endgames | 035 -- [action

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035 -- [action | voice]

[It's an antsy day, in an antsy week. Every time he gets back from a mission, lately, it feels like that. He's had a project in the mountains the last several days, and with the news from CJ last night, Shikamaru can think of a lot of other things he'd rather be doing. But with Korra on a mission, he'd feel bad for ducking out of work. At least he wasn't here for the experiment, or worse: his birthday.

So he can be found at the convenience store until late afternoon, messing around with a digital camera. He got it last December as a Christmas present from Precis, but he actually hasn't practiced with it any until now. Sorry if you are SUDDENLY BLINDED by the flash feature he didn't know was there, he didn't mean it.

Unless you're Naruto or Masaomi. If you're Naruto or Masaomi, he's doing it on purpose because he's an ass and this is what true friendship is built on.

Later in the day, before work gets out, he'll crack open his journal to make a post. He's been thinking about this for the last week, reading up and practicing how to make asphalt. It's not as difficult as he would've though, and he thinks he has it down now.]

[Voice]

Hey, Luceti. It's kind of late in the year for it, but the weather's been dry enough... So let's pave the roads. Anyone up for it?

[This might be ill-timed what with recent news, but hey. It doesn't hurt to gauge interest. There are a lot of other things he needs to take care of today, however, so he starts setting up some filters too.]

[Filtered to Cilan | Private]

Yo, Cilan. I got a job proposition for you.

[Filtered to Makie | Private]

...where the hell do you even live. I was gonna go visit you, but I forgot how much walking that takes when you don't know where you're going.

[Filtered to Gai Tsutsugami | Private]

[Flat, but not caustic.] It been enough time for you?

[Filtered to Haruno Sakura | Private]

[A string of scattered dots shows up in the filter before any words do, tappings of a pen. The message itself, when it shows up is anonymous. The handwriting is disguised and the picture in the journal window covered up to hide the identity of the writer. Inserted are a series of numbers: coordinates Sakura could figure out in her sleep.]

Come to the following coordinates at 1900 hours. Uzumaki Naruto is going to test the barrier, and he may need medical assistance afterwards.

(ooc: if enough people are interested in the road project, I'll make an ooc post organizing things for it after the House of M plot is done. right now this is testing the waters. 8|a)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Shikamaru nods. Because no, no he didn't, but you know. It's polite to word things like that instead of tossing accusations around. 8|]

That's the problem.

[His eyes are steely as he fixes his gaze on Shikamaru, already not sure he likes where this is going.]

I'll be the first one to take responsibility for my own failures. That mission was a failure, no question about it. But it wasn't entirely because of my actions.

You have no way of knowing it was because of his, either. [Davis isn't that much higher up the information food chain than they are, no matter what it looks like.] Behind closed doors, I don't care what you have to say about him. Most of the people you talk to are smart enough to draw their own conclusions. But you can't go around telling everyone else in the village that he's suspicious when all you have is a hunch.

Do you recall what he said to us in the briefing he gave us before the mission? He told us that those MSF soldiers we were sent in to detain knew enough that allowing them to reach the Cultists could put everything in jeopardy, even Luceti.

[He's quiet for a moment.]

I didn't pay any special attention to it at the time, but this last mission got me thinking again. One of the new Iron Eye recruits was one of those same MSF soldiers from the hospital. She was there because of her knowledge of Shift explosives.

[He waves a hand around the time Gai is wrapping up his comment, trying to interrupt him.]

I'm not here to listen to that. It's interesting, but tell me another time.

[If Gai wasn't irked before, he is now, though he's careful not to let it show.]

Why are you so invested in the idea that he has no responsibility for any of what happened? We aren't exactly surrounded by trustworthy people here.

[He raises his head now.]

I don't trust him. Not one hundred percent. If you haven't noticed though, coming from the other side we're shady as fuck ourselves.

I was including us in that statement.

[Because he sure as hell doesn't trust a large portion of the village either.]

You were including some of the people in the village. I'm talking about you.

I never claimed to be anything else. So-called terrorists aren't usually high on the trustworthy scale anywhere they go.

So why do you think they would you trust you with anything? The way we ran around that hospital, or any mission, Davis in particular has no reason to trust you with everything he knows.

I'm not expecting him to trust me with everything he knows. I'm expecting him to trust me with information that could be crucial to the success of a mission they've sent us on. It isn't exactly in their best interest either for one of their missions to go up in flames, regardless of the reason for it.

[He sighs.] I'm not going to argue semantics with you. That's never gotten either of us anywhere.

[It's the same loop as it always is. Gai leans one way, Shikamaru the other, and neither one of them come out gaining something from it.

Shikamaru already mentioned that there's a chance Davis wasn't aware of the bomb at the time; there's nothing better to add to it than that anyways.]

Can I get to my point?

[There's a slight quirk of one of Gai's eyebrows - he'd been expecting that to be the point - but then he shrugs.]

Go ahead.

[Turning over the words in his mind, Shikamaru pauses. Deliberates over the best phrasing.]

People listen to us. You understand that. Right?

Of course.

[That's why he'd given the mission rundown in the way he had, in the tone of voice he had-- just a clean, clinical layout of the facts. Impersonal, which he knew undoubtedly made him come off as cold, but it kept things cut and dried.]

[Good. Shikamaru continues then.]

Misconceptions are born easily in this place, and spread quickly. If you make someone out to be suspicious, that's what many of them will remember and they will set themselves against them.

You could turn someone who might have been an ally into an enemy that way.

Edited 2013-10-11 08:26 (UTC)

I know that. That's exactly why I didn't mention Davis by name, or the fact that it happened on a mission.

[He pauses.]

In fact, the first one to bring Davis' name into the conversation was you.

Anyone who's familiar with how things work here can figure it out. The draft in Desset was before my time, even. [And he knows Gai hasn't been around that far back - most of the enclosure hasn't, anymore.] No one gets out of the enclosure otherwise unless it's a mission. Not mentioning is as bad as doing so - you cast suspicion on every authority figure they work with that way.

Edited 2013-10-11 17:43 (UTC)

I didn't say we were there when it happened, either. For all anyone listening knew, it could have been something someone overheard on a draft or another mission.

Davis wasn't the only member of the MSF on that mission anyway. I'm sure you remember that as well as I do.

Like I said, not mentioning anyone specific is just as bad. We know little about any of them. Each one of them could be a potential ally until we do.

Then how else do you propose I discuss the one other Shift bomb we have any knowledge about?

Stick to the facts. Highlight the circumstances before you go into a theory. [That something was wrong with the team that took the hospital hostage. Not even the MSF knew what made them act like that. Most of them were being mind controlled to make it worse, too.] Play both sides of the debate, if you have to do the latter.

That's what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, the facts we have are limited. There's only so much discussion that can happen before we start going into theories, whether we like it or not.

[And Aka hadn't exactly been forthcoming on anything when he'd tried to talk to her on the mission.]

So keep that discussion between people who understand what's going on. It's not hard.

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