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While the other teams were furnished with a variety of equipment, the Investigation team arrived at the scene with their wits. Well, mostly their wits.

There were also a handful of baseball batsl, just in case.

They were the first group truly laying eyes on the building, behind the scenes of what a customer could see on a daily basis. This put a lot of responsibility on them. Their job was to sweep the building, to make sure all the areas were accessible, to double and triple confirm the involvement of the Negaverse before anything drastic was done here, make sure the place was truly free of civilians, and to find any other information that might prove valuable to Order.

No small task.

As soon as the Technology team managed to disable the security cameras and the electronic lock on one of the side doors, the Investigation team was able to come in closer.

Cynthus, Yvoire, Promethei, Tortuga, Anakeion, Mira, Drakonia, Reims, Ephesus, Sessrumnir, Ida, Illryia, Fang, Yomi-no-Kuni, Alastor, Amarynthos, Dering, Sterling, and Tjilaki gathered by that side door once given a signal. The front of the bank might have had false columns and a sign with gold-plated letters, but this entrance was in a dusty alleyway not much different from any of the others in Destiny City.

To communicate with the other teams, they’d been asked to have at least one person put their senshi phone on speaker.

Everyone had been messaged a copy of the layout of the building. This door would bring them in behind the teller’s desks. The safe was nearby, and the lobby was on the other side of the downstairs room. Upstairs were a variety of offices, although the information that they had at this point did not say anything about which office belonged to who.

The door clicked open. The question was, where would they go from here?

Would they investigate the safe or go upstairs towards the offices?

Anakeion Squire of Castor

"I'll be real with you," Anakeion said, casually, and nodded to Ida, "I have no ********' idea how to open a safe, so in the interest of, like, being useful, I'm also gonna be checkin' out the offices." She paused. "Not the exact same office, or anything." Unless Ida wanted?? She probably didn't want. Saying that also would've made Anakeion have more lost-puppy vibes than she really wanted to emit as a grown woman, and when meeting new people, that was an important quality to downplay and minimize!

Okay, yes, they were here for a greater purpose because the Negaverse was doing evil s**t (Again) (when weren't they!!) (she had this nagging feeling she'd never quite managed to banish that one day she was going to wake up and find out one of her favorite stores had been a Negaverse energy-gathering front the entire time) (and it'd suck because she'd been really into their tacos, or they'd had those really nice handmade socks) (it kept her up at night sometimes!!)

Sessrumnir, Knight of Jupiter
Choice: Office

They said they would help Cybele, and Sessrumnir honestly preferred knowing what was going on as opposed to hearing about it later. With so many showing up, it was bound to be noticed at some point.

Valhalla and Ganymede were going to help, if only to keep an eye on things with him, but they’d had an emergency and had been in the hospital for most of the day already, with their mom taking care of the kids.

Speaking of kids…

Sessrumnir frowned with his arms over his chest as he counted the number of teenagers there. At least seven of them were definitely still in high school. Including his own kid, who seemed excited about the idea of doing something daring, but also wanting to make sure people got help if they were hurt.

He didn’t want to hover, but he wanted to make sure they stayed away from anyone picking up bats. Maybe a bit hypocritically, he didn’t mind if Amarynthos picked up a bat, but that was because he knew how to use one.

“Want to check the offices with me? Or should we split up?” Sessrumnir asked Alastor, trying not to seem as anxious as he already felt.

Cynthus, Page of the Moon
Choice: Safe

Prior experience taught Cynthus that she wasn’t very talented with a baseball bat, so she hadn’t grabbed one. Her little shepherd’s crook should work just as well anyway.

She crept in with the others, looking around the interior with a scrunched expression. Maybe it was confusion. Maybe she was unimpressed. She certainly had no idea why the Negaverse would bother with this bank. She didn’t even recognize it.

Well, that’s what they were there for. To investigate.

Cynthus approached the two brightly clothed kids (Stirling and Dering) just behind Reims, giving the latter a look that clearly said, Why are you like this?

“Hi, I’m Cynthus,” she said.

People were starting to split off. Some made their way to the offices. One particularly eager Page (Promethei) went to the safe with a bat.

Cynthus trotted behind.

“Are we sure the tech team disabled the safe?” she asked. “If we put in the wrong code or start wailing on it, it might alert the authorities without sounding an alarm.”

She knew the cameras were down and the side door lock was no longer a problem, but neither of those things had anything to do with the safe’s security measures.

Sailor Drakonia, Chibi Senshi of Komodo Dragons
Choice: To the Offices! With a bat!

Drakonia was around a lot of adults again. She looked up at the group, many of them knights or eternals, and felt small for a moment. She probably shouldn't have been here, breaking into a bank and trying to root out a Negaverse foothold. Probably she should have stayed out of it and just kept on being a kid.

But she was a senshi. She couldn't just ignore a chance to deal a blow to their enemy! She might be small, she might be a chibi, but her small size could be useful! Plus they'd given her a bat and that definitely helped level the playing field!

She followed after some of the stronger senshi and knights. At the very least, if things did turn for the bad, she wouldn't be caught alone.

Squire Tortuga of Jupiter is Investigating the Offices

Truthfully when he had first heard rumors of the bank infiltration by the Negaverse Tortuga was going to pass on the mission to determine the efficacy of the whispers but then he caught wind of his own niece participating and that had him stepping up, if only because he was, at this point, a field medic. A healer was always needed during large operations like this, and if he was here he could do his best to keep his punch happy family member in one piece. It also didn’t help that the baby knight Sig also stubbornly decided to join in the fray. At least Sig wasn't meant to be in direct danger.

The whole operation needed to be done quietly and swiftly. Fingers crossed that that happens. With that in mind he headed towards the stairs to what should be the offices upstairs if the schematics they were given were accurate. The faster they cleared the building the better.

Ephesus, Knight of the Moon
Choice: Safe

Ephesus was nervous. A little excited, but also wasn’t entirely sure how any of this would play out. They were supposed to be investigating things and finding out how much the Negaverse was actually involved in this, and what to do from there.

And his dads were there, so of course he wanted to prove that he and Amarynthos could be trusted to do their best, even if it was potentially dangerous. He wanted to prove that they could be trusted, even if they got into a situation where Sessrumnir and Alastor weren’t around.

“I think your colors are the perfect brightness,” Ephesus offered a warm smile to both Stirling and her friend (Dering) that they had yet to meet, but who was obviously also a Lysithea knight. “I’m Ephesus,” he introduced, since they would be working together they might as well know each other’s names. He offered a friendly smile to Cynthus, although it seemed to falter a little to the uncertain side with Reims. But a smile nonetheless!

"It's nice to meet another knight of the Moon," he added with another smile at Cynthus.

There were other younger knights as well. The even younger Senshi earned a concerned look which he shared with Amarynthos, and wondered if that was how his dads felt about them being involved in something potentially dangerous.

He glanced over his shoulder to where Sessrumnir and Alastor were, and made sure to lift his hand to give them a little wave, but was glad that they didn’t seem to be hovering. He loved them! But he was going to have to do things on his own, too! Well, with Amarynthos and his friends, preferably.

Abzu, Squire of Neptune
Action: headed to the offices with Stromboli

"Yeah, no problem," murmured Abzu in turn, running his hand through his hair as he followed. "Better to stop this in its tracks. Augusta's got too much of a reach already."

He, too, wasn't really the type for these big operations. Getting to talk to people more one-on-one tended to be his vibe, and it tended to be what he leaned into in his approach. He lured people in with saxophone music. He struck up conversations and flirted and asked how they were doing. He experimented with his magic to see if he could get starseeds or energy returned. He and Pendour had connected fairly quickly over their similarly nonviolent approaches and he wanted to keep his approach that way at large.

This, though?

This was absolutely and assuredly bad. He didn't know what the Negaverse could be planning to do with this place, but he knew how society was and he knew how much money could talk. And he knew what that money talking could result in from the bottom to the top, primarily harming those at the bottom. If they could find a way to even put the smallest skip in that speech, or a small Freudian slip, maybe they could get somewhere. And if they could do so without harming any innocent civilians that might have been wrapped up in this? Even better, really.

"Look, I'm filthy rich," and Abzu wasn't even really saying that as a joke. Stromboli would know that better than most people, considering how they had met in the first place. "Know what evil s**t banks can do even without soul-stealing magic behind them. Last thing they need is that too."

A lot of banks were already figuratively soul-stealing. Why did they need literal soul theft?

Hopefully, they could find something of use in those offices, and preferably not find any people in the process. Nothing about this was going to be quiet from the sounds of the plan, but at least it could avoid being unneededly harmful.