Going through the extant raw materials of the rest of the Full of Grace-verse is a wild ride, let me tell you. I wrote this in such a flood of disorganized free-association. It’s a testament to how Not To Do Things.
I’m up to about 25k of mostly-contiguous stuff, but it doesn’t have lakeisha’s subplot and I know I didn’t write the Solving of the Mystery of Natasha’s Mysterious Mysteries. Because that’s the over-ambitious sequel.
Anyway, here’s a chunk I just found that made me laugh: James giving Lakeisha tips on How To Badass.
“In my case, I choose an angle of approach where they can’t see me coming. Which is tactically good, if they can’t see you they won’t shoot you– but also, if you just sort of turn up in the doorway like you’ve been standing there glowering for half an hour before they noticed you, it’s way more intimidating than if they saw you coming like a mile and a half away and have been watching you for five or six minutes commenting on how funny you actually look when you walk.”
“Nice,” Lakeisha said. “You should make a video about this.”
“I have some notes for one,” he admitted. “It adds a lot to your total commute time though, because you have to scout, like I’m doing now. And sometimes it involves scaling a wall so you can approach the door without coming through, like, a courtyard or whatever, where they’d see you from the time you came through the outer gate– the way to avoid that is to just scale the wall, and drop down next to the door so you can just step into the doorway and scare the piss out of everyone.”
“And you do this for effect,” Lakeisha said.
“There’s sound tactical reasons, but yes, effect is the main one,” James said. He paused and glanced over at her. “You don’t think pure drama is like half of my skillset? It is, though.”
“I know you’re not even kidding,” she said, amused.
“Especially if you’re working intimidation,” he said. “Between seventy and a hundred percent of that paycheck is going to be earned by looking and moving and just being as terrifying as fuck. And you can’t ever look like you’re trying too hard. You have to be super method. You are the night. You are death embodied. You are come from hell to take the undeserving. All of that.” He waved a hand. “Okay I’m not going to make you climb any walls. We’re just going to walk around the block to come at them from that side.”
“What if you have to run?” Lakeisha asked. “In my experience it’s impossible to look scary when running.”
He laughed. “I promise you I’m fucking terrifying at a run,” he said. “If for no other reason than I’m almost twice as dense as a human ought to be so I weigh 300 pounds and move like I weigh 180, and I’ll go fucking through you. Tends to intimidate people.”
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