With the mission over successfully and the pay distributed, the team now had a month of downtime. Bailey didn't actually need the downtime, she was more than used to running missions back-to-back after all, but that didn't mean she didn't appreciate the opportunities such time granted.
For the first week she did what she could to address the skill requirements that she had been informed she would need to reach in order to properly work for her new superiors. The task was a bit daunting she could admit to herself at least, but she would ensure she pleased her superior as much as she could. Unfortunately, her resources at Tao-Jinn were rather limited since she had only just joined, so she was only able to improve her skill at Assessing Technology.
At least she reached the threshold her superior required.
After that though, Bailey still had three more weeks of downtime to deal with so she used them as best she could to establish herself within her new environment, and that meant getting back in touch with contacts and suppliers. Or just supplier as there was really only one person Bailey went to when she wanted something that she couldn't get from her employer.
The person in question was a man by the name of Samuel Winter, and while he wasn't the most well known arms dealer, nor the most powerful, he was certainly the best in Bailey's opinion. If you had the patience and the money there was literally nothing the man couldn't acquire for a customer, up to and including a small, experimental stealth submarine.
Bailey had completed half a dozen missions from the man, mostly to eliminate potential competitors but she had also done the occasional bits of corporate espionage when asked, though whatever info she acquired had also gone to the Western Federation at the time.
Were she still with the Western Federation, Bailey would've only needed to send the man a message and payment and then she would have had what she wanted, but now that she was with Tao-Jinn she had to rebuild that connection. Middlemen had to be arrange, dead drop points decided upon, contract rates agreed to, licenses validated (or at least faked), and a whole host of other things to ensure that Bailey could get what she needed when she needed it and without the interference of the governments or the corporations.
She also completed the odd series of puzzles or questions that her new superior sent her during that three week period. Bailey never got everything right and sometimes she outright failed the tests, but she had been informed that they were merely a means of establishing her full breadth of skills and what she required further training in.
Over the course of the downtime, Bailey did make sure to spend some time doing less work related activities including checking out the apartment she had received from her new superior. She wasn't quite sure what the hell she should actually do with all the space provided by her modestly pre-furnished Medium Apartment but it'd make a good fallback point if nothing else. As such she made sure to quietly establish a decently large cache of supplies there, hidden away throughout the multi-room apartment.
Bailey spent a little bit of time interacting her new teammates, but over all she merely kept her distance and observed them, learning their habits and quirks and building a better understanding of their skills and abilities. She made deathly certain to keep her distance from Irissa though, for that part of her was long since dead, buried, and rotted away. It had died that night the firestorm had swept through the slums, taking everything she had cared for with it.
Eventually though, the four week break period was over and it was time to get back to work.
Summary:
- 5 exp spent, Assess Tech advanced to Rank 6.
- Contact Maxed: Samuel Winter, Arms Dealer - Level 10.
- Contact Improved: Hyperion - Level 3.
