A quiet table in the Navi Shop

Well, that was progress. Now for the potentially tricky bit... Rogan nodded as the new face spoke with him. Now, how to phrase this...

"That's right, yes. I'm sending you the net address now, but there may be a slight difficulty. We discovered the program by accident while exploring what seemed to be some sort of hidden archive. We couldn't even see it before we stumbled on it, but once our navis were in it was easy enough to see what had been done. My friend has an access key that should reveal it for whoever you send, once they arrive at the co-ordinates." He made a small gesture to Leslie, flicking his eyes up to her quickly. "She'll be sending it to you now, and..." he quickly filled in the navis' co-ordinates. "Here's the address." He smiled after sending it, looking far more relieved than anyone who knew him would assume he actually felt. "Sorry to be rushing so, but I'm worried that speed is important, and our navis can't move him safely from where he is at the moment."

He wondered silently if there was time to tweak the access key that he'd written to degrade faster and send it himself, rather than getting Leslie to forward the one he'd passed to her during her own call attempt; she did was to stay out of the spotlight in the case that the more difficult questions got asked... but at the same time, the glance he stole showed something more brooding away beneath the cool demeanour; maybe she'd appreciate being involved after all. He left it as it was, for Leslie to forward on the key data. With any luck he'd have convinced the man on the other end that haste was vital enough, that he'd not realise they were civilian operators and civilian navis, in a place that was normally supposed to be off limits to the general public.

The man on the other end raised an eyebrow as Leslie was connected to the call. "A hidden archive you say? A friend with an access key?" He put down his papers and rested his chin on his hands. "And what else have you found in this hidden archive? I am not currently aware of anyone employed by SciLab searching for hidden archives on our Network. So that makes me assume you are either innocent civilians on a busting run, or are people of a more criminal nature."

He sat back up in his chair and pushed a button on his desk. Another prompt came up on both Operators' screens. This one was asking for their NET ID Cards. "Please present your identification, both of you. It is mandatory for our filing purposes in regards to requests made of SciLab's resources. Also, any data you have on this distressed Navi and the hidden archive will be most appreciative."

Oh well, perhaps it was too much to hope that it would just slide right past. Rogan let his features shift to puzzlement, then the edges of exasperation, he tilted his head slightly, eyes earnest as he answered.

"Of course, I'll be happy to give you all our details, but as we sit and talk, it's another few moments closer to this navi disintegrating altogether." He sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair and looking all the world like a worried and anxious civilian before fixating on the screen again. As he continued, he let the the intensity of his voice wax further, the hint of urgent pleading growing gradually.

"Look, we were busting, my friend is helping train my navi to be a better fighter, but they got off track. Next thing we know they're in this place that doesn't match up with the address right, and then the path sealed, and there was this other navi, and I couldn't even read Lyntael properly, ah, she's my navi, and..." He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, as though trying to clam himself down. "If we've done something wrong, I'm sorry, but do you really think we'd do something illicit and then come right up and call you about it?" He paused to take a breath, smoothing his face again and presenting a calmer front.

"I'm sorry, I just... I don't like to see... anyway, this navi, at first he was having trouble talking, and he was really agitated and frightened. Our navis have helped calm him down, but they can't help stabilise him, or safely move him from where he is, that's why we need help. I couldn't even read my own navi properly, when they first ended up in this place, so I put together a file bypass that will open the way and make it clear, while my friend tried to call first. I'm not really that tech savvy, but I know a little..." He let his brow furrow in a moment of irritation, as though distracted briefly.

"I gave the file to her when it was done, but the receptionist blew her off and hung up on her, when she tried to ask for help. That was very unprofessional, and given the situation, quite upsetting... but it's not important now, what matters is that we get help, and quickly." Taking a long breath he bit his lip, looking worried. "I've sent you the co-ordinates, but unless you know already what's there, any team you send may not be able to see it; when the path sealed, our own navis couldn't even back track out. Short of jacking them out directly, we can't get them out of there either. It's why I was putting together this key in the first place. It's easier if she sends it to you, unless you're sure you won't need it," He made an annoyed gesture at his PET with one hand. "This thing's finicky and if I try to bring up the data again here, it's liable to cut the line to you in the process. Stupid thing..." He trailed off, then looked up expectantly at the man on the other end, eyes pleading.

It only bothered him a little that Leslie, watching on, would be very aware that the Rogan talking on the phone was a complete construct, given that he'd just spent a good deal of time with her. It was something he'd rather not be the case, true enough, but it was what had now become necessary, and with any luck she'd forgive his deception. It was for the greater good after all, at least as far as she was likely to see it, and technically speaking he hadn't, in fact, lied; every word was true, it was just a matter of painting the picture in a certain way.

Leslie immediately took a back seat, as Rogan started to explain what was going on. When prompted, she transferred the access key, fortunately having enough tech skill to send a simple attachment with zero problems. And...there. She'd officially contributed, but she still couldn't help but feel like a third wheel, considering literally anyone could've done what she did just did...

But, then her Netopian friend did something that struck her as odd; he...well, he wasn't lying through his teeth or anything, but he was kinda twisting things so that it looked like they weren't info diving or anything, and just randomly stumbled onto the scene. All things considered, she couldn't blame him too much, and yet...was it really necessary? Couldn't they just be totally honest about it? It wasn't like they were stealing SciLab secrets or anything. Maybe he just thought it'd get them here quicker? Because she was all for that. At any rate, for now, she'd just have to trust him on it. And so she sat on her hands, figuratively anyway, and just nodded in agreement. She certainly didn't trust herself to maintain the deception if she started speaking...

The man listened with a slight frown as Rogan painted a story for him. His eyes glanced down casually at a screen on his desk as a ping sounded, signaling the coordinates forwarded by Leslie. He looked back up as he pressed another button on his desk. "A retrieval team has been informed of the situation and shall be dispatched momentarily. Please make sure to give them your full cooperation when they arrive." After he finished, he pressed yet another button and the call terminated. Looks like he didn't need their IDs after all.

It was only once the line clicked off that Rogan let the small smile touch his lips. It lasted only a moment before he glanced up to his companion instead.

"There we all, all sorted. I hope you'll forgive me my... selective truth on the matter." He shrugged and made a helpless gesture. "It's mostly about the red tape, honestly." He shook his head, still smiling softly. "Once I have to start giving my own credentials, they're going to need to ask about my official business, and getting that sorted out would take all night, especially since they aren't going to have had any formal notice about my presence beforehand. Honestly, it's far easier and faster for both them, and for me, if certain questions conveniently don't get asked." He winked to her. "And keeping it off the books keeps you from being associated with what I'm doing..." He stretched slightly and rolled his neck, then laughed softly.

"Although, I suppose the way this is going, it may end being something you might actually benefit from having to your name, if none of the difficult questions get asked. I suppose it could always turn out, on closer inspection, that you were the only one here at all, possibly." He grinned again before glancing down to his PET.

"On their way, Lyntael. Expect arrival shortly." The words were short and matter-of-fact, and after speaking he set the device on the table again, still in easy sight, but out of his hands. Leaning back he raised an eyebrow to his companion. "Still, one way or the other that receptionist you got performed quite poorly indeed. I certainly wouldn't have said it was any fault of yours, really."

Phew, the SciLab guy seemed to go along with Rogan's story. Right after the call ended, Leslie let out a small sigh, half of relief, half of the fact they even needed to twist the truth to begin with. "Nah, I understand. Can't say I'm totally happy about it, but...the important thing is that we got help. And since we got it, I can't complain too much, now can I?" Hmm...this could actually help her family's reputation? That was a bit different from what they'd both been saying earlier. "You think? I dunno, myself...it might be best if all this just faded into obscurity. I know you'd prefer it that way. I know that clashes a bit with my mission statement, but..." ...But what? What DID she mean by that? She wasn't completely sure, but that wasn't going to stop her from going on anyway. "...I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't want anything to smear my family's honor, even if it's just a tiny bit. I'm fine with running my own name in the mud, but if it means hurting hundreds of years of work by generation after generation...but, I guess it's a little too late to worry about that." Man, sometimes doing the right thing was a massive pain in the ass.

With that, she let her tea benefactor tell his Navi the cavalry was on the way, and mostly like she'd tell Martia, so she decided not to tell her directly. "...I stand by what I said earlier. Honestly, if I were in my room or some other private place, I would've said a whole lot nastier stuff than that..." When she wanted to, she could make sailors uncomfortable from the sheer density of swear words she spoke. She could mostly clean it up around others, but every now and then a choice expletive still slipped out. "At least the one you got was reasonable. If you'd gotten the same receptionist I did, we might've been out of luck..."

As conflicted as Leslie seemed over her thoughts, or at least hesitant, Rogan chuckled softly and raised one eyebrow at her, still grinning. "If we were at home in your room, things would get nastier, you say?" He winked. "Something to remember I suppose." Sure he wasn't her type, so to say, but it didn't mean he couldn't play, after all.

"As you wish though. Neither of us were properly identified, and you can trust that I'll take care of... cleaning up any other little bits and pieces." He glanced down at his screen. The team that had been sent seemed to have settled into the search and recording business, and that look like... yes... Without thinking, he flicked over to Lyntael's personal statistics and slipped a blank mask over her data. He didn't trust Eric not to have highly identifiable hallmarks all over his work, better to play safe.

Once they'd scanned, and apparently rewarded, both of their navis for the help, too, Rogan ensured that they were both well out of the archive and standing on their own again before raising his eyes.

"And that, as they say, is that, I suppose." He picked up his glass and raised it enough for the server to see, nodding for a second. "Though, I guess I've kept you from your family for long enough now, my labours complete and dusk grown toward night as it is. I must thank you again for allowing me such charming company while I worked. It has been a pleasure." His second shot came a moment later and he turned it around in his hand, wrist twisted to show the back of his hand outward as he raised it to her with a slight nod of his head. Chances are his friend wouldn't really see the gesture as the traditional way to respectfully toast someone who didn't themselves have a glass, differences in culture and all, but it still felt important to him.

"Sláinte mhaith, your good health," he swirled the glass, ice clinking in it briefly, before taking a sip. His mind wandered briefly, over the work he'd need to do to make sure this little unexpected delve didn't cause problems, but realistically, it wouldn't be too hard, nothing he couldn't sort out later this evening once he was on his own again. Lyntael had actually held up her task sufficiently well for once, despite her excessive... emoting. Perhaps having another navi along with her help her work more efficiently. Something to think on.

"Oh yeah. Martia's pretty convinced that one day, I'll getting super mad at something, and start making up new curse words because I've used up all the existing ones. Sometimes, I think she might be right..." Leslie scratched the back of her head, not because she was embarrassed or anything, but she was trying to figure out how to follow that up. And like her ability to detect the innuendo, she was failing horribly. Best to just move on. "Well, anyway, looks like they're there. Guess our Navis' jobs are done!" And thank the kami for that. She hadn't gotten to do, well, anything in that 'battle'. It might be a little selfish to admit, but she kinda wished she'd gotten to do something, anything of note the entire time. She didn't like that...it made her feel helpless. And that was a feeling she absolutely hated.

"Oh, don't worry. By the time I get back home now, Father'll probably be either drunk or passed out in front of the TV. Either way, it won't matter too much. So don't feel like you're keeping me here or anything, okay?" Especially when her zenny total had made a nice climb. Hmm, she could probably head back to the Navi shop before heading home now. At the very least, she needed some of those upgrades that let Navis build sigs, since Martia had probably built up a couple of new moves over the course of all that fighting. Wait, what was Rogan doing? Looked like he was doing a toast or something. Completely missing the point of his hand positioning, she hastily grabbed her empty tea cup, and raised it. "Right, and slant math to you too!" Well, he was a bit rough around the edges, to say the least, but she could definitely feel that he wasn't a bad person. She could safely say she'd made a new friend today. "Well, looks like that monster guy's gonna be just fine, now that SciLab's on the case. And...thanks for not making your Navi attack it, even after it did all that to her. That thing would've probably gone haywire if she'd hurt it, and we'd have had to destroy it in self-defense. But this way...everyone came out ahead. Someone that needed help got it, and we got a little money for our trouble. I just hope that they can find out who was responsible for it all, and nail the sick bastards!"

"Uh, Leslie? Can you not call him a monster?"

"I guess...but why? It's not like he was a bad guy just because he looked like a monster."

"...I guess when you say it like that, you're right. But..."

"I know what you're getting at. Like the saying goes, appearances aren't everything! He looked like hell, but deep down he was a big softie!"

"Right. I knew you'd understand!"

Leslie smiled, and set her PET down. "Well, I guess that wraps a bow on that. It's kinda too bad, though...I thought our Navis actually made a decent team!" In that Lyn was capable of finishing off all the viruses that Martia had only weakened and not outright deleted. But hey, it was still teamwork. "But at the same time, you're done with your whatever, and Martia might run into problems if she has to keep her learned moves bottled up too much longer. I dunno how it works, exactly, but it can't be good for her to keep that inside..."

Rogan nodded, a small, wry grin on his lips as Leslie fumbled the north-netopian pronunciation. Points for effort, certainly. He found himself vaguely regretting treating the young woman so cavalierly, when what she mentioned of her own home life sounded less than happy to begin with, but now was certainly not the time or place to get into anything like that. He had work to do, after all, and while the clean up from this evening wouldn't be simple, there was still the data itself to go through and examine.

"Still, as you say, we've both things to do and work to be about, now that this little incident has been resolved. My work is normally quite solitary, so, this has been quite the unexpected pleasure." He finished the rest of his shot quickly and set the glass down again then reclaimed his PET.

"Lyntael. We're done here. Out you come." He stood, taking a moment to resettle his coat before Lyntael's plea for more time came back to him. His brows knit and he sighed. "Make it quick. I'm going to take care of the tab here, then we'll be off." He set the PET down on the table again and bowed his head to Leslie.

"Just a moment, I'll be right back." Offering her a small smile, he made his way over to the counter and, after nodding once to the barista waved his card over the presented bill. All set, he returned to the table they'd been at and picked his PET up again. "There we are, all done." He tilted his head slightly and extended one hand to her. "Shall I walk you out, miss Leslie? I imagine my path probably leads briefly back to the shop as well, after this evening."

"Yeah, and I guess I need to get home before it's too late, so I don't find Father had a stroke and keeled over." Leslie laughed nervously, and proved very unconvincing about it just being a joke, in large part because she wasn't 100% certain it wasn't true. She really did wonder about him sometimes...

But, for now, she still had to go make good use of the money she'd gotten. Then she'd head right on home and make sure she still had family in this world. And to that end, she checked her PET, and after making sure Martia knew it was about time, stood up, and took a moment to stretch. A look down showed that her chair was still slightly broken, which she had completely forgotten about...hopefully the cafe wouldn't be TOO upset about that. And with that thought, Rogan returned, and offered to walk her out. "Sure, if you're going that way anyway." Completely missing the part where he'd offered his hand, the martial artist walked right by him, stopping by the exit to take another look at her PET. "Everyone coming?"

((Branch Back: Return from => SciLab Net))
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Without missing a beat, Rogan fell in beside Leslie as they left the cafe, reclaiming his Pet and extracting Lyntael, before slipping it into his coat pocket. By this point, at least, he knew he didn't need to give her the order to decrypt, sort and categorise the databases he's scoured. She'd get to work on doing that while he sorted out clean-up, as usual. Strange that some commands stuck easily enough, and yet he needed to re-issue others time and time again.

He kept pace with Leslie as they walked, hands resting comfortably behind his back. Retracing their way back towards the navi shop where they'd first met took them through halls that were somewhat quieter now that afternoon had faded through to a deepening dusk, but still the occasional employee or visitor could be seen. When they returned to the shop, Rogan paused by the doors, inclining his head and gesturing with one hand, just enough to trip the sensor into opening.

"After you," he murmured, a soft smile just visible at the corner of his lips. Who ever said chivalry was dead?

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((To => Inside the Navi Shop))

Aside from the fact there were fewer people around, SciLab still looked the same as always. Still, the atmosphere was different...lonelier. Well, not that it didn't make sense, but it was always weird to notice stuff like that. Softly shaking her head to herself, Leslie pulled out her PET for a moment, making sure that Martia had gotten out okay. She had, and she'd already reapplied her tights. Too bad. She still needed to explain that one to her, but eh, she'd wait until they got home, in case it was super embarrassing or something.

Once they reached the shop, Rogan froze for some reason...but why? Turned out it wasn't anything serious, though, as he was just being a gentleman. "Well, thanks!" Don't mind if she did.

(TO THE NAVI SHOP)

((37 fxp awarded))