This thread is a part of Hiatus.

 

(Ok guys and gals, we're moving the NYC story to a new thread so Hiatus can end with the Tower and Hailey Weller plots.  Matt, Crystal, Gunnar, and Abby, you can write about landing in NY in this thread.  You don't have to be together, ACME, if you read carefully, Chase did say you can split into teams.  Crim, Lory, Kenny, the plan stays, let's do some shopping!)

 

 

Patty Larceny arrived at the VILE safe house in New York City while she waited for Crim and Lory to contact with a hotel.  Hotels are so much more fun.  The safe house looked like it could use some renovations, but since these things are temporary, Patty had to stop herself from trying to fit the place with new curtains.  Not known for being neat, she put her stuff on the floor in front of her and sat right in the center of the couch, turning on the TV.

 

"At the safehouse," Patty texted her surrogate sisters, "When you get here, tell!"

 

Looking around, she wondered what Kenny was doing.

 

"Kenny?"  She called out, "If you're having a snack, and you bring me some yoghurt or something?"

Abby glanced back to see Gunnar quickly walking away. She turned her head back in front of her and saw the cement and cars flying by. Suddenly she jumped out of her thoughts and quickly hailed a passing taxi. As she slid in she gave directions to the driver to head for her hotel to grab her few bags.

In an hour she found herself in a very large airport. She had been lucky in finding a spare ticket to New York on one of the planes.

   Before the sun would totally disappear she would be on an uncomfortable jet flying across the continent and finding herself swept three hours ahead.


  It was past midnight when she looked out her window down at the city lights of New York. The night was clear so she   could see the city stretching over the land.
"So here I am at the city that never sleeps."

(OOC: I have not idea what the line is by the first part. I tried to get rid of it but could not. I hope this post is sufficient. I was feeling really uninspired so forgive the boringness of it. I wanted to finish it up so we could keep moving on)

"Sorry Patty, there's no yogurt, just cold cuts." Ken approached her holding a makeshift bologna sandwich.  "And no bread." That is, he held two slices of bologna with a piece of headcheese in the middle.

Ken took a seat next to Patty, and swallowed his whole stack of cold cuts in one bite, wiping his hands on his pants. "Well...this is nice isn't it?" Ken said, a hopeful and encouraging tone in his voice. "Just you and me....and the guy on the TV watching us...."

Loralye opened the door to hers and Crim's room at the Plaza Hotel. Lora knew that this hotel was expensive and elaborate, but never had she imagined anything like this. The room was painted a stunning white; gold accents were printed on the furniture. She stood in the doorway, stunned by its beauty. Suddenly, Lora was shoved from her position into the wall as Crimson waltzed into the room. The redhead threw her luggage onto the nearest bed and exclaimed, "My hair's a mess! I need to go take a shower!"

Crimson was struggling to take her zebra print rolling suitcase down the hallway. Once I get into this room, I am throwing my stuff. Reaching the room at a record setting pace, Lory opened the door with the key. What is she doing? She is standing there like a dork…. I don't have time for this! Crimson pushed her awestruck friend out of the way. With a massive sigh of relief, she picked up her suitcase and flung it on to the extra bouncy bed. Crim turned and saw her reflection in the mirror on the wall. Her naturally curly auburn hair had frizzed, unattractively, due to the high altitude of the flight and the stress of getting two hotel rooms in the Plaza. "My hair is a mess! Time for a deep conditioning session! With hot oil ASAP!" she said as she ran into the bathroom.

Lora rolled her eyes and dragged her suitcase to the unoccupied bed. She figured that Crim would be a while, so she grabbed her copy of Methods in Modern Biophysics, got comfortable on her bed, and started to read.

She hadn't been reading for long when an obnoxious sound (that Lora only recognized as Britney Spears from being friends with Crimson for so long) began playing from Crim's purse. Lora tried to ignore the offending noise, but as time went on it kept getting louder and louder. Annoyed, Loralye grabbed the phone and looked to see who it could be. A picture of their bubbly 'sister' popped up on the screen.

"Crim!" she called, banging on the bathroom door. "Patty wants you!"

Crimson was singing Britney Spears in the shower when she heard some banging on the door of the bathroom. She figured whatever Lory was making a big fuss about must have been trivial. So she sang even louder. Loralye couldn't take anymore of Crimson's loud, and off key, singing so she decided to bang louder.

"Crimson, seriously!" shouted Lora. "If you don’t open the door, I'll coming in myself!"

"I am in the shower!"

"I'm coming in anyway!" Loralye, with the phone in one hand, covered her eyes with the other hand and fumbled to open the door.

"Crim?" she called. "Where are you, I can't see!"

"Ok, go to the right!" Crim told her friend. She watched in shock as her friend ran into the granite countertop. "Oh…. Sorry I meant my right!" Crim said while holding up her hands that were formed in the shape of L's. "So, go to your….. left?" Mumbling a few curse words under her breath, Lory found her way over to the shower. Crim grabbed the phone, closed the curtain, and read the text. "Pats told us to text her!" she said excitedly. "I'm letting her know that we are in rooms 192 and 193 of The Plaza. Lor, get ready to go shopping!"

Crystal looked around at the familiar streets, awash in nostalgia and realizing just how homesick she had been.

"Sure, we can do all that," she said to Matt.  "But we need to check in with my old mentor first.  Ah, here we are!"

She leaped out of the taxi and headed out in the the familiar back alley of the Manhattan branch of ACME.  Mrs. Pumpkinclanger's Siamese cat murowred at them, nibbling on a fish she had pilfered from a restaurant trash can.

Mrs. Pumpkinclanger leered out of the window herself.

"If you're looking for the Informant, he left a little while ago," she said, wanting to get them on their way before they started making noise.

"Really?  Did he say where he was going?"

"No--but he mentioned something Patty Larceny."

"Oh.  Thanks, Mrs. P!" Crystal said, heading back.  She sent a communications message to the Informant, asking where he was.

---

The ACME Informant, in the meantime, returned the message that he was currently in Lower Manhattan, acting on a tip that Patty had been seen in the area.

Apparently, she was not alone--he would definitely appreciate the backup that Crystal and Matt would provide.

"Um...sounds good..." Ken sat up and ran his fingers through the top of his hair a bit. He moved to the other end of the room where he had his trenchcoat, his fishing hat and a pair of black sunglasses.

Sure, it was Ken's idea to come here. He had a perfect picture in his mind of him and Patty skating in the middle of Rockefeller center together...alone. The problem is they wouldn't be alone with the Patty-ettes following the two of them around everywhere, and Ken wasn't about to offend Patty by asking her friends to wander off so they could be alone.

"What should I do....?" He murmured to himself, as he put on his hat.

"Uhm, no thanks..." Ken said as he looked about the perimeter of where they were standing. "I was looking forward to a nice, exotic coffee from the plaza. Arabica, canefora, robusta.....I don't know what any of that means, but it sounds really nice. Plus it's better than the stuff in the pot at home...tastes like it was dripped through one of Vic's polyethylene handkerchiefs...." Ken gave a long awkward pause upon realizing he was rambling. This was as much as a moment as he'd have alone with Patty until the cheerleader squad showed up. He should say something, he should do something. Something sweet, something charming, witty, romantic....

Then he realized Patty had walked a block ahead of him and he dashed up the street to catch up.

[Joint post with Rose_Thorn]

Gunnar sat alone at the Scandinavian restaurant near Wall Street for lunch. He purposely sat by one of the front windows, and opened his book on top of the table to read. He ordered the Swedish meatballs, naturally. Actually, he ordered two.

He sent a message to Abby from his communicator, telling her his approximate location. And he waited and read his book.

 

Abby busily walked back and forth in her hotel room unpacking. Once in awhile she'd walk to the window and look out of it for a moment, then she sighed before returning to her work.

She was finished with the unpacking and she sat down and mindlessly began to play Solitaire on her computer. She was pulled back into reality when her communicator started beeping loudly. She scrambled over to it and read the note from Gunnar.

"Well," She thought. "I suppose I'm not doing anything of worth while here. And seems how there's more chance I'll find what I'm looking for while out wading in the depths." She quickly punched a few keys on her communicator and pulled her coat off the rack and was out of the hotel and hailing a taxi in no time.

Soon she was standing on the street outside the building. She dodged a few crazy teenagers trying to get killed and entered the building. She stood uncertain for a few moments until she spotted Gunnar. She walked over and slid into the bench across from him.

 

Gunnar closed his book slowly, and slid it across the table grandly. The title read, “How to Get through Customs with Weapons”.

“You left this behind in Montreal,” he said. “I thought I should bring it back for you. Though I enjoyed it much.”

The waiter arrived at their table, and set a plate of the Swedish meatballs in front of both of them. Gunnar smiled playfully. “Don’t worry. I’m paying. Or…ah…ACME is, actually.”

 

"Thank you, I've been wondering if I'd ever get it back." She looked down at the plate in front of her for a moment, then looked up with a smile.

"Kind of takes away the impressiveness of it doesn't it?"

 

“What impressive? Ah…it would be so if you paid,” Gunnar replied, chuckling. “You have probably eaten these before, but they are always good…and not much expensive.”

He looked nervously about, and leaned himself in closer toward Abby. He whispered, “I really would want to know how we can find Matt and Crystal. We are supposed to meet them, ja? Faktiskt, it bothers me not so much, but we should have our heads together at least. VILE comes not to make it so easy for us.”

 

"Har har." She said a bit sarcastically. She picked up her knife and after a moment spoke again.

"I sometimes feel a little aggravated that we always have to make ourselves agreeable. They've made it quite clear that they want nothing to do with us and I don't feel up to having anything to do with them...except on a ‘have to’ professional thing." She viciously cut one of the meatballs in half.

"I do not know very many people in New York and seems how it is a very large city I do believe we need some help locating the VILE."

 

“You are speaking a bit like a Swede now,” Gunnar remarked with a grin. “We could care less, but we must follow the rules.”

He stabbed a meatball. “It shall be tough for us because the enemy knows the place better. So…we need think about where these agents will go. We need to look at their files and find something that seems to interest them. What usually happens after, is they go either exactly where you thought, or they go exactly where you did not think. So we must consider both.”

 

"Perhaps a jail?" She smiled slightly. "No, perhaps one of the more busy crowded places of New York. When they're doing stuff 'professionally' they’re usually doing things that seem like 'vacation' to us." She took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.

"Do you have a tour book handy?" She said suddenly.

 

“Always,” Gunnar answered. “I am a fine tourist, as you know.”