Moon 514 || Blaze and the White Griffon

30 || Borris

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Last revision: 3/27/2013 

“Please state your name.”

“Borris.”

“Which Order did you come from Borris?”  By now, Blaze had begun to learn to ask the boring questions that lawyers like to ask before getting to anything really important.

“I was part of Order 4,” he grumbled.  Still hogtied, the stocky fellow was not in a particularly good mood as he was being forced to give his testimony in that condition in front of the entire crew.  Blaze continued to ask the boring questions, including Borris’ recollection of the events of the day before – just to test his honesty in front of the crew.  For the most part, he confessed to speaking with Blaze about the master’s request for his allegiance and about his threat to kill Blaze and his companions.  However, he cleverly covered up his indiscretions by pointing out his shock to see so many of his fellow crewmen (including some dear friends) dead and insisted that his harsh remarks were nothing more than hyperbole – exaggerations used in jest because Borris found himself quite distressed over the situation and was using coarse humor to deflate the situation a little.  The testimony was not particularly helpful and verged on painting Blaze in a bad light.

“So, if I told you that I had a recording of the skirmish with these other soldiers … if I told you that I had them also on record, threatening to kill me and congratulating the magic woman for her successful kill of Dr. Boyd, would that be hyperbole as well?”

“I would imagine they might threaten to kill you if you were shooting …”

“I’m speaking about before any shots were fired,” Blaze interrupted.

“Well, I don’t know why they would threaten you at all – sometimes, people act outside of their authority, you know?  And for the same reason, I can understand why someone might have felt empathetic towards the magic woman’s cause in killing Dr. Boyd.  A lot of people were really upset over what he had done,” Borris answered.

“What do you mean by what he had done?” Blaze followed up, hoping that Borris’ changed portrayal of the magic woman’s involvement in the death of Dr. Boyd would be overlooked by the crewmen at this late point in the hearing.

“Okay – I don’t know how much you know Blaze but it seems like you might be aware of a lot of things Dr. Boyd was doing,” Borris snapped back.  He was becoming more hostile by the minute – he clearly had little idea of how to control his temper.

“I’m asking the question for the benefit of all of these people who may not know these things,” Blaze clarified.  “What did Dr. Boyd do that may have upset this fellow who claimed that your ‘master’ was pleased that Dr. Boyd had been killed?”  Untrained in the sophistries of the legal system, Blaze didn’t know he was taking liberties in asking these types of questions and Borris was equally oblivious.  Under the circumstances and the loose rules being followed for this hearing, the prosecution was unwilling to mount tons of objections either so the questioning continued, uninterrupted.

“Well, I would say first off that Dr. Boyd caused most of the people in the Orders to go infertile by selectively feeding certain individuals tainted food and then, when someone found the cure to the infertility, Dr. Boyd refused to allow the treatment to be tried on real people.  That didn’t sit too well with people in Order 4 who were privy to what was going on.  I mean … you know … when someone makes your friends and family go infertile so they can’t have any kids and then they refuse to allow you to help them, you feel pretty upset over the situation.  But that’s just for starters.”