Scene #9021: SEE SEVEN STATES #4 - I'm Not Renaming The Other Parts

Owner	Pose
Madeleine Cadrasteia	PREVIOUSLY The gang spent a day on the road, followed by an evening at a local fair while awaiting van repairs. Much merriment was had and only a few people were held at gunpoint. EARLIER Madeleine is eager to get back on the road after losing time to automotive troubles yesterday. She wakes the other Elites with a series of phone calls (and door-knocking, if necessary) around 8 AM, in time for complimentary breakfast at the hotel. It's an unimpressive spread, with two kinds of cereal (whole-grain Cheerios and Fruit Loops), a few sad-looking packaged baked goods, hot trays for scrambled eggs and sausage patties, and some kind of conveyer-belt pancake printer. Madeleine loads up on the protein, filling a plate with eggs, sausage, and a yogurt out of the minifridge. "So," she says between mouthfuls. "I got some more information last night, here's the sitch. Gnomes, like the garden kind, have overrun the Rock City tourist attraction. They're claiming sovereignty as some sort of kingdom, and the state government's at least entertaining their concerns. Feds aren't so keen on it, so there's some tension between the state National Guard and the national State Department and neither one wants the other talking to the gnomes. Don't ask me why the state controls the 'National' Guard and the 'State' Department is national." "As a reminder, we're here to learn what everybody wants, mediate, and find a solution. Actually relocating the gnomes, if it's gonna happen, is mostly for the bureaucrats to handle. Violence should probably be a last resort, since we're setting an example for the locals about how to treat the gnomes."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	NOW As the company of Elites travel across the state of Tennessee, a particular motif recurs in the form of barn-roof advertisements. "SEE ROCK CITY", they implore passers-by in bold yellow text. "SEE SEVEN STATES". Interstate 81 gives way to the 40, which the van follows through Knoxville before splitting off onto I-75 heading southeast on a picturesque route through the heart of the mountains. The advertisements for Rock City only grow denser as the crew approaches Georgia, coming to a relative fever pitch past the highway exit near the city of Chattanooga. The drive across state lines and up the mountain is tense, with few civilian vehicles in sight on the mountain itself. Halfway up the Elites come to an armed National Guard checkpoint, and are admitted after some confusion over Shinmyoumaru's age. The rest of the way up the mountain, there's more National Guard helicopters overhead than there are cars moving on the road, and the few ground vehicles that show themselves move in convoys, with tinted windows and armed guards. The most remarkable quality of Rock City itself is, of course, the preponderance of two-foot-tall gnomes, like a garden supply store come to life. A line of them stand barring the entrance to the main visitor building and exchanging pointed glares with the pair of human military police manning yet another National Guard checkpoint. Madeleine takes the van into the parking lot, where an MP and a gnome on a stepladder each give conflicting instructions about where to park. She opts to follow the gnome's directions, presumably as a show of good faith, and when the van finally comes to a rest she sighs, gets out of the vehicle, and circles around to the trunk to find her Concord paperwork. The presentation of official-looking documents, plus the distinctly unusual and varied attire of the Elites, convince the front guards both human and gnomish to admit the team into the visitor building. Inside, they are met with a few variously-expected sights. A human man in a well-fitted suit and a briefcase bearing the seal of the State Department paces anxiously around the gift shop (which has been curiously emptied of goods for sale). The information desk appears to have been seized by a picket line of four gnomes wearing blue with red caps and holding hand-painted signs with slogans like 'CO-OPERATION NOW!' and '#NOTMYKING'. A few other gnomes in red-and-gold uniforms with black pointed caps are gathered near the entrance to the rest of Rock City, whispering amongst themselves and casting glances in the direction of the protestors. Each of the uniformed gnomes carries a long stick with a folding knife tied on the end with twine. Madeleine approaches the State Department representative and begins a conversation in hushed tones about the diplomatic situation of the moment. What's everyone else doing?
Rita Ma	Rita wakes up early, goes out before breakfast, and comes back in time to eat nothing. She doesn't seem put out about that. "Don't ask me why the state controls the 'National' Guard and the 'State' Department is national." She raises her hand. "Um, Ms. Madeleine? Aren't a 'nation' and a 'state' the same thing?" Oh no. We're going to be here all day. TN: 'US state' means 'teukbyeol jachido'.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Shinmyoumaru had a good time at the fair. She wasn't held at gunpoint, after all. AND she helped out the tsukumogami, which made her happy - she spent a few times riding along. But this morning she's ready to go again - which is good, because given she volunteered to share rooms with Madeleine, she's going to be up early whether she wanted to be or not. Breakfast was disappointing - despite going ham at the Waffle House, Shinmyoumaru still has a taste for Japanese-style breakfasts and spent some time looking for, if nothing else, pickles - but she managed. She is currently working her way through a large stack of pancakes, swinging her feet absently as she listens to the explanation. "Well, if it's their kingdom," she says, "obviously they get to keep it. So we support the state government!" Pause. "Which is the National Guard and not the State Guard." She had been about to ask just what she was told not to, and is vaguely disappointed by being preempted. But she is willing to educate Rita! "A state in the United States is like a prefecture," she says, with a mixed degree of accuracy. "It's why they're the United States! Because there's a bunch of them." This is everything she knows about the American government. Please do not ask her for anything else. -- Shinmyoumaru did not particularly help at the National Guard checkpoint beyond vociferiously objecting to any confusion that would keep her out, because in her mind she is old enough, she didn't know that they were even going to try to limit it to adults (which she is, as she just told them), and that they're being rude because she's not human so how could they even tell? (Shinmyoumaru has found out, fairly recently, that 'I'm an inchling' can be used as a trump card in arguments about her age, because once they hear it everyone assumes that she's supposed to be smaller than a human. Which is, of course, true, though not quite the way she's presenting herself. She hates the assumption but is extremely not adverse to using it to get her way anyway.) Also she does have Concord ID. She has to be reminded about actually it, though. Even at the height of four feet which she usually affects in public, Shinmyoumaru is a lot taller than the gnomes are. She privately thinks their hats are awful but is actually too polite to say anything about it, and is inclined to be on their side anyway for a variety of reasons. So when Madeleine hops out to talk to the State Department representative, Shinmyoumaru meanders off to talk to the picket line instead. "Who's not your king?" she asks, curiously, as she approaches. "Is it a gnome king? Or... Do you mean the President?" Okay, there is one other thing she knows about the American government, apparently.
Rita Ma	Rita takes the last leg of the journey with her face smooshed against a cool car window, deep in thought. Nonviolence is fine. It's great, actually. I don't think I'm a violent person. (Am I?) But... Now that Ms. Madeleine said those words, I feel like something's doomed to happen. Telephone poles and trees swoosh by. Her eyes don't track them. The checkpoint would normally scare her with the stress of being 'found out', but that hardly registers either. I can't even stop us from pointing guns at each other. What kind of chance do we have with the gnomes? When the car stops, it jolts her like she's awakening from a dream. "Oh. We're here." Seatbelt click-whirrs free. "The Rock City Prefecture." Rita isn't exactly droopy, but she's hardly energized either. While Madeleine chats up a local politician, Rita walks towards the Gift Shop and from there on to the Entrance to the Fairyland Caverns. She lacks an affinity for tiny people, but she lacks an affinity for the US government far more sharply, so that leaves as her only 'connected' side... the human locals? Rita punches some numbers into her flip-top phone to find out what local Watch connections who happen to live nearby think about all this. But before she's entirely left Maddie's earshot, she leans over and asks: "Ms. Madeleine? What's the MCRD's interest in this, anyway? Gnomes don't count as 'cryptids', do they?"
Calvin Nash	EARLIER Calvin is already up and in uniform by the time Madeleine comes knocking, hat in hand and sunglasses hanging from the valley of his button-up collar. The cereal is sniffed and examined as if it came from an alien planet; the deflated packaged baked goods warily passed over in favor of two pancakes with egg and sausage. The briefing sees him updating the notes on his bulky wrist-mounted scrap-metal computer. Um, Ms. Madeleine? Aren't a 'nation' and a 'state' the same thing? "Prolly not worth gettin' into, Ms. Rita." NOW For once, there's something that isn't entirely unfamiliar on the road. He's sat upright in his seat the whole way through--having been up this way once or twice on his world, seeing it in pristine condition is of special interest. The helicopters have him craning his neck to try and look out the window. Past the checkpoint and through the main visitor building, Calvin bends the brim of his hat towards the gnomes, the MPs and the state department official alike on his way in. He doesn't talk to anyone at first, instead flipping open his COMP, reviewing his notes, and then navigating out of the note program with a shortcut to open another. SitRep v. 0.2.1 developed by Jamie Molina Message Subject: help Message Body: hey i got me a problem down here im wondrin if yall can help me out. what y'all know about the gnomes, the governor and the state department out this way._ Calvin mashes the 'Enter' key with his pinky; the keyboard layout is altered for the wrist-mounted shape, but the key is recognizable for its similarity to the iconic 'return' arrow. Include Location Data? Y/N Y_ Ticket Submitted Successfully Please Wait . . . Analyst Tasked to Ticket A chirping BEEP sounds from the COMP, its barebones sound card working dutifully to render it. Message Subject: RE: help Message Body: Chevalier Nash, We haven't been able to make contact with any of the involved parties--you're the front line, sorry to say. If you can give us what information you're able to gather we can work on some projections then. "Well." Calvin backs out of the program and reopens his notes. The entire time he's fiddling with the COMP, he maintains an air of unnecessarily statuesque affected authority. He makes for the guards posted to the entrance of the rest of the city, his un-COMPed hand lifting in a little wave. "How y'all doin'." Calvin is six feet to their two, so he bends over to offer each of them a handshake with the right. The small phalanx is reflected twice on the lenses of his aviators. "Chevalier Calvin Nash, Commonwealth Paladins." "If you folks could give me a little more information 'bout what's goin' on, that'd be great--we can get right to mediatin' and findin' a way outta this that everybody can be happy with. And if you can't, I'm happy to wait here for somebody that can." Splitting his attention between typing notes and looking back over at the guards to nod and make (occluded) eye contact, he poses a few salient questions: "Let's start with the basics. If I was to pull up a map, could y'all show me where all you're claimin', uh..." He scrolls up in his notes to find the word. "Sovereignty over?" "How 'bout them folks behind me with the signs? They with y'all, or is 'at somethin' different?" If it's something different, "What is it they want?" "Have y'all got any ideas drawn up 'bout what that sovereignty's gonna look like for the States? Border situation and such like?"
Dysnomia	"Don't ask me why the state controls the 'National' Guard and the 'State' Department is national." "Perhaps they are remnant forces, from before the territory was annexed." Dysnomia suggested, fingers clasped. "It might explain teh tension between the two." Oh no...She has no idea what she's talking about. ... When they do finally arrive, Dysnomia is in a hurry to get the hell out of the car--and only mostly to get away from Petra's aura constantly gnawing at her like claws drawn across a chalkboard. She allows herself a moment entirely to herself, wiping off her face, cracking her neck, swapping out some of the mist that'd been cooped up in a car for ages with others that'd be left invisibly trailing behind the car as they drove. With the protests being accosted by Shinyomaru, and Rita engaging with a man who probably didn't know how much his immediate survival depended on pleasing the polite young woman who had approached him, Dysnomia engaged with the gnome guards instead, approaching them side by side with Calvin. "Attention." She said, eying those strange sticks they were using as improvised weapons. "I am not a threat to you." Yet. She nodded toward Calvin. "He and I are part of a multiversal detachment come to broker a nonviolent solution to this standoff you're having here between yourselves and the local human population." "When you've finished filling out that map, it would behoove you to inform us of the state of affairs, your demands, and potential complications." She looked down on them with pupilless eyes. "Now."
Petra Soroka	Last night in the hotel, Petra triumphantly returned to the spoils of her earlier whining: rooming with Lilian! Considering the Dia's Lily too (though, technically, Petra had separate sleeping quarters), she's spent a shocking amount of time recently having mission-justified reasons to share a bedroom with Lilian, a fact from which she seems to draw endless smugness. Oddly, that smugness isn't aimed directly at the other Elites forced to tolerate her presence-- prying ears might pick up on quiet crowing about how 'little miss sapphire-eyes could never,' and other such nonsense. Despite all the shouting and holding-at-gunpoint, she seems like she had a pretty good time at the fair! Petra comes down for breakfast late. Not due to waking up late, as her shriek at Madeleine rapping on the room's door can attest to, but because when she joins the others at the table, she looks like she got hit by a truck and tried to just wash her face and go to work the next day. It's not that bad, really. The bite marks with fresh bleeding are practically routine at this point, and she's shouted enough about them at the very people here that it's impossible to miss the new crop of them. Instead, it looks like she just got terrible sleep on top of that, in a way Lilian doesn't mirror. There's an imprint of the carpet fluff embedded in her cheek, even though there were two beds in the room...? "Um, Ms. Madeleine? Aren't a 'nation' and a 'state' the same thing?" Putting on chapstick and massaging her throat in between bites of the ever-familiar continental breakfast-- Petra remarks, offhand, that early last year she was sneaking into hotels to steal breakfast like this a few times a week-- she confirms Rita's assessment of America's political situation from the exact opposite justification. "Yeah. They're basically all the same. They're both just big stupid machines with the exact same goals and laws and stuff, when you're actually looking at it like a person instead of a civics class, or whatever. So it literally doesn't matter what they call themselves."
Petra Soroka	Riding in the car, this time, is a lot more subdued. Petra promised not to start shit, so start shit she won't, but the awkward, distantly-polite tension between not only herself and Calvin, but herself and Rita, isn't grounds for a comfortable atmosphere. It's a battle of warring heat profiles, between the cold awkwardness of attempting to be nice, and the warm bloody afterglow of whatever the hell she gets out of spending the night with Lilian. There's no winning side, for anyone but Petra, but the entire car has no choice but to be inflicted with it. The National Guard checkpoint has some trouble with Petra, too. It turns out, her legal documentation consists of a heavily-folded and blackout-redacted thick cream paper describing her status as a nonperson asset to Lobotomy Corporation and threatening legal ultraviolence if the details of her identity or function are too deeply scrutinized. This, unsurprisingly, doesn't pass the sniff check of state cops in a comparatively rural world, but she's white, so it ends up not mattering. Once the car comes to a stop and everyone piles out, Petra does some full body stretches accompanied by little whines of exertion as bruised skin strains. She pops up to her feet with a loud yawn, and mumbles through her fingers, "So, right, rule one was 'no punting'. They might be puntable, but I can't punt them. They're tiny little annoying-looking shitheads, but I'll treat them with all the dignity of a normal fucking human being, which is...." Petra trails off, having a brief crisis about her ability to perform diplomacy. Petra isn't dressed much different than any random girl picked off the streets of Georgia, but she's supported by her much more esoteric companions. Today, rather than being skimpily battered as she was yesterday, Petra has invented a form of fashion where wearing a flannel shirt and leather bondage collar is somehow more polite than the alternative. It's not cool enough to be wearing her flannel, but she isn't in the mood to field questions about her arms to cops, so it's only her legs that are exposed through shorts. Disinterested in the human side of the local political situation as ever-- the American government remains the American government, and Petra's apolitically smug liberal opinion from breakfast holds true in practice-- she wanders through the visitors' center to confront the gnomes in red and gold, leaning down warily to inspect their makeshift spears. Two feet tall is too tall to treat as an inanimate object, but it's about the right size for a pet, and that's the sort of expression she wears when looking at the gnomes. "You guys look like those little British fuckers." That's far too crass for diplomacy! Petra backs up and tries again. "Those little British toy soldiers." No!!! That's a microaggression! "Like, you know, if they were normal size. For a gnome. And also alive! Sorry." After fumbling her introduction, because of woke, Petra remembers why she thought about those toy soldiers in the first place, besides the red and black. "Oh, right. Is the king they're complaining about yours? What's up with that."
Calvin Nash	You guys look like those little British fuckers. Those little British toy soldiers. Like, you know, if they were normal size. For a gnome. And also alive! Sorry. Great going, dumbass. Why not show 'em your bare ass too, just for good measure? Calvin's neutral expression has never been more effortfully affected. The definition of his features seems exaggerated as if his face were carved from stone. He looks over his shoulder at Lilian, perhaps to make sure she heard all of it. He promised Petra a truce, so he doesn't say anything to her or to Lilian about it, and returns his attention to the guards and their answers without comment.
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	Petra's appearance actually did surprise Shinmyoumaru, to the point that she wasn't sure if she should offer sympathy or a bandage or both. She settled for gesturing at her own face and hoping that Petra got the idea about the carpet dent in her cheek and rubbed it out or something. And maybe washed out the bites, which is why the one thing that she does actually offer is a wet washcloth. But later... "NO punting," Shinmyoumaru says, as everybody gets out of the car - and means it. "Why would you even want to? And I mean, you don't punt ME so you shouldn't punt THEM." She pauses just one beat afterwards and takes one hasty step backwards, out of easy kick range.
Lilian Rook	Healed by cute animals at the zoo, an elucidating ferris wheel ride, and tyrannical control over Petra's phone for a while, Lilian bravely manages the rest of the drive in peace, as the noble heroine who is unfairly menaced and oppressed by Calvin and Rita, and not at all mostly the architect of her own problems. She finishes up reading her treatise by the evening, spends a leisurely hour on her playbrick before dinner, and deals with most of the time between Madeleine scurrying off to get the van fixed and having any occasion to sleep by joining in for a singular monster movie, spending an aggregate 20 minutes of it having weirdly specific opinions about being gigantic and eating people, and then a 'light' workout followed by meditation and stock ticker fiddling. Lilian is up at a distressingly early hour, too. Despite how sloppy she's allowed herself to be (relatively speaking) on a podunk little van ride through the backwater, the fact that she is fully done with her shower and makeup and on to reviewing progress reports over coffee by the time others are falling out of bed is a harrowing reminder as to her sparkling tryhard aura (and also perhaps a little enviable that she doesn't even need to own a hairdryer). Breakfast is, apparently, offensively mediocre enough for her to harangue Petra for her slowness and demand that she hassle Qetra for the 'emergency provisions', snapping her fingers like she's impatiently dealing with a trained dog. So basically everything is back to normal. 'Um, Ms. Madeleine? Aren't a 'nation' and a 'state' the same thing?' "Not quite." says Lilian, over her reading and coffee, revving up to smug knowitall pitch. "A nation exists before a state. Regardless of borders, or even the lack thereof, people can be said to exist as part of a nation when they are at least loosely united by a common background and interest. You see..." Lilian goes on for a while, taking the absolute opposite angle of explaining the United States properly by delving into the concept of the 'tribe vs nation' discourse. . . . . . . 'Violence should probably be a last resort, since we're setting an example for the locals about how to treat the gnomes.' "Beg pardon? How will violence against the government apparatus be construed as an example for how to treat gnomes?" Lilian says, leaving the car in her somewhat flashy Paladins business-casual field-wear. "I seem to recall that the gnomes were the indigenous population, and that they are far less capable of getting in our way than the state apparatus." Lilian barely conceals from Madeleine the way she rolls her eyes, blithely forgetting-in-motion that her track record with law enforcement keeps ending up 'shooting them in fit', and effortlessly gaslighting herself into imagining that she is some sort of impartial representative of Ur-Justice from on high. 'They're tiny little annoying-looking shitheads, but I'll treat them with all the dignity of a normal fucking human being, which is....' "Annoying-looking? Are you being serious right now?" Lilian grouses. "Why are you even here again? If you have some kind of psychotic aggressive fixation on gnomes, then perhaps you just shouldn't speak at all." She looks at Shinmyoumaru at the same time the princess thinks the same thing out loud, saving her the effort. 'You guys look like those little British fuckers.' "One more like that and you cross the border gagged in the trunk."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Lilian: "Beg pardon? How will violence against the government apparatus be construed as an example for how to treat gnomes?" "Actually, what I meant is-" Shinmyoumaru: "NO punting." "Yeah, that." Shinmyoumaru: "Who's not your king? Is it a gnome king? Or... Do you mean the President?" A surly-looking gnome with the voice of a teenaged boy (but still with a full beard) and a weathered 'SEE ROCK CITY' temporary tattoo on his neck speaks first. "More like a 'gnome king'," he says, with vigorous air-quotes gestures. "This guy thinks just cuz he and his got to the gift shop first that they get to make all the decisions. He doesn't want us talkin' to outsiders, we'll show him he's not our boss!" An older woman steps forward to stand beside the youth. "That's right. There's so much that outsiders can offer us, and we deserve to choose for ourselves if we want to see their world." "Yeah, like R-rated movies! All we have here is boring 'DVD tour' videos. And I could get a REAL tattoo..." There is evidently some variance in how ideological their disagreements are with the king. "There's more of us, too. Dozens! Out of a few hundred gnomes. I can't believe so many are willing to just go along with the biggest voice in the room." Rita: "What's the MCRD's interest in this, anyway? Gnomes don't count as 'cryptids', do they?" "Well, they kind of do? Especially when it's not clear how they came to life. Hodags would just be animals if they weren't born from ash and ox blood, to make a comparison. Figuring out if this site is going to keep generating gnomes, or if this was a one-off event, and how it happened - those questions're how this got our attention in the first place. When we learned about the diplomatic traffic jam, well..." She shrugs, but it's unclear what that's supposed to convey. "Concord decided to send somebody, and we were already looking into it." The Fairyland Caverns are charming. They're full of little dioramas of classic fairy tales, relying on imagery that would be familiar to American tourists. Rip Van Winkle, Red Riding Hood, all the classics are here in various miniature representations. The local watch contact doesn't know much herself beyond that Rock City was already under government lockdown within a day of the gnomish takeover. She does, however, get Rita in touch with someone who was at the park when the gnomes came to life: "Oh, it was crazy. It was near the end of my shift at the fudge kitchen when I heard a bunch of commotion and saw people running up the path from the Gnome Valley - but you could probably have guessed that's where most of the things came from. Then a bunch of tiny men were chasing them out, waving their arms and shouting. Some of them got into the fudge shop and were just taking things willy-nilly! I mean, there's not something in the handbook for gnome invasions but they always tell us that in the event of a theft we shouldn't try to be a hero, so I just let them take what they wanted, which was pretty much everything. I don't know what they're gonna do with all that fudge before it spoils outside of the refrigerators, they must be hungry little guys. After about a half hour the call came in for all staff to leave so I got outta there and they haven't let anyone back to work since."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Calvin's handshakes are accepted by the gnome guards, one after another. "Oh, fancy title!" says the guard with the fanciest epaulettes. Chevalier, I like the ring of that. Should suggest it to His Majesty for what he calls us, maybe..." Calvin: "If I was to pull up a map, could y'all show me where all you're claimin', uh... Sovereignty over?" "The whole mountain belongs to His Majesty!" the apparent leader exclaims. It seems he was promoted on basis of enthusiasm. "It is his and ours to do as we please with it! That means no outsiders on the mountain! Except for dignitaries like yourself, that is. So it's okay that you're here, and that guy over in the gift shop. We just don't like the folks showing up with weapons! That's why we've gotta show our teeth a little." He stamps his spear on the floor to accentuate the message, and the other guards follow suit. Dysnomia: "I am not a threat to you." "And we're keeping it that way!" Another group spear-rattling from the guards. "The state of affairs is this: the outsiders want our mountain! Our demands are this: that our mountain stay OUR mountain! And the potential complications: the outsiders might not know what's good for 'em! There's more of 'em than us but we're holed up in every nook and cranny on this here peak, there's no uprooting us!" Petra: "You guys look like those little British fuckers." "Little who now?" They don't seem to know what 'British' means. "Those little British toy soldiers." "Well, this thing's no toy, I can tell you that much!" Spear-thumping ensues. "Like, you know, if they were normal size. For a gnome. And also alive! Sorry." "...Thank you?" A look of thorough befuddlement. "Is the king they're complaining about yours? What's up with that." "As for those collaborators," the guard sergeant says, sneering at the gnomish picket line, "They've been alive for a week and already they've gone soft. Think the outsiders are gonna just let us stay here while lettin' tourists in. As if we wouldn't become just another attraction to make a buck for the 'owners'. His Majesty knows better than to let that happen."
Petra Soroka	"Annoying-looking? Are you being serious right now?" "And I mean, you don't punt ME so you shouldn't punt THEM." "N-no-- no, I mean, come on...." Petra protests at Shinmyoumaru and Lilian, hands held up defensively. Her lazy vaguely irritated air instantly evaporates when she's scolded, forced onto the defensive for her Gnome Opinions. "Not because they're small! It's fine to be small. It's normal. You're, like, twice their height, anyways, but even if you weren't, it'd be fine." She continues to whine as they trek through the parking lot, lowering her voice in proportion with how close to being in earshot of any of the locals she is. "And I have nothing against gnomes eitherrrrrrr! Just, like, from the briefing, I thought... like... you know, gnomes? The ones that just look like little people? Like elves, and dwarves, and whatever? Garden gnomes is like being summoned to negotiate a fucking labor strike at Santa's workshop. It's like sending a sniper after an Elf on a Shelf. It's like attending the Yalta Conference for a suburban HOA." "One more like that and you cross the border gagged in the trunk." Petra blanches as she realizes the depth of her internalized gnomophobia. She turns back to the uniformed gnomes she inadvertently insulted and droops her head in apology. "Ugh. Sorry." How does Petra smooth over hostility to improve her first impression and allow for diplomacy? She racks her brain, but the options available to her are extremely slim, since opening her mouth universally results in political disaster. And so, she falls back on Old Reliable instead. "You can stab me once if that made you mad. And then we'll call it even."
Shinmyoumaru Sukuna	'You're like twice their height' is true enough for now, and Shinmyoumaru does not want to have that discussion this minute, so she just nods firmly. "Good," she says, before she wandered off to talk to the gnomes. --- Which she is doing now. "I agree!" Shinmyoumaru says, bringing herself up to her full height. "That's why I'm here, I wanted to see other worlds and now I am. And there was a movie on the way down so we got that, too, and a fair..." "What's the gift shop have to do with it though? Is that where the throne is?" Shinmyoumaru is starting to get a plan. It's unfortunate that it doesn't occur to her to clue anyone else in on it at first. "I think you should get to leave if you want to, but also people who don't want to shouldn't have to. I mean, some people are probably really happy with their mountain." She starts asking questions, rapid-fire: "What do you do here? Do you run the gift shop? Because if you want to be independent you need to make things for yourself, and if you don't you need to have things to trade... And the humans live here too around the mountain, so you can't run them all off very easily even if you own the mountain, especially if some of you want to leave. Maybe some of you would work with the humans here, while others who wanted to went omewhere else...?" Ideas continue to percolate, and after a few moments longer, Shinmyoumaru adds, "Do you think... I could talk to the king? And maybe some of my friends too." She gives a much fancier bow than before. "My name is Shinmyoumaru Sukuna, princess of the inchlings of the Shining Needle Palace! We're little, too, and everyone overlooks us - um, I'm big for an inchling - but maybe we can make an alliance!" ... "Not that the big folk are bad," Shinmyoumaru adds. "But people like us have to stick together. And also we can also watch the movies we brought for the car ride, either way." Would Mr. R-Rated Film like a monster movie? Hell if Shinmyoumaru knows! She didn't get to watch it from the front seat and has no opinion on it that isn't someone else's. Of course, the fact that Shinmyoumaru isn't bothering to check any of this with anyone who, say, has any authority over the humans here is a minor roadblock. But in her mind, only a minor one. Hopefully someone else is talking to them.
Rita Ma	"Well, they kind of do?" Rita's face wrinkles a little. "I see," she says. She does. She's got her experience with what being put under the MCRD's purview is like, though it's unlikely the gnomes will get a big scary warning label too. "Well... I'm sure you'll be looking out for them." If Madeleine's very attentive, she might get the feeling that that was a singular 'you'. - - - - "Mmm. Mm-hmm. Well, if they need to eat, someone has to teach them about farming, but..." Her contact on the phone gives Rita most of what she wants to know. Overhearing something from Calvin's direction as she passes by makes her cover the phone's lower half to look over, frown slightly, and ask: "It sounds like they want to have the whole mountain. Does anyone else live here?" <J-IC-Scene> Petra Soroka says, "Yeah, if the fucking United States military decides to crush these fucking garden gnomes under their heel, then it's going to happen no matter what we do here." The tunnel is sort of nice, if lurid in that Brothers Grimm way. While Rita soaks up the radio, she touches the red-eyed Big Bad Wolf and idly turns over the idea of fighting a helicopter. But I don't want to stay here protecting gnomes for the rest of my life. So she's sort of right. She's deep in gnome territory when she comes back out around the Lower Trail, near the Observation Point. It's a nice place to look out, all that rolling green falling away. That sparks her remembering something. "Um- excuse me," she asks the very next gnome she meets, in exaggeratedly formal language to compensate for the difference in stature. (She crouches too.) "Do you need to eat? What have you been eating? Just gift shop fudge? That doesn't seem sustainable, but..."
Calvin Nash	We just don't like the folks showing up with weapons! That's why we've gotta show our teeth a little. Calvin nods. "Makes sense to me," he says. "You don't want people in and out of your house wavin' 'em around." He taps a few lines into his COMP: -Claiming the mountain -diplomat folks OK -no outsiders with weapons Think the outsiders are gonna just let us stay here while lettin' tourists in. As if we wouldn't become just another attraction to make a buck for the 'owners'. His Majesty knows better than to let that happen. "Mhm," Calvin verbally nods. -don't want to be another attraction "That makes sense, too," he says conversationally as he types. "Somebody payin' a buck to gawk at me just rubs me the wrong way. Gives me the heebie-jeebies." Not the worst. You can stab me once if that made you mad. And then we'll call it even. Calvin makes a noise between clearing his throat and a flabbergasted sputter. "...I ain't had a chance to talk to the fella from the State Department yet," says Calvin, trying to just brush past what Petra said for his own sanity, "Or nobody from the governor's office. But..." His index tilts his glasses down, blue eyes meeting the guards', each in turn, with a quick sweep. "I don't suppose nobody said y'all couldn't make money off them tourists. As hosts, mind--not attractions." He slides his glasses back up his nose, occluding his eyes once more. "That's a hell of an opportunity. Your king plays his cards right, he gets that tourist money and the outsiders'll thank 'im for it--no tusslin' necessary. Think about that, why don'tcha--and I'll go jaw with that other 'dignitary,' see what he's after." Calvin excuses himself with a cordial tip of his hat, breaking from the guards to head into the gift shop where the well-dressed State Department representative is. "Howdy," he announces, non-COMPed hand lifting in a wave. The hand with the bulky computer extends for a handshake. "Chevalier Calvin Nash, Commonwealth Paladins. 'Fore we get started, I just wanted to let you know you couldn't'a got a better man on the case. See that?" He thumbs his Demon Marshal badge. "It's my job to handle stuff like this. And even if you didn't have me, you got Ms. Madeleine in there, she's a cryptid researcher, smart as a damn whip--and Chevalier Lilian Rook, to boot." He lets Lilian's name speak for itself, imagining that it ought to the way that Petra talks about her. "Now. I seen you pacin' 'round soon as when I come in. How 'bout we start with that--what's got you all antsy, there?"
Lilian Rook	'Well, they kind of do? Especially when it's not clear how they came to life. Figuring out if this site is going to keep generating gnomes, or if this was a one-off event, and how it happened - those questions're how this got our attention in the first place.' Lilian, in an absolutely staggering display, narrows her eyes at Madeleine, subtly curls her lip, and says with her head tilted a little bit back and to the side, "Cadrasteia . . . Do you think you could be a tiny bit less obvious?" 'This guy thinks just cuz he and his got to the gift shop first that they get to make all the decisions.' 'Yeah, like R-rated movies!' 'There's more of us, too. Dozens!' The confidence with which Lilian emphatically looks down on the MCRD nearly vapourizes on the spot, the minute she gets gets inside the building. The ridiculous clash between what 'interspecies diplomatic mission' meant in her head, and the cartoonish reality she hears unfolding around her, puts Lilian into a visible hitstun-wobble animation for a moment; a wavering moment that she pulls herself together from out of spite. There's no way, after all. Madeleine made it a road trip because she's poor, not because this wole thing is stupid! She wouldn't have dared invite anyone if it were really this ridiculous! She's just flat broke and a little bit racist, that's all! 'Diplomacy' is a word you only use in a situation with class! Lilian presses her hands to the sides of her face, and digs down in deep focus. §That won't be any good. Try to think of it on their level. How would I feel about being told I don't belong in the place I was born and threatened with remo--§ Lilian's brow twitches in discomfort. §Well, how would I feel if some completely ordinary thing that I own; some cute little pocket money amenity, like, a room at the Association, or a spare work computer; suddenly came to life, and started acting like some funny little guy and demanding autonomy? That could hardly be easy. Let's rationally consider--§ Lilian scrunches up her stare at the inside of her eyelids again. §No good. That only sounds sort of cute. I don't get this at all. Isn't the state government just being unreasonable? But how does that make any sense? Why would they be acting this way if it was?§ Lilian holds her breath for a solid thirty seconds, wracked with silent spasms of herculean cognitive effort, until finally exhaling, non-sequitur, the words "Right. Of course. This is America." with a cheerful edge of relief. Lilian effortfully ignores the gnome scabs in the gift shop, and approaches the funny little royal guards with a flash of her badge and "Dame Commander Lilian Rook. Paladins Chevalier." on her lips. "Could--" Something distracts her on the radio enough to turn around and hit the receiver button, loud-whispering "Could you not use the word zoology for a minute?" before turning back and clearing her throat. "I'd like to commend your attitude. There aren't so many people that would be so serious about defending their home in the face of the government even when far better armed than this. Whatever your majesty's wishes, it is an incontrivertible fact that if the government claims to own the mountain, it should be the government's responsibility to recognize you as United States Citizens residing at their legal place of birth." Lilian says. "However, I'm afraid your outlook here is considerably less rosy than that."
Lilian Rook	"Please make no mistake; you're being offered an opportunity to slink away on your own and let the men in charge look good before they resort to driving you out with force. They won't bother with sending brave men into the tunnels to fight you hand to hand; they'll bomb or gas you out." Lilian continues, with impeccably third-hand historical recollection of United States Government activities. "The cost of doing so is insubstantial to them. The idea of ceding sovereignty of something they currently own is more abhorrent to them than anything you can possibly do to dissuade them. I'm glad to see your sense of backbone, but biting them hard enough to flinch back their hand just isn't feasible." "Reframe the issue in your mind. Instead of a territorial issue, imagine that you are dealing with the hoard of an unfathomably ancient dragon; old and greedy and arrogant as they come, which could set fire to the mountain on its own. I'm afraid that my professional assessment of the situation is that your primary goal should be to carry out as much treasure as you can fit in your pockets-- which is to say, slowly haggle the government authority down to providing exorbitant compensation for your recognizing their authority." Lilian lets her stare wander over to the other gnomes rather pointedly, speaking with subject apparent. "After all. Even if they reward the collaborators, their dreams are hardly feasible. They aren't legally citizens, they don't have jobs or residence or transport, they can't pay for anything they want, aren't shielded by the law, and are liable to be deported or arrested the moment it becomes convenient to do so. No matter how much they might try to cooperate, they won't get what they want in the end. This little schism only weakens everyone's ability to bargain collectively with the government."
Petra Soroka	"The state of affairs is this: the outsiders want our mountain! Our demands are this: that our mountain stay OUR mountain!" Petra sighs in quiet relief when she learns that there's no deep-seated ethnic conflict of garden gnome history with colonialism, or complicated trade route negotiations, or anything that diplomacy typically means. These are just little guys who want their big mountain. And the opposing side is the United States Federal Government, which has a famed history of allowing populations to keep the land that they've staked out! Petra, having absolutely no knowledge of reservations, taps her finger on her cheek and wonders aloud as a first prospective suggestion to the group, "Do you think we could get this place registered as a reservation...?" And then she comes to the realization that there isn't a single Elite here with any context for what she means at all and frowns. "Well, this thing's no toy, I can tell you that much!" Petra nods and hums in vague, congratulatory agreement, like she's being shown a child's macaroni art. On the inside, though, she actually does flinch a bit when the excitable guards swing their pocketknife spears around, despite the fact that she's been in hundreds of far more lethal battles with real deadly weapon and monsters. Not only has she faced more threatening weapons than the improvised spears, but she also gets recreational applications of knives to herself anyways, so the entire threat should be moot. So why isn't it? Petra winces when the pocketknife swipes by her lowered face, and then tries to internally isolate the source of that wince, and unconsciously draws her hand up to a specific point on her cheek. Touching it, where a tiny scar would've been if not for getting her entire physical form deconstructed and rebuilt multiple times in the past few years, instantly brings back memories of a time as a little kid where some dickhead boy swinging around a knife accidentally caught her with it and made her cry. An insignificant wound, from over a decade ago, cryogenically suspended in impact in her memory despite being vastly and continuously outclassed in trauma ever since. It could've hit her eye! How scary would that have been?! Reflections on the permanency of formative moments in her youth (formative, for better or for worse, but considering Petra's opinion of her childhood, purely worse) carry over into tactical talk in the radio, where Petra sympathetically reminisces about being afraid of being blackbagged as a kid. "They've been alive for a week and already they've gone soft." "Huh." Petra sits down cross-legged, utterly enthralled by that singular sentence. "So you have only been alive for a week. What's coming next week? Why the fixation on the mountain specifically-- does it feel, like, home to you? Why the mistrust of the tourists? Were you born-- like, you know, when you came alive, a week ago-- feeling that way, or did people do something to make that happen?" Petra's Gnome Opinions seem to have dramatically improved since the parking lot, for whatever reason. It's a combination of being scolded by Lilian, assessing her gnomophobia, feeling briefly threatened by them, and having a flash of sympathy for the treatment of cryptozoological phenomenae, as girls sometimes do. "By 'that guy in the gift shop', you don't mean the King, do you? Who is it?"
Dysnomia	Again, her eyes found the little pointy sticks. Her usual instruments of dealing with uprising--veiled threats of overwhelming institutional violence--weren't on the table. "...You are keenly loyal to your leige." Dysnomia says, conceedingly. "I can respect that," She lied. "First. I want you to know; we..." She made a broad gesture that included Calvin and--with reluctance--Petra. Are not members of the government seeking to state claim to your land. And have no investment in your subjugation.)]")] "That said, I think you must be made aware of the state you are asserting independence from. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that each of your..." A pause. "...Fine chevaliers are worth ten...no...a hundred human soldiers." "I am afraid I must say, the american military has thousands of human conscripts. Your people find themselves in a precarious position, my small friend." She clasps her hands together. "You are in need further leverage, if you wish to maintain your newfound soverignty and live as you wish." "And perhaps, once you have obtained this leverage, the threat of a few tourists will seem a minor one."
Dysnomia	"...imagine that you are dealing with the hoard of an unfathomably ancient dragon; old and greedy and arrogant as they come, which could set fire to the mountain on its own." It was a little hard to track her gaze without pupils, as her head shifted, but it wasn't hard to guess who they might be looking at. Dysnomia sighed, brushing a strand of hair from in front of her face. "She's correct, after a fashion. This is why you must obtain more leverage--the actual cost of retaking the mountain must outweigh the cost of their loss of face. And governments like this will commit to mass bloodshed to avoid a loss a face." "So, you are left with a few options. Make the loss of face less painful for them, make taking the mountain more painful--or, preferrably, both."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Shinmyoumaru: "What's the gift shop have to do with it though? Is that where the throne is?" "Oh, no. He's set up all the way up at Lover's Leap, by the flag court. The gift shop was important because it's where pretty much all the valuables were - jewelry, those knives they've turned into spears, and plenty of outsider money. He and his folks cleaned it right out, it used to be just across the hall over there." She points to the vacant shelves and empty clothing racks, where Madeleine is conversing with the State Department official. "If someone wants to buy something from outside we have to go through the King, and so far he's only let in necessities. He'd have us all living in a barracks like his soldiers if he had his way! Because then his treasure hoard would last longer." Rita and Shinmyoumaru learn at roughly the same time from different sources that a decent number of people do in fact live on the mountain - the twin towns of Lookout Mountain, Georgia and Lookout Mountain, Tennessee have between them some three thousand residents. Rita: "Do you need to eat? What have you been eating? Just gift shop fudge? That doesn't seem sustainable, but..." "Oh, we eat," says a gnome. "But we ran outta fudge a couple days ago. Lucky thing, too, the stuff was starting to taste a little off. Anyway. We've been having to buy shipments of food from the Outsiders, since we're still figuring out what we can even grow up here. We eat mushrooms, root vegetables, shiny rocks, that sort of stuff." They didn't even think to differentiate 'rocks' from 'food', so it must be pretty normal for them. "It's a good thing there's all sorts of places around here that sell shiny rocks by the pound, honestly. I like to carry a couple around with me to snack on." They pull out a polished purple stone from their pocket and pop it into their mouth. It makes a frankly worrying crunch. "I'd offer, but I know outsiders don't like 'em. That's why they're so cheap." When Shinmyoumaru requests audience with the king and introduces herself as a princess, the older gnome lady stiffens. "Well, visiting royalty, are you? And you've heard enough complaints from us 'commoners', I gather. Fine, go on, visit the king." She waves a hand dismissively in the direction of the armed guards, but it's clearly a forced affect; she must be trying to put on a good show of anti-monarchism for the other protestors. "I'm sure the 'Royal Guard' can show you the way."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Calvin: "I don't suppose nobody said y'all couldn't make money off them tourists. As hosts, mind--not attractions." The sergeant's eyes boggle like Calvin just spoke heresy, but the other guards exchange uncertain looks. One of them raises an eyebrow and speaks, before the captain is done sputtering in outrage. "Yer sayin' we could turn this around on 'em? I think that sounds pretty good, boys." He looks to the other guards, who nod and murmur in vague agreement. "B-but you can't just agree to that! It's not your decision to make!" "And it's not yers either. I reckon we should take this idea to His Majesty." The lower-ranking guard puffs out his chest, and the nodding and murmuring from the others picks up in intensity. The guards make ready to send two of their number up the trail to Lover's Leap, and they agree to take Shinmyoumaru along for a 'royal audience'. Calvin: "Now. I seen you pacin' 'round soon as when I come in. How 'bout we start with that--what's got you all antsy, there?" "Pleasure to meet you, I'm Darius Green." He holds out a hand for a firm shake. Despite his anxious body language his voice is steady. "First is that they've got knives and I wasn't allowed to bring my security detail in here. Second is that I feel for the little guys, I really do, but I have a job to do. I have a sworn duty to represent the interests of the nation and the President, and that means not just giving in to the demands of..." He glances at the gnomes. "Foreign powers. And third is that things are only getting worse. The gnomes are going to run out of money soon if the park can't reopen, and that means they'll get desperate, and try something dangerous, and a lot of people could get hurt. Our people and theirs. The way the King's talking about me, he'll be asking for my head on a plate before the week's up." Lilian approaches the remaining guards - the sergeant, and two of his underlings. "Oh, another chevalier, are you? Very good." He listens intently, beaming with pride as Lilian begins to commend his attitude, and then- Lilian: "However, I'm afraid your outlook here is considerably less rosy than that." The sergeant does a poor job of hiding the worry on his face as Lilian explains the worst-case outcome. The comparison to a dragon draws a shiver from one of the other guards. When the Dame-Commander gets around to her assessment of the protesters, the sergeant balls his free hand into a fist. "You're right! We can't have those people weakening our position by trying to capitulate! Do you think you could talk some sense into them? They won't listen to us, we've tried."
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Petra: "So you have only been alive for a week. What's coming next week? Why the fixation on the mountain specifically-- does it feel, like, home to you? Why the mistrust of the tourists? Were you born-- like, you know, when you came alive, a week ago-- feeling that way, or did people do something to make that happen?" "Next week? By next week hopefully you folks have the outsider government off our backs, so we can start making this place into a proper home. His Majesty's already been drafting plans for renovations. We might even be able to open trade for more than just necessities, once we get mines and workshops and farms put together. Who knows, maybe Mr Green over in the gift shop could pay His Majesty a visit once in a while, hahaha!" "As for why we don't like outsiders much, there was an awful lot of fighting the day we woke up. The outsiders didn't like that we were coming to life on 'their' land so they had their police come in. I don't even know what their goal was, what they wanted besides 'a mountain with no gnomes on it'. Which isn't happening. Because yeah, we were born here, this feels like home to us. Where else could feel more like home than here, anyway? We don't know any other places yet. But yeah. A couple gnomes got hurt bad, that's why we had to start arming ourselves, why we gotta have a King to keep things organized." Dysnomia: "You are left with a few options. Make the loss of face less painful for them, make taking the mountain more painful--or, preferrably, both." "I..." The sergeant leans in, lowering his voice a little. "To tell the truth, we're about at our limit. There's only so many knives to go around, and without a good weapon a guard is mostly just for show. So it sounds like you think we should make it less painful for them to give up the mountain... how do you think we should do that?"
Dysnomia	"So it sounds like you think we should make it less painful for them to give up the mountain... how do you think we should do that?" Dysnomia's mouth was half-open to start goign through the usual playbook of getting them to sign over everyting so they could be dismantled into the general government when she visibly stopped, eyes going fuzzy and indistinct, as she struggled to add some new branches to her internal dialogue trees. "Before we talk about how to appease them," Dysnomia murmured. "Let's talk about how to bolster you." "My friend is already taking stock of your kingdom. We have mutual connections that might get you in touch with some supplies, if you're willing to work with us..." A thumb points toward Lilian. "The good Dame Commander and Marshal Calvin are members of the Paladins in good standing. If they were able to connect you to the Commonwealth, and make it acknowledge your kingdom's independence, they might think twice..." "...And, our Princess and another who's on this expedition with us are members of the Concord, here to make sure that you're treated properly. Between all of us, perhaps we could give your kingdom the legitimacy it needs to stand on its own." "...And once it has that, perhaps arrangements could be made with the people who used to own this place." She gestured around at Rock City. "I doubt you'd want to live in this kitschy tourist trap, in any case. So why not let them pay a toll to do what they'd already been doing? People get to go back to work. Have their livelihoods again...The people in charge get to pretend things haven't changed..." "...But, and this is key...Only once they've acknowledged YOUR sovereignty on your own land." It was strange to say that. She wasn't entirely sure it'd work. Normally, she did this sort of thing with a very different goal in mind.
Madeleine Cadrasteia	Shinmyoumaru is led down the central path through Rock City, past a number of art installations and the cutesy 'Prospector's Point'. As the main pathway straight to the peak of the mountain it's not as scenic as the more circuitous routes, but there's still some nice views along the way. The guards make small talk with Shinmyoumaru as they go, inquiring about her life as a princess. After some time they finally reach the flag court (now bereft of flags, in a show of defiance against the human governments), where the trees give way to open sky. A sign at the very highest spot points with seven arrows the direction and distance to each of the supposedly-visible states, though it's hard to tell where one begins and another ends when you're looking at the actual terrain instead of a map with clear borders. The King's court has, sensibly, not set up under the open sun. Instead, they have occupied the umbrella-shaded terrace seating of 'Cafe 7', a little counter-serve place just across the plaza from the "SEE SEVEN STATES" sign. There, a 'throne' has been constructed by... moving all the other chairs away, and pretending that the one remaining is an especially important chair. Upon it sits a single gnome, no larger and no more grandly attired than any other, smoking a pipe and chatting with a semicircle of gnomes seated on the ground. On seeing the guards approaching with their guest, the King of the Mountain looks up and waves. "Hello there! Nice to meetcha! My guards, I hope you have brought this outsider as a guest and not a prisoner! But either way. What business have you with Rock City?"
Calvin Nash	Pleasure to meet you, I'm Darius Green. "Mr. Green," nods Calvin. He taps away at his COMP, throwing in verbal nods as he listens, just as he had for the gnomes. -uncomfortable bout no bodyguards -mighta wanted to call em terrorists. settled on foreigner -worried bout what gnomes will do when money runs out "Well, Mr. Green," says Calvin matter-of-factly, closing the COMP for now. "I talked a little to them gnomes, just now. It might look like a mess, but honestly... Way I see it, you and the President both got yourselves one hell of an opportunity." Calvin removes his sunglasses, hanging them on the v of his uniform's collar by the frame, then pushes his hat back to rest a little further back on his head. The crown rests far enough back and the brim high enough off his brow for Darius to see his raised blonde brows. The kind of conversationally-interested frown of a man about to give a hot tip rests well on Calvin's square features, his thumbs of course finding their spots in his belt loops. "Now I know you don't wanna send in the army, and they don't want that neither, so we ain't even gonna discuss that." "You could buy 'em out," he says, one hand lifted briefly from his waist, palm out pre-emptively to dissuade. "And sure, that'd get 'em outta your hair, get the place up and running again, and there wouldn't be nobody hurt. But..." His palm curls mostly closed, but for an index, which dips in attempted temptation towards Darius. "Do you and the President wanna be the fellas that sold the next moon landing?" His lips twitch downwards at the corners, his interested frown emphasized to drive the point further forward as his hand returns to its spot at his waist. "Sure, 'giving into the demands of foreign powers' is bad for an election. But you know what's damn good for one?" He tilts his head conspiratorially towards Darius, looking at him side-eye. "You know what looks damn good on a belt notch, Mr. Green?" "Handlin' first contact with a brand spankin' new civilization and shakin' hands on livin' arrangements inside of a week. Next week," he says, "Next month, next election--" Calvin leans back and rolls his broad shoulders. "When it's somethin' scarier, meaner 'n gnomes, I know who I'd be votin' for, if I lived here. And the President'd know just who to call, from the State Department." "You seem like a smart fella, Mr. Green. If you see the same opportunity I do, then we get you and that there king sat down at the table and get down to business. Then, I can get the Commonwealth down 'ere, and between our suits, your suits, the President and that there king, we can get all the finer details nailed out. Commonwealth helps them gnomes get the place up and runnin' again, the US of A puts up some brand new toll booths so Uncle Sam gets his cut, and you and the President have yourself the easiest damn victory lap you ever had, when you tell the news all 'bout America's big discovery. First in the whole world." "Sound good?"