The Jumper dumps the Chases in the Surveillance Center of the Agency HQ before disappearing in a snap. In confusion, the two look around and spot Dolly, sitting in a rolling chair with a Santa hat on her head and a banana smoothie in her hands.
Suddenly: "Shit!" The villain jumps to her feet and pulls a pink origami moth from one of her pockets with her free hands. She walks over to a table and writes on it. Gently with some strokes and panicked with others. Without looking at them, Dolly tells the Chases, "Your goddamn daughter is good at this! Her and her new buddies!" She stops writing and tosses the moth into an air duct. "What is it, tell me?"
Zara looks at her husband and asks the villain, "Tell you what?"
"How does she do it? Block my power? I mean, I know she's a meta but I don't-"
Both of Victoria's parents exclaim, in unison and in certain shock, "Our daughter is a metahuman?!"
Dolly slurps up some smoothie and says, "Yeah. She's got, like, Spidey-Sense or something. Maybe that's it, her thoughts are too fast for me."
The Chases also spot Sean Prescott lying on the floor, trapped in a fetal position. Dolly adds, "Oh, yep, I got Sean Prescott here too."
Zara asks, "Where's Montrose?"
"Who?"
"Montrose. The party server. Our old… butler. Victoria was asking about him and we figured you might know a thing or two."
Dolly chuckles to herself, astounded. "Wow. She had a butler? Just one? Was he like a cool butler? Did he know 'Kar-A-Tay'?"
"Yes, actually. We had him until Prescott bought him away. Punishment for us 'giving his son drinks'."
"It was deserved!"
The Chases groan together with Colin angrily muttering, "Christ, he's awake."
"You hurt my son with that! Don't either of you DARE talk like that to me."
Dolly rolls her eyes and tells him, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure your son hurt your son, Mister Pee." Crossing her arms, she asks, "I take it you;ve just now heard about Vicky's amazing gifts."
"She's a filthy metahuman, yeah, I know."
Zara gasps and exclaims, "She's our daughter, you asshole."
Sean sits up and growls angrily, "You dare call me an ass-"
Fake-Nathan, still inside Sean's not-as-complex-as-he-believes mind, tells him, "Yes, she does, DAD!"
Speaking to the ghost in his head, he asks, betrayed, "Now you betray me too?" He scoffs. "I figured you would, Nathan. Always defending her like the lost puppy you were."
Both of the Chases look at each other, confused, and tell Prescott with some worry, "Nathan? He's not-"
Dolly jumps in and yells, "He's not fuckin' around, man!" She makes a gun gesture with her hand and panickedly yells, "Oh my- oh my shit, he's got his gun!" Sean puts his hands up and falls on his butt, hiding against the wall from the mental menace. She tells the Chases with a laugh, "I'm fucking with him. Mentally."
Zara shrugs her shoulders and tells the villain, "I can live with that. Now, what do you want from us again?"
"Tell me of any of your daughter's neat anti-mental trickery."
Seeing no way out of the situation. Colin spills the beans: "We know she had tin foil in her hat, for whatever reason."
"Hm. Yes. That'd make sense. Thought it was just some weird non-sequitur." She taps her forehead, telling that she used her powers to verify the truth. "Do you think it would last after it was taken off?" They both shrug, obviously not knowing much. Dolly strokes her chin and thinks aloud to herself: "Then there must be a deeper reason behind it. Self-sabotage? Hm. Naaaah. Alcohol consumption. Too young and too many eyes. Really, I got nothing. You?"
Colin tells her, with his chest unconsciously puffed up, "We don't know, and we wouldn't help you hurt our daughter either way. We've done enough of that."
Dolly rubs her forehead and says blankly, "Okay, so you're not lying. But, I mean, really? After everything she's done-"
"That we caused, whether we'd like to admit it or not. We both know she's angry at us, and we know she kinda lied about how she knew you, if the way you're acting is any indication. But that doesn't matter. We won't hurt her anymore." Zara holds her husband's hand and plops a kiss on his cheek, proud of his heroic stand against Dolly.
"Man, you guys are good parents. Vicky thought the same thing! Even when she was super-duper pissed at you for thinking you were lying to her about the invitation here! Yeah, I was listening with the ol' Metahuman Jumping Bean. Well, you're both certainly better than my parents." Dolly sighs and steps closer to them. "I'm sorry I'll have to do this."
"Do what?"
Dolly jumps up in front of them and holds their foreheads. She worms her way into their minds. Zips down their timelines straight for their pasts. Any that she can truly see and explore anyways…
1987
THE ARRANGEMENT
It started in April. Two immigrants from Berlin with dreams of art. Dreams that were held down back home.
It was there, in Arcadia Bay, on one warm Oregon evening, when they cleaned up for Sean Prescott one last time. It was at an afterparty for the Blackwell Academy Bigfoots' big game beating the Beaver Creek Collegiate Beavers.
Grinning at the two lovers behind the scenes of the shindig, he tells them, "So I've seen your portfolios. I'm impressed!"
Zara dusts herself off and says, "Thank you, sir." Colin helps her by plucking dust bunnies out of her hair, much to her delight.
Sean laughs and adds, "Seriously, Zee, what'd I tell you, both of you? It's Sean. Anyways, this? Good. Shit." He pulls out a red binder and flicks through it.
Colin asks, arms crossed in uncertainty, "So is that all you wanted to tell us?" Sean smirks at the two, but that smirk only grows into an impressed grin.
Holding her boyfriend's hands, she tells their fellow Berlinian roommate [DOLLY] "We made an arrangement with him!"
[DOLLY] strokes her chin and inquires, "Hm. Interesting. What are the exact details?"
Colin explains, "He wants a cut of the check, but we're getting a majority profit! Exposure! Money, mostly! I think that's how it works."
Zara laughs and nuzzles his shoulder. "Certainly beats the way things were back home."
[DOLLY] laughs and jokes, "Ah, don't get too rich for my blood, you two! Here's to the future!"
1992
THE ADVENTURE
FLASH . A fresh, crisp shot of the bright orange sun setting over Cluny, France, tinting the town tangerine. In the Summer of 1992, the two Chases took a vacation overseas where their good friend [DOLLY] had moved to pursue her dream career and see the artistry of the land.
Zara sets down the camera, planting the photograph in one of her overalls' pockets and tells her loving husband, "Now that's a keeper." She sits with him on a bench and shoots a smile his way. "Look at this, Colie. A view of the French world."
Colin nods stoically as [DOLLY] walks out from his small house by the streets. "It's nice. Having spent the last… decade? The last decade here, you learn a lot!"
The two walk up to [HER] and pat [HER] on the back. "We appreciate you hosting us. Really, [DOLLY], it's been amazing."
Joyfully, [DOLLY] tells them in a funny faux-French accent, "My pleasure! Oui oui!"
Snapping his fingers, Zara adds, "That's been a help too. French was not my strong suit back home. Nor were a lot of things, for that matter!"
Colin laughs before kissing her on the cheek. "Yeah! Me neither!"
[DOLLY] leads the two into [HER] apartment and says, "That makes three of us!"
1995
THE ART GALLERY
Zara cautiously closes the door to the Chase Space's entrance, keeping the night out. "Aaaand that's it for the day!" Just a few months prior, they had earned enough money and enough clout to begin their business in the hip photography scene of Seattle. Just in time for Christmas, no less!
Colin places several photographs into a red binder and tells her, "It's a lot. But I'm not complaining!" As he helps her around - what with her being five months pregnant - he looks at [DOLLY] and compliments her by saying, "Ooh, thanks for cleaning up, friend!"
Sweeping away some dust with a broom, [DOLLY] says gleefully, "No problem! It's the least I can do. Y'know, without a paycheck."
Colin laughs. "We're not that rich!" He rubs Zara's big belly and adds, "Besides, we've got the kid coming along."
Rubbing [HER] hands together, [DOLLY] asks the two, "Thought of a name yet? Because I've got some good ideas."
The two look at each other with smiles abound. They've already settled on a name, one that they will always choose, as fate would have it…
A few weeks later, after being rushed to the hospital upon the breaking of her water, a new life was brought into this world. One baby who would surely bring about a bright day for the Chase family lineage.
Cradling the newborn, Zara looks into her wailing daughter's small green eyes and smiles oh so happily and weakly: "Hello to the world, Victoria Maribeth Chase."
Sean looks at her and remarks, "She's so small." Looking around, he asks, "Are all babies like this?"
Astounded at his obliviousness, Jessica - one of the Chases' business partners - tells him boredly, "Obviously. You have a daughter, you know."
Sean shrugs his shoulders and nervously tells her, "Well, yeah."
Rolling her eyes, Jessica shows the young girl off to another one of the Chases' associates. "Look at her, Brad!"
Brad pats the baby on the head and says to the lucky new parents, "I can see her of course. Congratulations, you two!"
Colin holds his wife's hand and tells him, "Thanks. Isn't she lovely?"
"Yeah. Well, besides the crying, but that's the way babies are."
From across the room, [DOLLY] begs, "Let me hold her! Pleeeeease?" Brad hands the baby over to [HER] and [DOLLY] cradles her gently. "Hi, Victoria. Wow. You were an ugly baby."
2001
THE ABSTRACTION
As [SHE] rakes the leaves around the backyard of Sean Prescott's lofty Arcadia Bay mansion, [DOLLY] asks the Chase and Prescott parents, "Hey, where are the kids?"
In the midst of a martini, Sean tells [HER] frankly, "Dunno, [DOLLY]. They're probably just playing around. Let them be."
But someone else is on the hunt for the two kids: Kristine Prescott. She runs up to the adults and says worriedly, "Mom, Dad! I can't find Nathan anywhere!"
Sean scoffs rather playfully, telling his daughter, "Oh, he's just playing around with Victoria, I bet. No, seriously, I wager that much."
[DOLLY] jumps in and says with a pep in [HER] step, "Let us go find them, young Kristine."
The two venture into the thick bushes, sprinkled in orange fallen leaves, guarding the Prescott Estate from the dirty outside world.
In a small clearing, the two children are spotted with a little white rabbit in their hands. [DOLLY] texts the Chases on [HER] flip phone while Kristine whispers to [HER], "There!" They await the arrival of the parents by observing sneakily.
Victoria cautiously and carefully strokes the forehead of the rabbit while proclaiming, "He's so adorable!" She's completely captivated by the strange thing's existence and its fuzzy form. She even offers it a carrot from one of her dress pockets and it nibbles on it with infantile bites.
Nathan looks at the little critter with a bit of a darker curiosity, asking Victoria, "You think they ever get hurted? How do they feel it? Do they cry?"
In a panic, Victoria pulls the rabbit out of Nathan's grasp and cradles it gently. She glares at the young Prescott boy and tells him off with, "No, Nathan! No one will ever hurt the little babies! I will stop them from being hurted!"
The solace is disrupted by [DOLLY] bursting through the bushes with the adult Chases and Prescott at [HER] sides. [SHE] calls out to them both, "Victoria! Nathan! Thank heavens you two are alright!"
Zara looks at the two kids and asks, "What are they doing in the-" She sees the bunny. Her heart dropping in fear of the icky little ticks that could be rummaging through the animal's fur, she shoos away the critter and hugs her daughter tightly. "Stay away from that thing, Victoria! It may have ticks on it!"
Victoria reaches out to the rabbit but her baby arms cannot grab it as it disappears into the woods. "Nooo, it's just a baby rabbit."
Zara sighs, adding, "A disgusting thing, it is!" She combs her fingers through her daughter's hair and asks, "Oh, are you alright?"
Sean looks his son in the eyes and tells him firmly, "Nathan, seriously, you shouldn't be like that. Here in the bushes. That's it, we're going home!"
The Prescotts walk away into their house, leaving the Chases and [DOLLY] behind. [SHE] picks up their daughter, who whines, "Aww, but I wanted to play with him and Kristina and the rabbits-"
"We need to get you washed off. And you need to be careful out here!" From here, Victoria learned that she couldn't be like this - a careless child in a seemingly dangerous domain.
2009
THE ALCOHOLISM
Things only took a turn for the worse as the two younguns were spotted drinking alcohol by the Mount Rushmore National Monument for Spring Break. As much as they had learned from their parents, they had also learned from the world around them - movie, television, the news. It taught them to be tough. It taught them to party. Angered at this betrayal of his parental ways, Sean yelled at Nathan, "SON! What is this you have been drinking?!"
With the elder Prescott holding a bubbly drink in a water bottle in front of his young face, Nathan crudely blurts, "It's just water… Don't get so upset!"
Infuriated at the lies tossed his way, Sean tosses away the water bottle and slams his fist into a wall. "I'm no idiot, my boy! You and the girl were getting drunk! It's… her fault! Her! And now, it is time to make things right! Consequences must be known!" He grabs his phone from his jacket and dials intensely, getting the immediate answer he was hoping for. "Good evening, Colin. You're done with your daughter? Good. Because you're also done with [DOLLY]. That's right, [HER] ass is mine now!"
THE PRESENT
Prescott gains clarity once more, free from Dolly's control. He looks around and spots Dolly holding the shoulders of the Chases. He thinks to himself, " Gone? The fuckers are gone. " He grins from ear to ear, thinking and thinking thoughts all his own. " Good thinking, Doc. "
He hops to his feet and lunges at Dolly. Hearing the stomping of his feet, she looks back and asks, "What are you- YOU!"
The elder Prescott slams himself into Dolly's body, causing the two Chases to lose their footing and collapse like ragdolls. Grabbing her white mask, Sean growls in her face, "I'm sick and tired of you, kid!"
Dolly delivers a swift kick between his legs and knocks him back with a blast of psionic energy. Adjusting her mask, she spits back, "You hired me, remember?! This is me returning the favor! This and the end goal!" With Sean dazed, Dolly plants her fingers to her forehead to hone in on his mind. But she can't. "Why can't I get into your head?!"
Sean pulls himself up to his feet and tells her bluntly, "Training! The deterrent!"
"Fine, I'll just use your fat, sweaty body!" Sean's mind may be off-limits, but the body is a whole other deal. One Dolly can control with the fluttering of her fingers. Prescott bursts into a disco dance while the villainess exclaims with a sinister grin on her mask, "DANCE!" However, somehow fighting through the control, Prescott lunges at her and wraps his hands around her neck. "Hey, get away from me!"
Glaring into her soul, he tells her coldly, "I'm afraid I can't do that. After all… I hired you."
With an enraged burst of psionic energy, Prescott is swatted away with Dolly's arm. A SNAP crackling from his neck. He flies limply onto a table before collapsing to the floor.
Dusting herself off, she realizes what she has done.
Or rather, what her partner-in-mind has done.
Shocked and rather appalled, she gasps and yells, "Christ!" Stepping forward to look at Sean Prescott's limp body, she asks shakily, "Wha- what did you do?!"
Shaking her head a bit, the body she's in control of tells her, with a prim and proper French tone to his voice, "I did what you wanted to do, and what I've been wanting to do."
Dolly jumps back into the body's driver seat and snaps her fingers happily. "Good! Good riddance! Hah! Long time coming!" Tapping her chin, she asks herself, "Where was I? Oh, that's right. Let me just…" She grabs the shoulders of the two Chases and continues on her mental journey.
2010
THE AVEDON-ESQUE
Along with her dreams of becoming an amazing photographer, like her parents before her, Victoria dreamed of becoming an actress. She would tell this to her parents quite a lot both before she got to Blackwell and for the first few months she spent there.
But one day, for whatever reason, her mission shifted. Straight onto photography.
Worried about her sudden shift, Colin asks her, "What about your acting, sweetie? That would be great too."
Victoria looks away from both him and Zara, afraid of telling them the truth. Not that it was all that well-hidden, everyone at Blackwell heard about her on-set "drug nap" just minutes before "The Tempest" was set to start. She hurriedly tells him with a false smile, "I figured it wasn't for me. Performing for all those people, it makes me nervous. Just a bit. Besides, you two got into photography and you can teach me a lot."
Zara looks at her husband and tells Victoria happily, "Well… You did show a lot of interest in that. Plus, we can teach you well about it. And just in time for that Mark Jefferson's class!"
The night was warm as all summer Seattle nights tend to be. Down in Denny Park, Victoria learned from her parents just how to snap a Chase-Space-worthy photograph.
Zara guides her thoroughly: "First of all, you have to capture your subject."
The subject in question is a squirrel, standing atop a gate. It stands before the Space Needle, and the giant moon behind it illuminates the world.
"Like that. See?" Zara continues, "Focus. Steady. Make sure to get the clearest image in your sight. Everything should be perfect."
SNAP . "Now, let's see how it came out." Victoria grabs it and prepares to shake it until her parents stop her. "No shaking the photo, sweetie. It ruins the image." The three look at it and smile upon their daughter's work. "Great job, Victoria! That's perfect!"
With a tight happy grin on her face, Victoria beams, "Aww, thanks!" Looking at the photo as it develops in her hands, she adds, "Y'know, maybe Blackwell isn't so bad after all!"
2013
THE ASCERTAINMENT
"I knew sending you to Blackwell unsupervised was a bad idea!" Uh oh. They're pissed now.
Following the death of a certain blue-haired punk girl (who may have muscled Victoria out of her theatrical dreams), Arcadia Bay is in upheaval. Fingers are being pointed at the suspects behind the town's ruin - the Prescott family and their many friends. Revolution is on everyone's mind and it is scary.
With revolution also comes the truth as the two Chases would find out about their party-loving, heavy-drinking, creepy-teacher-hitting-on-ing, mean-talking, poor-tip-giving daughter. Having brought her to a motel near the edge of town, the Chases resume their duty of being parents to her.
Crying with her arms crossed in some last ditch effort to look tough to anyone at all, Victoria explains, "Look, I know what I did was bad and all, and I'm sorry."
Colin sighs and tells her, "We know, but… Jesus. We didn't raise you to be like that!"
A giggle leaves Victoria's throat. The giggle turns into a laugh, which turns into a cackle. A sad cackle, full of spite that she just doesn't want anymore. "I hate to be a bitch… but of course you did. You two and the Prescotts are the same. And look where it got Nathan! And Kristine! I don't want to end up like them. And it's a good thing I didn't, but… Look at me. I'm a mess. I'm a bad person. I was so close to being like him. And I want to make things right."
Humming angrily and quietly under his breath, Colin tells her simply, "You will. When you show us you can. Without us." Zara holds her husband's hand, trusting in both his statement and their daughter's. "We messed up - a lot - but we never wanted you to be like this. So you'll have to be a grown-up now. Without us."
Victoria smirks at both of her parents and softly tells them, "Okay. I know where to start anyways. I've been talking to Katie - you wouldn't know her since you weren't at our graduation - and I want to make things right by her. Really right." She walks to the door leading out into the world. "I'll go do that."
As she walks out into the world, Zara calls out to her and tells her heartfully, "Take care, sweetie! Please! We still love you."
Looking at her mom sweetly, Victoria says, "Yeah. I know."
And just like that, she is gone. Likely to a cab so that she can go back to the Bay and look for a place to crash. But back inside the motel room, Zara hugs her husband and asks, knowing of the pain they've brought to Victoria through their ignorance and absence, "Why are we like this?"
Colin strokes his wife's hair and tells her, "We're only human, Zee. And so is our daughter. But you trust her too, right? She'll make things right."
"God, I only hope so."
2014
THE (RE)ATTACHMENT
Victoria smiles as she holds hands with this Katie character in the Two Whales Diner that the two Chases have heard a bit about. "If you had told me I'd be with Victoria like THIS, I'd think you'd be crazy. But she's changed."
Following the revival of a certain blue-haired punk girl (who wasn't really revived per se, more that her parallel self came to town), good just seemed to be on the rise. There were reports across the globe of strange anomalies just popping up, and one such anomaly - a cult leader from a parallel world obsessed with Mother Nature's destructive streak - happened to pop up in Arcadia Bay. This particular anomaly was also stopped by the combined efforts of… a lot of people, and among those people were Victoria and her new arm candy girlfriend, Kate Marsh. The illusive 'Katie'.
Victoria wraps an arm around Kate's shoulder while eating a cheeseburger with her free hand and tells her, "I owe it to you, Katie. You saved me." As Kate leans on Victoria's chest, the two smile, happy to be with one another in this soothing moment of peace.
Colin humbly grins and tells his daughter, "We're proud of you, Victoria. You saved the town!"
Victoria shrugs her shoulders rather dismissively of her accomplishment: "I mean, I did. But… I'm not big on the title. 'Hero of Arcadia Bay', I'm no hero."
Sitting next to the Chases, Richard Marsh reassures her, with his wife by his side, "Well, you're certainly no villain."
"Coming from you, Rich, that means a lot." Victoria's smile sours a bit, not enough to vanish, as she says, "I mean, about being this 'Hero'-with-a-capital-'H', I'm not feeling it. I mean, literally, there's that Superwolf kid in Mexico wiping up drug dealers - not the best targets if you ask me, but that's neither here nor- anyways, he's a 'Hero'. With a capital 'H'. I'm just me. But, like, nicer me than usual. That's not something amazing. It's just Step One or something." She lets out a chuckle, adding, "To think, meaner me would be relishing in being 'Hero'-with-a-capital-'H'."
Zara leans in from her side of the table and tells her, "You've shown us you can change, Victoria. For the better! I had faith that you could, and of course, you proved me and your father right. And because of it, you've got a girlfriend who loves you, certainly, and who you love, certainly. That's one hell of a step- no, leap forward if I've ever seen one." Looking at the Marshes, she modestly adds, "Uh, no offense about the 'H-E-L-L' word."
Sandra laughs and tells her, "None taken."
Stroking Kate's cheek with her clean hand, Victoria tells her mother, "Thank you, mom."
Suddenly, another topic crosses Zara's mind. One that seriously needs discussion now more than ever. "Now, about that Rachel Amber that's just come back, what would she say is her favorite brand of tea? Just out of curiosity…" Victoria rolls her eyes and laughs a bit, happy to see her mom letting loose and cracking a joke or two.
Dolly reawakens and hops to her feet, adding joyously, "Victoria really grew up right before our eyes." She cackles to herself before saying, "I know you now, Victoria Maribeth Chase... neat name... And soon, we will face off again. I just hope it's soon, could be later, I mean... what time is it right now?"
Looking around for a clock, she checks the time. And boy, has she spent a good while going over all this mental malarkey as she exclaims, "Holy shit, it's been thirty minutes?! What the hell?!"
