Town Meeting

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

John awoke at his usual early hour on the morning of the town meeting. He dressed with slightly more than usual care in his suit of clothes from home, broke his fast with a light meal, and headed to the Golden Horseshoe to ensure that things were the way he wanted.

The chairs and small tables were already perfectly arranged, but John dragged a podium he found backstage out to the front of the curtain. Then he bustled about in the kitchen area setting out drinks and whatever small snacks he could find back there.

Before long, interested citizens began filing in and he went up to the podium. There was no microphone because he'd never heard of such a thing, but John Adams never had difficulty making himself heard.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome. If you would please pick up any refreshments you'd care for and take your seats, we'll begin in just a few minutes."

Comments

[grumpy-sunshine.livejournal.com]

Sunshine, who'd provided most of the snacks, found herself and her cup of tea a seat not too near the front, and sat down feeling self-conscious.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Susan arrived a little too late to say anything to John, but she smiled at him as she took her seat -- next to Sunshine, more or less at random.

[grumpy-sunshine.livejournal.com]

Sunshine smiled slightly at Susan as she sat down, recognizing a sometime customer who'd shown a proper appreciation for chocolate. Wordlessly, she offered a brownie from her (incredibly heavy-laden) plate.

[swordandchalice.livejournal.com]

The only reason Setsuna showed up was because Kira poked him to, but upon seeing the sweets near Rae, the kid immediately went over to them and asked, "Can I assume you brought these for everyone and have some?" He couldn't recall the last time he'd had sugar and was suddenly dying for some.

[grumpy-sunshine.livejournal.com]

"Of course," said Rae. "That's what they're there for."

There was actually quite an array of cookies and sweets, as well as little tea sandwiches; three kinds of brownies, lemon bars, chocolate chip cookies, Killer Zebras, and jam dandies were arrayed on the snacks table.

[veronica-pi.livejournal.com]

Veronica helped herself to a snack and found a seat near the back.

[under-arrest-d.livejournal.com]

Leon was, surprisingly enough, sober. He had chosen not to drink for the past day or so just so he wouldn't be drunk or hungover for this. He knew he should probably apologize to Adams in person, but he also knew that Carrot had done it for him, and he really wasn't in the mood to deal with too many people. In fact, he fully intended to leave right after the voted happened.

He chose not to touch any drinks or snacks, but he sat up in the front row looking fairly melancholy and somewhat spaced out.

[demoted-again.livejournal.com]

Gumshoe had, more or less, followed Leon to the meeting, whether he realized it or not. He was sure to keep a great distance away as he wandered over and inspected the snack table, though.
After happily picking away at the little treats all about, he turned back around to see that Leon had already taken a seat. Feeling as though it'd be unfair to his new friend to ditch him, he walked over by Leon with his usual dopey smile.

"Hey! Mind if I come sit with you, pal?" of course, he asked this as he parked his big self beside Leon.

((yay, nay? o_O))

[kuchiki.livejournal.com]

Rukia, Pippi in tow, tried to find a seat somewhere towards the middle. Sitting in the back would make it hard to see, but sitting in the very front seemed intimidating. Whispering to the girl with her, she said, "Now everyone's going to talk about whether or not we should have a police force here."

((Pippi-mun, if this isn't okay with you, let me know and I'll fix it.))

[no1likeher.livejournal.com]

Pippi was indeed skipping along and quite possably swinging Rukia's hand if she was holding it.

"That sounds fun! Can we sit in front? Oooh do they have chicken strips here?"

[hawaii-kid.livejournal.com]

Kon wandered in in his usual S-shield gear--the thing on the board about this had sounded pretty interesting. He was pretty sure Robin, and Rose, wouldn't be far behind him, but he wanted to see who else was there--and what problems might pop up.

Like, oh, a certain pyromaniac who'd shot off his mouth on the boards.

[sohot-imsmokin.livejournal.com]

Hot Streak had decided to come if for no other reason than to cause problems, but he was willing to remain civil until something ticked him off. He saw Kon, blinked, and then decided to head over to him. "Kon, right? Long time no see."

[superherogifted.livejournal.com]

Virgil decided to show up, too, albeit as Static. Not only did this kind of thing sound interesting, but he also hoped John Adams would provide some insight that'd give him a boost on his next history pop quiz. It was a very important goal of his to beat Richie on at least one of those just to keep his partner on his toes.

"Hey, Kon," he said. "Long time no see!"

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

John walked in with Daniel in tow, looking pretty disconcerted. The idea of all of this - the police and the meeting both - struck him deeply as a wrong move. Maybe that comes with being an outlaw yourself, he thought ironically. It was a point, though.

[a-good-man.livejournal.com]

Daniel was carrying a small notebook with Donald Duck on it and several folded sheets of paper sticking out at the edges, and he was idly turning a Mickey Mouse pen over in his fingers.

[thebadboyfriend.livejournal.com]

Logan swaggered in with a bag of popcorn and a Coke in one hand, and picked out a spot towards the back. He might really have been interested in the question to be discussed at this meeting, but it'd be hard to tell by the way he swung his long legs up on the back of the chair in front of him. His stance was pure heckle-and-mock.

[hawaii-kid.livejournal.com]

Having left Hot Streak to find his own seat, Kon moved over to go settle near Logan, waving casually. "Long time no see. Sorry about that. Did you ever find anything that could be turned into a surfboard?"

[tomato-fiend.livejournal.com]

Duckula thought he better turn up, even though he wasn't usually welcome at town meetings back in Transylvania, so waddled along and found himself a seat. He peered over the refreshments, hoping for a broccoli sandwich. Upon finding none, he settled on a nearby cake, then went to find somewhere to sit.

[una-harlequin.livejournal.com]

Una saw Leon (http://community.livejournal.com/dizzy_land/179878.html?thread=10189734#t10189734) sitting near the front, talking to another man, and sighed. This was what she got for being late, of course -- she probably wouldn't have a chance to talk to him before things got started. One of the other members of the police force might have noticed that she wasn't wearing her badge -- it was in her pocket, along with a letter in an envelope.

She slipped into a chair at the back, regarding John Adams thoughtfully. She knew of at least two or three zones where he'd come to the unpleasant end that he'd feared -- him and the other brilliant men of Philadelphia. Among other things, those zones suffered from the dullest intellectual activity of any Una had ever visited.

[john-adams-1776.livejournal.com]

((Guys, feel free to keep talking in the meet and greet section, but I'm gonna keep going...))

When it seemed that everyone had arrived and settled down, John approached the podium once more, taking courage from Susan's smile.

"Gentlemen," he began as usual, though there weren't only men in attendance, so with very little pause, he added, "Ladies, and Others. Thank you for coming this afternoon. As you all know, we have an important matter to discuss and I confess that I'm pleased to see that so many of you are taking your civic duty seriously."

Glancing around the room, it became obvious that John had been appallingly sheltered lately, for he recognized very few people. "I will begin by introducing myself. For those of you who do not know, my name is John Adams. I am an American attorney and diplomat with a good deal of experience in these matters. This afternoon I am offering to act in a neutral capacity as the moderator of the proceedings." He had his own opinions, of course, but Hancock had proven that one could be opinionated yet fair, and he intended to be.

"Please allow me to give you a brief overview of the situation. A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from a citizen who shall remain nameless at that person's request informing me that a small group had taken it upon themselves to form a police force here at Disneyland. Having seen first-hand what can happen when a group claims military power without authority from the people, even if they begin with the best of intentions, I decided to call this meeting to discuss the situation so that it might be resolved to the comfort of all. I first invited two gentlemen from that group, Detective Leon Orcot and Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson, to my office to inform them of this decision and ask them to prepare their arguments in favor of letting the group continue."

John looked around once more, snorted at the thought that he'd suddenly become a moderate - or at least appeared to be - and continued. "Therefore this is how we shall proceed. I will ask Detective Orcot to the stand to argue his case for having an independent police force at Disneyland. Then he will answer questions from the audience, after which we may hear from any member of the general public who wishes to speak against the idea. In the end, we will attempt to come to a reconciliation. If this is acceptable, then let us proceed. Detective? The floor is yours."

Tl;dr, I apologize.

[under-arrest-d.livejournal.com]

Leon took a deep breath, and headed up to the podium. He knew this was coming, and he wasn't a bad public speaker, but as he was, he'd much rather get this over with. Nevertheless, he was feeling pretty confident about this, since after he sobered up, he and Carrot had gotten together to write this speech. Letting go of his depressing for a moment - because the police force was all he had left and he didn't want to lose that as well - he inhaled deeply, and began.

“Hi, I’m Leon Orcot. I was a homicide detective for the LAPD from 1987 to 1994. This town meeting was set up because of the police force Captain Ironfoundersson and I set up, because a lot of people seem to have worries about it, and a lot of people don’t understand what exactly we’re going to be doing,” Leon started.

“I admit, when I first got here, I wanted the laws here to be those of California law, and I might have gotten a little ahead of myself, and for that I apologize,” at this he looked right at Logan, remembering the fight that the two of them had been in. But I have now been here for, I don’t know, half a year now, and I realize that I can’t do that. There are people from all sorts of different countries, times, and hell, even worlds. There are different laws for each of these, and I understand that, so our goal is not to push our laws onto the citizens of here. However, I’m sure that where all of you have come from, there’s one law in common, and that’s that hurting one another is not a good thing. That’s the only law enforcement that our police force is set up to do. Police officers are trained to stop it when physical fights break out. We intend to train those on our police force for the same thing, because it’s better to have trained professionals to step in rather than having someone else who doesn’t know what they’re doing diving in and getting hurt as well.

“I know what some of you are thinking, and that’s that the park doesn’t allow people to get hurt. This is not true. Maybe the park doesn’t let people kill each other, I’m not sure about that, as I’ve only heard of it through word of mouth, but I know first hand that it’s quite capable to get injured here.

“More so than even that bit of law enforcement though, is that we set this up for investigative reasons. Like I said, I was a detective back home, so this sort of thing is my specialty.” He took a deep breath here, and his voice seemed to take on at least twice as much passion as it had had previously. “My first priority is to find out how the hell to get out of here. I want to figure out what is making people disappear – what’s making them turn into ducks, as the police force has reason to believe that’s what’s happening. At this time, I want nothing more than to get out of here, but if I can’t do that, I’d like to protect people.

[sensiblesusan.livejournal.com]

Amid the mayhem into which the Q&A had descended, Susan looked anxiously up at John, hoping he wasn't taking it too hard.

Once this was over, she thought, there were going to be a lot of people with much poorer opinions of each other. She sighed and ducked her head.

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

It was rather difficult not to notice when Adam walked into a room unless he didn't want anyone to, but should anyone care, the Antichrist - who did, in fact, know exactly what was going on and why - found a seat near the back and watched the proceedings with a surprising amount of careful attention.

[soho-angel.livejournal.com]

Aziraphale had quietly entered some time in the middle of the argument, and nodded to Adam as the young man seated himself nearby, but said nothing. It happened that he had an interest in the matter of unprovoked attacks, and he also felt a certain obligation to attend as a matter of civic duty, but he'd rather expected something like this; such a wildly diverse population would be hard-pressed to agree on what to have for lunch, let alone anything of real importance.