@rebelichor : Brianne Landry, Director of Science Operations and evidently a double-edged weapon that cut both ways. She helped, and she hurt. She was with, but she she was against. The Resistance based in the Western Frontier were wary about an alliance, given the immense presence of Security Operations and how much of a crisis any leaked intel would create. There had additionally been mixed feelings about engaging with a woman so high up in one of the Resources Development Administration's most secretive operations — their business was very much behind closed doors.
Trust was lacking. On both sides, naturally.
The meeting point was inside an abandoned research facility. The River Delta Station, Brianne would arrive by covert water transportation and as the only Sarentu bonded to an Ikran, Ariadne arrived on the outskirts of the marshes on the back of Katir.
It was a brilliant location for the Director to choose. The Waterway Valley was more accessible, no sheer cliffs or difficult local weather patterns to navigate. Though there was also no Na'vi interference. Two outposts acted as a wall, a hydro injector neighbouring steam injector towers that guaranteed their privacy.
Even though she had more of a diplomatic heart, Ahri would have been a fool if she wasn't even a little uneasy as she dismounted and gave a hearty pat to Katir's curious head. "Easy girl. Stay here, okay?" The throaty complaint of an ikran pierced the blanket of silence. Her arrival was hardly a secret now, though she felt prickles wash over her skin, as though she had already been watched. Unlike most abandoned facilities, this one had already been powered up again, and there was a faint scent that trailed in the air.
It was with a crouch that the young Na'vi followed her nose into the small building, her tail sweeping and making contact with some of the equipment with a heavy thud. Her nerves were showing but she wouldn't admit to it.
The glitches of a dilapidated old computer console hold the director’s interest just as much as the overgrown potted plants at its side, but her snooping around the abandoned research facility comes to an end with the sudden awareness of another’s presence in the vicinity — the guttural chirp of a large animal hits her ears. Pin straight posture returns, elbows bending and hands folding softly at her front in nervous anticipation of the expected company to enter.
Behind the perspex shield of her mask, bright eyes scan the blue features and bright accouterments donning the young Na’vi woman who enters, and slightly clumsily at that. The thud raises the eyebrows on her otherwise neutral facade, but they drop just as fast and a hint of a smile grows; not in amusement but in welcome. Always a woman packaged in polite formality.
That Brianne is mildly disappointed at the chosen interlocutor will not move her features, unlike the concern held with being confronted by someone twice her size. Her hands wring at her front in discomfort. Messages sent by an encrypted comm-unit were not enough for the Resistance here to agree to work with her. Still, perhaps she should have sent a proxy also rather than go it herself. Too late now.
“I was expecting the courtesy of making Dr. Cortez’s acquaintence since I understand she is in charge of the Resistance in these parts. And you, you are not her.” Unlike her posture's rigidity, her posh and accented voice is soft and melodic in its pacing with a put-on unaffectedness that pairs with her high position in the RDA. “But,” she continues less dull and with head canting and a closed-mouth smile stretching in hope to invite trust into the arrangement. “You must be someone just as significant.”
The desire to appear trustworthy might seem contrary to someone willing to betray her people. If Mercer was more sound of mind and SecOps less in control of HQ, maybe she wouldn’t be here — but witnessing her subdivision scramble to keep afloat their research objectives amid funding cuts and her scientists incessantly put at risk and losing their lives in the field results in drastic measures. She seeks not an alliance per se, but a mutually beneficial scratch of each other’s backs.
“May I assume you understand my language?”
