multiversallogs | Interlude: Militiavisits by Candlelight

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Interlude: Militiavisits by Candlelight

Who: The staff and residents of the Valhalla Inn with a special guest appearance by the Militia.
What: A lock-down. A shake-down. Some questions.
Where: The Valhalla Inn. Different locations will be designated by different subthreads.
When: Early Coardi morning and into the afternoon.
Notes: OOC Discussion
Warnings: None yet, but expect (subtle) threats, coercion, and general jackboot'n'blackbag shenanigans.

Rumour travels fast in Baedal; soon everyone in Mog Hill and beyond will know that the Militia are at the Valhalla Inn and no one is getting out. Official word is that this is strictly routine; protocol dictates Arrival Houses be locked down for evaluation after a City-wide crisis. It's still early morning. Outside, the sun is rising after a night of gentle rain. Birds sing and gorge themselves on dead monkeys yet to be cleared away. It's going to be a beautiful day.

Meanwhile, inside Valhalla, the Militia have firmly requested that every guest, every employee and every incidental visitor gather in the Common Room as they search the rest of the Inn. The proprietor and her staff are visibly unhappy about the event, but the closest they have come to voicing dissent is managing to call for the Sheriff. Still, so far the gentleman who seems to be in charge of the proceedings has been nothing but curtly polite. The Militia works fast; they have gone through the whole place in less than an hour and are now, as they say, ready to take interviews. These will be conducted one-on-one in a different room of the Inn. Most individuals who arrived after the creature invasion are sorted out and escorted outside of the building. Some, however, are not.

None of the Special's agents or their more thuggish companions say so, at least not out in the Common Room, but it is evident that their search turned up something.

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"Pizza would be great, yeah. I haven't actually had that in a while. And yeah," he laughs. "Let's skip the hose. Oh man, that's making me think of an old movie."

He grins and shakes his head. It's not even that old; it came out twenty years ago for him, and he and his friends sneaked into a showing even though they were all way too young for it.

"Does this kind of thing happen often here?"

Eddie grins. The conversation is a good distraction from being here, waiting, but not entirely. He glances around the room again, and wiggles his fingers. "When we're done playing cops and robbers, you should go get some pizza. Oh... oh, god, do you mean Silence of the Lambs? Pfff."

Then he shrugs. "It hasn't happened before, in the time that I've been here, which has not been long."

"So, does that mean you know where a good pizza place is around here?" He's already done the Palao question on Eddie, so he doesn't ask that one again. This time, he's really asking about food. "And yeah, that's the one. I had a crush on Jodie Foster after I saw that."

He glances around the room, taking in the various militiamen and gauging their strength and probable armaments. Not that he has any designs of taking them on... unless somehow the situation deteriorates dreadfully and they attack people first. He hopes that won't happen. Pulling a concealed weapon is tricky and they might get the drop on him while he did. Yeah, let's hope this thing doesn't go bad.

And that there are no telepaths in the room, Lieutenant. Someone really still hasn't figured Baedal out. But in the meantime, he's going to just stay as cool as he can and keep talking like nothing out of the ordinary is happening.

"I could show you, if you can't manage to find one on your own, but then you'd have to wait." He holds up a finger, and hesitates, following Mike's gaze, now, playing along.

After a moment, he starts up again. "She was great. The dynamic between her and Lector was interesting, but I did like Red Dragon more, overall. Have you read the books?"

It's casual book-chat and glance suspiciously at the guards time!

"I did. I liked the first two. Lots and lots of psychology in them. The third one bothered me for a long time before I figured out why I didn't like it, and about then I was reading fifty pages of aerospace engineering text each night so I just crossed Harris off my reading list." Funny degree for a military medic, but his plans changed a little after college. "Which adaptation of Red Dragon did you like better?"

Smart military medic. Good. "I didn't care for the third one, either." Less puzzles, more weird drugged kidnapping... stuff. "Of course, Lector's clever enough that it makes perfect sense that he would win in the end. However, the satisfying part of reading those books was the battle of wits, all the detective work and how the psychology tied into it. Breaking down Starling's character with drugs was... creepy? Especially after they went into Lector's damage a little too much. Why didn't you like it?" Asking about the aerospace engineering would also be a good question, but he can save that for later.

"Manhunter had a more realistic depiction of Lector's ~living quarters~, so it gets points for that, if nothing else. I couldn't pick."

Eddie gets an approving look! "For pretty much exactly that reason. Not to put too fine a point on it but that whole thing was kind of a depiction of rape. Which was the last thing I wanted to see happening to Starling. Plus the doctor's tragic past felt like it was straight out of a comic book, you know, one of those 'origins of the Dark Avenger' type things."

He shakes his head. His world doesn't actually have Batman comics, but it has some equivalents. Equally ironically, back in his own world, Mike had the training, technology, and personal wealth to almost be the Goddamn Batman, minus the tragic past and the wacky costume (with or without nipples).

"Points for good music, too. I really didn't go back for more after reading the third book... skipped the movies, so I only ever saw Manhunter and Silence of the Lambs. Life just got too busy for anything I wasn't gung-ho about."

"Yeeeeeah, it was totally sketchy, and then the story ended there. Are we supposed to suddenly think this is all okay because..." Jazz hands. "Traumatic childhood? I knew a guy who'd just as soon kill you as give you the time of day, and he makes up traumatic childhood stories to mess with people. I also knew a Dark Avenger, though, so you work that one out." Eddie smirks.

"I can understand that. There's no point in wasting time on something that no longer meets your standards."

"Yeah, with them going off to South America to be the Cannibal Peróns or something." He shakes his head. "Very strange. I think he was writing for people who watched the movies instead of readers of the original books, or something. So I went off and read the Judge Dee Mysteries by Robert Van Gulik instead. Good books. And as for the traumatic childhood thing, well, I guess it's true that some people who were raised in abusive situations tend to pass it on, but... if it was that reliable, they'd all be locked up in advance and there'd be no crime. Things just aren't that simple."

Whoa. That just veered into Deep Philosophy.

"Haha, it would seem so, but the movie of the third book didn't use that ending."

Eddie considers the rest, frowning slightly. "The problem is, the sorts of bad things that happen to people when they're little are usually not nearly as dramatic and totally mundane in their badness. For every guy who saw his sister get eaten and blah blah blah, there's how many kids whose dad smacked them around when he had too much to drink? Mental illness isn't that simple, anyway. There are a ton of factors, and if you're able to understand right and wrong, even as a theoretical concept... there's a choice to be made, there, regardless of the hand you were dealt." Oh, he is parroting so much, but at least he's going along with it being true.

"Did she still get brainwashed, though?" That seems to be a bit of a sticking point for Mike.

"Choice... yeah, that's it. People don't get to choose the hand they're dealt, but they do get to choose how to play it. You can play a good hand badly, or a bad hand really well." Which is true, but also reflects a few of Mike's blind spots there. He's always been one of the strong. He few up being told that he hadn't actually earned it and needed to do that to deserve all of the gifts chance had showered him with, and he's made a sincere effort to do just that. But his only experiences with deprivation and suffering were within the safe cocoon of military training. He doesn't know what it's like to grow up poor, or sickly, or unloved.

"Hm. It's not a very well done reworking of the ending, but they don't end up boinking." Eddie shrugs, then rearranges himself in his seat, trying to lounge while not being able to keep still.

"Yes. That's what I've been told, anyway. It's a good thing to keep in mind when avoiding orange pajamas."

"I guess the whole boinking thing is why it kind of seemed to be in service to movie fans instead of book fans. I was a kid when it came out, but a kid with Internet even if the World Wide Web was still a few years away. I remember sneaking into internet chat rooms and all these people were going 'want to play Hannibal and Clarice?' to each other. Which... really never should have made it into an actual book about them."

He shrugs, not actually mentioning his opinion of those chat shenanigans themselves. Clearly he makes a distinction between fap material and good writing, regardless of whether or not it's his kind of fap material. Which is probably something he won't discuss at all.

"I'm curious about how you ended up in orange pajamas, if that's something you're willing to talk about. But..." He glances around the room. "Now probably isn't the right time."

"Aww, you found ~internet people~ at a bright and early age. That's adorable. Haha... yeah, yeah, it was like reading someone's fanfic wuv story oh em gee, like someone didn't quite think the implications all the way through. I take it you weren't pretending to be Hannibal Lector on the internet?"

Eddie laughs, quietly, and casts a dramatic, sideways glance toward one of the militia, smirking. "Yeeeah, another time, I would be more than happy to tell you about that." He holds up a hand. "I haven't killed anyone, mind you."

Mike just smiles and shrugs. He was precocious, and was definitely seeking something from the Internet at that age.

"Well, you're one-up on me there, then. I may be a medic, but a combat medic on a battlefield... well, if you're shot at, you still shoot back, even if you're patching up someone else's bullet holes at the same time."

The least said about that, of course, the better.

Eddie laughs more, still quiet, but it's just amused, not mocking.

"Haha, well there's a ~tiny~ difference between warfare and the neighbor's dog telling you to see what people's insides look like. I'm... fortunate? Hah... that I'm not delusional. I came up with some spectacular plans that didn't take the real consequences into account. It was a great time, though. Alas." He sighs, theatrically, then grins.

Mike's own laugh in response is genuine, as well. "You know, the problem here is that all bets are off with the talking dogs. We already had monkeys running around in little wet suits, after all."

He saw piles of those on his morning run, and people scrambling for little black pearls in the grass. He picked up a few of those himself, but has no idea what they might be... other than something he'd never seen before. The monkeys, of course, he didn't touch.

"Oh, yes, that is a little problem, but another reason to be glad I'm not delusional. It's a strong advantage to possess in reality-breaking situations. Heh."

He isn't touching anything that came from the creatures, though is keeping an eye on others who do.

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Interlude: Militiavisits by Candlelight

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