[PRP] The Tides of Time

[Blood_Goddess]

Faleen's day was predictably busy, ever after checking in with her partner who had been injured during the last mission.
She had gotten a big shock when she was greeted by none other then Elite Hayes, after quite a long time of the Elite working at another region's base... how long had it been? She had a bit of a difficult time guessing how much time had gone by, especially with how much had happened since he left.

A gloved hand slid over the cool surface of her next work station, hazel eyes lingering over the active screen of her work tablet, displaying the specs for various active projects and when they were due.
The team was on time thankfully, within the week they would be able to start work on some of the bigger projects.
She was sure she could take some time off, for a few hours at least... That was easy, though the idea felt a little surreal...
It had been nearly a year... maybe closer to that length of time, he had been called away as they seemed to come forward with the way they felt about one another.
Faleen wasn't going to say that those feelings had changed, since she knew they hadn't, but she was feeling a bit... nervous?

Letting out a controlled sigh, the Agent lifted her eyes to the looming glass dome being constructed close by. Swallowing a feeling of apprehension she tapped the Tablet back tot he main page, so that she could send Alex a message.

"I will be free later this evening if that works alight."  

[Tinnunculus]

There wasn't that much to unpack, but after seeing Aulus in the infirmary Hayes had just rummaged around for essentials and left the rest til tomorrow, electing instead to lay out on top of the bedcovers. Like everything he hadn't brought, they were new; everything brand new, and the old buried in wreckage and desert sand. This windowless room was pitch black, stuffy, enclosed - he got up, flicked the closet light and left the door half-open, and laid back down between Nemerle and Switch, fancying he could see the shadows of lake fish ghosting across the ceiling. In the morning, he'd make the place his own.

Eventually he fell asleep.

Now it was past lunch and though his quarters were still sparse, the flock of boxes had nothing more to yield and sat in a neat flattened stack by the door. He'd gotten up to speed on most of Tech's key projects, met a few of the new faces, let everyone out for a stretch and loaded Kurt's tablet with shows that were interesting enough to keep him entertained but not funny enough that he'd hurt himself laughing. Now Alphard was occupied with his tablet and he was on the couch, holding his battered copy of Neuromancer over his face without really reading.

New room, new base. New everything, but some important things hadn't changed. He was back with his best friend and with.. what were they, before he'd been transferred? Just getting comfortable, really - just getting started, before work had called him away.

She understood work's priorities, no question about that, but feelings followed an imprecise, visceral kind of logic, and a lot could happen in a year.

A lot had.

They were things he'd only experienced secondhand, if at all - text messages when he could, but work had kept him busy, kept her busy, would keep them busy; things felt more serious now. Maybe too serious, she might say, for distractions. And while working with her was incredibly fun, that by itself was..

He let the book fall on his chest and breathed out, rattling its pages.

'Hayes!' A white form popped in overhead. The book fell on the floor as the Rocket sat up, adjusting his glasses. "What's up, bud? Got a bug?"

'Mh-nh.' Alphard held out the tablet with both hands. 'Message.'

"Yeah?" Hayes' voice got a little more life in it. "Let's see."

The Jirachi floated down to rest on his stomach and peeped over the screen, trying to read. 'Faleen?' It patted at a word.

"S'right," the blond smiled, adding a "Good job" for the word recognition. He gazed down at the message. "Been a long time since we've seen her, huh."

'Years,' Alphard agreed with feeling, making Hayes chuckle as he tapped out a reply.

She'd looked happy to see him - surprised, yes, but happy under her professional public demeanor, even with the mission fresh in memory and her partner in the background. She'd been busy, but she'd looked happy, and.. either her feelings had changed or they hadn't. He'd find out, now that she had time, and find out where he stood - though after seeing her again, he pretty well knew.

Works great. Where do you want to meet?  

[Blood_Goddess]

"Where..." Faleen repeated to herself, int he old base she could think of a number of places, though she was still getting used to the layout of this one.

"I believe there is a cafe in the base, I'm sure that will work."

She would have to look up where it was again, but that wasn't going to be a huge problem.
Goodness she was going to have to sit down and review the map better one of these nights.  

[Tinnunculus]

Sounds good. See you around 8? Hayes sent the reply and looked at his Pokemon, who was waving its streamers like a toddler kicking its feet. 'Done?' it chimed hopefully.

"Hang on." The Rocket navigated out of the messenger and tapped a document icon. Alphard hovered over his shoulder as he skimmed. New base orientation, updated policies and procedures.. map.

Now where was the cafe?

_______________

On the same floor, it turned out, along with the agent quarters. Like everything else, the cafe had the scent of new construction, and was about half-full of various ranks when Hayes got there a little earlier than their agreed upon time - enough to wait in line to order, which gave him a good view of people coming through the doors. The blond had opted for the nicer end of his casual wardrobe, and fiddled absently with the cuff of his button-up shirt while he waited, listening to the espresso machine hiss in the background.  

[Blood_Goddess]

She didn't have any smudges on her face from machine oil, and her uniform was nice and white and neatly pressed as it properly should be, dark blond hair was brushed out, and laid loosely about her shoulders, gloved hands swaying casually at her side as the Agent strode into the cafe at the appointed time, hands moving to fold behind her back as she paused, and allowed her eyes to glance around the shop.

Almost right away she picked out the Rocket she was looking for, he had already arrived, and was sitting at a table facing the entrance.
Faleen blinked once, feeling her heart skip a beat rather unexpectedly.
a soft smile greeted his first before she made her way over to him.
"You weren't waiting long were you?" she asked, taking note of the drink that he had already sitting on the table.  

[Tinnunculus]

The smile started the moment he saw her, unbidden, spontaneous; it was the sort that had the potential to morph into a stupid grin, and he automatically sat up a little straighter, sleeve cuff forgotten. "Hey," he greeted her quietly, slipping off his stool as she approached. In answer to her question he shook his head and grinned lightly. "Nah, just a few minutes. Can I get you something to drink?"  

[Blood_Goddess]

The smile and the posture he had taken had not gone unnoticed, it was hard not too, Faleen generally didn't see people excited to see her, let alone this pleased... she found that seeing it seemed to reflect a feeling of anticipation upon approaching and speaking to the Elite.

When he offered to get her a drink, she glanced momentarily over at the serving aria then back at her "ah- sure, though I can get it." she reassured.
"After giving it some though its hard to put into perspective just how much time actually passed since you were stationed at HQ." She added.  

[Rocket Agent Hayes]

"Sure." Hayes' light tenor was full of good humor. "Walk and talk?" he suggested, gesturing toward the counter.

"It's been a while," he agreed, whether they went for drinks or had a seat. It was really all he could casually say to that as his brain worked over the formality and pattern of her words. "I guess seeing all the new faces around kind of makes it click. I'm sure a lot of stuff's probably changed. Saw you're heading up Robotics now, by the way," he added, a soft grin returning. "Congrats."  

[Blood_Goddess]

"Sure." Faleen agreed, making a gesture to the counter to indicate the direction she was going.

"A few things, yes, the base for one." She said with a slight grin, that very obviously went without saying.
Though a more genuine smile formed on her face when he brought up her heading Robotics. "I am- Thank you, I wish I could say its a lot of work, but really, I love every second of it, We've got a good team, all of them."

She made a gesture to him "What about you? Are you going to be taking over tech head again now that you're back?"  

[Tinnunculus]

"Eh, well, giant tower in the middle of a desert.." Hayes gestured vaguely as they joined the line. "Probably time for a change." He glanced up as if he could see Lake Elemi beyond the ceiling. "Feels more secure under here." Also more shut-in, even with multiple tunnels leading out, but.. he'd work on that.

The blond's hands found his pockets and his gaze found her again as she described her work; when her smile brightened as she mentioned what it was, his broadened slightly with a murmured "I'll bet."

Then: "Oh geez no, that's too much," he laughed at the thought of taking up that mantle again. "I mean, when I was doing it, it- worked?" He shrugged. "But I work a lot better just heading up Programming, so. S'where I am. I hope it'll give me some time to look at the biosecurity. I saw a vid of that first brainstorming session - did you end up having a hand in production? Actually-" he grinned, "just tell me what you've been up to." Pretty much everything that came out of robotics was interesting, and Faleen's enthusiasm for it made it moreso.  

[Blood_Goddess]

"... In hind sight that might not have been the best option, though it served us for a long time." She admitted, though allowed her eyes to drift to the walls of the cafe momentarily "I spent most of my time underground at the desert base, though I will admit to missing the windows in my room."

Her eyebrows arched when he shared news about his new position. "Ah- I see, I feel like you would be best utilized there." she admitted, facing him as she got in line.

"Ah- for the new security." She replied, with a light nod "Its certainly a lot different from what we had in the desert, its not without its bitter sweet moments, but I feel we thought of something quite effective." She smiled a bit "So far I haven't been doing much more then getting the labs set up. we should be done in the next few days, and we'll be continuing work on bettering the new security systems before we more onto new projects. What about yourself?"  

[Tinnunculus]

"Maybe not," he agreed. "But yeah, I liked the view. It'd not a perfect fix, but.. I think I'll wall-mount a flatscreen and hook it up to an outdoor video feed, just so there's something. Maybe set different locations on different channels, get a full-spectrum lamp for Therac." He shrugged, as if it were just something to do for the heck of it, although it was a thing he'd be doing as soon as possible, for both his Espeon's peace of mind and his own.

Hayes shuffled a hand through the back of his hair with a crooked smile that could have been sheepish, rueful, or sympathetic, and it shaded from one subtlety to the next as Faleen delivered her assessment, then - well, he assumed 'bittersweet' was the desert drone network she'd so carefully built. "About the same - tightening up security. Rollout was pretty solid but there's always a few bugs, and some new hack's always on the horizon. Cryptography's going to be a mess once quantum computing gets going in a few years, so.. we're trying to stay ahead." At the front of the line, an agent paid for their drink and left, leaving a space ahead of them; Hayes made a little 'after you' gesture.

"It's one reason I want to look at what your group's doing; the variety of Pokemon out there means that controller tech has a huge array of applications, especially if someone's developed a good API - and so far, we're the only ones who've got it."  

[Blood_Goddess]

She made a gesture toward Hayes at the mention of a monitor on the wall "Good idea."

At his gesture to the counter, Faleen moved before him, though continued to stand a little to the side to be able to talk to him.
She listened with polite silence as he discussed his current and future projects, Though she didn't quite understand a lot about programming, it had occurred to her just how little she had heard of it since Hayes had left.
He used to be the only one that went on about it, like she did with robotics.
though her face remained unchanged, a slight flush took over her cheeks and ears, as she understood very suddenly how much she had missed listening to him talk about this, without even realizing it.

"I would certainly hope we do." she replied as he finished speaking. "right now my department's contributing the chips that will be put in each pokemon, though I know for a fact we've only scratched the surface of what we can do with those. So to hear Bio labs and Programers input would be extremely insightful."  

[Tinnunculus]

'D'you want one?' Hayes almost asked, then thought better of it. Better to get everything working first.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed almost right away. "I mean- I can think of at least a few different directions I want to start looking in right now." His voice and expression started to get more animated as he went on. "I need to read more about what you've done - and toss the documents to my department so they can brainstorm - but .. from what I've got so far, you've got two-way communication through the chip, right? Send control signals, receive and translate sensory feedback from the Pokemon's.. ears, eyes, whatever."  

[Blood_Goddess]

"Yes and no." Faleen replied wearing a thoughtful expression on her face as she listened to him.
"This chip itself does a tremendous amount of work in the fact that it essentially reprograms the brain of its host, though it doesn't function as a sort of control beacon and the information it sends back to base and between each other is fairly limited.
The majority of the information we get back from the base are from the other implants, that monitor the creature like a life support, as well at the other sense enhancing implants that monitor the environment."
She pause at the counter as she stepped up to order her drink. "I would be more then happy to show you the work files on it. Its been quite the long project so far."

With that she took a moment to order her drink, play, and step out of line as they went to prepare the drink.