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There was an unmistakeable silence that had hung over the city for the past two days. The audience was holding its breath and Ricky couldn't escape the ringing in his ears. The young rebels, restless for revenge, were waiting for a signal to move; the soldiers were eying every young man in the streets as a potential gunman, and Ricky knew he would lose grip of the leash keeping the younger hotheads in place if something didn't happen soon. The talks with the woman in charge of the army wasn't the something he had been looking for.

Everyone had had their say about this trap the army had set out. A meeting, in the heart of their stronghold, away from neutral territory, rubbing the rebels' faces in their oppression. It was an insult to their cause, Ricky could not deny that, but he had to take the chance. He could not lie and say his heart wasn't racing as he approached the Town Hall: he was putting his life in the hands of his enemy, and the only assurance that he would be alive by the end of the day was that killing him would set aflame the ire of every rebel and burn any bridge of peace between the troops and the townsfolk. This government wasn't know for delicacy, however, and the iron fist of its military could come down hard and heavy on his head. It wouldn't be the first time they had been conned, and Ricky knew that there was no guarantee there would ever be a last time.

He didn't say a word as the soldiers patted him down at the door, the same way he had stayed silent as he had been cleared through the previous checkpoint. There were more eyes scanning him somewhere in the darkness, some of them friendly, some not. They were waiting for a call of a bomb, or a gun, or a knife. The soldiers wouldn't receive that satisfaction, and the rebels didn't have to hear the lie. Ricky, as he had been before, was cleared through.

No one spoke as he was escorted through the building. He remembered this place and the bustle of business on an average day. Decades and youth were not the only difference between what he saw then and now. The emptiness as he was lead out of sight to the mayor's office set a lump in his throat. This was what they had reduced his home to, this empty husk of fear and violence, and the government had the audacity to label the rebels terrorists?

Stepping through the door to the mayor' office tore at his resolve. Every inch of this show of force reeked with arrogance. Ricky knew the rebels needed to accept the first opening of dialogue if they wanted to be taken seriously, they had all agreed to it, but it didn't make this any easier. The argument worked by theory and logic, but in Beacons Grove, there was little room left for either. It was all he could do to just stand by the door, looking across the room he had been in once before, eyeing every one of his opponents that corrupted his memory like a tumour by their very presence. There was nothing he wanted to do more than walk out and call their bluff of peace. But he would not sink to their level.

He addressed the Lieutenant Colonel only. "It's a nice little place you've got here." The ball passed to her side of the court with a gentle volley. This was just the first serve with his new opponent. They needed to get to know each other before they could search for an ace.


((OOC: Let me know if you want Anna brought along and I'll work in some amendments.))

He had expected a whisper, not a bang; a gentle warmup. And he couldn't have been more wrong. Ricky could just as well feel the spit on his face as she disregarded him for her papers. A smile twisted onto his face in disbelief. What a difference the cameras made to this woman. In reality, she went from being a panther to an aristocrat. It was no surprise that there was grumbling in her ranks if this was the woman they had deal with. It was only a matter of time, Ricky supposed, before it was more than a couple of drunk foot soldiers lamenting over a pint at the bar. If this was really who was ordering the troops, bribing their occupiers may not be as hard as they always thought it would be.

It was all Ricky could do not to scoff at her utter disregard for the playing field she found herself on. Hiding the astounded smirk behind his hand was the least he could do for her considering her circumstances. "Other business to attend," he echoed under his breath. The sarcasm wasn't layered as thick as it was in his head, but it carried every bit of the scorn that he had held for her and this meeting since he had been cleared by the first barricade. Oh, he would have stories to tell once this night was over. They stood at the cusp of change, and this would be this moment that they remembered. This moment when, barely through the door, he had watched bridges crumble and burn.

"I'm quite comfortable here, thank you, Miss. But I'm truly touched by your concern." Ricky kept the vitriol out of his voice. The forced politeness should have been representation enough. His eyes were hiding everything but the soft glow of warmth and humour. The churning and bubbling in his stomach brought with it a tinge of nausea, not from fear but a nervous anger.

He dragged his hand away from his face as she continued, returning it to his pocket. The Lieutenant Colonel had no way of seeing the hard fist the he now held there, and that was best for everyone. The smirk was gone, a concentrated frown taking its place. "Do you know our song, Miss? I mean, we have quite a few so I'd understand if you didn't know exactly which one, but maybe one of your musclemen will be able to help you. ''T wasn't long ago we faced a foe, The old brigade and me, And by my side they fought and died, That our home might be free.'

"It's the same song that was sung by our parents as we were raised here. Every one of the people I represent by coming to see you today believe in the same thing our parents did. The direction we have been going, as regrettable as it is, is the only direction we have available to us. I am the elected voice for the United Front, Miss. We have come here in our right to be free, and with the hope to build some kind of understanding – to open negotiations so we can find a new direction. But I am telling you now, Miss, if you disrespect me or mine, I will leave here and the only change of direction will be that we will recruit more men and more women, and there will be more casualties until we have our god given rights, if takes weeks, months, or decades." Ricky hadn't meant to turn so quickly to the threat, but the longer he spun his story, the clearer he became. If this Ms Finner wanted to start talks with the rebels, then she had better start talking and not ordering. There had been enough posturing. Her military background offered an excuse he was willing to accept, but he would not be marched into this office to talk with this pompous b***h when there was nothing on the table. She needed to step back or start offering, or they would call her bluff and that would be the end of it.


((OOC: And here I thought Guy would be the one to show his bark first =P ))

Another turn and the woman only went more frigid. There she was: cold, straight and commanding. More Iron Maiden than mediator. 'How did she get so far?' Ricky had to think. How many of her senior officers did she get down on her knees for so that she could get this far having never spoken with a belligerent local? Surely the military had training for this and practiced it – the war movies he had seen were always showing their military heroes as champions of these talks. It was with huge effort that he didn't turn on his heel and leave. They hadn't even been there five minutes, but she was doing everything to crush any hopes he had for getting somewhere.

He glanced through her officers again. There was experience there, proven experience they could track through the papers. Two of her majors had a history in this sort of thing. The other rebels had been quick to tell him over the past few hours that the government had boasted about it as they deployed its forces. He wondered what they – lauded wartime negotiators – thought of this. Or perhaps they were the exceptions. The officer directly behind Ms Finner with the expression like he'd been told he was having a root canal without anaesthetic would have been one of them, Ricky supposed. As he approached the desk, he could make out the name on his uniform: 'NIELSON', the UN peacekeeper himself. But from up close Ricky saw a subtlety to the officer's expression that made him unsure what it really meant. Any other soldier had no problem meeting his gaze, but Nielson had never looked at him, only through him.

Having waited enough already for his host, Ricky made her wait for him as he continued to remain silent, standing with only the tips of his fingers pressed against the table. His shadow crept over the table, blanketing the edge of the file she had brought out of the draw. Ricky wanted to look directly into the eye of opponent, and looking down at her now he had decided to stop being surprised to find that her façade of seriousness did not break down.

"What exactly do you think is going on here, Lieutenant Colonel?" he said, incapable of asking the question any more honestly than he did. So far, it had been like talking to a foreigner, and he was beginning to understand why. "There is no situation to like. In case you didn't notice, there is a war going on, with this town right in the middle of it. If it's taken by anyone, it's taken by your lot. What we want is you and the miserable, manipulative government that sent you here out. We want the unity that our parents fought and died for realised in full, not discriminating against those who your government thought lacked a voice to stand against them.

"If you believe your men are here defensively, then you're either lying to yourselves or plain deluded." There was no malice or contempt in his voice. He had realised that there was no reason for that here. "If you honestly cared about 'our' country's citizens, you would have risen up against the unjust government that forced the United Front's hand. I'm sure you've seen the latest unemployment figures: 35%. Up 9% from two years ago. It wasn't us who caused it; We are merely the result. The so called 'spell' the government claims we have our town under is not a construction of shallow propaganda. If you break that spell, you are breaking the spell that links us together – the spell that anyone else would call community."

Bold and confident in his direction, Ricky soldiered on. "The only complete peace there will be, Miss, is when the oppression and manipulation stops. We are not interested in fighting the locals – if we were, do you think they would hide us from you? Between your tanks and guns, and our stand to give them the rights that they deserve that were so cruelly taken from them, I don't think it's us they want protection from – I'm not finished." The soft scuffle from behind Ms Finner set his eyes on Nielson. He had readjusted himself and that undefinable expression had grown harder. Nothing else said he wanted to interrupt, but Ricky was making a point and he would not be interrupted because he had struck a nerve.

He kept Nielson on the end of his gaze for a moment longer as he continued before returning his attention to his host; "Yes, there are extremists in our ranks who want more than just the old system back, but most of us would be happy with things going back to the way they were – Westerners and Easterners."

There were no more stories that he had left to spin her that would make any difference to what she thought if what he had told her had changed nothing. Leaning slightly towards her, he was now beseeching her to see reason. His shoulders were slouched, his posture bent with the effort of trying to make something of this meeting. He wished he could stare through her eyes into her soul and talk directly to it, but all he had was the hard Iron Maiden. "My directions for opening a dialogue with you are simple: we will talk a peace with you because you are just as much of a victim as anyone else in this town. We have no personal vendetta against any of your troops, but we cannot deny what your very presence here symbolises. Our real enemy is the corrupt tyrants and enforcers who have pushed people into poverty and treated their citizens like a soulless commodity. If you cannot understand us or try to understand us, then I'm afraid that we're done here."

Relief filled Ricky with those words: "What do you realistically believe we can do about this?" Finally some progress! The sweat of fear and exhaustion dampening the back of his neck cooled at the first sign of the breakthrough. There was no more need for pleading, they were back at the negotiating table, instead he could be there as the leader the United Front had asked for. He wasn't ready to press the plight of the mistaken rebel, but they had time for that. He hadn't flicked through the files Finner had presented him because he knew all the casualties except for the soldiers. The grieving mothers or widows were vivid images in Ricky's mind – he had personally apologised for the deaths of too many good people to forget, and in those images were already enough stories of blame if mistaken identity to both sides.

His eyes were no longer searching for something. Ricky for the first time was looking straight at his opponent. Lieutenant Colonel Finner was a battler, and that was the reality he would have to face. There was no reason to appeal to the United Front's cause, and so he only gave her as much compassion as could be expected to show it was not his own plans he was concerned with, but hers;

"We know that capitulation to our demands is unreasonable, and the last thing we need right now is someone new brought in to make everything worse." His fingers tapped on the desk to the melody of his voice, falling on every accent. "What we want here today is a ceasefire and the army to reopen our access across Beacons Grove. I know it's a lot to ask for, but please hear us out."

Ricky was taking an agreed gamble then, one that he himself wasn't fully comfortable with, but if he had come that far he wasn't going to back out. Never taking his attention off his counterpart, he pulled the chair up behind him and finally sat down. "The roadblocks double travel time across the city. We have parents who won't let their kids go to school because you've got every road from Dunroven to Sisco Street teaming with roadblocks and soldiers, and they're worried about what could happen to their children being near things like that. Produce is barely getting through those checkpoints either. You haven't caught a bomber or a shooter in months on those things, but there are profiteers using those checks that no one else will waste time on to charge the east side an arm and a leg to get food through the city. You are capable of stopping that. What do you have to fear of the United Front if we have a mutual ceasefire?"

It was a big ask, but he was asking for much less than what they wanted. There were parents and spouses who had begged him to request retrials of a dozen alleged rebels serving years in prison. He remembered their names, and he knew that they had nothing to do with the United Front, but the government was zealous with its sentences for anyone they got alive, and those poor people had paid for it. Asking for their retrial would be just, but she wouldn't do it. This Miss Finner wouldn't believe him yet, but Ricky was hoping that given time, she would.

The first round of bargaining had gone rather well, Ricky had to admit. He could only have expected that Miss Finner would give him a high ball opening offer. She had as much as guaranteed him the ceasefire, which was all Ricky needed to get up and leave with a big, fat grin on his face, but he would fight tooth and nail for any other bonus he could get to the deal. An unmistakable certainty reminded him that none of it would last, but he wanted everything there was on offer. The United Front's interests started with an end to the raids and ended with the liberty of the country – any step that would get them closer to the ultimate goal would not go unnoticed.

Ricky knew that pushing too hard now was dangerous. Holding back a bemused grin, perhaps a bit too eager to loosen the tension that had slowly started to dissipate, he kept hold of the focused demeanour. His answer came in a carefully choreographed act, trying his best to give only an honest appraisal of her offer. "So you expect every journalist, relative, person with any business at all in this town or the buzzed tourist thrill seekers who doesn't live here to be counted suspicious because they're here? Doing that won't do anything to us. But what kind of message do you think that's going to send out to world about what it is you're doing here? You're actively monitoring the citizens, invading their right to privacy and treating coincidence of place as motive. And you're claiming your intention is to take care of these people? I know two journalists in this town who will jump on that story and not spare the allusions to Nazi Germany or North Korea."

The show went on as he held out his hands with a shrug, an open gesture to show he was doing his very best to be as accomodating as possible and that his response had been taken out of his hands. "Considering everyone's interests, I don't think I can agree to that. You have your stop and search powers that the police – if not your soldiers – have taken a great shine too. You control most vehicular movement in the streets. I think there's something better you can offer us.

"Stopping the raids isn't the United Front's concern but we can talk with the RUF for you, and with enough persuasion and concessions, we can probably come to an agreement about meeting their needs in exchange for stopping these interruptions. But that is a big ask of those boys with a concession that makes Beacons Grove no less like a prison." For Ricky, even reaching speaking terms with the splinter factions was a big ask, but there were others in the leadership who could appeal to their reason. The RUF was one of three splinter cells the United Front would have to talk into a ceasefire but the less support he had to call in from others across the country, the better. The RUF would always demand compensation, but they would bend double to match any of the army's concessions.


((OOC: I thought I had posted this! Super sorry for not having double checked and kept you waiting!))