OOC: Please read all of Norb Whitehall's POV posts in the voice of Kevin Spacey from House of Cards.

Norton "Norb" Whitehall
Capitol Building, Evergrande City
Hoenn
Affected RPers: None

The meetings of the Defense Committee so bored Norton Whitehall. The Parliament of Hoenn endlessly bickered amongst themselves, simply trying to settle partisan gains as opposed to actually playing The Game. Everyone was only the lookout for the next election, the next campaign contribution, the next fancy dinner with a lobbyist; no one could see the bigger picture. The world was a chessboard and Whitehall intended to not only play it, but to win it. He was not a piece, but a player.

He did, of course, have a purpose for showing up at the meeting of Hoenn's Defense Committee. Recently, it had been a bunch of warhawks beating their chests over Hoenn's recent military dominance. As opposed to planning for Hoenn's Defense, as the founders of Hoenn had intended for these meetings to be used, these men were instead using it to plan further offensives into other countries. Orre was in Hoenn's line of sights now. Their harboring of militant refugees from various terrorist factions all across the world was finally going to be met with punishment, at least, according to Whitehall's esteemed colleagues.

"Orre will no longer harbor terrorist threats to Hoenn!" Hans Velshtein, General of the Hoenn Armed Forces, bellowed across the hall. The florescent light of the room gleamed off his bald head, blinding the aging Parliamentarian forced to listen to his speech. Whitehall wondered when the blowhard would ever shut up.

"We can't attack Orre when there's a war between Kanto and Johto. It's our duty, as the world's strongest power, to police these conflicts," Orson Barkley, another Parliamentarian, fiercely replied. Whitehall chuckled to himself. He's only deflecting because the Orre shipping industry is paying him out of the nose to keep war out of that country. Barkley and Vehlstein verbally duked it out for a few moments before Whitehall had to intercede.

"Enough! This is the Capitol Building. We are Hoenn's best and brightest. If we cannot resolve this petty disagreement without this constant bickering, then gentlemen, I'm afraid our motherland is lost," Whitehall quipped. "For now, I think it would be best to table this issue until the morning. A night of sleep will do us all some good." The blowhards and egotists surrounding Whitehall nodded in agreement as the men filed out of the room to return to their wives and whores. Whitehall grabbed Barkley by the crook of the elbow as he was leaving.

"What is it, Norb?" Barkley asked, expecting the usually genial Norb Whitehall. He quickly realized that he had instead come upon the vicious Whitehall; a scowl encompassing the entirety of the lower half of his face. Barkley tried to free his arm, but Whitehall gripped harder. He led the man towards the desks. Once he was confident the two were alone, Whitehall retrieved a bottle of Laphroaig 18 from his desk and two scotch glasses. He poured one for himself--all the way up to the rim--and much smaller one for Barkley.

Whitehall brought the drink up to his lips and relished in the firewater rushing down his throat. His body screamed at him to keep what was technically a poison out of his body, but Whitehall was man enough to keep the shivers under control. Whilst Barkley had only drank a shot's worth, Whitehall had downed half of the glass. "Woah, Norb. I know that you've been struggling with abuse, but you should at least wait until you get home to get that hammered."

The alcoholic grabbed Barkley's hand and put it on his side, where his liver was. "You feel that, Orson?"

Barkley's eyes widened in shock. "What the hell? Norb, that's a god damn stone."

"Exactly. I'll be fine. You see, unlike yourself, hiding my vices is much easier," Whitehall quipped. He grabbed a docket from under his desk and put it in front of Barkley. Barkley didn't react--he knew what was in there. "Illegally taking campaign contributions from foreign parties? That's baby stuff, we all do it. This, however. Well, quite frankly, when I came across these pictures, I was absolutely shocked." The photos, of course, had been provided to him by Finch Reynolds: Aqua's Captain of Espionage.

"What do you want?" Barkley asked Whitehall exasperated.

"The kids would say that you're my bitch now," Whitehall told him. "Me? I just would like you take my counsel on the way you should vote very seriously from now on." He finished the drink and slammed the glass onto the ground, shattering it. "Or you'll end up like that."

"But what about Orre? If we go to war with them, I'll have no money to keep running for office," Barkley tried to argue.

"Let me worry about that," Whitehall reassured him. "You can go now." The politician scurried away, unwilling to expose himself to any further political torment. Whitehall sat there for a moment as he finally started to feel a buzz overtake him. He nestled the bottle of Laphroaig away for later and checked his phone. Using his 4G connection, he logged into a secure VPN and accessed the Deathwing's servers. Whitehall liked to keep a close eye on Aqua's R&D department. Restricting Raidon's toys seemed like the only way to keep control of them these days.

A smile wrapped its way around his cheeks when he saw the Liquidator, a Gatling Railgun. Those Railgun plans that Whitehall had leaked to Aqua seemed to have come in handy. It appeared that Angel Price had modified the designs to distribute the masses via the gravitational turns of the Gatling gun as opposed to forcing a manual load. It was absolutely ingenious. He couldn't wait until he could turn that intellect towards Hoenn... when he ran the country, of course.

However, his smile turned to a frown once again when he saw Project MEND. Tyrus Hale's clandestine research group, whom Hale lovingly referred to as his "skunkworks," had been sicced onto this project. Once he had pored over the details, Whitehall decided he needed to pay Raidon Makoto a visit. He hadn't behaved well enough for a toy like that.