milliways_bar | (no subject)

"The reality of it seems solid enough." Mostly in that it keeps happening, whether it happens to be the door or the magically appearing food or even the time stopping outside the door. "But the answer to your question is more one most people here seem to take on faith and hearsay more than fact or proof."

Beat. "Steve McGarrett." There's a head tip, more chin than forehead, toward a chair, like an invitation, if he wants it. Though he just continues on without much more to it than that. "Guessing this is your first time in Milliways, then?"

Jack raps the table with his knuckles. "Feels solid enough, too."

He takes the invitation and sits, setting his cap on another chair and undoing a few buttons on his uniform. Since he can. "Jack Benjamin. It is--I was poking around our new house tonight and there was this bar in the hallway.

"A lot of faith around here, is there?" Sounds like home. He's not sure this is a good thing.

He closed the folder, while Jack seemed to be getting more comfortable with the place, as he answered that one. "Or a lot of people who just accept what they can't explain, or get explained to them."

Steve is pretty partial to facts and specs over supposition. He's not against the place all things considered, he's just not for blind acceptance of things that can't be explained either. It's the military man in him, that's more than three-quarters what he is, does, lives, breathes. He can take the unexplained, he can live under blackout, redacted unexplainable.

But it doesn't warrant faith or blind trust from him. Little on his planet, or any planet, could.

Edited 2013-07-09 03:57 (UTC)

"Am I right in thinking nobody lives here, and they all come from someplace else?"

"No." It's simple, easy. Fact.

Get's a wave of his hand toward the ceiling, without it even lifting four-five inches off the table.

"There are rooms above this one. Catacombs of them." That don't fit in actual logic, if count rooms or floors, and then study the building from the outside. Another thing filed under that uneasy Magic clause of the place. That couldn't be explained or denied. "There are some people who live here, some even who were basically born here. But the majority is all from somewhere else."

"Another world, another time, everything from the most plausible to some less than logical, crazy ones.."

For reasons that Jack is not even sure he can explain, that makes Jack smile. "Tell me something. Does the name Gilboa mean anything to you?"

Steve shook his head. "Not really."

He can come up with case names that are reminiscent of it, but nothing that would hit that nail on the head.

"That the name of your planet? City?" Otherwise location. Or even the milita force he'd guess backs that uniform he's wearing.

"Country," Jack says, really relaxing. "It's my country. And if you haven't heard of it, it's probably safe to say you and I are from different worlds."

He is surprisingly okay with being that far from home.

"Honolulu, Hawaii, myself," Steve tossed back. Pretty easy in this place. Especially when it's not likely a good half of the people will get anything from it anyway. "It's part of a chain of islands in the middle of the largest ocean out world has."

He's not sure he'd call it home. The word fits the island, but not the being there, and definitely not him. He hasn't had one except as a memory for more than a decade and half. It's more the land of ghosts than some golden homecoming. But then coming 'home' to the brains and blood of your last parent blown out on the walls had a tendency to keep that going.

Another tip with chin, toward Jack himself. Or more aptly, that uniform. "Military?"

"Never heard of it," Jack muses. "Though there is an island nation that sounds like that--Kanaka Maoli.

"Yup," he answers Steve's question simply. "Captain Jack Benjamin of the Gilboan Army, at your service."

He'd snap a salute, but something about Steve says he'd salute back, and that would just be awkward.

For as much as Ellen said there were as many uniform wearer's about these parts, he seems to be hitting several.

"Lieutenant Commander McGarrett." This time with a more resolute sort of clipped nod. Sharp, short, nearly formal on a dime. "Navy."

Because it's true, and a lot easier to explain than being a SEAL. Especially when being a SEAL, and exactly what that entailed, while it was a point of unshakable pride, was about not needing the glory or notice of that job being done any more than it being done and the world being a safer place once it was over. "Presently, heading up a task force in Hawaii."

Because six months with the HPD was a drop in a bucket compared to the sixteen dedicated years that came before this.

"Pleasure to meet you, Commander.

"Is Hawaii a war zone?"

After twenty years of constant battle, it's hard to imagine a place without it, day after day, even if Gilboa and Gath have reached a tentative peace.

"The same to you. Captain." He's young for it. Over there, with his undone shirt, buttons and boyish smirk, but Steve's seen some up and comer's in his time. It's hard not to when you're slingshot as one of the very best of an exclusive elite force than barely reaches thousands.

"Not currently. Though it has been a hotbed during war times. It sits near the midway point of our largest ocean, between the main continent of my country." Maybe he hedges names for generality, but he's not exactly handing out exact map dots and names to people he doesn't know either. Especially when they shouldn't matter or lodge as known. "She used to be home to Battleship Row."

But the attack on Pearl Harbor set an example why that would never be true, again. Too many of their finest in one place.

"Midway between your country and what?" Jack asks thoughtfully. "Friend or foe?"

"Yes." Complicated answer, even though it's incredibly short and pin-pointed.

"There are over a hundred countries of various sizes on either side of both oceans on both sides of ours-" Depending on how you counted, and whether you counted them once as one on all three other continents. Before you started counting down and up, too."-and the relationships with all of them have their own vary levels of either."

Some of them were politically aligned and had been for a good long while. Some of them were high alert hot beds being watched round the clock. Some of them he might not flinch if he woke up tomorrow and learned an assignation of their president and their first give tiers of staff had taken place over night.

Especially when the first assumption would be that there was a high likelihood someone in a position like his meted it out.

Edited 2013-07-09 05:01 (UTC)

"It's always a complicated thing," Jack says dryly, "international relations."

"Never been a big fan myself." There something of a quirk to the line of his mouth. Dragging it crooked. "Politics."

"Always liked the straight forward, tactile response more." It's part of what makes him an amazing, brick wall of a weapon. Along with the thing where he's never once in his life had a reason to hold back or flinch away. There's something of a gold ticket in knowing there's no one to send the letter to.

"Me neither, but it's a necessary evil in my household."

"By choice?" It's speculative enough.

"By choice," Jack confirms.

There's an odd quirk to his mouth, with a nod. "I should double your condolences, then."

More comment than condescension. Steve's just never been one for the red tape and the rules.

"I appreciate them," Jack says, a weary type of quirk to his own mouth. "Sometimes I wonder if my parents thought it through when they embarked on this life."