(Untitled)

[whoshotsherlock]

Who: Greg Sanders, Lance Blackthorne, Ritsu Namine, Nick Stokes (partners?)
What: So two CSIs and a trap walk in to a security guard's office...
When: April 12th, Late Evening
Where: Neon City, Hyperion

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[punkass_drgnrdr]

Lance was already waiting in his office, sitting on his desk facing the door and leaning back on one hand, staring absently into the couch against the wall to the side. Draca was sprawled over his lap, purring quietly and enjoying his absent strokes, but mostly just making sure he had company. He looked more haggard than ever.

They'd been in there for a while now, actually; none of his paperwork was still in there, transferred to Sarasim's keeping, but he had gone there to kill time and get his head on straight. In all honesty any plan to play Finitevus had as much chance of failing as it did working, all because he'd made it clear he didn't trust Finitevus to the doctor's face. He'd have to come up with something good to keep the other tamer from instantly getting suspicious. Something that Finitevus would believe he was so ashamed of that he couldn't choose to turn to the people he knew and trusted. Then again, with Finitevus's theory that he was being manipulated emotionally ... that might just be easier than it sounded.

The knock on the door came as a slight surprise, even expecting people as he was. "Come in."

[whoshotsherlock]

Greg poked his head around the corner, find Lance mostly alone in his office. That made him absently wonder where the hell Nick was, but if anything he knew the man wouldn't ditch unless it was absolutely necessary.

"Hey..." he said quietly, urging the short UTAU in to the office to take a seat. Ritsu did so quietly, barely remembering to pass a nod of hello in Lance's direction.

[punkass_drgnrdr]

"Hey," Lance answered automatically, his own nod of greeting at Ritsu somewhat belated since he had focussed on examining the UTAU instead. He'd never actually met Ritsu in person before, and even though he wasn't precisely on top of his game he could still see that the android was nervous.

His gaze rested on the vocaloid for a few moments more, his mind elsewhere, before he shook it sharply once and looked at Greg. "Where's Nick?"

[whoshotsherlock]

"He's--"

"Right here, sorry!" Nick said as he jogged up to the door of the office, sliding in and closing it behind him. "Hailey didn't want to go to bed."

"Pft. Pushover," Greg snorted under his breath.

"Shut up, Sanders."

[punkass_drgnrdr]

A corner of Lance's mouth quirked up at their banter. From where he stood, Greg wasn't exactly in the position to talk either. But then the humour fled and he sighed, scrubbing his face a little, running a hand through his hair. "What has Greg already told you, Ritsu?"

[whoshotsherlock]

Ritsu frowned a bit, fidgeting with the hem of his kimono sleeve.

"J-just that... you wanted to talk to me about Finitevus."

"Well... we need to figure out what to do about him. And if he's really as much of a threat as we're perceiving," Greg added in.

[punkass_drgnrdr]

Lance nodded slightly. "He came to me," he said bluntly. "He was there when I--when the brawl happened, and he contacted me after I got back to the Hotel. To offer me help finding out who'd wreaked havoc with my emotions." He snorted, his tone faintly sarcastic. Finitevus hadn't done anything technically wrong, but knowing he had put the bite on Ritsu as well as himself had just reinforced his judgment of the doctor. "I met up with him early this afternoon. Didn't convince me that he was trustworthy and he left, but his partner told me to call if I changed my mind."

[25tontrap]

Ritsu listened quietly, shifting his hands to his lap. As soon as Lance mentioned Finitevus' partner, though, he tensed.

"D-don't..." he stammered, "His partner might mean well but he's completely devoted to Finitevus. You'd just be walking in to an unintentional trap."

"... you... know this how?" Greg asked curiously, raising an eyebrow. Ritsu looked up at him through his messy red bangs, face set in seriousness.

"His partner contacted me on his own. He seemed genuinely concerned about me, but he said Finitevus was sick at the time. He wanted help, but even if he was telling the truth, going to him would have put me right in Finitevus' path."

[punkass_drgnrdr]

"That would be the idea," Lance said simply. "I don't need his help, but the best way to spring a trap is to walk into it knowing it's there. At least then maybe I could find out something, either about his plans for you and yours or about what plans he has for the digital world at large, if he has any. If nothing else maybe I can set him up for a fall to get him off your back."

[25tontrap]

"I-I don't... I don't know..." Ritsu said after a long, thoughtful pause. The whole thing scared him. All his quiet, stoic confidence that was normally there couldn't hide the fact that he'd never dealt with anything like this before.

"Well... there's more to it than that," Nick piped up, "We need to get that warp ring outta here. Lance got to see 'em in action and he's worried they might be more powerful than this Finitevus guy let on."

[punkass_drgnrdr]

"I wouldn't need you to do much except give me information," Lance told Ritsu. "But if Finitevus cottoned on it could encourage him to come after you sooner. Could. In any case, Nick's right: the Ring's what we need to figure out right now--any other plans we can take a little more time about. The Warp Rings let him move instantly from one place to another; if he's already got one near you then chances are he can use it to come to you no matter where you are, without him needing to find out your location first. Even if that's not true we don't know enough to say for sure, and I'd rather not take that risk."

He drummed his fingers against the surface of his desk in thought. "I'd suggest turning it over to someone for research, but that means involving even more people and if he can use it to come for you then we might be able to use it against him somehow. Either way I don't want you to be carrying it around anymore. I don't even think we should keep it in the Hotel; even if we locked it up he might be able to just Ring himself out of a safe." He paused. "Unless ... can it be put into a D-Reader? I doubt he'd be able to use it then."

[25tontrap]

Ritsu was silent again, looking at his lap, thinking about how much of his family had arrived recently, how he was becoming so close to Sara. He just wanted it all to be over, to stop living in fear and thinking that he was going to wake up one morning to find out Finitevus had kidnapped one of them, or worse.

Slowly he reached in to his sleeve and took the ring out, holding it out without looking up at any of them.

"Just take it... all of you can handle this better than I can. I'm just... pathetic and scared out of my mind..."

[punkass_drgnrdr]

Draca sat up, sliding off Lance's lap so he could step forward and take the Ring. The redhead stared down at it for a few moments, remembering the deflection-redirection tactics Finitevus had used with the Rings to try and 'help' him, before storing it in his D-Reader.

He didn't go back to the desk, though, opting to sink onto the other side of the sofa. "It's hard to think of anything else when you've got someone gunning for you," he said wearily. "But he's not invincible, and we have the opportunity to turn the tables on him."

[25tontrap]

"Been there myself, too," Greg offered, putting a hand on the UTAU's shoulder. Ritsu shrugged it off, though he wasn't doing so out of anger. His gaze was still on his lap.

"Being afraid doesn't excuse what I did, Sanders-san."

"I told you... it wasn't that bad."

Ritsu shook his head sharply, hands curling in to shaking fists on his lap.

"All I have is my family, and I told a complete stranger our entire history. I told him about Kokoro! What if he figures out the one thing we've never known? What then?"

[punkass_drgnrdr]

Lance sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees, head turned to look at Ritsu. "Your software? You don't know how it works?" That made sense, he supposed. The creator, whoever it was, wouldn't want their creations to be able to create themselves.

He knew that the Vocaloids and UTAU were artificial. He knew that their AIs were beyond anything he'd ever heard of, so good they were human in all except an organic sense. But he didn't know much about their specs or their software, and he didn't know how much they knew about themselves. There was a lot he didn't know ... and he'd have to know all of it if he wanted to try and limit Finitevus's research on it while he was investigating the doctor. He needed to know what he was getting into. "What did you tell him, Ritsu? Exactly?"

[25tontrap]

Slowly, Ritsu shook his head. The Vocaloids may have known a bit more than the UTAU, but it probably wasn't much.

"I told him... how we got started. Why UTAU came about. There wasn't much else I could tell him. We weren't even allowed down-loadable schematics, except for purposes of repair..."