Ronald sat as his desk, pondering his meeting with Lita. He nearly hadn't made it out of there, He shuddered. Even a full 24 hours later the fury in her eyes as she realized that he was standing in her was scared him. Despite his best efforts at talking his way out of there, it barely worked. His gamble had failed. His attempt at pitting the two departments against each other had failed, and his life nearly taken in payment. 

He had never really been one for power. To him it was a means to an end, and he wouldn't, couldn't, let it be any more. That hunger that possessed Lita was common in the DA. Each scientist and acolyte in these unhallowed Alleys starved for something, whether it was knowledge, or power, or blood, or cookies. They had this primal drive that pushed them to take for takings sake, and while it was so dreadfully common, it did give them strength.

For hundreds of thousands of years, humans feared the night. Not for supernatural reasons as some would have you believe, but simply because predators lived there. Mere animals, creatures so far beneath us that we farmed them by the thousands now. Yet early on they terrified us, because they had this same hunger. They would push themselves harder and faster then we ever could, simply because they knew that we were food. We merely survived initially because our hunger for life outpaced theirs, but we only started thriving once we learned temperance. When we learned that we could outlast them in a hunt, by chasing them for days or even weeks, we started to thrive. When we learned that by sitting and waiting over a meager field of crops, we could grow our families and establish ourselves far bigger then we ever had by running ourselves to death hunting, we started progressing toward civilization. This ability to temper our passions and control ourselves led us to be the truly remarkable beings that we were today, but Ronald found himself surrounded by humans that gave into this passion, and worse of being, being completely outclassed by them. No matter how he played it, he was weak. And his ability to survive and play the long game did him no good if someone shot him in the back. 

It was clear, after facing the ire of one of the department heads, that he needed more power. Not for its own sake, but to protect his life. If he was to sit at this high stakes table, working with and around department heads, he would need a bigger get out of jail free card. If they were displeased with him, they could simply kill him with a blink of their eye. He sighed. The one good thing about this situation was that the DA was exactly the place where anyone seeking power should be. But he couldn't just pick up any power. He needed a power that he could control.

Walking up to his wall of books, he started pulling the ones off that discussed investiture. While he wasn't a researcher, it behooved him to have some resources nearby to reference the various powers he might come across. He started scanning through the tables of context, and slowly he came to the realization that this was going to be much more difficult then simply going to the store and picking out a couch. You see, in order for this new source of power to become useful, it needed three things. The first was that he needed to be in control. The second was that it couldn't change him too dramatically. And the third was that it needed to be strong enough to give him enough time to slip away from department heads.

Very, very few things fit that bill.

The metallic arts seemed to fit most things right off the bat. A fullborn certainly had enough power to take on the Department heads, and hemalurgy was readily available. But he couldn't use hemalurgy under any circumstance. The insanity brought on by an entropic god whispering in your ear would change him too much for it to be considered a victory, and to become a full born he would need a lot of spikes. If he could find lerasium, he could be a mistborn, but that still left 16 spikes for feruchemy. He knew his limits, there was no way in heck he would be able to survive that.

Awakening was very controllable, and certainly didn't change himself all that much, but the power it granted likely wouldn't be enough for face off the department heads. He would also need to surround himself with miles of fabric to even have a chance at getting it to work. While potentially strong enough to face off against a department head, there wasn't anything in his book that would show how a non Nalthian could awaken. It did have the  benefit of not requiring Hemalurgy however. Awakening was on the table.

Selish magics on the other hand seemed very much out of his reach. He wasn't from Sel, and as such didn't have any of the connection necessary to obtain these powers naturally. Hemalurgy or medallions would work, but Hemalurgy was out of the picture, and while medallions could potentially be used to obtain the power he would need further research to figure out if they were viable in the long term. More importantly, while being an Elantrian would certainly give them enough power to fight against the department heads, his reliance on the Cognitive realm would certainly pose an issue. At the push of a button they could simply cut of the Dor pipeline to the alleyverse and he would be done for. No Selish magics were too vulnerable.

He worked his way down the list. Yolish magics were to weak, sand mastery was too environmentally dependent. Epic powers were unobtainable without hemalurgy, and they came with the anger that changed him, so they were out. Cytonics were unobtainable without hemalurgy. Aethers too weak. The chalk stuff from that odd earth place, while interesting, was still too weak. The old magic from Roshar was powerful, but came at a cost. And with a request as powerful as this, the odds that the cost took something important away from him were too great. What he needed was an arbitrage. A known benefit and a known cost that he could exploit for his profit. 

He was nearing the end of his meager library when he came across surgebinding. This... could work, he thought. He read the descriptions of the honor blades and their power, as well as the knights radiant. Certainly he could escape from a department head with this much power, and he was in control. Ethically it seemed like a fit as well, with temperance and control as its biggest strengths. Yet that strength was also its weakness. The oaths were predetermined, and they constrained him in ways that he didn't appreciate. Perhaps that was negotiable. At the end of the chapter he noticed a footnote, stating that bonding with many cognitive entities was theorized to be possible. Perhaps their oaths were different, or their powers different. Certainly it warranted research.

He stood up, shook his head as if to clear it, and checked his watch. It had been a full 8 hours of reading, but it seemed like it wasn't over yet. His resources weren't enough, but he knew the DA had a vast library, one that contained all the knowledge in the universe. It wasn't very useful, being that most of it was unintelligible nonsense, but the Library of Babel had what he needed. Hopefully the assistants would be able to help him locate this information.