[Fin] Clear the Air

[TawnyAngel]

"Badly executed?..." KO mused this over another sip of Absinthe. "I don't think we could have foreseen the stampede or dealt with that any differently than we did. We could have done without Clancy helping to raise the Champion's suspicions but a makeshift plan as all we were ever going to have when the situation changed while we were in transit. Anyway, no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy."

Lex's juvenily expressed displeasure over his hair got a wan smile out of KO. "You could just wear a wig off base for a while."

The conversation seemed to be jumping around now, KO nodded along until there was a gap for him to speak in. "Well, you never know I suppose? He got the hint about not antagonizing Jerome's Gengar eventually. And yes? I'm surprised you haven't before, but I didn't think it was for me to push the issue. Tech isn't my speciality by any means of course but considering other things we know they can do, a bionic eye should be a walk in the park for the right Agent."  

[Shaddaling]

"Conquering others is power, conquering oneself is strength," Lex dredged up the old quote, and faintly traced along the underside of his prosthetic eye. "A surgery after getting on my feet ..." he trailed off and shook his head, brushing a stray bit of hair back into place.

"Been considering see if an eye can be clone but while in size it might not seem much of a project, but then I consider how complex it probably is to simply make a part not a whole." He looked at his drink, giving a tiny swirl of the glass, watching the cloud mix of spirit, dissolved liquid, and water move.  

[TawnyAngel]

"What?" KO looked at Lex, looked at his drink, and then looked back at Lex. He wasn't sure he'd understood any of that, not as a coherent whole anyway.

"A clone?" he echoed, trying to trace the train of thought from there. "So, an actual biological replacement?... Might be possible? But difficult, experimental. Pokemon are a lot easier to clone than humans due to their innately unstable," he waved his glass, "you know, DNA. Biology. Eevee is just an extreme example of that instability that makes evolution possible.... But that's not what you were asking. Actually cloning just a part of something really isn't a problem, as it were. We can grow human organs, but we can't grow whole adult humans. The problem is that the human eye is a very complex organ to grow - never been done that I know of - and then you have to consider the surgery to attach it, and hope that it survives and then works as it should?" KO shook his head and took another sip of his drink. "I think a cybernetic replacement would be a whole lot easier, just from my own understanding of the science, but it never hurts to ask if you're set on a biological eye."  

[Shaddaling]

"Mmh? Ooh the first part was a quote from the Tao Te Ching, it is a favorite of mine but the rest..." Lex hummed and listened, giving a slight nod of thought and gave a tiny hum.

"I had wondered if we were cloning organs or not but the structure of most organs is as you said is a bit less complex then an eye when you take in the nerves, lens, and slight different in shape of the over all eye can effect vision and well the major one of if the optical nerve will still work after months of inactivity." Or if he still had one. Lex shook his head and sighed. "It was a passing thought truly... one I probably will bring up just to put to rest."

Another pause. "I wasn't considering cloning humans as a whole...though I'm glad to hear that we aren't." That was just gross to consider. "But more of how the shape of optical no orbital socket? Could also be a factor in cloning an eye, it is the sole organ that truly has other factors shaping it."  

[TawnyAngel]

KO, who had been taking a drink, coughed and wheezed a bit. "That," he coughed more, "that's the issue you see? Lex!" He couldn't stop himself from laughing. "We- we could make a little mold for it to grow in you know! The container we grow it in is the least of our worries!" Wow, he felt a bit better now. KO wiped his eyes, coughed more, and shook his head. "And there wouldn't be any profit in cloning whole humans or we'd probably do it. Ahh. But yes, it's worth asking to find out what your options are."  

[Shaddaling]

"Well, outside of everything we just talked about earlier, yes, " Lex gave a small grin over the edge of his drink and set it aside. "It isn't as if I ever seen one grown and while I have the basic idea of cells being separated and cultured and scaffolds, magazines articles are only so informative."  

[TawnyAngel]

KO wiped his eyes again and said; "Mmh," around his drink. "Well like I said I don't know if it ever has been done but whether it has or not the container is, well," he waved the glass, "as I said." He finished up the absinthe and wandered over to Lex to pour some more into his glass. "But anyway, yes, speak to the experts and see what they can - and will - do for you. I don't know what the deal is on requesting replacement body parts."  

[Shaddaling]

"Thank you." Lex replied and fished around to find the spoon and the box of sugar cubes and his half filled bottle of water. Soda, coke especially sounded delicious but the caffeine would not be good. Things he would miss. "I will have to."


"Subject change and speaking of promotions.. I been attempting to figure out what I want to really do," it wasn't like he could be promoted going from one grunt job to another. "Narrowed it down to Field Work, Labs, or Intelligence."

"Just, thoughts in general about any of them," he tipped the water over the cube of sugar, slowly filling it.  

[TawnyAngel]

KO blinked at the change in subject but at least he'd been given fair warning of it. "Thoughts," he echoed again as he tried to gather some though his weariness which, as yet, didn't have anything much to do with alcohol. "Well.... Field work means a lot of risk to life and limb but it is what you used to do for Galactic. You know I favour the sciences myself, I mean I have been working in the field of chemistry for...." KO paused and groaned internally at the figure that had come to mind. "Well more than fifteen years now," he said with a trace of gloom often heard in the voices of over thirties who are remembering they are over thirty. "But, yes, labs. I suppose you'd have a lot to learn but everything that goes on down there is interesting, and there's a lot of scope for creative projects. I don't know a lot about what the intelligence department get up to but I think that has the potential to be interesting work though again, potentially hazardous to health."  

[Shaddaling]

"I do believe that every department has some sort of hazards involved." He finished, capping the empty bottle and set it aside before taking a sip of his drink. "Tambrey mentioned that I probably have a lot of catching up to do if I decided to work in the labs." He had not spend fifteen years working in a field.

"The labs so much creative possibilities, resurrecting pokemon, pigmentation customization in pokemon... I actually fiddled with that a bit when I was designing my Milotic but that was mostly choosing a color palette and applying it to to photos not the actual genetic part."

Perceptor had turned out very pretty. "I did get to see him in a holding tank before taking him to a training room." But that was just the tip of a very large iceberg.  

[TawnyAngel]

"True, but some more so than others," KO replied, settling himself more comfortably back against the pillows on his bed. "Clerical for example I think is pretty safe, but a lot of people in the department I think are those who're no longer able to serve in another department for one reason or another.... You would have a lot of catching up to you but if you're set on working in the labs," KO shrugged, "you do have a lifetime to learn. It's not like we're going anywhere, barring a disaster that brings the whole organisation down." It did sound like Lex was more interested in the labs than anything else, he hadn't even bothered to reply to the parts about field work or intelligence.  

[Shaddaling]

"Don't have the patience to do clerical work," Lex shifted and gave a small hiss as his knee complained about the movement and shifted again till he was comfortable. "I know what fieldwork is and I like it but I don't love it."

He could admit that easily, he loved working with his pokemon, training them and well he did love the thrill of thievery but the lost of his eye made it harder to judge depth and he had to depend more on his ariados to make the snatch. More cautious and most of his partners were new and he didn't have the same ease of work as he use to have with some of the others.


"And it harder now with the blind spot and it part show, distraction, depth and dexterity. Use to distract a crowd with fortune telling and Tems or her pokemon both would take what they want from certain people." Never his pokemon because they didn't have the dexterity needed.

"Intelligence... we could have done so many things last raid. Don't know why I kept thinking about it," Lex knew, he thought KO had died and he just kept replaying it in his head. "Can't change the fact that Kalos rockets tracked a legendary in their uniforms," was that a hint of disdain in his voice, why, yes, it was.

"But, we could have took a few minutes to go over identification and try to get a base of where they were from and maybe a few key things so we didn't end up gaping like idiots in that cave." Lex sighed and sunk down, fiddling with the coins strung on their leather hoop.

"When I was younger, my mom use to drill in me a safe word that if anyone but her was going to pick me up, they would know it. We don't even have a way to discretely tell other in the organization what we are on their side in plain clothes."  

[TawnyAngel]

KO's eyebrows rose slowly as Lex spoke. "Well it's all very well to say that Lex but we wouldn't have known about the man who was dead or been able to produce IDs to give to the champion from a few minutes of going over IDs. And how do you think it would have looked if the other rockets just suddenly surrendered to us when they'd been going all out against a Legendary? No," he shook his head, "I can see a safeword working in some situations very well, but not that one so much." And somewhere there was a small bitter part of him that flared up against Lex for having a mother who bothered with things like that. He'd thought he'd put all of that to bed a long time ago but maybe not.

"The ruse we were trapped playing meant we had to fight them, I think," KO concluded more quietly with a shake of his head, "but for the future.... Maybe there is something like that, but if there is and we don't know it we ought to. Would let us ID rockets we don't know in the field but suspect might be in all kinds of circumstances."  

[Shaddaling]

"It's not the fight that bothered me so much as that one agent doing that stupid suicidal stunt that could have got us all killed. It was the guy in the vents all over again and we weren't able to speak to him and we forgot him and he blew up a ship with us still in it." Lex hand clenched tight enough around the coins to hurt and he relaxed them, looking at the shapes indented in his skin.


"Don't think they would have been bad enough actors to just surrender but something to say, hey, we are on your side, be ready. We couldn't not fight... it wouldn't have worked, but if we could have stopped that stupid agent from charging Xerneas." He trailed off.

Well he would sleep a bit better if he wasn't occasionally plagued by death...  

[TawnyAngel]

KO frowned and thought about it. "I... understand how you feel but I don't see how that idiot would have got anyone killed but himself. It understood the champion was on its side, and at that point she thought - or was letting us think she thought - that we were as well so we were safe. Could've saved some trouble though if it worked out right, he seemed like a right hot-head who would have done something stupid either way. Or maybe I'm just judgemental tonight."

Oh, and his drink was empty. KO went to fill his glass up with vodka, ice, and coke on auto pilot.

"And wait, you don't have the patience for clerical but you want to work in the labs?" he said, turning abruptly - drink sloshing slightly - as he remembered the previous topic. "Have you ever seen a coding sequence for a pokemon? You know all the tiny, tiny, boring things you have to pore over?" He waved the glass vaguely and wandered back to sit on the bed. "I mean, Tambery and I have been working on this improved ah, growth solution. Thing. Do you know how many failures we've had? Dead ends? False starts? Science takes a lot more patience than clerical! It's all...." KO looked into his glass and shrugged at the ice cubes. "All.... Empirical."