Welcome to Gaia! ::

He watched her curiously, a little puzzled by her tension, but didn't move much as she explained. There wasn't any apparant reaction until she finished.

Kalis shrugged.

But he also smiled.

"Sure. Sounds good." He set his weight on an elbow, and turned his torso around to face her, rotating the stool under him if it was one of those fun ones that spun a little like that.

It made sense to him, that. With a busy day, and Owle in need of relaxation- so he mandated, whether she cared to agree or not- after doing as much or more than any other team member even as their alternate, that she should get away from having to care for the bar.

"So, is there a road or lack there of that's caught 'yer fancy?"

Kalis near chuckled at her enthusiasm, giving her a lopsided grin. " 'course."

Her absolute exuberence still seemed a little misplaced, but he wasn't about to let it bother him. Besides, she deserved it- they'd had a long couple of weeks.

He rested his chin on a fist, and scratched at the short stuble starting on the underside of his jaw. "Well," he lolled his head to one side, and then the other, pretending to consider. "I suppose 'that way' sounds as good as any." And truthfully, why not? That was the point, it sounded like, to make it up as you went. An absolutely whimisical sort of outing, from the sound of it. He wasn't surprised, coming from Owle, and it was charming in a way.

"So, when do we leave?" he flashed red eyes around the room, and then back to her, and stood, stretching his legs.

...and out of thin air, with the stereotypical pop, a figure clad in a red longcoat appears a good three feet in the air above the floor of the tavern, which he soon meets with a resounding whump of flesh on wood. For those who recognized him, he was more disheveled and unkempt than when he last set foot in the Firebrand, but this was still quite immaculate considering his profession. With a pain-induced groan muffled by the floorboards, he drags himself upright, muttering.

Paul: "Thrice-accursed deus ex machina..."

There's just one thing missing from Paul Ethere...and with another pop, it appears. A battered guitar case slams down onto his back, causing him to ram into the floor yet again. With a grim chuckle, he finally manages to pull himself upright.

Paul: "...at least I got my guitar back..."

He looks around, noting faces old and new as he brushes himself off.

Paul: "So, what'd I miss?"

((Back from school work induced hiatus!))

Pulling a wry face, Paul opens a window and spits out a mouthful of splinters and grit from the floor before answering.

Paul: "Last thing I know, I'm talking to this dwarf, and then..."

He frowns, as though grasping at a memory just beyond his reach.

Paul: "I'm not exactly sure...I was back on my ship, but somehow it wasn't my ship...once I figured out it wasn't my ship, somehow I ended up back here."

He shrugs expansively as he sits in an unoccupied chair, propping the guitar case next to him.

Paul: "Kept an eye on the Firebrand while you weren't here; all my earnings are in the till. I figure I owed you 'n Rage for putting me up...and putting up with me."

"For my... loved ones..." he repeated, leaning back in the chair, his eyes focused on the hologram. He began to think, mentally weighing the pro's and con's of what he was being offered.

He closed his eyes, smiling just slightly. He opened them and looked back at Brown. "I think I'll pass on the relocation thing; I want to keep my daughter as far away from me as possible so she's in no danger, and as for me... I'm just too stubborn to settle down. Not quite yet."

He paused, and it quickly dawned on him like he was rejecting the offer. "But!" he blurted out before his guest could start again. "But... I'm interested in those laboratories. I... I want to be healthy again, Joseph. I want to rid myself of this... thing, that's killing me slowly, day by day. I want to see my daughter graduate... hell, I want to make it to her next birthday, which I don't think I'm going to get to do."

He looked down at his drink, turning it in his hand, watching the remaining bourbon spin in his glass. He didn't like to gamble, and he was about to take a very serious one, which may cost him everything.

"I can... get your scientists the data of what I had done to me, if they could find a way to reverse, or at least, control it. It'll take me a week or so, but I can get it. I'll even undergo any tests or experiments they deem necessary, if that's what it takes. That's all I want from you, Joseph Brown."

"But, what will it cost me?" he asked, looking the executive straight in the eyes.

"If figured one of those things would catch your interest." He smiled after Rain bit, "I just didn't know exactly what one would seal the deal. I can have scientists analyse whatever, and I can even have some equipment shipped to you so you can continue looking into it yourself."

Joseph wouldn't have got where he was if he flinched. If Rain went for the eyes then Joseph would meet his look and raise him that same easy going smile he had the whole time.

"Now, since you're all down to business I'll begin long a** speech number two." He dramatically cleared his throat, downed the dregs of the bourbon he had missed, and then cleared his throat again. "Gaia is a really really shitty place to do business, as neutrality is both expensive and really hard to maintain. With the crap I do research on, the s**t I develop, and the people I employ some people would kill, and I mean that literally, to get their hands on. I could be threatened by a superhuman hired by the competition one day, and then propositioned by some rouge militia who want to kill all metahumans the next day. I can afford to cave into either one of those extremes, it's just not safe."

"So it helps to have a group of your own highly talented people around. A task force if you will to take care of those threats and protect my assets more than regular ol' guards could." He leaned forward a bit and propped his cheek against his palm, "And then there's the less straight forward stuff. There's assloads of stuff on Gaia that's dangerous to research or developed by dangerous people. A veritable cornucopia of unfinished, abandoned, or misused technologies just barely hovering on the verge of profitability. While I'm slightly more involved than most in the acquisition of those properties, I still need help. Underhanded, probably. Hazard to my health, more than likely. Worth it, you bet your a**."

"Besides, the danger is the fun. And if it wasn't fun I would have stopped doing it long ago."

"You can hire and train thousands of people to fire a gun. The fact I can shoot straight proves that any idiot can do it." Somehow he seemed a bit more serious now that he was down to the bargaining, "No, I'm not offering to throw you in with a bunch of others so you can train to fight like a whole bunch of others. People don't usually take it well when business start up personal armies like that anyway."

"What I'm saying is you'd be a group of people that get stuff done however the hell they want to." He shrugged, "The kind of stuff that can't be done by militaristic grunts. As I said I have stuff that people want without paying if you know what I mean. Grunts have a tendency talk, and if word gets out that your company is under constant threat by god knows what... Well, that doesn't exactly inspire the specific kind of faith expressed through investment dollars."

"Best job description I can give is that you'd deal with situations. Situations of all sorts from counter intelligence to salvage to plain old people are trying to kill everyone in one of my buildings. As long as they get dealt with I don't care if you subdue, prevent, or throw teddy bears at them.