Welcome to Gaia! ::

Brielle wore sandals. They were orthopedic ones, of course, but they were still pretty, with crossing straps. After some consideration, she'd decided she didn't mind if people saw her scars. She also wore a short sleeved blouse and a pair of flowy pants. Things were finally starting to be a palatable temperature, and she was going to make the most of it with her clothes.

She brought a fancy coffee for herself, and two drinks to share in a cardboard barrier which she set down on the table as everyone drew near

Michael got a smile first, and the drink carton was nudged in his direction. She wanted so badly for things not to be awkward between the two of them, but they kept meeting under the worst kinds of situations.

Hopefully this could be different.

After all, she came bearing interesting news.

Anser had been worried about said news and enthusiastic about Cybele's proposed solution, but she wanted to run her thoughts past a few more sets of ears. Devyn had a good head on his shoulders for tactics and planning. He'd managed to get Chaos off of a whole planet on his own, after all.

"You'll never guess what an agent let slip," se said, one eyebrow half quirked, as she settled into the table.

“I will never guess,” Devyn agreed, but he seemed good natured and smiled as he settled onto the seat across from her. He accepted the drink Michael passed to him as he made himself comfortable next to him.

“Thank you,” he said to Brielle first, because he always minded his manners, and he took a sip instinctively.

He didn’t have the same optimism Michael had, but he was perplexed all the same and leaned forward a bit, like he was waiting for Brielle to share some juicy secret.

“Don’t hold me in suspense, is it something good?”

She didn’t seem upset or frightened, so he hoped that meant it wasn’t something bad.

Michael was quiet for a little while as he thought about everything Brielle told them. Knowing points of interest to the Negaverse would be good to keep an eye on, in case anything happens. It seemed a little risky for them to be powered up during daylight hours, which he decided was a good thing.

Because it meant that they were careless.

He didn’t need to remind her that if she could feel them, they could probably feel her when she was powered, and to be careful not to be too suspicious. He kept his thoughts to himself by taking a sip of his coffee and shifting his foot over to rest the edge of his shoe against Devyn’s boot. It could have even been considered accidental, except he didn’t move it away after contact.

“What do you think we’re looking at? A place where they’re laundering money? Using it as a cover for something else? Finding a way to turn coins or cash into ways to drain energy?” he asked, and then glanced over at Devyn with a little shrug, then explained.

“The Velencians had crystals or something to drain energy, and we know the Negaverse has been doing it in various ways with different rates of success.”

"The more we get into those sort of details, the more it starts getting into guesswork," said Brielle, her brows furrowing until a line formed between them, because she really did wish she had a better answer. "I know a few things about Infiltration. Not a lot. It wasn't my area of expertise even when I was corrupted, but," her lips pressed thin, too, "The obvious answer is that they want money. Could be laundering, could be legal. Or, they could be draining, that's always a common theme. They could just be trying to make sure their agents are dispersed and influential."

That had been one of the Negaverse's goals. She remembered that much, even if the details of where exactly they might have been trying to place people felt strangely fuzzy around the edges, the way so many of her limited memories were.

It didn't narrow things down much.

"I want to stop them before whatever they're planning has time to get off the ground," she told them. "I was thinking about trying to destroy the building. We could look for additional evidence while we do it."

Her confidence faltered a bit, there. She knew that they had to do something, but she wasn't here to try to sway them into helping with her one and only plan. She was looking for reassurance, or a second opinion.

But she was asking of it from people who she knew could do what needed to be done.

Earth was complicated in many ways. If this were Alastor, Devyn knew exactly how he’d deal with it. But here…

Here, there was so much to lose. Here, there were too many things out of his control.

He wouldn't say it out loud, but he hated the strange feeling of helplessness that came with having to carefully navigate ‘how to deal with things’. He didn’t want to be a monster.

But he knew what Chaos did to someone. He’d have killed them if it meant giving Earth a chance to heal. If it meant that less people trying to do the right thing died because of the Negaverse.

This was a war. They were soldiers by choice.

If they were willing to kill, then they should be willing to die.

Devyn didn’t think he was a good person, not compared to the people who had the strength to give people chance after chance. To fight evil with goodness. To heal.

He’d spent a thousand years trying heal his world, and Chaos had stripped away everything but its Core. He didn’t want the people of Earth to go through that. He didn’t want Earth to go through that.

He was willing to get his hands dirty so others could keep them clean. He thought Brielle was probably the same. Michael was, too.

They were both right. Destroying it before it could get off the ground was a necessity. But, destroying anything so publicly would draw attention.

He’d had his fair share of trying to navigate the public opinion. It was different on Earth. Most things were. The public might not have had names, or specific people to blame, but the Negaverse–the media–only needed to blame an idea. A hypothetical type of person, a fabricated villain to fuel their narrative and push for the changes they wanted while protecting themselves.

If they were being sloppy, maybe they wanted to be caught. The thought kept lingering in the back of his mind. He’d walked into plenty of traps knowing what they were but having no other option. She just needed to be prepared for what it might be.

He tapped his finger on his cup again and then, finally, spoke.

“I have a hard time thinking that they would deliberately be so disorganized. That’s unlike them, especially if we’re supposed to assume they’ve infiltrated other establishments before. If you’re planning an attack, you need to be safe about it. You need to anticipate that they want this.”

Maybe she’d already figured this out, but he was repeating it for its importance more than anything else. Michael was right, and Devyn trusted his caution.

“I don’t trust any obvious answer. If they want money, they could teleport into the vault and take whatever they want. A Mauvian could hack their systems and fabricate funds. I think.” He glanced between the two of them and was more than willing to to be corrected. There were still many things for him to learn.

“A building is just a building. I agree with Michael. Damaging it will might negative repercussions, and it doesn't necessarily guarantee that you'll really hit them where it hurts. But.”

He tapped the cup again and then leaned forward a bit as well. “You won’t have time to do everything you want to do alone. And the more people you get involved, the more your plan will stray. People always take things into their own hands and do what they think is best, especially when they have no authority to report to. If you want to find evidence, you can’t go in planning to destroy everything. If you want to destroy it, you have to plan an escape route, and that’s harder when your hand is full of evidence. If this is a trap, they’ll already have things ready and waiting. So you have to be prepared for everything.”

Even if it was just precaution.

He wasn’t the expert here on Earth, but he appreciated her calling them there all the same. The look in his expression wasn’t one of dismissal or reproach; he trusted her. Believed in her. He wanted her to be prepared for whatever might happen, and to make sure that she had the support she needed.

“I think the most important thing is to figure out what you want out of this. And how we can help.”

“What evidence are you looking for? You know how far the Negaverse reaches. You know they’ve got their hands in everything,” he reminded her, although he was good about keeping any frustration he might have had out of his voice.

“I don’t think it’s fair to decide for everyone that it doesn’t matter if we’re seen as terrorists. There have been a lot of Senshi and Knights and Mauvians who have been working to try and keep our reputation something that those inside the Negaverse, questioning it, would look at and see that the Negaverse and the destruction they cause isn’t the answer. If they see that we’re doing the damage anyway…”

He could only imagine those who might be wondering if they should leave deciding that the Negaverse was right all along and Senshi and Knights were just as bad, if not worse, because they paraded around their self righteousness and called themselves things like ‘Order’ when it was anything but.

Then again, Michael had been possibly the only one who hadn’t joined hands at the Surrounding, hoping and praying for divine intervention when he believed they had no right to ask for help after causing problems for themselves.

“Destroying a physical bank, controlled by the Negaverse or not, would be like hunting ghosts and then leaving the city to clean up the mess. Most banks operate electronically and have very little on deposit, and if the Negaverse was hoarding physical money, they would just keep it in their little Negaspace or whatever they call it. I just want to make sure you’ve thought this through. People could get hurt or worse. We could lose any positive reputation we might have. It could be a trap. It could just be a way to test how we respond to whatever they’re doing, otherwise why would they be powered up inside the building? Unless they’re just idiots,” he scoffed.

“How would you even destroy a building? You know the Negaverse probably has people in the FBI. Like I said, this could just be a trap. And it would be decades in prison for whoever was caught and found guilty, and you know the police don’t care who they find as long as someone is blamed.” They could very well be sending innocent people to prison for a very long time for what they did.

Michael didn’t need to look over at Devyn to know how he was feeling about things, so he kept his eyes forward even as he kept his foot against Devyn’s in reassurance - for himself as well.

“How can we help,” he reiterated Devyn’s question. “What do you want us and others to do? Who else is already involved? I can talk to Chris and Paris, but we need to know what’s involved and I’m going to be honest that I’m really concerned that innocent people are going to be hurt if we start destroying property.”

"Let me think," said Brielle, because while she was open about the emotions that were leading her to these considerations, she also wasn't going to be reckless about this. A logical strike was better than one that did no harm than good.

"You're right that I'm going to need more than rumors and aura sightings to do something of this scale. That's something I could use help with, I believe. I can only go in asking about too many accounts before I start getting suspicous. I could use a few more faces, if you or any of the others would be up for doing it. Perhaps there's other ways that we can scan for Negaverse activities without getting too close ourselves. I wasn't going to ask anyone to get involved in that because I have the advantage that I can sense auras from a bit farther away, which makes it easier for me to get an idea of if something's going on without getting caught, myself, but-"

It wasn't foolproof, and the information it gave was vague at best. The shrug that Cybele gave to the men beside her, and the tilt of her head, said as much.

"And if we don't find some sort of solid evidence, I won't do anything." It wasn't worth putting Order's reputation at risk, and possibly even people's lives, otherwise.

"Then, if we do go for it, we'll do everything in our power to mitigate the risks. Of course the Negaverse will do everything to turn this against us, with the media especially, but there's got to be some way to make sure they don't have too much to go off of other than perhaps word of mouth. After all, they do it all the time."

How many mysterious gas leaks had there been over the years? Of course Cybele couldn't remember most of them firsthand, but she'd looked through the records.

"There's got to be some sort of way to deal with security cameras," she mused. "Hack them. Disrupt them." She wasn't the best with technology herself, but she was sure someone around had the skills. Mauvians, perhaps. "And with luck, we could do something similar to the digital side of their banking. I know that's probably where they're actually getting their money. I know that vaults are mostly just for show these days. That said, I don't think flooding the building is going to be enough."

Water damage might clear the place out for a month or two, but it could be fixed.

That wasn't enough.

"They can still use the building for other things. Business meetings. Negaverse meetings. Interactions with the public in a controlled setting. Something worse, perhaps. you're right that I don't know, but I still don't think it's good."

Construction records were another thing she'd have to look into, but it looked older from the outside. In her head, she was already spinning a tale about faulty wiring.