Black Stranger (Leiss)

[raiho]

"Hmm ... no no no, this isn't working properly"

The object of interest was a pair of soldier heartless who were exposed to a deadly amount of electricity. After applying a lethal dose of volts, they exploded into darkness and the hearts that fueled their existence left their former bodies made of darkness to return to the place where any heart goes.

"Yet another failure. I Cannot find the proper amount of damage needed to cause the desired effect"

She left behind the torture devices used to restrain and perform wicked experiments on the heartless and looked at a pure, free of darkness heart she had inside a crystal container akin to the one protecting Beast's rose. It was brimming with light and slowly rotating on it's own axis.

"I can't neither replicate this effect on those defects nor do "that" with them, maybe I should take a break from my research."

She left her laboratory, located in the basement of her home, and went to the kitchen to get a quick meal and recover her energy. She might be a super human, but she still had the need to refill spent energy.

While she ate a sweet chocolate cake filled with chocolate crisps and dulce de leche and drank a cup of chocolate milk, she checked some notes she made about the shadow and soldier heartless and thought about the people who were helping her.

"Kanji, he is really a loyal follower, but I can't say the same of Jack. Also there's this mercenary whom I doubt I can recruit and this girly boy who seems to be loyal to somebody else. If i want to capture freaks of more rarity than those two common types I need to find more people willing to work for me"

With her monologue finished, she continued checking her notes and energizing her body with the much needed food. Someday she was going to change the laws of this insane universe and until then she had to continue researching and keeping herself alive.

[hoffman]

"This can't be it," Leiss groaned, a disheartened sneer slowly growing on his face.

This 'ultimate fortress' that the mad bunny-maid scientist spoke of looked nothing like the sort. In fact, it couldn't have been, given the weak size and inviting shape of the terrace that stood before him. He had double-checked the address scrawled onto the strip of paper in his hand - several times, even, and it matched the decorative digits hanging beside the door each time.

His eyes hadn't deceived him.

"It's like something out of a 'Homes and Living' magazine. Frick..."

Nevertheless, it was far too late to turn tail and head back now. His C.O. - Malphas, as he was named - gave him permission to interact with this bunny maid scientist so long as there was something in it for him. Prior to this, Leiss had to give a whole spiel on how the report he had lost (thanks to a certain 'Seed') was indecipherable and how he could still recount everything he learned while on duty; it was this clever and careful tactic that had convinced his superior to not take disciplinary measures.

As for the job itself, Malphas' reasoning was that the scientist was interested in Leiss... not in any other Tom, Dick or Harry. The boy was relieved that Malphas saw it his way.

Putting his most professional or sociable smile, Leiss gave the house's front door a stern set of three knocks. As he awaited a response, he idly wondered what the inside of the house looked like.

"She better damn well be what she claims to be... or my ass is toast."

[raiho]

By the time somebody knocked three times the door of her house, the scientist was already done playing the role of a maid and cleaning the kitchen.

"Now everything is sparkling clean, and just at time, somebody's knocking at my door"

Like she always did, she was wearing her usual bunny maid uniform, the 3rd one of her collection of exactly the same design of attires, and with the elegance only a maid could have, she walked in direction towards the door with swift but soft steps.

"Whoever is outside identify yourself, I wasn't expecting any person today."

Ha, who would open the door to a complete stranger that easily? Less careful people would've opened the door first and ask later, but not Saga. Even a world as quiet as Traverse Town had bad people who would love to take advantage of other's naivety to steal their goods or do something worse.

With nothing more to do, she waited until the stranger identified himself. One of the consequences of spending all her income in laboratory related goods and in saving enough funds to buy a gummy ship was that she couldn't afford to replace the old fashioned door that came with her house with a more modern one with a small hole where to see who was behind the door or directly install a camera to watch from a monitor the movements of any unexpected visit

[hoffman]

"It's Leiss. The green-haired guy you met a couple of days ago. We hadn't exchanged names."

That much was true. Neither party had cared enough to ask for either's name, so that kind of made this greeting awkward. In a vain manner, the boy straightened his tie, making sure that it didn't seem too loose or unkempt.

And it wasn't simply a tie that he was worried about.

Under orders from Malphas, he had been wearing a business suit - the kind that one would wear to a job interview. It carried with it navy blue tones that went semi-well with his dark complexion, though it contrasted his green hair quite heavily.

"What does she think of you so far?" Malphas asked in a past meeting, cautioning that the boy's future interactions with the scientist could be risky if he didn't play his cards right. Leiss commented on the fact that she seemed equally wary of him as he did of her... and that she already might have suspected that he wasn't acting alone.

Recommending that the boy take on a sense of professionalism from then on out, Malphas gave him a business suit. He figured that dressing to impress would be the best thing Leiss could do right now - it was too late to significantly change the scientist's first impressions. It was also inevitable that she would find out about XMR at one point or another. But they could at least make him out to be some serious kid looking for a job.

He continued to stand there calmly, awaiting a response.

[raiho]

"So, your name was Leiss? I will open the door"

She opened the door and let the effeminate man enter inside her house. For some reason he wasn't wearing the same comfortable and easy to move with attires from their last meeting and instead wore a very formal business suit. Just what exactly was this guy? Never mind, that wasn't something that concerned her.

"No need for formalities here, simply tell me if you accepted to work for me or no. And If you need to know, my name is Saga Matsuda"

She guided him to the living room of her house to be more comfortable during their short talk, it was a typical living room like any other with a pair of long sofas and a crystal table in the middle. The rest of the house too was like any other house with nothing out of ordinary other than the bunny maid motif that could be seen in the curtains of the windows and other places like the tablecloth on the table in the kitchen.

"Also, tell me how much you will be dedicated to my cause, only those who follow me with no doubts like my most faithful follower Kanji will be able to participate in the final part of my plan. Less than absolute loyalty and I shall not let you know the full extent of my plans"

[hoffman]

Leiss followed her in with a stoic, prideful stride. He didn't pay the interior too much mind, though it still bothered him that the innards of the house looked nothing like he would have imagined.

"A scientist has to live too, right? Maybe she keeps all her equipment in the basement."

He kept silent until they arrived in the living room where 'Saga' finished speaking of her initial concerns.

"I'll be frank, this is rather complex," he quipped, giving his chin a stroke before continuing, "I can't be loyal to just any 'John Doe' who tells me they've got grandiose plans. I need to see how serious you are before I can show you my loyalty."

Were Leiss unaffiliated, his words would've been much different. XMR had been a safety net of sorts - they weren't 'loving', but he felt that he was important and respected. He didn't need it from someone else.

[raiho]

"It looks like you had already prepared your dialog for this meeting. Anyway, your lack of resolve is disappointing and maybe I should rethink about the idea of recruiting you"

If he were really willing to help her to achieve her goals, he would be more eager to participate in the activities she planned. However, he was doubting of everything and was quite persistent in the idea of seeing her research, almost as if all he cared were about her hard earned data and not the overall goals behind it.

"Fine, probably you have secondary motives behind this, but if what you want to see is my research, then so be it."

She let the rather secretive follow her to the basement of her house, and showed him the splendor of her workplace. It was quite clean and organized with the only hint of disorder being some notes scattered around some tables. If he guest had a sharp eye, he could notice the heart inside a crystal container, but odds were that the freak show in front of him were more interesting than the small, pure heart: dismembered heartless torn apart in the name of science and some of them still being currently being tortured by electric mechanism checking their damage tolerance and other ones extracting black matter from their bodies to be examined carefully.

"And this is what my research is about, to find what makes the heartless work, to encounter any weakness they might have, and from all this science, to eventually find a way to make humans immune to the advance of those parasites and strong enough to annihilate them and any other dangerous creature with no problems. Now decide if you want to be out of this or join me."

Even if the effeminated man had ulterior motives behind his secrecy, he could do nothing with this research without the brilliant mind of Saga and he could be of any use if he were swallowed to this world of twisted nature defying science.