A Whole Lot of Nothing
Word Count: 920

"Wow. It's a whole lot of nothing, Lenore." The redhead looked down to his feline companion, curled softly into a C-shape on his lap. She never looked up at his comment. "Nobody knows anything. Or has seen anything, actually. Which is kinda weird if you think about it.

"I mean, most people cursed about him, and I kinda expected that. But it still sucks, you know? My brother was a d**k, but he was still my brother." Perpetually ring-encrusted hands brushed over soft fur. "It's always stuff like, 'Umber? Why are you looking for that dickface?' or whatever. And I can get that. I mean, Chrysocolla said he corrupted her, and did some strange stuff to her, and that's why she hates him and doesn't want to be around him. But… I dunno, do you think she could be lying? Like, she made it up because she can't get along with him or something?"

The cat offered no answer. Instead she looked up, bumped her head adubly against the old wooden desk lip, and meowed insistently. Whatever he mumbled on about, he wasn't scratching her face enough. Running his mouth seldom promised pets.

Sighing, he gave a robust scratch under the chin. "I guess I'm just super disappointed. Nobody knows anything. Or they say they don't know anything, anyway. I dunno. I can't really see them lying… I mean, why would they lie about a coworker? Or a direct superior? Seems like it'd be a bad idea if you get caught, you know? Being like, 'who knows or cares' about Umber and then getting caught about it when he gets discovered again… I dunno. Maybe it's nothing. It'd be really rude of me to doubt a bunch of people in the Negaverse. And probably undermining or something. Everyone's trying to work toward a common goal, and get better, and work together. I can't just doubt that."

His hands left the cat to return to the pages covering his desk. Each a cheap printout on budget copy paper, half delineated a high school girl's attempt at a formal report and half were from his own obviously unprofessional demeanor. While both featured the crisp, cold header used on most Negaverse documents of this nature, the rest of the contents were laughably mismatched in tone. Slate never minded it; he vastly preferred the personality Sylvite kept in her work. Maybe it wasn't professional enough for the likes of his brother, but it got the point across, and she sounded like a human when she wrote it. Slate could like that. Maybe she'd be the personality point the Negaverse needed to bring them more together.

He really should get to hooking her up with some favors. A commendation had to get her somewhere, right? Maybe he could advocate for her with one of the General-Sovereigns. If he tried well enough to advertise her perks, and downplay any weaknesses, she might even get a promotion. Or he could try to sponsor her through any projects she might be doing. Agents did projects sometimes.

But that would have to come a bit later. For now, he looked on at the 'whole lot of nothing' that encompassed his search for Umber. Not one of the four knew where he went or what might've happened to him — not Ashanite, not Chrysocolla, not Faustite, not Haüyne. They couldn't all be hiding something. No, he must've been doing this wrong from the start. Why interview people expecting them to know something when they probably would've reported it if they did? Doing that just… Makes it seem like he thought they were inept. Which wasn't true, he never thought someone else in the Negaverse was inept, and he didn't think they were hiding anything…

Slate sighed. He shuffled the four reports together again and again and again, in different configurations, and tilted each one this way and that, expecting to glean some hidden insight. But this wasn't the movies, he realized — no sudden epiphany came to him by rehearsing old scenes. He had to do something else. Ask someone else, or —

Wait, maybe it does happen like in the movies. Slate squinted down a last time at the four papers, his gaze challenging each page, with the middle two finally offering a suggestion. Chrysocolla and Faustite both had commanding officers, even though Chrysocolla didn't need to report to anybody but a General-Sovereign. And both officers worked under the same general — Schörl. If those two knew Umber and then worked under Schörl, then maybe Schörl knew Umber too?

Hastily he drew out his tablet and snapped it open to the dull violet glow. Its screen flickered to life, demanding a username and password, and Slate typed in his credentials as quickly as he could. Navigating to personnel files was simple enough — a tap here, a touch there — and then he scrolled through the long list to find the general in question. There wasn't a ton of information given about any one officer, but what was there proved to be enough. Longstanding general, been around for a while, kept a small team. She worked in the SpecOps branch before Hessonite cleaned it out in a fiasco. And SpecOps was supposed to investigate stuff like this…

"Maybe we've got an appointment to make. What do you think, Lenore?" Slate gave the cat a quick petting before he penned the name down in a personal memo. "She's probably gonna be better at this than I am."