un: Dankovsky | video

[thantagonist]

[Daniil posts live from a café near the museum. He has no patience for typing responses, and his own visage should explain why. His nose has recently been broken and reset. He looks exhausted and irritated, but he has a duty.]

I need a couple people to come down to the café near that absurd museum with the sewn up fruit exhibits. Bring a stretcher, we have a patient who could use some more urgent treatment.

[From somewhere offscreen, a voice that is distinctly not Daniil’s states:] This Etrayan shot me in an attempt to get information I did not possess. I would appreciate his removal from my presence.

Now- That’s not true at all. That is not the reason you were stopped. [Daniil now regrets making a video, but what’s done is done. ]

Comments

[levelshift]

[Someone needs to shoot Percival and make sure Daniil has adult supervision.]

Damn, what an arrogant answer. Did you plan to do this or was it a spur of the moment thing?

[thantagonist]

[Yeah, but who will do all that? ]

Can a man not make a plan on the spur of the moment? I’m adaptable. What I had planned for him to just answer my questions. The rest was his own making.

[levelshift]

[Someone with a lot of time on their hands.]

Волка ноги кормят. Is that how that goes?

(("A wolf is fed by his legs." Basically to get anything done, you have to get up and do it.))

[thantagonist]

Indeed it is! Are you fluent? How long have you been holding out on me? [Ordinarily, an aphorism might annoy him. But this is like an oasis in the middle of a desert, if the desert were also full of irritating slack-jawed critics.]

The work is no wolf, it’s not going anywhere. [He offers back in native Russian. It means “Don’t put off until tomorrow what can be done today,” though the more modern read is “Well shit, the work is a wolf, so avoid it.” But Dankovsky has never been a slacker.] Unpleasant as this all was, it has moved one of our enemy’s pieces into our pocket. This entire ordeal is unpleasant, and I have no intention to endure it longer than physically necessary.

[levelshift]

[Wow, that's way more positivity than he was expecting. It's a big much, but he figures he may as well just keep responding in Russian.]

I learned a bunch of languages at school, including Russian. [He sighs, a little reluctant to offer more of an explanation.] I'm technically the top student in the city, so my education was the best they could offer. Most of Etraya speaks English or Japanese though, so it's just easier using one of them.

[He's kind of lazy.]

Next time, leave the interrogations to the professionals. We've got at least one here wandering around.

[thantagonist]

I’ve noticed this. It’s strange, I wonder why. Perhaps it is just clerical: our Bubble City might primarily receive people from those regions. I may merely be an outlier. I’ve been learning English, a slightly larger percentage of my contacts speak it and it is a closer relative to the languages I already speak.

I figure it’s a good safeguard if my earpiece is broken or confiscated.

[He’s getting used to Accelerator’s sass, so he lets this one roll over him.]

Perhaps next time, the professional will beat me to the suspect. I certainly took my time, you know.

[levelshift]

Everyone could stand to know a second language or two. Limiting yourself, especially when we have all this fucking free time in between missions, is just stupid.

[Daniil is right. If they're ever in a situation where they can't rely on translation software it would be difficult, and some people would be screwed.]

I'll be sure to pass that criticism along to him. Where the hell did you get a gun, anyways? Doctors don't usually carry those on themselves.

[thantagonist]

Correction, foolish doctors don’t. There’s a gunsmith amongst our number in Etraya.

I usually do carry a gun, though my normal one is a little two shot Debutante. But I find it necessary, especially when traveling. I tend to carry medicaments and the trains are absolutely crime-ridden. The streets can also be dangerous at night, and my fist fighting days are well and truly behind me.

[Daniil genuinely seems pleased with himself now. ]

I really prefer to threaten only, if I must.

[levelshift]

[At least Daniil has experience using a gun. That part is reassuring. Nothing more dangerous than an asshole with a weapon he doesn't know how to use.

This is also a good reminder that Daniil comes from an age where getting mugged on a train is a normal thing.]

Obviously threats didn't work, huh? I can't picture you fist fighting anyone, though. [No offense.]

[thantagonist]

[This time in his life is slightly at odds with his personality now and embrasses him somewhat, so he glosses it over.] Well, my friends might tell the story better. They might remember it better, too. But we used to get in bar fights.

I still graduated top of my class, somehow. [Somehow was a ton of work.]

My father was a military man, and he envisioned the same for me. I think I told you this? These days my hands are much too precious to break in something as petty as a fight.

[levelshift]

Hard to picture you being the partier type. [Even if they're talking 1920s Russian partying and not the modern kind it's still funny trying to picture scrawny Daniil picking drunken fights.]

Yeah, you mentioned that. How come you didn't follow in his footsteps?

[thantagonist]

It’s paved with death. I abhor death. It’s why I’m a doctor, and why I ultimately strive to defeat death itself.

[You can call Daniil a lot of things, but he’s very ambitious in the way only a turn of the century man can be, perhaps.]

[levelshift]

.....

[Accelerator is silent for a few moments, before speaking up.]

You sound like my doctor from back home. He's the kind of person who'll tell you that no matter what happens - whether all your bones have been broken or your skin's been ripped off or your organs have been crushed - as long as you come to him still alive he'll save you.

[It's weirdly reassuring.]

[thantagonist]

He sounds incredibly talented. Fascinating. You wouldn’t know where to access his notes, now would you?

[Daniil’s singular interest has been activated.]

Have those things happened to you, by the way?

[levelshift]

Those would be proprietary to my city. There's a lot of red tape you'd have to go through to get access to them.

[Red tape he could get through with his position as the head of the city, no doubt.]

My skull shattered when I was shot, that's about it. He isn't a neurosurgeon so he didn't personally operate on me, but he oversaw the procedure and I had appointments with him when I was recovering.

[He is in fact, one of the 3 good adults in Accelerator's life back home.]

[thantagonist]

Is that so? Well, maybe someday.

I’m hardly a surgeon either. I had one in the place I was before this. A truly excellent surgeon. He was this enormous man, by all counts an imposing fellow with a murderous expression… but with incredibly skilled hands. They called him the ripper. There was some rumor that he was a serial killer, but then again, there was a rumor I was a vampire. People are idiots. But I’ve never even seen steadier hands in my entire life. An incredible person to have at one’s side, even if he did never graduate medical school.

[levelshift]

Why didn't he?

[thantagonist]

He joined the army. By choice or conscript, I don’t rightly know. I never asked, and he never told me.

[levelshift]

Well, if he ever shows up here it sounds like he'd be fucking useful.

[thantagonist]

It almost feels cruel to wish it on him, but we’ve been through worse together.

[He sighs, then huffs.]

Actually, I’m not sure which I prefer. No, wait, yes. This situation is more pleasant, if you can believe it.

[levelshift]

I can't. [He is extremely curious now.] What the hell do you mean?

[thantagonist]

Oh, just the situation I was in before was much, much worse. Trying to keep my head above water while a plague decimates a backwater town amidst riot and infection and a supply train that hasn’t visited in weeks. A place with no real hospital. Deaths in the thousands every day. Nowhere to dispose of corpses. Monsters crawl out of the earth. Then the Inquisition comes, then the military.

[His ears ring and it feels like his mind is trying to turn inside out trying to recall it.]

The violence here is ultimately avoidable and survivable. Hiding from a plague is impossible.

[levelshift]

I see. [He does, he really does!] I think people would be more scared of the fucking enforcers, and the tower since that violence is more immediate and upfront for them. But epidemics are way more fucking insidious.