[Locked] And we're off to see the Wizard ...
[The result of this thread.]
Second floor, first hallway, down the corridor … gotcha.
It required very little thought after the coffee shop went up, really. A few days of going over the possibilities in his head, running through the scenarios. What’s the worst thing that can happen if Elashte turns out to be a complete asshole? What’re the advantages ( Read more... )
Second floor, first hallway, down the corridor … gotcha.
It required very little thought after the coffee shop went up, really. A few days of going over the possibilities in his head, running through the scenarios. What’s the worst thing that can happen if Elashte turns out to be a complete asshole? What’re the advantages ( Read more... )
It's always a concern.
He's perched on the edge of his desk when Jack walks in, though somewhat oddly twisted around to look at a low cabinet behind and beside the desk. "I think Phoebe left some scotch in here if you're serious about that drink," he says, without either looking up or un-twisting himself - actually, he twists a little further, flicking open the door to reveal a bottle, only half-finished.
Only.
Then he sits up, weaving his knuckles together with a dry smile. "Decided we're the most palatable of the available options?" he asks.
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It says something, he thinks, that there's enough of a population of sharks in Lake Michigan to sustain that little one-man industry. He's going to have to check and see whether that makes any sense according to any of the mundane published materials on the lake's fauna, sometime. He gets up, recovering the scotch and two glasses, and pours once he's sitting back down.
"First things first, though: an icebreaker." He holds out one of the glasses. "Tactical opinion on how to deal with our friend Mr. CLF?" His tone is conversational, but he's making no effort to disguise the attentive narrowness to his eyes. There are certain answers he'd like to hear, and he's hoping O'Neill will be kind enough to oblige him on one of those.
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Of course, with the ever-present threat of having ships fall out of the sky, maybe “relaxing” is the wrong word here …
Jack takes Harkness’s offered scotch glass without breaking eye contact, watches him closely. He doesn’t drink from it, not yet, just rotates it in his hand as he considers his next words, because this is hardly an icebreaker despite Harkness’s claim. It’s all there in his voice.
“Surgical strike team, take out the key players,” he says, after a moment. It’s his gut instinct. Shoot first, ask questions later, and for Christ’s sake, worry about the goddamn fallout later when the threat's gone. “We’ll need to gather intel on how the CLF operates. Does it work like a traditional terrorist organization, with cells, or does it operate differently. Where are the weak ( ... )
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"Experience says the CLF is too decentralized for key players to matter for more than a few months," Jack says. "Their MO tends to revise itself every time the seasons change. So far as I can tell, the entire Front is nothing more than a bunch of people with a lot of anger, waiting until any damn opportunist to comes and gives them something to fight against. It's risen at least three times, never with quite the same ideals." He takes a drink of his liquor. "...kinda makes you want to give them a puppet government, doesn't it?"
OH JACK HARKNESS NO
"But, hey, even a few quiet weeks might be something to aim for, so long as the population stays active. That's one thing we can say for the CLF - it's giving the wanderers a reason to organize. When the Barnams come-" and there's no if on that, "-I doubt we're going to have a grace period." He knocks the scotch glass against his knee. "As for the Barnams? They're not just ( ... )
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He suspects it’d be a bad idea to even half-jokingly suggest getting rid of all the archangels and rakshasa (bless you, did you get a piece of beef stuck in your windpipe?), so he keeps his mouth shut until Harkness is done. His understanding of Callings is minimal at best, but he's gotten the impression it’s one of those unavoidable things to being an angel or a demon. Biological imperative, psychological imperative, it's all the same, kinda like how all Goa’uld seem destined to become power-hungry, melodramatic bad guys with a propensity for flashy clothes and insubstantial threats. There’s just no substance. (And all right, all right, maybe they've got a little bit of substance. It’s not so much that they’re all bark and no bite; they just spend so much time yapping that they never get around to fully carrying out their evil plans of universal domination ( ... )
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Which is actually something of a common problem in Torchwood and the SGC/SCRT both, Jack suspects. Yeah, eventually the brilliant folks will come up with something to pull everyone's asses out of the fire. The trick, and it takes a fair amount of talent, is to keep them all from roasting while they work it out.
"And you're going to love this. The last time anyone saw that First Angel, he was heading for a monastery in a remote part of Tibet. Even trying to get ahold of him to sign the damn thing took, what was it, four months?" He considers that. "And that was with archangels looking for him. To the best of my knowledge, there is no archangel comman structure here any more ( ... )
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Though, as bad as this situation is, if there’s one saving grace about the entire business, it’s the fact that he doesn’t have to deal with anymore snakes. (And, given any luck, no snakes will pop on through the Rift.
… right. Luck. Haha.)
He makes a face. “… all right. Plan B,” he says. Oh right. “What’s Plan B?”
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“Oh, Instagur’s my middle name,” he says. It really isn’t, and he has no idea what the hell it means, but he’s down with it. So far. The ball's in his court, and it's time to play.
“So you want me to make you a team,” he says, wetting his throat a little. “Any recommendations?”
He hasn’t been here for too long and nobody’s really caught his eye yet. Then again, he doesn’t exactly “get around,” per se, and if Harkness knows anyone out there … well, though he'd prefer to make his own team from scratch, a place to start wouldn't be unwelcome.
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And oh, wouldn't he like to be a fly on the wall of that meeting.
"She's been organizing the civilian response efforts. And what can I say? She makes friends."
Sure, this is all a bit more cobbled-together than most people would like, but that's practically the definition of Torchwood and its tactics. Empty out the odds and ends drawer, and if you can't save the world with that?
...well, you're screwed.
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He’s asking because he’s noticed more than a few cops around the area who’ve dropped into the city with nothing to do, all of them cooling their heels on the sidewalk or walking the beat at random. Though it’s better than nothing, it’s not exactly very efficient, and some organization on that end might do the community a world of wonder.
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