Board Thread:Role Plays/@comment-26104528-20161008203617/@comment-26104528-20161013234803

...Brine, you son of a...

For the last few weeks, Stahlfritz had been undergoing social training to avoid showing stress and other signs of weakness or revealing when someone had found one of his threads to pull or buttons to press.

"A lack of emotion will alienate your audience and can be detrimental to social combat, but total transparency with your feelings is not good either. If you take one thing from my class, it is that you must know which emotion or words are favorable to you in the moment and consciously decide to feel that emotion or say those words."

Under normal circumstances, his poker face would have been rock solid thanks to Zephrion's many lectures and occasional one-on-one training, but these were not normal circumstances. Azzie was right; huge stakes, a questionable crew, and what Hargreave was asking of him all compounded into a large enough chink in the eliminator's social armor.

Well, lying's not gonna get me anywhere; if Brine and/or Azzie wanted to bone us over, they'd've done so already...


 * sigh*

Fritz set down his tea and got up, checking every single window and door to make sure it was closed and locked. He drew the blinds shut to prevent anyone who might be able to read lips from doing their thing, giving one particuarly nosy neighbor the stink-eye as he forcibly pulled the curtains together.

"CATSAI, activate local comms jammer. Azz, turn off your scroll." he said as he did the same. He sat back down on the couch and by 'sat', I mean heavily plomped back onto it.