds his wrists together and presents them. "I hate this part," he says woefully.

Felix turns him, with the grace of Baryshnikov and one of his partners, to get those wrists behind him. It ends not in a pas de deux but in the dual clicks of the steel cuffs shooting home. "I take it you've been through this before."

"Uh huh," Porter admits unwillingly. He glances around unfocusedly, then staggers as he tries to lift one bare foot to scratch the other leg. "A bunch of times. If I think I'm going to throw up, should I wait and do it before we get in the car, or try to hold it until we get out? Because I think I might throw up. How far is the station from here? Is the coffee good? Are you a cop? That's a nice pistol. Can I see it? I don't really like guns, but I'm a really good shot. I'm a captain in the Marines."

"Do it now, if you're gonna," advises Felix. THe uniform is very young, a brown haired woman. "Got a crazy. Indecent exposure," explains Fel, in that deadpan, even as he flashes his own gold badge. "Tell O'Meara back at the precinct Ivanov sends him a present," he adds, with a wry grin. "I'm a Fed, citizen," he says, drily. "No, you can't see the pistol. The coffee's awful, but you won't be getting any, so don't worry about it."

Porter nods sloppily. "Ivanov. Fed. You can bet I'll remember that. 'lo, Officer!"

Chirping cheerfully, nattering all the while, the scraped spy is happy to follow the uniformed officer into the car, where he promptly vomits. From there, it's a short drive to processing and a long wait in holding. A long, painful sobering-up.

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License