2010-03-30 - The Sport of Officers

Earlier:

After a hard evening of whatever it is Revive Revivals do, and a hard morning of feeding pills to Louise Halevy, an inter-office email had come in.

TO: david.bowie@innovators.alaws.efa.ef.mil.info

FROM: jfreud@fraternity.top.plnt

RE: Let's do lunch

Captain Revival, I haven't had the chance to meet you yet and I'd like to. I'd be glad to buy you lunch for your trouble. Come by the third training deck around 1130 hours ship time and I'll pick you up.

Also, is Bowie your real name, like with Mr. Bushido?

-Jung

NOW: 1128 HOURS

The "third training deck" is another of those ridiculous gymnasia that the Top Squadron seems to have seen fit to buy in quantity. It is, by the standards of most ships, lavish and over-sized. A bunch of Vietnamese people in those fucshia-and-offwhite leotards are on some congerie of parallel bars, doing complex acrobatic maneuvers despite the ship still having normal gravity in this area.

Jung Freud, easily visible from the sliding entrance doors, is periodically doing sit-ups while hanging by her knees from a leg bar, occasionally shouting in Russian and pointing at the Vietnamese people; probably exercise directions.

The entire room smells like sweat and echoes peculiarly.

Revive Revival is no stranger to training decks.

SOME TIME AGO

Revive Revival sighs boredly as he polishes his fifth EFA Hangar Hoops League MVP trophy and sets it back on the shelf with the others.

NOW

Revive Revival, man of action and adventure, woman of style and beauty, enters the training deck, wearing a smartly matched athletic get-up in A-LAWS teal and grey. He glances around, resting his hands on his hips for a moment -- he's skinny, but he's not frail. In fact, he looks dangerously fit for someone with such an... indeterminately-gendered body shape. "Ah," he says, spotting Jung quickly and bee-lining toward her.

Slung over one shoulder are two bags containing racquets (not rackets, so low-class). In one hand is a can of balls. "Captain Freud!" he calls in his fey, womanly voice, offering a cheery wave with the ball-hand. "I hope I'm not interrupting!"

Jung completes the reverse space situp she'd been in the middle of, which means that her first face to face encounter with Revive Revival comes with her hanging upside down -- like a bat.

This does not flatter her hairstyle a great deal. Her eyes flick - him? she thinks, considering that voice - up and down, before grinning. "You're a little bit early, Captain!" she says, before hoisting herself back up by thigh power alone, grasping the bar, and dismounting with a slithering movement of the hips. "Just give me a moment to dismiss the cadre here."

Thence follows ten seconds or so of whistling and arcane instructions. Based on the use of space Russian, it seems to be 'go eat lunch'. There is a chorus of assent, followed by monkeylike repeats of what Jung just did, at which point Jung turns on her heel and puts a hand on her hip, smiling slightly again. "It seems like you've come equipped -- is that tennis or racquetball there?"

She then takes one step forwards to stick out her hand, clearing her throat /dramatically/. "And ahemhem, Captain Jung Freud, Fraternity, a pleasure to meet you, so on and so on." Rather than wait for a proper handshake, she firmly grips the canister of balls and waggles it a little before letting go, perhaps to observe the results.

Revive Revival swings his own hand out to meet Jung's, but it's too late -- "I see you waste no time in getting men by the balls, Captain," the 'Cyber-Newtype' says, straight-faced -- until the last 'Captain,' when a slow, easy smile creeps across his lips, like a conspiracy of two had just been formed. "A pleasure, I'm sure, in any event."

Rattling his can of balls, Revive says, "Racquetball, I'm afraid. The sport of officers, they tell me -- but I suspect that's just because they've yet to build a ship with a full eighteen holes." Again, Revive's smile is like he's sharing a secret with Jung -- as if the crazy culture of military administration was something that they, and only they, were beyond. "I prefer tennis, myself, but I can never seem to find a ship with a decent court for it -- plus, they always get the gravity settings wrong." Shifting the racquets on his shoulder, he slides one loose. "I didn't know if you played. Either way, my gift -- to you."

Revive holds out the racquet, in a nice black shroud and all -- perhaps to observe the results.

Jung laughs at the ball comment, possibly more than is necessary. Of course, this is probably not a great feat of personality typing; nonetheless, it may have had the desired effect, given that her smile, without really widening, shades into 'grin' terrain.

"I always thought golf was a little bourgeois, but tennis is supposed to be alright," Jung continues, hand going back on her hip. "I think they've tried to set something up in the fourth center, but it's basically just the volleyball court with the net lowered. Still, maybe if you want -"

Her eyes go from Revive's head and face to the racquet (/qu/et), reaching out with a manicured hand to take it and grasp it firmly on the handle, the other unlacing the shroud and pulling it upwards. "You didn't have to do that, you sweet talker," she says conversationally. "Do you like your racquets with or without gravity?"

"I haven't even begun to talk," Revive Revival says. Somehow, despite the completely overblown nature of the line, his smooth voice reigns it in, assigning it a sort of blithe conversational quality that one would generally see in a banal comment about the weather. His smile, too, fades into something less obtrusive -- he doesn't look chipper, just affable. Affable and more than a little man-pretty.

"And with gravity, always. Zero-gee racquetball is... well, between you and me, Captain, pick up how to play it, but what you should learn is how to throw it." Revive chuckles morbidly. "Because it's always the highest-ranked and the least-talented who like to play it with the gravity turned off."

The racquet itself is sleek, carved from some sort of well-polished grey metal with laser precision. It doesn't have any flashy designs or logos woven into the netting. It almost looks like a weapon. Not so much 'sporty' as 'powerful.' The handle is covered in a dull red wrap. Revive's, meanwhile, is pastel purple.

"But it'd be unfair to play right away -- I'm coming in fresh, and you've just been... oh, would 'sculpting' be the right word? Because it certainly seems appropriate." There's a tiny tick of a smirk on that one. Revive Revival, you dog. "Why not lunch? It'll give you a chance to get your energy up, and me a chance to get fat and lazy."

Jung inwardly considers the matter of racquets with or without gravity. "It's true," she says, "it's easier on your knees /and/ you get to pretend you're a mobile suit, instead of playing the actual game..." The racquet is raised upwards to the light, and turned a few times, to test its weight and heft. Not bad, she thinks, even as she takes a small test 'slice' at the air, attention then going back to Revive as she re-invaginates the thing into its shroud.

"Well, I'm sure you're a busy fellow," she continues, "so let's just hit the vending machine. I hope you don't mind a soup pod or two." With that she turns, towards what is presumably the locker rooms, considering that that's where the gaggle of Asians went to earlier; she slings the racquet over her shoulder as she walks. "Usually I don't work my legs that narrowly," she continues, "but I'm still getting all the way back up from when I broke that leg, you know, back in the distant past, before our glorious alliance?"

She turns her head to speak more directly. "I did have a couple of things to ask you about that, if you don't mind me prying just a /tiny/ bit."

Revive follows Jung. He doesn't seem to be fazed by the trip toward the locker rooms -- he is, presumably, a big boy. "Ah, the distant past," he says, with a sprightly chuckle. When he speaks, he sounds... like a woman, but like a woman who could maybe have been a man at some point, depending on the gravity of his tone. When he laughs, he just straight up sounds like a chick, no bones about it (double meaning).

"How did we ever survive then?" Revive twirls the can of balls in his hand idly while he walks, as if he were an eighth-grader with a pen. "But, to answer your question, rather than just ramble -- soup pods sound excellent. I'm actually rather surprised by the quality."

Of course, then Jung has to go and mention /prying/ into things. Even just a tiny bit. Revive Revival isn't caught off-guard -- he never lets his guard down when he's talking to lower life forms, even if right now in his imagination the pastel purple handle of his racquet is coming out of the back of Jung's neck and he's ratcheting down on it so hard that her eyeballs pop out like some sort of squeezable toy. "Well, I can certainly answer... whatever I happen to know the answer to," Revive says, carefully stumbling over the sentence so as to make it appear natural, and following it up with with a boyish grin. "Sure. Shoot."

It's a strange voice but not an unpleasant one, Jung thinks in the back of her head. Maybe some kind of hormone thing? Or just, she considers, he has -- a weird voice. Some people get that, and it isn't like you need to hit a perfect baritone to be a military officer.

The locker room isn't immediately accessible; after walking past a bulkhead with a mazelike curve in it, there is a lounge, with juice dispensers, a Protein Bar ("not human flesh any more!") dispenser, and another machine with 'SOUP' on the front of it in curvy letters. Jung sets the racquet down on a table and walks towards the machine, unaware on any conscious level of that momentary fantasy of her grisly demise!

She punches a button. The machine starts humming. "Just pick whatever you want, there's like ten kinds," she tells Revive, even as she leans against the juice machine, considering her words for several seconds.

"Well," she says, "You know Captain Care, right? She seems..." Jung's lips purse inwards: they're probably, she tells herself, at least vaguely friendly with each other. "A little tricky to get along with. I don't suppose you could give me a little insight, you know, in case something comes up again?"

The image crosses Jung's mind briefly: Nicol Almafi over her knee, getting violently caned as he cries. In the actual world of physical reality, her lip quirks in a tiny momentary smile.

Revive Revival glances around the locker room when they enter. It's the sort of habit one might expect from someone who's been in the military a little too long -- whenever you go into a new place, immediately analyze it for strategic advantages in a firefight. Even if it's a locker room. Especially if it's a locker room. But Revive looks nothing like one of those grizzled old career soldiers. He looks like something Roy Fokker would try to marry on an unfortunate shore leave, only to have it annulled before Max or Rick could find out. He leaves the balls on the table, and slings his racket on the back of a chair.

Standing next to Jung at the machine, Revive eyes the menu of soups. "Captain Care...? Mmm, ha ha." It's a knowing laugh, but not an ominous one. As if he's been asked this question so many times before. "I know Healing, yes. She's like a sister to me, in many ways. I don't know if you have a family, Captain -- and by 'family,' I don't necessarily mean biologically. But there's always that one sibling who can't just move with the pack."

When Jung's soup is heated and dispensed, Revive selects something spicy and noodly. "That would be Healing. She's... well, you say 'tricky to get along with,' I say 'kind of a bitch.'" Revive looks over and smiles quietly, before putting his finger to his lips. Don't tell anyone! "But that's just her way. Some people were never cut out to play well with others. Take it from me, though, Captain -- her heart's in the right place. She knows what the mission is."

"I used to," Jung says, fairly easily.

Her lips purse again. "I didn't /want/ to insult her, but you're, mm, a little more accurate than I was, yeah," she agrees, even as the soup machine hums - /twice/. From an internal microwave which is hopefully not leaking deadly radiation as the two military officers speak.

Jung's eyes go to the floor for a moment. "The main worry I've got is - she came out of nowhere to get on Stenbuck's case during the December attack, right?" She lets one hand come out, palm turned upwards to needlessly accent the words. "Too much of that kind of shit and morale can fall apart. If you can get her to zip up her pants if something like that starts - well, I imagine she knows /you/ better than some cream cake from the gym decks, right?"

She straightens up as the machine starts rattling. "Hold on, it's about to drop them," she says, taking one step back. The machine strains audibly, producing a mechanical whirring sound, and then the two high-impact pint sized soup pods hit the lower tray with an audible dual 'bang!' of dropping. Jung leans over to grab hers.

"Other than /that/, tell me about yourself!" she says. "I'd never heard of you guys before the treaty and everything. Except Leo, obviously."

Revive leans down and takes his soup pod with a graceful little gesture that evokes how one might expect someone to take a soup pod, if taking a soup pod were part of the gayest interpretive dance in history. Standing erect and cracking the pod's seal with a thumb, Revive's smile turns to a look of... mild concern, maybe, or at least a gentle dampening of his mood. "No, I quite agree. But, mm. Stenbuck. Not to veer the conversation too far into the realm of unpleasantness, but Stenbuck's case is a whole different animal of morale falling apart right now. He's got some... issues with women, and..." Revive makes a disquieted face, before sucking in a breath and visibly forcing himself to get affable again. Of course, he's not actually putting any work into it -- he's putting work into making it look like he's putting work into it. "But that's something else entirely. Come on, let's eat."

Moving toward the chair where he'd slung his racket, Revive scoots it out, setting the steaming soup pod down on the table. "Well, telling you about myself gets a little tricky. I mean, I'm never really sure how to answer it, to be honest." List of things Revive Revival is currently faking: 1. Bashfulness; 2. Awkwardness; 3. Geniality; 4. Humility; 5. Camaraderie. "I mean, I could start the story with 'I'm a Cyber-Newtype,' but then... it just kind of ends there. In fact, it begins and ends there no matter how I tackle it, you know?" Ha ha ha, he laughs, with that boyish, self-deprecating smile, a faint red gleam in his eyes like he knows how to take a cosmic joke. "Truth be told, I don't really remember a lot before I was put into service. But, I don't know. It doesn't bother me. I'm doing good work and keeping the galaxy safe for good people. And that's... enough for me."

Revive now turns those feminine wiles toward Jung: "What about you? You were hooked up with Neo Zeon, of all people, if I remember the dossier correctly."

Jung Freud thinks back:

A FEW DAYS AGO:

"Hey, thanks for coming by."

"Hey, no problem... are you doing OK, you seemed stressed."

"Stressed... in my penis."

She snorts. "Yeah - well, he's kind of young still," she says as she snaps the spoon out of the recycled plastic lid of the soup pod, stirring some kind of creamy potato soup with it. The mention of cyber-Newtypery makes her eyes flick up, with momentary surprise, but after a clear moment of consideration, she doesn't push. Instead she nods once...

... because her favorite topic, /herself/, is being brought up. "Oh, /well/," she says with an embarrassed laugh, "that's pretty funny. Well, when we all got back, we got met by this Zeon and DC fleet, right? Of course, we didn't know what the fuck a 'DC' was, and it took me like two months to figure out there'd been a goddamn war between Zeon and the Earth. At first we were all just like," a wave of the spoon, "'Thank God, the space monsters aren't going to all eat us.' After /that/, well, for a little while I think Regent Karn was interested in me. You've seen the RX-7s, right?"

They are parked everywhere in the hangars. They use them for traffic control.

"'Young' doesn't really excuse it," Revive Revival murmurs to himself, perhaps a touch bitterly, before going to take a sip of his soup. Spoons, as it turns out, are for humans, and Cyber-Newtypes have perfected the most efficient ways of eating. Somehow, despite basically just /going for it/, and his thing being full of spicy noodles, Revive neither makes a mess (not even a stray drop) nor a sound. It's like he just took a casual sip from a can of soda.

"Ha ha," Revive intones, laughing quietly with the story at the appropriate moments, remembering to keep making eye contact (except for when Jung goes to eat, at which point eye contact is broken and he sips -- but then right back) and nod every so often and let his lips curl up faintly in the sort of bemused smile that happens when one isn't really paying attention to what they're doing with their mouth. Revive Revival: fully engaged in the art of seeming fully engaged. "The RX-7s? The traffic control things?"

Jung puts her hand to her forehead as if struck. "Oh! If only it was twelve years ago! You'd be mocking the peak of modern degeneracy reactor technology!" She eats another spoonful of the chunkier parts of the soup, a little hint of the creamy broth clinging to her lower lip for a moment.

She continues. "Anyway, I'd been in one which got badly disabled in a fight, but without actually being destroyed... I was waiting for recovery. We didn't have space for normal suits, so I couldn't just pop it open... anyway, some Zeek ship collected me."

She lifts up the soup pod, meeting Revive's eyes for a moment. "And apparently Regent Haman Karn wanted one of these," eye roll, "relics for her museum, so there was a lot of clanking, and thumping, and then finally I popped the hatch open since it was getting sweaty... and she was standing there admiring her new trophy, and there I was, crawling out of it."

"My my," Revive says, after another sip of soup. He doesn't even have any on his upper lip. The soup level of the pod is going down, though. How is he doing that?

SOME TIME AGO

Ribbons Almark and Revive Revival are sitting around, drinking soup out of soup pods. They keep splashing it around and making messes and it's noisy and disgusting. "Ugh," Revive says. "Someone should fix this, because I refuse to use a spoon."

"Maybe someone will," Ribbons says, eyes glowing ominously, before his grip on the pod slips and he spills soup on his couch. "Son of a--"

NOW

"So you just... played along? I mean, obviously, you weren't -- well, /committed/ or anything." Revive lets slip another one of those easy smiles, those ones that creep up around the edges of sentences and marinate them in an effortless charm. "Still, sounds quite exciting. Aside from a couple whirls in the Gadessa, I've mostly been saddled with the worst part of the rank." Revive sets down his soup pod, and mimes signing with one hand, stamping with the other.

"I can't really defend it," Jung says, eyes going downwards for a moment as her lips quirk in mild embarrassment. "But, you know, I didn't really /realize/ how they were. I had a ten year gap in experience, and I suppose it was flattering to get a head of state telling me I was a Newtype, eating cake with me..."

She slurps the soup pod now, perhaps unconsciously mirroring Revival's face-stuffing strategy.

"As far as I knew, you know, Zeon had every right to be in the Gundam Fight. Of course, after I... /didn't/ win..." She trails off, eyes turning ceilingwards as she sighs. "Well," back down to Revive, "that was pretty instructive, anyway."

"Hey." Revive Revival's voice shifts gears, but not so abruptly that it feels like a snap in his tone. Instead, it's just a slight downgrade, from something fey and arch and jovial to something a little deeper, a little more serious. Revive sounds more masculine now, but also, weirdly, more maternal -- either way, both are archetypal protectors. "Jung. Don't beat yourself up over it."

Revive reaches out when Jung is staring at the ceiling, and puts his hand on hers. It's a forward gesture, but it's not a sexual one in the slightest -- there's the barest squeeze, and Revive leans in, his red eyes seeming to radiate compassion. "We're only human, you know? Well, I mean, some of us aren't /quite/... but where it counts, is what I'm saying. People make mistakes. What's important is that you took responsibility, and you made the right decision. I'm not speaking as a Captain right now. I'm not speaking as Paradigm-1. I'm speaking as Revive Revival, a man who'd like to be your friend."

Revive lets go of Jung's hand, and his own arm slithers back, but he stays leaned forward slightly, elbow on the tabletop. "Maybe it's because I don't /have/ a past that I can see what clinging to it can do to people. But you fuck up and you move on. You're still alive. Your team is still here. And you're on the side of the angels. And that's what matters, right?"

The touch to her hand startles Jung, but only slightly. Perhaps it was the context more than anything; there is a small tension in her muscles, though not enough to jerk her hand. Revive is probably looking for it; afterwards, she relaxes, looking up with a slight smile. A slightly pleasant feeling runs down her spine as she says, "You really /are/ a sweet talker, Mr. Bowie."

She then settles back in her chair. "That memory thing sounds so strange, though. Was it... something..." She purses her lips again as she lifts up the soup pod to take a final long swig from it. "You know, something from beforehand," she concludes, so as not to just come out and say 'Did Jamitov Hymen stuff his dick into your brain?'

"And I suppose I'm still here; the team, well," Jung says, glancing towards the distant noise of the Vietnamese recruits, "maybe it's lived too. Who knows?"

"Tsk. 'Bowie.' Healing's sense of humor. I'm still trying to figure out how to get it changed back in the official record," Revive says, looking downward, bashful in his profession of mild impotency or incompetence. After all, he can't be too slick. He has to seem like he isn't in /complete/ control. "I think she paid someone off. But honestly, I don't even get the joke."

Still, Revive chuckles wanly and shrugs his shoulders in a graceful rolling motion. "But that's not important." He looks back up at Jung, and the smile on his face is still tenative, as if unsure of how wide to be. His voice stays in that faintly deeper tone, as well. He wants Jung to think that she's gotten his guard down. That he's opening up. "I'm sure it was /something/," he says, with another chuckle, this one a fairly morbid, weary noise. "I mean, I could have it so much worse, though. I look at some of the... other Cyber-Newtypes. We're not even legally people, true, but... I can't help but feel some of them would choose /not/ to be. Every day, I wake up and I know who I am, and I know that I'm a person, not a hardware peripheral for a mobile suit."

Revive's smile tenses for just a second. He briefly considers faking a tear, but decides that that would be too much. He's already skirting the edges of believability, he decides. Best to rein it back in. Act like he didn't intend to let that much slip. Break eye contact. Rub hand over mouth, downward, as if he was tired. Shake head, gently. "I'm sorry," he says, "That was... inappropriate."

"I don't either," Jung says with an honest shrug of her shoulders.

She then blinks, several times. "What - what the hell?" she says, sounding baffled. "What do you mean not people? Like... long term contracts or a prison thing or what?" The sympathy key has apparently been found and properly, resoundingly, struck.

But there is also, Jung can tell, discomfort there; she frowns slightly and says, her voice lowering near a murmur, "If you don't want to talk about it, it's alright. OK? Just give me a call or anything if anything comes up." For a moment she wonders: this sounds familiar, but she does not, for whatever reason, make the connection to saying similar words to Leo Stenbuck.

She also polishes off the last bit of soup. "Aaah - besides," she says, reaching over to gently grasp and lift the can of balls, "we have something more exciting to do than sit around and talk about our tragic pasts, don't we!"

"The name that gets tossed around for that little section of the law is 'Neo Jim Crow,'" Revive Revival says, arching one eyebrow and smirking in a way that suggests that he's telling a joke that's not really funny because it's not actually a joke.

"But yeah, not the best time for a discussion of posthuman civil rights. It gets awfully fuzzy awfully quick." Revive puts down the rest of his soup, too, and says after, "Hey. I appreciate it, Jung. And if you ever need it -- you do the same, all right? I'm trying to pull the GNX Team back together because they've got a leader who couldn't handle the stress, and exploded. But I keep thinking, you know, maybe if he'd /talked/ to someone..."

Revive lets the sentence die without finishing it. "You know what I mean," he says, the friendliness returning to his smile, the color to his tone. He turns, and with a laser-precise Dr. J, throws his soup pod right into one of the trash receptacles -- about thirty feet away. It doesn't even spill as it sails through the air.

"This is A-LAWS, Captain," Revive says with a bold grin as he stands up and hefts his racquet. "There's excitement around every star."

Jung says quietly, "Yeah," in agreement. Perhaps if they'd gotten to him sooner? she wonders; but none of them are really trained psychologists, and it's hard to help someone, especially when they're ambiguous about wanting help.

Her head swivels to watch that throw. "Wow," she says. "I see you're a basketball player...?" She tosses her hair as her own racket's lifted. "We'll have to see how well the skill carries over, won't we?"

BONUS STAGE

 Healing Care offers a 'hmm' of thought before: "So, is it mandatory that Ms. Triald is returned in /one piece/?"

 Revive Revival transmits, "It's mandatory that you bring her in as you find her, Captain Care."

 Revive Revival transmits, "I don't want to sound /morbid/, but considering that we're talking about Yazan Gable..."

 Revive Revival just kind of lets that one trail off.

 Healing Care transmits, "Well I sure hope nothing /bad/ happened to her!"

 Shiro Amada transmits, "We need to act fast, then. Not give him a chance to do anything."

 Jung Freud transmits, "Do you have any craft sightings from the local population in that time frame?"

 Healing Care transmits, "Well I assure you all, /Stenbuck/ especially, that I will do /everything/ I can to see to it that we find her as quickly as possible."

 Healing Care may or may not be speaking in sarcasm.

 Revive Revival transmits, "I -- wish I could answer that off the top of my head, Captain Freud, but I'd have to consult Lt. Peries' data again. Rest assured -- hnngh -- (wow you're good at this game) -- Rest assured that all leads, no matter how small, will be followed up on."

 Revive Revival is also apparently broadcasting the sound of himself and Jung Freud grunting, sneakers squeaking, and loud, regular 'THOCK's.

 Revive Revival thinks, "Healing, sister?"

 Jung Freud with a distinct 'thok' noise, "Hmh. Well, Japan's a pretty friendly territory, right? So - dammit - so probably whoever did this did it kind of as an opportunity thing."

 Healing Care thinks, "Yes~?"

 Revive Revival thinks, "It would be a /shame/, I know, but an awfully /educational/ experience about life and death for our master's young friend if he were /lose/ someone close to him."

 Healing Care thinks, "Oh, assuredly. It certainly builds /character/, something our friend Stenbuck is certainly lacking."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Revive Revival transmits, "Gnng. We also can't rule out the possibility of... Triald's a Cyber-Newtype. If her data was corrupted -- gah! -- her brain damaged, to use the strictly human parlance -- then she could have simply... walked off herself."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "Did you know he's so upset over this he /hit/ the other one? What's her name. Louise. Right across the mouth. Pow. I thought he had potential..."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "...and then he had to go and ruin it by trying to apologize."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "Clearly, he needs us, sister."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Hiroshi Shiba transmits, "Are you playing Parrises Squares without me AGAIN?!"

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Jung Freud transmits, "You need to get some more aerobics! Anyway, maybe, but by this point someone would have probably found her, or she would have hit a city, Japan's pretty built up."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Huang Qin Shi transmits, "Concur. Check with local authorities on strange appearances in local hospitals."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Shiro Amada transmits, "We'll just have to keep an eye out and an ear to the ground, I guess."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Huang Qin Shi transmits, "Also nuisance complaints - if a non-state actor grabbed her, people might have seen something."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Revive Revival transmits, "Either way, as soon as I can get the budget cleared we -- lucky shot -- we start putting the word out. We've got all the damned ad space down there, and all we're using it for is putting -- ugh! -- Patrick Colasour on billboards."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Revive Revival transmits, "(What the hell is a parrises squares?)"

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Hiroshi Shiba transmits, "It's a /game/ with /ramps/ and /a ball/."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Hiroshi Shiba transmits, "It's very popular."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Healing Care thinks, "/Clearly/. But, really, that's expected of /humans/. They can't separate themselves from emotions."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Revive Revival transmits, "Call me old fashioned then, for preferring hangar hoops--!"

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Hiroshi Shiba transmits, "Well hangar hoops is hangar hoops, Parrises Squares is Parrises Squares."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "The worst part is how he's influencing the other one. I keep feeling like I'm on the verge of breaking through and teaching her to let go -- and then she just jumps right back into /feeling/ things. It's like trying to teach a retarded dog to sit."

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Jung Freud transmits, "Heh heh - oh dammit. And yeah, that too. It's also possible - are you trying to hit me in the back? - possible she's camped out somewhere, especially if she's confused?"

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Healing Care thinks, "Well, to be fair, you sort of are?"

<Radio: A - A-LAWS Chat> Revive Revival transmits, "Right now, I'd wager anything's possible, Captain -- and I wouldn't be near your back if you didn't keep pulling all of these hinders!"

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "Ha ha ha. True, true. You know, sometimes it's almost fun, though. I can see how much the world means to her, how much pain she's in, how much she's lost, how sharply she feels it... and then I push a pill down the bitch's throat and watch her soul die that much more."

<Radio - Quantum Brainwaves> Revive Revival thinks, "It's the simple pleasures, Healing, that make life worth living."