[FIN] Dead Issue

[Gwennythe]

Speed could be nice, and if it was only a little, it didn't bother Tambrey. She did try to give a quick glance to the speedometer though; it wouldn't be fun to be stopped for speeding or something.

"Mmhm. Region, or, um, country maybe? Right, but where did you come from before you came to Kodo?" She inquired; it felt a little like squeezing blood from a stone in getting him to say much, but then she supposed she'd probably come across similar people before... She must have, she was sure...
Bruce- wait, no, that hadn't been his real name, she meant... Kratos, right- hadn't been a very talkative person either most of the time, from what she remembered.
Still, she was going to make an effort.

'The Element Song' by Tom Leher occupied the the soundtrack for just over a minute; Tambrey resisted the urge to hum along.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

The needle on the speedometer wobbled upwards a bit, and displayed a speed that they would not be pulled over for. Any faster, however, and it would've been a possibility.

Ah, that's what she meant. "I haven't heard anyone ask about 'regions' yet," he admitted, and an amused "heh" matched his similarly amused smirk. "I don't see how that's important."

And then... this... Sync's amusement faded into a skeptical and vaguely bewildered expression, complete with a single raised eyebrow. "What is that?" Science had never been one of his strong suits in school.  

[Gwennythe]

"Ah? I suppose it's, uh, more of the way we think of places when they're, uh, technically under League control..." Tambrey mused, and then tilted her head thoughtfully.
"Hm." She seemed to actually consider the answer for a few moments. "Probably not but it seems oddly suspicious, I think, to most people to get a non-answer." It didn't sound like she was suspicious by her tone, more like an observation and it was followed by a shrug.
If he didn't want to say, she didn't really mind, though she found the reluctance curious.

"Oh? This is, uh, pretty old now. Out of date. The Element Song? The, uh, periodic table, but sung, really. Well, the periodic table as it was back then."  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Under League control?" Sync echoed, perplexed. What did she mean by 'League control'? It sounded interesting, regions being 'under control' - though the more he thought about it, the more it seemed like the term 'League' would be more frequently used for some goody two-shoes organization than something more sinister.

Her reaction to his reticence incited another "heh" from the grunt. "It's not necessary to my job for me to share anything like that," he pointed out, "so I don't. If some people think it's suspicious when someone doesn't like to talk about themselves, then those people are idiots."

Period table... Elements? His initial thought was to say 'nerd' but the thought immediately following the first was, "So does that mean you're in one of the science departments?"  

[Gwennythe]

"Mmhm. The... uh, Pokémon League." She explained, not expecting to have to explain further. Well then, that... ruled out a fair few places he might have been from anyway.

She nodded a little to his answer though; it was the kind of answer she'd wished she'd have thought of back when she wasn't comfortable talking about herself. It /did/ seem like it might be prone to a little backfiring, but she couldn't really see it as a bad answer.

His first thought, had it been voiced, would probably have been met with agreement; she hadn't felt uncomfortable about being such for quite a long time, and acknowledging her interests had led to some rather treasured friendships in the long run.
But the question he did ask brought a grin; she /liked/ her work a lot.
"Yep! Biology. Specifically genetics. I'm a geneticist and, um, I suppose the best term is bio-engineer? Well, um, with a specification in pokémon biology. I, uh, don't do much with medical... Hence me being in this car, actually. Fossil DNA! Exciting!" She actually clenched her fists and seemed to shake a little.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Ah, right," the grunt replied with a nod. He'd heard of them, of course. They were, as far as he knew, their primary opponent, though he didn't know much more about them than they were, as he'd put it before, a goody two-shoes organization. Whatever. As they weren't important to their current objective, Sync refrained from requesting further information and instead opted to simply look it up later.

"Geneticist, huh?" He echoed, and her explanation piqued his interest for the first time since they got into the car back at the base. "So does that mean you work in the labs making pokemon?" Her reaction to the fossil would have received a comment had he not been much more interested in whether or not she worked in the labs.

Ahead of them the city of Jinko became clearer and clearer the further they traveled, though they were still outside the city limits.  

[Gwennythe]

"That's uh... Well, um, yes. That's probably the most simplistic way to put it, as it involves a lot more than 'make the pokémon', but the bulk of my job is to produce them, uh, either from a standard cell-line, that's not a lot of work, we're practically at the point where that's a bit like 'easy-baking' a pokémon..." Tambrey admitted, though not without a little pride for the labs "Or we, uh, create an individual from a specification; odd colours sell rather well..."
He was asking things now; well, surely that was a breakthrough, so Tambrey was happy to provide what information she could, even if he hadn't asked for quite that detailed an explanation.

'RE: Your Brains' by Jonathan Coulton was the next, notable, song from the playlist.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

Ah, that made sense. Of course it was more complicated than that - he couldn't imagine it wouldn't be - but that didn't mean he knew the first thing about it. The 'easy-baking' comment threw him for a loop and he regarded her with a sidelong, quizzical glance. She seemed kind of strange, but she was in the labs and that was important. Create individuals from specifications... A certain uniquely colored Zoroark came to mind, and the grunt pondered this for a moment or two. He didn't care about what it looked like, but he was rather curious... "Is color the only specification you work from, or are there others?" As he posed his question, their vehicle passed the outer limits and entered the town proper, and after taking a moment at a red light to double check their destination's location, Sync guided the car through the town streets towards a residential district.

...some of these songs were kind of ridiculous, and he had to wonder how many of them were like this, or if the mp3 player was just picking all of the 'best' ones to play right at the beginning.  

[Gwennythe]

"Oh. Um. Well, to be honest there's a lot of different things we can do with pokémon, so no, but um, colours, or otherwise odd appearances, just happen to be the most visible and commonly desired traits. We certainly can work from other specifications though, as long as the, uh, biology or genetics allow for the possibility." Well, now this was nice; she was getting to talk about what the labs could do! She wondered...
"So, uh, is that a department you're looking toward?" She hadn't seen... any hint of him near the labs as far as she could remember, but that didn't /always/ mean much, she supposed.

Once 'RE: Your Brains' came to an end, it was replaced by 'Neon Pegasus' by Parry Gripp.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"So you can make them look prettier," he interpreted it with a vaguely amused smirk, "and those ones are the most popular. Go figure." People could be so vain; what was the purpose of making a pokemon look more pleasing aesthetically? Making it prettier didn't make it any stronger or any better or any more useful, but if they could sell them for a profit then they at least had some purpose, however small. Still, other specifications...

The question caught him a little off-guard, but he should've expected something like that. "Nope," he replied as he steered the car down one street in particular. "I'm trying to get into infiltration, but I've been looking into getting a Zorua to add to my team."

The next song... Yeah, this chick was pretty strange. Definitely a nerd, but at least it wasn't country.  

[Gwennythe]

"Mmhm. I guess it is, uh, pretty obvious that people would want 'prettier' things." Tambrey admitted.

She raised her eyebrows, making the connections, but also rather approvingly of the choice of pokémon in relation to department.

"That's a good idea. My partner is, uh, a field agent, but even then discretion and stealth are useful fairly often; he's got a Zoroark. So you're, uh, thinking about getting a lab-produced one?"

Her hand tapped a little, as she absentmindedly enjoyed the song.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Just a little," Sync replied with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

"An agent suggested them to me and told me three options of getting one: Trying to hunt them down and capture them is stupid, requesting one from storage only works if there's any of them in storage, or getting one from the labs," the grunt elaborated, "which seems like the best option out of the three. I didn't know that you could make them to other specifications though," he admitted, though it was a good thing to learn and could be quite useful. What other sorts of specifications did she mean though...? What sorts of possibilities could they play with... "What about a specification to... Strengthen their illusion abilities?"

It was at that moment that Sync turned their car into one driveway in particular and set it in park, and the grunt frowned at the large ranch-style house with its cheery exterior. A well-kept and varied garden sprawled across the whole front yard, lining the house and walkway and circling the trunks of trees with colorful flowers and small shrubs. The place looked, for all intents and purposes, completely innocent and devoid of any and all criminal ties. "...what kind of outpost is this?" Sync queried aloud with a very skeptical and unimpressed expression as he pulled out his 'dex again, holding it low as he double- and then triple-checked the address to see if he'd gotten it wrong -- he hadn't.  

[Gwennythe]

"Oh? Which agent? Um. I suppose that's about right." Tambrey nodded in agreement and then brightened with the idea of talking more science.
"Oh! That's a neat question. Um... Well, let's see." The agent closed her eyes for a few seconds, drumming her fingers a little faster as she thought about the query.
"Um. Well, first you'd want to, uh, 'specialize' what you mean by 'strengthen. Do you want the ability to last longer, uh, be more convincing, or something else? I mean, uh, it's always going to be an illusion, we couldn't strengthen it into being able to, uh, manifest something into reality... but conventionally strengthening it, depending on the... details. That's... doable. I mean, um, I'd need to think out the process properly but I can already see a couple of different options depending on what you mean..."

She'd been rather focused on his first question, and it took a moment for her brain to, not only switch gears and register the other, but also realize they'd arrived.
Her eyebrows rose a little but she grinned rather than seeming too surprised.
"An effectively hidden one. Um... Hiding in plain sight, and all that. This is really lovely... Look at the plants!" She liked plants. They weren't quite as a good as mysterious fossils but they were still very good.  

[BlackFireKitsune]

"Agent Aulus," Sync supplied readily enough as he continued to frown at the house. Science definitely wasn't his forte, and he was more than happy to let her be the one to think about how to do it. The only thing that mattered to him about that was 'is it possible?' Apparently yes. Her question required a bit of thought, so he dutifully pondered it for a couple moments while he turned the car off and undid his belt. "Well," he started, "I think they need experience for it to be more convincing and practice would let them do it longer or at longer distances, but a stronger inherent ability would help accomplish those faster," the grunt theorized as he put his 'dex away. "It could pick things up faster, start doing them sooner, master them quicker - sort of like just making them smarter or have a better affinity for making illusions, or something."

As much as he wanted to theorize about a Zorua with superior capabilities, they had an assignment to see through. He couldn't care less about the plants, but he could appreciate them hiding an outpost in plain sight as she'd said. "It is well hidden," he agreed, then asked, "do we both go in, or is one of us required to stay with the car?" This was his first assignment to pick something up from another outpost, and he wasn't sure if there was some dumb requirement about grunts needing to stay behind to watch the vehicle or something.  

[Gwennythe]

"Ahah. That would be the partner I mentioned, uh, coincidentally enough." Tambrey replied with a nod, then decided to give a bit of thought to the summary he gave regarding the Zoru, but didn't elaborate on her thoughts beyond:
"I'll think about that but, uh... Yes, I think I've got an idea."

She made to get out of the car too, after retrieving her mp3 player, leaving nothing inside.
"You can, uh, stay with the car if you want, but there's no real requirement. It doesn't seem likely to be, um, at risk here. This is, you know, one of our places as well..." She explained, then opened the door to get out, and breathe in the air, especially keen in a place with so many plants.