Ordinary Days

[Brian]

The embassy doesn't know about the sandwich place ... but you can be given a ride to the hospital in an embassy vehicle without much trouble.  All three embassy vehicles are matching black limos with tinted windows.

[Dracos]

Dracos nods, thanking them and asking if they could get one around eleven fourty.

After which he heads over to get some breakfast at their cafeteria.

Dracos

[Brian]

Mmm.  Breakfast.  ENGLISH breakfast.

Could be worse.

You're sheduled for a lift to the hospital just before noon, though.

[Dracos]

Dracos enjoys a very slow meal.  Slow as in hours long meal.  Delayed enough so that he and huitz can leave if huitz doesn't want to say anything.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

Paul comes down to the continental breakfast, harried and distressed-looking, and sits at Phil's table. He takes a few halfhearted bites of an "English" muffin, then whispers to Phil, as low as he can, barely loud enough to hear himself.

"Turn on the brain-phone. We need to talk."

[Dracos]

~Moshi, Moshi.~  Dracos sat, calmly eating his meal.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

<I had a dream. One of the dreams that mean everything. And I wasn't the only one in it. There was the kid, from the plane. The Japanese kid that got shot. He was THERE. I don't mean that a dream version of him was. I mean, me and him, were in the same dream. I checked it out. I talked to him.>

<And he needs our help. And I'm going to give it to him.>

<He -- wait, stop, let me start at the beginning. I don't want to miss something.>

Paul stirs his rapidly-cooling scrambled eggs.

<He wasn't there to begin with. I was walking down a hallway that never ended, with locked doors at each side. I had something in myhand, but I didn't kjnow what it was. Then, someone was chasing me. I didn't recognize him, but based on everything else, we might meethim in the future. He wore all black, and I knew that I could not let him catch me. So I stopped, and the "thing" in my hand became a keychain with keys labeled... I can't remember, strange things, like "Friends" and "Adventure" or something. I unlocked a door, and went in.>

Paul gets a forkful of eggs, but only gets it halfway to his mouth before placing it back on the plate.

<Then I was at a game table, playing against a fat kid. It was the same fat kid from the dream I had earlier, back in California. Only this time it wasn't cards -- it was chess. The board has thousands of squares and hundreds and hundreds of pieces. There were pieces for you, and me, and Bjorn, and Nate, and Parthipan, and many others I couldn't recognize. There were lots of colors, too. I had four pieces captured off the board. The other guy had too many to count. The Japanese kid had a piece. His was red, and it was right next to ours. And I think... I think I could move him. I think he was one of our pieces. I think he was on our side.>

He puts his elbows on the table and then holds his head between his wrists, very slightly rocking back and forth.

<Then I was in his house. His house. In Tokyo. Rose petals were falling like rain. He was there. So was his sister. And she was hurt. He told me her legs had been broken. She would never walk. And I think -- I think it was Shade that did it. It was why he was looking for him on the plane.>

<He told me other things, too. That the other guys on the plane lied to him. That he didn't want to let himself be caught... or maybe it was let "people like him" be caught. Or like us. Hazy. He also said he was ready to die. He told me that he was in the same hospital as Parthipan. And he told me that the last time it rained in Tokyo was on the eighth. I looked it up, and he was right. I didn't know that. It couldn't have come from my own mind.>

Paul looks up and makes eye contact for the first time, and his lips very slightly mouth the words he "speaks" in his mind.

<It came from him. He came to me in a dream, and he needs my help, and we need his help. He is laying in a hospital bed, watched by the police and by agents of the Cabal. And soon, the Cabal is going to take him. They'llwheelhim out in his hospital bed in the middle of the night, trailing in IV stand, and they're going to TAKE him. They're going to put him in a hole, some dank rat-cellar entombed in concrete. And Bjorn won't be able to save him.>

<But we -- we ARE here to save him! And save him is what we are going to do. What we HAVE to do.>

[Dracos]

~Huitz, I don't know what you are smoking, but I tend to make it a general policy not to go out of my way to try and help people that had a gun to my face within the last week.  It sort of helps with the whole not getting yourself shot in the back routine.  You can mentally shout as loud as you bloody want but that's not convincing me of anything excepting that you lost it.~

Dracos idly drained another bottle of water, tapping his fingers together ponderously, "Hum, wonder how the stock market is doing.  I just realized I haven't checked it in a while."

~Even assuming, for hypothetical sake, I went along with this madness, what would we do?  We're flying out by plane in under twenty four hours.  If we pick him up, we not only can't do that but we have media already on our arse with our pictures, we'd have police after us for breaking out a known terrorist, and a heck of a lot of land to foot past.  I just don't see that happening.  And what would this bet be on?  That he follows some mythical samurai code of honor and will naturally be indebted to help us in our war and such?  In the best case scenario that we get him out, we get one untrustworthy add on who's a damn poor judge of character.  This isn't flicking a winner point here.~

Dracos

[Huitzil]

<I -- I don't know what we'll do with him! I wish I did. I wish I had the answers -- but I don't have the answers, I just got statements. And one of them is that we have to help him. I was thinking that we could just get him out of the hospital and surveillance, before we left. Not take him with us. Just get him out, and let him escape on his own.>

[Dracos]

~Right, and you are interpreting the dream to give you that statement.  Here's another.  The guy is a neutral hostile force.  He could be swung to our side if we rescue him.  He could also shoot us in the head.  We don't have to do anything.  I'm no good samaritian.  I have statements too.  Without a plan, we aren't trying anything.  Hospitals have security cameras which would record us if we did such things.  This would not engraciate us to those who we're still dependant on to help us get out of this country.  Nor would attaching a criminal record to these IDs help us get out of here either.  And again, I don't like going to rescue someone who had a gun to my head.  Call me a bitch but I'm a live bitch.~

Dracos

[Huitzil]

<You don't have to help me if you don't want to. You just have to not stop me. That way, if I fuckup, you can still go to Gibraltar without me.>

<I'm sorry, but this is something I have to do.>

[Dracos]

~Right.  That's just fucking brilliant.  Why don't you vanish and I take Gin and I can meet Rez and Bjorn and we can skip along into the sunset...  Are you a bloody retard or did you just wake up stupid today?  We need all five of us there or whatever the hell is going to happen is not going to happen.  So what happens if you fuck up?  We have to break your ass out.  And that's assuming you are alive.  Stop being so damn selfish.  You forgetting we have a mission to accomplish here?  You fuck up and we all are screwed.  Unless you have a plan, forget that damn guy and concentrate on surviving yourself.~

Dracos

[Huitzil]

<I can't forget about it. We split up because we knew there was a possibility some of us might get encountered, and then caught or killed. It wouldn't be any different than if Nate and Bjorn get caught before leaving the States. They had to gather our allies, and I have to do this. There's no help for it. I... I just have to.>

[Dracos]

"Not interested in stocks man?" Dracos shrugged.  "Guess they can be pretty ugly."  Dracos leaned back, idly thumbing above his nose in a rather habitual action.

~This is the Drac news report, bringing you live insights straight from the: We don't want to die network!  This just in: I can read minds.  This also just in: So can they!  News Flash!  They capture you, they brain drain you, then what is possibly suspicion to them becomes cold hard fact.  They know who we are, what we represent, exactly where we are headed, and our current plans on how to achieve it.  Hup, what's that?  An update Mr. Brain?  Ah yes, acting like a fucking martyr and going off on a solo mission is retarded.  Especially when you don't even have a bloody plan.~

Dracos

[Brian]

An attendant approaches and offers to refresh your coffee before vanishing.