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[naismith]

[A man appears on the network of indeterminate age, extremely short-- under five feet tall, easily-- with a slight hunch to his posture and Germanic features. His eyes are sharply alive, bright with challenge. There's no hesitation as he speaks, in a gravelly kind of accent that sounds almost Russian, the words flowing quickly as he makes them up on the spot.

Right now, he desperately needs intel of all kinds, and eventually a spotter to watch him while he uses his seizure inducer. That fact he's assiduously ignoring. He'd checked his neurotransmitter levels this morning, and he has at least three days, even with all the stress of arrival. No, four days, probably. Five. Really, he can go a lot longer without one than the ImpSec medical staff had given him credit for. --Focus, Vorkosigan.]

So. I see you all have quite a neat set up here. Let's not waste time. Who can bring me up to speed, ex tempore? Surely we have more intelligence than "don't say its name" on our bogey man. Since confirmed facts are likely to be scarce, personal accounts would be acceptable.

I'm also taking proposals for getting miserably drunk at the bar, as is traditional in times of drawn out peril. I need someone to drag me home, y'see; alcohol has quite a soporific effect on my constitution. [And Ivan is unfortunately not here to do the dragging. Miles ignores the resulting pang that inspires in him.

Then he hesitates imperceptibly, the memory of his previous catastrophic failure to report his seizures clanging loudly through his brain. No. He can't ignore this, much as he'd like to. The only thing that scares Miles more than never going home is turning into a vegetable, mindless and drooling. He can at least do the preliminary investigation about options.]

Information about local medical facilities would be appreciated as well. They're not all-- er, at this level of technology, are they? [He looks dubious about anyone surviving on that level of medical care, but immediately recovers with a wide, convincing smile.] I'd just like to know preemptively for when I wake up with a skull splitting headache.

Comments

[isnotokay]

[ There's a little bit of new information tucked away to keep in mind there. It doesn't sound deliberately dropped, but she knows her own limitations in reading people that she would sooner just default to being suspicious. To have had a private army under his own command at some point means that he has some more potential than she'd expected if it's true.

Even if it isn't, she's evaluating him on his own merits here and not on anything he could reference in his past. She lets out a soft, short sigh in response to his assertion that she won't regret it. In Annie's mind, there's no way he could believe he could possibly honestly offer that as a promise.

And had she, in that moment, she might have just bolted. She's not above working with madmen, but anything so much as faintly smacking of altruism makes for an entirely different kind of beast. ]

Maybe.

[naismith]

[Miles is expecting, of course, that he'll be evaluated only on his performance here. And that's how he's thinking of it: as a performance. He feels like Naismith again, but not; maybe some new incarnation of Naismith, the stomach-dropping free fall of relief and panic indistinguishable from one another.

Forward momentum is the only answer. Just keep going until you can't anymore, and then get up again, and keep on.

The maybe is enough for him. Miles nods sharply in acknowledgement, pushing off from the edge of the rooftop.] I'll contact you when the next step is ready, [he declares, feeling she needs no more grandstanding. He offers her a lazy salute as he walks off toward the stairs, an ImpSec analyst's vague wave toward his brow.]