Title:Chapter Two
Danny’s first meeting with Sentinel McGarrett was put off due to a minor Zone at the airport.
Danny tried to get to McGarrett, but he wasn’t registered as McGarrett’s Guide, so airport security wouldn’t let him near.
Director Yung and Director Yung personally went to the Security office to retrieve McGarrett, and they brought him to the Center complex in a Sentinel-friendly ambulance.
Then Danny was put off again when the Center called McGarrett’s sister, who was an ER nurse at Hickam Air Field. Mary McGarrett-Charles was a lovely woman, but she was rabidly protective of her older brother. And she was doubly so once said brother was finally near enough for her to actually put her hands on him.
Guide Yung tried to explain that Guide Williams would tentatively be working with her brother, but Mary was concerned with the fact that her brother had had three Guides previously that didn’t work out, and she didn’t want to risk her brother’s life on another failed partnership.
So a deal was struck that Mary McGarrett-Charles would meet Guide Williams before he was introduced to Sentinel McGarrett.
That meeting did not go well at all.
Firstly, Danny thought it was all bullshit. S/G laws superseded all other laws, sacred or secular, so a Mundane sister’s demands meant nothing to him.
He made his opinion known.
“Look, Director Yung, I appreciate what she wants. But I just don’t care. Sentinel McGarrett is fully online—has been fully online—and his sister had been nowhere this whole time. All of a sudden, she wants to be a baby-sitter. I don’t need the hassle. Find him a Guide without better things to do.”
Secondly, Grace had, indeed, come online, and Rachel was being a right pain in the ass.
“You can’t take her, Daniel! She’s my daughter and she belongs with her mother!”
Danny pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to calm himself. Stan was in Grace’s bedroom, trying to calm Grace.
“Rachel, I will bring the courts into this again. You will lose, and when you lose you will be lucky to ever see Grace again.” Danny began to pace slowly around the living room. “Our daughter came fully ONLINE today! During her physical education class, when one of her fellow students fell and broke her ankle. Grace could feel, empathically, all of the pain that that other girl felt. She can feel, empathically, everything you feel right now, including the disgust you feel at having a flawed, defective Guide for a daughter! Just like I could feel, empathically, the way you felt about me for four years after I came online!”
Danny turned and glared at his ex-wife. “Do you honestly think Grace will want to stay with you, knowing how you feel about Sentinels and Guides? She’s in her room, right now, crying her little eyes out because her mommy hates what she has become, and you want me to leave her with you? That’s not going to happen, Rachel. You can’t keep her from this, Rachel. You can’t change her, and you can’t force her offline, and you can’t expect me to leave the light of my life in this house for one more minute while you continue to hate the fact that she’s a Guide.”
“I have a right…”
“You have NO rights, Rachel! Not anymore. I have a copy of the custody order. In case you forgot, it states that, in case Grace comes online early due to the stress of the move, primary custody goes to me, a Guide, so that I can get her the help and training that she needs. Any visitation that you have will have to be assigned by the courts now, because I fully intend to come clean with the S/G Center about this. Now, I’m going to gather my daughter and her suitcase, and we’ll be leaving.”
Stan had, during the entire confrontation, managed to calm Grace and pack her favorite clothing into a suitcase. Grace gave him a hug, and Danny shook his hand, and then Danny and Grace left the house without a single word to Rachel.
So, Danny Williams never did manage to meet with Sentinel Steven J. McGarrett during his first week in Hawaii.
Danny did manage to receive several nasty voice messages from Mary McGarrett-Charles. They mainly mentioned how self-centered Danny was for leaving darling Steve to the tender mercies of the S/G Center medics. Since Danny had other things to occupy his mind at that time, he managed to ignore all of the messages. He was much more concerned with having Grace evaluated for formal training and dealing with the S/G lawyers in regards to Rachel. Grace understood, at least intellectually, that Rachel didn’t actually hate her. But emotionally?
Grace was a wreck emotionally, and her emotional bleed was pushing against Danny’s shields pretty hard. Danny spent the better part of a week teaching Grace how to build shield of her own. He taught her every meditation technique that he knew, and she learned more from the medics in the Center. Grace also had weekly therapy sessions so that she could learn to deal with her mother’s attitude.
Danny kept busy working in the processing department of the Center, reading about recently Emerged Sentinels and Guide and learning how to find Bond pairings. Danny hoped that he could find his own Sentinel to Bond with before even thinking about introducing Grace to un-Bonded Sentinels. His little girl was too young for that sort of thing anyway.
≠≠≠
Steve McGarrett didn’t remember most of his flight into Honolulu Airport. He never used to have trouble flying. During his tenure with the SEALs, Steve was a passenger or pilot on many different types of aircraft, and he found the sound of the engines to be cathartic and relaxing.
But this time the engines sent his sense of hearing into overload, and once he Zoned on hearing, sight and smell quickly followed. By the time the plane landed, six hours later, Steve was nearing Catastrophic Zone and Airport Security had installed him in a secure office and wasn’t allowing anyone other than Center personnel in to see him. The Director Guide herself was the one to bring him out of Zone, and then he was taken by ambulance to the Center proper for processing and treatment.
Thus Steve McGarrett found himself once again in Hawaii, and once his senses balanced, he was greeted by his sister, Mary, whom he hadn’t seen in several years. She may have come to Los Angeles for their father’s funeral, but Steve was online and Zoned at that time, and nobody was permitted to see him in the San Diego Center Hospital.
Mary looked good. She was healthy and looked happy, like marriage and a good career agreed with her.
But she gave him holy hell for not calling before coming to Hawaii and then Zoning on the plane. Mary planted herself by his hospital bed and lectured everyone who came to check on him about how to properly care for ‘her big lug of a brother’. It was cute.
Until it was annoying.
Steve had heard, during one of Mary’s bathroom breaks, that the Honolulu Center had found a Guide to work with him, but that Mary had all but shut him down.
It seems that sister-dear was demanding to meet and vet out this Guide before ‘allowing’ Steve to meet with him. Since Steve knew for a fact that Mary’s demands were beyond her authority, but he was mystified as to why the Center was giving into them. Mary insisted that Steve didn’t know what was good for him, and that she would be the one to decide which Guides had access to Steve.
Steve was, of course, beyond pissed.
“You can’t do that, Mary! You have no right to keep any Guide from me!”
“Steve,” Mary began to placate her brother, “You’ve had three Guides since you came online. You obviously don’t know what is right for you.”
“And you think you do?” Steve wiped a hand down his face in exasperation. “Mary—do you even work with Sentinels and Guides?”
“N-no. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t have your best interests in mind.”
“No, it doesn’t mean that. But it does mean that you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to any Guide meeting and working with me. I need a Guide, Mary. I’ve been doing okay keeping my senses from spiking, but I need a Guide to protect my mind and to keep me from Zoning.”
“Then what about those three Guides that did you no good at all, huh, Steve?”
“Mary, those Guides did help. As much as they could have, they did help. But they weren’t meant for me. Lissa was very young, mentally, and couldn’t deal with the backlash of my memories of military service, and Anne met her destined Sentinel during her work with me, so I gladly let her go so that they could bond. And Roger? He wasn’t a military man or a police officer—he was an office pencil-pusher who wasn’t mentally equipped for work with man like me.
“I will find my Guide, Mary, I promise. I know he or she is out there, and they’ll be perfect for me. But you don’t get to decide who that is or isn’t, and you can’t, by law, keep any Guide away from me. Please, don’t make me bring the Center down on you, and don’t make any demands on the Center for your own peace of mind.”
Mary sighed and sat down on the edge of Steve’s bed. “Okay, Steve, I’ll stay out of it. I only want you to be happy, you know?”
Steve reached out and took her hand in his. “I know that, Mare. Now, tell me all about your work, okay? And how is that husband of yours treating you?”
And for the moment, they were normal siblings.
And when Steve looked out his window to see the lush park outside, he thought back to the Spiritual-Blue dreams—of the swimming otters that twirled around him, and the laughing blue eyes, and the waves rolling onto the beach—and he knew that he would find his Guide here, on the island where he was born.
˜˚˜
“Okay, Chin, what can you tell me about these guys?” Sentinel Steve McGarrett was quickly finding his place in Hawaii by working with the local police department. Steve had always been an active person, so sitting at a desk didn’t appeal to him. The Center was happy to loan him out to HPD for major crime cases, and his interim Guide, Chin Ho Kelly, was a decorated police officer that recently transferred to Major Crimes from Vice. His Zen demeanor was the perfect foil to Steve’s hyper-kinetic energy, so they were a good match.
It wasn’t perfect, but Steve could be patient. He knew he would find his Guide soon, but in the meantime he had to work—or he would go crazy.
Chin was one of several Guides that were also police officers with HPD, each one un-Bonded. Since Guides greatly outnumbered Sentinels world-wide, it made sense that Guides would find a way to serve the Tribe in every capacity possible, from doctor to teacher to police officer. Chin rated high on Intuition and General Empathy, so he was prized as a cop with Major Crimes. Vice had about burned him out on police work, so Chin had taken a long leave of absence, returning to work only after he proved to be a decent match for Steve. They would never Bond, but Steve had imprinted sound and scent from the man.
Once Mary had gone back to her husband and her life, Steve began to settle into his new life in Hawaii. He presented himself to the proper authorities at Pearl Harbour-Hickam and transferred his official Navy medical records to the base hospital. Then he met with the S/G Center directors to figure out where he might best serve the island populace. Sentinel Yung had good contacts with HPD and Steve was practically guaranteed a place there once he passed his psych evaluation. Since that formality would take a few weeks, Steve met with several HPD Guides and decided that he meshed best with Guide Kelly—at least until he finally met his perfect Bond-mate.
Steve was perfectly honest with Chin about knowing his perfect Guide was nearby, and the other man agreed to act as a temporary Guide until the permanent one was found. Steve had only been working with Chin for a week when their current case landed on his desk: gun-runners smuggling out of China. Steve hated gun-runners. Anyone smuggling illegal weapons was a threat to his greater Tribe, and his instinct was to run them to ground and destroy them.
It was imperative.
It was Sentinel Duty.
Chin Ho Kelly understood the protective drive better than any of Steve’s former Guides. Chin’s uncle Keako is a Sentinel and a retired police officer, so Chin had been around Sentinels most of his life. He was happy to supply information and to follow Steve’s lead when it came to tracking criminals.
Guide McCartney never understood, really, how Steve was wired as a Sentinel. He knew the theory, but not the reality.
Steve didn’t have a death wish, or any suicidal tendencies. He was just driven to protect the Tribe at any cost, even if the cost was his own well-being.
Steve listened as Chin rattled off the information he had obtained from a confidential informant, and he took detailed notes. They were planning to hit the warehouse where the guns were supposedly being kept, so Steve wanted good back-up from experienced tactical officers. Chin knew the department pretty well, so Steve would follow his lead this time. His job was to use his senses to sniff out the firearms and make sure nobody got un-necessarily hurt. If any blood was shed, it would not be from police officers while Steve was on duty.
˜˚˜
“Why do they always run?” Steve growled to himself as he dashed into the crowded marketplace.
Steve had been enjoying a rare peaceful day with his temporary Guide, walking through the International Marketplace and scenting the normal scents of the food stalls and testing his ability to be around such a crowded area without Zoning. He hadn’t really tested his sense of taste since coming online, sticking mainly to the bland, Sentinel-friendly food served in the Center cafeteria, so Steve was also looking forward to trying some of the selections in the Marketplace.
Everything was going smoothly, right until Steve heard a scream of alarm near a jewelry stall.
“Oh, my god! He’s bleeding!”
Steve and Chin made their way toward the panicked voice and Steve dialed-up his sense of smell, and he found the coppery scent of blood.
When they reached the end of the aisle, they found a sobbing woman kneeling over a fallen and bleeding elderly man. He had obviously been stabbed, but the wound did not look life-threatening.
“Ma’am, what happened?” Chin took care to question the woman while Steve called for an ambulance and scanned the crowd for any suspects.
“My grandfather—he was stabbed. The little punk stabbed him!”
So, yeah, a stabbing. “Ma’am, please! Who stabbed your grandfather?” Steve could see no one running through the marketplace, and no one looked out of sorts that wasn’t gathered around the victim. “Can you give me a description?”
The woman was crying, so it was hard to understand her, but Steve thought she said, “It was Miko. It was the kid who works for us!”
Chin tried to calm the woman while keeping pressure to the victim’s wound, so Steve was left to question onlookers.
“Excuse me! Does anybody work near this stall?” Steve flashed both his police badge and his Sentinel card to attract attention.
“I do, officer.”
Steve turned to the man who spoke. “Do you know this Miko?”
“Yeah. Young kid; surfer type.”
“Was he here just now?”
The man nodded. “I saw him earlier, just an hour ago.”
“Thank you. Can you tell me what he was wearing?”
The man gave a description of Miko and what he was wearing, and Steve left Chin to deal with the victim until the ambulance arrived, and he began to make his way through the marketplace, scanning the crowd for anyone who resembled the description of Miko.
Steve dialed down his senses of smell and hearing to keep his distraction level down, and he asked for help along the way. Near the center of the marketplace, where the largest concentration of people were congregated, Steve spotted a young man wearing the band t-shirt that was described to him.
Unfortunately, that young man spotted Steve and his badge at the same time.
And he took off into the crowd, running at a mad pace.
It was like a rabbit running in front of a wolf. Steve took off, quick-dialing Chin from his mobile phone to tell the man where he was and where he was headed. The ambulance had arrived and Chin had taken the official statement from the victim’s grand-daughter, so Chin said he would meet Steve at the back entrance to the Marketplace. Steve sped up in his pursuit and began to herd the attacker toward the back entrance.
The assailant made a quick turn around a corner and entered an empty area, and Steve lunged forward in a sudden burst of speed, tackling the young man behind a t-shirt stall. He was wrestling the perpetrator into cable-ties when Chin caught up to them.
Steve was breathless as he looked up at his Guide. “They always run. Why do they always run?”
≠≠≠
“Guide Williams! We need you to go downtown!”
Danny was walking across the grounds of the S/G Center with Grace, talking about the flowers and insects that they found. Grace was writing a paper on local insects for her science class, and the gardens around the Center were the perfect place to find all sorts of bugs and beetles. Sentinels could not handle being around pesticides and harsh chemicals, so S/G Centers around the country used beneficial insects to keep destructive insects at bay. Grace had never heard of such a thing, and the head gardener was giving them a detailed tour.
But Danny quickly turned toward Guide Yung when she called to him. “Why? What’s going on?”
“We have a Sentinel in Feral Battle Drive in a hostage situation in a bank downtown.”
“Have you called the cops? And where is the Guide?”
Guide Yung held out a piece of paper containing written details. “He is the cops—at least he’s working with the cops—and the Guide was injured during the take-down and can’t talk the Sentinel down from the Feral state.”
Danny looked at his daughter. “Are you gonna be okay staying here with Catherine?”
Grace nodded. “Yes, Danno. You should go and see if you can help.”
“Yeah, I probably should.” Danny took the paper from Guide Yung and began to read. “What is the Sentinel’s name?”
“Sentinel Steve McGarrett. He’s been working with HPD’s Major Crime unit for a few weeks now. Guide Chin Ho Kelly is an interim Guide who was already a police officer. He was shot in the shoulder during hostage extraction, and is either in severe pain or unconscious—we don’t know for certain. Sentinel McGarrett went Feral after the shooting, and he’s already taken out the shooter and one other robber. The hostages seem safe, but they’re afraid to approach him.”
“So should they be, if he’s Feral. He could hurt someone else without meaning to in that state.”
“Yes, well, we’re hoping that your experience here will help take him down. The paramedics can’t get into the building to take care of Kelly or the robbers.”
“Yes, and I’m sure McGarrett is armed as well. I hope they have a bullet-proof vest in my size.”
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chimerawrites 