[ The mask dropped for a second. Not when they were talking about Krouse himself and his supposed villainy, but when Riz mentioned that one throwaway comment about himself. He doesn't think Krouse is altogether correct in his judgment call - Riz has been thinking a lot about that sort of thing these days; he has more willingness to hold himself accountable than his friends do - but it's telling, isn't it? He's trying to act like the hardened criminal that the world at large probably told him that he is, but his first instinct is still to defend a friend, much in the same way that Riz is asking the questions he is in the hopes that Krouse will say something that makes sense to him, enough to make him reach his hand across this strange gulf between them as though the guy hasn't been lying between his fucking teeth for every conversation they've had.
His relationship with Krouse is different than the one with Fabian, or with Gorgug, where they're just -- they're just guys, really. They fool around, they hang out, they have normal conversations. But every time he talks to Krouse, they get dragged into talking shop by some neurotic inclination of theirs, Riz greedily soaking in every bit of information about Krouse's world he could get, pick-pick-picking away at Krouse's brain for his own perspectives, for what that says about him as a person, for what the guy himself prioritizes. All that talk about limiting collateral, all of the suspicion towards the government, all of that about the good guys not really being good... it all had made sense to Riz's own shifting view of the world these days, but none of it had made sense for Krouse, not if he was the ordinary guy he said he was. Riz had known that the entire time, really. That it was something more personal to him. That it had gone deeper than all of this.
He wishes that Krouse could have come clean with him further down the line instead of the both of them getting shoved into it head-first, but beggars can't be choosers. ]
I'll keep calling you Krouse, if it's all the same to you.
[ And then there's the explanation. Not the full story. Riz can't trust Krouse like that anymore. But a story, certainly, and one he finds all the more compelling for the fact that the guy's trying to keep his deliberately detached facade up, as though he really is talking about some sort of supervillain origin story and not a tale where he was, regardless of whatever happened afterwards, wholly victimized by circumstances. His judgment is clouded; his immediate thought is it's not your fault. He shuts that thought down. ]
If whatever that is gets loose, we'll deal with it, [ he says with the sort of confidence that a scrawny guy like him really shouldn't have. ] So you had a choice to make, and you chose what you and your team saw as the lesser of two evils. [ Riz and Krouse are, even now, similar people; where Krouse keeps a cool distance, Riz circles around the topic like a detective, steering clear of any sign of personal investment in his story. ] But that's a pretty big jump, even for a group of people that already had some sort of field synergy, even if it was mainly virtual. You guys had to have had some guidance from someone. Or somewhere down the line, something went wrong.
These heroes -- they fucked you and your team up, didn't they? Got you guys recaptured. Or worse.
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His relationship with Krouse is different than the one with Fabian, or with Gorgug, where they're just -- they're just guys, really. They fool around, they hang out, they have normal conversations. But every time he talks to Krouse, they get dragged into talking shop by some neurotic inclination of theirs, Riz greedily soaking in every bit of information about Krouse's world he could get, pick-pick-picking away at Krouse's brain for his own perspectives, for what that says about him as a person, for what the guy himself prioritizes. All that talk about limiting collateral, all of the suspicion towards the government, all of that about the good guys not really being good... it all had made sense to Riz's own shifting view of the world these days, but none of it had made sense for Krouse, not if he was the ordinary guy he said he was. Riz had known that the entire time, really. That it was something more personal to him. That it had gone deeper than all of this.
He wishes that Krouse could have come clean with him further down the line instead of the both of them getting shoved into it head-first, but beggars can't be choosers. ]
I'll keep calling you Krouse, if it's all the same to you.
[ And then there's the explanation. Not the full story. Riz can't trust Krouse like that anymore. But a story, certainly, and one he finds all the more compelling for the fact that the guy's trying to keep his deliberately detached facade up, as though he really is talking about some sort of supervillain origin story and not a tale where he was, regardless of whatever happened afterwards, wholly victimized by circumstances. His judgment is clouded; his immediate thought is it's not your fault. He shuts that thought down. ]
If whatever that is gets loose, we'll deal with it, [ he says with the sort of confidence that a scrawny guy like him really shouldn't have. ] So you had a choice to make, and you chose what you and your team saw as the lesser of two evils. [ Riz and Krouse are, even now, similar people; where Krouse keeps a cool distance, Riz circles around the topic like a detective, steering clear of any sign of personal investment in his story. ] But that's a pretty big jump, even for a group of people that already had some sort of field synergy, even if it was mainly virtual. You guys had to have had some guidance from someone. Or somewhere down the line, something went wrong.
These heroes -- they fucked you and your team up, didn't they? Got you guys recaptured. Or worse.