Welcome to Gaia! ::

The unfortunate truth of the matter was that Jada herself was not yet a General, which meant that to be polite and to look like a good little Captain who followed the chain of command, she had to check in with her direct superior before she could get to the one who could truly sign off on this.

Another set of eyes looking over things never hurt, but as Jada made her way down the hall towards Faustite's office, Borax next to her, she found herself wondering how much help the General would end up being. She'd heard the rumors. With Albite around, it was hard not to.

He was sick. Some youma ailment, which made it sound like he had enough on his plate.

He'd agreed to the meeting, though, so of course Jadarite was here, her tablet tucked under one arm like a clipboard and her subordinate at her side. "Faustite won't care about the finance aspect of this," she told him as they approached. "The intricacies. The jargon. He always stops listening if I talk too much about the details of civilian side projects, so keep that brief. What we need to show him is how this benefits the Negaverse."

They made it to the door, and she knocked three times.

Whatever ailed Faustite had infringed on his job. Faustite didn't take kindly to that. It left him so wearied that he made it to the office half as much as he used to, and spent half as many hours in Destiny City as he should have. The rest were spent sleeping, or building up his strength, or being horrifically impatient about getting better.

Faustite needed a way to keep going while he waited for results. He needed to stay busy, to stay useful.

Jadarite had reached out regarding a promising new project — needed his input for it before she could move forward. Depending on the size of the project, either he would be approving it himself, or would be forwarding it up the chain to one of the Sovereigns. To make those critical determinations, Faustite needed to be sharp. Needed to be able to listen beyond the sound of his own coughing. Needed to be awake.

His answer for all of the above was to pop a starseed in the minutes before the meeting. To chew it, wait for the thrill of it, for the rush of sharpened colors and the bolstering energy to hit him, only for him to feel what normal used to be. While dismaying, it didn't stop him from immediately wanting another.

Before he could follow the thought up with leftovers from Heliodor's stash, someone knocked on his door. Likely Jadarite, given the Lieutenant in tow.

Faustite sat up straighter on his stool, as much as that helped him look presentable. One of those boiling fissures opened up along his jawline, perpendicular to it, and tucking up under his neck where it ached and pulled any time he moved his head. His left hand was fairly covered in heat blisters with a few having popped in the webbing between his index finger and thumb. The air smelled of copper, moonstone and salt.

"Enter," he managed around a cough.

Borax could see into the room before he entered at his height, and was easily rewarded with the same view of Faustite as Jadarite was. For as much as it took him by surprise, his eyebrow simply quirked slightly; it was an impressive poker face that kept him from doing anything else, even though the questions roiled in his mind. What had gotten Faustite like this? Was this a cold that had gone far too far because he was literally made of fire, bathed in fire? Was this some kind of infernal disease they had no chance of quite understanding?

None were appropriate to ask, and Borax, always intensely status-conscious and status-concerned, did not ask them. That did not mean Borax did not eye him another time before taking a seat so he did not tower over either of his superiors.

(Being 6'5" was primarily advantageous until the rare opportunity in which it would only cause him more pain.)

"I can provide some backup as needed," came Borax's smooth addition, careful to not butt in around what Jadarite was offering. "These ideas involve an area in which I have some considerable expertise."

Perhaps he couldn't quite stop blowing smoke up his own a** though.

Jadarite shifted from attention, but did not relax. Instead, she shifted into business mode, her sharp gaze flicking over to meet Faustite's tired, burning one. Her tablet materialized in her hands, although as she could feel the General's body heat from here, she did not offer it over. Instead she tilted it so that he could see the first slide of the presentation that she'd made, a few images of the institution she'd selected with the help of Borax.

"I'm looking to infiltrate a bank," she said. "Augusta Credit Union, specifically. A local startup, since it will be easiest to start small and then expand from there as needed."

The next slides were filled with the kind of nitty details that she'd told Borax to skim over, and so Jadarite simply lowered the tablet at that point.

"I'm confident that it will benefit the Negaverse. It will provide careers, streamline finances, and give the Negaverse access to more resources. On top of that, Infiltration has precedent for running similar missions with excellent results."

When he coughed, something in her face shifted away from that formality, towards something closer to the expression she'd worn when he'd taken her out for coffee at a civilian. It was something more honest.

"I know Infiltration isn't your favorite. I can spare you the lecture on the exact fees we'd be able to avoid if you'd prefer, but I'll need your permission to take this to someone like Lepoidolite before I schedule a meeting with him."

Faustite's attention was on Jadarite to the point where she lowered her tablet. It was clear from the outset that the project she was presenting was better suited to someone with more than a GenOps' worth of information on how Infiltration worked. She might do well with someone like Netherite, or even her old boss if Marcasite was still present and accounted for. Without any firm peer contacts in Infiltration, there was only the option of sending her further up the chain.

She had a firm pitch, and she understood that her audience glazed over at the sound of intangible, abstract concepts like accounting and finance and loans and IRAs and any other bank-inclined buzzwords that cropped up in conversation. The pitch sounded promising, but they were effectively pitching to a teenager who hadn't finished high school and whose parents managed the finances with little reason to involve him.

Faustite summoned his tablet to the desk as he coughed into the crook of his arm, leaving a black stain. He heard Borax's reasoning, but did not yet address him. They were coordinated beyond the immediate entry to his office.

Typing was a difficulty for him — he vastly preferred pen and paper, but had yet to approach a Mauvian about a tablet pen — but the message was moving along. "I'm not disinterested," he offered as he wrote. "Just not qualified. Will help where I can, but I'd be more effective taking direction than giving it." Once he finished typing, he read over the message. There was something uniquely difficult in writing to someone he had never personally met in his life.

the space cauldron

General-King Lepidolite,

I am requesting an audience on behalf of my subordinates, Captain Jadarite and Lieutenant Borax. They have a lucrative and ambitious project that they want to undertake, but their plans are better heard by someone more knowledgeable and more of an authority on Infiltration than me. I can think of no better source to evaluate their project.

The project concerns infiltration of a credit union to expand resources, support, and finances for our agents. Please hear their proposal in person if you have time.

After rereading it, he set his tablet face-up on the table, spun it toward the pair, and pushed it forward with a nail for each of them to read.

Then his attention fell on Borax again. "Telling you this now so no one embarrasses themselves in front of Lepidolite. Height doesn't matter here, so put that out of your head." Faustite was fairly sure that wall of a man was taller, regardless.

Faustite reminded himself that this one was new. Came from a different background. "Negaverse values obedience in tandem with ambition and ingenuity. Once you enter his office, you salute and stand at attention. You continue standing at attention until informed otherwise. You speak only when spoken to or prompted. Remember your place — as a Lieutenant, you are a coat rack to him. Impress him with your obedience.

"If the missive suits you both, I'll send it." After a beat, he added under his breath, "Don't like using please."

Borax watched as Faustite coughed into the crook of his elbow and found his brows raising in mild alarm. Did he normally cough literal soot? He hadn't seen that in prior interactions with him, and Jadarite had said he was under the weather, but it left Borax wondering what had gotten into the man who had helped introduce him to a new world. What kind of plagues did this place hold under the surface?

Best not to draw attention to it, and he turned his attention to what Faustite was writing up instead. Eagerly leaned in to read it, and couldn't help a small sense of relief at being named in the same breath--or sentence--as Captain Jadarite herself. Her first, of course, because as rankings went, she still held the higher one for the moment. His eyes lifted from the tablet as Faustite addressed him, and he leaned back, listening to every word he said.

A coat rack?

It sounded surprising to some degree -- he didn't know the general-sovereigns had those particular tastes -- but to another degree not unfamiliar. The executives and the higher management at most places he had ever been employed couldn't give a single s**t about those of the lowest ranks. It was why so many of them were sent to be errand boys and go get obscene amounts of coffee or danishes from the nearest cafe. "Understood."

Borax let Jadarite accept the missive first before chiming an agreement of, "It looks good to me." He nodded his agreement to Faustite's helpfulness, before following up with, "Faustite," might-as-well make himself continuously useful, "is there anything you'd like me to keep an eye on from an Info perspective while building this out? This will get us a bit closer to the civilian populace than normal."

Which may perhaps get them a bit closer to cracking some identities.

"Recruitment will be a powerful tool in our infiltration of this place," Jadarite said to Borax, agreeing with Faustite. "But we'll have to be judicious about it." There was a delicate balance to be found if they wanted to pepper the business with agents without wasting a large quantity of energy on people of the wrong type, people who would just end up as turncoats or other sinks of resources. "We'll talk more about that as we hammer out the details."

She did nod when he said to look for wounds and scars. Jadarite might have been a specialist, but she could still do the basics of keeping up with the Database and looking for obvious signs of the enemy.

"That's all," she said, when Faustite dismissed them. Just because she wasn't focusing on the coughs into his elbow or the hollowness in his face didn't mean she wasn't seeing it. She was professional. She wasn't going to stick around and make herself a nuisance when someone looked too sick for work.

She turned and walked from the office, waving for Borax to follow.