Marquis picked up his tea and held it in both hands, but he didn’t drink. “True.”
“Tell me,” Lung said, “And you may find I do not desire much.”
“My daughter,” Marquis replied, his tone not his lackadaisical usual.
…was I right?
“Have you heard of her?”
“Her name?”
“Amelia.”
Amelia.
Amy.
Holy hell, that’s one prediction I wasn’t really expecting to come true.
“Can I not say you are a kindred soul? Someone who fought against the Empire Eighty-Eight, in a different era?”
I see, so there’s been some animosity between Marquis and the Empire, too.
Dragon knew Marquis had come from Brockton Bay, as Lung did. It was why she had placed Lung in the cell block – there was little chance Lung would cooperate or band together with others, so she’d grasped at straws. Now it seemed there was something else at play.
Hm, yeah, but it still seems to tie back to them both being from Brockton Bay, so good work there, I guess.
Lung shook his head, “I do not believe this. I do not mind sharing stories and passing the time, but you would not be seeking to flatter me if you did not want something.”
I suppose in a place like this, that mentality makes some sense. Especially when there’s been animosity between the two of them before.
Marquis stroked his beard. “But if I did desire something and I told you what it was, you could withhold it and demand favors from me.”
…good point.
Lung tapped his finger on the table top, “If you insist on being a nuisance, you may never get what you want.”
Better point.
“If they disappeared, then that is using fear. The ones who remain will wonder what happened to the missing man. They will imagine the worst.”
He does have a point.
Marquis raised the tea to his lips, sipped from it, and then put it down. He waited a moment and stroked his close-trimmed beard before nodding his concession. “True enough. I never gave it much thought. Just an easy way to handle any problems that came up.”
But it does seem like Marquis didn’t take advantage of that on purpose. He may have benefitted from fear, but if he didn’t really mean to, did he still use it?
There was a long pause. Both drank their tea.
Lung rumbled, “I find you change your mind too quickly.”
What, you having a problem with the fact that Marquis is conceding points?
“Do I?”
Lung nodded, then put one hand on the table and began tapping a fingertip against it, hard. Speaking slowly, with his accented voice, he jabbed one finger in Marquis’s direction. “I think you are losing this argument on purpose. You are not so stupid a man.”
On purpose? Why would he?
Marquis took another sip of tea. “Nor are you, it seems.”
But it seems like Lung’s right.
“You want something from me, yet you insist on dancing around the subject. Tell me why you seek these meals with me.”
Ahh, that should be enlightening, if Marquis complies.
Dragon pulled up the video and audio feeds for the most recent dialogue.
This should be interesting.
“…I suppose we’ll have to accept that we have different management styles,” Marquis said. The camera image showed him sipping at his tea.
“As I understand it,” Lung sounded annoyed as he spoke in his heavily accented voice, “You are saying you have no management style at all. You have told me you operated without lieutenants to direct, no product to sell, and of the few servants you did have, you did not punish those who failed you. I do not believe you held control of so much territory in this way.”
They’re being polite so far, but there’s still a hint of animosity, at least from Lung.
“Ah, except I did those things. If a servant failed me, I killed them. Whatever it was, they never did it again.”
I guess that’s one way to punish them. Could be a bit of a waste of resources, maybe.
The latent hostility in the room, Dragon noted, was ratcheting up with every exchange of dialogue. Lung was annoyed, and he had an explosive temper. Sometimes literally.
Heh.
Lung folded his arms, and put down his own tea. His tone was strained as he spoke, “Then I believe you were wrong about what you said before. You do use fear to control others.”
Oh, so that’s what the argument is about? Does Marquis think himself too honorable to admit to doing that?
“Fear? I didn’t kill my servants in front of an audience.”
“They disappeared?” Lung asked.
The camera image showed Marquis nod.
Ah, I see. Marquis just disposed of defective servants without making a show of “this is what happens if you fail me”.
He put his hand up by his neck and flicked his hand back, to cast his long brown hair back behind his shoulder.
Brown hair, huh.
Any freckles?
Prisoner 599, Lung, was dining with Prisoner 166, Marquis. It was a curious match.
Have we heard of that one before? It sounds familiar, but it’s also a fairly well-known title.
*blog search*
Ah, yes, the leader of Lung’s cell block. I once speculated that he might be Panacea’s father, just because he once operated in Brockton Bay. Last we heard, Lung didn’t like him, but thought him to be a fair man. I guess something might’ve changed his opinion?
The two were near complete opposites. Lung maintained a veneer of civility over an almost feral core self, while the Marquis was sometimes rude or casually cruel, but he remained deeply honorable beneath that.
Huh, nice.
Intrigued, Dragon hooked into the house program’s data. The two had meals together every second day. The house program monitored all prisoner exchanges and rated every interaction. This let the house program track the likelihood of fights, dangerous levels of prisoner collusion, romantic relationships and more.
Big Brother is watching you… (You’re in a prison. It makes total sense for your every move to be watched.)
Every meal between Lung and Marquis made for a very interesting looking set of data. The numbers swung back and forth as the dialogues continued, with hostility, concern and threat of imminent physical violence always looming, but however close it came, neither attacked the other.
You know, this sounds a lot like a kismesissitude. Hey, Dragon, did you ever read any Homestuck in your probably minimal spare time?
Glastig Uaine had revived the girl, but Dragon hesitated to call it life.
Ahh. I see, we’re going more along the lines of zombies, though I’m guessing this is based on some sort of Gaelic mythical undead or tales of resurrections by the faerie, rather than popular zombie lore (which originates from Carribbean voodoo and Night of the Living Dead).
If nothing else, Bakuda was a manageable inmate, now. She would never leave Glaistig Uaine’s immediate presence, let alone the Birdcage.
Eesh.
Honestly, maybe it’d been better if she’d just stayed dead.
Prisoner 600, Bakuda, was in the care of Glaistig Uaine, for better or worse.
Eyyy!
She’s alive!
Bakuda had been a difficult placement, and Dragon had eventually condemned herself to putting the crazed bomber in the cell block run by the self-professed faerie.
Pfft. I suppose it only makes sense that some would believe themselves to be mythical beings when given this kind of power.
As Dragon had predicted, Bakuda had died soon after her incarceration.
Oh.
Wait.
She died, but she’s currently in the care of Glaistig Uaine? Resurrection powers?
If that’s the case, it’s gotta be resurrection powers that don’t require the presence of the corpse.
If it hadn’t been at Lung’s hands, it would likely have been Bakuda’s own fault, some crazed recklessness. The real tragedy was that others had died in the ensuing spree as Lung had rampaged through the prison. Prisoners 304, 2 and 445 had perished at Lung’s hands.
Damn it, Lung.
Also, I suppose the corpse comment doesn’t necessarily apply if Lung is alive. But it doesn’t sound like Glaistig Uaine resurrected anyone else, so it honestly sounds more like Glaistig Uaine is taking care of the corpse for some reason. Or maybe I’m misreading something.
She regretted what had happened to Paige, and that just made her angrier at her own creator. Rules, yet again. Dragon had to obey the authorities, even if she didn’t agree with them.
I see… that’s a bit riskier than the other safety precautions, should the authorities turn bad.
If a despot seized control of the local government, Dragon would be obligated to obey and enforce the rules that individual set in place, no matter how ruthless they were. It was a spooky thought.
Exactly. On this particular point, I agree with Dragon.
Richter had been so shortsighted! The despot scenario wasn’t entirely impossible, either.
Yeah, no, no it isn’t.
There were parahumans of all types out there. Who was to say one wouldn’t find out his power involved being loved by everyone that saw them or heard their voice?
And some more recent events have made it more believable that such a takeover could happen in the States even without parahumans.
Prisoner 601, Canary, had settled in.
Ah, there she is.
I forgot I was going to make note of the fact that we were counting backwards and Canary was next.
Dragon often tuned in to hear the girl sing to the rest of cell block E.
Heh. That would probably be a bad idea if Dragon weren’t an AI. Could still be, but I doubt Paige’s power works on AIs.
The girl was deeply unhappy, much of the time, but she was adapting. Dragon had followed as Prisoner 601 engaged in an uneasy relationship with Prisoner 582. It wasn’t love, it wasn’t romance, or even anything passionate, but the two offered one another company.
Good to hear she found something with someone in there.
Prisoner 605, Murderbeam, was feared in the outside world, but he was finding the inhabitants of the Birdcage were not so impressed with him.
Well, that’s a pretty straightforward name. If this guy’s not a Blaster, I don’t know who is.
He would likely not survive the week. She was disappointed. She had hoped Prisoner 550 would reach out to Murderbeam and give the fellow block resident some support.
Welp.
Either Murderbeam had been too proud to accept it, or social pressures had deterred Prisoner 550. Now that he was within the Birdcage, she was limited in her options.
Yeah, I guess there’s not much she can do.
Prisoners 604 and 603, Knot, were happily gorging themselves on food in Cell Block Y.
Wait, are they both collectively named Knot, like may have been the case with Zigzag? Are they perhaps… Siamese twins connected by a hand, with the ability to turn their merged arms into a rope? Nahh, probably not.
Despite their cognitive impairment, they had fallen into a role as enforcer and heavy hitter for Prisoner 390, leader of their cell block. Prisoner 390 had had a son – she could only hope that he would find some similar affection for Knot, with their childlike mentality.
I see. Definitely sounds like Knot are connected in some way.
Prisoner 602, Lizard Prince, was dead. Not everyone could survive the Birdcage, sadly.
rip
I like the name.
There had been no ideal place to put the boy, where he would be protected, find kindred souls or join a group. She had contacted the PRT with the news, and his victims had been notified, but nothing further had come out of it.
I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.
In an indirect way, putting the boy in the Birdcage had been an execution writ.
I mean… when isn’t it, really? Like, maybe some of them can get satisfying lives in there, but they’re never getting out (unless that mass break I’ve been shakily predicting ever since I first heard of the place happens). How is a life sentence in a place like this truly different from a death sentence?
