“Oh, I see. Poor Elodir, that has to be terribly frustrating. The adorable code phrases must only make up for it a little.”

"I think most people take them a little bit more seriously than that."

"Most people are allowed to be wrong about things," she says serenely.

"Do you have an alternative first-pass idea?"

"Not really, my point is not that they're impractical, just that if people are not delighted by their existence, they're incorrect."

He laughs. "Alright, I see your point. I am sure the other orders have similar things, anyway."

"But James, I was charmed by this one first!"

"That seems like a flawed decision criterion!"

"Yes, but there is no perfect decision criterion, so I might as well go with the one I find the most entertaining!"

"I feel like there's a flaw in that argument somewhere, too."

"Nonsense, I never make any of those, you must be imagining things."

"Of course, dear."

    Elodir returns, dragging an annoyed-looking asura and a charr.

        "Commander," the charr says.

            "Commander," agrees the asura. "I trust this is very important? This one," she continues, giving Elodir a look, "seems to think so, but I have learnt to not trust him."

    "A wrong lesson to learn if there ever was one," says the sylvari, unashamed.

Vetareh snorts.

"It's for the Commander, actually," it is so weird to call him that instead of by his name, but she knows how to play along to people's customs, "and also me, but not knowing me at all I expect helping him will be more compelling."

            "Now that is a surprise," says the asura.

"Vetareh and I seem to have been infected with some sort of magical affliction and the Lightbringer," (Elodir huffs when James uses this title), "wanted to use a necromancer and a mesmer as basis to analyse our magical signatures."

    "But she's special," the Lightbringer can't help but bring up, "because she has a secondary profession. Given to her by the human gods."

        "Is that so?" wonders the charr, turning to examine Vetareh with more attention than before. "I thought they had left."

"It's complicated. In any case, let's stop skipping the introductions here, why don't we?" says James, amused.

        The charr snorts. "Agent Nelia Poisonbreaker, at your service," she says, saluting.

            "Agent Smipa. A pleasure," the asura adds dryly. "And you're Vetareh, yes? Shall we get the pleasantries out of the way and finish this so I can get back to my work?"

    "Please forgive Smipa, I think she has been trying to stop drinking coffee and that has had an effect," says the Lightbringer.

Vetareh resists the urge to snicker at Elodir's and the Agents' antics, instead giving a proper Orrian curtsy.

"I am indeed Vetareh, a pleasure to meet you both. It's fine, I wouldn't want to keep you longer than necessary," she demurs.

            "Yes, yes, good, what do we need to do?" wonders Smipa.

    "Just put your hand here, I'll compare your signature to the Commander's and Nelia's... well, I'll need to figure out how to tell things apart with Vetareh but I'm sure it won't be a problem."

James grins fondly at Vetareh while the Agents get their signatures collected.

She grins back! It's distracting that his pretty face is out and about instead of hidden behind spikes and fire. Not a bad kind of distracting, but. Distracting.

After Elodir is done collecting their data the Agents salute again and return to their work. "Right, then! Let's see what I'll find." He places the device on a little rectangular indent of the wall where it somehow sticks in spite of gravity and then a section of the wall lights up to show a lot of writing going by really fast. "Just a minute, need to boot this up."

Well, obviously Vetareh is going to try to figure out what the writing is about! She might not manage it, but it's something to do, and she despises boredom.

It seems to be giving information about the initialisation of various... things? The names seem to be the kinds of things the asura would invent, like "Aetheric Alterator" or "Enormously Massive Data Storage Unit Lite", but if they're referring to any actual physical... things... those things are nowhere visible, or not reacting in any way if so.

Huh! That's interesting. At some point she should probably acquire at least a basic knowledge of how different Asuran tech works, but now is probably not the time for that. She'll keep reading over Elodir's shoulder, though, that seems like a worthwhile endeavor.

After another few seconds, something like a graphical interface not too different from the ones Taimi uses pops up, and Elodir starts quickly tapping various things on the screen. He reaches a point where a diagram of a human shows up, with highlighted glowy points around its body and thin vein-like connections between them. He rotates the diagram and taps various parts with purpose even if the order seems to be random, but the colour of the lights changes as he does that and various diagnostics data appear when they do.

He starts humming tunelessly to himself while that happens, almost but not quite as if he was talking aloud about his thoughts.

Vetareh would actually prefer if he were talking aloud about his thoughts instead of just humming to himself. ... She's getting bored already, trying to figure out what Elodir's doing with little to no context and no outside help is very like how she kept herself amused in the Mists, and she has not had enough time or distance to get completely over it.

This is the point where she'd go snuggle James and have him distract her, but also they're kind of on duty, and she would kind of like to not end up making out (or... other things) in a closet in his adorable secret society's library. Not... that this is what would end up happening, no, no, that would be silly, she and he are far too professional for th—hahaha okay she'll stop lying, it's totally what would happen with the both of them bored and with nothing better to do. Even if they could probably totally get away with it, because he likely knows this place well enough to know all of the out of the way nooks, and she's a mesmer. Great, now she's reminded of Kas's illusionary clothes, that is not helping.

She looks at James. C'mon, one of them has to be reasonable, can't she pass the reasonable stick to him this time...? It's his fault for showing off his pretty face, this was much easier when he was covered in spikes and fire.

His pretty face is being shown there, yep, all austere and serious, arms folded, eyes closed, concentrated in his thoughts probably.

........

...........maybe a bit too concentrated in his thoughts, actually.

She squints at him, then she leans over and pokes him. Jerk. Sleeping while standing up is very clever, and also tactically smart, but also, they're in this together and so he does not get to just tap out because nothing's happening.