The Brigadier is the sort of man who would do that - or rather, have his staff do it - just to make it as painful as possible for M. If he knew about them, he'd have insisted on animated bullet points too.

>Dun dun DU- wait, Logan's a secret agent *too*?

Well, inasmuch as he sometimes does work for the Canadian government - that is, acts as an agent - and it's secret, yes. But they know better than to call him in for certain kinds of jobs. For instance, he would have been a bad fit for the Casino Royale mission, if the Canadians had been doing the heavy lifting on that one instead of the British. He's more of a one-man counterterrorism squad than an intelligence operative.

>Sounds like two men whose vacations you should never spoil.

Or, well, about one and two-thirds, at the time. :)

>Okay, so in that small group of women Gryph had dated, we've got the
>Baroness and the two Onnatop sisters.

Well, sort of. The Baroness is one of the Onatopp sisters (Xenia is her younger sister). And he didn't so much date Xenia as, erm, encounter her in the line of duty.

>Somehow, I'm no longer surprised
>Lara had disapproved. If I had a platonic male friend who was trying
>to get into a relationship with the Baroness, I'd not as much
>disapprove as yell "what the HELL are you thinking?!" and attempt to
>shake the idea right out of him.

To be fair, she wasn't yet infamous (indeed, wasn't yet technically "the Baroness") at the time.

>Keep your mind on the task at hand, Gryph. Next thing you know, you'll
>either be missing an obvious strike and getting your liver perforated,
>or worse, getting into another relationship.

With Decapre? That'd be... a lot of work. And not in the good way.

>[Murder on the Orient Express] should really be a 12-maneuver chain,
>with some of the strikes being very weak and- although I suppose there's
>not much point to a combo where some of the strikes are light?

Not much, but you're correct - however, in-universe, Zoner named it, and he's not so precise with his Agatha Christie references. It irritates Gryphon a little bit too if he lets himself think about it, so he doesn't. :)

>A shock baton. Built into her crutch. That's... such a very
>megalomaniacal-organisation thing to do. It's like, what, you want to
>stay *out* of combat situations until your leg heals? No, that would
>just not be *evil* enough. Your crutch is now also a shock baton.
>They'll never see that coming. Now hop back to it.

Under the circumstances, it was probably Laura's idea, because she's kind of cracked that way. She has a deep-seated need to demonstrate at all times, to an extent that's considered eyebrow-raising even in the brutally Darwinian world of Shadolu, the full depth of her commitment to ruthless badassery. When you're Lord Bison's favored student, you really do give to the job 'til it hurts.

That said, whatever technician built it for her won't have kicked up a fuss about it. A, he'd prefer to live, and B, as you say, it's not really that strange a request in that organizational culture.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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