Yeah, Latho let itself get carried away a bit at that point – it was so excited at the prospect of finally learning something about the identity and nature of their opponents that it jumped right in, not considering the reaction that the sudden appearance of a walking, talking pink plush animal tends to garner from people who haven’t been slowly and carefully prepared for the event. Now they’ll have to wait for Hiroki to recover from the shock before he can spin the rest of his yarn. And, based on experience, that might mean they’ll have to wait quite a while.
Not that Latho’s excitement was entirely unwarranted – keep in mind that this would really be the very first glimpse it gets at their opponents. Latho’s a protagonist, after all, so the ample glimpses of the villains which were already made available to the audience weren’t available to it. And that shadowy glimpse would be intriguing, wouldn’t it? The shape would appear rather odd, if you don’t know about the epaulettes, for example.
And it surely wasn’t the rest of the narration that got Latho that excited – Hiroki’s tale is perfectly typical for his sort of character in that sort of a situation in this genre. So something with Latho’s level of experience has probably heard that same tale, with few variations, many times before: inevitably, it starts with the prospective transformation victim bemoaning exactly whatever trait it is that will form the basis of the transformation, and then etc. etc.
More on Monday.