Welcome to Gaia! ::

Could they get some people to follow Faustite out? It was a lofty goal, a lofty hope; he had enough connections that even peeling off a few of them would likely have a ripple effect like Livie said she was having. (And Ignacio saw her entries in the database. He was willing to buy that she was seeing some results, even if it wasn’t with the person she seemed to really want to see results with…)

Ignacio would have said something about it while sidestepping the Albite Problem but Sadie spoke first, and his mind jumped from that topic to hers. She was right. There was something deeply wrong with almost every person that housed a youma soul, significantly more of a problem than the average agent.

He wished he could deny it. He couldn’t.

It sounded like Sadie’s approach was to convince him to let go of chaos and bring the rest of it later. Would they have the time to talk him into not immediately running back to what he knew? But then Sadie had already addressed that concept of the five minutes they’d have to get through to him–

While he pondered, it was the now humanoid Viatrix who spoke up, curls bouncing as she turned to look directly at Sadie. She bypassed the matchmaking question, that was her bonded’s problem not hers. Dating wasn’t her thing. “Do you think we can convince him to that point and still get him to stay after? Sure he’s crafty enough to stay that way, right?” She sucked in her lips for a moment. “If he really doesn’t want to leave, he might tell the Negaverse that ahead of time, right?”

Ignacio winced. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen–”

He ran a hand through his hair, glancing in Livie’s direction afterward. “Look, in my opinion any Order boy would probably be an improvement over a chaos boy but it’s been a while since I’ve been on the market, so I’m rusty. I was last dating people before,” he cleared his throat, side-stepped what his brain quickly surfaced, and finally substituted a, “Tinder was a thing alright.”

He had also still been a teenager, so Tinder wouldn’t have been relevant anyway–

“Finding him a boy he might be interested in over here isn’t a bad idea, though.”

There were a lot of possibilities that he needed to think about. Ignacio knew this was going to be a project, and the several angles even just the four of them in this front hall were thinking of was a sign of it already. But– “The crux of the problem is definitely getting him to the point of letting go in the first place, though. Sadie’s right. It is going to take some work.”

“A lot of work,” substituted Viatrix, because of course she did, with a cupcake in her mouth. She swallowed. “But I believe in us!”

Ignacio felt comforted in the fact that Sadie was willing to put in that kind of work with Faustite. With Elex. Ignacio had known it from the way she took away from her sleep in order to try and work with him, to try and convince him – but it ended up more useful for his new motivation than he expected.

It was useful in that it was comforting.

This was going to be a lot, but Viatrix was right, he hoped. She had to be. The alternative would result in Ignacio feeling like he had failed at something essential. Faustite deserved to have the same chances that Ignacio had once had if he wanted them.

The goal was to make sure he wanted them.

Now, why was Livie rushing off…?

“Ooh!” Viatrix jumped to her feet, quickly moving to follow after Livie. “I got three hours in this humanoid guise without reverting back to the high-power form. I’d love to play some Mario Kart. Are you stuck in the trying to beat Raina game too, because I’ve been stuck on that for months--”

Ignacio shook his head and rolled his eyes, for one moment truly feeling his age. “Let’s join them for a little bit.” He stood up, brushed himself off, and reached out toward Sadie to help her up.

‘“Might help us form our plan.”