JUST BUSINESS | TERE

Melanie sat at the desk in her office, trying to decide what to do next. She wasn't quite sure that Tere was adjusting well to how the Garrison was being run, but dealing with it would be an issue. For someone who was used to being on their own and in charge of their own life, this had to be an adjustment of epic proportions. Maybe a good, old fashioned heart to heart would do everyone some good. As is, Braxton had nearly bit her head off when he finally got around to talking to her in person.

Picking up the coin that Tere gave her a few days back, Melanie left a message requesting that Tere meet her at the office in the House of Hades. Switching out the leather jacket she had been wearing for a lighter, less domineering cardigan. This wasn't a meeting to reprimand, it was a meeting to clear the air and figure out where to move on from here.


@tere

The song of the sea called her attention. Tere rose her teal eyes up from the map she had been working on, plotting courses and places to drop off things. Of course she wasn't dumb enough to mark either course headings or places where she would stow things for the other agents. No, that would invite others to know what and where. No good pirate tells the hunters where the treasure is.

Standing, she walked over to the singing sand dollar and turned it over in her hand, and as if the sea had lapped over its surface, the message appeared. She sighed softly and turned, tucking the sand doll into her pocket, she took hold of the maps and tucked them into her vest before heading out of her home and towards the HoH where she was being summoned too.

When she arrived she made her way to Melanie's office through the maze of the house and gave the door a soft tap of her knuckles.

When Melanie heard the knock at her door, she had just been finishing up the paperwork she brought with her in to the kitchenette to finish. The perks of working in such close quarters to her living space definitely showed though whenever she got tired of sitting in the office chair. Throwing the file in to her office, she pulled her hair back with a tie around her wrist before walking towards the door. She didn't even bother closing the one that separated the office from her suite. They wouldn't be staying there anyways.

Reminding herself to smile, she opened the door wide and greeted the woman on the other side. "Good Afternoon Teresia. Please come in." Gesturing towards the opening, she stepped back to allow Tere in to the space before closing the door behind her. "Feel free to make yourself comfortable. Can I get you something to drink?" At least here in the House of Hades, she could offer the comforts of a home. And alcohol. Thank the Gods for a fully stocked bar downstairs.

Tere stepped into the room and glanced around, however she didn't sit and when Mel offered her a drink, Tere did something that clearly was a sign of the apocalypse - she declined with a shake of her head. Glancing at Mel, she pulled the maps from their hiding spot and glanced over at the desk for a moment before final choosing to speak. "Is something wrong, Mel or is this just a social call?" She asked in an even tone.

Melanie smiled and leaned back against the wall. "A little bit of both actually." Well, maybe this wouldn't be quite as pleasant as she had hoped. Normally she and her people had quite a good relationship, but she and Tere hadn't been able to spend any time together. No training, no sparring. Just the command initiated sit down. "You see, Captain Sine, I pride myself on having a good relationship with my people. It's what makes us a team, and it's what keeps us alive. That is something that has been neglected with you and your girls due to an increase in off island activity, and I apologize for that."

Moving to sit at the bar in the kitchen, the chair turned to where she could see Tere, she continued her thought. "However, it has also been called to my attention that you specifically haven't been settling well. I don't want this to be a formal meeting, but I do want to take the opportunity to talk to you. See if we can't make some things make more sense. I know this is a difficult place to be in. The rules are weird and everyone but us is in charge most days." Granted, Mel had more pull in some places than others. Fin would let her get away with murder. No amount of love or...well, she wouldn't go there... would let her get away with sneezing wrong at Braxton most days.

Tere's brow lifted sharply when Mel called her 'captain' according to some people she was little above pond scum, according to Mel she was just an agent. Tere tucked her hands into her back pockets and her Teal eyes rested on the woman, watching her walk about a bit before sitting down and facing her. She said she had a good working relationship with the others and Tere just stood stoic, her face giving nothing away. Tere started to say something but silenced herself as Melanie continued on.

Her arms tensed a little as she gripped onto the fabric of her pockets, starting to get a feeling that she wasn't liking, and now that her sister was no longer a chancellor, or rather the chancellor, she was unsure of what would or could happen to her. One thing she said though almost had her snort, she didn't, she just bit the inside of her cheek and continued to stare at her for a moment. "So what do we do then?" She asked softly, unsure of how to even talk now, and that was something that annoyed the hell out of her.

Run her mind told her... take the song and take control of your life again.

Melanie smiled for a moment before gesturing towards the open chair beside her and then to the three open seats across the room. "First you make yourself comfortable. Your posture suggest that you are tense, ready for reprimand or an interrogation. Neither of those are happening today, unless random superior officers burst through the door." Which, wasn't going to happen. They were all too busy right now to mess with things such as personally coming to her office to boss her around. No, they would just call.

"Next, you start telling me what's wrong so we can figure out how to fix it. If I don't know, I can't help. With the changing political client, we're going to need everyone on board and working as a team." Tere and her girls would be an important part of her operations soon, especially with the strict laws going in to place on immigration. It would require more training on everyone's part, at least until the new system was worked out, but it would be worth it in the end.

Tere gave a slight nod and willed herself to relax a bit, taking a seat in the first seat that was offered, her eyes moving about to take in the office a bit. Melanie said this wasn't about reprimand so she took a deep breath and then turned her eyes on the woman, crossing her legs and relaxing back into the chair. Still, there was a small part of her that was waiting for someone to tell her off, but she shook it off and took a breath before saying. "The only thing I am having a real problem with is the whole not knowing who is who, who is over who, and the fact that I have been in command, in control for so long. It's hard to bow down to others now, especially those far younger than myself. It's difficult to swallow." She said, resting her hands on the arms of the chair, stroking them slowly, letting her teal eyes watch as she did so.

"Well, the good news from what I've heard is that you've already met our top four." Melanie started, deciding to tackle the chain of command first. "The Chancellor and the Commander are our top two, though when in doubt defer to the Chancellor and then inform someone higher than yourself, generally me, if you aren't sure if that was the best decision." Alright, it had only happened once, but sometimes wires did get crossed. Panama was a fun experiment with that mess.

"Under the Commander, you have our Colonels, Wyatt and Rockefeller. They are very much so the boss in charge of me, and have the power to make everyone's lives miserable. Finley won't do that, but Colonel Wyatt...steer clear of him unless you have specific orders. He won't mess with you if you don't mess with him, in general. I'm not sure what kind of mood you caught him in, but he generally isn't that bad." Fin was definitely Brax's better half, which is why she and her people worked with him so closely. "Are we good up to that point, or do you want to know what specific powers our beloved Colonel's possess? Feel free to stop me at any time. I don't want to leave a question unanswered when you leave here today."

Tere listened to Mel, though so far everything she said she had covered in the last meeting they had. That wasn't her problem, it was the fact that people here didn't wear ranks or their names on their chest, and she wasn't a mind reader, so how was she to know who was and who wasn't over her. Though, if she thought about it, it seemed everyone was over her. She had zero control. "So far I know them, I know where they are now, that isn't the problem. The problem is when people get upset for me not bowing down and kissing their ass, like they expect me to know who they are and their rank, when I have met them once for one moment and even then didn't know their name, or have never met them before. I have no clue who is who and yet I'm the one getting beat for it, they all seem to know who am I and where I stand. It should be a two way street if they demand respect the moment I meet them. Plus, when you first told me about this job, you said only you and Ember would know, and that I could continue to call myself a captain. How is any of that my fault if I'm told one thing and expected to know another? I'm not a mind reader." She said and she realized that she was going off on a rant now so she stood up, started pacing the floor because it was the only thing she had control over. Herself.

She continued to pace back and forth, running her hand through her hair. She needed some form of control. She was losing everything to this place it seemed. Then she glanced over to the woman and sighed "I need control, I've had it for 7 years and to lose it all... To lose it all now..." She dropped down into a hunch, bowing her head into her knees, her arms around her legs. She was shivering with a mix of anger and distress.

Melanie sighed before standing up to make her way to where Tere sat. "Alright, Teresia. Let me tell you how I see it. When I am on this island, I only have slightly more control than you do. Even then, it's more delegation than actual control. Your sister, now Masin, could send me wherever she wanted to at the drop of a hat, no questions asked. So could the Commander. Do you think they ask? No." If that was the case, they wouldn't have lost Tavie and so many others. So many things that could've gone better if she had more control over things.

"But you know where we do have control, where we do get to be our own people? Off the island. The mainland, the sea...we get to be free there. If you give this up, you lose that control. This is the ONLY job that will allow you both worlds. I'm not sure where you are going to stand now that Masin is in charge. She may tighten the reigns a bit more, not allow you to leave like Ember Lynn would have, but for now... you could go whenever you wanted to and still be welcomed back. You have more freedom than almost anyone on this island. You have more freedom than I do." And she did. Melanie had responsibilities, protocols. Tere had been given a special job by her sister that would allow her to do as she pleased. She was in a grey area, somewhere where she could still be in control, just not here.

"As for chain of command, even I wasn't sure what exactly Ember Lynn was talking about there. She might have intended for you to be exempt from it, but when I have bosses, my people have bosses. I just have to follow her lead. It's in the job description." Now she would follow Masin's, hopefully in a better direction. Maybe the two of them could actually get something done about the issues instead of pretending everything was alright.

Tere sighed, running her hand through her hair, glancing over at the woman as she spoke to her. She liked control, and she could live with it just being at sea, but that wasn't all that she wanted. She wanted a bit of respect, she was one of the oldest people on the island that she knew about aside from her sisters and Ashton, she didn't demand it, but it was usually better to show respect in order to get it. She closed her eyes, lowered her head again, running her hand through her mahogany locks again and again.

Eventually, Tere returned her teal gaze to Mel and nodded, "I guess we will have to see how Masin handles things... But in truth, it's not freedom I'm worried about, and while I need that sense of control and get bitchy when I don't feel it, it's not just those things I expect. I'm one of the oldest people on this island and while I may not have been here long, I want to protect it, I did work to protect it at the battle almost to the point of death, I think I deserve to be shown a little respect before I'm demanded to give it to young shits."

She stood slowly, stretching out her long legs a bit to work out the tension that had built up because of the position she had stayed in. Tere looked to Mel and continued with her thoughts. "I feel I deserve to be given a chance to give my respect before it is demanded of me against my will. When I met Fin, he earned my respect. When I spoke to Owain, he earned my respect. Masin had earned my respect. Do you know what they all have in common? They treated me with respect first, they earned mine, they didn't get pissy and demand it of me when I didn't even know who they were in comparison to me - well, I knew Owain's status so I showed him a bit of respect first - but Fin, Masin, I didn't know who or what they were in comparison to me, still they gave me a measure of respect, they didn't demand it of me and then send someone else to tell me off when I didn't." She knew she was ranting now, but these were her feelings and she needed to get them out.

Melanie couldn't help but laugh quietly. Oh yea, this was definitely a Braxton issue. That boy was going to get her killed one of these days, she was certain of it. "If it helps, I sympathize with the frustration of dealing with Colonel Wyatt. Most of intelligence steers clear of him when they can. Hence the whole working with Fin thing." Brax could be a pain in the ass, almost literally. At the end of the day, though, he was still a superior and what he said had to go.

"Fin is a different breed, a true leader. I have no doubt that if anything were to ever happen to the Commander, that Fin would take his place. Before all of this, he was a leader of the Romans, along with my late brother Zane." Now that, that hurt to think about. She couldn't go there, not now. "Assuming that things calm down soon, I'm hoping that relations between intelligence and the Minotaur command can be restored, but I can't promise anything." Settling in against the wall, she waited for Tere to continue her rant. If this is what the girl needed, she would listen as best as she could.

Tere glanced over to Mel, listening to her understate things, that is until she took notice to the fact that she had said 'late brother'. So there had been casualties of the battle, she hadn't heard about the deaths, but she wasn't silly enough to believe that they hadn't lost lives on their side as well. It was a well planned and executed attack, one that might have been stopped of at least slowed down if there had been people looking out for such things. Surely that many didn't just appear, they had to have boats, boats she could have sank.

Running her hand through her hair again she glanced to Mel "I'm sorry for your loss." She said softly and leaned against the wall. "So what now?" She asked, her head hitting against the wall with a slight thud.

Melanie nodded her head at Tere's condolences before taking a breath to steady herself. "He was a good leader and a brave man. He died a hero's death." The finality in her voice wasn't meant to steer anyone away from the topic, but more to remind herself that it had happened. Her indestructible brother, blown away while trying to save the innocents. "Right now, we need to discuss your options. I won't ask you to stay in a situation you are uncomfortable with, but I also won't ask you to leave. There is a war coming, and we'll need every person we can get. At the end of the day, the decision is yours. I just need to know how we can make this work."