Border, KS

Monday morning came and Walter could have sworn that he was experiencing deja vu. He had come in to the Border, P.D. with Morgan and immediately headed for the interview rooms. The rebuilt interview rooms, he thought to himself with a sigh as he walked along. “So we’ll start…uh…deicide practice this week?” He asked quietly, as he got a file and the two of them went through turnkey in to the holding area.

“Yeah. We need a decent space, and I want to let you recover.” Morgan offered. “No sense in breaking you further. We want to train, not break.” She offered with a prim, angelic little smile.

“I might surprise you.” Walter offered, to defend his pride more than out of any real conviction. “I may be old, but I’ve got hops.” He finished by literally hopping. “I think it means the ability to hop, but I could be wrong.”

“First,” Morgan said as they made their way back to the secured interview room and Walter put hi hand on the door in front of her. “Having hops doesn’t mean possessing the ability to hop. Second, I’m older than you, if you recall. And finally…we’ll see.” She finished with a Sphinx-like smile as she paused outside the door. “Do you still want me to come in?”

Walter nodded. “I need the back up in case he goes crazy as well. And maybe the sight of you will put him in the right mind.” Morgan smirked at that, although at what specific part Walter didn’t know and couldn’t tell. A corner of her mouth stayed quirked up as she spoke.

“He shouldn’t be able to get through the doors. After last time, Tania and I made sure they had some…protection.” She explained. “I won’t use the m-word, but it’s…”

“The m-word.” Walter said with a sigh, as he turned the knob on the door. It didn’t creak—it was too new to creak. “You know, one of the old anarchist mottoes was ‘No Gods, no masters’. I’m beginning to have great sympathy for that idea.” He complained, waving his hands. “Let’s do this.” He said, opening the door.

The man who Tennyson had called the Earl was seated behind the desk, smirking smugly. That only intensified Walter’s deja vu as he entered and set a tape recorder on a side table. After Tennyson had plowed through a table on his way out, they had started putting more sensitive recorders out of the way of charging fairy tales. “What makes you think I’ll stay here any longer than my compatriot was? What makes you think I won’t carve my way out just as bloody?”

Walter took his time and sat down carefully in the seat across from the man. He was handsome, in a ‘chiseled arrogance’ kind of way. He had dark red hair that had originally been in a ponytail, and he was one of those guys that somehow made even the khaki jail jumpsuit look like a tailored suit. He seemed specifically designed to make Walter dislike him.

“We’ve taken certain precautions since the last time you were here.” Walter explained as he set out a pad of paper in front of him, and pulled out his pen. “You people don’t much like the small talk, do you? In books you’re all elegant and crap, but now you’re just ‘Grr, I’m threatening.’” Walter leaned back in the chair. “I have to tell you, champ, it’s getting pretty old. You’re like the third one to threaten me now, and you are by far the least impressive.”

The Earl stared at Walter, as if he was stunned by that. As if to cover, his eyes flitted over to Morgan for a moment and considered her. “If this is a conjugal visit then I suppose you could have done worse, although she takes a bit after Winter. But if you want to give us a little bit of privacy?” He pronounced privacy like he was English.

Morgan’s lips moved, and to someone who didn’t know her particular well it would probably have looked like an impish grin. But Walter saw teeth in that smile. “Oh Lord Aodhan, you always were such a charmer. It’s why I always wanted to pummel you to death with a garden spade, I suspect. I’m here as a…native guide, shall we say; they haven’t minted enough gold since the first mortal drew breath, or since the first and oldest of us were first formed, for me to take a ticket to that ride.”

If the Earl had looked shocked at Walter’s insolence, he was positively floored at Morgan’s. The shock radiating off of him was a palpable thing, the silence in the room charged with the electricity of disbelief. It was only broken by the intermittent hum of the air conditioning, and the almost subsonic sound of the camera.

“Who in the hell do you think you are to talk to me like that?” The Earl demanded, positively boiling with anger. He actually flushed with rage. “You obviously know who I am—do you think you can speak to me and when I am free, and my master is on his throne, that you will not be punished? What are you, some half-blooded by-blow who remembers 1910 and thinks she is important to these mortal apes?” He sputtered, fighting for coherence through his injured pride.

“Well…” Morgan said simply, crossing her legs and kicking the top one with an ease and casualness that Walter knew wasn’t faked. “I suspect that if your master wins I will be punished. And I suppose that I am in fact some half-blooded by-blow who remembers 1910 and thinks she is important. But even if I was only what you said, that would be more than enough to know that if you put nine centuries of life on a horse’s ass you don’t get a powerful lord—all you get is a very weathered horse’s ass.” Her voice was even, casual and calm; but there was more than teeth in her smile now. It held razors and darkness, and goading superiority.

The room regained that shocked silence until she kicked her leg airily one last time, and it was apparently too much for the Earl to bear. He let out gargled roar of anger, and then the room exploded into motion.

Whatever it was that Tania had done it kept the handcuffs together, but it didn’t keep them bolted to the table in front of him. He ripped off the hook in a distressing blur the metal shrieking as it gave and pinging off of the ceiling of all places. The Earl started to leap over the table, presumably on his way to the door, and he was so fast that he made Ninja Grandpa look slow. Walter’s brain barely had time to register the movement before he knew he could never catch the man.

The Earl might as well have been moving at the speed of light for as fast as he was going—but Morgan was breaking galactic speed records. In a blink she went from all but reclining to standing, her hand in a claw-like and vise-like grip around the Earl’s neck. His legs went out from under him like a cartoon as they kept going, but the main of his body was stopped by his neck. Morgan pivoted effortlessly from holding the Earl—a man who was at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than her—to effortlessly slamming him in to the table. Or more accurately through the table, driving down with a powerful pivot of her hips that blew out all four legs of the table. The Earl exploded on to the ground in her control with a thunder like crack, and she ended the move by dropping her knee on to his neck and sitting there casually.

“Blight…” the Earl croaked breathlessly, wracked with pain. “You…can’t be…”

Morgan, meanwhile, looked back over her shoulder to Walter and raised a single dark brow with an amused smile. “So,” she said, “still think you might surprise me?”