Before the breathless courier can press another ink-stained dispatch into Ryan's hands, a booming, parade-ground voice echoes across the damp cobblestones of the foggy transit square. A towering, heavily armored quartermaster thrusts his way through the morning mist, planting a gauntleted hand on his hip and barking demands for an immediate accounting of the missing arquebus inventory before the magistrate begins his inspection of the garrison. The gruff, unapologetic volume carries the exact, abrasive energy of a regional warehouse supervisor chewing out a coordinator over a discrepancy in high-value promotional display stock right before a major product launch.
Ryan lets out a quiet, bone-weary sigh—the exact hollow exhale he usually reserves for a late-arriving vendor claiming that a pallet of fragile event hardware got "lost in transit." Adjusting the massive, cold-welded brass ledger and his stray office mouse inside his bulging canvas messenger bag, he offers the roaring quartermaster a mild, unimpressed nod. With the deadpan diplomacy of a salaryman attempting to close an inconvenient administrative ticket, Ryan treats centuries-old firearms with the clinical, unbothered tedium of a standard inventory reconciliation, hoping to wave away the officer's complaints long enough to finally find his platform connection.