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[abrightboy]

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[deuceoftears]

"Not sure how you'd tell the difference from jelly and shards, to be honest with you," muses Jedao, who doesn't know what an Emmy is but is guessing from context.

[abrightboy]

“Well, that’s just it,” Malcolm points out. “You can’t rely on physical evidence from the victim’s body in a case like that. But he was experienced working at heights. His harness was the only part of him intact. It had either not been hooked up - unlikely based on his record - or someone unhooked it. We had to pursue evidence of someone else being up there at the same time, their relationship to and history with the victim… that sort of thing.”

He finds a promisingly flat stone and holds it out for Jedao.

“You want the flat surface to hit the water and it helps to put a little spin on it by flicking your wrist.”

[deuceoftears]

Jedao feels the smooth, flat stone, and holds it correctly right away. He feels the edge, fingers finding a little notch he can use to add more angular momentum at the very last moment of flicking it. It feels right in his hand, the way a sword had felt, the way he sometimes dreams a gun would feel.

He has no idea that Jedao One grew up next to a duck pond, no idea about the long summer afternoons he spent trying to get a stone all the way across. But his hands remember.

He sends the stone out, timed with his sense of the waves, and manages six skips before wobbles and sinks.

[abrightboy]

"You're a natural!" Malcolm declares gleefully, with no idea that that's true.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao scoops up another stone, tossing it in the air, contemplating.

"I think my...progenitor, was good at it. That's a feeling I get sometimes. Like the muscle memory is already there."

It's hard to reconcile with his mental picture of Lao Jedao, the Immolation Fox, the man who massacred his own bridge crew. He was good - somehow, at some point - he got good at skipping rocks on open water.

It does fit with the man who dyed his hair purple live on interdimensional comms, just to make Godric smile. Jedao doesn't know how he feels about that.

[abrightboy]

"You got that from him? His muscle memories?" Malcolm asks.

[deuceoftears]

"Mmhm. The first thing I did in my life was duck for cover behind the furniture of the perfect nice guest quarters they'd put me in. I don't have his memories, just the instincts. It's been awhile since I tripped over a new one."

He throws again - a little too hard, this time, and only skips thrice.

[abrightboy]

"Is it like discovering some secret new ability?" Malcolm asks curiously.

[deuceoftears]

"Most of the time it's like intrusive thoughts on how easy it would be to kill people, and how I'd do it," he admits, dourly.

"But sometimes it's just - a reflex, that comes easy. It's not the same as being an expert, I can still fuck it up if I overthink it. He was good at dancing. And I guess skipping stones, too."

[abrightboy]

"...Are you saying it's weird to think about how easy it is to kill people and how you'd do it?" Malcolm teases.

[deuceoftears]

He glances over to meet Malcolm's gaze, but doesn't smile.

"I'm saying if I let my body do what it wants and knows how to do, I would succeed without thinking about it."

[abrightboy]

"Oh. Will and I just think about it," Malcolm says in all seriousness. "Like. Professionally."

[deuceoftears]

"With the profession being...profiling." The word is a little alien for him, but he remembers it.

[abrightboy]

“Yeah. Profiling,” Malcolm confirms. “It involves hunting killers for law enforcement.”

[deuceoftears]

Jedao crouches and pokes around for another flat stone. Hunting killers for law enforcement sounds profoundly bizarre to him, like something out of Alice in Wonderland does to people from Earth: absurdly topsy-turvy.

Civilians don't kill people. Government professionals kills people.

"Right, so, analytics." He flips a stone between his fingers like a coin. It's a little awkward, thicker, but he manages it.

[abrightboy]

“Sort of. We examine what their crimes tell us about their thought process and use that and other personal information to predict where we can find them,” Malcolm says.

[deuceoftears]

So, sloppy analytics, Jedao thinks, but isn't rude enough to say. What he says instead is,

"I have the procedural memory of a professional assassin. My hands always know how to kill. When things get - messy. I'm always fighting not to."

[abrightboy]

“Your victims would tell us a lot about you,” Malcolm tells him. He picks up a stone and whips it, sending it for three skips.

[deuceoftears]

Jedao snorts.

"No, they wouldn't. Professionals don't choose their own targets." He stands and throws too, getting no skips at all, but a dramatic spray of foam as he hits an inch below the crest of one of the waves.

"Even here, it would only tell you who'd gotten in my way."

[abrightboy]

“I’ve arrested hired killers for professional hits. Everything anyone does says something about them,” Malcolm tells him.

[deuceoftears]

"Malcolm, you guess shit wrong about people you've actually met all the time," Jedao points out.

Yes, it's possible to observe people closely and make inferences from almost anything - the more eyes the better, and all that - but you don't get a Rahal to do it. You get a Shuos.

[abrightboy]

"And yet you're sharp enough to suggest I'm bad at my job without even really understanding what it entails," Malcolm replies crisply. "What a study in contrasts we are."

His job at home and being not only good at it but one of the best is very tied up in his identity still.

"You should be a career coach. Save people like me from devoting their lives to the wrong thing."

[deuceoftears]

Jedao laughs, one short sharp bark, before he drags a hand over his face.

"Oh, I basically do." The only people who hate him more than the cadets he fails are probably the cadets he passes, at this point. But they hate him because he's right about them.

"But you're right, your job doesn't make any sense to me at all."

[abrightboy]

Malcolm shrugs and moves a couple of steps past Jedao, ostensibly looking for another stone.

"It takes, like, ten years to become one, so making it make sense is a time consuming endeavour," he says, bending to pick up a stone and turning to throw it. Four bounces. Not the worst.

[deuceoftears]

"No, like - that whole context. In that breach with the Fantasyland tours, there were those, what was the word, farriers. People whose whole job was horseshoes and hoof care. Because that world had tons of horses and donkeys and mules. You keep talking about hunting killers like that's a thing. And I know it is, because I remember other breaches. But it's weird to me."