[Fin] (Gene) Guns N' Grass Types

[TawnyAngel]

Today's shift had been dull; real grunt work, cleaning this and monitoring that very boring experiment. Honestly KO struggled to take an interest in timing how often a substance went 'blorp' even if the science behind the experiment was fascinating. When his work was done all he wanted to do was retreat to his room and drink and sew, or go out on the town and drink and maybe hook up with some handsome man whose name he'd probably forget by morning.

Instead of either of those things he gave a heavy sigh headed through to the back of the storage room he was being permitted to keep his tanks in. He cared about this pet project of his, he cared a lot, but today he was tired and discouraged. On the other hand having hit a brick wall did open other avenues of possibility and it had been a while since he'd been able to spend much time with Tambery considering her new position. Even if he'd rather alcohol was involved in this equation at least he might have good company.

Once against considering Tambery's schedule he had texted her to ask if she could meet him after this shift a couple of days ago and he'd received what sounded like an enthusiastic affirmative, with a caveat of 'so long as nothing drastic happens'. As he entered the store room KO fetched out his 'dex to check if the elite had messaged to say she couldn't make it after all, if she couldn't then.... Well there were still useful things he could do, reading and so forth and checking the samples again just in case.  

[Gwennythe]

Rank tends to open doors, and for Tambrey, she'd found that fairly literal. Still, though she could simply open doors and walk into most rooms without needing permission or announcing herself she still considered it to be too rude. It just wasn't in her nature.

Thus when she reached the room KO was using she knocked on the door frame.
KO's 'dex would show a message of '(⌒ω⌒)ﾉ' as Tambrey had allowed Turing to send a greeting from her own 'dex as they approached the room.

"Hello?" Dressed in uniform, after a little while spent in the role, she looked less tired than she might have earlier in her promotion. In fact, she looked rather pleased, excited, to be there.  

[TawnyAngel]

Oh good, she'd made it after all.

KO turned to greet Tambery with a slight smile; he too was in uniform, and though he did look a bit tired around the eyes his smile was genuine. "Elite Tambery," he drawled, throwing a playful salute and indicating the space occupied by a pair of tanks and a small table. "Welcome to my office, I'd offer you a drink but this is also my lab so you'll just have to imagine it. How has life been treating you? I don't think we've more than passed in the hallway in the last few weeks." She looked well, in good health and enthused. Perhaps her energy would be infections? He hoped so, and hopefully her knowledge would help with his desire to be down here too.  

[Gwennythe]

"Still sounds weird but I think I'm getting used to it..." Tambrey mused at the use of 'Elite' to address her, almost to herself but still a purposeful admission to her friend.
She smirked at the salute and considered returning one, but she didn't want to turn the occasion either too formal or too silly; it was nice just to be able to casually work on something with a friend, no matter the likely importance of the eventual fruition.

"New roles always end up so busy... I've been well. Busy, but well. Between my duties now, training, and trying to keep up on my own projects- I've had to delegate, um, a few so apologies for any extra work I've sent your way..." She smiled sheepishly apologetic and then nodded after KO's indication.
"And, um, you? How are you? You look to be off to a decent start with this..."
She'd definitely gave him a quick inspection just then but seemed satisfied and was back to smiling her usual smile.  

[TawnyAngel]

How was he? He didn't really feel like himself still but that was almost a new normal now, it was like he'd left something behind when... Mmh. "Oh, you know," KO shrugged slightly, "grunt work doesn't change much, I do have a roommate now though. He's absolutely no conversation but he keeps his side of the room tidy so I can't complain. On a more interesting note," KO indicated the tanks again and headed over to them. Attached to each tank were monitors, the readouts reported on the levels of different chemicals within the old, slightly foggy cylinders.

"As you can see," KO gestured, "no Hydroen. I have been at this since March, I've been through every pokemon we have tissue samples for - whether they produce stable clones yet or not - and I've taken samples from as many live subjects as possible for diversity and still nothing. It's possible that eventually I'll find a lucky specimen which reacts like C. reinhardtii," the pronunciation of the name was smooth and casual as any other word in the sentence, "but there's no guarantee of that and it would probably take years to crop up as a rare mutation. With a naturally occurring specimen more or less ruled out for now I think we may need a more... direct approach, if you follow me?"

He had been hoping to avoid genetics really, he'd wanted this to be his triumph but once an elite was involved credit would naturally be diverted to them. It was lucky therefore that Tambery would refuse to take any that wasn't due to her, he trusted that but.... He'd just wanted it to be his, he'd wanted to prove... something? And he'd wanted it to be his triumph, and his alone, so that it would be written down somewhere and in years to come somebody would read over it in passing as they made use of or furthered his work; that was a kind of immortality wasn't it?  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey nodded in understanding.

"A lot of cleaning and filing other people's work..." She mused, recalling her own experiences as a grunt- those that didn't involve missions anyway. "At least he's not Star." She couldn't help it; KO was one of the few people who'd understand what rooming with him- as she had as a grunt- might have been like.

Moving on to the science though, even as KO talked about it -not- working, produced even more of a smile from the geneticist.
She found herself nodding yet again, but with a different sort of understanding, and rather enthusiastically.

"You might but, um, I'd agree..." Tambrey nodded. "Pokémon are a rather, uh, anomalous group when it comes to things like this... You'll likely find a lot that do /almost/ what you're looking for and then one factor in the process invalidates the whole thing... So, um, you'd certainly be a lot more in control of this whole, uh, process with what you're suggesting. Potentially. You'd just need to introduce the right genes into the right subject and, um, develop the process- or, rather, re-deploy the method you've already got most likely- using the new subject pokémon..." She stopped herself from rambling on too far, but she did seem enthusiastic for his work.
"Did you have something in mind?"  

[TawnyAngel]

KO gave a snort of amusement and a nod of acknowledgement. "Well that's true, it could always be worse. Unless Star is your roommate." Or boss, he hadn't envied the galactics who'd worked directly under the former commander.

"But yes, as a matter of fact I do... I just don't know anywhere near enough about genetics to know if it would work or not." As he spoke KO moved over to the table where his laptop sat waiting and beckoned Tambery to follow him. "While I haven't found any pokemon that react the way we need to sulphur - or to a range of other chemicals I will not bore you with - I have discovered that of all the pokemon we have stable clone, ah," he gestured vaguely as he pulled up a file, "sequences of, the most efficient photosynthesiser is," a graph popped up on the screen, "the humble Oddish. Given it's usual ability that's no great surprise and it has other advantages too for the use we want to put it to, in that when there's strong sunlight they tend to remain inert with their bodies buried and just get on with photosynthesising."

KO turned back to Tambery and gestured to the screen. "Add to that they're small and quite hardy, I'd say if we can alter an Oddish to put out Hydrogen rather than Oxygen we'll really be onto something." Having said this KO sighed slightly and gave a helpless shrug. "And that's where I step outside of my area of expertise, I've heard you talk about gene guns and read a little but I don't know anything like enough to know if it would work in this situation let alone how to go about performing the procedure. Thoughts?" If Tambery turned to him now and told him it was impossible he wasn't sure what he'd do, keep looking in the hopes of finding that one specimen that reacted as required? Perhaps.  

[Gwennythe]

The Elite followed KO and adjusted her glasses- mostly out of habit- as she bent a little to look at the file he called up on the laptop.

She nodded as he spoke, agreeing.
"Behaviour-wise that's a perfect kind of template; the less you have to mess with the," she sighed a little "brain chemistry, and I'm honestly only using that term for lack of a better one, of this kind of organism the better... Well, um..."

She paused for a good few moments, before nodding slowly.
"There are a few ways to go about this... Ordinarily I might say that Oddish cells might be too delicate for the cellular damage a gene gun would do but there's a technique we can employ that we've been perfecting for a while- actually we kind of stole it," she shrugged "but we progressed far faster than the original scientists. You might have read their work not long ago. We're slightly ahead... So. Um. Thoughts. Well, it's doable. Might take, um, a few attempts though. You'd want to tinker with the hydrogenase in each organism too to tackle any regression issues...
Uh, but, um; summary in case I've missed something... If I understand it properly you want to take Oddish cells, introduce modified C. reinhartii transgenes via the gene gun, and grow the mutant Oddish?" Tambrey looked a little impressed and still excited.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Exactly so!" KO agreed, smiling brightly and preening a little at Tambery's obvious enthusiasm for the idea. "I've no doubt it'll take a lot of tinkering to get a specimen that's viable and will perpetually react as though its in a low oxygen environment and-" KO stopped mid sentence and his brows lifted abruptly as another thought occurred to him; he turned back to the laptop to pull up another file, this one was a research paper dated a couple of years ago. "And if we can also bioengineer the C. reinhartii's hydrogenase as described here our already impressive photosynthesiser could increase its output even further, potentially, once the algae's transgenes are in place." So far so promising! If he could do this - alright, with help but if he could do this.... This could be big.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey nodded in agreement, her nods seeming to attempt to be a silent emphasis to KO's 'a lot of tinkering', and then she turned her attention once more to the laptop as KO pursued and called up another file.

"It'd be a lot of tinkering, a lot of, uh, work, but I think, if you think the chemistry's sound, the pieces are all, um, viable. You'd want a clean-lab for this, uh, for the obvious reasons but also in case one of your tanks were to, uh, leak. Not that you'd be using leaky tanks, but y'know, just to cover all the bases. I'd probably suggest, um, ventilation precautions once," apparently she was confident enough to use 'once' instead of 'if' in this case, or maybe just excited enough at the science "you've got some viable organisms at a decent stage of development..."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Agreed," KO said, a lazy smile beginning to spread across his face; he was feeling better now! "But a sealed lab, ventilation precautions, up to the minute tanks, not to mention all the resources that would go into producing the prototype Oddish to begin with...." KO ticked off the points on his fingers and then let the sentence hang. After a few moments he continued with; "What I'm saying is that all of that goes a little beyond what a grunt is allowed to do in his spare time with old gear. Is this a project you'd give official backing to Tambery? I'm perfectly confident in the chemistry but I understand if you want to run it by one of my superiors. Just don't let them swipe the project from us."

Now that he thought about it properly it was completely unrealistic to believe it would ever just be him; big ideas needed a lot of resources that he wasn't free to command but Tambery was and if Tambery was the one to okay the project and assign resources to it he could be pretty confident that he wouldn't find himself kicked off it. This was... this was actually really exciting, if this worked then what other possibilities could it open up? That was the wonderful thing about science; one thing inevitably led to another, discoveries and improvements all leading on from one another. It was, as his old partner would say, pretty cool.  

[Gwennythe]

"It is a bit of a hefty requirement list- a bit of a heavy request- but, uh, the research is invaluable and you're the one who's done the chemistry, who understands it best. You, uh, maybe have to settle for accepting help to produce results as quickly as possible, or being forced to continue to work long hours like, uh, you already have... if they agree to provide what's needed, I mean, anyway." Tambrey agreed and nodded, gesturing a little absentmindedly at the tanks.
"This is good, for sure, but you're right, uh, the further along you get the more 'up to snuff' resources you're going to need..."  

[TawnyAngel]

It was probably sensible to get more people in on this if it was to move with speed. KO frowned slightly, turning the matter over in his head. Unfortunately no matter how he looked at it the only advantage he could see to keeping it more or less to himself was ego and, well, a fear of getting pushed out of working on his own idea. It would still be his idea no matter what happened but that wouldn't be a lot of comfort if he knew somebody else was pawing through his notes while he was off scrubbing beakers!

The red-haired man scowled slightly and nodded. "You're right, we want results and we want them as soon as possible. If this works Team Rocket will have a valuable resource at its disposal to use and to sell on; using pokemon for profit, I mean I'm certainly not going to delay a chance to adhere to our motto." KO paused, frowned a little deeper and then grudgingly added; "I know that it's the right idea to bring in support, I just don't want to find myself removed from this because it suddenly becomes too high clearance for me if this expands to a team of researchers. I understand it's all 'for the glory of Team Rocket' in the end but I want to see this though." And also he really did not like the idea of some Agent swooping in and taking the credit and, again, going through his notes! It was nearly as bad as the idea of somebody rearranging his décor and then sleeping in his bed, naked and drooling on his nice pillows.  

[Gwennythe]

"It's a lot harder to work a project to perfection if you didn't conceive that project. And besides, this is promising but it is still research, and research that you conceived. A risk project, in a way." Tambrey shrugged with a smile. "I'm not promising anything but I don't think you'd have this taken away from you as long as, ah, you could pursue results without, um, interfering with your duties as a grunt. A clean-lab and a ventilation system are actually relatively, um, standard requests from a chemist. If you can, uh, think of a way to automate things here and there than you minimize the amount of people around you... Sure, um, you'll still need more than you, but not a great deal more than you. We'd have to monitor the Oddish mostly; they'd be brand new, uh, variations even in the forms you'd be using..." She was clearly thinking about it, rearranging her thoughts and cancelling out previous concerns, for both of them she hoped, as she mentally, and verbally, mused over different aspects.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Humm." KO looked thoughtfully at his screen and then over at the tanks; that didn't sound so bad and he trusted Tambery's professionalism enough not to think she was only saying that to make him happy. It did make him happy though; a small team that included him even if it meant he had to keep putting in a lot of overtime sounded a lot better than a big one that might not but allowed him to have a social life again. It wasn't as though this would be forever.

"Alright, that sounds sensible," KO agreed aloud, turning back to Tambery with a slight nod. "Some kind of remote monitoring system?... Humm, and perhaps I could employ some of my pokemon as assistants; my Kirlia and my Rotom could be trusted to monitor things and alert somebody if there are any changes." He'd just have to make sure he made up for the boring task with some fun to Kaiser or the ghost type would start sulking and refuse to work.

"And I don't mind the long hours," KO added with a smirk, "it's not as though I'm in need of beauty sleep!"