[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=B8860B][i][b]Nigel Cooper[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=B8860B]Location:[/color][/b][/i]  Education Center (M)
[i][b][color=B8860B]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/LrnKm2S/Nigel-Hadrian-1.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	Nigel noted the brief, yet emotional testimony of the older soldier, Alexander, feeling a sense of sorrow simply watching him as he clearly didn't feel comfortable sitting up there. Why? The Roman scholar couldn't tell, simply observing him silently, but with an understanding look as the old man finished and limped back to his seat beside his fellow old man. He didn't know it then, perhaps never would, but he could only imagine what old Alexander had gone through to be moved in such a way by Hunter's outburst of Greek theatrics. 

	The trial wasn't about Alexander though, but Hunter, and Nigel sat patiently while he observed intently what testimony followed. Nikki was call forth, questioned about her relationship with the troubled youth. Nigel remembered how the two youths had socialised back then, and contemplated how far Hunter had fallen since then. Games of Pool, relatively friendly conversations and drunken words of encouragement, how was his story  going to wind up? How would the Golden Yarn of Fate be spun? 

	Then the heavy charges were put forth against the accused Hastati, in the words of none other than Macsen, who told in great details. While the events were told, Nigel found himself digging his face deeper and deeper into the palm of his hand. To him the reprucations for his negligence seemed fair, but Hunter's reaction had been…well, Nigel didn't have words really. It didn't help when others came forward to continue this Greek tragedy, not to mention the following evidence. 

	Televised footage. 

	At every turn and crossing, Hunter had made critical strategic mistakes in the battle for social inclusion. In short, Nigel thought Hunter had done everything in his power to make things worse, even if he didn't think so himself. Everyone he met, perhaps aside from Nigel himself for some strange, divine reason, Hunter had managed to insult. To say the least, the young soldier had a Herculean feat before him if he was to convince them he wasn't a danger to their small society. Even Nigel was having second thoughts to Hunter now, the pragmatist taking hold of him like before. Perhaps it was for the best if Hunter was simply thrown over the city walls?

	Only time and Hunter's words would tell, and Nigel waited with baited breath.
 
[color=lightgray][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][table][row][/row][row][cell]
[h3][color=662d91][i][b]Alexander Polawski[/b][/i][/color][/h3][i][b][color=662d91]Location:[/color][/b][/i] Education Center (M)
[i][b][color=662d91]Skills:[/color][/b][/i] N/A
[/cell][cell]
[right][img]https://i.ibb.co/BBfr494/Mugsy-1.jpg[/img][/right]
[/cell][/row][/table][CENTER]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[/center][/color]

	Alexander's hand shook uncontrollably, struggled to not show itself in a position of weakness as the old veteran was finally dismissed from testifying before the court. He got back up on his one good foot and good peg-leg, limping determindly back over to his old seat beside Manny. It had been hell, a kind of hell ol' Mugsy hadn't been exposed to for years at this point. Years of trauma had been dug up, and in a matter of mere minutes it had played itself out before his tearing eyes as he had tried to answer their questions. 

	As he tried to not think about the traumatic flashback Hunter, Tatiana and others had unknowingly brought upon him by causing that scene back in Quarantine. His fleeting eyes crossed Hunter's for a moment, two soldiers from different times meeting in a world not made for them. Or perhaps made perfectly for the two of them? 

	Alexander shuffled hurriedly back to Manny, quickly seating himself as his good hand gripped tightly around the one shaking, as if in the middle of an enemy mortar strike that just would stop. Ol' Mugsy's mind was so focused on the trembling occupying him that he didn't see Manny reaching out for him. When he did, his face shot up and stared wildly at Manny, but grew calm and comforted once he recognized the familiar face looking reassuringly at him. He did good?...perhaps he did? 

	The old veteran's face grew less stiff, frightened, and began to take the deep breaths he so desperately needed to keep going through the trial. He had done good, answered to the best of his abilities…if Manny said so, then he would try to believe that. [color=662d91]"I…thanks Manny, thank you."[/color] The words were equally short and thankful, glad to have Manny by his side as the trial kept dragging on. 

	Things only kept turning from bad to worse with every single word spoken up against Hunter. People might have gotten a really, really bad impression of Hunter at this point, but Alexander? He couldn't force himself to think he was a horrible human being…because he had to believe that he himself wasn't one. It was to awfully easy for the old soldier to see himself in the young soldier, decades apart but still suffering from a trauma that hadn't fully healed. Only difference was that Alexander had been coping with it since the 70's and had a wife to help him, and Hunter had not. 

	It was still painful to hear the testimonies of those who'd witnessed Hunter's outbursts and himself watch the footage of him lashing out. Honestly Alexander didn't know what to think; was he a sorry piece of shit who desperately needed CMB to recover, or was he a sorry son of a bitch who deserved to be thrown to the wolves? He…he didn't know, desperately wanting to find some redemption for the young man. Or was it redemption for himself he sought?