Two heli-jets landed to make deliveries last night, but only one had been intact enough to take off again.
The helipad glistened under a soapy orange film. Chunks of aluminum, shorn from the propellers where they tilted into the asphalt, sparkled in the dawning sunlight.
"Fuck."
Giovanni had been contacted about the crisis moments after it occurred. Perhaps he should have stayed awake to supervise the drop, but the cargo was non-standard, not the procedure. Regardless, he was dressed and on the tarmac before the spilled suspension fluids stopped oozing outward.
The pilot was in hysterics.
"I was landing. Just landing! There was no reason..." he rambled as medics tended his wounds. When he caught sight of Giovanni at the scene, he made a hideous noise and started to hyperventilate.
The young man's poor piloting had cost Rocket Corp nearly a quarter's net profit in spilled goo and heli-jet parts.
"Take his Pokémon. Put him in holding until we can interview him."
The pilot flailed as grunts snatched the Pokéballs off his waistbelt. They dragged him into the hangar and out of sight.
"Sir."
The shipping manager appeared beside Giovanni, standing at attention. He nodded for her to speak.
"Pilot experienced a malfunction while engaged in autopilot landing. Wind at .5 knots and not considered a factor. We are currently assessing the equipment for a better understanding of what happened."
"How much of the payload was lost?"
"Sir, what you see here on the tarmac represents two damaged drums. Four more have been delivered fully intact to the requested endpoint. The total loss is-"
The woman trailed off as Miyamoto sidled up to the conversation.
"Madame Senior Executive," she demurred.
"What's going on here?" Miyamoto asked, surveying the situation with bleary eyes.
"A setback for Ariana's project," Giovanni sighed.
Beside Giovanni, Persian prowled the edges of the helipad. It approached a puddle of the orange fluid and gave it a sniff. The Pokémon had no reaction, and moved on to other explorations. Observing this, Giovanni missed Miyamoto's barely-concealed smirk.
He addressed the manager. "Clean this up. Suppress the topic from updates beyond the base until we've closed the internal investigation. Start now."
She saluted and trotted off to obey.
"Suppressing? What if it's an attack?" Miyamoto asked.
He detected mockery in her tone.
"If it's an attack, then it's an attack from within. This-" he gestured to the surrounding peaks, "-isn't the place for a drive-by."
At their altitude, the mountain mists were thick, softening the jagged cliffs in the distance. It gathered at dawn, signaling the closing of the optimal take-off and landing time, and persisted until the day's heat burned them away. Once the fog was gone and grey stone rose unobstructed in all directions, the mountain base felt even less accessible.
Miyamoto ignored Giovanni's quip.
"Where's your mother?" she asked.
Giovanni arched an eyebrow at her, but made no comment. He preferred not to acknowledge her personal relationship with his mother.
"In Saffron. Until tomorrow night."
He was certain the tarmac would be in order before her return, but covering for a crash during an unauthorized conveyance... He'd have to take a look at the ledgers to decide how to hide that expense. With a resigned huff, he accepted that it would be a long day of cooking the books ahead.
"Sir!" The shipping manager was visible in the entry to the hangar, waving for his attention. She was trying to approach, it seemed, but was hindered by the cords of the phone cradle in her hand and the handset shouldered to her ear.
Unused to jumping at an employee's summons, Giovanni lingered. The manager began to look panicked. She held the phone away from her ear, then brought the receiver back to mouth and spoke rapidly. Now curious, he moved towards her.
The second Giovanni was within range of the phone, the manager shoved it into his hands and peeled off. He heard the voice, and volume, coming through the earpiece and immediately understood. Gingerly, he lifted the handset and spoke.
"Madame Boss?"
When she heard his voice, she switched from her full-volume yelling to a loaded silence.
Giovanni waited for her to speak, bracing himself.
Finally, she struck out, full of venom.
"Exactly what the fuck is wrong with the way your brain works?"
Silence.
"Is this fun for you, taking a shit on everything I've ever worked for?"
"Mother-"
"Don't. Do FUCKING not. You wasted no time after I left setting a disaster into motion. Did you think this through at all? What the FUCK even is "suspension fluid" and where do you get off charging my accounts for the shit?"
As she screamed at him, Giovanni maneuvered around the hangar for more privacy. He noticed Miyamoto had moved in to listen.
"It's an essential operating material for the project you-"
"AND A HELI-JET WAS DESTROYED!? MONeyyy, Gio, you just throw it away. Just slap me in the face next time! Just hit me right in the face, you little shit. I would PREFER it. I would love the excuse. You are a fuck-up and I'll show-"
Giovanni lowered the phone from his ear as she shouted louder, launching into more generic verbal assaults.
His mother was angry, and rightfully so, he thought. How she already knew the details of the accident… Rocket Corp staff chose to be hyper-diligent at random, it sometimes seemed.
"Giovanni!? Not even fucking-" He heard his name and jerked the handset back up to his ear.
"Yes, Madame Boss."
"When I get back you are done."
"Excuse me?"
"Excuse me ?! You're done, Vice Boss Giovanni. My own son, a fucking embarrassment to the company and to his mother... It's clear you respect none of us at Rocket Corp."
Giovanni kept silent. She wanted him to react, he knew. But if she didn't get a reaction now, he was worried she'd amplify her threats in pursuit of one.
"Mother, I was acting in the best interests of-"
"Of yourself, you selfish little brat. You'll have some explaining to do when I arrive tonight and perdition to fucking pay tomorrow when I bring you in front of the board to explain to them where the Q1 profits went."
He cursed under his breath. His mother could, and did, withhold or bestow executive powers at a whim, but once the board got involved, his actual relationship with the corporation was at stake.
"Get all that shit off the runway before I land. And try not to set fire to any more piles of money before I get there."
She hung up.
Giovanni fought an impulse to fling the phone, but remembered his mother's admonition against further waste. Instead, he bent over and dropped it at his feet. The bell inside rattled, startling Persian who had just begun to approach.
"To me," he called.
The Persian slunk to his side. It followed him as he left the hangar. Miyamoto tried to ask him a question as he approached her by the exit, but he walked briskly past.
He and Persian skirted around the goo puddle. The orange slime had reached the tarmac-level doors into the base and that was where the grunts had begun to scrub it back in a bubbling arc. He wrinkled his nose at the vinegar smell of their cleaning solutions.
Instead of slip-sliding through muck to the doors, Giovanni turned to the stairs. They were cut into the rock, flat and even, but dew-slick. They would take him straight down to the courtyard entrance.
He and Persian were halfway down when he heard flat boots slapping on the steps behind him.
"Gio!"
Giovanni stopped and turned just as Miyamoto caught up to him. She tried to stop too, but had to grab the handrail to stay upright. By reflex, Giovanni took her other arm to steady her.
Once she was on firm footing, he wrenched his arm back.
"You will address me correctly."
Miyamoto was still recovering her composure, but she spared him a critical eye.
"Touchy..."
"What do you want?" He started walking again.
She walked next to him, one hand following the handrail.
"Was she upset?"
...was she upset? Miyamoto had seen his mother rage at him before. She knew how his mother spoke, how savage she got. Giovanni risked taking his eyes off the treacherous steps long enough to throw Miyamoto a hateful look.
She was too busy watching her own feet to notice.
"Why don't you ask her?" he sneered. He picked up his pace and trotted down the last stretch of steps. At the door, he keyed himself and Persian inside and shut it before Miyamoto could catch up. When he was mostly down the hall to the elevators, he heard her scramble inside behind him and trot up again, undeterred. He stepped into an elevator as the doors opened and she popped in beside him.
"What did the boss say about Ariana's project? What's the plan?"
Giovanni continued to ignore her. If she kept following him, she would find out soon enough. And if she would stop running him down, he could think of it to begin with.
When he reached the entrance to the laboratory floor, he hesitated. He bought time by holding the door for several white-coated employees arriving for the day.
All of them bobbed in deference as they passed him. Once they were through, he heard his name ripple through their hushed conversation. He held the door a little longer and jerked his head for Miyamoto to enter too, then followed her inside.
The lab was mostly empty, except for the group that entered with them and a few scattered researchers working quietly at individual terminals. It was an expansive, open floor of half-height cubicles, lab benches, fume and laminar flow hoods, machines, and racks of equipment. Four free-standing glass-walled rooms were spaced evenly in the center.
Ariana's room was loaded wall-to-wall with her machines. On a pallet just outside it sat the intact barrels of suspension fluid. Giovanni glanced around for her tell-tale red hair. He was glad to see she had not yet arrived for the day.
Near the entrance door was a supply station, one of many throughout the lab. Giovanni punched a coffee order into the machine on the counter. While it brewed, he opened the cabinets and pulled down two blank legal pads. From a box on the counter, he grabbed pens. From a lidded jar, a treat he tossed to Persian. Miyamoto hovered nearby, watching him.
When his coffee was ready, he gathered it and the supplies and headed for Ariana's station.
Miyamoto pulled up alongside him again.
He thrust a pad and pen in front of her and she reflexively reached for it.
"Since you're here, you can help me inventory."
She took the items from his hand.
"Inventory what?"
"Parts. For sale."
Giovanni gave the cleaned server racks an appraising look as he passed. Approaching the glass room, he could hear the machines whirring away.
He spared a moment's pity for Ariana and her project - more than he had for himself. This result was exactly what he deserved. He shouldn't have tried to take a shortcut to his mother's respect. Now he had to buy back lost ground.
"You're going to tear the instruments apart and sell them for scrap?" Miyamoto asked loudly.
"Huh?"
Giovanni and Miyamoto both paused at the sound. Someone else was there. Two more steps and Giovanni stood in the doorway to the glass room.
She was impossible to see from outside, hunched forward over the table asleep, but Ariana sat within. She lifted her head, waking up slowly. On the white sleeve of her lab coat were two black smears and a red blotch where she'd rubbed off her makeup.
It seemed Giovanni would not have the benefit of dismantling the woman's life work outside her awareness.
Nothing would be simple today.
"Good morning," he said flatly. He sipped his coffee.
At the sound of his voice, Ariana jumped awake. She rubbed under eyes with her fingers, then turned to her reflection in the stainless steel side of the nearest machine and cleared up the smudges. She turned back to him, improved.
"Sir!" Belatedly, she hurried to stand, then tipped him a shallow bow.
"Sleeping on the job?"
"Not on purpose, no, sir. I was here late. I didn't mean to stay."
Miyamoto squeezed into the doorframe in front of Giovanni, then into the narrow space with Ariana and her equipment. She slipped behind the red-headed woman to peruse the readouts on the monitor.
"Did you make any matches yet?" Miyamoto asked.
Ariana looked to Giovanni. He appreciated that instinct. He arched his eyebrow, expressing his own interest in the answer.
"Well?"
"Let me check…"
Ariana turned to the screen and started typing. She didn't seem confident. After a couple minutes of clicking around under his and Miyamoto's watch, she turned back to them.
"The algorithm hasn't determined any matches yet. But! It has further confirmed that each unknown sequence belongs to a species of Pokémon. We still have more than half of our collected samples to run against them, and may yet find a match. That's about 60 more hours if we have to run them all."
Sixty hours would be long after his termination by the board if he didn't recover the company funds.
"Documentation is your new priority, Miss Ariana. Organize your sequenced models and your code, and copy it to the local network."
"Sir?"
"You can run this equipment until end of day." He gestured around the room with the coffee cup, then took a sip.
Ariana looked distraught.
Giovanni braced himself for tears.
Instead, the woman sat back down at the desk. She placed her head in her hands and rubbed a few circles into her temples. Then she looked up at the computer and got to work.
"I'll remind you we have copies of your system snapshotted. There will be consequences for anything missing or incorrectly catalogued."
She frowned and didn't look at him, but she nodded.
Miyamoto, wedged between Ariana and the suspension chamber, gave her a pat of solidarity on the shoulder. She twisted out of the tight spot and tried to shimmy out the doorway past Giovanni again.
Giovanni held up a hand and she halted.
"The inventory, Miyamoto. If there's anything here you or another pod have the spend to salvage, make a list. We can charge the items against those budgets. The rest will go to market."
Miyamoto shrugged. She took a step back into the room.
Behind her, facing away as she sat, Ariana began to sniffle.
For the first time that day, Giovanni was glad Miyamoto was around. She could tend to the crying employee.
"Come along, Persian, we've got some calls to make."
The cat heeled to Giovanni from wherever it had gotten off to, and the two made for the exit.