Order and Chaos

[Falstaff]

This time Falstaff opted for a bus seat without ketchup on it. Ermac had asked a private audience, and who was Falstaff to deprive anyone of his sagely counsel--he was, after all, a Free Council-er. He thought he ought to demonstrate the full range of his personality--theater is not just comedy, but tragedy too. And so he found an outfit suitable to his dignified role, to his expertise, and solemn countenance.

Dr. Falstaff

As he stepped off the bus, he started humming mood music to himself, something to lend an aura of severity and urgency to his presence.

Getting into Role

He stops before the Byzantium, smooths his white overcoat, pulls the wedgie from his ass, and heads down the stairs. "Dah dah dah dah dah!" he hums, adding military majesty to his entrance, heavy cadence to his footfalls, as if to announce: Fear not, for Dr. Falstaff is here.

[Falstaff]

"Ermac! Hey, friend. What are the odds of running into you here?" Falstaff laughs, smiles, offers him both hands, so that Ermac may choose either to shake--he didn't like to assume the whole world was right-handed.

He sees the arced brow and figures the genius is doing some brain stuff in his head: maybe assembling Rubix cubes or doing calcu-algebra for fun. He admires Ermac's cool calm measured gaze: like no matter what was happening, Ermac appeared to be watching water drip, and he knew how many drops there were, and how many people could drink those drops, and how much change all of those people had in their pockets. Falstaff had spent most of his school days eating paste, but the value of brilliance and comportment was not lost on him--take Shakespeare or Bill Nye the Science Guy for instance. What would the world be like without them?

Trouble? Son Tee-Zoo, the Taiwanese general had said: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Trouble happened to be friend and foe, so Falstaff kept it both close and closer. "If by 'trouble,' you mean 'marriage,' then yes. How are you?"

[Falstaff]

Wonderful. Falstaff seems pleased when Ermac takes both his hands to shake. Though at the touch, poetry pours from his lips of an agency not his own--sometimes his Gnosis is the boss, or maybe it's the invader of his dreams:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.

Falstaff nods his assent; "the Muse" had chosen for Ermac the rallying cry of Shakespeare's Henry V, a passage denoting nobility at the head of camaraderie and selfless leadership perhaps? He doesn't know, being better at receiving queues than interpreting them.

"Shakespeare has a secret joke about marriage, methinks." Falstaff continues as if the possession of his tongue had never occurred. "This is that: almost all his comedies end in marriage."

Glib, Falstaff sinks low in his seat, twists his cheeks until he's perfectly comfortable, clearly relishing the honor of being the first consultation. The rest of the Assembly would have to wait their turn. "What would you like to know, Friend Ermac?"

[Falstaff]

Strongest suit? He guesses he's never thought about it before; he'd always just been who he was, and never had any context to compare himself. He'd failed out theater school and then gotten fired from the Renaissance Faire, but most of his skill had been from his time in those places.

So first Falstaff tells Ermac what others had said: how a honcho in the FC told him he had "high Gnosis for a useless vagabond;" how his Ren-Faire fencing instructor had called him "a natural, though unconventional;" about how the fortune tellers at the Ren-Faire said he had "a mind made for the Occult."

Then Falstaff adds the skills he finds most important: that he's best friends with Fate, that he never gets angry, and that he's almost always content--like a tiny Buddha but with more hair and better jokes.

Falstaff shrugs. He'd rather be a sniper who could cut sideways cakes in half. He adds that he sometimes has someone else's dreams, someone far away away and very strong. Falstaff doesn't care if he's stronger, but he'll help Ermac be stronger if that's what he wants to be. Ermac was the only Mage who didn't hate him, who shook both his hands.

[Falstaff]

Plans . . . those aren't Falstaff's list of strengths, but they seem like they're on Ermac's. Maybe that's what "cohesive strength" means? "I don't know about all that stuff," Falstaff admits: who's right or wrong, plans, or advantageous combinations, they make his head hurt like Sudoku. "But I'll go with what you think." Thinking was such hard business, and if he could spare himself a little effort . . . he wonders how many calories he's spent at the meeting already, just thinking alone. Maybe if they thought some more, they could get ice cream.

He wonders about Ermac, how he got to be the way he is. Maybe he was born with an extra brain? Or maybe he's a Mind mage? He wonders how he can help a Mind mage with an extra brain. His turn to ask a question: "What do you want to be when you grow up . . . in the Free Council I mean? A boss of things? A ninja guy? What's your suit list?" Falstaff bets Sudoku is on it.