You wanna get ahead?

[breaksthecuties]

Ariane Emory, Ari to those that knew her well, was a busy woman. When the call had come that Khamja were holding a meeting she nearly ignored it. She didn't attend Khamja's concerns often; they were a sideline, a way to keep an ear to the ground for rumblings in the distance. When you ran such a high profile laboratory complex as Reseune, it helped to know what was going on in the outside world. The shifts in politics might not impact science, but they could impact things like funding, or where those holding the purse strings wanted you to direct your attention.

The actual day of the meeting, however, had fallen into a gap in her schedule. It was a convenient gap, all the more convenient because of what she expected the meeting would be about. Khamja liked to keep its fingers in multiple pies, and the ongoing tension between Niflheim and Lucis was the bigger concern within Niflheim, but whisperings of the outbreak of war on the lowerworld of Spira had reached even there.

Galbadia had taken a Gotei Captain hostage on false charges, and said Gotei Captain happened to be one of the two resident Captains in Archades. One was the lead scientist at Draklor, the other was supposedly a kindly, benevolent figure that had influence in Archadian upper echelons. Ari had her doubts about the kindly and benevolent part; no one rose to that sort of position by being nice, but it was the common rhetoric.

She'd taken the journey time to educate herself on the political situation, and the individuals involved. Galbadia and the Archadian Empire had tense relations. Politically speaking, they'd been eyeballing each other for some time. Galbadia's military were highly effective. If they weren't they'd be an Archadian territory by now. Their remit thus far seemed to have been defensive, but now they'd taken an action that was distinctly offensive.

And curious. Arresting someone whose role lent them diplomatic immunity and a pass to cross borders in the pursuit of their duty was treacherous ground to walk. There had to be some reason other than mere trespass. Possibly, they believed he'd been spying, but that seemed like very dangerous accusations to make right now.

There were people in Khamja whose entire reason for existing was the sourcing of information that couldn't be obtained by other means. That was why Ari had gone to the effort of attending. It was likely Khamja knew more about what was taking place than any single given side of the affair right now.

Her two personal azi accompanied her. She rarely went anywhere without them. They were bodyguards, but they were also companions; people she could trust to listen and retain information without spilling it to undesirable ears. There had been no reason not to bring them.

Ari had been to Khamja's Desert Palace only once before, some years ago. It had been a brief visit for the purposes of her induction into Khamja's ranks. Still, some memories sparked along the way as they moved from the airship port to the main entrance. She remembered the main entrance, and it, it seemed, remembered her, opening to a touch of a glyph. It was a magical defence system. Ari couldn't say she approved. She much preferred more high tech methods of protecting information. Passwords and retina scans were less prone to failure over the course of time.

Though this would have been put in place by Kuja, who she remembered was rather proud of his ability as a mage. Perhaps he was confident the wards would last, or perhaps he carefully reapplied them on a regular basis. It was a complicated bit of magic, she had to grant him that.

The first entrance took them into a corridor, and beyond that lay another entrance. Catlin and Florian were probably working the Room in their heads already; a bottleneck like this would have them on guard. The next entrance opened out into a much larger hall, expensively decorated and, Ari had to admit, a little grander than she remembered.

The place also thronged with the reiatsu of people. It certainly hadn't been this well occupied the last time she'd been here.

Comments

[shoottokill]

Gin watched the chatter with interest and an unreadable expression.

Aizen had a Philosopher's Stone and few people knew of this, or the fact that Midgar had been involved. Yet, Galbadia had it on apparently good authority that Aizen had both a hand in the Fall and had the stone and he'd been captured accordingly. L, one of the people who knew about the stone, and a man with an open grudge against Aizen himself, had apparently lost track of it.

What a coincidence.

Had he checked down the back of the sofa cushions, he wondered?

[lawlietschiffer]

L fixed his attention on Even, although both he and Ariane were challenging him. He knew where his own suspicions lay when it came to the careful leaking of information about the stone to Galbadia. Aizen wouldn't have placed himself in that unfortunate position, but there were others who acted with little care for the fallout.

And whom L knew had an interest in discrediting him, though for what reasons he couldn't say.

"At most in the last month," he answered. No one else needed to know if that was entirely true or not, and wouldn't be able to confirm their answer one way or another in any case.

"I have the means to know everything," he said, placidly, looking very carefully at Even. "I'm not, however, psychic."

He turned his attention to Ari. "The stone was held in a secure location. Aizen's rather proprietorial over it, having risked his underlings and his own life in order to get it. I wasn't about to take control of its location from him."

[breaksthecuties]

Ari watched L, critically. Has it not been for Aizen's message to his underling, they'd only have L's word for it that Aizen had been the one to move it. It was fortunate for L, then, that the underling has been sent, and the message had been given.

"So," she said, turning away from L and addressing Kuja, "in order to access the stone we require its owner, who is currently locked in the depths of a hostile country. Which makes that stone functionally useless."

Much like other things, she thought, glancing briefly at L again.

[hellsingsforyou]

"Knowledge of its existence is powerful enough," Integra said. "It should have been destroyed."

An artifact like that, as powerful as that, with the political consequences its mere existence could have, shouldn't be allowed to exist. And it certainly shouldn't be in the hands of any one person.

[theschemer]

"A Philosopher's Stone can't be destroyed," Ienzo said, addressing Integra. "It's a perfect object. More than that, as mentioned, it's an incredibly concentrated source of power. To attempt to destroy it would likely result in an explosion of raw energy, similar to what wiped Nabudis off the map, only rather more volatile."

He thought of his own small piece.

It felt like glass, unusually dense, but crystalline in structure. It was ruby red and cold to the touch, though that came as a surprise only because he knew what it was made from. He felt guilty owning it, guilty for having played his part in the production of it.

Telling them that it could be sectioned off and broken up into pieces would be like throwing chum into the ocean. He kept his silence.

[hagsfiend]

Kreeth folded her arms, the movement enough to pull her wings up for a moment. She looked around at those gathered and cocked her head to one side, birdlike more than curious.

"And ... what? So you had a stone, and now you don't have a stone, and the only person with the stone is locked away in a country I've never heard of and only he knows where it is," she said, gold eyes looking over all gathered. "Why did we need to know about it? Do you intend to use us to get him out? Are we going to be given use of the stone for a participation reward if he gets released? What else is on the agenda?"

[gracefuldahlia]

"Is rescue on the cards?" Marluxia asked, addressing the question to Kuja. Vanishingly few knew of his ability to traverse continents without having to do anything so crass as traverse them, and the Arrancar, Aizen's own underlings, shared that ability. A rescue wasn't as far out of the question as it initially sounded.

On the other hand, it would ruin Aizen's public persona, and from all appearances, he'd be out sooner or later without their risky interventions.

True, it put the stone out of reach of those that might seek to use it for the moment since Aizen had displayed the foresight to move it somewhere that required his presence to access it. But Aizen hadn't come forward with the stone's existence before, so his willingness to work with others was in question anyway.

"Or is the main concern the presence of an obvious leak within the very small number of people that knew about what was retrieved from Midgar?"

[doesthissmellofchloroform]

Hojo snorted with derision. "If he's been stupid enough to let himself be captured that's his problem. But what if his incarceration goes on?" It could, depending on how desperate Galbadia were to get their hands on a stone, and if they were half as eager as Hojo himself then they'd be putting Aizen some intense scrutiny.

"The man has a lot of assets running free without anyone keeping them in check." He looked across at Nel. She was one of them. She didn't show appropriate respect to members of the clan.

And they were scientifically fascinating.

[immoralmelody]

"That would be the main concern," Kuja said, ignoring Hojo for the time being.

Marluxia was a man of few words, but his partner was a man of fewer. Even so, he'd spoken less than Lumi during the course of the meeting. Perhaps Lumi knew more about war than Marluxia did.

"We're all aware that members of the Clan often hold little regard for each other, but the pool of those trusted enough to keep quiet was deliberately small on the subject of the Stone. Even so, there was a leak..."

He looked between Ienzo, Gin and L.

"I'm not here to point fingers," he said, charitably, "but simply apprise you all of the situation, and the potential political repercussions of it."

Then he turned to Hojo.

"By assets, you mean his subordinates..?" He inclined his head, expression flat. "They're spoken for in the event of Aizen's death, or, in this case, longterm incarceration."

[shieldoftheprince]

Gladio folded his arms across his chest.

So far, the meeting had been relatively moderate, Bellatrix's outburst before the beginning notwithstanding. Nobody had flipped their lid, nobody had pointed a weapon. Nobody had, outwardly, accused another of having had a part in it, but the number of those who knew prior to this moment, was small.

From what he could tell, the Alchemist knew, because he'd seen the stone. The weird man in the chair knew, because he'd been in a position to know the location of the stone, and for some reason the other Gotei Captain knew. Them, and presumably Aizen's subordinates.

The latter group had nothing to gain from Aizen being locked away. Gin was the man's ally and was, he noticed, smiling slightly more widely now. That left ... L, and Ienzo. Ienzo hadn't expressed an opinion of Aizen either way, but L was clearly not the man's biggest fan.

He expected that Ignis had gleaned more from the situation than he had.

[doesthissmellofchloroform]

They were spoken for were they? "By who?" Hojo demanded. When it came to personal assets, such as research, laboratories, items of value such as the stone, or underlings, Khamja had a tendency to reclaim them from members that died. It also reserved the right to reclaim them from anyone undergoing an extended absence from clan activities.

They could be willed to particular people, of course, but sometimes that person wasn't capable of handling them, or didn't want to.

"Aizen has twelve Hollow infused underlings roaming the Palace in his absence. They should be studied! Not kept like trinkets on a shelf."

Aizen wouldn't share his research, but studying his successes would reveal something of use.

[breaksthecuties]

Ari barely resisted rolling her eyes at this self styled scientist and his demands. It was clear he'd come with only his own benefits in mind, as had they all, but his were rather smaller than those of everyone else.

Ari was much more interested in the stone. If Aizen had secreted it away somewhere, and wasn't that a clever and sneaky little thing to do, ensuring that if L double crossed him no one else would be able to access the item of greatest value, then it might be worth paying the man a visit once he was released from prison.

Whenever that might be. If someone had disappeared into the depths of Niflheim being questioned about something of that nature, they'd never be heard from again, and their disappearance wouldn't have become public knowledge either. It was trickier with public figures, but not impossible if you had the right backing. If Galbadia had half the nous about them that a government needed to survive, they'd have something up their sleeve to keep Aizen for as long as they needed. Not that it was likely to get them anywhere.

Alternatively, of course, they could release him and follow him. The man wouldn't be able to check on the stone for months.

The words 'Hollow infused' made her ears prick. She looked at the white coated man, and then over at the example of Aizen's subordinates standing there, meek and quiet like a good little underling. She wasn't as good as an azi, of course, but she wasn't doing a bad impression of a low grade one waiting to be called on.

[thatsit]

Ignis was mulling the situation over. Khamja had a leak, that much was obvious, and all roads seemed to point to L.

But that was in itself suspicious. Certainly the room had turned against the man, and he wasn't as perfect as his reputation had suggested, but would a man clever enough to survive as Khamja's chief intelligence officer have betrayed a member and allowed the finger of suspicion to fall on himself? That seemed too slack.

It was suspicious, certainly. L was clearly not one of Aizen's close allies, but the finger of suspicion seemed to fall to him too squarely.

So who else had known of the stone? Captain Gin, the young alchemist Ienzo, and Kuja. Had there been any others, any outside of this room right now? The number was very small, but what other allies did Aizen have? Someone had told a country full of alchemists, that were directly opposed to Aizen's country of origin. It was rather obvious, and yet subtly clever given Aizen's political leanings that he nonetheless kept out of the public sphere.

Was it possible Aizen had done it himself in order to damage the only other person who seemed to have known of the stones whereabouts? It was certainly convenient for Aizen that it had been moved just prior to his kidnapping, and it was a kidnapping, a government sanctioned one but a kidnapping nonetheless.

Ignis had a sharp nose, and he was sure he could smell a rat, he just wasn't sure where said rat was hiding.

He wasn't truly listening to the miniature tantrum of Hojo. The man was objectionable and clearly thought he should be granted both the stone and Aizen's underlings in the man's absence.

His gaze flicked to Nel, and then Gladio, at the mention of Aizen's underlings being "Hollow infused". That was interesting, and slightly concerning.

What was a Gotei Captain of Ivalice doing with Akuma infused underlings? Infused how?

[lesstravelled]

Road had been growing bored listening to the members of Khamja prattle on about a traitor in their midst. This was Khamja. It'd be boring if there wasn't a traitor in their midst, or had these fools thought they could trust each other?

But then Hojo spoke and Road's face practically lit up.

Hollow infused.

Aizen's little underlings had Akuma in them did they? They'd been careful not to mention that before. She hadn't noticed it in them, either. They felt like normal people. So what was the manner of the 'infusion'?

It'd be fun to find out.

She looked at Nel, like a wolf spying a fawn with a broken leg.

[shoottokill]

"By me," Gin said, tapping his chest with the tips of his fingers, his grin widening.

It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Gin was Aizen's staunchest ally, his colleague, and his friend. The Arrancar were residents of the palace, and useful for more than just doing Aizen's dirty work. They did jobs and tasks around the place that others wouldn't think to do, let alone deign to.

[immoralmelody]

Kuja looked flatly at Hojo in response to his outburst.

The man annoyed him. He had his uses, but his constant and petty demands wore very thin, very quickly. He'd been dismissed from Midgar for his experiments and Kuja had it on very good authority that some of his research had been lifted from his peers. It didn't matter, but it was something that made him side-eye him all the same.

"And what do you think Aizen would say if he returned after a brief absence to find that some of his subordinates had been interfered with?" He asked, fixing Hojo with a look. "Members are not permitted to touch the subordinates of others, that was made clear to you when you came here and I am repeating that fact now, so everybody else can be aware of it if they are not already. Furthermore, you should be aware that underlings are permitted to act in self defense or defense of their less capable fellows."

He folded his arms, turning from him again.

"Gin is the caretaker of Aizen's subordinates," he said, with an air of finality on the subject. "A member must be missing for twelve consecutive months, at least, for their subordinates to be forfeited. Should that happen, or should they die, it is up to me to decide what happens to them if there haven't been provisions made in advance."

He'd taken on Orochimaru's subordinates himself upon his death. It had been more a mercy to Kadaj, than anything. He hadn't entirely considered the repercussions of his actions.

"In this case," he said, indicating Gin, "the point is moot."

[hagsfiend]

Kreeth, like others, was never going to not be fascinated at the idea of a Hollow-infused person. It was amazing that it had been achieved at all, let alone successfully twelve times.

She rolled her eyes at Hojo.

Some people really did think they sat above the rules. He and Bellatrix would be a match made in Hagsmire where their bizarre sense of entitlement was concerned. Kreeth wouldn't deny wanting to get her talons on an Arrancar, but she would never be as foolish as to express such ahead of time. That was just idiotic.

[intangibleman]

Like Road, Tyki suddenly started paying attention again.

He'd been listening to, but only half understanding the conversation thus far. He didn't have the knowledge for some of it, the care for the rest, and the minor language barrier had certainly done a number on some parts of the conversation, Ivalician accents be damned.

And then the words 'Hollow infused' had been used by the snappy scientist who he knew Nel didn't like, and he was interested again.

He wasn't so good as to not react. Suddenly the pervading smell of fear he'd noticed around certain residents made sense. They couldn't feel any Hollows, but their Hollows could certainly feel them. He grinned.

[lesstravelled]

Road heard the warning about touching other people's subordinates and knew it wasn't just directed at the grouchy scientist. That was aimed at anyone that might try to pick on someone else's underlings.

Bellatrix, for example. Or herself and Tyki, although they'd put on a good show of getting along with Nel and some of the others Aizen kept, and they weren't about to ruin that now.

Not where anyone could see, anyway.

It was more interesting information for the Earl, at least. And, of course, there was the question of what someone like Aizen was doing experimenting with Akuma instead of killing them like he was supposed to. Someone has been a very naughty boy behind their public facade, haven't they?

[doesthissmellofchloroform]

Hojo's upper lip curled. Down to Kuja, was it? As if he could have any idea of what opportunities he was denying science.

"And if those same subordinates are disrespectful, or challenging?" There was one, the pink haired one that fancied himself a scientist among the Arrancar's number. He'd been quite the fan, as Hojo recalled, but he wasn't willing to share his work with Hojo.

Of course, he also had quite the mouth on him by all accounts. He'd been shipped out of the Palace just before the news had reached them that Aizen had been imprisoned.

"It wouldn't be a first for one of them to attack a member, so I've heard."

[joinmyreunion]

Kadaj was trying not to let himself get wound up by listening to Hojo go on with himself. The Arrancar were Kadaj's friends, most of them. He no more wanted Hojo to get his hands on them than he wanted Hojo to get his hands on him.

"The only people Arrancar have attacked," he said, sharply, "have been family members that had it coming."

Which served as a warning, too, because if Hojo kept going they were about to witness episode three of Khamja's family feuds.

[shoottokill]

"If that happens," Gin said, smile fixed firmly in place. "Ya supposed to take up with the owner."

It was a threat, and not a particularly subtle one, and his expression served to both soften and sharpen it. Hojo could bring any cases of disrespect to him, if he really wanted to, but Gin wasn't sure that 'lack of respect' or being 'challenging' were quite on the same level as what Nnoitra had done to Orochimaru, or Ulquiorra to L.

[immoralmelody]

"Being difficult with you, or not bending to your will, are not acts of aggression," Kuja said, resisting giving his eyes a roll in the interests of diplomacy.

He looked around at everybody, closing the matter with Hojo.

"I think that concludes the meeting for the time being," he said. "Should there be any further developments, another gathering will be called, but that may happen sooner rather than later, so you are invited to avail yourselves of the Palace's hospitality for as long as you wish. Thank you all."