[center][h3][color=#b3ccff]Esben Mathiassen[/color][/h3][/center]
[hr]

[color=#b3ccff]"Would I ask you if I wasn't certain?"[/color]

Given everything that he could see was about to happen, it was best to keep the girl away from the mess happening with Mizutani, lest her willingness to work with the group be rapidly diminished. Certainly, she knew that the plan was to kill the crime lord and gather up her head...but such things were rarely so simple, and the sound of the altercation behind him only made that point more obvious. It had the added benefit of keeping her out of the way herself, in a situation that was full of chances for things to go even more wrong than was already bound to occur.

[color=#b3ccff]"Come on, then, we'll have to be quick about it!"[/color]

A rapid search of the building—except for where the combustion and its destruction proved enough of an obstruction that they couldn't get past—led them quickly down into the basement, and Mizutani Tane's personal office. The documents on and in the desk were swept up rapidly, Esben not giving Robin a chance to see anything more than that they existed, folded and slipped into a pocket on the inside of his cloak, before he turned back to the more obvious valuables strewn throughout the room, grabbing at the goods at random and slipping them into all his other pockets. [color=#b3ccff]"Well, now, what to do with all of this? I may get Arton to come down this way and help carry some more of it out. Make sure to grab as much as you can, [i]ja?"[/i][/color]

[hr]

On his way back up the mansion to reconvene with the others, he'd had a few moments to scan the records that Mizutani had kept by the now-abundant firelight. Business records, mostly, both legitimate and not; but there was a wealth of other information present. Missives from Valheimer officials, more personal dealings, various reports, even a few pages that were written almost as though they were meant to be for a journal than for records such as these. All together, they painted a fairly clear picture of everything that Mizutani had been involved with, including with the occupiers—and implicated Ciradyl in a large portion of it.

Obviously, she'd had something to hide; now it was obvious [i]what.[/i]

Once they'd re-entered the safehouse he was able to start delving deeper into them, tracking down more names. Valheimer officials, other local criminals of some repute, rebel leaders and personnel of other cells that were either given up to the occupiers or [i]otherwise[/i] rendered unworthy of note...some names that he could recognize, both from news and study of the recent wars and from far more recent events than that. Unsurprisingly, however, the rest wouldn't allow him any time to piece the rest of it together for them before deciding it was time to interrogate Ciradyl over it.

[i][color=#b3ccff]Ah, well. It can't be helped.[/color][/i]

As everybody more or less resumed their spaces from earlier meetings in the same room, with noticeable space between them and the Faye that had drawn their scrutiny, Esben broke from the pack. His cushion was kicked over past Ciradyl's, where he sat down, his back against her own as he stretched his legs out and used her to balance against. He lazily flipped through the sheaf of papers he had back to where he'd last been reading, though not without leaning his head back over Ciradyl's shoulder and whispering in a low tone:

[color=#b3ccff]"Be honest, would you? Otherwise we'll have a much harder time dealing with all this than we ought."[/color]