[center][img]https://fontmeme.com/permalink/181029/2a9826ee65c789810435f55ad53d7fd5.png[/img][/center]

Dealing with people like Elvira grated on Christine's patience. As a Reporter, a higher up within The Penrose Independent, and The Boss's protege, patience had been something The Boss had spent a deal of time instilling in her. When it came to finding the news, it paid to be steady, never to rush, but also never to waver. Undue excitement had been the downfall of many successful journalists throughout the years, but the most successful of them all took their time to research, and understand every facet of their quarry, and story, before pouncing on it. To be stalwart, and cunning, and patient - they were three of the key tenants to a successful career in journalism.

Yet even with that, those virtues were tested the more she interacted with Vi-chan. Ellie sat below her, reading eat word with bated breath, chewing on her nails for anxiety support following each message and reply. Her constant fear, Christine could feel, was mingled with a thinly veiled excitement. It was probably the girl's first proper experience and interaction with Elvira outside of Glimmr streams and the like. How a person could like someone as obviously abrasive and inconsiderate confused her.

But more than that, Elvira was terrible at getting to the point. Every other word was inane and pointless to the overall conversation, and the fact she assumed The Boss had entered into the negotiations believing that attacking Beacon was their only, or true, goal spoke volumes about her as a person. She was bad at lying, bad  at negotiating in general - half of Christine's mind wanted nothing more than to take control of planning the party entirely. Ellie and Mary could likely create a convincing virtual replica of Elvira's personality to keep the hype flowing, while the minds behind the party would be at least a dozen times smarter than the one currently in charge. Things would go exponentially smoother if that were the reality she lived in, Christine imagined.

[quote]
[b][colour=PaleTurquoise]C: Sure.
C: Time, place, whatever you're into.
C: It'll be my Boss attending, not me, but did you have anywhere in mind already?
C: Just so you're aware, this chat will be wiped and unrecoverable after I close it, so if you need time to think, feel free.
C: We're kinda running on a deadline though, so maybe not too free.[/colour][/b]
[/quote]

[center][@Rune_Alchemist][/center]

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/Zmaysrl.png[/img][/center]

The Boss stood atop a roof, watching the Penrose skyline from above. The edges of her boots crested the edge of the building, her eyes trained on the street below, past the toes of her shoes, and through her windswept, purple-red hair. Amongst the various areas and districts of Penrose City, The Boss had chosen one of the highest buildings around to call her perch. Especially at its height, a frigid breeze lashed at her exposed face and neck, and worked its way down her clothes, beneath the coat, to chill her from the inside out.

But in spite of the weather, the view the building afforded The Boss was something more than to be grateful for. A vast, open picture of the city, once bustling with hundreds of thousands of people, blissful, and ignorant, and solemnly unaware. Now, though, it had run quiet. Though plans had been set to reopen The Nerine Vista, the evacuation of the city had left it untenable; those who had remained, weren't going out to eat. Few were leaving their homes at all. Sascha had been left free to fulfil other duties within The Penrose Independent, but still the absence of her restaurant operating for business interred a slight and deep seated sorrow.

[colour=DimGray]"Ey, Boss,"[/colour] a voice called out behind her, accompanied with the subtle closing of the access door to the roof. [url=https://i.imgur.com/ctkpdZy.png]Miriam Aconnel[/url] stepped out into the cool, sealed within her human disguise. Within moments of the chill reaching through her jacket, she fished into the depth of her pockets, and retrieved a packet of cigarettes, and a metal lighter. [colour=DimGray]"Swear the whole 'brooding Super Villain watching the city from the top of a big ol' building' shtick's been done to death. You consider branching out at all? - I hear standing in bus stops while it rains and watching people and brooding is a pretty untapped market, 's all I'm saying here."[/colour]

As she finished speaking, Miriam lifted the cigarette to he lips, and flicked the lighter open. Her thumb pulled back across the flint, once, twice, each time the sparks blown out from their metal container and into the wind. The third strike left her brow creased. Her frustration burgeoned on anger with the fourth, and then fifth, but Miriam's harsh, irate expression softened as her Boss approached. Her gaze flitted between the shorter girl, and her hand as it reached into her pocket, and produced a box of matches.

[colour=BlueViolet]"Am I not allowed to just enjoy the view?"[/colour] the first strike yielded nothing, but with the second strike, the match lit up in flame. Miriam half leant forward into the warmth, grasping the cigarette with one hand while the other pocketed the lighter, and allowed the fire to ignite the tip before she breathed deeply in the smoke. [colour=BlueViolet]"I got bored so I came up here. It's a bit fucking cold, but it's nice. What are you doing up her, hmm? Last time I checked, you were supposed to be working with Rebecca. Or did you just decide to swing buy and kiss your Boss's ass?"[/colour]

[colour=DimGray]"Whaaat? I wouldn't [i]dream[/i] of it~! Not [i]ever[/i],"[/colour] Miriam retorted. With her words, a dense cloud of white smoke poured from her lips, mingling with the visible mist from her own breath. She sighed, taking a moment to centre herself once more, and with a number of steps, past The Boss, took her own place at the edge of the roof. A sudden, painful, but ethereally quiet shriek resonated from where Miriam stood, the sound echoing across the stone roof, quiet enough to barely be heard, but soul piercingly loud simultaneously. Her human disguise fell away in the blink of an eye. Behind her, the cat tail she called her pride, black along its length until it tapered into a white tip, stretched as though contained tightly for a dozen hours, as she herself reached into the air, accompanied with the audible clicks of her bones and joints stretching and loosing out. [colour=DimGray]"Since things have been quiet, Sascha had my team take over some of the priority surveillance. Just had a fight conclude a little ago - sounded like some locals and Ascendancy chumps got into it with some more Liches. Wasn't much interesting about it, except Kenny said... I'm not really sure, she said there was some kind of, magic disrupting field? - knocked out Mary's tether to SB-02, and all the magic shit on it got shorted for a while. Backup footage was mostly intact, but the audio's kinda messed up, and she lost the photo-arcane recordings for when it was in the radius."[/colour]

A grave expression crossed The Boss's face. Her eyes trained the tile work of the rooftop, drawing her gaze along the lines with her furrowed brow, while Miriam stood in silence, watching, and smoking. Some kind of Nullification Magic was the worst news yet. She hadn't been able to personally observe it - they wouldn't have any relevant data on its sheer capability, but she had to assume the worst, at least until she could get an accurate read on it. Worst case scenario, she assumed, would be nullifying her tether. If it were merely limited to spells she could cope, but The Boss had never come across an individual with the power to mitigate others, and what she could do was fundamentally different; she consumed magic, but it still occurred. The way Miriam had described it - if it really could break Mary's connection to the drones - then it was abject cancellation.

[colour=BlueViolet]"Have Kennedy send me the recordings - magical and mundane,"[/colour] she finally replied. Miriam dragged upon her cigarette once more, exhaling the stream of white through pursed lips, and watched the trail travel and vanish but a few feet away into the wind. When her head tilted down again, she nodded, tossed the cigarette over the edge of the rooftop, and walked away, back to the access door, and down into the building proper. The moment she disappeared, The Boss produced a touch screen cellphone from an inside right pocket. The wind bit deep into her bare fingers, unprotected by the fingerless gloves she had made a trademark, numbing them slightly, as she navigated to her contacts, and opened up the messaging app - to an individual she had never texted before.

[quote=Unknown Number]Hi there, Penny. My name is Eden, head of The Penrose Independent - I received your number from Olympia after your last meeting. I'd like to meet, sometime soon, if possible, and discuss that favour of yours.[/quote]

[center][@Shifter_Master][/center]