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olitics and Personalities

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Michael O'Reilly took a deep breath before opening the door and walking into the house. The Gemstone-attached FBI agent had flown in from Washington just hours before. It was all hands on deck in Texas. It wasn't just the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, but one complicated by seemingly impossible factors.From what he'd been told, his quarry had arrived at the safehouse not too long ago as well. Out of the way in the Texan countryside, it was the best option out of what they had available. Though the security detail would probably be useless, it was far enough away from civilization that actually getting anywhere would be difficult, especially with air cover either on station or on standby.“What happened to the other cop?” Roman Torchwick asked from his casual position half-laying on the couch.“Busy,” O'Reilly replied, slightly annoyed at being immediately pegged as police. He sat down across from the thief and his petite associate. “You and your friends caused quite the ruckus.”“Oh, it's what we do,” he replied with a disarming smirk.“You're a smart man, Mister Torchwick,” O'Reilly began. They'd given him pages of intelligence to read through, most of which was from the show's notes and may not be accurate. He was hoping it was. “You hedged your bets with Cinder. You believed that by working with her, you'd stand the best chance of survival in her new world. Well, now she's dead and there isn't going to be a new world. At least, not her's. Let's talk about surviving onnew world.”Immediately he realized he'd screwed up. Torchwick leaned back and laughed. “Wow, where are you getting this? You've got itwrong.”Fortunately, he had a plan to turn it around, pivoting on the thief's hubris. If their assessment of his personality wasn't wrong too. “Oh? So youwork with Cinder because you believed in her?”“Of course not,” Torchwick practically spat. “I'm not so naive as to believe she wouldn't throw me under the proverbial bus. Besides, that bitch was full of it.”He asked casually, “Full of it?”“Let's just say calling her plan insane would be a massive understatement.”“So why get involved in the first place?”Torchwick laughed. “Why do you think? Thievery is tricky business. I get information, I don't need a fence, I get paid handsomely.”“You were never going to go through with whatever she was planning.” O'Reilly allowed a thin smile. “You played her.”“I played her.” Torchwick smirked. “Cinder thought she was playing everyone, and I mean everyone. Me, her minions, the White Fang, the Queen. Okay, the furry freaks, maybe. But I never believed her for a second. I always had a plan, a way out. It was just a matter of choosing the time and place.”You. It was far from a complete picture, and what he had learned wasn't exactly pleasant, but it was a start.He decided to push a little more. “Roman, how much do you know about Cinder's plan?”The response was a shrug. “Not a lot.”O'Reilly could tell he was hiding what he knew. “Okay, then.”“So, do I get to go to the nicer prison now?” Torchwick asked. “I'm really interested in these prisons of yours. Do they have swimming pools? Bring me some brochures if you can.”“It's a lot more complicated than that, unfortunately,” O'Reilly answered, standing to leave. “And not many have pools. But I'll see what I can do.”* * * * *The domestic situation was a mess. The National Guard was deployed in Texas, with parts around Austin under de facto martial law. There were occasional riots and protests, but a much greater concern was people refusing to leave home and go to work. Mass media was alight with information and speculation, and many were calling the competence of the country's leadership into question. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt pervaded the nation.The President couldn't afford to think about that right now. He had to compartmentalize and prioritize. The rest of the world was pointing fingers, most of them at the United States. His country was not the only one demanding answers.In the White House Situation room was the top leadership of the country. The Joint Chiefs of Staff sat with a few other military officers on one side of the table, with the Secretary of Defence, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, Director of National Intelligence and National Security Advisor on the other.He sat down at the head of the table. “Okay. What's the situation, internationally?”The President held up his hand. “One at a time, please. General, what's the strategic situation?”The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs replied, “The Russians have gone to high alert. They're mobilizing almost all their regular troops, they might be bringing up reserves, and we believe their strategic arms are also at a heightened state of readiness. Despite their posturing, it's likely that their actions are for internal purposes more than external ones. Both to maintain order and to give the appearance of control.”“What about China?”“It's a very similar story with the Chinese. Heightened alert and readiness, sometimes internal deployment and possible callup of reserves. In fact, that's the story all over the world, including with our own allies. We're seeing this in Europe, in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Canada and Australia.”“That's understandable,” the President reluctantly agreed. “We just have to make sure there aren't any accidents. John, what's the story politically?”“The Russians are denouncing us, publicly, as liars and criminals,” the Secretary of State replied. “Through official channels, they haven't offered much beyond boilerplate statements. I think there's a good possibility that they did already know and would have taken similar actions if they did not. They're waiting for us to show our hand.“The Chinese, well, they haven't said much at all. That's not surprising considering their response to other events in the past. They definitely want answers, but if this is a big concern to them, they're not showing it. Most of our allies, Gemstone and non-Gemstone, are fairly quiet, but they're all asking us what the hell is going on.“The big surprise is France. The message we're getting from them... well, it's very mixed, to be honest. They're not happy at all about being left out of Gemstone. On the other hand, they understand what it's like to have this kind of thing happen, and they're begrudgingly reaching out to lend a hand.”“Okay.” The President replied, mulling it over in his mind. “This is more or less what we were expecting. Which means that the leaders we care about are acting at least half rationally. We want to appear firm, but not aggressive. Tell them that the world isn't ending. It'll change, sure, but there's nothing to start a war over. I think they know that.”* * * * *Two men wearing rumpled suits strode into the hospital, surrounded by a cordon of armed officersand waving their official IDs at the security as they passed. One was Emmett Lyons, the FBI agent nominally in charge of the terrorist case, and the other was a CIA analyst, Johnathan Ryan.“What's the story on Torchwick?” Ryan asked as they breezed by the reception area.“O'Reilly's still working on him,” Lyons told the CIA agent. “He doesn't seem to care about revealing his boss. I think he's testing us right now, trying to see how much he can get from us.”“He's going to get an island prison if he's lucky.”“What hegets isn't my problem,” the FBI agent replied. “What hehe's going to get is.”“Isn't it always.” He paused. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”“We need to know for sure. I don't have any agents I can put on this.”“I could-”Lyons cut his companion off. “Have you ever conducted an interview or interrogation?”Ryan shook his head. “No. I'm an analyst... I see your point.”They headed up a flight of stairs and down a hallway into an isolation ward. In this case, it wasn't being used to isolate dangerous pathogens but a potentially dangerous subject. Two heavily armed guards- actual police officers and not hospital staff- stood in the corridor, with two more inside.A balding man in ruffled scrubs was waiting for them. “I'm Doctor Combes. I assume you've been informed about our patient?”“We've only heard that we had a Faunus survivor,” Ryan told him. “Fill us in on the details, please.”“She was brought in with some of the other wounded,” Combes answered. “In quite bad shape, I might add. Bullet wounds in the chest and abdomen, two broken ribs, a punctured lung. We almost started to put blood into her before one of the nurses noticed the ears.”“Would that have been a bad thing?” Lyons asked.He shrugged. “We have no idea. We were hoping your people would be able to tell us more, but either it's classified or they really don't know. We've been treating her as we would one of our own, except plasma only, no whole blood, and being careful with the drugs. She's doing remarkably well, but for all we know we might have actually been making things harder on her system. They seem to be similar to us biologically, but the devil's in the details as they say.”“Can we talk to her?”“I should say no, but I'm not sure if it would stop you,” the doctor said carefully. “I think she's strong enough, and maybe it's better to do it now before she hurts someone. She's still in shock, though, so be careful for her sake and your own.”“Thank you, Doctor.” Lyons withdrew his service pistol and handed it to one of the guards before entering the room.It was a typical hospital room, ugly and sterile. He'd been in many, both as a patient and as an agent. It was never a pleasant place to be in either position.The patient sat half-upright in bed, orange ears visible from under her similarly colored hair. Her skin was pale, though neither the FBI nor the CIA agent could tell if that was natural or from her condition. Dull eyes met their gaze.“Hello. I'm Emmett Lyons, an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. This is my colleague, Johnathan Ryan. What's your name?”“Siena,” she croaked reluctantly.“Okay, Siena. We just want to ask you some questions,” Lyons said. “If you can answer to the best of your ability, it will make things easier on all of us. We may be able to make a deal that gives you a more favorable outcome.”She looked down, pausing for a long time. Finally, she said quietly. “Okay.”“Okay?”Siena shook her head sadly. “I already betrayed the White Fang a long time ago. What do you want to know?”* * * * *“So you don't agree that this is a policy issue?” the television host asked his guest, a recently announced candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.“This is a policy issue, yes, absolutely, but it's more than that. You know, I've been talking about jobs and the economy, and that's still important, but this other world, Remnant, this is huge. This could be a massive opportunity or a massive threat. Honestly, I don't think the man in the White House is prepared to deal with any of this.”“Well, what makes you say that?”“They covered it up. They covered it up. Why? Because they didn't know how to deal with this, that's why. So they just swept it under the rug. We know these people have been here for at least a year, but they just kept it a secret? Was he afraid of what this would do to the world? You know, I don't think so. I think he just didn't know what to do.”“Is it fair to condemn the President for his actions in this case? I mean, this is something that never happened before, that nobody had any idea about,” the host argued. “So, let me ask you this. If you were in his position- Obama's position- what would you have done?”“I never would have kept this a secret. Why? I mean, what's the point? What's the point? If everybody knew right away, we could get a lot of these issues out of the way and move forward. And despite what they look like, these people are not American, they're not Earthican, you know, it's tough to say this but they're not even human. Our goal should have been to learn as much as we can from them. I mean, if we opened this up, we'd have a lot of really smart people looking at it. And then we can put them on a nice island that we can bomb at a moment's notice.”“Don't you think that's a little harsh?”“No. These people are not human. They have green eyes and they can shoot fireballs. It's not like a comic book. As much as we all like them, we can't have superheroes running around doing whatever they want. We just can't. We have to do what's going to benefit everyone in America.”“I can't say I agree with you, but it's an interesting perspective. Thank you for joining us tonight, Donald.”“Absolutely.”* * * * *This thread is for discussing international reactions and responses. For general discussion about the attack, see. For speculation about technology and biology,. For general discussion about the show itself, there's. For debating philosophy, this is Spacebattles, not Philosophy Battles. While we're not enforcing strict divisions between threads, please try to keep things reasonably on topic.@Tarrowroot Not really a buildup, but theres a lot of fear here so we do be prepared. Yes, it is cultural in some way, but very reasonable an action to take.Tanks in the street outside and talk of mobilization. I don't think there's going to be a war, but they're acting like it.The French statement is fairly neutral, but if you read between the lines...@rufus: I can't, please explain.My own (Canadian) government is being oddly quiet on this issue so far. Just a boilerplate statement. Given the close relationship between our countries, it would not surprise me if at least the highest levels of our government knew. They may have even been involved. There's also the rumour that RWBY lived here and not in the US, which if true would mean that we were in deep for a long time. Ben Basically, they are saying that they are rather annoyed at not being involved earlier, but want to get in on this on the American side now. There's a lot of colorful languages, condolences mostly, but it's about being invited into the super secret group. And probably toward our own ends.@rufus What secret group?@CTThomas It's probably the thing they're calling Rainbow.@kiva Which is pure bullshit.@Adamolurker There's probably some truth to it. There's nothing uncommon about similar task forces except for what this one dealt with. And given the ambiguous or nonexistent statements from certain countries, it's even safe to guess which ones. I highly doubt it's actually called RAINBOW, though. That's just pointless fan wank.You can say everything you want about the attack being horrible, but the US is getting a lot out of this. Advanced technology, superpowered warriors. Everyone else should be happy they're sharing at all.@Black Ops Go home, you're drunk.so if there's a war over this who will win?yeah theyre going crazy here not like were going to war if we do itll be doing what squaddies to to Atlas woulc love one of those mechsThings are very tense here. I think, though, the fear is more of Russian buildup than the other world. Many still remember 1939.* * * * *Midterm exams. Nasty cold. Keyboard fuxxored. Chapter anyway. Sleep now.