Elliot's stupor, half contemplation on the night's events and half nigh-comatose delirium, remained throughout his stony-faced, staff-assisted stroll, up until the moment he recognized what was about to happen.  Like a bolt from the blue it pierced his haze, and devious smirk overtook his features despite the fatigues that kneaded his mind.

From the staff member offering the prompts, there came a muffled groan of disbelief as Elliot appeared before him.  After a moment, the agonized voice asked him, “Isn't it past your bedtime?”

Before a nanosecond could pass Elliot burst forth with a breathtaking tirade.

“What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.”

Pure malice dripped from the operator's words as he snarled, “Go on ahead.  Asshole.”

Elliot looked as though he'd made the single greatest achievement the world had ever known.  His face, somewhere between a goofball's idiotic grin and the expression of unmitigated bliss an exhausted man sliding into a hot tub ought to wear, signaled a man thoroughly pleased with himself.  “Hahah.  Aren't the passcodes great?  And totally necessary?”  He then trudged into the meeting room, seated himself, and steeled himself to face Director Kens.

He kept quiet, his face pronouncedly less self-satisfied as it had been when he entered, while Lillian, teary-eyed, said her piece.  Since nobody else seemed eager to make sure Kens was off their back, Elliot decided to weigh in next, his voice grim.  “Don't know the full story, but yeah, we weren't the only ones with eyes on that place.  Some loony woman...uh, Troll, was it?  She sicced some freakazoid on us who could make clones that got their own random powers.  That backed us and the Community bozos into a corner, so everyone went nuts trying to survive.”  A pitying look went Lily's way after that, though not in intentional connection his previous statement.  Elliot couldn't call himself a compassionate antihero, but he felt bad that Lily seemed to be taking everything so personally.  This mess wasn't her fault any more than it was his—and in no conceivable reality was it his fault.  Saying anything construable as gushy now, however, while under review of the Director, did not seem wise.