Crack your skull open [Closed]

[themightysamson]

Picking a place to do evaluations wasn't easy, but after some searching, he eventually found a nice spot. It was... some alien building in the city. He didn't know much about the culture, but he had to marvel at the architecture. Not only was it aesthetically pleasing, the furniture was comfortable, and the walls were virtually soundproof. It helped to provide a nice relaxing and secure atmosphere he needed to get people talking.

And speaking of, he sat back, waiting for his first few appointments of the day to arrive.

Comments

[livestoannoy]

Hey, as awesome as finding juicy stuff would have been, that wasn't the point. The point was to be prepared, and have as much knowledge as possible on-hand.

"Ah, so you're saving the squiqqles for later. Gotcha. But dude, I am so complaining about the lack of a couch. How am I supposed to properly talk about 'my childhood' if there isn't a couch?"

[themightysamson]

"I'm sure you'll manage. You don't seem to have any trouble talking so far," he noted.

"And seeing as how you mentioned your childhood," Come now, Marco, you gave him that opening, "why don't you tell me about it."

[livestoannoy]

"This is false advertising, man."

And sure, Marco could talk about how his mother (apparently) died when he was eleven, leaving him to look after his father when he completely fell apart and spend two years sitting on a couch staring numbly at the television screen. He could talk about how he then ended up having to fight a secret war against invading aliens who could be anyone and everyone, including his apparently not dead mother.

But sorry Samson - there's actually no way in hell Marco would ever actually say any of that. And hey, he still has eleven years of issue-free childhood to talk about - and since all of that stuff happened in his teens, technically he's not lying at all by completely avoiding it.

"Dude, seriously? That's your first question? And here I was beginning to think that you weren't a walking stereotype. But sure, if you really insist I can tell you about that one time when Dad accidentally stepped on my Lego fort. Crushing, that was. Especially since it took him a week to build it. He cried for days."

[themightysamson]

"Did he now?" He actually seemed interested in this story. Which may seem odd, but people give away a lot of information when they're trying to not talk about themselves. He motioned for Marco to elaborate on the story.

[livestoannoy]

"Yeah, I just said that, didn't I?" Marco said, rolling his eyes. Seriously, he wanted to hear about Lego? Lego?

But, Samson was right to assume that there was some major avoidance going on. Marco did not want to talk about his mother. Talking about his mother meant talking about how she 'died'. Talking about his mother meant talking about how she got infested, and that meant talking about Yeerks, and his part in the war.

Course, with the gigantic and bizarre mess of issues surrounding his mother and the war, Marco didn't actually realise that his father wasn't necessarily an 'issue-free' topic itself.

"What, you want me to go draw you a picture?"

[themightysamson]

"I do have crayons," he offered.

"Did you spend a lot of time with your father?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco believed him. After all, he'd already found the crayons when he scoped out the place earlier.

"No, he lived in the zoo and would only ever come around when there was Lego involved," Marco said, rolling his yes. "Yes, I spent a lot of time with my dad. Hello, he was my Dad?"

[themightysamson]

"Aside from being sensitive over lego blocks, what was he like?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco suddenly focused on Samson, narrowing his eyes slightly. Okay logically Marco knew that Samson was just 'doing his job', but he didn't like the way he was asking so many questions. Like he was fishing for information. And why the focus on his father?

But it only lasted a fraction of a second, and then Marco was forcing himself to push back the suspicion. He couldn't afford to appear paranoid here.

"He's a computer engineer. Mostly. Spends all his time geeking out over triangle equations or whatever."

[themightysamson]

He was looking for something, but not quite the information that Marco would think.

"What kind of parent was he?"

[livestoannoy]

"Why do you want to know?" Marco demanded.

[themightysamson]

Samson took a moment to scribble something on his notes.

"I'll get to that momentarily. For now, I'll ask the questions, you answer them.

"What kind of parent was your father?"

[livestoannoy]

Okay, so deflecting hadn't worked.

Which left lying. Or at least doing some serious bending of the truth.

"Alright," Marco said, shrugging. Mentally he was calculating, trying to figure out what he could get away with. "He worked a lot, on some big projects."

And technically, that was even true. It was just nowhere near the real story.

[themightysamson]

"And your mother?"

[livestoannoy]

Almost imperceptibly, Marco froze. Fuck!

"What about my mother?" he said, his voice unnaturally level.

[themightysamson]

"Whats your relationship with her like?"

[livestoannoy]

Marco concentrated very hard on not clenching his fists, and latched onto the fact that Samson had asked a present tense question which meant he didn't have to talk about anything that had happened in the past.

"Fine, even if she does keep insisting on family dinners. Seriously, there's only so much you can do with the gloop and none of it's particularly appealing."

[themightysamson]

"Was it always that way?" He was still probing, looking for something, though he already found out a decent amount of what he wanted to know.

Still, what was he looking for?

[livestoannoy]

"Yes," Marco said, staring at Samson as if daring him to suggest that it had ever been anything else.

[themightysamson]

"Really?" He'll take that challenge.

"So how did you end up like... this?"

[livestoannoy]

"Like what?" he said, watching Samson through narrowed eyes. He couldn't have figured Marco out already, could he? Unless Samson had had info on him before this thing had even already started...what did he know about? The Yeerks? His mother? Morphing?!

[themightysamson]

"You put an awful lot of effort into appearing shallow. But this goes deeper than simple avoidance issues, doesn't it?

"What are you so afraid of, Marco?"

[livestoannoy]

For half a second, Marco didn't say anything at all.

"Aww, you think I'm deep? I'm touched, really. I'll have to put that on a plaque: 'Marco's not shallow, because the shrink says so.'" Why was he joking? This wasn't going to work; he knew it wasn't going to work. But Marco couldn't think of anything else to get him out of this. He was just rattling off whatever came into his head. "And alright, you've got me. I'm afraid of the gloop; I think it's secretly alive and plotting vengeance."

[themightysamson]

"Are you afraid of crayons too?

"I noticed that you didn't make a crack about them when I mention them, which, struck me as odd considering that you present yourself as being so full of smart remarks. It puzzled me for a moment, but if we toss in the fact that you're trying your damnedest to give away as little information as possible, the most likely reason you didn't remark on them was because you didn't want to give away that you already knew about them." It was speculation on his part, as he had no proof Marco had ever been in this office, but he had a feeling he was close to the truth.

"How many times have you been in my office?"

[livestoannoy]

"Dude, are you insane? That's what you decide to psycho-analyse? The fact that I didn't make a joke about crayons?" Marco said.

Dammit, he needed to think. He should have planned for this more, should have looked more at Samson, should have figured out some topics he could divert to before he got here.