[i]For a supervillain, Laraxis seems awfully distracted by things that don't matter.[/i]

Polo made his way back into the armory, scanning the inventory as he went, mentally noting through available weapons and configurations as he tried to get his mind off his internal frustrations. Even though he had little intention of actually utilizing anything that Laraxis had provided, it would certainly be useful to see what the mastermind may have thought would be useful to the resident cyborg.

Walking past, Polo took note of the rather flamboyant session of dress-up currently being indulged by several of the operatives, and rolled his eyes so hard he might as well have flipped himself over.

This entire enterprise simply reeked of inefficiency, so much so that Polo could hardly stand it.

On the one hand, Laraxis had a state-of-the-art armory, the technical know-how to create a fully-functioning, albeit subservient artificial intelligence, and enough silicon running through this place to power a mission to mars.

On the other hand, this man was emotional, prone to outbursts, obsessive about tea sets, and apparently enjoyed thinking about color-coordinated operative costuming in his spare time.

This was a discrepancy which Polo just couldn't wrap his head around. Unlike Laraxis, everything in his life had a place. Everything had a spot. It needed to do more than simply work properly - It had to sing. When something was out of place, wasn't working quite right, Polo had an overwhelming [i]need[/i] to fix it, to make it right. It was an inclination that he would have assumed another technologically-inclined individual to have.

Instead, there was little here but paradox, a random assemblage of pieces that simply [i]looked[/i] like an organization.

While Polo never would have considered Laraxis to be the emblematic symbol of stability, he certainly would have expected more cunning and control from someone who Cyrus believed to be a considerable threat. Instead, this situation seemed more, to Polo, to just be the actions of a petulant child who had lost a loved one, and decided to enact his own vengeance against the rest of the world.

To Polo, Laraxis was little more than someone playing at superiority - And this, perhaps was the clue to Laraxis' interest in him.

[i]When you are but pretending to be superior, nothing is more attractive to you than someone who embodies the genuine article.[/i]

Polo took note of a small side-room that the AI, "Forty-Seven," had quickly ducked into, carrying a duffel bag of unknown contents.

He ducked out of sight as the bot left the room, making its way back toward the armory lockers towards where Citrine and Cheshire had been changing. With the hostess gone, Polo made his way to the door.

It was a deceptively simple hack to open the lock, and with an infrared, night vision, and super-heat scan of the room, Polo didn't see any physical sensors or alarms.

[i]Cocky son of a bitch, aren't you, Laraxis?[/i]

He entered into the room, and noticed what looked like dozens of filing cabinets, mostly unmarked. On a whim, he tried one of the drawers.

Locked.

It seemed that his curiosity would go unrewarded.

Still, he took a quick peek into the duffel bag, finding an obscene number of wallets within, each with a different ID badge and a few hundred dollars in cash.

[i]How desperate have these operatives been, if this was all that would be needed to convince them to come along?[/i]

Polo scanned a few of the cards into his database for later, being sure to replace them into their wallets. He didn't take any of the cash, however.

He was certain that these cabinets held secrets that he would most definitely find interesting, but without the proper tools, he'd be at a disadvantage.

Which, of course, gave him an idea.

He left the room, locking the door, and made his way back to the armory. Looking past the hand weapons and firearms, the explosives and grapnel gear, he finally found the materials section in the back, filled with odds and ends.

Sweeping an open space, he began a quick "shopping session," picking up what looked like a random assemblage of parts, before piling the pieces at the table and setting his skills to work at a small scale.

In about ten minutes, he'd pieced together what looked like a thick pen, capped with a convincing pen cap. He slipped the device into his pocket, but wasn't about to rush back to the room.

Instead, he meandered back to his locker, finally looking inside to see what awaited him.

Opening the door, he found only a small piece of paper. A blank check. At the bottom was Laraxis' signature.

In the memo, it said only, "An Expression of Trust."

Polo smirked, and slipped the check into his pocket before closing the locker door. Though it was, of course, symbolic, the gesture was an interesting one.

[i]And,[/i] thought Polo. [i]A pretty big mistake.[/i]