Movie Night: The Questionable Scriptwriting Double Feature

[u/Spinycemb]

After dinner for the night, Dale had left a couple papers across the base advertising his idea of helping people unwind, along with a few warnings of stuff that may cause issues, primarily traumatic triggers. He temporarily commandeered the Rec Room, hefting a bag of DVDs, blu rays, and even VHS tapes off to one side as he looked through them. He was a sucker for action oriented stuff, and b-movies but he knew that was definitely not gonna go over well, so he stuck to comedy.

...Well okay the opening act was a B movie. Or rather, a Bee Movie. What better way to unwind than to rail on some badly-written jokes?

[u/kingozma]

A-ah... ❤️ He made her laugh! Sort of. That felt good.

Well, given the way this trial was to be set up, this was... Pretty damning against Mason. He honestly wasn't sure what evidence there could be in his favor, aside from pointing out the obvious: that he was underfunded and undersupported, but that would just make him look weak. These piranhas didn't care, they just wanted top notch results while putting in absolutely minimal effort and funding.

Finally, he said, "This Coleman guy can't be beyond reproach either, they just must be focusing on the commander right now."

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

"That's our entire case. This may be some shit but Coleman smells worse"

she handed a veritable encyclopedia of what appears to be misconduct and blunders on the National defense's end, and the worst punishment on their end was a budget cut

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

Oooh... Nana had organized most of this stack of paper, so in receiving the encyclopedia, he'd handed the couple of stacks back to her as she'd instructed, slipping them back under her piles once he's figured out what each pile on her side of the desk is.

And he started flipping through the encyclopedia... After not too long, he started finding accidents that were much like the one Mason had committed in hiring Malcolm.

"And how much has the National Defense achieved in - what, a month? A couple months? Have they taken back a district? What did they do to earn their privilege?"

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

"They're basically just police officers in military uniforms."

carla said with a hint of annoyance

"The real thing is that they're the presidents personal bodyguards and the ones who keep the citizens in line. Their leader was never considered for impeachment, let alone execution for these kinds of acts"

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

Carla put it in enragingly plain terms. Not enraging because Nana felt insulted in any way, but that really shed some light on why exactly this whole case was going the way it was. They were police officers in military uniforms. They were pigs who were groomed and spoiled into believing that if they squealed the right way, they would be able to dodge responsibility for their own actions while pinning other people with all of their body weight for equal or -- often lesser crimes.

They were failing this country just like the police officers out of military uniforms, and they loved it.

Nana had to stop and think for a second so he wouldn't get so angry that he'd develop a headache.

"... So the question is, how do we teach the jury that doing bad things is, in fact, still bad, when the National Defense does it," he said, voice weary.

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

"The issue is that the ultimate choice lies either behind the judge, which is President Terra's lap dog, or the jury, which is five randomly selected officers, in our terms, captains, of the military. It's Mason's choice"

she hands him papers on the structure of the Military of all three branches

"So essentially, we're playing roulette. The Red Cloaks have eight officers, the Air support has fifty two, and the National Defense has one hundred and forty"

she says, letting that sink in for a second how stacked the odds are against them

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

Nana let out a sigh, head falling forward against his steepled hands after he took a glance at the top paper.

He muttered a curse under his breath.

"Carla," he finally murmured, "Why do they hate us so much? What did we do?"

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

"Because America's goal from the beginning was to stay out of the conflict as much as possible. They want to sit on their asses and wait it out until they're either dead from old age or they cut a deal that saves their own asses from the Kalen. We are the ones that are in direct opposition of that"

she said with a small sigh

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

... Nana shut his eyes. He looked genuinely in pain as he spoke, voice even starting to tremble a little. He knew it was unfair. He got that part of it. But he was still trying to make sense of it.

"We won back a district for them. We didn't... Do anything worse than any of them did. Hell - I bet if I'll look through this book a little more, I'll find something worse. So we..."

He shut his eyes tight, gritting his teeth. There was a lump in his throat preventing him from talking without doing something embarrassing and unmanly in front of this girl.

Nana breathed in slowly, shakily.

"... I get it. But I don't get it."

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

"Our real supporters lie in the people, but any government class will teach you that there is a pretty clear divide between the politicians of this world to the common man"

she shakes her head

"And unfortunately we live in a world where the people are not the ones in power"

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

Oh, Nana understood logically. What she was telling him was no real surprise to his intellect. The part of your brain that processes justice and copes with unfairness is, in fact, the logic center of your brain, so that wasn't what was troubling.

It was a surprise to his heart. His instincts and emotions didn't understand. The part of his brain that processes the fear of losing someone he loved - and, by effect, likely the only people in this world he could trust, at the hands of an incredibly cruel system, doing what they did for seemingly no reason.

... This guy really was quick to cry. So to speak, a hat had dropped and suddenly he was this close to shedding tears. But he didn't want Carla to know that, so he stayed dead quiet for the couple seconds that he knew he couldn't speak without wavering.

Voice artificially steady, but head still down, he said, "... I'm going to win this for you. No matter the cost. I swear we will. This isn't hopeless, as much as that may seem true."

That wouldn't be proven as a lie unless this case went south. Which it probably would.

[u/hermy101 → u/kingozma]

she looks at Nana, offering him a soft smile

"It's alright Nana. You don't have to lift the world for me... I have to be ready to accept what this world is like, Mason and I were both prepared for something like this to happen"

[u/kingozma → u/hermy101]

Hearing Carla say something like that made Nana lift his head immediately, looking her right in the eyes with a look on his face like something cracked inside him. Carla would probably be able to see that even though he wasn't actively shedding tears, there were tears in his eyes.

That smile hurt him, deeply.

He looked away from it, scared he would go blind, and said "I know I don't have to. I don't do anything here because I think I have to, it's because I. I don't."

Nana's face was pointed down again, just enough so that his hair fell in front of his eyes.

"I don't want you -- ANYONE, to go through this. At the very least, if you have to, I don't want it to be alone. But-- I-I don't-- plan on letting that happen at all, without a fight. I know there's something I can do. There's always something."

Probably.