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“What kind of a name is… Daveed?”
“Ooh, close. Only my mother calls me that.” You probably shouldn’t be cracking jokes or wearing such a shit-eating grin, given the circumstances you’ve found yourself in. The alien in front of you certainly doesn’t react any, except you think maybe her eyes narrow behind her obnoxious red glasses.
“What is a mother?” she asks, sounding distinctly disgusted.
You bark a laugh, which then devolves into a full laughing fit, and she’s still glaring at you, or at least, you think she is. “Oh my… You’re actually serious, aren’t you? What, you spent all this time on Earth and you didn’t observe the local fauna?”
“Humans disgust me,” she spits.
You laugh again. “Humans ain’t the only species with mothers, darlin’.”
She’s not sharp enough to stop a reaction to that, and her face scrunches up with what you’re guessing is a mix of confusion and disapproval. “Tell me this,” she starts, and she takes a step to stand behind you. You crane your neck to try to get eyes on her again, but given you’re currently tied to a chair, there’s only so much you can do. “How does an idiot monkey like you plan a revolution?”
“Oh, is that what you’re charging me with?” you say casually. Nonplussed.
Evidently, your cool bothers her, because she leans over you to slam her hands against the table in front of you. It’s so stereotypically Bad Cop that you struggle to bite back another laugh, making a mental note to incorporate this into a future SBaHJ film.
“Is this a joke to you?” she yells.
“Uh, yeah,” you reply, unbothered. “Your whole fucking invasion seems like a huge joke to me.”
To her credit, she just grunts at that and pulls away rather than yelling again. She walks a circle around you, and you think you can see the gears in her brain turning as she tries to re-calculate a new interrogation strategy.
As much as you want to say something cocky, because frankly, pissing her off is pretty fucking funny, you know this is the absolute last situation you wanna get your motor mouth running in. The more you say, the more information they can glean from it, and you’re not about to risk everything like that just to bug some trollcop.
Finally, she seems to settle on her new strategy, because she plops her ass down on the table in front of you. Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration—she leans on the table, but you’re certainly staring straight at her ass.
“So,” she starts, her tone no longer laced with venom. You do not bother to drag your eyes up to her face, thus entertaining the notion that she might actually talk to you like a real person. “You know that refusing to talk isn’t going to prevent your execution, right? The Empress has deemed you guilty, and that means you’re going to be made an example of. Do you want to know what happened to the last martyr in troll society?”
“Not really.”
“He was strung up in chains—red hot iron shackles around his wrists. And then he was shot with an arrow. Not somewhere merciful, either. Just under the ribs. He was left there to cook for days in the Alternian sun. Historians can’t seem to decide whether he bled out or finally died from exposure.”
You stare blankly at her, only to realize a second later that this would be more impressive if you weren’t wearing your shades. “Okay,” you finally say, tone completely neutral.
“I used to be quite a fan of his back in the day, you know,” she says, which does successfully pique your curiosity. She must sense somehow that she has your attention, because she grins. (Wait, when the fuck did you start looking at her face?) “Oh yes. I thought his ideas made so much sense. Why should lowbloods be punished more severely for the same crimes as a highblood? That isn’t just. It’s why I became a legislacerator—”
“It’s why you became a what?”
“—in the first place,” she continues as if she didn’t hear your interruption, or as if you didn’t interrupt her at all. “I thought I could be the great equalizer. Justice herself. I thought I could be the one who would weigh the fates of highbloods and lowbloods without tipping the scale because of something as silly as caste.”
She pauses, and it’s clear she intends for you to ask what changed her mind. You just stare at her, clenching your jaw just enough that she can’t see that you’re clenching your jaw. When you don’t take the bait, she continues anyway, “Of course, eventually, I realized how pointless it was. I can’t be Justice. The Empress is Justice.”
You can’t help but roll your eyes, and now, at least, you’re grateful that they didn’t take your shades. “And what a fair lady she is,” you deadpan.
The troll grins at you like you’ve said something very amusing, and though you don’t let it show to her, your heart leaps in your chest. What? What did you say that’s got her looking at you like that?
Her voice is saccharine when she says, “My, my, Daveed. You would speak so callously about your queen?”
You grit your teeth to keep yourself from spitting that she’s not your queen. She seems to read it in your face or your body language or something anyway, because her grin grows wider and she says, “Oh, did that bother you? You’re planning your silly revolution and you can’t even bring yourself to acknowledge what you’re revolting against? That’s how rebellions die, you know.”
“The fact that you know that says more about you than it does about me,” you say, trying to keep your voice calm and neutral, and more importantly trying to throw her off you for a minute.
Her grin does falter for a moment, and then settles into something tighter. Sharper. You stare at her mouth as she says, “You don’t know anything about me.”
You look her up and down, seeking any vulnerabilities you can use. She stands like someone who believes themself to be extremely high and mighty. She clearly thinks a lot of herself. You lick your lips and say, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
She laughs. Cackle might be the more appropriate verb. She throws her head back and fills the whole room with it. Admittedly, it’s a pretty small room, but you still wince. There’s a dangerous quality to her grin when she looks back at you that wasn’t there even when she thought she was successfully interrogating you only a moment ago. “They call me Redglare.”
“Bullshit. You’re making that up based on your stupid ass glasses.”
“I’m not,” she says, not even sounding defensive. She’s being casual in the same way you’ve been casual for so much of this conversation. After a moment, she adds, a little pensive, “Though I suppose it is based on my glasses. Which are rad, by the way.”
You can’t help it. Hearing her use the word rad when she’s been all cop-with-a-record on you this whole time makes a laugh burst from your chest. “Okay, Redglare,” you say. “Most people call me Dave. Or D.”
“D,” she says, somehow managing to roll the single syllable along her tongue like she’s trying to taste it. “I guess that’s better than Daveed,” she adds, although she doesn’t manage to sound approving. “How did you get here?”
“You swooped down from the sky with your giant ass dragon and snatched me up. I can’t believe you’ve already forgotten.” You say it like a scorned lover in a soap opera confronting their cheating spouse for forgetting their anniversary. You don’t think she entirely gets the reference, but she clearly finds it amusing. “How did you get here?”
“I swooped down from the sky with my giant ass dragon and snatched you up.”
You snort. “Fair enough. How’d you get the special privilege of coming down to Earth with Her Imperious Condescension? I didn’t get the impression there were a whole lot of trolls left in her precious empire.”
“Her Imperious Condescension. That’s funny,” she says, which doesn’t answer your question, but you’re not gonna get all butthurt about it. It’s not like you’re actually interested in getting to know this woman. You’re just buying some time. “I’m very good at what I do.”
“Which is?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s my turn.” You don’t think you technically established a turn-based system, but you hold your palms up at your sides in conceit to her point anyway. “The Empress hadn’t revealed herself yet when this little revolution started. How did you find out?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, because you’re not that stupid.
She holds her own hands up in conceit, like she’s trying to be your buddy now or something. “Alright. But you did call her Her Imperious Condescension. That’s her title back on Alternia.” She clearly expects you to react for the dramatic pause she takes after that. “So how did you know she was called that?”
“I didn’t. I just thought she was imperious and condescending and wanted to make fun of her.” Rose would probably point out that imperious and condescending basically mean the same thing, but you’re kind of operating on the fly here. Plus, if Rose was here and that was what she chose to act on, you’d have some choice words for her. “What do you do?” you add after a second.
Redglare considers the question for a moment, as if she’s actually going to offer you an answer that isn’t complete bullshit. “I’m not sure there’s an accurate human equivalent,” she eventually says. “I work in law enforcement.”
“No! You’re kidding.” You gasp dramatically, and you would clutch a hand over your chest if you had use of your hands, but you’ll have to make do with the slight tilt of your head instead. “And here I thought this was a fetish. I’m disappointed.”
She laughs at that, the same cackle that fills up the whole room, and your chest swells with pride. You’re not sure you’re the funniest guy on the planet, but Redglare certainly seems to think so. “It might be a fetish. A little bit.”
You waggle your eyebrows at her. “Well, I’d be very interested to hear more about it. I’ve never been with a troll before.”
“Oh, you couldn’t handle it,” she says, with an edge that tells you it’s not entirely teasing. There’s a part of you that kind of wants to challenge that, but you tamp down the urge. Flirting is not as likely to get you any useful information as the little game you were playing. She seems to come to the same conclusion, because she finally moves to sit in the chair on the other side of the table. You don’t think she’s sat down the entire time she’s been in here, so you’re going to take this as a victory. “Who is your moirail?”
“My… what?”
She’s quiet for a second, and you imagine her eyes narrowing at you behind her glasses for a moment. “Your moirail. Your closest ally. Your…” She waves a hand in the air like she’s trying to pluck the right word out of it.
“Best friend?” you offer.
“That works.”
You consider this for a moment. Obviously, Rose is your best friend, but you don’t think you should formally associate yourself with her, just in case. At least, not in this interrogation. “John Crocker,” you eventually say.
“Bullshit. You’ve never met John Crocker.”
“I have!” you defend, and you surprise yourself by how much you actually mean it. “...Once,” you amend, since apparently it’s important to you.
“When and why did you meet John Crocker?”
You think about pointing out again that it’s supposed to be your turn to ask a question, but you decide against it. “I mean, he’s a famous comedian. I went to one of his shows when I was a teenager and I met him backstage after. A friend of mine bought me the ticket. He gave me some advice on comedy.”
“So you’ve met him once and he’s your best friend?”
“It was very good advice.”
She snorts. Then she’s quiet for a second, and you think you can see her trying to calculate what she should say next. No doubt she’s trying to figure out how to ask you more about this encounter with John without seeming too interested, in case you glean too much information about the whole situation with Crockercorp from it. You would almost respect her for how well she’s managing this whole conversation if she didn’t want you dead. Finally, she asks, “So is that advice why your… movies… are… like that?”
You can’t help a laugh at just how disgusted she sounds by the idea. That, at least, is not a sentiment that is entirely unfamiliar to you. You’ve had plenty of interviews where it was obvious the guy on the other side of the desk didn’t approve of your movies and had no idea why they had become such cult classics. You like it that way. Among other reasons, it’s much easier to put subliminal messaging in a movie when every vulture on Metacritic isn’t trying to pick it clean. Also, your movies are just kind of objectively shit.
“I draw my inspiration from a wide variety of sources, and it would be tough to credit any one of them with my movies being like that. I’d like to think it’s pretty much just my own genius, though. Like, I dunno, maybe I know what I’m doing.”
“I haven’t gotten that impression,” she says, but you think it almost sounds teasing.
“Yeah, well, you just haven’t seen the good ones. I’ll make sure to make a top 5 list for you, and maybe we can watch ‘em together.”
“You mean if you weren’t being executed?”
Damn. You were kind of hoping she forgot about that. “Yeah. But maybe you’ll put in a good word for me, because I’m so charming?”
She snorts again. “This is what humans find charming?”
You shrug. “It’s worked for me so far.”
“Yes, well, I suppose I already knew I was smarter than most humans, so I shouldn’t be terribly surprised that they aren’t smart enough to see through your bullshit.”
You raise your eyebrows. “My bullshit? There’s bullshit?”
“Yes. This whole conversation reeks of lies.”
“I’m wounded,” you say, mostly sarcastically, but you are a little bit. “I thought we were having a real moment here. Forging a connection. Maybe we were going to finally cross the boundaries between humanity and trollkind to create the sort of glorious empire your boss lady wants.”
She tilts her head, and her lips curl into an eerie sort of smile. “Glorious empire? So you have been paying attention to her plans.”
Shit. You try not to let any of your panic show on your face as you frantically retrace your steps in this conversation to remember what she already knows you know. Is that new information, or is she just trying to catch you off-guard? Why did you have to be the one they grabbed? You’re not built for interrogations. Rose would be having a field day right now.
“I mean, it just seems like the obvious route?” you say, using all of the self-control you’ve so attentively honed over the years to keep a carefully measured pace that is neither too fast (panicked) or too slow (deliberate). “Here’s an alien trying to invade Earth right under our noses, sneaking in her alien cops. What is a guy supposed to think is going on here?”
She hums, but there’s a distinct shift in her body language now. She thinks she has you, and maybe she fucking does have you. You don’t even know at this point.
“You must be very clever for a human, then,” she says, and you can no longer tell from her tone whether she actually believes that or not. Maybe you could never tell. Maybe she’s been playing you longer than you realized and you were never actually in control of this conversation at all.
“I think maybe you’re just underestimating humankind. Or conflating being clever with being in the wrong place at the wrong time, in which case I am very clever and it’s about to get me killed.”
There’s a loud, metallic clang behind you, and you turn to try to peer over your shoulder, but you can’t get far enough to see what’s happening. Redglare can, though, and when you look back at her, she’s launching herself over the table and over you to get across the room. It’s kind of hot, but you try to scold yourself internally for thinking so.
“How did you get in here?” Redglare yells, clearly alarmed and clearly very pissed off, but whoever her assailant is—and you have a pretty good idea of who her assailant probably is—doesn’t answer her. There are sounds of a fight behind you, and you are so pissed that Rose is the one with the vision omnifold, because you’re sure it must be very cinematic and it would be nice to have on the backburner for a future release.
A moment later, someone must win the fight, because you hear a body thudding against the floor. One tense heartbeat passes, and then you feel your restraints coming loose and you let out a breath. “Took you long enough,” you mutter. You turn around once your wrists are loose to see Rose, who does not look very amused and whose dress is soaked in various colors of blood, but none of them, as far as you can tell, appear to be hers.
“Yes, well, I got caught up in something,” she says, waving a hand dismissively through the air. “Next time you can break yourself out of prison.”
“There’s not going to be a next time,” you grunt, standing from your chair and staring down at the crumpled body on the floor. You don’t see any obvious blood. “She dead?”
“No,” Rose says. “Why? Do you need her for something?”
You shrug. “She was cute.”
Rose gapes at you for a moment, and then pinches the bridge of her nose. “Dave, we do not have time for this,” she says.
“Time for what? I didn’t—”
“Dave.”
You grumble, but you follow Rose hastily out of the building, passing by several more troll bodies which look more dead than unconscious. Once you’re finally outside, you say, “Why did you kill all of these guys but leave her alive? She saw your face. They’re going to associate you with me now.”
Rose pauses for a moment, and then offers you a shrug. “She was very cute.”