Grimoire hadn't seen Rupert Shinra since he'd worked with Rhys on the materia manufacturing project. They traveled in different circles, on different sides of the world, of course, and he'd been busy working on his doctorate. And every free moment that wasn't spent towards his education went back towards his family, time with his lovely wife and young son. It never felt like enough, but he gave it everything he had.

But when Rupert was willing to come all the way out to Junon to meet him, he couldn't help but feel it was only polite to take the time for it.

"I appreciate you meeting with me, Grimoire, I know your time is rather in-demand these days," Rupert said, settling down into the seat opposite him at the cafe they'd decided to meet at. "How's everything going with your degree?"

"I'm about half way through getting my doctorate," Grimoire said, sighing with a wry smile. "Lots of work to do, that, but hopefully it'll pass by quickly. I've been lucky that a lot of it I don't actually have to sit classes for."

"I'm certain that helps, yes," Rupert agreed. "I was wondering if you might have time to help me out with something. For pay, of course."

Grimoire arched a brow, pausing a beat before picking up his iced tea. "Go on."

"Rhys and I made a discovery of something we're calling 'mako energy,'" Rupert said. "He can fill you in on the specifics, but essentially what we've discovered is the ability to generate electricity by processing raw mako."

Grimoire stared at him a long moment, trying to process the implications of that sentence. "Generate electricity."

"That's right." Rupert nodded, a hint of a grin starting on his lips. "So you see where I'm going with this, then. We're talking a clean, infinitely sustainable energy source."

"That's amazing," Grimoire said. "But what can I do to help with that?"

"You're the closest thing I've got to an expert in mako," Rupert said. "I need someone to work with Rhys and make sure we can process it safely. Electricity's no good if we all die of mako poisoning."

"You have a fair point," Grimoire agreed, humming thoughtfully; he didn't know that he'd go that far, but he did have some background in dealing with mako. "But I don't know that I'm the right man for the job, Rupert, that's not even in the direction of my field."

"It's not your field, no - it's not anyone's field, this is entirely new," Rupert said. "But you have the qualifications. You have the background to make sense of this."

Grimoire frowned, shaking his head. "I can see where you're coming from but I really don't think I'm the right man for the job. Bugenhagen, maybe —"

"He wants nothing to do with the project," Rupert said immediately, cutting him off. "Grimoire, I'm not expecting perfection, but you've already worked with Rhys and you already know more than anyone else I could ask. You can figure this out. Get Gast in on it, make it a team project. You can do this, I know you can."

"Faith is not enough to make me the person you need for this," Grimoire said.

"But you are, I know you are," Rupert insisted. "I've seen your work. You were able to help us figure out the materia, you can help us work out the mako. Please, Grimoire. This fascinated you earlier, what's changed?"

"Fascination isn't… Rupert, despite popular opinion I am not entirely driven by impulse," Grimoire said. "I have a doctorate to finish, and a wife and child to support."

"A wife and child you'd be closer to, if you were working with us in Rakheim," Rupert pointed out. "Within hours of the ocean, and you could be on a boat over in no time. And frankly? So long as you work on it I don't have to have you there the whole time, either. You can fax me update between working on your other projects."

That… was actually a tempting offer. He didn't have a lot of spare time to be on site, but something he could pick up and work on regardless of location might just be doable. "I'll tell you what, I'll look into it. I'll give Rhys a call, and hear out what he knows already. What plans may be in the works. If it sounds like something I might have ideas on, then I'm willing to see where it takes us."

"That's all I ask," Rupert said.

"And I'll be compensated for whatever time I spend as a consultant, hm?" Grimoire arched a brow at him pointedly.

"Arrangements will be made," Rupert assured him. "So long as you put in the work, you will be appropriately compensated for your time."

Grimoire smiled faintly. "Then it's a deal."

It wasn't that Grimoire was exactly predictable, Gast knew better than to say that. But he had certain patterns overall that he'd fall into. And he'd been dragging Gast into new projects ever since their early days at the university. So of course, when Rupert dropped this potential project into his lap, it came back around.

"You realize, I make even less sense on this project than you do," Gast said. "You've studied mako. I can see where he's coming from there, even if you're not quite the right person for the job."

"Bugenhagen won't do it, I wouldn't say I was his first choice," Grimoire admitted.

"I would say, safely I think, that I wasn't even on the list," Gast said. "This is on you."

"You're still not on his list, you're on my list," Grimoire said, flashing that supposedly-charming Valentine smile. He was given a flat look in return, and his lips curled into an impish little grin. "This is where you tell me how flattered you are."

"I'm flattered, Grim. Really," he said dryly. "But I'm an anthropologist. This is not even vaguely in my realm of expertise. This isn't even in one of my experiences."

"I'm aware. I'm not exactly the ideal person for this either, biogeography isn't quite the right discipline," Grimoire said. "But there isn't a field for this, not yet. It's new."

"New and exciting. You've always fallen for those." Gast sighed. "I'm too busy for this - you're too busy for this. We've got school to finish."

"But it doesn't have to be here all the time," Grimoire pointed out. "I've never liked Junon, library aside. Rakheim is interesting. And the things they've done already, Gast! You worked on the materia project. They're on to something, something big - world changing! Don't you want to be a part of history instead of just studying it all day?"

Gast sighed again. "Is he at least paying you to be a consultant?"

"Yes," Grimoire said. "Of course; I'm excited, not stupid."

"And he'd pay me?" Gast checked. "Even though this is very much not my field?"

"He understands the risks."

Gast stared at him a long moment. "I'll consider it."

Gast had not meant 'I'll consider it' as some sort of code for 'yes' but when dealing with Grimoire he should have known better. Somehow, he found himself being pulled into a project he was utterly unprepared for, completely out of his field and yet being consulted like he could possibly have something to contribute. Grimoire, in the least, should have known better.

Why he expected anything else, he really wasn't sure. The man was notorious for these sort of shenanigans.

To be fair, the mako energy project was fascinating, it really was. Just the premise, the idea that mako could be harnessed as some sort of fuel, an endless planet-generated clean energy - it would revolutionize the way things were done. There was nothing he could think of that wouldn't in some way be effected. Machines would have to be reworked to process mako. It would be a death toll for the coal and oil industries which would change the entire dynamic on the central continent.

It could very possibly bring the war itself to a standstill. Not immediately, of course not, but if coal was no longer the fuel of choice… there was no reason to fight over it. The Corel territory would lose value overnight once it was proven viable, even if it would take longer to truly spell an end to it.

Rhys already had a basic idea of how to do it, they'd created a small, usable charge with a processor scaled up to the size of an oil drum, hooked up to power a rigged generator. But for it to work on the scale Rupert wanted they were going to need to go bigger by far, and that meant even more safety measures. Handling raw Lifestream was a dangerous venture just for the fumes, even before getting into how caustic it was or the high heat bringing it out of the ground. Refining it to mako only increased the concentration, and while a closed container would lower the exposure to fumes, it was even more caustic and still kept at tremendous heat. They were going to need to write up safety protocols before going forward, and study to be sure the mythril would hold up long term.

Part of that was on Rhys, of course. He was the engineer, and the one with the background in metal smithing. He would be the one to figure out the bulk of the physical mechanics for how it was literally handled. But Grimoire was going to be able to theorize with him on the rest. Gast, on the other hand, had absolutely no idea what he was there for but was trying to offer intelligent input if nothing else. If they could explain the problems, he could at least follow the logical procedure to come to a conclusion.

Eventually, between the three of them they began to work out a system for harvesting the Lifestream directly, a concentration process, and how they would be able to work it into a big enough agitator. The 'waste' couldn't go back to the Planet once it was concentrated, but theoretically what parts of it didn't burn off could be run through again, or reworked into powering smaller systems. Arguably, if you kept concentrating it over and over again, it would eventually be prime material for generating materia, so they should be able to combine the two processes into one smooth system. Theoretically.

Of course, they wouldn't know until they tried it. Which meant finding a site with access to a Lifestream flow. And that they would have to leave up to Rupert.