"Huh. I do not know how to diagnose your sudden onset empathy situation."

"Of course not."

"Is it... good?  For us?  That you have this, do you think?"

"Do you prefer this treatment to the one you received from my colleagues?"

"- Yes.  Yes sorry thank you."

"I think it's better that there is sudden onset empathy in the mix, I don't want to be trying to make small talk with a SHADOW goon who hasn't got any and can easily torture me by walking out of the room even if they're having a squeamish day."

Hug!! (Well, shoulder-squeeze; he's still cuffed.)

"Would you like me to attempt to join forces with your previous 'babysitters'."

"Do they... have... forces?"

"Vogt works for the Canadian government," she shrugs.  "And he had enough defenses to knock you out, which I think we may assume almost hit me.  ...You have not given me any other suggestions on where to go."

"I'm not all that picky about where to go but joining back up with him sounds probably good?"

She nods.  "The plan for today remains the same."

"Hotel. Yeah. Room service and snuggling and trying to find conversation topics."

"Right.  ...Uh, I care more about this guy as a conversation topic if we're going to be meeting him?"

"What else do you want to know?"

"I don't know.  What did you do there?"

"I summarized the plots of things I've read for Ari and at one point we were comparing which Christmas carols exist between worlds and we tried some co-op video gaming but it did not work amazing. - Xavier had this drug that makes people fidget less and brought it out because Ari's fidgety and it was making it complicated for her to be on extended snuggle duty. They've got like different painkillers here... oh, I remember another non-matching country, there's one that like, is stereotyped as being a leading exporter of saboteurs? Which must be really something against this backdrop."

"Wow...  Were all the video games new or was it just stuff from ten years ago.  ...Five years ago."

"I didn't recognize any of them but they did not seem notably either dated or futuristic? I'm not usually a big video game person besides that I'll play Civilization sometimes."

"I guess I haven't played much since high school, either."

"One of them was like, a series of plot-connected Minesweeper levels."

"That's cool.  Unless you think it was lame."

"I dunno what I would've thought of it in my right mind."

"Sure.  That makes sense..."

Svetka pulls into a Churn Dash.  It's going home-y on the theming; there's a quilt pattern as the logo and a lot of rough wood in the decor.