The Black Dirge [Sci-fi]

[CalamityJade]

"I thought you would be pleased. For one, the package should decrease the chance of failure to procedures by a hefty margin, as well as decrease the amount of downtime for individual components." There was a brief pause before his voice came back. "Or are you saying that you have the luxury of rejecting supporting components simply because they will take more time to re calibrate? I thought you would be pleased to have the more rare components. Was I mistaken by that?"

[yamikuronue]

"The package will suffer complete system failure if I bring it to a field mission, limiting its usefulness. I don't fancy any part of my well-oiled system hogging resources without contributing for months if not years."

[Rednaxela]

Kenji gives Kimiko a funny look, stating plainly "You know... you're not the best liar out there." Careful Kenji... careful...  don't want tearful stuff happening gosh darnit...

[Hitoshirenu Shourai]

She looks away awkwardly, "I... know. It's... sort of reflex..." She clearly has some sort of story behind that, but doesn't everyone have stories? The question is whether it matters to Kenji. But thankfully, Kimiko wants to change the subject, "S-So, umm, you all have, umm, powers, right? What do you do?"

[CalamityJade]

"...one moment." There is the tell-tale sign of the line being put on mute as something went on. It took about a minute before the feed changed to an actual imagine of the Boss sitting in a rather sparsely decorated room. It was hard to tell exactly where he was, but it seemed that he deemed this important enough to respond in person. He also looked rather annoyed. Not QUITE angry, but definitely displeased.

"Shinigami. You obviously understand the amount of severity I want to portray if I am going to speak to you like this. You have performed spectacularly with every operation I have deemed to give you and I have to say I am almost impressed with the turn-around time you manage with them. I want you to understand how much I exactly know of your accomplishments and undertaking."

He paused a moment and took a long breath before continuing. "So you have to understand that I am QUITE disappointed that you decied to call me and then proceed to TELL me that I am misunderstanding the situation. That after a single day you decided that someone with a EXTERNALLY usable support ability is somehow beneath your interests and abilities to make usable. That even with that time, you did not consider having a strictly support personell that would cut any other operatives downtime by half. And that you decided that you could RETURN her simply because you could not adapt to what any other cell would consider a gift and act as if you could BERATE me for even sending her to you? Am I understanding the situation we are currently in correctly?" There was a slight edge to his words that only seemed to become more prominent as he spoke, ending with a rather pointed question.

[Rednaxela]

Kenji shrugs before responding to Kimiko, "Well they call me Marbles because..." and then a moment later, he holds up a hand, and a stationary transparent sphere appears above it, only visible because of the light passing through it briefly looking a touch redish for the briefest of moments followed by some lensing. He quickly says, "Don't touch."  as he moves to take a feather out of his pocket to drop above it. As it falls, onto the sphere it kind of gets.... stuck? No, not stuck, just moving a little slower, as if moving through something thicker. Then a moment later, the sphere disappears, the light passing through it for the briefest of moments appearing more blue as it disappears, and the feather resumes a normal fall. Kenji chuckles a little.

[yamikuronue]

Shinigami opens her mouth to argue, but her brain catches up with her, and the only thing that comes out is a tight, strangled, "yes, sir."

Her heart pounds in her chest. He was unhappy. He never spoke like that unless he was unhappy -- and when the Boss was unhappy, heads rolled. Maybe even her own.

[CalamityJade]

"Thank you. I was beginning to wonder if you would try to tell me that was not the case." He took a breath. "I understand completely that the one in question is a difficult case. In fact, were it not for the extreme rarity of her ability, we may not have even bothered with acquiring her. She is not of any typical sort that we gather, but all are welcome for our cause. I sent her there specifically because your cell has the highest chance of making use of her and possibly making her more than she is. Are you going to tell me that I was wrong about your abilities, given the difficulty with Ophiocordyceps?" He was, of course, referring to their general state of apathy and the sharp difficulty they had even getting them to go on any field missions, and the difficulty of forcing anyone with a contact-destructive ability to do much of anything.

[Hitoshirenu Shourai]

Kimiko stares with her mouth open, her eyes glittering as though she had stars in them, "Woah... do it again!" She looks extremely interested! Maybe even a little entranced! Such a neat ability, such beauty, whereas she barely even knew her own ability. The sphere did indeed look quite similar to a marble! If he had such a cool ability, maybe the others had cool ones too?

[Rednaxela]

Kenji shrugs in response before proceeding to create a little sphere again, a little smaller, it's surface perfectly smooth,  and doing the feather dropping trick again. As he does so he comments, "Time passes slower in the bubble... I can't make particularly big bubbles, nor can they last long. It looks nice, and sure the unusual warp in spacetime gets the eggheads all confused... but it's not not the most useful ability."

This time before the bubble disappears, he shrinks the bubble slightly, and when it disappears there is a popping sound. After the pop, he adds, "Though can be useful for self defense.... against certain things... You're not a spy, right?"

[Hitoshirenu Shourai]

She watches the display again in great interest and thinks it's cool as heck, but is taken aback as to the accusation of being a spy. "S-Spy? W-Wait, spies are an actual thing...? I thought that only happened in movies..." She clearly has no idea about the 'real world' in this case, and seems quite oblivious. Hell by the look of her she's barely mobile. "I don't think I'm a spy... I mean I could be wrong, since, you know, there are all sorts of powers... for all I know, someone could be controlling my mind... or yours..." She stares at him suspiciously, scooting away slightly. What a strange girl!

[Rednaxela]

Kenji gives a pained look, one arm reaching behind him as he replies, "Just a joke, just a joke... I'm sure The Boss screened for that appropriately... probably..." Kenji makes a little bit of a face as he ponders this more. He's heard of those with empathic powers showing up from time to time... but mind control? Rumors of those with that type of power always seemed rather unlikely to him. Of course... mind control implants on the other hand... those were a rumor he put more weight in. Every reason to expect some power out there is at least trying to prototype them, given the state of tech.

[yamikuronue]

"Ophiocordyceps was worth something, both the hardware and the software; that system was simply underutilized. This is good software running on broken hardware -- it will crash when you need it the most."

[CalamityJade]

"And as we cannot move the software to a new system, improving the hardware is the only option. I also believe you mentioned your dubious thoughts about Ophiocordyceps as well, but you gave THAT at least a month of work. Are you saying that you've predicted anything done from the first day." He drifted slightly into an annoyed state before taking a breath.

"I will...admit there was some trouble with the acquisition, but we had to move quickly before the entire package would have been taken for R&D, making it impossible to acquire. While your cell is commendable, we are not ready for such a move." Which meant the event HAD to have been publicly seen and that they'd grabbed Kimiko before any government agents could investigate. "As such, I adjusted my expectations for when you would have the package ready for deployment. All of which should have been in your report upon delivery. Was it not?" And finally she could feel that the Boss's anger might not be entirely directed at her.

[yamikuronue]

"I received no documentation beyond the spec sheet you sent in advance." She sighs, though she keeps her posture upright and her face neutral. "I will invest one month of work into improving the hardware. If I cannot work with the system then, you can send it to R&D. I know you've been meaning to get some insight into that process." Meaning he's considered bugging someone with implants and leaving them for the government to find, to see if he could get some intel about their holding facility. Said facility was like a black hole: people went in, but they never came out, and nobody knew what happened to them there.