Taika frowns. She didn’t really like the idea that Jun knew something she didn’t even if it was in something outside her field of study. “I don’t think it’s a fuel system. He wouldn’t feel the need to keep the engine secret. If such highly efficient fuel existed, he could sell that for tons of money. Reactor core is possible, but how would they fit a cooling system in there? And what are they doing with the waste? Hey, do you think if you blew it up, it would destroy a small town?”

She leans back in her chair. “Helix is a funny name though.” An odd thought enters her head. “Hey, what if it was… like… alive. Like there was something akin to mitochondria in there.” She shakes her head, “Ok. I’m going to stop talking about science fiction now.”

When offered up the choice, she looks between the door and the general. She doesn’t really like the director, but she at least knew how to talk to him. “Ash, I have barely any tact. I doubt I could get much out of the General. Why don’t we split up for now? I’ll go see if Flamingo also has a serious headache after this. And you can see what’s going through the General’s head.”

She gets up and heads for the door, looking for her pink-haired superior.

If Ashley approaches where the General and Prime Minister Adoji Ito were, he might overhear a few words from a discussion between the two along the lines of 'If we continue to get this kind of result then it will be time to drastically scale back the Japanese Military Research budget and operation in lieu of private industries'. As Ashley may try to approach, he will find himself shoved rather hard from his right side as a man in a white coat and black glasses begins to make his departure from the area.

Meanwhile, Dr. Matou by the time Taika caught up to him would be around a corner, heavily puffing on one of those electronic nicotine devices. It was often made fun of as being 'unmanly' behind the Doctor's back. His expression would be one of barely contained rage, which Taika may be aware of would mean he could go into an explosive rant and make her life miserable if she chose poorly her words or actions.

Electronic cigarettes… pretentious with unknown health risks. Taika held in her disgust at the device. However, it’s not like she liked being in the presence of cigarettes any better. At least, she wouldn’t be surrounded by smoke during this conversation.

The director looked angry, and she rather be ranted at than scolded. How could she best approach this? Could she safely assume that he hated Kaneko Industries’ CEO as well? Or was he simply angry at other matters? To hell with it, she would just be blunt. If she got chewed out for the next hour, well, that was hardly different from being at work some days.

“I don’t think I could stand in there a moment longer while Jun Kaneko gets his ego stroked. But I think I made it pretty clear that I was unimpressed by all this,” she says. “I don’t really buy into the idea that a teenage boy’s fantasy is going to change the tide of this war.”

"I also find it strange how he decided to leave our departments totally out of this project. He was willing to work with the General after all, so he had no qualms about a more cooperative project presumably. Seems like a slap in the face."

Those statements would be enough to get her to launch into a tirade. Hopefully, that would have the desired effect.

Ashley really frowned at what the president said and it really made him angry. This was more or less Matou's fault that there budget was getting slashed and slashed. Perhaps this was a good time to set his plans into motion on slandering the good director. As his fury and frustration was growing although as he was approaching the President and General. Someone shoved him out of the way and nearly made him stumble and fall over. But Ashley got his balance quickly and saw the guy that was running out of there. This got his attention and his eyes went to slits, technicly he got the info he needed. Ashley does his best to keep to tail the person that nearly knocked him over. He was going to give this man a piece of his mind.

The guy's appearance looked a bit too of a generic lab tech person. Ashley tried to get close to this guy to find out why he was leaving the area like the plague. Something in his mind was telling him something was not right with this guy.

As Taika approaches Matou, he puts his device away and glares at her as she makes her opening statements. It was pretentious of convict to talk to him as if she were his equal. His expression's glare hardens but after a moment the nicotine starts to kick in and he returns to his normal level of snark.

"Convict, he didn't want us involved because he wanted the glory for his private industry. He also thinks his people above ours, which while including the likes of you may be true, excluding me and my senior staff is an insult." he says as he tucks his hands in his pockets.

"Even if the mechanized armor is what the General wanted, the real technology is that engine. It is a miniaturized nuclear reactor which while it produces a large amount of power, I don't entirely buy that the bastard's model is entirely practical. The problem is, Kaneko's game is that if we somehow win this conflict with his SHOGUN units playing a key role, then he will be able to gain popular support for massive small scale nuclear power which will make him a fortune far surpassing that of the computer industry." he says with obvious disdain.

"People like Kaneko are an insult to proper science, when profits take precedence over priorities." Matou says enraged, glaring at Taika.

"Of course, you keep that to yourself. The civilian population isn't allowed to know about that as per command. The only reason I tell you is that you will likely have to do biological studies of mech pilots and the exposure to the Helix system. Maybe we can make some data to smear his 'good name'."

When Ashley decided to pursue the man in white, the man made his way swiftly through a crowd and when he got out of range of prying eyes, he leaps up into a fire escape from a building and begins to scramble up with impressive agility. The fire escape was ten feet up which Ashley may or may not be able to reach depending on his agility, but while Ashley would work on the problem of pursuit, the man in white was scrambling up the stairs with squirrel agility, and would disappear onto the roof if left alone long enough.

As soon as Matou utters her unfortunate nickname, she cringes. Damn, maybe she spoke incorrectly. However, he begins to launch into a rant, and she’s thankful for that. She could deal with occasional jabs and disparaging remarks. It’s sort of like a weekly routine that she had come to accept.

Besides, as soon as he starts talking about the Helix engine, he could call her whatever he wanted. She’s not about to ask how he got that information; whether he was given the privilege of knowing or was every bit unlawful as she was didn’t matter much. However, she has to hand it to Jun; it’s a smart play. She shrugs though, “I don’t think he’ll win that game though. I think we’re going to just pour a bunch of money into a piece of technology that won’t really get us very far.”

Taika can’t really hide her happiness to hear the change of focus at work. “I wouldn’t think of telling a soul. I was about to make messing with Jun a hobby, but if you’re telling me that I’m going to get paid for this, my day just greatly improved,” she responds. “Besides, I’m not a fan of the idea of the soldiers risking exposure for no good reason.”

However, she did have a few questions, “I’m still trying to figure out how he got a good enough cooling system for that thing. Are we sure those things won’t explode? I also wonder where the waste is going to go. And are we supplying him with all this uranium or plutonium?”

Ashley frowns a bit and backs up and jumps up with an equal amount of agility and swings himself up and on to the fire escape and keeps after the man. He frowned and something was really off with this guy and tried to keep up with this guy. Speaking would be useless or trying to call for help. Right now a plan would be useless as that fraction of a second would give this guy a massive head start. He feared that this man might have been a spy for either the covenant or a industrial spy working for another company. None the less Ashley would have to catch up to this man. So he pushed himself to his limits to keep up with the guy.

"Hmph..." Matou mutters when Taika seemed almost happy about the whole thing, convict was being almost too bubbly. Her happiness was appalling. Matou's expression remained stone cold. When Taika asked the couple of questions about the resources and how to keep the engine cool, his expression shifted from cold to an almost evil, hatred filled visage.

"It's some proprietary formula that I don't have access to and that by contract we are not officially supposed to run any kind of testing on. As far as the nuclear material, the government isn't as shiny and pristine as you might think sometimes: they will tap into unconventional resources to acquire things from overseas if they think they can grasp victory somehow. I'll leave it at that." he says as he tucks his hands in his jacket and begins to walk away.

"This conversation is over Convict. Further, it never happened. Understand?" he says, his tone expressing that if any information here were to leave this site, then she would be buried.



As Ashley approaches the roof, and peeks his head out from the bottom, a firey burst of energy would land in front of him: not powerful enough to explode largely or sear him. The man in white looks at Ashley, then leaps away and across to a different roof. One of the man's eyes had a blue glow, but his expression indicated that he wasn't trying to fight.

As he flees, it was clear he was no normal human...but what was he?

Ashley not expecting an energy blast stunned for a second but shook his head and gave chase to the man. He sees the man jump off to another building that alarmed him. "The hell....a Covenant? Or something else.....but why run. Was he trying to spy on the event to get some kind of information....blue glowing eyes.....what kind of rabbit hole have I gotten myself into" he said to himself and then looks around the area to find some clues. One of the things he did was take out a smart phone and take a picture of the scorch marks. He keeps looking for a clue to go off of "Was it a weapon or a power...when I get back into the lab....testing on that thing is going to be needed" Ashley said to himself again.

Well, Taika got all the information she wanted to hear. She tries to hide her obvious disgust that the government is passing out nuclear material like Halloween candy. Could she see the use of having it? Yes. Anyone could. There was nothing wrong with collecting weapons in this world where they could. Should they be giving it out for free? Definitely not. At least, she knows a bit more of what's going on. That and her new direction at work were the only good things to come out of this entire day.

She doesn’t like being addressed in that tone of voice, but there’s not much she could do about it. And they finally found something to bond over too… She frowns a little, “Alright, sir.”

As Matou leaves, she heads back inside the building to see if Ash was anywhere to be seen. Oddly, he is not by the President or the General. Where in the world did he go?

"........I think I am going to talk to Kurio about this the next time I see him. He might be better on the investigation of things" Ashley said to himself and he starts heading back down discretely to not get any attention to himself. None the less he felt something bad about all of this as he got back down to the ground floor. He gets back in and walks around for a bit and then finds Taika looking around for someone. Ashley figured that she was looking for him and walked over to her "I had something rather interesting happen to me. Anyway....what did you find out" he asked her, when he got close to her. The male was curious on what she was able to get out of pinkypie.

Taika looks over to see Ash, not in the place she left him or in the place he had said he would be. She is curious to hear what took he managed to find out elsewhere, but it looks like she was sharing first. “I’ll bet… And I actually gathered quite a bit. I didn’t think flamingo would open up to anyone but I think we shared the closest to a pleasant conversation that anyone could have with the guy. Then he insulted and threatened me. But my focus at work got shifted a little. I’m pretty sure if anyone hears me talking about it, I’ll be sent to Siberia in an instant, so let’s go someplace more private. Or at least a place with fewer coworkers.”


She starts to walk in the direction exit, "We can head to my place unless you prefer to go to yours.  Or we can go get food, because I'm hungry and tired of this place.  I'll give you a hint though: You were right about Helix."