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DRAMA – My Liege, there is something we need to discuss.
YOU – What is it now?
DRAMA – We have been observing you and the Lieutenant for a while now, and, dare I say...
VOLITION – You're a bad influence.
YOU –
- Wait, how?
- Finally! What could be better than one Superstar cop? Two Superstar cops!
- I guess that's true. Sorry.
LOGIC – Think, do you really believe this would be happening a few days ago?
COMPOSURE [Medium: Success] – Not that the lieutenant is being anything less than a consummate professional, but there have been... things. Very brief glances, infused with... Something.
LOGIC [Easy: Success] – That started after your little stunt in the abandoned gym.
PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Formidable: Failure] – It was hard to see if that glint was in his eyes when you sprang upon him the idea of doing this… ‘trust exercise’?
ESPRIT DE CORPS – For ‘rapport purposes’, like that one time with Suzerainty that ended with him blowing you out of the water. Or board.
HALF-LIGHT – Maybe he’s counting on a similar outcome with this and that’s why he’s indulging you on that.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Fat chance! This scrawny twig envies your musculature.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – "Envies". Sure. If that's what we're calling it.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – This exercise is a challenge. You could lift him one-handed.
SAVOIR FAIRE – No, not anymore.
VOLITION – Well, you already set it in motion, so it’s time to follow through.
You stand back to back with the lieutenant and hook your arms around each other. There's a resistance; something solid under the layers of cotton and orange polyester.
KIM KITSURAGI – "Ready when you are, detective."
A brief sensation of familiarity. You did this before. When?
- As a pre-performance warm-up in your side-show strongman days, which were very real and which you have just miraculously remembered.
- Something to do with that rubber squeak and mat thing?
- Shake the thought away and count. (Proceed.)
YOU – "On the count of three then. One... Two... Three!" You bend forward as the lieutenant kicks his feet off the pavement and leans his whole weight on your back. He's in no way heavy, but you thought he'd be lighter.
HALF-LIGHT – The bino has secrets, huh? These sleeves don't have to be just for optics.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Forget the secrets, what is this form?! You wouldn't be that unstable if you bent in half, like you're supposed to! The last thing you need is to blow out your back!
PAIN THRESHOLD [Difficult: Failure] – Yeah, sorry, I don’t think we have the core strength to do just that right now, so let’s rely on these legs…
COMPOSURE – … and end this as soon as we can without being too embarrassing.
SAVOIR FAIRE – Uh, are we gonna acknowledge *that* in any way?
YOU – Out of the corner of your eye, you see that your joint shadow is shaped strangely, as if...
No way.
PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Easy: Success] – Yes way. Lieutenant Kitsuragi pulls his pin-straight legs up and points them towards the momentarily clear-ish sky. You don't remember that being a part of the exercise. Is he... showing off?
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Now that's flexibility. That's control. Of course the unshakeable Lieutenant would be able to pull this off.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Wonder in what other situations he could fold like that.
VOLITION [Formidable: Success] – Not now, pervert.
YOU – You straighten up and he lands gracefully, arms still linked with yours. His turn.
KIM KITSURAGI – “Alright. One…”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – The binoclard may be flexible, but there is no way he can lift you. You'll crush him.
KIM KITSURAGI – “Two…”
LOGIC [Easy: Success] – Lifting aside, you don't exactly have enough information on how he's built to draw a definite conclusion.
PERCEPTION (TOUCH) – He seemed solid enough, earlier.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Oh, did he ever--
KIM KITSURAGI – “Three!”
YOU –
-
[Savoir Faire: Formidable] Do your part of the exercise, like a normal person.
-1 Kim doesn’t exactly come off as a weightlifter.
-2 You’re big, heavy, and awkward.
- “Nope, wait, sorry, stars, can’t do it, not today.” [Back out]
SAVOIR FAIRE – Never mind that, push these feet off now and here goes!
KIM KITSURAGI – Kim already bends into a perfect 90 degree angle and, Host on high, snatches you off your feet, pulling you backwards.
REACTION SPEED – WHAT--
ELECTROCHEMISTRY [Easy: Failure] – HOLY--
SAVOIR FAIRE [Medium: Failure] – HOW--
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT [Medium: Failure] – I TAKE IT BACK I TAKE IT ALL BACK
COMPOSURE [Easy: Failure] – PUT ME DOWN
KIM KITSURAGI – The lieutenant is stable on his legs, holding up your entire mass with relative (and surprising) ease. Admirable, since you're not exactly making it easier for him.
SAVOIR FAIRE [Formidable: Failure] – You forgot what to do with your own legs and you squirm with all the grace of an upturned cockroach.
Through agonizing seconds, the lieutenant still stands.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Compact, lithe, packing serious power? The man must be built like--
CONCEPTUALISATION [Easy: Success] – A Graadian premier danseur.
ENDURANCE [Easy: Failure] – Count on the art-house degenerate to insert some homo-sexual shit into that.
CONCEPTUALISATION – Excuse me? Rigour, persistence, strife for perfect form? Strength, hidden in lightness? Forging yourself into a living sculpture? The κάλλος-σθένος of it all? Esteemed audience, you heard it straight from the Meathead Manor. If it’s not used for throwing stuff or scaring people, strength is “homo-sexual” and ergo, “baaaaaaad”.
ENCYCLOPEDIA [Medium: Success] – Mirovan ballet academies are famed for the quality of their training, as well as for their cutthroat competition. Not a metaphor.
HALF-LIGHT [Challenging: Success] – A distant echo of a story you heard once, in another life: pointe shoes, red blooming through the fabric. Glass shards placed there by a saboteur’s hand.
COMPOSURE – You remember suddenly you can see the Whirling's backyard decently from your impromptu open-air gym. After that piggyback debacle, Cunoesse would have a field day if she saw you now.
PERCEPTION (HEARING) [Easy: Success] – You hear no sickening crunch as your boots finally hit the blessed ground.
KIM KITSURAGI – “All in order?”
YOU –
- “Of course, pfft. I'm fairly sure I carried potato sacks heavier than you.
- “Yeah, all OK. Sorry for the flailing, and thanks for not dropping me.”
- “Ballet. Thoughts?
KIM KITSURAGI – A shadow of a crooked smile. “I believe it’s been a while since either of us did PE lessons. A less-than-perfect form is understandable.”
YOU –
- How?
- “Can’t really do the fold-in-half thing, but I’ll remember to pull my knees up next time.”
YOU – Not for the first time and not the last, you wonder how Kim became the person you see now. What goes into producing this kind of silent, hidden power.
SHIVERS [Legendary: Success] – Somebody stands near the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the east bank of the Esperance: a woman, scanning a row of people lining the barre in a large, well-lit room with a mirror taking up one entire wall. The training session has been going on for well over two hours. Tomorrow, they will be here again.
You don’t know enough to suss out the details and Kim has no reason to tell you, but you can form a guess on a part of it already.
INLAND EMPIRE [Challenging: Success] – The metal and the smith are one and the same.
EMPATHY [Challenging: Success] – How *can* it feel, bringing the hammer down on yourself?
YOU –
-
How? - “Can’t really do the fold-in-half thing, but I’ll remember to pull my knees up next time.”
KIM KITSURAGI – The muscles in his face shift into a microexpression you now recognize as his own version of sheepishness. “That was unnecessary of me. Not really a part of the exercise."
DRAMA [Trivial: Failure] – Ah, the famed topos of affected modesty.
EMPATHY – Is it?
YOU –
- [Rhetoric: Heroic] Give articulate and eloquent praise, subtly acknowledging the insane pain the lieutenant had to put himself through.
-1: A non-zero chance you're talking way out of your ass.
- [Don't be weird about it.]
YOU – "You say "unnecessary", I say "advanced version". Wish I could do stuff like that just for the hell of it."
VOLITION – That was… surprisingly sincere.
KIM KITSURAGI – Surprise flits through his face, a shadow, before the lieutenant schools his expression back to its regular, impenetrable neutrality.
PERCEPTION (SIGHT) [Legendary: Success] – But something lingers in the corners of his dark eyes, something almost soft.
COMPOSURE – This one will stay with him for a while. And not in a bad way at all.
KIM KITSURAGI – "It's kind of you to say that, detective. Now, I believe we still have a question or two to ask Miss Amandou, so…"
YOU – "Ah, that. Yeah."
VOLITION – Palpable enthusiasm indeed.
The lieutenant and you head back to work to the Whirling-in-Rags lobby. That microscopic amount of softness about his eyes is still there as he turns to push the door open.