All was mostly quiet in The Corps!!! HQ. There wasn't much for them to do aside from clean up and collaborate with The Cure on certain projects. Jaz knew that the major shenanigans would die down the moment the Kobbers left, leaving just a few small fries to weed out. The Corps, much to Shadow's shame, was built more like a defense force rather than a variety of skills like The Cure managed to grab before their face turn. Mitori and Sanra were at least making an honest attempt to reach out and get others on board to help out in different community service deals, but they weren't exactly oozing with charisma.
There was one other problem, made apparent when Jaz kicked away an empty bottle of sake. She peered into The Corps' research lab and frowned as she saw several bottles of booze litering the floor, research assistants passed out onto their keyboards. Her eyes narrowed into a glare as she spotted a box of chocolates, all of the chocolates now pitch black instead of shades of brown. As a hand reached out and grabbed one, Jaz's eyes trailed towards the culprit, whose one-eyed hat moved to stare her down and blink.
"What in the fuck did you do with those chocolates?"
The culprit leaned back, cheeks flushed with pink. She stared at Jaz for a bit before the color left, deadeyed stare meeting deadeyed stare.
"Huh, you ditched the shrine maiden cosplay for that witch cosplay," Tsubakura noted as she took in Jaz's new outfit. "Guess your hero burned you real bad, huh."
"Nice try dodging the question: what'd you do, Tsuba?"
Tsubakura rolled her eyes. "What, you don't eat chocolates with ink?"
The color drained out of Jaz's face, and for the first time in a long time, her expression is one of utmost disgust.
"You're not dumping fountain pen ink on those, are you?"
"Nah, just Blooper ink. Pen ink tastes like rust."
"Wh... how-" Jaz took a deep breath before the many questions that came to mind overwhelmed her. "Actually, nevermind, not important. Shadow wants to know what you're up to, especially now with all the changes happening in Olympia. I'm kinda hoping it doesn't involve booze," she adds awkwardly as an assistant muttered something about snake people infiltrating Olympia's government and 5G poisoning everyone worse than radiation. "For your sake."
The head scientist slumped forward and put her head on her desk. "I'm researching the best way to not do research. All the hot topics are long- term projects, and after CarverCorp's fuckups, nobody's going to ask me how my limb-regrowing tech even works. They even ruined the concept of ready-to-go battle armor in case some burglar tries to steal your purse in the middle of the day." She groaned as she reached for an unopened bottle of sake, grabbign a bottle opener and popping it open in one smooth motion. "Love it when corporations make it harder to chase your dreams." She brought the bottle to her lips and took a swig like a water-deprived Mr. Fish.
"Aaand you're going to blatantly ignore that extra radiation down in Inner Rememberance?" Jaz asked as she snatched the bottle away, Tsuba glaring at her and trying to reach for it before Jaz smacked her hand away. "You have the nanotech to at least do something about that, right? Or maybe you can use that big brain of yours to improve on their anti-rad suits. Must be something you could lend a hand with."
After a few futile attempts to get her sake bottle back, Tsubakura sunk into her chair, almost slipping off as she grumbled, "Yeah, I could, but that's less interesting than making battle armor."
"But you'd be doing something productive."
"...I guess."
As Tsubakura booted up her computer and lazily brought up info on what her nanotech could handle, Jaz pondered for a bit. She was here long enough to notice the sort of interactions the crew had with one another, their regular routine. Tsubakura was notably the laziest of the bunch, an almost herculean effort and the promise of booze needed to get her to do most things out of her comfort zone. The only times she even bothered to get out, besides for a grocery run, was when nanomachines were involved in some capacity: first with Reaper, then with Dust. Jaz noticed sometimes while passing by that Tsubakura would stare at her screen, several tabs passing her by, barely noticing that it was about the supersoldiers CarverCorp had been developing until their eventual collapse. Granted, when they needed her help the most, Tsubakura had them covered, even helping Jaz recover from her fite a lot more easily, but it didn't look like very many things held her interest, and if she wasn't interested, it was hard to press her into action.
Now that the Kobbers were gone for good, it seemed like it was even harder to get her to do anything. She'd spend the days drinking and the nights eating and sleeping, with maybe the occasional looksie at the Kobber Blogger. All made worse because ultimately, she wasn't exactly needed. All those scientific concerns could be delegated to ex-CarverCorp scientists, or at least those with a strong moral and ethical core. Andrew and Brandon would be able to find the best fit for some of them, if not all of them. It was as if Tsubakura knew she was no longer an important asset, either for The Corps!!! now that The Cure was handling more of the heroics and they had all the tech they needed to handle things, or Olympia as a whole. And so she would loaf around and get her paycheck by doing the bare minimum and live a boring life.
But Tsuba would always look back at the Kobber Blogger, eyes bright for a moment before she became deadeyed again once there was no significant update.
So did she really want this life? Or was she looking for something more interesting to come along and sweep her for the ride? A feeling rose in Jaz's gut as Tsubakura summoned the more sober assistants to take samples of her nanomachines and do a radiation stress test. Part of her wasn't sure to trust it: she really shouldn't be making guesses about what a person really wanted out of life. The other part? Well, she wouldn't know unless she gave it a go!
"Y'know, the Kobbers are heading to a new place in South America," Jaz said, keeping it casual as she looked over at the weird-hatted scientist.
"Uh huh." Tsuba was typing away, pulling up maps of Rememberance, taking a look at just how much radiation was in each sector as of a more recent study. "Somewhere that Maya chick was from. Brume- no, Agama, wasn't it?"
"Yep. Turns out, there's a whole bunch to be discovered there. Lot of ruins, full of mysteries."
"Mmmmhmmm." Barely a reaction, if anything.
"Some of them might even have some ancient magitech, since I hear Agama's perhaps the most magitech-friendly place around."
Jaz immediately noticed the glint in Tsuba's eyes, though she at least kept her bored look. "That's neat, I guess?"
Time to strike. Jaz leaned back and stretched, keeping a poker face on as she said, "Well, they're open for more people to help out with research. They might have more modernized magitech now, but there's always something to learn from those that came before you. Who knows, maybe there's a way to incorporate something like that into your nanomachines or your casual battle armor ideas. Maybe bring them back to Olympia once people forget about CarverCorp's mistakes 'n all."
Dead silence. Jaz kept her poker face, though she wanted to break into a smile so bad. The bored look was gone for longer than a second, and for the first time, Tsubakura had an intense curious look on her face. Even if it didn't last that long, it was all Jaz needed to know.
"I'll... look into it, maybe," Tsuba replied as she straightened herself up. She glanced around at the mess everywhere and frowned as she added, "Maybe after I do a little cleanup and finish up those stress tests." She looked back up at Jaz as the shrine maiden-turned-witch with a raised eyebrow as she asked, "Still, did that loss really hurt you that bad?"
Jaz picked up a few empty bottles of booze and turned to leave. Her reply? "Just needed a little change, that's all."
"That doesn't answer anything," Tsubakura grumbled as the door shut behind her.
Sometime after the mess was cleaned and the assistants were gone for the day to sober up and relax, the scientist stared at her computer intensely. Kobber Blogger still wasn't updated. No information on Agama from there. Of course it wouldn't be that easy. She reached out for the mouse and clicked to open another tab, her fingers flying on the keyboard as she brought up Wikipedia. Search for Agama... aha! A barely written wiki, but a wiki page, nonetheless! Not much known, but there were several references to news stories and articles about their entrance into the world stage. Click, click, click. Tabs flew open, and she leaned in, soaking every word of those articles like a sponge. Every reference, she clicked. Every scrap of information, she wrote down. Her browser's tab catalogue ballooned from just three to twenty as she scavenged what little information there was, from general information to what little people knew of the technologies within. And what little she could find, she compiled into a file, before making another file on research topics, then making another on several hypotheses on how magic can affect nanotech and how they can be used in productive ways, including how it can raise how much radiation nanomachines can handle before they break down entirely.
By the time her work was done, Jaz came back to a bloated browser, an overly crowded task bar, and a snoozing scientist. It was only then that Jaz cracked a smile, leaving a bottle of Chocalcohol besides Tsubakura before tiptoeing away. One life potentially changed for the better... she hoped.
Tsuba by herself wouldn't be a totally great idea. Always better to go in pairs. But Jaz had an idea for that. After all, there was certainly someone interested in the "magi" part of "magitech", someone with a more blatant curiosity... and one who could break Tsuba out of her shell and drag her into sheenanigans, whether she liked it or not.
Jaz smirked as she took out her phone and made a call.
"Hey, Reimu? I might have something to scratch Marisa's itch for a thrill..."
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