Path To Power

It’s business as usual the day after the holiday. Never mind that nobody had gotten any sleep the night before with the bootleg firework going off at all hours. "I don’t know if I should be buying a lottery ticket or ticking things off my wish list of things to do before I die." Gia looks at the packages on her desk like they are a bomb. "Is this our lucky day or a sign of the apocalypse? Faith Roscoe- Ashton, Stefan Cassadine and Lydia Karenin-Quartermaine. Who do these people have in common-- Dara Jensen."

"And Helena Cassadine." Dara agrees with a shake of her head. "Never thought I’d be in the same grouping as Helena Cassadine. I am definitely living wrong. Go ahead and have those lists messengered over to Stefan and out to Faith. After that-- we’re staying out of it."

"Ha! Famous last words. I think I said something like that right before I was trapped down in an underground lab with Stavros Cassadine while his mother was trying to blow it up. Give me a nice land battle for the new Stadium– an overeager rook causing trouble for the coach. After dealing with them, I’m ready for it."

"That Rookie needs a nanny. I can’t open the Sports Section of the Herald without reading about something... stupid he’s done lately." Dara sighs. "First the contract and now he seems to be doing everything he can to make the coach have a heart attack. What was the latest?"

"Speed racing on the runway of the Port Charles Airport with the overpowered toy he bought with his bonus. Not only tickets from the PCPD but also arrested and the FAA is going to have a bit to say as well."

"Sure." Gia shrugs and picks up the phone. With one phone call the future Stallions superstar to be is left cooling his heels in the detectives interrogation area. Mary Bishop is left in charge of the office while Gia and Dara head to the PCPD.

Over on Spoon Island, the household had a later start than normal thanks to the late night before. Stefan had authorized a switch in the normal schedule. Tasha could have her activities in the morning rather than her studies. Which meant she could sleep a little later and in fact had a sleep over down at Penny’s cabin. Nikolas and Penny had arrived back to the island in time for the fireworks.

Zander had arrived earlier. He’d only stayed long enough at the carnival to win Tasha a prize and then had come over to spend the day with her since she couldn’t go to the park. They’d watched t he fireworks over the island and reflected off the water. Tasha had decided then and there– there should be fireworks every night. Everyone had laughed but there had been a stubborn look on her face that Zander is familiar with. Somehow Tasha is going to be arranging fireworks for more than just the 4th of July. Maybe he should be warning Stefan not to get her any chemistry kits.

Taggart takes one look at Dara and Gia when they stalk into the PCPD and shakes his head. He should feel sorry for the Rook he really should. That Big Bonus Baby had just ticked off a strong black woman, and if his right ear is any judge there is another strong woman on the way. It was just going to take the Big Baby’s mama a little longer to get there. But if things went right then the Rook would not be back in the PCPD unless it was for some charity gig. These guys went from broke to millionaires overnight and very few of them took any kind of college course in how to be a millionaire. More dollars than sense. All you had to do was open up the pages of Sports Illustrated or click on ESPN and there is a story about some guy who is making more records on the police blotter than on the sports field. "You aren’t allowed to touch him."

"Oh I won’t have to." Dara’s voice is grim. "I won’t even have to raise my voice." Dara walks over to the interrogation room she knows so well. Gia follows along trailing in her wake. This is a watch and learn exercise but Gia already knows this is Dara’s version of in loco parentis. The Rook’s mother couldn’t be here to chew him a new one, so Dara was going to take it on. Dara nods to Gia. This is actually better going in one on one. Gia would take care of the paperwork while Dara is in there. The Rook would be getting out today. But Dara could make it really easy, or really hard depending on the Rook’s attitude.

As soon as the door opens on the room the Rook looks up hopefully but then seeing the look in Dara’s eye buts his head back down on his arms hiding his face. "Are you going to get me out of here?" He mumbles into the desk.

Gia grins cheerfully at Marcus. "You remember the time you put your baseball thru the neighbor’s window and then went for the Some Other Dude Did It defense and Mama just wasn’t buying?"

"Dara doesn’t have to be nice. She’s not his lawyer; she’s AJ’s, the team’s." Gia reviews the paperwork at Marcus hands it to her and puts little paperclips where the Rook is going to have to sign to get released. "And you know she isn’t going to be doing this again."

"Good to know. If this doesn’t sink in properly then she can pick up the next round. I have been taking this guy all over town since he finally signed his contract so that he could get settled in and I still can’t pronounce his last name." Gia mutters.

"Why do you think everyone is still calling him Rook?" Marcus laughs. Probably the only person in Port Charles that could pronounce the guy’s last name without sounding like an idiot is Penny. She grew up in Hawaii."

"Tasha told me. Penny gives her swimming lessons. Evidently also giving her cooking lessons too. All kinds of stuff Penny picks up down in Chinatown that she used to eat when she was a kid."

Gia realizes she’s been coming at this all wrong. Sure, she’d given the big Samoan a tour of Port Charles. And Jesse is a nice guy, a great guy. The holding out thing had been the advice of his agent. But this acting out thing had really surprised her. Maybe the big lug was homesick?

Just then the door to the interrogation room opens and Dara comes out of the room with Jesse following behind her. Jesse dwarfs Dara but by body language alone you knew who had won the battle. "Marcus, are the papers ready?"

"And after you are done here then Gia is going to take you to get your car out of impound and she is going to drive you both back to the dealership and you are going to get a car that is actually big enough to fit you rather than an overpriced tin can that they could bury you in."

Marcus just shakes his head. That woman really needs to have kids. She already has it down. He reviews the paperwork and gives Jesse his copies. "You’ll need these to get the car out. I’ll let you tell him the good news, Little Sis." Marcus finds something else to do.

Marcus digs thru his jacket for his cell phone and goes back thru the memory. He gives the number to Gia who quickly scribbles it down. For some reason he feels like he has to explain. "Sometimes Tasha spends the night over there."

"Oh it is. Really. Sorta." Now that they are outside, Gia turns to Jesse and lets him in on the latest. "Your mom is on her way here. Connecting flights and everything she should be here tomorrow morning."

"I’m dead. Take me back to jail; she’s going to kill me." Jesse sits down on the bench right at the base of the stone stairs that go up to the PCPD.

Bobbie had sent Lucky and Elizabeth home with most of the leftovers from the picnic. Lucky is a bottomless pit where food is concerned and Elizabeth is eating for two. So it’s leftovers that Elizabeth brings down to Lucky who is hard at work, bent over the computer of the Scorpio Detective Agency. He rubs his eyes at the interruption and decides this would be a good time to take a break before he ends up needing glasses. "Hey."

There is a bit of a fuss when Jesse turns the hundred thousand dollar sport car that he’s had for only a couple of weeks back into the dealership. With some quick smoozing by Gia and some picture taking and promises of promotional appearances the sports car is traded back in to the dealership. Gia strongly suspects that the car is going to end up on the show room along with autographed pictures of Jesse up on the wall. But that is just fine as long as the trade gets made. Sports Car in– Cadillac Escalade and Toyota Tundra out. Both of those vehicles are more his size. Hell from the way he described his mother, they’d fit her better too. Jesse might have his mother outweighed by over a hundred pounds but only beat her in height by about 4 inches. The Tundra is going to have to have

modifications made so they’d be driving the Escalade.

The sales manager escorts Jesse out from the back still trying to get more pictures and promotion time from the big Rookie. Jesse is rolling his eyes but keeping it polite.

"Excuse me." Gia interrupts. "You’ll have to excuse us. Jesse looks like he’s about to fade away and if we don’t get some food in him he’ll be featured on anorexic weekly." The salesman laughs as Gia intended but then he starts trying to sell her a car. Gia holds out her hand. "Give me a card. I’ll come back after I pass the bar but until then you’re barking up the wrong tree."

Finally they are able to break away and meet up at the front of the dealership. Gia gives Nik the address of Jesse’s place at the Harborview Tower and they take off in a high powered caravan with the Escalade leading the way and the Jag following. "How come he gets a Jag and you think I should get a big truck?"

"You’re sweet." Gia laughs. "I contacted Penny cause I figured if there was anything you thought your mom might need to feel at home while she’s visiting– Penny probably knows how and where to find it." Gia winces when Jesse pulls in the Harborview Towers. Sure it is the nicest place in Port Charles if you weren’t planning on buying a house but that doesn’t mean that it’s not Mob Central. Jesse really needed to get his own place. Hopefully when his mother arrives, she can take care of that. Nik pulls into the parking space next to them. Gia climbs out of the car and suggests to Penny. "Why don’t you take shotgun since you know where we’re going?" Nik and Gia climb into the back seat of the Escalade and Penny takes shotgun. Penny soon has Jesse at ease and the conversation between the two of them has Nik and Gia shaking their head. They understand maybe one word in five... some of them are even English but it doesn’t sound like English.

Stefan glances over at the clock on the mantel, what was supposed to be a quick errand on the mainland had turned into something more. There is no reason to wait any longer. "Tasha, please tell me about Odysseus and the Cyclops."

"Then they should call right? It’s not fair. I don’t want to talk about stupid Odysseus. He was mean to the Cyclops. Comes onto the Cyclops’ island and steals his stuff and then pokes his eye out."

"So if someone comes onto our island and starts stealing our stuff then they can poke our eyes out to get away? It’s not right. And it’s gross. If they tried to poke my eyes out I’d be really scared. I’d call Mr. Marcus and then he could shoot them and put them in jail."

"Thank goodness the super had this." Gia pushes over a large flat cart like you’d use for shopping at the big warehouse store. Jesse had gone a little crazy at the oriental market and Penny if anything had been egging him on. "Because I would have deserted you and made you haul all this stuff up to your apartment on your own."

Jesse grins and shrugs as he drops the fifty pound bag of rice on the cart. All the odds and ends are piled on top of the rice including the rice cooker. He is starting to look forward to his mother arriving tomorrow. As soon as he’d been walking the aisles with Penny it had come back to him doing the same thing for his mother and he could pick out which of the things his mother would like. Thanks to the cart they are going to be able to take everything up in one trip.

Nik is ready to leave and has been for quite some time only biting his tongue because Penny seemed to be having a good time with the big Samoan. Even if he hadn’t been able to understand a word she said.

"Mainland style." Jesse sniffs dismissively then admits with a wink. "I got the number on my fridge." He is the only one that could push the cart after it’s totally filled and he starts toward the elevator.

"Nikolas’ uncle is teaching me how to manage money. Until a few months ago I wouldn’t have needed the lessons. The only thing I was managing was my tips. Now I have to think about investments, charitable donations, real estate dat kine ting. I give Nik’s Auntie swimming and cooking lessons in exchange." Penny looks at Nikolas. "You know Tasha is going to be trying to get me in trouble to get out of her lessons."

Gia shakes her head. "She’s really that bad? Marcus and Zander don’t talk about their visits too much. I haven’t gotten to see Alexis at all since..."

"Dara never beat Alexis. Anyway, Alexis went kinda crazy after her daughter was born prematurely. She killed a guy– he’d threatened her and the baby, killed her sister. That was bad enough but it was piling more and more stuff on her, and she lost what was left of her mind. Marcus says she’s like an eight year old now. Smart and precocious for eight. Everything else is gone. Including remembering she has a daughter."

"Penny, according to Marcus, seems to have the best handle on how to deal with the situation. She knew Alexis before, of course, but she’s taking it like an opportunity. Alexis used to burn water. Penny is teaching her how to cook. Because she lives on Spoon Island, Penny is teaching her how to swim. She must be really wonderful with Alexis because Nik’s uncle is a cold SOB. If the Cassadines aren’t getting the best of the deal then they don’t deal."

Dara glances at her watch. She’s done with court and the courthouse complex for the day and starved. If she didn’t get something to eat then she’d probably end up doing something stupid. Not a good thing for an attorney to admit. She had at least another five hours of office appointments and work time in front of her. It’s time to refuel.

Two birds with one stone and a billable hour, she heads down under Kelly’s to the recently reopened Flynn’s. Hopefully they serve food. If not maybe Kelly’s could send a sandwich down. She doesn’t have long after putting in her order and taking a seat when Faith and Bruno arrive at the pub. They must have been out and about in the area when the bartender had called. Faith slides into the seat across from Dara and nods in Bruno’s direction. Bruno leaves Faith’s briefcase and heads over to the bar to put in Faith’s order and his own. "Counselor."

"It didn’t suck." Faith shrugs. "I was going to call and make an appointment with you anyway. Find out how it’s going with the Charity. Also have this." Faith reaches into the briefcase and pulls out some standard real estate offer sheets. "You can follow up with these from here."

Dara looks at the addresses on the sheets. "Are you trying to create a conflict between you and one of my other clients? Because your grandmother’s will may have ticked me off because it was so sloppily written but I’m still not comfortable having you as a client."

Faith shrugs. "If you mean the football team? No conflict there. Just figured with all the work Ned’s grandmother is doing down in that area that I should do my part."

"Right." Dara believes that one like she believes one of these offer sheets is for a nice bridge. She shrugs. What Lila did with the Chloe Morgan Memorial Park did increase the property value down on Courtland St.

Faith sniffs and gives her opinion of Lydia’s situation. "Bloodsuckers working for the trustees. They need to be taken out. I received the packet you messengered over. Already got one of my guys working on it."

"I really don’t want to know." Dara winces. She leans back from the table to make room for both of their lunches to be delivered. She gives the offer sheets more consideration to kill time and hopefully any personal conversation. She recognizes some of the addresses from her time in the DA’s office. That’s not saying much however since just about any address on Courtland had a connection to the DA’s office whether it was as the home of a victim or a perp. "I hope you’re serious about cleaning this up." Dara looks at Faith. She has no illusions about her client, none at all. "I don’t see what you’re getting out of it."

Faith shrugs. "What did Sonny get out of adding a wing to GH in his dead wife’s name? Sitting on the board of ELQ? Opening up Corinthos Morgan Coffee? My husband thinks I need a little positive PR. And Lila wants me to keep the Old Man out of everyone else’s hair. Speaking of that. You want to cause a little trouble? Strictly legit- I swear." Faith crosses the spot where her heart should be and tries to look innocent.

"Yeah, Lila told me yesterday that the country club doesn’t let women on the golf course. Club house sure, tennis courts oh you betcha but the golf course is evidently reserved for the guys."

"I’m thinking a nice foursome: me, the owner of the Herald, a litigious attorney and someone who just inherited more money than God. If they don’t let us on the course then they would absolutely deserve what they get."

Dara absolutely hates the idea of having anything social to do with Faith but like Faith’s grandmother’s will this is just too egregious to be passed over. "Make it for the weekend and I’m in. I might even have some clubs somewhere. I haven’t played since college."

"I’ll have Ned make the reservation for us." Faith says eagerly. Kicking ass in any shape or form is her idea of a good time. She reaches for half of her sandwich with the relish of a healthy appetite.

"It worked out for the best." Stefan dismisses the concern. "Tasha and I were able to review not only her myths..." That took about two minutes. "...and finish her maths. We are about to start with geography." Stefan spins the standing globe that is by the table that Tasha and Penny use for their studies. "Tasha, select your study."

Penny watches; it’s kind of like pin the tail on the donkey as the globe spins and Tasha randomly puts her finger on the globe. Tasha gets her face right down on the globe to see what her finger is on and announces happily. "Nothing. There is nothing there. I’m all done."

Stefan comes over and examines the area where Tasha had put her finger. "Not quite. The South Pacific– includes the islands of New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti."

"And technically where I’m from too." Penny adds to tempt Tasha. "The people of the South Pacific were explorers; they would go where the sea and wind would take them. The Hawaiians are South Pacific islanders too. The reason why I’m late. One of the new football players for Port Charles is from Hawaii too." Penny comes over to the globe. She puts her finger on Hawaii. "His mother lives here. But his people are from here." She trails her index finger over to Samoa.

"Volcanoes. Ship building, plants and animals that are only found in the islands." Penny shrugs. "There is really an awful lot there: food, culture and they didn’t start writing things down until about 200 years ago."

"Through songs and dances." Penny answers. "Songs that were sung while rowing the outriggers across the water. Dances at family parties called luaus. And your brother probably empathizes a lot with the early people of Hawaii. Because they were the only place in the United States that started with their very own Queen. But the president and his cronies decided that there couldn’t be any place in the United States with their own queen so they locked her in her room until she agreed to quit being Queen." Penny looks over at Stefan. "1895. There are folks in the islands who are still ticked over that one."

Stefan breaks out into a very rare grin. But then puts on his serious scholarly face. "I will order the materials today. You’ll start on your study of the South Pacific tomorrow."

"Sugar. In fact I think I have some 100% pure Hawaiian cane sugar at my place. I think making cookies for your brother would be good homework for today."

Stefan knows that nothing more will be accomplished today, and he does have to get the books to do the study of the South Pacific. "You are both excused."