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[The ID reads Clark Kent, as always. Not the right time to try fooling the network yet.]

Sadly, Captain Holiday was put under intensive care not long before I ended up here so I never got to talk to him. But I was hoping some of you might have gotten a chance to contact him before that. If you have, I'd appreciate if you could tell me about your conversations with him.

You don't have to tell me what the conversation was about, I understand a lot of them were confidential. [That word, he hates it. Lois might see it as a sign that she's pulling the right strings but Clark only sees it as a wall he cannot punch or fly over.]

It's really him I'm interested on. If you noticed anything weird in how he behaved, perhaps, or if he was acting completely normal.

[He pauses for a second. And then:]

I'd also be interested in talking with people who've been able to take a look at the Porter, or been in contact with it. I understand it's a privilege to be allowed near it?

Thank you.

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[ she takes out her communicator, running through a few quick searches. ]

The man's own words. He certainly implied that they worked together, until they didn't, and it could easily have been nothing more than a friendship that ended on very bad terms. But the way he turned defensive when I asked for elaboration, I think there may have been more than that.

[ and she places her communicator on the table, this conversation playing over the speakerphone.

she waits until it's finished before continuing. ]

In September, he mentioned a problem of spies, by way of explaining his absence. I believe he made reference to suspicions of Soviet infiltration at the same time as this broadcast. [ she points to her communicator again, to clarify which broadcast she means. ]

[ He feels bad, anyway. Probably because he's kind of... a disaster. ]

We were the chess pieces, yeah. It was never specific who she was playing against -- or if it was anyone -- for all we knew, she was playing it against herself for the fun of it.

I don't know if she ever planned on telling us, but there was... she sent us places too. Sometimes, it's like she had a goal in mind, and other times it was just that she wanted to see how we'd mess things up.

[Wait hold on what]

When you say she sent you to places do you meant she sent you to other cities? Like the porters?

[Clark listens the conversation intently while pursing his lips. He keeps his trusty recorder on his pocket so he'll have a chance to listen to it over and over if he has to, but so far what he's getting from it is that Kanaya is probably right. Maybe they weren't in a relationship, but there's a lot of bitterness in his words.]

You might be onto something, but speculating over their relationship before they had a falling out it's not going to help us much. Dr Holt confirmed he had had a crisis in September, he couldn't say much about it... but the timeline fits.

Has anyone looked into this? If Narga is really what Holiday believed him to be it'd have to show sooner or later. [He'd know, the man sounds exactly like a certain bald alienphobic megalomaniac.]

No. [ That one 'no' is a lot more...emphatic than one would suspect. It's the kind of word that says, very clearly: "I've seen some shit." ]

Alternate universes. Of the City. Heropa was just the last place we were sent to.

[SOMEONE COULD HAVE MENTIONED THAT.]

How often did she do something like that? And you implied sometimes she actually wanted to get something out of it, what was it? Information?

I think it was... every few months? Only near the end, when Vulcanus was... they were there, whenever we showed up. Anyway, she was trying to stop them. She sent us once to a world where everything was water, and once to a place where...

Well, if you think this is bad, you have no idea. Imports were...property in that place.2

Pleasant trips all around, it seems. And it hasn't happened since we got here, has it? At least I haven't heard anyone mention anything like that before, and I think people would remember to warn about something like that.

Did she give you missions or things to do in these trips?

Not since showing up here, no. I think that's a sign that there's something wrong, or different. Then again, she only started doing that in the last year, before we came here. There was a purpose to it.

[ There was a pause. ] She didn't give us...missions exactly. It was clear we had to do something, though. Sometimes it was easier to figure out rather than others. The last one, where we were property... we had to find her sister.

Her sister. That's a common theme as well, I wonder if we'll be seeing sings of them any time soon.

Did you find her?

Shit, I hope we don't. If we see Clotho, then that means that Atropos is far behind and...

[ Not thinking about that. She had, after all, destroyed the world. ] Everyone said they found Clotho, yeah. Eventually they got home. I had been... someone killed me, so I found myself home early.

I wouldn't jump too quickly to the assumption that Holiday was actually accusing the man of being involved with the Hornets. [ she was afraid of that one coming up. kate jumped to the same conclusion, but kate is notorious for wildly jumping to conclusions. the caliber of the past examples has largely discredited her as a source to kanaya, unless she can produce solid information. ] He says he wouldn't put it past him, certainly, but bear in mind that at this point so little was known about the Hornets that they were considered more a rumor than a threat at the time.

Holiday didn't mince words, if he truly suspected it, he would have said it in more certain terms.

[ she picks up the communicator again, scrolling along as she looks for something specific. once she finds it, she leaves it playing until holiday mentions his lack of evidence. that, on its own, seemed enough evidence to kanaya of a very strong contrast to his accusation of narga. ]

Narga was actually there, at the first swear-in. He'd snuck in and tried to convince some of us to go against registration, with some promise that he'd assist us with support. I didn't speak with him personally, but he struck me as a rather smarmy character.

As far as I know, no one took up his offer, despite a number of us unsettling.

[He shakes his head.] No, that's not what I meant. The man could have helped the Hornets, maybe, but we don't have any proof of it so it'd purely be speculation. It fits with what we know but we've got nothing solid.

I meant that he's a- how did he put it? A 'Shifty snakes in the grass'. I actually talked to some people about Narga, a friend [Karen] suggested his offer was worth looking up so I've been trying to contact him. Sadly he's been on vacation...

[The second conversation also gets recorded. He really has to contact Narga as soon as possible, if only so he can draw his own conclusions.]

Why did you think he was 'swarmy'? Something specific you could point out?

Could you tell me about that? About Clotho and Atropos. I know the latter appeared as the City got destroyed... at least that's what I was told.

But I'd like to know your version of what happened.

[ she's noted the tape recorder, of course. it's a smart move, this is something that should be on record. but it also means she needs to be very clearly where the distinction lies between what she knows and what she thinks.

narga is an especially important case of the latter. ]

As I said, I hadn't spoken with him myself, I'd only seen the way he spoke with others. But the fact that he avoided me and others who registered at that time seemed telling.

Similarly telling are the absence of any attempts on his end to contact imPorts further. The impression I came away with, stronger in retrospect now than it was at the time, is that his concern didn't lie so much in helping imPorts as undermining the government's initial reception.

At best, he probably saw us as nothing better than ammunition to fuel his own grudge. Possibly against the government as a whole, but perhaps against Holiday in particular. I don't know the man's history of motivations well enough to distinguish between the two.

[ but, even on record, this doesn't have to be strictly professional. it's always interesting to see how import social circles fit together, especially if someone clark knows has been here since the beginning. and so, she changes course with a question. ] Who was the friend, if you don't mind my asking?

Edited 2015-01-05 22:34 (UTC)

Of when the world ended? Shit.

[ There's a pause, before there's something that sounds like what an ice cream headache would sound like, and then the line's encrypted. It's not that he doesn't trust other people, but... Mitch doesn't like revealing weakness.

But he can trust superman, right? ]

You ever watch a city that you love fall apart around you? It's... it's not pretty. It started with the sun, it went red. [ A pause. ] After that, things cascaded bit by bit. The City started to collapse around us, or really, collapse up around us. Starting with the highest skyscrapers, and then bit by bit, everything started to melt up. I didn't think -- well, I didn't think we were going to make it, honestly.

City Hall, most people went to the sewers, but City Hall was built over subway stations, so we went straight down. We tried to keep people calm, and evacuate where we could, but it wasn't...

It wasn't going to be enough. Not up against that.

And then Atropos came. Have people told you a lot about her?

I don't know that anyone's decided to look into it yet. Maybe ask Loki to see if anyone's decided to take his lead?

[He nods, tapping the table with his fingers. He itches to be writing all of this, he's so used to using the written words to commit things to memory he misses it when he can't use it. But he's already recording this, writing things down would be a bit too much.]

Karen, Karen Star. We're from the same world so we've crossed paths before, and we talked about him in that Charity Ceremony there was a while ago.

But that's alright, most people's motivation aren't clear even if you do know the person. But it does sound like I should probably have more information on the man before I have a talk with him, do you have any suggestion on where to start asking questions about him?

I think I might have made the so-called trickster god mad.

[Clark swallows.

It's one thing to be told their city was destroyed, to be told they had to be relocated into another world. It's another thing altogether to finally get to know the horror behind it and he tries, he tries his damnest best but his mind can't help but draw certain parallels. 'Not really', he wants to answer. 'But my parents watched the world they loved fall apart around them. Almost entire species did'.]

I can't imagine what something like that must have been like. I'd say I'm sorry but I know that wouldn't solve a thing, so I'll say I'm sorry for making you recall it. You can stop whenever you want.

But no, they haven't. It's not a pleasant thing to talk about after all.

[ Joke's on you, Clark. He already knows. :') ]

It's... alright. It wasn't easy, but... you know, we can't just ignore the ugly realities. My job focuses a lot on that, more often than not. I've gotten used to doing that kind of thing when needed. How else can we prevent it in the future?

[ And really, when every sleeping moment is met with worse, this is nothing. There's a pause. ]

Anyway, after some time, Atropos came. She...swallowed -- I think -- the world. Took it into her, and we were in her... a part of her. It wasn't normal there. You could breathe, but it was obviously still a vacuum. It wasn't normal, and one step could find you flying, and then you could be falling in the next. Lachesis eventually called to us. Atropos saved her too, so I guess sisterly love still applies.

Anyway, once we found her, she... took us away? To here? It was never very clear exactly what happened.

I know Karen, she's a friend. [ she's actually going to help her hunt for an apartment tomorrow, a day out she had to delay for this meeting. ] I suppose it's possible that she might have come away with a different impression of him, as I believe he actually bothered speaking to her.

In honesty, I registered at the time largely out of convenience. We came from a bad situation, and it seemed the only responsible option to take care of ourselves and those in our care. This is why, if he was offering a legitimate alternative, I think it was rather negligent of him to ignore all but the undecided. [ in other words, she just took him ignoring her way too personally. ]

If you want to know more, then it might be best to look to the others he actually spoke to. Unsettled imPorts who have been here since January should be a safe bet, but there will be some who have since registered that may be included as well.

Really? It is a small world after all. [The affirmation makes her win some points in Clark's book, because Karen is usually a pretty good judge of character. Way better than he is most of the time, since he has a tendency to disregard first (and second, and third) impressions. He also wonders if she's told Kanaya The Secret... but not enough to go ask her. Powergirl did always do her own thing, and he has to keep reminding himself to stop treating her like he treats Kara.]

Maybe the man believed those who'd registered wouldn't change their mind. Or if we go with Holiday's theory of what he actually wants, maybe it hurt the government more if people never registered, so people who already had didn't interest him. I'll try to find out if I ever get to talk to him.

[He gives her a nod and a smile.] This has been really helpful.

What did he do now?

[She doesn't think twice about how she frames that. Loki clearly did something wrong. He's Loki. Plus, Clark seems perfectly nice! And helpful! And extremely sharp to boot.]

[It makes Clark laugh, and he does so freely since she cannot see him laughing. Ah, friendship.]

I suggested he share information, just like he told me to do. I think he's taken it as an insinuation that he wouldn't, or hasn't.

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