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Callen, G. (g_callen) wrote in omega_reality,
@ 2012-03-27 07:43:00

Entry tags:

*complete, 2012 03, character: alexis castle, character: g callen, character: troy bolton, dead: jenna hanna, dead: mike renko

RP: A Few Casual Interviews
Who: G Callen, Mike Renko, Jenna Hanna, Troy Bolton, Alexis Castle
Where: All over the ranch
When: Tuesday, March 27, 2012 -- all day
Summary: G talks to a few people to assess training needs

The director liked his office and his meetings. G preferred being out with his team and seemingly casual conversations. For most everyone he had a good idea of what they could and couldn't do at this point. They'd been training as a team with their power for long enough what he hadn't seen he could extrapolate.

Still, there were a few people who had newly come into their powers or who had seen changes recently that he needed to assess before they went forward with any further training. And, now that they'd explained the day before about the new ruling on not training with powers outside group training or with G's supervision or approval, he wanted to make sure he touched base with those he had less firsthand experience with their powers.

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

g_callen
2012-03-31 08:56 pm UTC (link)

G snorted. "I think you're seriously confusing me with a guy who hasn't been doing this job for twenty years."

Listening as Renko went on, however, left G speechless. Truly speechless, in a way he couldn't remember being since he found out he had a brother. Stopping the truck he let it idle while he leaned his arms and stared out the front windshield for a long moment. "Are you serious?" he asked finally, turning to look at Renko. "That's..."

G didn't even know where to start. Here he'd been thinking this was Renko, one guy who truly ought to get it. And it turned out the joke was on G. Even Renko, who maybe didn't have the years in the intelligence game G did but still have the years working with G himself, didn't get it.

That wasn't even getting into the fact this was a man who had led his ops and who should know better than most that shooting was what you considered last, not first.

If even Renko didn't get it, what the hell was G doing here in the first place?

"First, the guy who can aim, fire, move, and repeat for a full clip before you've had time to pull the trigger for more than a couple double taps doesn't need to be told you can't duck bullets. And just being able to see farther distances doesn't improve your marksmanship, especially if you have to use a silencer for your own safety and not for stealth.

"Second, you've done this job long enough to know there's a hell of a lot more to it than shooting. You're an undercover agent, who has led ops. You honestly can't see any reason for me to know any of that when planning ops? You have abilities that could mean I can send you in on surveillance ops I couldn't send anyone else on without a ton of gear we don't have and they might not be able to take in. But, I can't do that if I don't know what you can do. The next time I'm handcuffed to a fucking stove with no comms, do I have to wait for you to find someone else like Kensi who actually knows morse code? Or can I possibly speak under my breath and have a chance of you hearing me give you the information you need to get me out?"

Shaking his head, sat up and disengaged the brakes. With the truck moving again, he had something else to focus on than the deep disappointment he should have expected. This was why he'd never tried before. Partners, teams, they all disappointed. He'd just gotten lucky in finding the exception in Sam. Thinking there were others who got it was only going to prove him wrong. "No, we don't both know that. And even if the odds bear that out, it's damned foolish not to plan for the eventuality that next time they come during the day, under cover of local LEOs maybe. But, again, preparing for an attack is only one portion of what we do, unless you're telling me you want an office job instead of getting back on the field teams when your sight returns."

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

m_renko
2012-04-02 06:56 pm UTC (link)

Mike smiled. "Or maybe I just know that shit happens a bit too often and wish to safe-guard myself?" Mike offered. "You said you got my reasons, tell me you wouldn't do it yourself if the tables were turned?" He hadn't even been lying, or keeping them in the dark, the only thing he hadn't done was offer information that wasn't asked for.

He could see the reaction in Callen far too easily and he sincerely hoped that it was because Callen let him see it and not because the other man was slipping. He sighed, and seriously since when had it gotten easier to talk to the Director than Callen? 'Yes, Sir', 'Of course, Sir', 'Understood, Sir', and you were done. This felt...weird. This was supposed to be the easy part, it wasn't supposed to be the other way around.

He sighed. "I do get it, Callen. I get the wish to protect the team and plan the ops to perfection. I get it, I just don't think you understand what you're actually asking for. It's not that I don't want to give you certainty, it's that I can't. I can give you estimates, I can answer your questions if it's connected to specific scenarios, but there is no way I can cover it all and give you guarantees. There are simply too many variables, and that's not even considering how much things changed with my loss of sight. I still don't know what will happen when my vision is completely restored again, though I can venture a guess since it's nearly there."

He sighed, thinking of the specific scenario given. "You ask if I could have heard you if you were tied to a stone whispering? How far off am I? Do I know that I ought to be listening? Is it an ops, and I know I should pay attention - then there is no doubt that I would keep within range to hear your very heartbeat, let alone a whisper. If you're suddenly kidnapped while in Flagstaff and I don't know you're missing?"

He paused, sighing. "Those kids out there, I felt the shake, I heard the stones falling, but I didn't listen for anyone crying out for help or for any missing heartbeats. I didn't listen, so I didn't hear it." He hated that he hadn't, even if he knew why that was. He couldn't listen to everything all the time or he'd go insane. The more he could block out the better in his mind, but that didn't help when people died.

He looked up at Callen again. "You want to know what I can do when we're not on this farm? Then train with me, reason with me about scenarios and situations because that's the only way you'll get something that isn't just bullshit pulled out of a hat with hopes that it's somewhat accurate."

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

g_callen
2012-04-02 08:00 pm UTC (link)

"Really, Mike?" Maybe the use of his given name would shake him out of this delusion. "Are you asking if I've ever had to choose between protecting myself and doing what was best for the team? Does the name Keelson ring a bell for you? Do you think it gets worse for me than having my team crawling through the parts of my past I'd rather they never know? But, I did it because I trusted my team. Sam, Kensi, Eric, you. I trusted my team and they needed to know in order to do their jobs," he said tightly. "I've laid myself and my past open to help the people here more times than I can count. So, if you didn't trust us to be able to protect you, fine. But, don't sit there and tell me you know better what I would or would not risk of myself for this team. Ever."

G was so pissed off now he couldn't see. But, he reigned it in after a minute. Renko didn't trust them. That was clear enough. That was...okay, it wasn't fine. But, G knew how to deal. That was what he did. "I'm not asking for guarantees." And Renko must really think him an idiot if he thought G didn't get that. The reference to the militia camp had been a random example and he let it go. "Honestly, what do you think is the point of asking you these questions, of thinking of the scenarios, of trying to get an idea for what you know now? How do we train with no idea where we're starting? You don't have details. I get that."

Pulling back up in the parking area, he turned off the truck. "But, you're not giving me anything to work with in that training, Renko. You just told me I don't need to know any of it. I don't even know what you can do on the ranch, let alone off it. So, how do we train when you're more interested in arguing why you don't know or why I don't need to know, instead of just giving me what you do know?"

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

m_renko
2012-04-02 09:10 pm UTC (link)

Mike wanted to sigh and he should have known better than to open his mouth and speak. Things always worked out for the best when he just said nothing important and just kept joking around. He hadn't meant to upset Callen and he could acknowledge that the man certainly had made sacrifices when they were asked of him. "I'm sorry," he said honestly. "You're right, you've shared a lot in order to try get this team to work."

He took a deep breath, thinking of Callen's first questions, trying to sort them out into something useful rather than things that was just random. He still didn't think Callen had asked the right questions but instead of trying to make him see that it was easier trying to make it the right questions himself because this was going no where fast and nothing would be achieved by Callen and him fighting. He still thought it was a bit weird to have Callen as a lead rather than just a college. That had been so much easier. But right, focusing.

"Right now I can hear every car that passes this ranch and heading into town without any difficulty, but if I strain too much I start hearing this car instead. The sounds of the engine, the turns and ticks and- everything," he said. "I can switch back and forth but it takes effort. Back among the houses I can still hear the cars in town but it's fainter because there are more things distracting close by. The louder and more intense a sound is, the harder to ignore and block out." Or impossible, in the case of Liam crying.

"My eyesight was sharper, I could see further, pick up details better but also see things moving faster than I could before, but I also don't know exactly what will happen to it. I'm still sensitive to light, I was before too but it's worse now. I don't know if it will go back or not." He thought that Callen ought to know most of this from just observing him but apparently he didn't. He might never have told people of the extent of his powers, but he'd always assumed Callen and Sam would have figured out most of them anyway, even if they didn't know the exact details.

"My other senses are heightened, but not to the same extent," he said. "thankfully," he added. It was bad enough smelling as much as he could at times when the winds blew in the wrong direction and if he was any more sensitive to touch than he was his stamina would be that of a virgin teenager who was touched for the very first time and he could live without that particular problem. "I can however smell some things, and combined with heart rate, involuntary reflexes, breathing I can tell what someone is feeling and guess at what they're thinking."

"Like for instance how you're thinking that I'm a huge ass right now," he added with a smile, because jokes usually worked to defuse the situation. "To be honest, I still don't get what in all of that you didn't know or could figure out before."

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

g_callen
2012-04-03 06:54 pm UTC (link)

G nodded at the apology and didn't press the issue. Very few people understood exactly what simply leading this team did to G, how difficult it was for him to even be there still trying to find ways to get people to connect some days. Telling everyone about his problems instead of just doing what he had to in order to get the job done wasn't going to solve anything. He'd only said as much as he had to Renko because he trusted the man, or had. He didn't know what this conversation would do to that trust.

"Two different things," he explained. "What I knew was what you told Sam, which was a lot of generalities about conditions and a rough estimate that you could hear an armed force fifteen to twenty clicks away. Then, that you could hear Liam's heartbeat from across the ranch. That alone is a big difference. But, it's also only about your hearing. You never talked about your other senses at all. So, I didn't know any more than what you told me and what I observed, which doesn't help a whole lot when everything is happening inside your head.

"What could I figure out? I could figure out a lot of things, whether they were accurate or not is another matter. There's no handbook of superpowers. The comic books many of us read as kids were based in science, but even then, there's a certain amount of artistic license taken. And the science of the times has changed with new discoveries. I'm not a biologist, physicist, chemist, geneticist. I can make guesses, but knowing what's possible and what actually is aren't always the same thing. I can guess that the base became your own personal porn network," he added with a slight smirk. "But, how you focus to block it out isn't as readily surmised. I wouldn't necessarily be able to guess that you can put together all the things undercover agents learn to control for their covers like heartbeat and breathing, things you can smell -- pheremones? hormones? -- and be able to interpret them into emotions. And even if I could make those sort of guesses, there's too big of a risk to you and everyone if I turn out to be wrong."

Opening the door, he got out of the truck. "But, okay, it's a start now. Let me think about the best way to do this without putting you on display in front of everyone any more than you are now and we'll see if we can't find a few more answers. Meantime, I need to get in to training before they decide that, like a university professor, if there's no teacher they can legitimately skip out on lessons."

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Re: Callen and Renko -- Right after PFT (0900)

m_renko
2012-04-04 05:21 pm UTC (link)

"When I talked to Sam I wasn't blind," Mike said. "When Liam disappeared I was and that made one hell of a difference to what I could hear. Was my estimate to Sam a bit low? Probably, but it was what I believed."

He shrugged at the comment. "I have no clue what it is I can smell. Sweat?" he offered as a suggestion with a small smile added. "It's not that different from what any of us do when we interrogate someone though. We've all been there, trying to determine if someone is lying or not, and we use all of it. How much is the person sweating, where are they looking, are they breathing differently than normal, what's their tone of voice? I can just pick up those things better than before." Which was why he'd assumed that Callen and Sam could figure it out. It wasn't like it was something they didn't do on an almost daily basis back home.

"And trust me, I'm happiest on the days I can tune out the porn network. There are some things you just don't want to hear - that's one of them."

He got out of the car, nodding, glad Callen was about to head back. This had been a tiring conversation and a lot harder than it should have been. He was only glad if it could be over.

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