theliar | transition into the future (for not_a

There was no time to shout her name or warn Vala to stay away from the apparently dangerous button before he blipped out of existence in the castle. Neal's world was spinning and sky seemed to open up into a vortex of swirling stars. For the world's longest second, and also the shortest, Neal Caffrey was terrified. Well, simultaneously terrified and exhilarated. Vala's stories of time and space were true?!

Before he could consider this fact any further, Neal found himself shielding his eyes. His feet had never moved, his position had never changed, but suddenly the light was far brighter than the room full of painting or the moment of transitioning in time. When his eyes finally adjusted and Neal brought his arm down, the usually loquacious man was silent.

Space craft and hover cars were whizzing by overhead. Skyscrapers that reached where he'd known aircraft to fly in his time. Neal's handsome jaw hung agape as he tried to register everything he was seeing. The amount to take in was beyond overwhelming and when Vala appeared beside him, he was still in the same stunned statuesque pose.

Vala, used to Stargate travel, didn't find herself disoriented by the process. Once she pressed the button, she found herself appearing next to Neal. Her first thought was to be secretly happy they hadn't ended up somewhere with a hostile atmosphere - or worse, floating in the void of space - and she looked up at the sky, her mouth widening into a tremendous grin.

"Now, this is more like it," she declared. She took a few steps up to him, still looking to the sky, and shifted so her shoulder gently bumped his. "I bet this makes you wish that garage was full of more than just fancy cars, doesn't it?"

Blinking, Neal turned his head toward Vala. There were very few people in the known universe who'd successfully rendered him speechless. The strange brunette could now be proud to count herself among them. Rubbing the back of his head, Neal struggled to not look completely dumbfounded.

"Well, I wouldn't want them to take the fancy cars away but..." Staring as a hover bike whizzed by, a childish grin took his lips. "But I REALLY want to try one of those."

The big spaceships were amazing, surely, but not something that appealed much more than jetliners. They were a bit unattainable for him. Neal's eyes sparkled as he looked from ship to building to ship and then back to Vala. Internally, he was trying to catalog how much he could steal, make, and need to learn to be perfect his trade in this place.

If they never returned to the castle, it would be too soon!

Vala's thoughts weren't too far from Neal. This was a treasure trove of technology, and Vala had certainly stolen much more complex ships. She watched then whip through the sky, debating the best way to go about such a heist, and trying to decide how to do so without bringing it to Neal's attention.

"Let's go and try one then," she said encouragingly. Maybe if they "borrowed" one, they could get it back to the right timeline and use it to get away from the castle. Granted, Vala wasn't sure her plan would work, but at this point, anything was worth trying. She really just wanted to go home, mostly. But doing so by flying in a rather extraordinary ship wouldn't hurt...

"Of those bikes? They are bikes, right? That's what people call them here?"

It was obvious to Neal that Vala had been truthful all along. This future was real. He could see it, feel it, and even taste it. Most people would have thought about how their friends were long dead and how they were alone and obselete. Neal meanwhile, well he already was alone in life and so all he saw in this reality was potential.

With a nice and honest girl like Vala to accompany him and show him the ropes, Neal was sure he'd integrate alright in time. Granted his crippled arm was going to leave him relying on Vala for quite a while, something he wasn't as happy about, but at least it could be an excuse to stick by her without seeming as clueless about the future as he actually was.

"Well, I'm not exactly going to be the best candidate for driving one of those," he admitted, giving his arm a disdainful look before turning back to Vala with a patented charming smile.

Vala shot her own patented smile right back, knowing from Neal's attitude that she had him wrapped right about her finger. Men were so easy sometimes, especially when they didn't have much of an idea of what was going on. Daniel had been impossible to tame, of course, because he knew what Vala really was; or, in the least, what she had once been. Neal, on the other hand, was a welcome challenge.

"Something like that," she informed him. "Personally I'm more familiar with more modest trading ships. Sometimes I really miss mine." The lies were coming easily, slipping off of her tongue with genuine innocence. But she was too wrapped up to even feel badly about it. "I think if we're going to give anything a try, it should be one of the bigger ships. And I'm sure I can fly anything here."

"Well back at the castle it seemed alright to help ourselves, so this is probably no different?"

Neal's voice was purposefully tinted with innocence and optimism. If he could convince Vala they take one, steal one really, then he'd have plenty of time to recuperate. Once he was better, Neal would focus on the where's and finding a good place to set up shop. There were probably aliens and a slew of other dangerous things he was going to want to be educated about from the safety of a ship rather than some place they would have to squat in or, gasp, work hard to keep.

A wink, the kind men give cute women to convince them of their sincerity, punctuated the end of his spoken sentence and his unshared thoughts.

"Lead the way. If we find one you think will work, maybe I could distract them or something?"

Yep, lay it on thick, as if all these ideas were just coming out of nowhere.

Vala let her mouth hang open just a tad, as if such an idea would never occur to her. "Oh, I don't know about that..."

The play of innocence was obviously working to her advantage, but Vala didn't want to push it too hard, lest Neal catch on that she was over-compensating. The suggestion, however, certainly impressed her. He was making this far too easy.

"I suppose if we just take it out for a ride and bring it back," she finally added. "Maybe they won't even notice it's gone! If nothing else I'm sure we both could charm someone into giving us a wonderful deal..."

For Vala, of course, "deal" meant "free." But she and Neal were in this together now, and she didn't need him running off when the fire got too hot. After all, she was sure there was something she'd be able to use him for.

Vala was playing right into his hot little hands. Neal was almost compelled to feel guilty for taking advantage of her. Almost, but not quite. She might have helped to save his life, but beyond that she was just another pretty face. Granted it was a very kind and sweet face, but still one he planned to use to every advantage he could.

"Charming is something I can be very good at, even with the broken arm," Neal assured her with a dashing smile.

That statement was actually true, but surely not in the context Vala would take. His charm could be natural but it was also crafted after hours in front of the mirror so that no matter who he was playing. Despite all this though, he knew he was going to have to rely on Vala to supply him with the right approach in this foreign world. Just a few more helpful suggestions and Neal was sure he could get her to fill in the blanks of his currently developing con.

"We could try to get a test drive. They probably do that if they're trying to sell theirs, right?"

It had been a fairly long time since Vala had enjoyed the feel of pulling off what could result in being a fairly lucrative con. A white lie here and there, especially when she was doing it for the betterment of the galaxy, never quite lived up to the rush she got from stealing something from someone who, for whatever reason, really didn't deserve to have it anyway.

"That seems like a possibility. They have to let people try it out before they'd expect anyone to make an investment."

She stepped forward, deciding to push sweet little Neal out of his comfort zone once and for all. "Let's go look around and see what we can find, shall we?"

Letting Vala think she'd made the push towards taking a look, he nodded. Part of every successful con was letting those who weren't in on it think they were in control. If it was 'her' idea, she'd have even less reason to be suspicious when he was seemingly agreeable. Pepper every lie with validity and truth and that would make it all the more difficult to separate fact from fiction.

"Sure! Let me know when you see a good one, this is all foreign to me. I'm better with cars and yachts," he said, continuing his role as the clueless playboy.

Gesturing with a grand sweep of his arm, Neal let her lead the way. If he picked the ship, there was a good chance he'd end up getting them in trouble with military folk or worse, dead in space with a junker. As they walked, his eyes still shined with awe. It was genuine, though certainly helped to perpetuate his image of a naive fellow along for the ride. Blue eyes were fixed on the sky above and all the activity it held, causing him to bump into Vala's back more than once as she would have any reason to slow her pace.

Vala was rather pleased with herself in turn. As far as Neal was concerned, it was his idea to get a ship, and anything that occurred after that would be easy to adjust to circumstance. He was the easiest hurdle, and the real challenge would lie in making sure whomever she swindled didn't catch on until it was too late.

She let Neal spend his time wrapped up in the interesting things going on around them while she mentally made an inventory of what kind of ship they would need. Technology, in Vala's experience, didn't change much between cultures, even if the look and feel of a ship did. She hadn't had any problem shifting between her expertise between Goa'uld and Asgard technology, and anything in between, so she didn't doubt figuring out a Tau'ri ship from the future would be all the much of a challenge. And if it was, it would be a welcome one after her time spent trapped in that stupid castle.

The streets were filled with people going about their business; a few shops here and there selling advanced looking items that didn't look anymore complex than hand devices, and Vala already had the supplies she needed neatly stowed away in her bags beneath her clothes. Finally, they reached an impressive, glass building with a landing pad behind it, and a magnificent small ship on display out front.

Vala paused, waiting for Neal to bump into her and hoping that would knock him out of his state of wide-eyed wonder. "This seems like a good place to ask," she said cheerfully.

Though he was usually incredibly aware of personal space, he hardly expected Vala to be leveraging that as well. Before he could stop himself, Neal had bodily bumped into Vala again. Outwardly he played it off as being in awe of the future but inside he was berating himself. New world or not, Neal knew better than to get distracted during a con. Taking one long breath Neal Caffrey reigned in his excitement and put on his best game face.

Which, in this case, was a naive smile and the vague air of money that he used as his natural default when playing the world at large.

"Looks shiny. And expensive. I'm generally a fan of both of these things," he responded with an enthusiastic nod.

The future was as oddly empty of folks to stop them as the castle had been. By the time they were where the docking ramp to the vessel would lower, not a soul had appeared to attend to or stop them.

"Guess the future is over security teams?"

Vala scrunched up her nose, as if also confused by the lack of security near the landing pad.

But really, she was annoyed. If there wasn't a living, breathing human being there to try and sell them a ship, it meant everything was computer automated. While that saved her the struggle of out-witting a human being, it meant she would have to reroute the flight program in the ship, which she would have to do without Neal becoming suspicious. It didn't exactly throw a monkey in her plans... Is that how the saying went? Though she guessed if one did get a monkey thrown at them it would certainly muck up the plans. Hopefully there wouldn't be a monkey involved.

Wait, hold on. Get back on track, Vala. Spaceships.

She walked up to a screen and activated it, pursing the options of sleek ships they could test drive. "Do you have any requests?" she asked Neal with a proud smile.

Neal was very much out of his element in the future but after he'd managed to wipe the astounded expression from his face, most wouldn't have known the difference. Already a calm and charismatic smile was in his features, replacing the childlike excitement that Neal reluctantly buried for a later time when he could privately reel from the space age reality. Coming up behind Vala, he was close. He did his best to appear as though he was just looking closely but giving the appearance of being with the confident woman was a part of his con.

"Well... they all look amazing," he said, not having to fake the tone of wonderment as Vala's long fingers flipped through the holoscreens quickly.

Though he really wanted to touch the futuristic display, Neal just managed to keep his hands to himself. Knowing his luck he'd end up calling the police if he tapped the wrong way. Moreover, Vala was scrolling through at a speed he couldn't have come close to.

"You seem like you know this a bit better than I do, I'll default to your expertise."

Lay on the compliment, seem helpless, let her do the work. Neal's con was going well so far.

Vala's mouth curved into a smile as she pursued the ships. She was more than pleased with the idea of choosing the ship on her own, and luckily Neal's nervousness with this strange world was working to her advantage. She was in her element, and she was showing off. It was the best of both worlds for a girl like her.

She mused softly as she looked at the ships, trying to decide what her preferences might be. "We should try to find something with a hyperdrive... If those even exist in this time period. It would also be helpful if it had some kind of transporter. That's not completely necessary, of course, but it certainly makes thing easier." She kept flipping through, not quite happy with the specs she was seeing yet. "Plus, let's admit it, we need something flashy. No point in, erm, test driving anything less than the best."

She shot him a grin and flipped to a new image. Taking a look, she titled her head and nodded. "Well. No transporter but it does have hyperdrive. And it's pretty." And it was. A sleek ship, a little on the smaller side, but it's silver chrome shone nicely even in the hologram, and Vala was practically drooling at the idea of calling it her own.

The only capacity in which Neal knew what any of those mechanical terms were was from the few times he'd let Mozzie force him into watching some of the science fiction shows that the younger man was pretty sure helped make Moz as paranoid as he was. Neal didn't have to hide his ignorance from Vala on that front, if only because she already knew he was from earth in 2011. When she settled on one, he nodded his agreement. Once his eyes settled on the ship, even he knew that the vessel was pretty. It might be the future but Neal still had an appraiser's eye.

"Pretty is nice. You know guys like me..." Neal said, knowing Vala didn't know anything at all about the kind of guy he actually was. "Hopefully it doesn't need maintenance every other trip like Audis."

Hating his broken arm, Neal really wanted to lay on that extra touch and subtly touch Vala. Women loved when an attract man was proximal and the manipulation you could use once a woman was attracted to you was a whole nother level. A level Neal Caffrey excelled at. Instead, he had to settle for that dashing smile. There was something less than sexy about clumsily banging your injuries into people.

"Want to lead the way to the test drive?"

It took everything Neal had to not verbalize the quotation marks around "test drive" he was hearing in his head. Hopefully Vala wouldn't hate him if she ever realized he'd intended to steal the ship and get her to pilot it from the start. Once they were away from the castle's otherworldly reaches, maybe he could get on figuring out where the hell his future was going to go.

Turning away from the holo screen, Vala's eyes snapped up to Neal's and took a step towards him. The tilted her head flirtatiously; part of showing off was flirting, and Vala hadn't done nearly enough with that yet. Besides, it was the best way to prime him to be distracted, just in case things didn't go quite the way she'd planned.

Looking up at him, Vala reached out with a seductive swagger and straightened his shirt collar with her fingers. "I'm going to give you a ride you won't forget."

She winked and reached around him, pressing herself lightly against him so she could reach the console and push a button. And within seconds, the very ship they were looking at materialized on the landing pad in front of them. The screen turned to a display, with a short driver's manual. Vala brushed up against Neal to read it.

"It looks like we have a 15 minutes drive before the homing device will activate and bring us back here automatically. Hmmm." What a shame it would be if that malfunctioned.

Neal was incredibly impressed with his own prowess when Vala turned on him with those glittering dark eyes. He was used to living cons with so much authenticity that sometimes the cons did the work for him. This time was turning out to be one of those. Soon Vala's hands were on his collar, straightening that train wreck of a tie he'd done one-armed earlier and Neal knew that clearly enamored smile Vala was wearing was his victory flag.

The extra comment about an unforgettable ride didn't phase Neal on the outside, though on the inside he had just a bit of pause. Vala was incredibly attractive and he wouldn't be lying when he would say she could raise other flags of his easily. He felt a little guilty that she seemed to already like him so much and he'd been lying, but that guilt was gone when she put her arms around him to reach for the console. She might have been 'innocent' in his con but Neal was familiar with women who weren't innocent and naive and he was starting to think Vala might have fallen more into that category than the sweet airhead category he'd been putting her in before.

"Fifteen minutes seems like a cheap ride for my first space ship," he complained, layering on a bit of a spoiled whine.

Rich men had expectations and Neal would be no exception. He had to find a way to get them away from the magical hell hold for a lot longer than fifteen minutes.

It was a good thing he didn't have more to contribute verbally, because as the ship materialized Neal was staring again and having a hard time controlling his awe.

There was something about the look on his face that tickled her. Even if he was a vehicle in what was turning into a rather easy con, he seemed like a nice enough guy, and Vala had no problem in letting him have a little fun, too. Grabbing his hand, Vala tugged Neal towards the ship.

It was a nice ship, too. The door opened as they approached, and Vala led the way up the ramp and through the door, straight into the cockpit. It wasn't a huge ship, but roomy enough for two, with the cockpit in front and a smaller room in the back.

She settled into the pilots seat with a grin, taking a precursory look at the controls before she started the engine. It looked straightforward enough; Vala really could fly anything, so it was just a matter of deactivating the homing beacon within the first 15 minutes of the flight.

The ship lit up, and Vala settled into the seat, flipping a few switches. She looked over at Neal. "You might want to have a seat. Lift-off might be a bit rocky."

The bridge of the ship had one chair besides Vala's, presumably for back up weapons support or piloting though Neal wouldn't have made that connection immediately. He was happy to let Vala tug him along. For starters, it helped give the air that she was the one helping a simple bachelor pick a ship. Every good con needed someone to take the fall and Neal was glad it would likely default to Vala if he continued playing up his lie.

"That's a lot of switches..." he observed of the central consoles. Like an airplane, it was a lot to keep track of and Neal was still sure he liked automobiles the most. "You sure you know how to do this?"

If Vala blew them up, well he'd rather have no con at all than that!

Taking her advice with a nod, he dropped down into the chair. There was no seat belt, though if sci-fi had been true apparently gravity wouldn't matter soon after take off. As Vala began to engage the engines, Neal couldn't help but look out the front of the ship with anticipation. Once they took off, the con was back on, but for five seconds he was going to be a little boy playing astronaut.

Vala rolled her eyes. "I can fly anything, don't worry," she assured him. She reached up and flipped a switch, and an ear-piercing alarm started pulsating through the ship.

She jumped and shot Neal a wide-eyed look before scrambling to flip the switch, but the alarm was still blaring. She dove under the console, taking a moment to look at a few things before she figured out what wires to pull to shut it off.

Coming back up, Vala laughed nervously. "Whoops."

Before Neal had a chance to respond, she programmed in the liftoff pattern and then settle back into her chair. "Okay. Now we're ready." With a grin, she hit a few buttons and the ship began to lift off.

Those rolling eyes told Neal so much more about Vala than nearly anything else had. She was a confident woman, smart, and clearly very much knew these things about herself. He was going to have to be careful as this con played out or she might grow suspicious. Part of him was disappointed the con wouldn't be as easy without her being a witless ditz, but the other part was oddly fascinated with the challenge.

Neal sort of had a weak spot for strong and intelligent women.

As he was repressing that thought, his subconscious cheered at the blaring distraction. Outwardly though, Neal began to panic. Alarms were bad. They meant authorities were coming. Neal didn't know what kind of authorities the future had in space but he figured they were even worse than Peter and Peter was pretty much Neal's worst nightmare when he was actively conning.

"Vala..." he said nervously, as if she couldn't hear the alarms.

Before he could get the rest of his thought out, it looked like she was under the dash console hot wiring the space ship. That seemed highly suspect but for some reason that thought was starting to swirl in his head. His body wasn't feeling right and at first he wasn't sure if that was a normal part of the take-off process.

As the creeping spins flooded his nerves, Neal knew exactly what was happening. He wanted to curse loudly but the edges of his vision were starting to go black, just like they had when he was playing jail break back at the castle. Fuck. As the spaceship pulled up out of the upper mesosphere, Neal felt his body slipping to the floor and shutting down.

"Vala..." was about the last thing he said, deathly quiet, before collapsing into a heap on the floor when they shifted out of the ionosphere.

Having been wrapped up in the excitement of being on a ship again, Vala didn't notice the new emergency until Neal was a unconscious lump on the floor of the cockpit.

Her grin melted away. This was bad. She wasn't even sure what was wrong, and she made sure the ship was on autopilot before she jumped down next to him, running her hands over his face and shaking him gently.

"Neal. Neal." She checked to make sure he was still breathing, and assured that he was probably just unconscious, she dragged him to the back room and laid him out on the floor.

Once he was in a somewhat comfortable position, Vala pulled off her jacket and balled it up, shoving it under his head and patting his arm gently. "It's okay. We'll get out of here and get you help."

Glancing at her watch, Vala realized she was down to just a few minutes to deactivate the homing device. She might be able to delay any tampering alarms built into it, but probably not for long, which meant she needed to get them to hyperspace, deactivate any tracking devices that might be in the ship, and then get them somewhere safe. Preferably before Neal died.

Focusing on one goal at a time, Vala got up and moved back to the console. She was starting to feel a little dizzy herself, but she fought through it. It took a few minutes to deactivate the homing device, but it was easier than she thought it would be, which made her worry. Things that were easy always just became more complicated later down the line.

With that done, she worked on locating tracking devices. The ship was full of them, of course, but she was sure she could shut them down. However, it would require a full reboot of the ships operating systems, which would put them floating in space, unprotected, for however long it took the systems to come back online.

Vala quickly decided the best bet would be to jump to hyperspace, pull out far enough away for no one to have any suspicions, and then do a system-wide reset. It wasn't foolproof, but it would work.

And then she'd deal with Neal.

Vala slammed the ship into hyperspace, just long enough to get them out of the planet's solar system. As soon as she dropped the ship out of hyperspace, she shut off the power, hoping it was quick enough that no one on the planet could track the ship.

The cockpit fell into darkness for just a moment before the ships systems started up again. Knowing she couldn't do anything about how long it would take for the hyperdrive to come online, Vala took a deep breath and stood up, her knees almost buckling under her.

She practically crawled back to where Neal was, checking his breathing again and trying to fight back a foggy wave of nausea that had overcome her. She sat down next to him. "Just a few more minutes, Neal."

It was only a few seconds before the hyperdrive was back online. Vala stared at Neal helplessly, knowing that her comforting words, however well intentioned, were just empty lies. Even with the ship's power back up and the, well, relatively good chance they couldn't be tracked, Vala still didn't know what to do about Neal. She wasn't exactly a medical professional.

The only thing she could figure is that he was reacting from leaving the planet's barrier, much in the way he'd passed out when he got too far from the castle. She didn't know why it wasn't effecting her, though, and what kind of long term damage it could do to him.

Vala got up and rushed back to the cockpit. She paused over the controls, trying to figure out what her next move should be, and she took a minute to pause, take a deep breath, and look out the cockpit window.

And that was when she saw the space station.

Her mouth dropped open. It seemed just too perfect, out here in the middle of nowhere, and ending up right in front of what looked like a perfectly good space station. On the one hand, she was going to run a huge risk by exposing themselves and asking for help. On the other hand, Vala didn't exactly like when people died during one of her crackpot plans. It never left her with a good feeling.

Making up her mind quickly, Vala put the ship into manual drive and navigated it towards the space station. She sent an automated distress call, so she wasn't surprised when she docked, a member of the security team was there to greet them.

With some difficulty, Neal was moved from the ship to the sick bay. Vala explained patiently that they had been on their honeymoon, in a new ship having been a gift from a distant, wealthy relative, and Neal's collapse was both sudden and completely unexpected. No one seemed to bothered by her story, however, and the nurse in the med bay busiest herself with Neal, taking a few readings and finally giving him a shot.

Coming down from her adrenaline rush, Vala sat by the bed and watched over him, hoping silently that he was going to be okay. That, and also hoping there wasn't any chance anyone was looking into her flimsy lie.

transition into the future (for not_a_conartist)

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