The First Rule

Near the all too crowded center that is NetSquare, off in a more well-known shopping and entertainment district waited a lone navi pacing back and forth. Beyond him simple shops and dinners where navi's could go to simulate the same lifestyles that one might enjoy in the real world, though he seemed to be more annoyed than happy to be here. As the faint ramblings and grumbles he was speaking to really anyone that happened to come within earshot of him could easily tell.

"This is stupid, I told him I'm fine and nothing is wrong, no need to go to all this hassle. Honestly that stupid little brat Operator of mine is just being a pain, not like it costs him anything while I recover, gah!" Stopping himself the rather plainly dressed, almost simple looking navi wore a full green jumpsuit though no helmet so his brown hair could flick and wave lightly around as he moved. Standing maybe 5'9" and looking toned well enough to have probably been in a few battles before and survived. He finally stopped and took a long forced sighed breath. "Right, all I have to do is tell these investigators nothing is wrong and that'll be the end of it, just take it easy, won't get caught." Letting out another long exhale in attempt to relax, the navi once more started pacing, though he at least seemed in better control of himself now.

"Finally, I get to do something legitimate!"

Mata appeared in the NetSquare, looking over the stores and the civilian navis that was nearby as she adjusted her shades. "After so many of those phony...craps Oliver made me go through, this just makes things so much more exciting!" Despite her professional vibe she had going before, the navi was certainly enjoying herself with the mission with her overly cheery personality.

However, when few of the civilian navis began to give her strange looks, most likely due to her revealing appearance, Mata calmed down and found a wall to lean back on. "So, so, so? What's the mission you're undertaking?" Said Oliver as he appeared on the holographic screen, looking up and down to see if Jocelyn was watching him. "Nothing that you would be interested in. We're gonna shadow over a navi's activity for anything suspicious." Mata replied with a serious tone, turning her personality around once more. "I dunno, that sounds great! You can investigate this, and I can take care of things on my end...Two birds with two stones, but both at the same time!"

The navi sighed and forcefully shutoff the holograph screen, crossing her arms as she waited for her partner, Sleuth, to come by. "Forget about him...Can't I enjoy myself once in a while?"

Although Sleuth had really wanted to surprise the client (and her partner) with a truly superb disguise, she found that the atmosphere suggested that he was already standing there, waiting for a detective. As such, anyone who approached him, detective or not, would be assumed to be a detective, regardless of how they looked. "It would be interesting to try to embarrass him with a mistake such that he was forced to revoke that expectation, but I should try to show at least an ounce of professionalism," she thought to herself. "Speaking of an ounce of professionalism, what a darling look my partner has adopted!"

The detective was instantly amused upon seeing her ally's unfortunate choice of wardrobe, especially the way she wore the chest so far unzipped. "Hello, my good woman!" Sleuth called out, exercising no caution as she approached and spreading both arms, like and was intending on hugging her new acquaintance. As she drew closer, she set that fear to rest by bringing the cane to rest easily at her shoulder, thus occupying one of her hands as she used the other to offer a shake. "I wonder whether it is you or I that our client will find more conspicuous?"

Unfortunately for Mata, her partner had no intention of forgetting Oliver. "As we progress, please let me know if the sirrah on the other side has any additional situational musings. I must say that I am a little jealous of you, Mata. Your operator is quite a bold and strapping gentleman," she laughed, smiling earnestly but annoyingly. "Well, Jocelyn is strapping in her own way, but wit is not her forte."

Apparently it really wasn't, because Jocelyn offered no protest to the notion. "Well, are you ready to begin our adventure and get to the root of an undoubtedly enthralling adventure? They're as good as you make them, you know."

As she heard a familiar voice, Mata looked up to see a tall woman navi coming her way with her arms spread out. "Wha...Huh?" The spy had never seen the navi before, yet here she was coming towards her with what looked to be a warm greeting. If anything, Mata would've remembered a navi dressed so...strangely, by navi standards if anything. I guess the most obvious conclusion is that she's my partner, Sleuth...Might as well return the greeting?

Mata got up from the wall and slowly raised both her hands up to share the hug...Only to see that Sleuth quickly changed the gesture for a handshake. "!!" The spy lowered one of her arm almost instantaneously and shook Sleuth's hand with the other, all the while trying to avoid direct eye contact to save herself from embarrassment. "W-well...Calling me conspicuous even though we just met, aren't you high and mighty." said Mata, as if she was trying to out-embarrass her partner.

She never really had the right "personality" to be a full fledged espionage spy she was created to be. Mata had the skills, she had the equipments, but her personality and physique was something the dastardly Oliver had fooled around with, resulting in the way she is now. She had tried to change her self to match with the cool, collective spy motif that everyone would expect from the said spy, but her natural personality still seeps out here and there...Such as now.

Nonetheless, Sleuth seemed to pester on about Oliver for some reason, as if she was more interested in him than the mission itself. "Jealous? Please, don't be. I have too much trouble with him around, and I'm sure your operator will realize something's...off about him." Mata replied as she pushed back her shades, slowly returning to her spy persona. "Trust me, someone who thinks too much is bigger trouble than one who doesn't."

Not realizing the context of the words she said, especially towards Sleuth, Mata went ahead and approached the client navi for the mission...

"Good afternoon. I'm Mata.EXE, and this is Sleuth.EXE. We're here for the mission to...Well, to follow you around."

"Now now, there's no reason to be offended! Have you considered that the conspicuous navis are the ones worth knowing about? An outstanding amount of intelligence, wit, or even invisible traits such as introspection can make a person conspicuous. In fact, one can even be so well disguised that they become conspicuous!" Sleuth exclaimed in response, enjoying laying down her theories on a treasured detective buzzword. "As for Jocelyn, trust me, you will soon find her skills of perception are quite on the other side of the spectrum from my own. In fact, it could be called quite a wonder how little she manages to observe... That is, her failure is itself superhuman! I'm unable to determine how she became this way."

Mata's words, "someone who thinks too much is bigger trouble than one who doesn't," brought a vibrant and genuine smile to the tall woman's face. "Ho ho! But wouldn't you say that we're lucky for that? From curiosity and questionable intent rises trouble and from trouble arises interesting situations... or, at the very least, the sort of crime that we base our very livelihood off of. Assuming that you are a spy, as you say," she added, intentionally ribbing her partner on. "Speaking of conspicuous people in trouble, yes, let's go have a chat with our client."

Sleuth had seemingly learned something juicy, but upon further inspection, she realized it was just more of the same. Oliver's own navi described him as off. This only further illuminated those two distinct roads: either he was a clever individual like herself, but with some hidden motivations, or he was simply some sort of pervert or fetishist. Either discovery would be satisfactory, so long as she could drive down to it.

She spun on her heels and headed towards the client navi, thankfully not spreading her arms this time to give the wrong impression. Her cane tapped up and down against her shoulder in a calculated way, one that was meant to draw attention to herself discretely, and her cape spun as she moved. The cape spin was not calculated, but served to do much the same, as it displaced the outfit just enough to show the tightness of her dress pants. "You there, pacing sirrah! Are you waiting for us, or were you thinking that more viruses might jump out and attack you here in the square, hm?" Her opening statement was a simple prod to see if she could make him spill any flaws in the cover story they'd mentioned on the mission posting.

Stopping his pacing, perhaps in surprise when he was spoken too, first by a dark clad navi, who at least gave introductions, only for the second to outright yell then insult him. Grumbling a moment as he frowned at the two of them, "You say Mata and Sleuth? They sent a couple of women to oversee this? Well I guess that's good they aren't taking it seriously either." Still he huffed about the little investigator's comment on viruses, scowling at her. "Look, the name's Slies, and this isn't really a big deal at all. So I came back home once or twice injured, I explained to my Op that it was nothing. Besides he's at school all day so I get bored sitting around at home."

Shrugging he'd at least start to relax slightly, even offering a smile that looked far to fake. "But, that being said, there is really nothing to investigate, so the two of you could just go back to where ever you came from and tell them there was nothing to this but a worried little boy." That smile, at least for the briefest of moments shifted to that of a sly grin before he caught himself and quickly hid it once more.

Sleuth took in each detail, smiling wider and wider. The guy was obviously trying to curb their enthusiasm for the mission and send them home, which only made her more anxious to get to the root of the mystery. All of the best mysteries had at least one "gatekeeper" like this, trying to cut it down before it started. In some (most) cases, those gatekeepers turned out to be well-meaning and better-informed people who were honestly confirming that there was no situation worth investigating. Still, if those people weren't hounded by Sleuth under suspicion of hiding something, she'd never be able to do her job.

"Well, that's fine and well. Let me feed you back the same story you've given me, with a few additions I've made myself, and you can simply nod if you'd like to confirm it," the detective offered, having to hold back a chuckle at the expense of her client. "To alleviate your boredom, you go out when your operator is away. During these expeditions, you encounter viruses, either intentionally or unintentionally. You are routinely injured by these viruses, to the point where the wounds are great enough for your operator to notice them and give comment. Now you stand before us, smiling- almost grinning-!" she elaborated, accenting her statement by pointing her cane to her own happy, smiley face.

"I don't know, Sleuth. He did say that it's not worth investigating," Jocelyn offered. "That means there's really no case to begin with, right?"

Ignoring her operator's late interjection, Sleuth continued. "You stand speaking to two, if you don't mind my saying, very handsome and comely ladies, grinning with confidence and self-contentment as you describe your routine of going out on some errand, so unimportant as to not be worth speaking about, and encountering viruses, presumably ordinary since you haven't described those either," she conjectured, "who beat you so badly that you show visible bruising! Your face doesn't match your story, I'm afraid. Would you rather make a few modifications to your story, or can I begin to correlate the events to a hypothetical motivation in which you, embarrassed at losing to ordinary viruses, are trying to brush aside the case so that we courtly women do not see you shame yourself?"

The spy silently listened to everything Sleuth had to say to Slies, nodding her head as it went on. "... Well? What do you have to say about that?" she followed up with the end of Sleuth's questioning, even though she herself didn't have anything to say on her behalf. Mata was surprised by the amount of detail Sleuth was able to go on with a minute of talking and possibly a glance at Slies' appearance. If she wanted to find out about something suspicious, she never tried to deduce the possibilities...She would simply find it through specific means.

With a flick of her wrist, her golden bangle shook as Mata quickly closed her hand into a fist. "But whatever your answer maybe, we still have a mission to follow. Sorry, but we have to investigate and report." She gave Slies a casual pat on his shoulder with the same hand she had kept into a fist, all the while giving him a rather sarcastic smile.

Oliver suddenly appeared on a holographic screen, interrupting both the real world and the cyber world as he pointed his finger at Slies. "You! Beaten up navi! You'll keep up this charade as long as you want to! But it's only matter of time before these girls get to the bottom of it... But don't make it too obvious, and don't make this end too quick!" Before anything else was said, Mata closed the screen once more as her brown cheeks flushed red. "Y-You keep out of this, alright!"

Slies listened in closely as the perhaps lesser obvious navi started to rattle on her own tale of his previous encounters and endeavors into the net while without the company of his operator, though as she started to get towards the end he seemed to be growing slightly agitated before finally almost interrupting just as she was finishing her little alternate story. "What? No I didn't encounter no vi-" Cutting himself off with a slight blink before coughing softly and offering a slight grin once more, "Er, yes, viruses that's it sure, I guess they like to jump me here in the city a lot, you got it right."

Though at the shoulder pat from the second young lady he seemed to flush if slightly before shrugging with a soft sigh. "I still think it is most likely a waste of time, but I guess if you have to do your job, you can just accompany me today as I go through my usual rounds. Then my op will be satisfied, and you'll be able to report back that there really is nothing wrong at all." He'd have probably said more, but it was then the odd little holographic screen popped up and a operator, he'd guessed the little ninja's started yelling at him. "Er.. Well, I don't know about all that, but my errands usually take a few hours... I guess if you really are just hell bent on believing my scared little operator instead of me, I can't stop you."

The detective raised both hands in a shrug, smiling to her partner in a way that said "we're out of luck. He really was a gatekeeper; not the kind that tries to cover transparencies in his story, but rather, the kind that is just so obstinate that it's difficult to make him confess to things. Ordinarily, she'd take what she learned and investigate, but she still hadn't learned quite enough... And it seemed likely that his presence was a central cog in getting whatever happened to him to happen.

Pressing her cane against the ground and crossing both hands over its magnifier head, Sleuth redirected her gaze towards their client. "That will suffice, for now. Of course, it stands to reason that we will not be fully satisfied if you deviate in such a way that the ordinary occurrence does not occur," she reminded him, leaning in closer as she did. "That is, if you finish your errands and we haven't seen anything that's gotten you beaten up... It stands to reason that we'll have to assume you misled us, won't we?"

"Does that mean you're going to beat him up?" Jocelyn asked, getting tangled up in the wording. "It's not okay to beat people up. It's one of my job responsibilities to make sure that doesn't happen!"

Sleuth backed up and pressed her gloved hand to her hair, causing her hat to ride backwards ever so slightly. "Jocelyn, ease your worries; I have no intention of doing that," she sighed. "Besides, even if I were to want to do that, I would defer to Miss Mata here! She'd be much better at that sort of thing," the detective chuckled, purely to see if putting her partner in the role of hired muscle drew out any humorous responses.

"Ha. Ha. I'm sure your rapier wit is doing a better job at beating others up than anything I've done..."

Though Mata was caught unprepared to Sleuth's teases before, she tried to control her usual reaction with a stab at a smart retort back at the detective. Pushing her shade back, she tried to keep up her "strong" appearance and began to walk forward to lead ahead. "Let's get going already. We wouldn't want to waste your time, do we, Slies?" As the navi walked further ahead with her back facing Sleuth and Slies, a smile lit up on her face to break her once serious expression... Which was unfortunately soiled by Oliver's own smile when he appeared once more on a hologram screen.

"Maaaataaa?"

"...W-...What?"

"I don't know any better, but shouldn't you follow that navi's routine rather than... Your little shindig?"

"BE QUIET, I KNEW THAT!"

Mata stopped immediately, standing stiff with both her arms straight by her side, and slowly turned back towards the two behind her. "...Lead the way, if you would..." The navi whimpered as she pushed her shades back once more.

Slies watched the two before sighing and shaking his head some in annoyance, "It's not like it happens every day ya know, sometimes I go weeks before my turn comes round again." He blinked before frowning at himself, having said a little more than he'd meant too. Though it was probably because of how casually one of them was talking about beating him up if he tried to lie to them, not exactly a pleasant thought.

He'd have said something else but the other girl seemed to be so insistent on getting things going that she was leaving without him, which did bring a faint chuckle out of him and helped to calm him down slightly. "Yeah sure, first stop is close by anyway." Finally starting to move, he'd glance back long enough to make sure the two of them were following.

The first stop as it were, seemed to be a small digital coffee shop. Set up with a few booths, tables, a stand where a navi was taking orders for refreshing drinks that could restore a small amount of HP, but not enough too really heal the wounds of battle, but it was more for the simulation of real world activities.

At each table there seemed to be a small floating orb over a source point, which upon touch allowed a navi to connect with current news feeds, BBS's, and other boards to keep up with current events and any activities that might interest them.

Though as the trio entered those behind the counter waved and called out a greeting to Slies, which he responded to quickly and moved up to take a glass that was being set up on the counter for him. "Morning Surv, anything good going on the wheels today?"

Surv, as it turned out, was the navi behind the counter, a somewhat large, heavy set looking navi with casual shirt and apron about him, by in large the design was taken from what you'd expect a pub's bartender to look like. Even the mannerisms as he took an empty glass and started to clean it, eyeing the two girls, "Eh, 5's fallen behind again, I think the runner's holding it back for cheap bets again. Who's the dames?"

Glancing back, he'd shake his head lightly and sigh, "Couple of investigators, seems my operator got huffy about me coming home injured a few to many times. Nothing I can't handle."

Surv only shook his head again before turning to the pair, "Well, you two want something to drink?"

The detective's lips curled into another smile, then opened slightly to show the tips of her upper row of teeth before receding again. She seemed to have decided against whatever she was going to say, but the gleaming of her eyes made it obvious that she'd picked up the slip. "Well, then, we'll hope for everyone's health that the viruses aren't out to play today," she finished noncommittally, pleased that Mata and Oliver's humorous antics seemed to be distracting her client from becoming too infuriated with her.

Her eyes darted around the area obsessively as they moved to the first location on their trip: a neat little coffee shop with useful modern amenities. Sleuth enjoyed keeping up with the current news, probably a lot more than most navis, but the NewsServer wouldn't provide her any details about her current objective. Her current objective was what mattered.

As such, she gave the barkeep an obsequious grin and tip of the hat, revealing her sleek brown hair. "Good morning to you, sirrah; I am Sleuth. I believe I fancy a cup of tea, myself. I'll take it with whatever the house recommends," she replied in an indulgent, cheery voice. "Unless, of course, the coffee house insists on coffee, in which case I suppose I will conform to the latest trend of Creamland's natives." Jocelyn looked at her in a puzzled way, indicating that she didn't follow. Seeing this, Sleuth spread her gloved hands into another shrug and revised her statement. "I would suffice with the house beverage, that is. Coffee."

"... I don't really have any zenny right now, Sleuth," Jocelyn warned her. "Are you going to make him pay for your drink?"

Sleuth didn't say anything, but the corners of her eyes turned up with her smile, as she was unable to hide the fact that the thought of asking him to pay for the drink just to rile him up had crossed her mind. "Certainly he would not allow a lady to pay for her own drink... Certainly not!" she pondered, feeling no offense but a bit of incredulity. "At any rate, I can only assume our friend here wants a vodka martini; shaken, not stirred?"

"You sure presume to know a lot about Ms. Mata, considering the two of you just met," her operator muttered.

The detective presumed to know a lot about a lot of people and yet she always craved to know more. "Well, she can order for herself, of course. In the mean time, pardon my butting in, but what exactly are you speaking of with 'number 5' and 'the wheels?'" She half-hoped that they were talking about horse racing. Never before in her career had she gotten to work on a case involving that noble sport, a pass-time which she adored but seldom found a chance to indulge in.

Mata was facing down and fell silent all throughout the short trip to the coffee house, completely 'collapsed' by the embarrassments she suffered in such short time. However, when they did get to the first stop, the spy looked up at the shop with amazement. Wow... This place is so nice. You can really relax in this kind of corner. the navi spoke to herself. But like all her charades before, Mata quickly changed her expression and tried to focus on the mission with a stern face.

When the three of them got into the coffee shop, the navi noticed how friendly the workers were to Slies. "At least we know he's not leading us in a fake trail. It seems like he's a regular around here." Mata whispered to Sleuth. She didn't nitpick on the obviously suspicious talk between Surv and Slies, casually scanning through the menu on top boards for something nice to drink. And besides, it seemed like Sleuth was doing all the detective work around, nitpicking everything to the point of no nit to pick on. "The caramel frap sounds so good right now..."

But alas, the detective threw yet another indirect insult at Mata, and she snapped right back out from her causal self. "Sleuth, that's just being... Stereotypical... kinda. Just because my profession, I don't go around drinking alcohol!" Angry and appalled, the Spy slammed her hand on the counter and looked right into Surv. "Get me a black coffee! Oliver, transfer me some money!"

"I'm dry, Mata." The operator reluctantly replied.

"...What does that even mean?"

"I spent almost all of my money on the Netopian plane ticket. I really don't have any money to buy coffee."

"But you were JUST gonna buy yourself some overpriced mall meal!"

"Okay, see, what you were just getting is fake and nonexistant! I need to eat to survive, and you get little to no health benefits from drinking and eating...Unless..."

"Wait no, stop, I get it! Please...Just don't think too hard about it!"

After stopping Oliver's imagination go wild, Mata sighed and shook her head, all the while missing out on Sleuth's little sleuthing on Slies. "C-Cancel that order, please... *Sigh*"

Slies would listen in as the two of them seemed to argue not only with themselves, but their operators as well over something as simple as requesting a drink. Shaking his head softly as he lets out a soft sigh, "Just get em both a drink on my tab, Jeeze." Grumbling Slies moved off after grabbing his drink and took a seat at one of the tables, fortunately it had room enough for 4 so the two of them could probably join him.

Surv chuckled before letting out a somewhat bellowed laughter as the two of them took time to decide on the drinks. "Never figured you for a softie Slies, yeah yeah." Reaching under the counter he'd grab up two empty glasses before turning away to set them both on what looked to be a data pad. Once the first was on, a vid screen popped up with a selection of drinks, and a quick set of taps got the tablet glowing before the glass seemed to start filling up. Second was repeated on the other pad before he took both glasses and turned back to the counter, stepping back up to the girls as he sets them down. "Here ya are ladies, hot tea and a black coffee, got milk and creamers over there at the edge of the counter."

After he'd glance back to Sleuth and smirk faintly, "Don't sell booze here, it's too bothersome to get the coding right. As for what we were talking about, it's the C-Sliders, at least today. Got race tracks going around in the city, some pro racers are riding around. I be thinking number 5 is low speeding to raise his odds for the bigger race later today, it's a dirty trick." Scowling he shook his head before taking up a random glass to start cleaning it again before grinning. "If you be wanting to bet though, you'll have to have your own funds, Slies barely wins anything." Laughing out again the bartender seemed to at least be having a good time at the navi's expense.

Sleuth gave her friend an apologetic smile (though really, she was always smiling regardless) and clasped her hands beneath her chin. "But my friend, it's my job to begin with what's expected of people and events, then work outwards! It's the very basis of abductive reasoning," she explained, trying to sound reasonable. Of course, if Mata had ordered a vodka martini at a coffee shop, that would have been much further from ordinary than a caramel frappuchino. Her face brightened back up as she saw her tea arrive. "My earnest thanks to you, kind sirs! You'd think I'd get to enjoy tea more often, but no, not so often as I would prefer."

"I would venture a wager myself, but as you may have surmised, my purse is my operator's on a case by case basis. And as it so happens, my current operator is without much in the way of money," she sighed. "I'm very lucky at the sort of thing, though. With my guidance, you'd probably pick a winning C-Slider for sure."

"Although my hourly wage is low, my father has made me quite an allowance," Jocelyn offered. "But he also instructed me that I'm not to give to freely to anyone. As such, I'm very thrifty with it."

"He's wise to make certain others can't exploit your gullible nature to make off with such a substantial portion of his fortune," the navi thought to herself, tilting her head onto the back of one of her crossed hands. "But back to our good host, I would venture to say he's not a bad person at all. Even though he's causing his operator to worry and he's a little irritable," she continued, as if she'd given him nothing to be irritable about, "he's willing to go along with this to prove that there's no cause for alarm. That in itself shows a certain sense of responsibility to one's operator."

"I'm sure he's a good person," Jocelyn agreed, nodding cheerfully. Of course, her list of perceived "bad people" in the world would be shorter than her typical grocery list, so it wasn't much of an impacting statement.

"He's also enough of a gentleman to buy drinks for women, so there's that. Besides that, he's a rather rugged and handsome sort of fellow, isn't he? I wouldn't be surprised if he got those bruises doing something rather amiable," she continued, her eyes shining with trickery. In truth, even though she had a good opinion of Slies, she would have been very surprised to learn that he got those bruises helping anyone else out. These observations she was giving out were just like her earlier conjectures, only more reasonable at face value. In truth, she still suspected that he wasn't going along with them to try to throw them off nor simply from the goodness of his heart.

Her intuition told her that Slies was the type who hated to lose. If detectives told him they were investigating him and started dogging him, he would lead them on an empty trail just to have the victory over them in the end. Avoiding the investigation would be cowardly; playing along without discovery would be a triumph to be proud of.

Or perhaps Sleuth was simply projecting her own character onto others. It certainly wouldn't be the first time she'd been led astray by that bad habit.

Mata gave Sleuth a dirty look before she wrapped her hands over the cup of coffee. This girl is starting to get on my nerves, and I'm getting tired of putting up with this charade she's making me go through...H-hot, and it's so bitter! Her face cringed for a second after she taking a sip, quickly setting it back to the stern look to avoid anymore teasing. "Umm, thank you...I guess." Mata nodded her head towards Slies.

Other than the fact that Slies gambles, the spy saw that there wasn't much going on in the coffee shop, at least, something that could have caused Slies to be beaten up. "Maybe he's so jacked up because he mounded up too much gambling debts...Or maybe because he was trying to rig one and got caught, or eve-" Mata turned to give Oliver a harsher stare than she gave to Sleuth, causing him to stop momentarily. "Geez, I'm only here to help~" said Oliver in a nonchalant manner. "Please, you're only going to make things worse."

Taking one more sip into the coffee, and one more cringe, Mata slid the cup away from her and turned towards Slies. "Mr. Slies, where's your next stop from here?"

Surv was more than willing to listen to the two girls as both of them spoke on about their own various thoughts and ideas on just where things were leading to. The tender could only smile knowingly as he cleans a few glasses out with a dry cloth.

Slies, as it was, was sitting at a table, watching a feed of the current racing stats, grumbling about not being able to race today. "Eh, no problem ladies, enjoy yourselves I guess, with moderation.. Damn it he is trying to hold the race back, his stats are horrible." Shaking his head he'd flick the news data stream off, slipping back from the table. "Eh, next stop? We're heading a few blocks from here to meet up with another guy, he'll let me know if today's my time or not. If not then I'd assume you two's job is over since nothing would be happening today. Still, I'm not even sure how he'd respond to it if I brought you both along." Shrugging his shoulders he'd wait patiently for the two of them to finish their drinks so they could leave.

"Your time? I certainly hope it is your time! I would hate for our adventure to face such an anticlimactic turn as would otherwise present itself," the detective gasped. She had considered for a moment how awkward her excitement might be if he was instead talking about the conclusion of a terminal illness, but she didn't think it terribly likely. "Please do allow us to accompany you. I assure you I am capable of behaving well if I put my mind to it," Sleuth promised her client with a foolish grin.

Unable to let even the smallest details slide, Sleuth took a long draw of he tea and then leaned in to invade Slies' personal space. If there was one subject people would loosen their lips and their security over, it was hate for a peer. "Who is the one ruining the race today? Can you tell me about them?"

She held the cup back up to her lips and drank deeply, realizing that her partner might be trying to speed things along, in which case she probably ought to fuel up.

((Short post. Lost my glasses and I can't type without planting my face into the screen...Sorry))

"Oh...Is that so."

Mata seemed a bit disappointed that the mission would be over so quickly if this was all there is to Slie's daily routine. That meant that she would have to return to Oliver and all of his nonsense antics, and she already has enough of those as long as she remains as his navi. But luck would have it, Sleuth sure wasn't going to let this mission go away without being little stubborn. The spy took one more sip of her bitter coffee and decided to go along with her partner.

"I can do the same, just let me stick around for me to see this through!" said Mata as she stood up anxiously, almost begging Slies to let her through. That said, it did put her into an embarrassing position and Mata quickly cowered back to her seat...