Scene #9780: Welcome To Institum Lorentz

Owner	Pose
Team Timekeeper	As of now, Regulus officially has a job! Well, sort of. She has an internship. The past couple weeks have revealed several complications with her hiring! Technically, technically, Regulus isn't a 'refugee' from the Storm, and reviewing the wording of the post-Storm employee accelerated hiring programs, and the rulings currently being passed from the Foundation as to the legal status of the arcanists part of Team Timekeeper, technically technically Regulus has to go through pre-Storm hiring avenues. There's quite a lot of rigamarole to it, she has to pass a test, she has to work as an intern for six months, she has to receive approval from her supervisor and endorsement from her educator (officially, Vertin) to be hired for a full-time position, and so on, and so on. Her mysterious benefactor (X, Vertin already told her) did vouch for her hiring, which actually made it easier than it would've been normally! Except, Lilian should probably be the same level of Storm-refugee as Regulus is, at best? And for some reason she had it super easy. Well, whatever. One thing there's no shortage of, though, is offices. Even little ol' Regulus can get a small tucked-away room of her own in the Mechanical Engineering and Enchanting department. It's basically just a closet with some filing cabinets and a desk, attached to the Enchanting laboratory, but it's something! She could get a record player in there, maybe a record player in the laboratory, maybe a record player in the common area-- As she's getting set up, the door to her little room swings open, from the weight of that goofy heterochromatic fuckboy who wears shorts under his labcoat. X hangs his head inside her office, dangling his weight off the side of the doorframe by his hand, and waggles his fingers at her with the other. "Knock knock~! So the rebel radio pirate's finally turned to the side of law and order, has she?" He knows that already!! He's known for weeks! He surely knows Regulus knows he knows! "You've been having a busy few weeks, huh?"
Regulus	In your face everybody who called her jobless! Now Regulus has a job! Technically two because she also works for Vertin. That's TWO JOBS! Now she's unstoppable and she hasn't realized yet that there were reasons she was a radio pirate in 1966 beyond what her personal interests were. But this is the period where she is most likely to give up on Laplace entirely because it's the period where she has to deal with the most bullshit. Like this 'technically Regulus not being a 'refugee' from the Storm deal. How does that make any sense?? She was rescued from The Storm and sure it wasn't through official channels but nobody says that doesn't count as 'refugee' right?? Is it because she took this long to get hired in the first place? Does 'Storm refugee' wear out the second the following Storm hits? Or is it because she's part of Team Timekeeper? She was aghast at tests, aghast at the idea of being an intern for six whole months that's like 1/60th a Regulus amount of time! And well okay getting approval from Vertin but she already had that because Vertin knows her the best in the whole wide world. But it's fine. Six months will pass like a breeze when she's off saving dogs from Manus Vindictae or whomever was actually behind all that. If she saves one dog every month that will be time well spent. Regulus is halfway climbing up one of the filing cabinets (like a pet, she needs to clamber all over the place before it's truly hers) and she startles as the door swings open without a knock and kind of ends up rolling onto her back looking up at the fuckboy from there. "Blimey, you could've knocked on the door itself!" Regulus wiggles around and, pulls herself up and sits down on the chair which she has already clambered over but is happy to just sit down on it right now. She reminds herself she owes this guy a bunch and maybe she shouldn't go after him with the broom someone left in there. "But good to see you, X! Glad you were able to get that chat with Vertin, I passed on the message just like you asked the last time." She wrinkles her nose at the idea of being on the side of 'law and order'. "I'm on the side of Vertin, love, though I wasn't expecting so many hoops! I heard you helped me out, thanks a bunch, mate, but you're not exactly on the side of law and order are you?" She lowers her still askew sunglasses to add, "At least, you've got a bit of a rebel in yourself don't you? So how bad can it be?"
Team Timekeeper	"At least, you've got a bit of a rebel in yourself don't you?" "Ahhhh, hahaha, you must be mixing me up with someone else!" X is probably mostly joking when he waves that comment off, since it doesn't look like there's anyone outside who might overhear. He still looks a tiny bit nervous though, past his coy little snicker. "Someone exceptionally handsome and clever, surely." X relocates himself, again without asking, to the inside wall of Regulus's office. He crosses his arms, leans back against the doorframe, folds his thighs over each other, and then casually swings one foot around as part of the same motion to push the door shut, leaving both of them in privacy. "Yep, the Timekeeper and I had a talk! And I think we came to a mutually agreeable agreement. Wanna hear about it?" Not a real question! He continues talking anyways. In a smirkingly sarcasting tone, which is weird because he appears to mean what he says, "Since the Timekeeper's so graciously offered one of her own to support Laplace, it's only fair that we do the same in return. So, you and I are gonna be coworkers in more ways than one, Regulus! Isn't that exciting?" Rather than continuing that, when Regulus surely has questions of her own, he hinges forwards at the waist to squint and peer all around her messy little office. "Are you making yourself comfortable? Any idea what your first project's gonna be? I'm not seeeeeing anything here...."
Regulus	"Oh geeze..." Regulus says, "They really have got you spooked. But who doesn't have a bit of rebel in them anyway?" At least she didn't say 'hey remember when you helped out the Suitcase Rebellion?'. Even Regulus knows on some level there's a difference if you've signed the papers and made the oaths when you help out with something like that than if you were a bunch of arcanists who got dragged in from outside. The closet, already a closet, because a bit more cramped with X's presence but Regulus admits, "To be honest, I imagined one of those new--uh--cubicle type arrangements, I wasn't expecting having a door into a whole room, considering how the Foundation is about space limitations." ''You and I are gonna be coworkers in more ways than one, Regulus!'' When X says 'Wanna hear about it?' Regulus opens her mouth like it was a real question then shuts it when X continues on before she can get a word in. "Oh are you joining Team Timekeeper?" Regulus asks, redundantly. "You haven't really gotten to know Sotheby right, have you? I have a feeling you'd really dig her and her far out potions, I know how much you like to set up those elaborate devices of yours, now you can include some groovy concoctions to the mix." ''Any idea what your first project's gonna be?'' "Just came by to check the place out! Gotta fill the place up with Regulus, know the nooks and crannies--especially important for a place this small. I'm going to have to bring in a record player of course--Vertin said that Madam Lucy was actually interested in spicing up the place with some rocking tunes." This is not exactly what Vertin said. "I promised Shira I'd help her out with a fashionable wardrobe--oh you don't know her, she's this sort of spiky lizard lady who gets big like Riku--so I was thinking I'd work up some designs and get with Gwen about developing some fabric we could use for her." She brings her feet up on top of her cheet and hugs her knee with one arm. "I guess the big project would be figuring out the Storm, though, right?" She makes it sound like a big project rather than a knowledge-defying phenomena that has driven researchers to their wit's end, but that might be because Regulus hasn't had the chance to reach that point. "I don't know exactly where to start, but I promised myself I'd make sure Vertin would see past it one day. Guess I'll start in figuring out how all these wacky machines work around here."
Team Timekeeper	"To be honest, I imagined one of those new--uh--cubicle type arrangements," "Oh, goodness no! No, no, ahahaha." X wards off the idea with his hands while laughing like it's the most frighteningly ridiculous thing he's ever heard. "Oh, that'd be a disaster!" "You haven't really gotten to know Sotheby right, have you?" Nope! Haven't had the chance. I think there's a whole lot of stuff hidden in that Suitcase that might help my projects, though. The young lady Sotheby, Miss Druvis, oh... the spinning wheel...." X pokes a finger to his temple coquettishly, leaning his head to the side. X doesn't really care all that much about what Regulus is doing to make the space hers. He nods along absentmindedly while Regulus goes on about how certainly Lucy wants record players everywhere-- yay! That means she has a Department Head's permission!-- and gets a little bored until she starts rambling about other things. "Oh? And what's the problem with basic, boring old normal fabric?" "I guess the big project would be figuring out the Storm, though, right?" "Thaaaat's right! Got it in one!" he says, about like the fourth or fifth thing she said. He pushes himself up off the wall, pacing around the room-- or at least walking in circles around Regulus's chair, because there's not that far to go with the size of the room. "Oh, the Storm. What do we do about it? What really is it, even? You know, it's always there in the back of everyone's minds, no matter what they're working on. Scientific progress always rings a little hollow when there's nothing to progress to. But there's a million different theories...." X, in his orbiting, puts his hand on the back of Regulus's chair and spins himself around to hang in front of her. "What do you know about Chaos Theory?"
Regulus	"Would it?" Regulus says. "I mean I would've said that you wouldn't catch me dead in a cucible, but I also would've said that about any office at all..." She spins around in her chair for a moment, frowning. "You were having a bit of a laugh about me being all law and order now, right?" She is accustomed to THOSE jokes by now so it was her initial impulse to assume it was just in jest, but now she's starting to worry. She swings the back of her hand to her chest and declares arrogantly, "I'm just rebelling smarter not harder for the sake of Captain Vertin and dear Sonetto." "The wheel? What wheel?" Regulus asks before she reaches out with her hand to stop her chair from spinning. She cocks her head for a moment and then remembers! "How do you know about the wheel?" Regulus asks. "If you're fancying a gander, I'd hate to be the bearer of bad news, by the time you can get a good look at it you're already passing out!" Regulus scooches her chair closer to X. "And well, call it a pirate hunch but something tells me that sending in a ratbot weouldn't be as fruitful an idea as it'd seem as the next logical step." Regulus's first experience with drones were the ratbots so they're all just ratbots to her now. ''What's the problem with b asic, boring old normal fabric?'' "Well she keeps ripping everything 'cause of all the spikes. I'm guessing just cutting out holes doesn't work because she's, you know, part giant monster. I guess the clothes don't come with. Which is a bit of a double standard, I'd say, why does Riku's Ultraman Suit get bigger with him when the lady monster tears everything off? This is inequality at it's finest." X deftly moves onto the Storm before she can get further on her rant. "Not very encouraging if there's a million different theories on something you lot have had years to figure out, though if i hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would've thought everybody went stark raving mad if they tried to tell me that rain would go up and people's bodies would get all that distorted without even noticing." Regulus is startled again as X dramatically spins himself around to get right in front of her. "Chaos Theory? Not much, love, I mean I heard of it, but it's pure maths, at least in my era, and I've always been a hands-on digging into the guts kind of gal. But it's around weather prediction, right?" Well they DO call it a Storm.
Team Timekeeper	"How do you know about the wheel?" X shrugs. "Like I said, I had a talk with the Timekeeper. We all wanna figure this out, why not work together?" "I guess the clothes don't come with." "Hey, bring her in sometime, why not? Maybe I could rig something up! Just don't expect me to make any fashion choices-- but I've been wondering about what to do with this order for enchanted uniforms I got assigned...." "Not very encouraging if there's a million different theories on something you lot have had years to figure out," "Laplace has a million different theories." X leans back, palm braced on top of a filing cabinet, short hair swooshing away from his face. "I have one." "Chaos theory, my dear pirate, is a mathematical, mechanical, all-encompassing theory of everything to ever happen. How a leaf will fall, how a ball will bounce, how a breath of air will ripple across a trillion molecules, never to truly disappear... how a butterfly's wings flap to cause a Storm. That's my theory." He snaps his fingers. "You've seen by now, how odd the timing of the Storm is each time. There's no regular cycle, no season, it's not even correlated with arcane energy before it's already inevitable... but something happens to cause it. What is that source of deterministic chaos behind everything? Behind the first Storm?" That's what I want to know. Or, rather," X closes his eyes, hamming up the sell out of certainty that Regulus is already interested. "What we want to know." "We, are a collection of individuals, all with certain talents, all with a collective, ah, dash of rebellion, that burns too strongly to resist limiting our research. The truth of the Storm is our mission, and Laplace and the Foundation... are helpful in their own right, but you and I can agree they're not an end all be all for progress." X tilts his head, leaning back with both of his eyes locked onto her and a little smile. Regulus, would you be interested in joining the Institum Lorentz?"
Regulus	''Why not work together?'' "You know, for a moment there I wasn't sure the Foundation really wanted to figure out The Storm with all their rules and nonense restricting Vertin, more concerned with politics than solving the problem!" Regulus exhales, shoulders drooping as her head dips low. "But I guess even to me drumming that on that is getting a bit old hat. It's in the past and all, but I never got an answer I cared for there." She sets aside her gloom to beat a drum she could beat forever! Clothes! "Oh! You got something? Well, I've always wanted to try designing for someone else, so I'll handle that and you handle the material." She grins brightly. She's someone who can handle looking a little silly from time to time, so X messing around with the Rebellion the first time is something she's willing to chalk up as the price for assistance. Honestly, Regulus would appreciate it if she could one day maybe not do the whole 'ahh sorry i fucked up' bit that she seems to be getting into with the Suitcase friends and denizens before she actually gets a proper appreciation for why their needed in the Suitcase and why they need the Suitcase and she can just be immediately welcoming as Vertin is but, gah, she can't just FAKE it can she?? ''Laplace has a million different theories. I have one.'' Regulus is a little pinned in by X here, but her eyes light up immediately upon hearing that. "Wow, being cool about it are we?" She smiles. "But if you're that confident, I guess it's worth being cool about." Her eyes widen. "Oh! That's how you were able to figure out how to hit that drum set just right, was it? You predicted that with your chaos theory, mate?" But he's right. The only thing that seems to suggest that a Storm is coming--or at least what can accelerate one... "The Manus starting the Stock Market Crash early to set off the Storm early. Somehow they were able to take all those actions the Foundation didn't or barely noticed and made it happen. Even Vertin was caught off guard." ''That's what I want to know.'' Regulus wants to know too. It's actually less of her scientific field than it might be for X here but until they find out what causes The Storm how can she ever expect Vertin to be free of it? Or Sonetto? Or even Regulus.
Regulus	''Would you be interested in joining the Institum Lorentz?'' Regulus thinks this over, maybe a little longer than X might expect though maybe not for the reasons he'd expect. Well, secret clubs are fun! And X already seems to have cleared this out with Vertin. And he seems to at least be confident he's got a better idea of what's going on and if she doesn't like it she can just quit. But she'll have to tell Lilian, won't she? And she works for Laplace. And she might MAKE FUN OF HER for signing on with some kind of other research group on the day after she just joined the one she was trying to join! What if she gets teased?? Then again, Regulus thinks, Lilian's been feeling really down lately. Maybe making fun of Regulus a little bit would cheer her up. Maybe even more than the salmon. But what if she, like, makes fun of her and it's like because she's actually upset about it though? She doesn't want to upset her after she's already reasonably unhappy and she just got through one whole rebellion. But then again, Regulus thinks, it'd be pretty stupid of her to dump this opportunity and she owes X like twice already, and he's taken a big risk in trusting her by saying this much already right? And as a pirate she's well acquainted with a bit of chaos. And it's even more jobs! Lilian has like thirty of them so she can't really complain! She raises her head back up after thinking it over. "Alright, mate, you've got yourself a deal." She offers X a hand, spitting in it first to show that she's serious. "I'm happy to learn all about this Chaos Theory, and if there's anything I can do to help chart the Storm, I'm in your corner!"