a consultation. Who: Azalea Cerelia, Siana Banes, Jareth Monaco, and Peony Min What: Murder in the Red Light District, Part 2b. (Parts 1 and 2a) Where: Cerelia Labs, University of St. Iocus When: Morning of July 3rd. Rating: PG-13, mentions of death & violence. Status: Complete.
Contact with the EKP was not unusual. A large part of Azalea's job was to look after the Guild's image, and this task often entailed cleaning up after the Guild's less effective members. While Lea didn't mind the chore, her actual sentiments about it were intolerant at best. Anyone who got caught was a detriment to the Guild, a chink in the armor she worked tirelessly to maintain. As far as she was concerned, if you had somehow managed to get past apprenticeship with such a crippling lack of stealth and subtlety, then you deserved to be weeded out by the justice system. Thus, the machinist had gleefully thrown fellow criminals to the dogs when Reinholdt was certain not to have minded. The Guild washed its hands of petty failures; there were masterful crimes to be accomplished without the burden of dead weights.
However, Azalea had a feeling today's meeting with the EKP carried more gravity than the typical petty fare. That it had been arranged through the intervention of Peony Min, another Councilor, was enough to ensure Lea of that. Furthermore, there was the meeting's concurrence with the recent ruckus at the RLD. Through the Guild's own eyes and ears in the district, the councilwoman had already been apprised of the salient details. It would not do for the Houses' security to be compromised—they were prime sources of revenue for the Guild, in information as well as in gil. And a blight to one House, to the more judgmental eye, was enough to blight them all.
So it was with these considerations in mind that Azalea promised the investigators the soonest pocket of time she had available to her.
Bright and early in the morning, a conference room had been cleared out, and a few extra cups of coffee added to the Cerelia Labs' usual morning order. (Their own coffee machines might have served, but there was something in The Roast's brew that Azalea and her fleet of mages, machinists, and scholars of the academe could not live without.) When the investigators arrived, they were ushered into the room by eager interns. Azalea was already in waiting for them, going over a postgraduate's report on the progress of their cell cultures. Three steaming mugs of finely brewed coffee awaited the visitors' consumption.
At the trio's entrance, the labs' eponymous director would smile, warm and convivial, rising to her feet. "Good morning," she greeted, offering handshakes to everyone along with snappy introductions. She resumed her seat only when the others had taken theirs. "What can I do you for?"