Corporate Warfare [Arlette, Steiner]

Operations in the City of Lights were going well enough, Arlette supposed. She'd put together enough of a security setup with Bauher's help that she could finally have guests in her penthouse. Not that she was the type of socializing, of course, but she needed to occasionally speak in person when it came to business. South Pacific Logistics Incorporated was an impressive company, certainly, but she'd need more people involved if she wanted to see her goals accomplished. Many of the more famous technicians and inventors were squarely in the pocket of the Duvalier Group, so she looked smaller, toward those individuals who were not currently operating on a scale to catch Claudia's interest.

Steiner Halford fit well into that category. Arlette sent a formal letter of invitation to the young man, asking simply that he come to the City of Lights to discuss a potential career. No further details could be shared, naturally, but she gave a date and time that he was expected to come.

When he arrived, he would be checked by quite thorough security measures, anything and everything to both verify his identity and ensure he had no Duvalier Group surveillance on his person. Only then would he be allowed into the elevator, to the top floor of the building where Arlette sat in wait, cigarette in hand.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Halford. Thank you for coming."

It was not every day one received a formal invitation and even more so from a group of this level of prestige. Sure, money had recently become less of a problem for the Halford family, but the chances of him being able to remove more stress for his parents was always worth looking into. Besides, he was genuinely excited to go into this meeting, and talk shop, if even a little. After all, businesses such as this didn't come knocking unless they were extremely interested in hiring, or even bringing in a person on commission. Either way, Steiner saw this as an opportunity to expand outside of just working in his parent's attic, and actually see some actual cutting edge tech.

So, he packed his bags, and prepared his best suit to make the trip to the City of Light, which was no easy feat for anyone involved. The financial burden alone would have caused him hesitation, but his parents were willing to throw money at the problem, and help him pay his way. Then the actual boarding and disembarking part of the trip caused unwanted stress, at one particular point he believed he had lost his suitcase full of his designs and a few prototypes. Luckily they had been expedient in finding his bags and returning them to him, then came the discussion around the fact that he was bringing weird gadgets with him.

Everyone believed all the devices he was toying around with were just explosives or bombs of some kind, at one point he thought he was going to spend some time in prison, but luckily he was bailed out by some quick thinking. Eventually, after a great deal of stress came the real test. The security of the penthouse to which he would be entering. They were thorough, maybe a bit too thorough, in their approach to searching his person, and his bags. He waited patiently for them to clear him, even though his patience was being tested to a mad degree. By this point Steiner had spent several days on the road via multiple methods of transport and most of the civility that he had was long gone, but he remembered why he was there.

He was there to meet a big wig, somebody with the power to make, or break him for the foreseeable future. This was his chance, this was his moment to truly become the inventor that he had always wanted to be. Now all he had to do was step in this penthouse and literally sell himself as hard as he could, he tried to think of it as nothing more than being on the job, but he was panicking. Heart racing a bit abnormally and his confidence a bit shaky thanks to handsy security, Steiner Halford stepped into the penthouse from the elevator he had been riding on.

"Thanks for the invitation, Ms. Ovide."

He said as he straightened his tie and gave her the most confident smile he could muster.

"I don't get out much, but I must say the City of Light is quite breathtaking."

Small talk, it was an important part of sales, and right now Steiner was going to sell himself as hard as he could.

Hearing her last name certainly didn't please Arlette, given her circumstances, but she could hardly say it was something worth being bothered by. After all, any sensible person would be polite as Steiner had been, and so she simply offered him a small smile as response to his smalltalk. It was not a gesture that came particularly naturally to her, but it was certainly done in earnest.

"Yes, this place is certainly lovely. That's part of why I intend to protect it, at least in the ways I can."

After all, it wasn't as if her having been here would have protected anyone from Ichigo Kurosaki's rampage. But she could still help with plenty of smaller matters than that.

"I won't waste your time trying to sell you on my company's bottom line, or even our ethics. It's our aim to develop the City of Lights' security to a position where they aren't concerned about more subtle threats, and I'd like to hire you on for that project. Electronic warfare, infiltration. Things that tend to get overlooked in a spiritual conflict. I think an engineer like yourself would be suited to that, and I can assure you that you'd be working with other competent minds in your field. My chief parter is Bauher Kleinmund, one of the minds behind Karakura Central's defense systems."