Welcome to Gaia! ::

Work had been ... work, that day. Inexplicably boring, as always. It felt like Adam was going to crawl out of his own skin to get himself out of his predicament, and he desperately wanted to. It was so easy now to call upon something else and be something much closer to what brewed under the surface than the contained formality he projected. He supposed he would eat up his time creating a new maze for his latest maze book; perhaps it would give him ideas for something else he could do, later.

Or it would occupy him, at least.

It had occupied better than the meetings and the office lunches and the return to blase spreadsheets, at least, and the thoughts about how to complete them occupied him until the end of the day.

Adam stopped at one of his current cafe haunts after he was finally able to flee from the building. It was a trendier place, at least, recently opening outside of the financial district with hopes to capture their richer pockets. It was working, for certain, with the amount of more expensive drinks he saw leave. His drink was a bit more expensive, festive as he was wont to do at this time of year. Cinnamon blend, apparently, if he cared to inspect what he had actually gotten.

He sipped it as he left, sliding against one of the buildings he did.

Spicy. Hm.

In one moment, he was Adam. In the next, he was Borax.

A patrol and an easy path to his also freshly released coworkers leaving him the ******** alone--

Borax had been enough signatures by this point that he had picked up on what the sensation that felt like it crawled up his neck was. There was another member of his "organization" around somewhere, though he wasn't exactly sure where. The signature did not feel as if it was a blister like Faustite's did, but did not contain the same subtlety as Cryolite's. Easy to conclude that this was either a captain or a super senshi.

Either may be worth his approach, especially if this happened to be a member of his direct chain of command. Was Jadarite out? Or perhaps this was one of the myriad supers that Faustite seemed to have at his own beckon.

He wasn't sure how to start his pursuit, though it had quickly become obvious to him that his fellows often took to the back paths. It was valid as a mechanism to stay hidden, especially considering none of the outfits he had seen so far were built to blend in. If he was in Greece or Albania, he might have gotten away with it, but even then, fustanella were frequently entirely white as a base color. He wore black.

So, he'd try there.

What caught his attention first was the trail of frost -- reminded him of Cryolite, but so far as he could tell, he wasn't capable of that. Still, he pursued it, until he saw the unmistakably long hair of a corrupted senshi. A super, then.

"Out on a patrol?" His tone was as smooth as butter.

So this super was inclined to patrols after shift, too. Borax could appreciate that, his brows lifting as he nodded in acknowledgement. Had he found himself in an organization of people who were in part trying to escape their daily lives? It couldn't be, entirely, not when he had been recruited by an infiltration captain for presumable infiltration purposes. That did require him to maintain some degree of affiliation with his job, no matter how much his powers may make him no longer need them.

"Similarly, if you'd believe it. Work is very dry in my field." He took another sip of his cinnamon-blended coffee. Frappe? He hardly paid attention to what it was specifically, only that it was seasonal. Presumably, as the snow fell, this drink was what he was to speak of. It was ... okay. Not boring at least. "I recently got off shift and decided being in a different skin for a while would be preferable."

A different skin, which on the inside for some of them could hold fire, could hold magic, could hold teleportation, could hold the power to clutch souls and hold them in his own hands, yank them out as if they had no rights to the chests in which they had sat in the first place.

"General expects me to start bringing in quota, and I plan to succeed in that. Same for you?"

So this one had a vested interest in the torment of senshi and knights in particular, and it seemed self-motivated. That was interesting to him. Borax couldn't quite deny the appeal of bodies in his wake, but he also knew what he had been told by Jadarite. Better to pick people who wouldn't be noticed for his own collection so the Negaverse didn't have to do too much clean up. Borax shouldn't be too obvious.

Of course, he followed a captain of Infiltration. It sounded like this super didn't follow any particular authority at all, and perhaps he was aligned under a different division. There was a part of him that envied that; listening to the authority of others felt internally abrasive.

On the other hand, it had given him a group of people to mine knowledge and experience for both his own benefit. For the benefit of the organization as well, of course, which could only benefit him in turn. If they saw him as useful, perhaps they would be inclined to let the firey general funnel more power into his starseed.

"A hot drink and bodies in your wake?" Borax somehow sounded sultry about the concept. "Sounds like a good evening. Count me in."

Perhaps this was one of the members of SpecOps.

Perhaps he should have had a weaker stomach than he did. It was hard to feel sympathy, though, when he wasn't sure if the people they hunted, as Miyamoto described, truly counted as people. They were farming their souls. At what point did he decide he had been accepted into an organization which went a bit further than just using people to their advantage and instead simply were using them as cattle?

He sure didn't have a soft spot for cattle.

A super suggesting him lead caused his brows to loft momentarily. Not something he had expected, necessarily, with the concern over rank that seemed intrinsic to the Negaverse, but also nothing he would complain about. "Absolutely can take the reins." It was good practice, in any case. 'It sounded like you were focused on the forces of the White Moon tonight. Had you already felt any?"

He sipped from his frappe like they were simply talking office gossip as he slipped forward and further into the alley, focusing on the energies he felt around them. It still required some practice, but Borax had started to attune to what he needed to notice with his new senses. Something that threatened to blind him was too much, but a light like an irritant breaking the ambiance of a good movie was more accurate. Did he feel any of those?

... Perhaps ...

Borax headed left, up a different street.

"Maybe I'll be your lucky charm." He gave a smooth wink to accompany that, happy to intentionally butter up a connection in his new organization. Miyamoto was not in his direct line of command, but that didn't mean he should spurn him. He was letting him lead a hunt for starseeds. To be honest, that was ideal.

Even if the hunt at the moment was a merry conversation about murder while drinking just as merry drinks.

Borax felt the frost before he noticed it, taking a brief look behind himself to see if he could figure out where it was coming from. Was Miyamoto himself producing that? Fascinating. Were they all so elemental? Could they all one day become the kind of infernal that Faustite seemed to be, or did that have limits? He was curious about it, even if body modification itself was not his thing. The magic, though--

"I am fairly new," came as an unfortunate admission. "I've been learning the lay of the land, making connections, studying the database and the Negaverse training manual. Very basic stuff." He swatted at the air. "I've taken some energy, though. A couple starseeds."

As Jadarite said, aim for those who would not be missed.

"Hasn't bothered me at all." While Faustite had gotten to see his sudden acute interest firsthand, he wasn't necessarily about to tell everyone else that he was getting a rush out of getting "his hands dirty." There was something about having lives in his hands and being able to pull people out of living so easily that drove his interest into overdrive. He wanted that power. He deeply desired that power. And he had it, now.

If he had to torment people a little bit to get there? So be it.

They were cattle anyway.

He shrugged. "Suit yourself. I think humans reproduce enough to replenish the civilians." Borax could understand the business sense of not wanting to wait years for them to become clients, though. He didn't necessarily need to worry about that in his line of work. Capitalism meant that people were always going to need banks. Worked for him. "And I find connections very useful. It is often not what you know but who."

Jadarite, for one, had gotten him recruited in the first place. He was not entirely convinced that he would have ever been given the time of day without.

"The database is exceptionally useful. Gives me a head's up on what enemies to be aware of and how to counter them. Will help if we happen to run into any of them on this patrol." Borax stopped and felt around for a moment, checking a bit harder for any auras, before turning in a direction where he may have felt one. Perhaps. He was still attuning that sense. "I will likely contribute to it as I can."