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Lilian Rook     Even before the Onslaught, the average person would struggle to find out anything about Quoin or Jazira Zuqar without already living in the region. Now, even Lilian Rook, with the considerable resources at-- well, Special Operations Chief Gerart's fingers, with whom she can rack up almost infinite favours-- is practically flying blind.

    Even having this much locational precision is a challenge; the orbital coordinates etched into the Voyager Golden Record weren't as precise as anything originally machined into it on Earth. Nowhere south of Cairo is on friendly enough terms with what passes for 'the global order' these days to divulge anything about their Warpgates, much less offer further travel, so even getting there is a matter of a twelve hour private flight aboard the aircraft stolen by Bond from the Russian G.D.F, wrecked in the Ural mountains, transported by Arthur to Kansai, miraculously restored by an anonymous someone in the Himorogikage, and flown through Moscow just to start.

    The notification of 'scientific armed field investigation' comes through the LSCC (and thus FDMO) channels Lilian has now, but mostly through the Paladins proper, and also Petra. The number of people she will tolerate at all on a twelve hour flight is excruciatingly low, and so her 'gentle urging' is that, if people don't want to waste their day, they wait until she makes landfall, and performs one of her major field roles in the Immunes: the construction of a forward transport beacon that is accessed by pre-Unification means. Instructions include finding a secluded 'arch' of any variety, turning off all navigation instruments, reciting a middle-length bit of verbal incantation, and keeping your eyes clsoed when stepping through.

    The principles include cutting through a between-space of the global Otherworld and the blasted surface of the Earth, but that's not important. What matters is that you exit through a stone arch door, overgrown with vines and out-of-season flowers, in the back corner of Abu Ail; a turn of the century (20th, not 21st) stone and mortar lighthouse complex on near-edge of a barren and sandy volcanic rock. More properly, you arrive in the attached complex; a humble, square, unevenly two-storey building bleached by nearly two centuries of weather.

    The architecture is practically medieval. The lettering, where there is any, is in French first and Arabic second. The lightless, dusty insides are more like a historic police station than anything. Very little has been moved out of the white-and-red painted VTOL in the traditional-style courtyard and up the stairs. Only out of the eastward arch windows can you see the humble, rust-coated husk of the lighthouse, bafflingly untouched by global apocalypse for its sheer irrelevance.
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Involve again

    Arthur is here! Not via LSCC. Or FDMO. Or Paladins. Or Petra. He's just here because at this point he might as well be a fixture of the Phantom Circle operations. He was CCed on the emails and even when someone removes him, someone else inevitably adds him back. Bafflingly, he even took the plane (he insisted on showing Lilian an old DVD he had of The Blues Brothers on the in-flight screen).

> Arthur: Hang out, make gates

    Then he "made up for it" by helping out with the portal. Though, admittedly, since Lilian mostly has it covered, he also spends a good chunk of time on other work. Namely, mapping out the exact range based on what decimal point was cut off where, traced on maps that somehow become visible markers in 'UI' when looking out the window.

> Arthur: Travel vlog about this

    "FEELS LIKE," He mutters. "I gotta be WALKING AROUND and calling this AMAZING and then plugging my PRODUCT PLACEMENT into a CAMERA. Girl this shit be GLOBE-TROTTING FOR REAL." He stares out of the lighthouse, idly mapping things out in his head -- angles of things within the estimation zone relative to the lantern of the lighthouse, maybe. Or shadow-casting angles at times of day corresponding to certain orbital periods based on the orbital coordinates. All kinds of complete scattershot Indiana-Jones riddle-solving nonsense.

    "Ya got PLANS or you want me to just start FLYING AROUND until I get MINIMAP PINGS?" He asks, still looking out the east windows.
Tamamo     An abundance of concern is the most likely reason for Tamamo not having waited for a summons. A disposition toward warding is another. A few hours into the flight, she's feeling some regret for her decision, but not enough to not make the same exact decision the next time identical circumstances should arise. She even keeps her complaints about the relative lack of amenities to herself, as she attempts to spend as much time as she can asleep. What time she isn't, she's using a portable stove to refresh herself, and sharing with Lilian (and with anyone else who made the same poor decision). Arriving with the feeling of 'having been on a twelve hour trip' is something she'd really like to avoid, and is partially successful, but she still has to dip into her supply of mystical restoratives by the end, when the caffeine of tea is insufficient.

    Time spent after that, while Lilian sets up the portal, is more productive. In a presumed-hostile environment, even one as seemingly overlooked as this, Tamamo sets about laying out rows of talismans to define boundaries and arrays, leaving some just unfinished for later activation, and others immediately active for their subtler protections. If being overlooked was this place's only line of defense, that's something she can supplement, to an extent. For the most part, however, 'early warning' would be a better descriptor, as she arranges her design for continual monitoring of the surroundings, past the immediate scan.
Lilian Rook     On a greater level than any specific reason, the impression you get from your very first step over the threshold is that this is a place lost to time.

    On such a small island, with no wild plants, the building reached its maximum level of dirt and dust and disrepair fifty years ago. Anything that could have been corroded by salt already has been long before that. With ordinary cleaning supplies and a little determination, the old-fashioned slate flooring would shine and show its decorative patterns again. The dirty bulbs in the ancient electrical system could be replaced, and still aesthetically resemble old gas lighting from France.

    The sejadah left behind still tell of the very last shift, nearly a hundred years ago; of their number, age, wealth, and piety, just as the rusted frames of each of the few beds still dutifully support their petrified and useless mattresses. Wipe off the grime, and you'll find posters, photographs, books, keys, cigarette cases, cologne bottles, charms, tickets, keepsakes, and even a deflated soccer ball. The aggressively western construction, down to the old rails on its stairs, the locks and shutters, the pegs for hats and lack of place for shoes, and the corroded iron door with flaking paint down to a dead generator, only make it feel warmly alien.

    The kitchen is out of date. The gas stove has outlived the broken iduction plate. The calendar on the wall says 2036. There are nothing but stains in the ceramic bowls. Old stone stairs out from the balcony lead to a ferry dock where everything but the plastic supports and the anchor chair have rotted away; the former still bob in the water and bump into each other like dull wind chimes. Outside, the lighthouse's retrofits were old in the middle of the twentieth century, with skeletal construction and thoroughly browned aluminium that would look at place in an artist's rendition of sci-fi Chernobyl. The rock all around feels like you're on mars.

    But the ocean is as the ocean always is. If you climb the lighthouse, you can see the coast of Eritria, though as little more than a dull sliver. The only sound besides the water is the odd call of a few lonely seabirds, from the west, where there was once a wildlife refuge. Even that much is shocking, on this Earth. You can't even find insects.
Meresankh     After her experiences with the Southern Assembly's Terminal network, Meresankh is happy to try out another world's pre-unification teleportation methods. Although this process lacks the emotional rush of passage through the Expanse, there's a certain thrill for her in the literal magic of it all. Meresankh's tomb-palace is not exactly blooming with life, so a secluded arch is a trivial find. Closing her eyes and turning off her navigation systems are one and the same act, one she rarely partakes in, but after a moment of witnessless trepidation, she deactivates her eyes and recites the incantation...

    The queen steps out at her destination and her eyes light up again. "My greetings, Commander Rook," she says with a little bow. "Do we know what we seek here? Or only that something is on this island or thereabouts?"

    As the other Elites arrive and spread out, Meresankh joins the search. In particular she focuses her attentions on the lighthouse, doing her best to access it from within if possible, otherwise by flying up to the top. Her eyes fix on any and every showing of the machinery, mapping its workings through careful measurement and well-practiced extrapolation. She's hoping to find something out of place: some component that should have rusted through by now but hasn't, or extraneous mechanisms of unclear purpose, or even signs of activity since the site's general abandonment. In time the search will take her to the top, where she examines the beacon closely for any irregularities.

    While she examines the lighthouse's workings, she idly withdraws her tesseract labyrinth from within her cloak. The caged god-scrap within flickers as if tasting the air, and she monitors its reaction to the local supernatural energies. Even without 'baseline' readings to compare to, the shard will still react to sudden shifts in the occult temperature or gravity within the lighthouse, giving some clue as to the location of magical anomalies.
Storm Investigators Between being on both Paladins and LSCC channels, word soon reaches the pair of Greta Hofmann and Marcus that there's work to be done involving a certain record and things that may have come from space. With plenty to gain from investigating the discovery, there's little (known) reason for them not to go, and having instructions on how to reach Lilian without having to sit through a terribly long flight means both of them even show up on time.

Marcus does get a little distracted looking back at the stone arch, but Greta manages to move her out of the way before she can be a bumping hazard for too long.

Heading into the complex, Greta barely seems to notice the dust at all while Marcus pulls her scarf up over her nose and tries to hide a few quiet coughs inside of it.

"Product placement? Are you marketing something, Mister..."

She's not sure what Arthur's name is. It'd be so easy to read it, and she's so tempted to, but she instead just stares at him kind of awkwardly, hoping he'll introduce himself.

"... Are there customers here?"

Following Tamamo's lead and on Greta's urging, the younger investigator starts reading the air around them, to try and detect traces of anything magical or poisonous besides all that dust. She isn't too familiar with Tamamo's sort of rituals yet, though, so she might give some false positives until/if she can tell the difference between that and anything particularly unnatural.

Greta, meanwhile, takes note of the calendar while waiting for Marcus to finish helping sweep the area. "2046... Does this match your records, Commander Rook?"
Xion 'You could just wait and join us after.' was offered to Xion. But then she would be denied:

12 Hour Plane Ride!

And so, despite having absolutely no need to fly in an airplane, Xion is excitedly present to partake in the experience. Having assembled a real piece of carry-on luggage - a white backpack with black flaps and silver zippers with a long hanging Moogle charm off the main zipper filled with items that do not need to be in it due to their bearer - and dressed in white slippers and grey sweatpants with a black short-sleeved t-shirt depicting a retrowave orange and purple sunset on the front for maximum comfort with a dark grey beanie with purple stripe hiding most of her hair and all but the bottoms of her ears.

She had come dressed like this for Bond to steal the airplane, but had disappointed when James had already stolen the plane since she had wanted to see him steal it, not show up all suave and cool. Even if he was!

Kicking back for Blues Brothers and busting out all kinds of trip snacks from her bag, during and after the movie, Xion even spends some time sleeping just for the novelty of it, spending an hour with a blanket over her head and another dazily just staring out the windows. It's not very active - she's never done a flight so long her legs got annoyed sitting or standing but for needing to walk it out - but she manages to not go crazy or teleport home for a break before the meeting.

She feels better about *that* when they ditch the plane in the Urals.

Having put back on one of her black coats before their final connection, the unhooded and still beanie'd Xion arrives at their destination spinning a keychain about her left hand's fingers with an empty star charm, more curious than cautious as she peers around. "Yeah." She confirms, while Arthur sets up the gate. "Definitely needed to see here first. It's kind of nowhere at all, isn't it?" She rolls into asking, tucking hands behind head and leaning back at a stretch before moving into walking - though there's not that far to go.

The place feels all at once like a glass made opaque by the fall of time as dust upon it, but the sweep and scrub of the hand to reveal would take hours, days of work.

"It feels a little homey, doesn't it?" Xion asks, a little distant-voiced, perhaps telling on herself on what homey means to her, but having lived in a place called The World That Never Was for most of her actual life gave her leans. "Definitely paint and a sweep." She decides, before looking away from lighthouse to the waterline and horizon.

"Arthur, did you pick up anything? I'm..." She begins, and then pulls right hand out of pocket to look at the palm, where a golden medallion rests in her hand, being thumbed across and considered. "Well, I've not felt anything yet, but I'll tell you if I feel a tug. Neat place, though!"

Heading through the Lighthouse at a moderate pace, out on the balcony she looks at the anchor chair, and then over the edge.

"Does anyone think there's something around the undersea base of it?"
Petra Soroka     Petra is, actually, among the small clade of people that Lilian would tolerate on a twelve hour flight. She knows this for a fact, because not only did she and Lilian spend two days in a car together recently, but Lilian even voluntarily suggested an entire extra half-day trip be tacked onto that for them to just hang out in California for a while. To not only be tolerated on another enclosed situation with Lilian, but probably even *welcome*-- it's impossible to imagine that Petra would pass up the opportunity.

    And yet. There's only so much Petra can do to work on all her other responsibilities remotely, and three days' worth of absence already stretched that quite a bit. The emotional load of having to inform Lilian that 'no, I'll pass up on twelve hours of Lilian-time, because I've got *work*' stuns her for a bit, and the fact that the 'work' lies bimodally between 'homework' and 'political assassinations' does very little to make that choice easier. In the end, though, with a heavy heart, Petra ends up taking the teleportation beacon.

    That part's familiar, at least. What's on the other side isn't, and upon rotating in two full circles with her arms folded on top of her head, Petra suddenly blurts out, "Oh my god, I don't think I've literally ever been to Africa."

    She's wearing a cropped t-shirt (the front's blank, the back says KICK ME) and jeans, shedding her flannel the moment she's through the arch. Along with her is Angela, in person, which is a mild stressor to her for two reasons: firstly, simply, not knowing about the nearest warpgates makes the psychic strain of extending the Light to Angela sort of dangerous, but Petra's got that mostly under control at this point. The second reason is that, given that she knows the Foundation is assisting Lilian here, and Lilian's recent comments towards White about the banal cruelty of insisting that she should be fine with being in the same room as Schneider immediately after the recent events, it seems kind of in bad taste to go through the effort of hauling Angela out of the Library for this, like she's trying to make a point.

    A point that implicates Petra in a conflict that she was trying to mostly stay un-implicated-in. But then, it's kind of unspeakably cruel on Petra's part to refuse to help Angela leave the Library just for Petra's own interpersonal comfort, and explicitly against Petra's carefully constructed ideology, so, to be intellectually and philosophically consistent, she has to have Angela with her.

"I gotta be WALKING AROUND and calling this AMAZING and then plugging my PRODUCT PLACEMENT into a CAMERA."

    Petra immediately starts spinning off ideas like she's in a techbro hiking startup boardroom. "Beer hat with a visor that keeps you from seeing the Man in the Moon. Powered hiking exoskeleton. You know, I've never paid attention, do you turn your energy drink logos to the camera before drinking them?"

    Frankly Petra is more 'armed' than 'expedition', here. She's notably not-magically inclined, and she's mostly just available as a dog that Lilian can point in any direction she wants. She's pretty certain it's not relevant, but she's drawn immediately to the remnants of the last days of the people living here before they all vanished, lightly brushing her fingers over the mundane objects with fascination.
Petra Soroka     "2036...." She murmurs, putting her finger on the first day that isn't crossed out on the calendar. "I wonder what killed them all."

    It might, actually, be useful of her to look around for paper documents that are more directly involved with the work they did here than the calendar is. At the very least, she'd be interested in what kind of Antegent they were looking out for when they all got vaporized or whatever, but as a long shot, since everyone in this world is up to some bullshit or another, maybe there's decades-old records of flashes of light in the atmosphere or strange impacts nearby.
Lilian Rook     'I gotta be WALKING AROUND and calling this AMAZING and then plugging my PRODUCT PLACEMENT into a CAMERA. Girl this shit be GLOBE-TROTTING FOR REAL.'

    "If only there were anything to see." says Lilian, who has endured Arthur for so long that she almost doesn't notice it now. "Well, let me amend that. If only there were anything I'd show someone else a picture of. London was certainly something 'to see', but I wouldn't exactly recommend visiting."

    Considering the nature of the trip, Lilian had to make certain concessions to appearance, which actually don't trouble her at all, but have simply been a while since they came up. She suited up in her Immunes corps standard combat skin before getting on the plane for this, threw a breathable sun jacket over it, and then the gear harness overtop; badge and insignia are visible through the magic of low-zipped collar and cold shoulder. She planned to untie her hair at some point, but forgot after somehow sitting through the Blues Brothers.

    'Ya got PLANS or you want me to just start FLYING AROUND until I get MINIMAP PINGS?'

    "Ideally, I'd like to establish a forward operating base here, just because of how staggeringly remote it actually is, but I'm not certain I could get away with it." Lilian says. Looking over the edge as well, she drums her fingers on the windowsil. "Realistically, all we can do is start probing around here for any signs of . . . things falling from space." She makes a face, realizing how vague it sounds. "You're the expert on that, aren't you? Couldn't you spare a tutorial?" A moment later, she immediately regrets that choice of wording.

    '2046... Does this match your records, Commander Rook?'

    "It means they stayed here for a year after hearing about monsters, mass death, and a global state of emergency." Lilian says, frowning. "I'm glad. That means they went back home once it got bad enough. If it were a couple of years later, I'd assumed they all starved or killed themselves." She puts no sugar on it whatsoever.

    'It feels a little homey, doesn't it?'

    Lilian smiles. Without any proper explanation, she begins a new subject entirely. "Waning crescent. Won't have moon issues for a while, but Tamamo has already taken care of it. Overnight work shouldn't be too hard, but I won't ask anyone to stay that long."

    'Do we know what we seek here? Or only that something is on this island or thereabouts?'

    "I wish. Perhaps we'll find a flying saucer and a little green man under the waves? That'd be nice."
Tamamo     ...an old DVD he had of The Blues Brothers on the in-flight screen.

    Thank goodness there was that much to focus on. Having Xion there, too, means there's someone for Tamamo to talk to for the duration without either distracting the pilot or risking the learning of gamer words.

    'I gotta be WALKING AROUND and calling this AMAZING and then plugging my PRODUCT PLACEMENT into a CAMERA.'

    "Is it not a merely expected level of dirtiness?" Tamamo misunderstands the topic. "Much of it can be cleaned, and I am somewhat tempted, though I do not yet expect we will be here quite that long."

    '2036... Does this match your records, Commander Rook?'

    "That is merely the year in which this place was abandoned, of course." Optimistically speaking. If not 'abandoned,' then something worse happened to the final shift.

    'It feels a little homey, doesn't it?'

    "It does." Tamamo might be thinking of something other than what Xion is, but the conclusion comes out the same.
Angela After recent events, Angela has decided to provide personal assistance today, though she isn't coming alone: Binah is coming along to be a bodyguard of sorts. When out with Petra in a place like this, she figures it'll be better to have extra muscle looking out for her rather than less. Of course, Binah's a lot less tough than she used to be, but Angela is more concerned for less direct problems and Lilian seemed pleased with Binah's last outing, so she should reward Binah with another.

Another benefit of taking the teleportation beacon is that it's actually viable for Angela to come along.

Of course, it has occured to Angela that she shouldn't be expecting to be as welcome today than she would have been before the encounter with Schneider, but that's partly why Angela wants to go as herself. She wants to reaffirm her willingness to need and assist Lilian. If this goes poorly, she'll have to try something else. It's lucky, then, that Petra wasn't taking the long route around--Angela wouldn't encourage Petra to skip out on twelve hours with Lilian for this.

"Xion, wonderful to see you again." Binah says, dipping her head. "Please let me know if I can be of any assistance to you."

Angela HAS given Binah an EGO for the day, though she's keeping it hidden under her robes for now.

Angela is presently in her Librarian uniform, but she has selected an EGO that she is keeping in her book in case something happens. If there's someone or something she can end up drawing a page from. Certainly, she thinks, if there is a little green man she could do just that.

She is briefly distracted by Marcus, recognizing her voice. "You are...Marcus, aren't you?" She asks. She is quiet for a moment and then turns away.
Foundation Scions     Matilda Bouanich, exemplary diviner, and resident dork of the FDMO, would have loved to get to go on a twelve-hour plane journey, for the sky-gazing opportunities and the novelty of it all- but regardless of any chance as to whether she'd be allowed along by Lilian, because Matilda Bouanich, diligent Monitor Assistant to the SPDM, simply would not be able to get twelve not-strictly-necessary hours off of her duties! As such, it's the portal for her. Despite coming through in her cheery adventure-getup of those silly overalls, and a (necessary, in the sunlight) straw hat, there's a little pout to her, knowing that a part of the whole task existed that she couldn't tag along for! Comme c'est injuste!

    She's alone, from the office of the FDMO- though, that can hardly be a surprise, 'elective duty' isn't ever something Mesmer Jr. wants to take up, even if this is in part a follow-up of analytical efforts she was involved in. It's probably a good thing she isn't here, with her streak of bad behavior.

    Of course, Matilda's disappointed sentiment fades the moment she gets to lean out and stare out of a window, at the premises, and at the barren landscape and seascape outside- "Bravo, Mathilde, c'était judiceaux d'apporter de la crème solaire!" A hum, standing inside, in the shade, as she rummages in her bag to find just that and apply it, "I always come prepared~!"

    Warded off from the perils of sun-burn, Matilda is distractible when grouping-up with others, poking at charms and artifacts left out- seeing the two (actual) Foundation Investigators that were sent along, however, and not just there as an outreach-liason, has Matilda awkwardly, and obnoxiously, following behind Greta and Marcus. She isn't particularly stealthy about it, too, she's just decided, with little basis, she's part of their group now.

    "Psst, Investigator Marcus? Please do not cough so frequently-!" Chastising is a thing people do to other team-members! Matilda knows the interaction method of 'teacher's assistant' very well, and that maps to it! Then, clearing her throat, to a little bit chide at Marcus again, in gesture to some of the remnant documents- "It is lucky that this writing is done in French, no? Because, after all, you have a top expert on the language along~!"

    She doesn't yet know what to do and she's trying soooooo hard.

    "Gas lighting? Ms. Rook? Is there a known history of this emplacement?" Matilda is familiar with lots of lighting being gas! That's something that makes it weird to see, in a place that's gotten into the 21st century at all. "To think that that was used, for so many years past the millennium... it is like a strange relic of a sort!"

'I wish. Perhaps we'll find a flying saucer and a little green man under the waves? That'd be nice.'

    Matilda actually straight-up raises her hands, before exclaiming- "I have a suggestion!" Her suggestion is divination. Yes, the giant bowling-ball of clear quartz is with her, in its bag. Yes, she's looking for a place to set it down and start querying the orb, before even continuing to say, "If it is a journey to continue on, I can seek the next step! Please, allow me to perform a ritual as to such!"
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Are you marketing something

    "Nah, I just mean this feels REAL VLOGABLE and they always got some," Arthur makes a vague motion at Petra's suggestion. "Some fuckin', I dunno, DOODAD. Probably a DRINK, yeah!" 'Doodad?' He takes a big drink of Mtn Dew Presented by PEPSICO DRINKS(tm). But he holds it, yes, towards the camera, such that it looks like he's drinking 't e n  , by SICO DRINKS' (not trademarked). This seems to be entirely accidental, but judging by how it happens again the next time he picks up the soda, he's just been doing it for years without noticing it.
Lilian Rook     Within the complex, there is a staggering lack of anything magical at all. Not just for age, either. Despite knowing just how many people casually wield magic on this planet, there has clearly never once been a single person doing so on this lighthouse in two centuries. There is no indication of anyone knowing anyone that does. There are no references in left-behind literature besides the purely fictional and fantastic. Old papers, printed off a computer and cut up to fit on a corkboard for aesthetic's sake only, contain no references at all. Despite how endearingly authentic some of the keepsakes and greebles Matilda prods, she and Marcus both can easily verify they have no power beyond personal belief.

    'Oh my god, I don't think I've literally ever been to Africa.'

    "Nor I. Though I'd--" Lilian stops abruptly, then makes a face. Just for a second, she was going to say something about having no reason to go there, because there's practically nothing left, but then her thoughts drift to Nevada; and Caelton.

    'Beer hat with a visor that keeps you from seeing the Man in the Moon.'

    "Would you believe that people actually sell things about half that stupid?" Lilian says, getting up to walk around and distract herself from the subject. "The grey market regarding items of dubious mystic efficacy isn't as small as you'd think, nor like it to be. What's worse is that people do often use it to fence or illegally sell things that do actually work; and everyone knows it."

    'Gas lighting? Ms. Rook? Is there a known history of this emplacement?'

    "Sorry, I'm white." Lilian halfway jokes. "I can't read Arabic and we don't really have records about this region at all. I really only know that there's meant to be a wildlife reserve and a few odds and ends on the bigger island."

    'If it is a journey to continue on, I can seek the next step! Please, allow me to perform a ritual as to such!'

    "I'd hoped as much." Lilian, who didn't actually ask for Matilda by name, per se, says. She could have at least cleaned the kitchen table or something. "I know that someone came after it once before, so . . ." Without explaining, she hands off a scrap of yellow plastic, carefully unfolded from a sealed pouch. It looks like it came off a biohazard bag, or perhaps a radiation suit.
Tamamo     'Ideally, I'd like to establish a forward operating base here...'

    "I wonder if the kitchen can be made to work, and whether it would be safe to check the gas lines." Tamamo is momentarily distracted by the back of Petra's shirt, looking like she really wants to ask, but the moment passes.

    'Does anyone think there's something around the undersea base of it?'

    "Something being under the water... seems plausible. Containers that survive in seawater, in a place like this, are an excellent means of hiding something for a very long time. Of course, that would require that there have been 'someone' hiding something."
Lilian Rook     The light house was, at one point, locked. An optimistic gesture by some dutiful keeper who expected he might be back one day, and would like to have done his job well. It's a trivial thing to kick it in by now. The odds are worse than one in twenty that he lived anyways.

    The beacon itself is modest, put charitably. A technical analysis says it was designed only for two white flashes every ten seconds, visible for fifteen miles at best. There isn't space for more than two people to work on the lantern itself, and the computer systems in the middle level above the rust-eaten stairs are ancient enough to require advanced repair; which is exactly what Meresankh has, actually.

    Arthur's examination actually turns out that this would have been a very bad landmark to use for any sort of orbital landing. The radio equipment is so poor that it wouldn't have been useful to lock on to from any meaningful altitude either. Oddly, once again, no sign of anything that could be called 'the occult' either, though depending on the range one is searching with, the first sign of it is on the water to the east, two miles away, halfway back to Yemen.

    The computer records don't contain much; the lighthouse wasn't particularly designed to monitor weather, but it has an uplink to the main complex, which has internet that reaches the mainland via undersea cable. Very little is remotely interesting about it, save a year long anthropological record of six people's nervous browsing of every bit of news they could get about the very first year of the Onslaught from abroad; a disaster that didn't actually touch home for the first eight months. However, there are two meaningful points of data besides . . .
Storm Investigators Seeing Meresankh's strangely shaped cube device, along with just seeing Meresankh in general, gets the younger investigator staring at her and the device before long. She 'reads' it briefly to identify what it even is and what Meresankh is doing with it, and then Marcus she looks over at her with a curious tilt of her head. "Did you make that yourself, ma'am? It's quite the impressive device..."

"It feels a little homey, doesn't it?"

"It really does... The view of the lighthouse from here is quite nice, and having a high place to watch the sea from so close by would be a great place to learn so much about this area." Marcus murmurs in agreement with Xion, reminiscing as someone who has lived in a lighthouse for a while.

Marcus does a double-take when she sees the back of Petra's shirt. Good manners makes it impossible for her to really consider it, though, even though she recognizes her voice shortly after Petra speaks.

"Oh! You are... Madam Petra, yes? The supervillain?" Marcus asks, slowly getting a mental image of giant bug-themed armor the moment Petra brings up powered hiking exoskeletons. "How long would the plug be...?"

"I wonder what killed them all."
"... I'd assumed they all starved or killed themselves."

"They must be alive. If they had died here, then..." Marcus starts, but stops herself once she remembers that she's only been here for a few minutes, tops.  It's certainly not enough time to make such a conclusion, at least not without checking out the rest of the lighthouse. "Never mind. Um. Sorry, Madam Rook. Madam Petra."

"The lighthouse should have more clues about their fate, but it could be in disrepair if this complex is any indication. Don't scope it out alone." Greta warns, partially for Marcus' sake, but also sparing a few quick glances around at the group. She looks back over at Matilda in particular, just taking her presence in stride and trying not to get too sore keeping an eye on both her and Marcus.

"Please do not cough so frequently-!"

"Eep! Oh. Sorry, Miss Bouaniche. I will be more careful." She replies to Matilda hastily, pushing her scarf up against her mouth a bit more to really make sure she's covered from the dust! That coincides with the itch in her throat getting even itchier, and she not-so-subtly makes that quiet little barely-clearing-throat grunt that doesn't help at all.

It just makes the itch more pronounced and harder to ignore. Mm... Th.. Yes, the writing being in multiple languages would be a-ahem. Take a while to decipher without help. And these other letters are... Arabic. Are you familiar with those as well, Miss Bouaniche?"

"You are...Marcus, aren't you?"

Perking up as she hears another familiar voice, Marcus glances the wrong way once before turning back around to face Angela. "Oh! Ye-" She starts, then coughs into her scarf again and tugs it up even higher over her face until even her eyes are barely visible.

Greta sighs and just nudges it down so Marcus can speak properly, although she can't make Marcus NOT avoid looking at Matilda after that. Yes, I am Marcus. And you are... Madam Angela, yes? The librarian? It is good to finally meet you. I..." Perhaps realizing something is off, she still chuckles briefly while gesturing around with the end of her scarf. "I would not have expected to meet you here of all places."

As the complex investigation continues, Marcus does plenty of reading to confirm the lack of power in those keepsakes. "If there was any power in these, I... Do not see anything about it in here. No current magic, no recent magic, none whatsoever. That should... I hope that will make it easier for us to find our space objects, then."
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Did you pick up anything?

    "Nothing on PASSIVES. If it came outta SPACE then it's got some SPACEWARP still on it, or bare minimum some SOLAR WIND STENCH on the thing." Arthur is rambling to Xion. "Whether or not there's anything goin' on HEARTWISE, I'll catch the MATTER if it's still got some SPACE ASPECT. And this place sure is mostly EARTHSIDE." He looks back over to the lighthouse, but makes a little snapping point to Lilian. "PROBING AROUND is what ya boy can DO."

> Arthur: Spare a tutorial

    "SO," He nearly instantly summons a little bright green circle into the air in front of him. "NATURAL ARRIVALS gonna hit nearly any ANGLE. But they ain't AIMING AT EARTH. It's EARTH AND A TRAJECTORY INTERSECTING. So there's usually a STRONG ANGLE." He shows... a long, complicated series of geometrical indicators of how more surface area on a sphere is intersected by infinite parallel vectors affected by gravity, at a substantial angle, than would cause them to impact the surface dead-on. Is this useful data?

    "If something CRASHES or FALLS OUT OF THE SKY, it'll come in at an ANGLE. But if something was AIMED," He makes sure all vectors aim for the core of the planet, and another set of vectors towards a particular spot. "Then it'll be TIMED and it'll come in DEAD ON. So we're looking for an IMPACT SITE that had a HELLA TOP-DOWN IMPACT." He claps his hands together brightly, once, and beams brightly. "So you're looking for IMPACT SITES without much SLOWING. Probably more like LANDING SPOTS, or CRATERS. Could be DEEP HOLE. I gotta get SCANNIN'. Or maybe SCRYERS can get SCRYIN' for stuff that came outta the SKY STRAIGHT DOWN."

    "Should'a thrown a bunch of DIRT with HELLA RADS and weird HEAT STUFF around, if it wasn't in the WATER." He scratches his cheek. "Probably in a CIRCULAR SHAPE. I'll go SWEEP IT, not good with this SURVIVAL-CRAFT stuff about OPERATING BASES."

> Arthur: Much of it can be cleaned

    While he's getting his rocket-broom out, he considers Tamamo's thoughts. A brief thinking-emoji expression... and then he kicks off with the rocket-broom, looking for the circular-surface-dirt-with-mild-radiation that should be what he's after, hopefully getting whatever guidance he can get from Matilda about where to start. But as he kicks off, he does a quick little donut around the room, and...

    It's a broom. Somehow, it's significantly less dirty when he leaves, even though he kicked up an obnoxious dust-cloud in his blastoff.

    It's a *broom*! It *sweeps*!
Petra Soroka "Does this match your records, Commander Rook?"

    Petra doesn't know who Greta is, but the comparative rarity of seeing someone who's got grey in their hair means that she unconsciously adds several reputation points to her starting bonus. "That's a year after the start of the Onslaught in 2035. I guess I never really hear about what the early years of it were like, before the God-Class Antegent showed up and fucked everything. It's not like everyone immediately fucked off to Urban Centers the moment it hit, but like, it's kind of neat to see what life was actually like *while* it was happening."

    Mostly, this completely trivial fixation is what catches Petra's interest until Lilian whistles and points her somewhere else. Seeing how completely annihilated the wastelands outside of the Urban Centers are at this point, it's fascinating to remember that there was a gradient of time-- years, even-- when it wasn't, but was slowly becoming that way. When did it become too much for the people here? Or did they just die?

"Realistically, all we can do is start probing around here for any signs of . . . things falling from space."
"Does anyone think there's something around the undersea base of it?"

    "Oh, oh!" Petra bounds out of the complex with an excess of energy, and then lurches and doubles over, cover her mouth with her hands and hacking up feathers through her fingers. After retreating back towards Angela, sweating and plucking some raven feathers out of the exposed skin on her midriff, she continues, "I could totally check underwater. I'm sort of half-alien myself so maybe they'll recognize me and come out, eheh."

"You are...Marcus, aren't you?"

    "Who?" Petra turns herself around a couple times before she notices the girl who is essentially just a puffball of hair and nerves. She stares at her, tries to place that name from being introduced to her on the radio mere days ago, and then gives up and gets distracted. "Oh, wait, Matilda's gonna be here, isn't she?"

"I always come prepared~!"

    "Okay, step one," Petra says to her upon locking on, as if it's assumed that there'll be multiple steps, "You should really always make sure you put on sunscreen *before* hopping off to an assignment. You're young and you look like you've got good genes for your skin, but you never know if you're gonna get suddenly thrown into some bullshit and not realize until six hours later that you've been getting cooked by the sun. It's smart to bring it too, though. One time I didn't, and then I got stuck on a train for three days."

    She adds, after a moment, waving her hand (she's actually still got the quartz bracelet on, though Qetra's are gone), "It's not like French is too complicated for the Understanding or anything. It'll be useful if there's some detailed translation stuff, but we can all read it."
Petra Soroka "What's worse is that people do often use it to fence or illegally sell things that do actually work; and everyone knows it."

    Petra reflects on this for a moment before blurting out, "Isn't it probably worse for people to sell things that don't work and get people killed by not working than to illegally sell things that do work?"

"I wonder if the kitchen can be made to work, and whether it would be safe to check the gas lines."

    "It probably wouldn't actually be that hard..." Tamamo's comment advances Petra's assessment of the complex from 'first exploring in a post-apocalyptic survival crafter to get lore' to 'scavenging up a base in a survival crafter'. "Well, there's no way the gas tanks even whole anymore, but it'd be easy to temporarily set up an electric stovetop. Qetra's holding, like, a bunch of generators."
Petra Soroka "Oh! You are... Madam Petra, yes? The supervillain?"

    "Oh. That's no good. Don't call me that." Petra frowns at Marcus, finally placing who she is. She quickly clarifies, "'Madam', I mean. I'm not old. Just call me Petra."
Lilian Rook     Petra's inquiry into the lives of six, probably dead, ultimately irrelevant men who were simply fossilized in amber by chence, and recovered by Meresankhs fixing-up, paints a picture where sea trade was still ongoing for entirely too long. The very last signs of anything before an evacuation point towards them receiving instructions to wire things up to last as long as possible autonomously.

    And yet, a year is clearly more than they were meant to actually stay here without returning to land. Signs of use and day-marks next to the radio indicate some number of times they had to hear about borders being closed. The vast majority of what she finds in the cellar points to the supplies they lived off of simply having accumulated by bureaucratic antipathy and oversight rather than ever actually meaning to supply anyone in an emergency.

    It'd take psychometry to get anything off the radio's broadcasts, but print-offs and web-browsing first resemble a group of people anxiously following news of a pandemic breaking out in another coutry, then become like obsessive UFOlogists, looking for pictures and videos not of the press or the government, but the horrid things allegedly witnessed overseas. Simultaneously exploding across four, then six places on Earth, an eerie narrative of normality prevails within months, adjacent to what modern media thinks of living through a world war; back when the stakes were 'small' enough to be a global military issue.

    There. A note in the right place that staying here, on this rock, avoids conscription. That's why. The ferry back to the mainland must have been a last resort, and taken weeks or months to even get.

    The equipment left running automatically, which failed decades ago, has recorded two events.

    One of them, a 'star shower' from the south, at an extremely shallow angle, narrowly missing the African side and landing somewhere in the sea, despite scattering debris across the Eritrean shore. Twenty-five years ago. The other, radio logs of multiple aircraft; active identification, ground scan, and unanswered hail. Twenty-three yars ago.
Meresankh     "Does anyone think there's something around the undersea base of it?"

    "A sensible conjecture," Meresankh comments as she finishes her exterior examination of the lighthouse. "There is little sign of unusual activity on the surface or in the structure, which points to the object of our search being buried or submerged."

    "Did you make that yourself, ma'am? It's quite the impressive device..."

    Meresankh makes a pleased sound, though with her unchanging asp-fanged grin it may come off as a little menacing. "It was a long time ago, that we carved these little sparks from the whole," she says, "But the principle remains with us. It's similar to my cloak, in fact," she says with a little flourish of her cape, "except instead of connecting to somewhere else, it connects to nowhere at all. Or somewhere that wasn't anywhere until we made it so. You have an interest in devices?"

    Once inside, Meresankh visibly (but not literally) lights up at the sight of the old computers. "Let's get you working again," she mutters to herself. "Marcus, was it? Come here, I can show you what my tools are capable of." The tools in question are in fact, one tool: her scepter, which blinks and chitters and emits little sparks into the computers as Meresankh rewires their circuitboards into functionality.

    In a matter of minutes the screens flicker to life again, and Meresankh scans their contents with her eyes and through electronic decoding. "There are two events recorded here that may be pertinent," she says into her radio. "Twenty-five years ago, something landed in the sea just west of the island. Coming in at a shallow angle, so if Mister Lowell is correct, that would be a crash and not an intentional landing. Twenty-three years ago, multiple aircraft flew over the island, attempted contact, and, after receiving none, departed with only a scan of the ground. Perhaps they were looking for whatever it is arrived two years prior."

    The queen turns to Marcus, stepping aside from the console. "If you can make any more sense of the *intentional* logs, be my guest."
Foundation Scions 'I'd hoped as much.'

    "Ah-hem, then, let us waste no time!" Matilda excitedly finds a spot to plunk her gear, and, gingerly, takes the scrap of plastic when offered. She turns it over, and places it down, with an un-needed gentle little pat.

    With the time to set up her ritual and set her crystal ball down, sparkling in window-crept sunlight, Matilda fiddles back and forth a few times to adjust its luminance and luster. Whatever metric she has for readjusting, tongue stuck out the side of her mouth in concentration, she's gotten nearly all of the orb into indirect light, with just a sliver of prismatically-refracted sunlight sparkling through. Absent the spent-time to hang charms and let scented candles anoint the air, Matilda's spending all the more energy to fuel her ritual, and though she doesn't call attention to it, along her murmurings, there's a visible dip to her apparent vim and vigor. The incantation across her lips, while holding one hand over the orb, and one over the bit of plastic, is- "Oh boule de cristal, guidez-nous vers ce qui manque, s'il te plaît..."

    Mists swirl within the ball, and hidden truths make themselves known to her- quiet, and focused less on talking than her ritual, "Ms. Rook? I see signs of threat, of fragility, to something one must pull from thornbushes- metaphorically, a sign of necessary carefulness -and the debris washed from a confluence of disasters. Deep below, it is to be found, in the direction of the sun's setting, and..." Matilda's expression turns, worried, "Be careful, the danger, it can spread and catch. Er- a disease, may not be far off from what is encountered, but... through it, there is something, and it shines with some manner of promise and weight."

    Matilda stops, sitting back up- standing up, even, and points towards the waters of the Eritrian coast, out the window, to clarify direction. Then, she sits back down again, dizzy- "Whew... it is warm, at this time of year..."
Xion Happy to ward Tamamo away from Gamer Words with more pleasant conversation, at the lighthouse her appreciation for the space lingers in several ways that rest entirely outside of the charm of others and more with a sort of space affinity. The emptiness, and the sound of the ocean, and the way the wind is broken by the broad and resolute tower and whistles near the top like a flute all cause Xion to stand at a thoughtful ease, pull her beanie off, and sense for a moment.

Then it passes, and there's little nooks and crannies to explore while the conversation carries!

"So... It's more likely that they got called away before they were stuck. That's good." She answers to Lilian's story, crouched down to check a bit of the riveting and prodding at one of the caps with a finger. "I think I could survive seeing skeletons and journals with only about a paragraph or three of text explaining something creepy, but, not because I really *wanted* to."

Greeted by Binah, Xion stands and waves, half-saluting with a hand. "Hey, Binah! I'm looking for structural issues, like cracks or rust-outs, but I might be jumping into the water in a bit. There's probably at least a little swimming before we start settling into the night, at least. Are you good with plumbing?"

The pivot is sudden, but Xion has realized that the camp might not have an overnight solution and while she wouldn't have to stay herself... It'd be uncomfortable! Water, as well...

"It's pretty important we check the gas and water, yeah. Basically, have you ever done a building inspector before, at your old job?"

Heading around the interior, her wandering is a bit aimless, following the chatter.

"I could probably see if I can get a better stove online, unless Arthur has appliances in his inventory?" Xion offers to Tamamo when she speaks of stoves, looping back to Arthur as he commiserates on passive and active scanners. On probing, her flash of a grin is chased by a warm-teasing, "Thought you were anti-romance, Arthur."

His explanation on the crash falls down means that... "No angle means it could have hit into the water a way's down, and if it was a little off course, it might've hit nearby, but, I've got another question..."

Xion looks across to Marcus, pointing up. "Why's this lighthouse here? Lighthouses ward ships away from something. And this was staffed, not automated. Why? The nearby preserve? We're not close to it."

Xion points into the water. "What if what was hit, was the thing that this Lighthouse was there to ward away from? We wouldn't see it, because, it'd be gone."
Lilian Rook     'I could totally check underwater. I'm sort of half-alien myself so maybe they'll recognize me and come out, eheh.'

    "Or they'd scream and hide." Lilian laughs, monosyllable. "That's not a bad idea. I'd assumed it was a possibility, which is why I sent a broad notification; for all my myriad talents, ultra deep scuba isn't one of them." Says the woman who is equipped with something that is barely not a diving suit at its base layer. "Though, I did my research, and most of the sea is surprisingly shallow. Let's be optimistic." Which means 'I did all the hard work getting here and I haven't the foggiest clue about maritime salvage'.

    'Isn't it probably worse for people to sell things that don't work and get people killed by not working than to illegally sell things that do work?'

    "I don't know why it would be." she says. "Selling snake oil that gets people killed is obviously indefensible regardless of how gullible the buyer has to be, but selling misappropriated goods that would have been effective in somewhere else, and setting up a savvy criminal buyer with something neither of you understands well; doesn't that also add the element of 'waste' and 'dangerous intent' to it?" Lilian is doing her best not to examine that she mostly thinks it's worse because it means stealing from Enlightened. It's not as if she's confabulating it; she just really doesn't want to cite the Code on this right now, and is arguing around it.

    'PROBING AROUND is what ya boy can DO.'

    "Say something else." Lilian scoff-sighs. "We're talking about aliens. Come on." She can't avoid the literal tutorial pop-ups now.

    Lilian should be paying more attention to them. He's right. An extreme angle is unnatural. The orbital diagrams on the golden record hadn't suggested something like that either.

    'If there was any power in these, I... Do not see anything about it in here. No current magic, no recent magic, none whatsoever.'

    "This was all before magic was publicly acknowledged at all." Lilian says. "Back when there were an estimated three million Enlightened world-wide, too . . ." It sounds like 'what a shame, to fall from such a golden era'.
Angela ''And you are.... Madam Angela, yes? The librarian?''

"I am. Though usually when people are formal they use Miss Angela or Lady Angela." Angela is a little uncertain about the word 'Madam', it's not one she typically hears that much in her life. She looks at Greta, getting a familiar vibe from her that she can't quite place in the moment, but she supposes Petra's objection--that she doesn't want to come across as ''old'' is viable here. She doesn't really feel old even if she technically is one of the oldest here. It's not really real age if her experiences are just the same thing over infinite time after all.

''Who?''

"Marcus." Angela says, looking to Petra. "She has an ability similar to mine. ''Reading''. Though I do not know how closely they correlate, though as someone new to having an ability at all, she no doubt has more experience than I do in the craft." She would like to talk to Marcus on her own time but isn't really sure how to make that happen due to all the debacles lately, so she ultimately leaves it. What's she going to do? Tell Marcus 'hey if you ever want to spy on me...' It wouldn't feel quite right and she's in the process of reconsidering her approach so it's best she doesn't make any big moves today.

And besides, she's not here for herself and--

''Petra bounds out of the complex''

Angela jerks her head and her eyes widen and she starts running after Petra. "We can go underwater." Angela assures her. "I still do not need to breathe so it should be no problem on my behalf."

Binah, of course, is way less leashed and she ends up approaching Xion, half-saluting back like she's mimicking Xion because she is. "Am I good with plumbing? Surely you are joking." Binah says. "Unless you mean, am I willing to get involved in some basic plumbing despite it being an unglamorous activity, well, I'm completely willing to get my hands literally dirty--not just metaphorically dirty."

''Have you ever done a building inspector before, at your old job?''

"I do occassionally have to...check on the architecture of buildings that are inclined to hide dirty little secrets. I would not consider myself an expert in building management, but if there is something hiding in a nook, or a cranny, or if there is a 'secret floor', I can probably find it with enough time."
Foundation Scions 'You should really always make sure you put on sunscreen *before* hopping off to an assignment.'

    "Hmph! But that is why I wore the hat, too!" It's genuinely fully likely that no-one ever told Matilda that sunscreen is actually particularly useful in keeping skin from wrinkling with age. Still, with the little pout Matilda makes, yeah, she's gonna listen.

'It's not like French is too complicated for the Understanding or anything. It'll be useful if there's some detailed translation stuff, but we can all read it.'

    "Hein? You can?"

. . .

'And you are... Madam Angela, yes? The librarian? It is good to finally meet you. I...'

    Matilda, flash of panic over her face, tries to get Marcus's attention to not go down that road, hissing out a little "Marcus, she is, not, a friendly ally! Fais attention!" Then, when it doesn't work, while trying to be out of sight of Angela and Angela's employees, Matilda takes to even doing the finger-across-throat danger-indicating gesture Marcus's way, and, frankly, it's likely she'd start to just do jumping jacks to get her attention otherwise.

    When given a moment to whisper more warnings, Matilda, worried, rushes out a "If you were not aware, and, I most hope you were not, her library, it is one that kills people! I have, er, seen the likes of what occurs, Investigator Marcus! It is dangerous, and, and fully against the sanctions of the FDMO," Which doesn't exactly boss field agents around, "To engage with that manner of a Concord affiliate!"

    It's not like Matilda actually does a good job at all of hiding her words from any of Angela or her entourage, but a low stage-whisper, that still feels appropriate! Technically, also, Matilda doesn't have problems chatting with Petra, who's dangerous, a killer, and a Concord affiliate. She can have little a hypocrisy as a treat! At least she hasn't heard about Petra turning people into books.
Tamamo     It's a broom. Somehow, it's significantly less dirty when he leaves, even though he kicked up an obnoxious dust-cloud in his blastoff.

    Tamamo covers herself against dust by holding up her sleeve and narrowing her eyes until it begins to settle. Well, that's a start.

    'Qetra's holding, like, a bunch of generators.'

    At this, Tamamo fails resisting the question. "And why is Qetra holding a bunch of generators?"

    And now that she's already asked Petra one question, "Have many followed your top's imperative?" Realizing a moment later that that could have been clearer, "Your shirt, that is." Ironic tee design isn't even common in the section of modernity she'd ended up in these few years ago.

    'I could probably see if I can get a better stove online, unless Arthur has appliances in his inventory?'

    "If there is some better option than the portable stove I brought aboard, then, by all means. Ah, one moment." Having thought of it, Tamamo heads back to the aircraft to retrieve those cleaning supplies she'd thought to bring for possible camping purposes. She hadn't prepped for a whole lighthouse, but if it's just a kitchen, and she isn't too fussed about preserving a finish, then she should have enough to make it sufficiently decent.

    "Checking under the water is more important, I should think, but if someone is not otherwise occupied, I would welcome any assistance." As well as having sponges, color-coded scrubby pads, and small spray bottles, Tamamo's brought out a frilled apron, a stylized red heart nested in an outline taking up its center. She did not, however, bring extra aprons.
Storm Investigators "That's a year after the start of the Onslaught in 2035."

More notes to take in addition to Lilian's! Greta nods slowly as Petra gives her some more information to add on to Lilian's about that year and the Onslaught, still leaving extra room on that page for later. "A worldwide catastrophe, and pockets of survivors such as here that may have relocated afterwards. No wonder they would remain here as long as they could."

It only takes another few seconds for Greta to realize something, and she starts keeping her eye out for any fishing rods on her way around. She also barely bats an eye when Marcus calls her a supervillain. It's not for a lack of caring, but she doesn't seem all too worried, either.

"Oh. That's no good. Don't call me that."

"Oh! I'm sorry, Mi.. Ah. Petra." Marcus obliges quickly with a brief nod. Somehow, that actually helps her relax a bit, and she even loosens her scarf without coughing again.

"You have an interest in devices?"

"Yes, ma'am. Even if I do not know how to make them myself, I enjoy learning how things work and how to explain it properly to others. Marcus tells Meresankh, still awestruck by her entire appearance and even getting distracted by her cloak when she mentions its similarity to the device. "The better I can do that, the easier it will be to bring people together everywhere..."

Once it's time to head to the lighthouse, Marcus is far lighter on her feet than she was on the way here. It's one of the few types of places she's used to navigating with whatever twists and turns there may be on the way up, and she's particularly good about checking around little corners and nooks that might be hidden by ladders and steeps stairways. Upon reaching the beacon, she observes Meresankh and Arthur curiously, jotting down notes about what they're doing or saying.

Arthur in particular necessitates good note taking, so she can slowly try and decipher the way he speaks. The tutorializing session helps a lot for both her and Greta, with the latter eventually commenting.

"A direct strike with a wide crater, perhaps lacking trails through the ground that would suggest the objects coming in at an angle." After transcribing more of what he says, Greta frowns slightly when he brings up rads. "Do we have anything with radiation shielding? Or some way of moving a lot of water to cool it down?"

Marcus, meanwhile, joins Meresankh at the computers when she's called over. She watches that work with the scepter closely, using her cheating reading powers to find out that the rewiring is even happening rather than just assuming it's all funny sparks and noises. It's still wholly unfamiliar to her since she's barely even touched a computer without supervision in the first place, but it's still fascinating to her.

"Why's this lighthouse here?"
"We wouldn't see it, because, it'd be gone."

That gives Marcus an idea! "A good question. If it was so different from the usual reasons for one, then there must be some kind of records somewhere in this place's history." Holding up her lantern, she shines its light around slowly, poring through all the pages laid out before her to try drawing a clearer picture of the lighthouse's purpose:

Why was it built?
What was it meant to stop from crashing, if not ships?
What was it meant to protect, if not the ships themselves?
Lilian Rook     'Deep below, it is to be found, in the direction of the sun's setting, and...'
    'Be careful, the danger, it can spread and catch. Er- a disease, may not be far off from what is encountered, but...'

    "Not under the ocean it isn't." Lilian exhales the words in a very particular way. "Tip of the day: For reasons we don't understand well, Antegent are extremely disinclined to inhabit water. It's far from unheard of, but every coastal city experienced less than one in two hundred attacks from the water. Marine biomes are frankly better off than they used to be." Lilian talks as she walks, headed towards the western side of the complex at pace. Rather than her firearm, she reaches automatically for the pendant under her jacket.

    'Whew... it is warm, at this time of year...'

    But she stops, briefly. "Are you alright? We have water and food on board the VTOL. If you need to lie down, there's an emergency medical bed. Don't push yourself."

    'I think I could survive seeing skeletons and journals with only about a paragraph or three of text explaining something creepy, but, not because I really *wanted* to.'

    "You get used to it." Lilian says. "You shouldn't, but you do." She pauses, deliberating whether she really wants to tell anyone about the work she does twice as often as when she is a Chevalier. "'Everyone from back then lived in a different era'. It's best to think of it like that."

    'Why's this lighthouse here? Lighthouses ward ships away from something. And this was staffed, not automated. Why? The nearby preserve? We're not close to it.'

    "I--" Lilian hitches. "Don't know. I didn't think it was important. They built it so long ago, I just assumed it had an obvious use. I mean, it was built in nineteen-oh-three." Now she's uneasy.
Storm Investigators "... Miss Angela or Lady Angela."
"Fais attention!"

"Oh! Ah. Do you have a preference for either, Miss A-oh. Er. Lady-um." Marcus is too indecisive to settle on either one, and she looks at Angela expectantly for aid! If she's supposed to be scared or concerned, she only seems that way because of that. She doesn't catch all of Matilda's first warning, either, and she only looks more confused when she does catch the little throat-cutting motion.

Oh no. Is Matilda telling her to kill Angela so shortly after meeting her?! That certainly has her looking scared, but for none of the correct reasons. It's only when Matilda gets a chance to whisper to Marcus all conspirator-like that she finally starts to get some of those earlier warnings.

"A library that kills people? That sounds like something out of a supervillain's playbook..." Marcus whispers back, furrowing her brow in thought as the mental image of a librarian-themed supervillain starts forming. She looks back over at Angela, taking note of her librarian-y wear, but she doesn't seem convinced yet.

"Being a Concord affiliate... She must have her reasons, right? Just as we are working with the Paladins, and the Timekeeper is associated with the Watch, and we are.. Ah. All here with Commander Rook's permission, it should be-oh. But if there's sanctions, then would we get...?" Lack of FDMO-bossing notwithstanding, Marcus is starting to get confused again!
Petra Soroka "I'd assumed it was a possibility, which is why I sent a broad notification; for all my myriad talents, ultra deep scuba isn't one of them."

    Petra gets directionlessly excited by Lilian acknowledging her little joke, and vents this by doing a weird energetic wiggle with her fists. "Well, you can just count all of my talents as part of your own! I mean, I don't think the Beauty of Ash could keep me safe in super high pressure, but-- yeah, the Red Sea's pretty shallow, isn't it? It's like, a big permanently flooded river basically, if I remember right. Like... Greece, I think?"

"Selling snake oil that gets people killed is obviously indefensible regardless of how gullible the buyer has to be, but selling misappropriated goods that would have been effective in somewhere else, and setting up a savvy criminal buyer with something neither of you understands well."

    "That's true." Petra buckles immediately after one singular retort from Lilian. She doesn't really hold strong feelings about this, so they're easily overwritten by Lilian's feelings instead. "Resources are, like, way more limited on this world anyways, so it's especially important for them to go to people who can use them."

"She has an ability similar to mine. ''Reading''."

    A dozen different jokes instantly bubble up in Petra's mind. She manages to discard most of them, but one slips by. "Proud of her."

"I still do not need to breathe so it should be no problem on my behalf."

    "I'll have to carry you with the Beauty of Ash if we do." Petra still remembers all the times that Angela has simply fallen like a rock, compared to Petra's floatier descent, and nearly gotten her killed. "And you might just get lodged in the sand if you fall from that height."

    Petra's contemplation of the people living here's lives is ultimately uselesss besides as a meditative exercise. The narrative pieced together and embodied in yellowed scraps of paper and dusty and salt-stained equipment with the fossilized fingerprints of how it was used, is valuable to her in a philosophical sense, rather than a practical one. Tracing the steps throughout weeks and months of life on this island, indulging in the fear of the far-off apocalypse and the contrast between gradually-failing attempts to avoid it and obsessive tracking of it, brings these people back to life by sheer coincidence.

    She thinks to herself that 'coincidence' being such a driving factor of archaeology is ultimately one of the things that most gives value to the everyday lives of ordinary people, to spin up a justification for why she can't just discard all of them. In the moment, of course, it's almost certain that she'd dislike these people for the reasons that she dislikes nearly everyone, but in historicized retrospect, their most trivial feelings are given dignity. Archaeology is the process of exalting the mundane individual by transforming them into a narrative, and this little ritual increments her morality meter one point towards good.

    . . . "Oh, to the west? Awesome, awesome, awesome, I'll get on it in a sec."
Angela ''Do you have a preference for either, Miss A-oh. Er. Lady-um.''

"Miss Angela is fine. Properly polite without being excessively so." Angela says. "Do you see an application for your arcane talent to be useful here?"

But it seems that Marcus does have an idea so she observes the process. Perhaps if she learns a bit more about how Marcus handles her ability, Angela can conceptualize and evolve her EGO to something less ... frustrating to work with, at times. It is such a particular EGO but she wonders if that's due to a limitation she has placed on herself rather than some fundamental element of what it takes to properly manipulate the Light.

Angela makes an active effort to not react to Matilda calling her librarian a murder library, essentially. Frankly, she's grateful she's showing some discretion about it and bringing it out into the open will make it Lilian's problem. Best to avoid it.

''Proud of her.''

"Mm." Angela doesn't seem to realize it's a joke. She's thinking about how, in a sense, the Foundation wouldn't have accepted her anyway so she really the only thing she stands to lose by saying 'fuck it' and just openly aiding Manus Vindictae as much as she can is ... ... The most important thing. Frustating.

"That would be a good idea. Even if I may be more buoyant now, a controlled descent would be ideal."

''Not under the ocean it isn't.''

Angela looks towards Lilian. "...That is...strange to hear. The Antegent experiences our team has had, minimal as they may be, suggested that they were of such a nature it would be difficult to imagine them having a unified dislike of the sea."

''I didn't think it was important.''

"Perhaps it is not, but there is no harm in looking into it."

She'll give Marcus an encouraging nod whenever she's around to be seen again.
Petra Soroka "To engage with that manner of a Concord affiliate!"

    Petra looks over at Matilda with a complicated expression. She opens her mouth, and then closes it again, faintly smiling in a way that's neither entirely unhappy or very happy at all. Internally, she thinks that it's kind of scummy of her to have the flinch instinct of not wanting to be seen as being associated with Angela for Matilda's sake, when of course in any real conflict she'd choose Angela every time. Still, where she'd ideologically like to have some strong feeling towards Matilda for describing Angela that way, she kind of has no judgement towards her at all.

"And why is Qetra holding a bunch of generators?"

    "Oh!" This is an easy question! Petra perks up like Tamamo is throwing her a softball intentionally, in order to... get good girl points for answering her, or something. "Because, what if I need them? I've probably got some heating elements in there too."

"Have many followed your top's imperative?"

    Carried over by the momentum of eagerly answering questions, Petra opens her mouth and gets half of a sound out before Tamamo clarifies. "Ah-- oh, the shirt? Uh, um... the kicking me part? None, yet. Uh, I don't particularly want anyone to kick me, but... so, there's... a sort of cultural joke they do in movies, with an archetypal symbolic gesture meant to represent 'bullying' in school, where the bully sticks a sign that says that on someone's back. And the implication is that people will just, follow that sign and start kicking them, but that's ridiculous, right? Everyone would know that that sign is put there by someone else in order to make fun of that person. So the real function of the 'kick me' sign is meant to signify an outgroup and farm the social consensus of the group's acceptability of harming that person filtered through the thinnest possible veil of subtlety in order to make a point."

    Petra blinks. "That's not related to why I'm wearing it. I just thought it was funny."

"For reasons we don't understand well, Antegent are extremely disinclined to inhabit water."

    "Oh, good, I was just gonna ask." Petra tilts her head to look at Matilda. "Spread and catch... Encroachment/catastrophe stuff, but... if it's not an Antegent underwater, then what?"

"I didn't think it was important."

    Petra frowns. "I guess we should never take anything for granted, but, like, there used to be a billion boats going up and down this whole sea constantly. If there's a bunch of islands here, maybe it's just kind of shallow enough all around to be dangerous, so they have a lighthouse."

    Then, outside on the edge of the island, Petra flips open the compact mirror dangling from her neck. Looking over at Matilda-- though this might not be the time for a more prolonged interaction-- she pulls it off over her head and spikes the mirror downwards to shatter it. The stream of pearlescent glass erupts around to envelop her in the shape of the Beauty of Ash, which then crouches down to pick up Angela in two arms against its chest. It picks its way closer to the sea, leaving disproportionately shallow divots in the sand, before lunging forwards and piercing under the surface of the water, instantly becoming invisible from the refraction of light.
Lilian Rook     Reading the history of the lighthouse is simple: Built by a private French company, seized by the British during World War One, operated by European contractors until the nineties, and finally ceded to Yemen, reopening the site in 2028. The keeper's house was expanded somewhat, but strangely poorly supervised, with little information recorded and few visits. Originally built to simply aid navigation entering the Red Sea near Yemen, someone has shortened the original lighthouse tower by exactly thirteen meters; the same person as the expansions to the keeper's house, and the strange stockpiling of goods.

    Unbeknownst to any who've been to it, the lighthouse forms a sequence of geological coordinates with several others run by the same British contractor. A subtle work of geomancy would have been possible from the Uqban lighthouse, also build in 1903, but after being annihilated by a volcanic eruption in 2007, rendering it occultically worthless, and thus strategically irrelevant to the shadow-movements of ancient Traditions at war.

    The adjustments were made by a lone mawlawi who found his way to the lighthouse after its reopening. Plagued by nightmares and deranged omens about humanity being forsaken by god, he died here in 2031, years before he would see the Onslaught.
Lilian Rook     'The Antegent experiences our team has had, minimal as they may be, suggested that they were of such a nature it would be difficult to imagine them having a unified dislike of the sea.'

    "I hope you aren't calling me a liar." Lilian says, testy. "People still prefer to travel by ship than by air you know.

    'And why is Qetra holding a bunch of generators?'

    "Why is she holding a cinderblock?" Lilian shrugs.

    'Have many followed your top's imperative?'

    Lilian is being sooooo well-behaved.

    'Checking under the water is more important, I should think, but if someone is not otherwise occupied, I would welcome any assistance.'

    "If it's too difficult to move, like Matilda says, readying this place for a return visit may not be a bad idea." Lilian says. She sighs, bigly, having clearly not actually wanted to come here again.

    Finally hustling to the west side of the island as Petra departs, Lilian waves over Arthur, who likes to teleport objects around a lot, and points where the Beauty of Ash then splashes down. Lilian imagines it shaking itself off like a wet dog when it surfaces again, but doesn't say anything about that.

    And under the monotonous sound of the waves . . .
Angela ''I hope you aren't calling me a liar.''

"Of course not." Angela attempts to reassure Lilian. "I'm remarking that it's exceptionally curious that this truth holds despite the instinctual expectation. Perhaps we'll get the opportunity to learn as to why today. Mysteries invite inspection."

Despite looking like a book, Angela's personal EGO doesn't seem to be troubled by water. She makes no move to reject Petra's hand though it is impossible to imagine that she hasn't noticed Petra's complicated expression even as she is electing not to comment on it. Of course, Angela's feelings are also a little complicated, so it might be a bit hypocritical of her to.

She readies her book to draw a page in case they run into something that, well, can have a page drawn from it. It's her most helpful use in situations like this.

But she supposes it IS a little strange that she does hope that there is some sort of thing down there that she can draw from. She wants to be helpful. She needs to be. But there's no promise of that today so she clenches her hand in anticipation.
Tamamo     Petra explains 'kick me' signs.

    "Oh, I see." Having listened with remarkable patience -- less remarkably, for doing so while peeling away a layer of grimy dust from a countertop -- Tamamo summarizes, "It is not the signal of a request, but a symbol -- or, perhaps, a costume -- of a bullying victim, made clear by recognizable, tale-like exaggeration. Do you empathize as such?"

    'I just thought it was funny.'

    "Mhm."

    'Why's this lighthouse here? Lighthouses ward ships away from something.'
    'Twenty-five years ago, something landed in the sea just west of the island. Coming in at a shallow angle...'
    '...maybe it's just kind of shallow enough all around to be dangerous, so they have a lighthouse.'
    'If it was so different from the usual reasons for one, then there must be some kind of records somewhere in this place's history.'

    "Do we have a map of the surroundings? I do mean a nautical map, of course. Once I have this table clean, I should like to check the intersection of some lines." Like the shortest distance between the crashing object and the lighthouse, and where the impact would have been within surrounding islands, and whether those islands were of common purpose in a given time period.
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Teleport objects around a lot

    "YO?" Arthur's eyes get big in correlation with his grin. He's flagged down during his radiation-scan search, during his criss-crossing rocket runs. He pulls back on the broom handle of his rocket-broom, pulling into a hover... He looks to Lilian, pointing to where Petra's dropped. A quick nod -- he doesn't need a bunch of instruction. "GOTCHA."

    Hovering over the drop-site's bubbling marker, Arthur... Arthur's got a fishing minigame interface. He casts a portal in tight, condensed form down into the ocean, where, hopefully, he can catch Petra's attention and she can grab it like a powerup. It'll turn into a deployable portal, one she can place anywhere she needs, matching one on the surface. One kept at the shore, because it'll spill a ton of water out each time its partner is deployed, unless she can find something underwater that isn't... well, underwater.
Storm Investigators With a slight confidence boost from catching Greta looking on approvingly and Angela being on the same page about using her reading power, Marcus soon gets lost in her reading of the lighthouse! She keeps her lantern held aloft the entire time, like she's illuminating the pages before her very eyes. Helpfully, she actually starts talking about what she's reading, and Greta starts writing all of it down in case anybody wants to copy those notes later.

"This lighthouse was built... A very long time ago. 1903, at the same time as the Uqban lighthouse in... Yemen. It was built by the French, then seized by Britain during World War One. It was built to aid navigation like a normal lighthouse, and.. Oh! It is part of a formation with other lighthouses run by the British contractors. And then they held it until the 90s, but an eruption in 2007 disrupted that when the Uqban lighthouse was destroyed. How sad..."

"... But after it was reopened in 2028, a m... Mawlawi-" She says, pronouncing it incorrectly, "-found the place and shortened it by thirteen meters. An unlucky number... Oh! This person was the same one that made the expansions to the keeper's house and gathered those supplies, too. And then that person had nightmares and omens about God forsaking humanity, and he died in 2031."

With that reading done, Marcus exhales slowly, then starts searching around the upper levels of the lighthouse. Part of her is hoping she doesn't find the mawlawi's ghost, but part of her is also hoping to find any ghosts.
Lilian Rook     The water is clear. The bottom is shallow. The slope away from Quoin is slow. The motion of the choppy surface vanishes completely as Petra submerses herself. The Beauty of Ash dissolves into the brilliant blue, and now she could be anywhere, at this depth in any ocean, on any Earth, at any time. Being surrounded not by the ruins of a world already ended, but by seagrasses, dotted corals, and wild fish, is at once deeply reassuring on a strange and spiritual level, and more than equally as much, alienating.

    Matilda's directions aren't GPS, but they're not vague. Crossing the north side of Zuqar, heading west, barely more than ten miles of sea floor stretches ahead of her, and the first sign of a right direction is much closer; a piece of burnt metal, half-buried, that clinks against the Beauty of Ash's crystalline leg-tip. Though she is forced to play hot-cold to define the radius of the pieces that inevitably follow it, closing in from that perimeter is merely a matter of inevitability.

    At first, unidentifiable chunks of man-made material, encrusted by the sea. Then, plastic cargo webbing caught waving in the current. A twisted chunk of robot blade embedded in the sand. Sins of aircraft, strewn across square kilometers. As the water begins to darken, with the slope gradually taking Petra closer to the edge of the photic zone than the surface, the debris of helicopters and their cargo is increasingly interspersed with glints of what look like silver metal foam; flaked apart into hundreds, then thousands of glass-like fragments, each one retains vestiges of their hollow lattice, strangely geometrical regular, around their scorched outsides.

    Following them is different. Spalling castoff from a straight trail. An arrow that points her directly to where she's going, meter by dim, watery, meter. The endemic life dries up around her, but nothing replaces it. No unearthly substance covers the barren rock, nor has it been shaped. The second to last thing she arrives at is the lip of a crater, bizarrely wide and shallow, flattened down with unnaturally distributed force, and over sand that crackles with static and physically crunches underfoot, buried in the half-light, partially encapsulated in crumbling layers of spheroid metallic lattice--

    The distinct profile of a high-gain antenna; seven meters of pockmarked concave dish. The magnetometer boom extends almost straight upwards, grasping at the surface. The optical calibration plate is facing her. Even without markings, she'd recognize it. A spacecraft that should be over a light-day from Earth, miraculously intact, quietly forgotten in the dark blue void.

    As if recognizing it as a thing of heaven, not even the grasses come near it. The shredded main chassis of a helicopter cockpit is the closest thing after them. Underwater tools lay scattered around a field of silver-pinned yellow plastic, no doubt responsible for the gouges made in the electronic bus housing; the ten-sided spheroid protected by the angle it fell at. Where metal has been flensed away, seawater is held back by a fibrous layer of purplish-blue material, spilled over its edges and hardened like a scab. The mounting for the disc is barren. More than one human body is buried in the sand.
Meresankh     Although Meresankh's gravity manipulators are as functional in water as air (if a bit slower), she chooses not to submerge during the search of the seabed. Instead she hovers just above the waves, scanning the seabed for metals and electromagnetic signatures as she follows behind and above the Beauty of Ash. Arriving at the crash site, she emits a gasp - intentional, more than reflexive, but no less expressive of her surprise. She lowers herself into the water, settling down near the Beauty of Ash and Angela at the edge of the barren patch. Barely holding herself back from charging in across the empty sand, she performs a scan (visual and electronic) of the area first.

    Although the sand-buried dead receive a moment of solemn attention, the queen can't help but turn her attention to the crashed spacecraft. "These are two different modes of construction, one matching human stylings and the other... not," she remarks. "Some variety of self-healing structure has been placed around it. This is one of your world's space probes." She pauses.

    "Did something... catch it and throw it back? Like a 'called shot', placing it exactly where they intended to based on those coordinates from the disc. Were they playing a game? Or issuing a warning?"

    Meresankh looks around the craft now, at the bodies in the sand again. "Lives were lost retrieving that disc," she cautions. "We should be prudent in our approach."
Lilian Rook     'Do we have a map of the surroundings? I do mean a nautical map, of course. Once I have this table clean, I should like to check the intersection of some lines.'

    A map is something Lilian can easily produce on her tablet. 'One with leylines' is something she can produce by overlaying literal textbook material over it. Now that the object has actually been located:

    A hundred and twenty meters deep, twelve kilometers west, at an angle that, had it been earlier, would have been nearly a direct approach to the African continent, and later, a clean slingshot approach into Russia. The leylines don't draw a particular pattern relevant to the craft; in fact, they make it look very much like a messy accident. The lines drawn between the four lighthouses around the volcanic shield, however, would be ideally suited to works of astrology, divination, dreams, surveillance, and clandestine magic. The unassuming beacons were once involved in spycraft, back in the days of the masquerade.

    On the bottom of the sea floor, Meresankh's tesseract stirs. Despite the obvious freakishness of the sight, the reaction isn't strong. It's reacting to a residual event, most likely. One involving such considerable mutilation of 'space' that its traces still remain. Only when very close does the eggshell of geometric-metallic foam register as 'supernatural' at all; otherwise it seems to be nothing but some phenolic-foamed alloy.

    The residual response comes from the inside of the dish, peeled by heat and pocked by microscopic debris, where fragments of some arcane design can still been seen here and there across the considerable span. The strongest response is close to the bus housing, where, on the underside of the antenna support ring, the metal has been deeply scored with designs that uncannily resemble the image retrieved by Laplace from the Golden Record, drawn in sand. The circular nature of the craft incidentally allows it to be drawn entirely around the electronics suite inside the bus.
Angela Angela is honestly appreciative of a chance to be in the water. Just as she feels a pull to the stars she feels a pull to the beaches and the sea but, of course, she always knew the origin of that particular pull.

In truth, she hadn't thought about the condition of the aerospace of Lilian's world. ''Space'' isn't exactly something that comes up much back in her own world. Johnny was a bit of an outlier in her experience though, she supposes, she's also a bit of an outlier herself though her pull towards the cosmos doesn't seem to be nearly so strong as that particular AI.

she hasn't changed, she thinks, upon meeting him either. She is still doing the same things as before. Shouldn't it have meant something more to her?

Has that little half victory of hers broken her? Or is she still in a place where she feels her connections are inherently limited because of how limited her reach is?

It's old concerns. Even as she feels her world decay around her, what else can she do? If she had a better path forward besides martyrdom she'd take it. Wouldn't anyone?

Her eyes widen as she sees that strange spacecraft--it's strange to her, even if it's supposed to be here. She extends her hand. That looks like a craft with a story to tell.

Golden light pulls olut from the spacecraft and takes the form of a page in her hand and she looks down at it, after.
Arthur Lowell > Arthur: Fondly regard space artifact

    You can't do that right now! Maybe you should GET PROBE.

> Arthur: They said not to say that

    You should GET PROBE.

> Arthur: Use portal to excavate space artifact.

    GET PROBE now.



    Arthur shakes his head. He readies the land-side Gate for Petra to apply the oceanside one. Should get the target out of the water and into general view quick, once she sticks it on there -- thank goodness he doesn't get a chance to see the bodies of the people lost in the process.

    Once it's on the surface, he'll be quickly shutting up. He jokes on the surface while gravitas thrums below. When Petra applies that portal, he should be able to spatially dislodge it -- if there's any proper space-warp tied into its terrifying surface growth, it'll undoubtedly interface with his abilities and deposit it, largely in the same condition, at the shore.
Petra Soroka "Do you empathize as such?"

    Contrary to her quick dismissal of just finding it funny for its irony, Tamamo querying her again forces Petra to further interrogate her own feelings on *why* she finds it funny, trapping her into her own unskippable dialogue.

    "Well, not *directly*, I'd say. I mean, it's not like I don't consistently put on the specific signifiers of being an outgroup in order to signal hostility to the kinds of people looking for those traits. So rather than it being an empathy thing, it's more like ideological allegiance. But it's funny because, the typical narrative target of this kind of sign is someone who's *free* to do violence towards, which is what the sign is meant to point out, and I have a whole thing about making sure that thoughtless group violence has a cost. So, like, if someone did kick me, I could kick them back."

    Eventually she's satisfied with her own explanation, and can get along with being useful at doing anything else. She follows this thought to completion even if Tamamo gets bored and ignores her partway through.

    Then, underwater. People say that the closest thing to space on earth is the deep sea, where the water becomes frigidly cold and stretches empty and lightless in every direction, and here in the sunlit shallows, the Beauty of Ash is like something that wandered up from far below. Jellyfish-transparent and shot through with luminescent orange, massive but dartingly mobile like a fish, the Beauty of Ash cuts through the water as if it wasn't even there. Once under, Angela is shifted from its arms to its back, where she can grab onto one of the spikes down its shoulders, so that all four of the mech's legs can be free to bound in front-back pairs just above the seafloor.

    Arthur's portal is snatched by the point of the mech's snout, carried along and trailing behind like an actual fish hook. The sand just barely stirs in swirls where the wake of the Beauty of Ash's legs kick it up, and despite its comparative size and the fright of the schools of fish scattering when it approaches, the ecosystem is left ghostly-undisturbed behind it.

    She doesn't have that long to lapse into a pleasantly dissociative haze, but she does consider that, given her habit of sleeping in the woods, it's equally plausible for her to spend nights underwater, too. This train of thought is broken off when she first sees a piece of burnt metal, and her passive wordless telepathic contact lights up with the noiseless equivalent of a bark. <!>

    She digs it up with the front legs of the mech, then darts around for a little while longer before closing in towards the center. Along the way, the Beauty of Ash accumulated objects of interest, wedged into the crack in its face or hooked on its snout like its mouth is crammed full to bursting, because she couldn't bear to leave behind the weird blade, or the sparkly silver lattice, and tried to haul as much of a helicopter chassis as she could along her journey. She had to give up on that one, though, and instead just impatiently circled it a few times to see if she could get any national insignia, or maybe corpses inside of it, or any other indication of where it came from.

    The Beauty of Ash floats closer to the Voyager craft, straightening upright for the first time since going underwater. The rest of the gathered floatsam is shaken off and placed a short distance away to not disrupt the site, and then it leans down to place the portal on the sand. Assuming that the water spat up on the shore is enough of a signal-- though she can use her radio if not-- Petra then focuses on interrogating the cuts in the probe like it's a forensics site instead of a crash. Were the corpses killed *by* cutting it? What did they cut it with and to get to what part of the probe?
Lilian Rook     The corpses have skeletonized inside their breached suits. Each of them, at a glance and a best guess, are military issue, though the equipment brought with them is better suited to underwater welding and medical evacuation at sea. The damage to their gear doesn't seem supernatural in any way; more like an explosion, mostly involving the shrapnel compromising breathable air. One that might account for multiple downed craft. The markings denote a local 'coast guard' authority, by G.D.F garrison number, but they're fake; taking a page from the body confirms what's already known.

    Every single one of these people were contractors working under NAZCA's orders, and some of them even knew. Far from the exciting lives of bionically enhanced and psychically maimed lifelong soldiers, these people couldn't be further from Blue and Red team, or the staff of the observatory slash quarantine in the mountains; their stories are those of dull, ghoulish desk strategists at best, and crank patriot scientists looking for a leg up into the the apparatus of the Letter Agency on average. If any survived this disaster, they've been disposed of later.

    Taking a page from the probe is a different matter. The golden motes of Angela's EGO surge through the entirety of the craft up until the antenna ring, and then are sharply repelled by the borders of the circle-drawn-in-the-sand. The Light therein is burned away, unable to touch the bus. The effect on the page is strange and dramatic.

    Where the text would begin reciting a story, the page lavishly details a perfect operational diagram of an eight-track magnetic tape recorder, with annotations added on top in a vaguely 'separate' pen. If she examines it techncally, it certainly 'tells a story'; one of step by step play, disassembly, sterilization, modification, recombination, and re-recording. She can even read the data on it; it's been translated into textual binary on the back side.

    Except half the page, right in the middle, looks as if it's been halfway drenched in ink. The circular pattern is reproduced in bold, sloppy lines, like either an official seal or an error message. The lines that radiate from it look like iron filings, reproduced in ink stippling, to draw out the exact contours of a magnetic field; one with multiple overlapping waveforms.

    It's hard to shake the idea that the Page wasn't, somehow intentionally, sabotaged or censored by that 'array'. It's also stupid to believe that it was, because the whole process is Angela's EGO; something that has nothing at all to do with magic or science, and which has no equivalent in this world.
Lilian Rook     Teleporting it to dry land is a lot of water more than it is a lot of work. The silvery 'shell' crumbles nearly to powder the instant it goes through Arthur's gate, and not when it hits the ground. For a fiery crash landing, the expensive, delicate, historically famous space probe looks only mildly worn; missing components and external damage can easily be accounted for by violent jostling and secondhand heat, as far as Petra can tell.

    The cutting never particularly got anywhere. The back of the bus housing however, previously buried under the sand, has clearly been detached and re-sealed, cut into with a physical instrument rather than a torch. In fact, the more that Petra looks at it, the more it seems like the probe has already been tinkered with. Minimally, albeit, but the signs emerge like a magic eye puzzle.

    The place where the recorder once was has signs of magnetic clamps being installed, then clumsily ripped out with a plasma cutter. The boom has been clipped off at the end to shorten it, bringing it within the invisible spherical perimeter drawn by the antenna. Everything relevant to the RPS has been unplugged and, somehow, physically, heatlessly spliced. The battery is fried, and certainly not by the onboard PSU.

    Every last trace of the isotopic Plutonium-238 that once powered it is gone. Even a quick wiki check can tell her the half-life is 87.7 years. A quarter of it should be left, even though that would be nowhere near enough to power even a single module. The time it'd take to decay than less than a percent of a percent like this would be nearly nine hundred years.

    The blue material looks like it spilled out from inside. The compartment where the DTR track should be.
Tamamo     "It is strange." Looking over the maps, Tamamo points out the construction of the array. "'Someone' predicted 'something,' but it could be wholly unrelated to the crash, given what else was happening at the same time. Significant events, dangers, are easy to chart in retrospect. If this particular event was predicted... it should be the entire array used together, as such. And yet, the people here... with one possible exception, were not informed of any such thing."

    She moves around the table to look at it from another angle. "The keeper's effects, or else... something in the expansions to the keeper's house. If I could find something there to read, to know whether... though it does not seem likely, would it not be something to learn that this was not 'predicted,' at all, but 'summoned'?"

    Tamamo's just on her way to find something to give her a read on that mystery lighthouse-shortener's motivations when Arthur gets the portal running, and she's interrupted by the splash of a now-beached space probe. "Well, now."

    Keeping her apron on, as it certainly couldn't hurt, Tamamo steps up to begin checking about the craft. "I do not know as to just how this looked, beforehand, but this part seems to have been disconnected, yes? These, here..." When the pieces are big enough, they're easier to follow.

    "If this were the same craft as housed the record we retrieved, this could be explained as looting and resealing. However, this craft came from the south... which, if it traveled without first looping about the Earth, suggests that it is the second Voyager, and not the first. Still, this does not mean that it has not yet been looted, whether by the same Agency or another."

    Tamamo looks toward the shortened boom. "That does not give the appearance of damage from looting. That has the appearance of something cut to fit within a box." A perfectly round box.

    She pauses. "Why did they fail to retrieve this? Something went wrong. What designs were left? Was it trapped?" The bodies aren't here, so she can't ask them.

    She makes her way to the underside of the support ring, where the metal was scored.
Meresankh     Meresankh, now returned (via portal, for expediency's sake) to the island, circles the probe, examining the modifications. She pulls out her tesseract again, but not to consult its reactions this time. She pockets the handheld dimensional labyrinth and speaks up. "This magic circle," she wonders aloud, "is it to keep us out? Or to keep something," she points at the strange blue scab, "*in*? We should not open this device frivolously."
Angela Angela flinches when the antenna ring somehow just...repels the effect of her EGO but she looks down at the page to confirm what just happened, frowning slightly. Naturally, her gaze is immediately preoccupied more by the disruption than the data she was actually able to obtain. It is likely uneccessary but once they are out of the water, she will helpfully point out, "Something about that antenna repelled the EGO." She shakes her head, burying her frustration. She doubts this is going to be much help to Lilian, though the idea that something could repel the EGO might be of interest in of itself.

It SHOULDN'T work, Angela thinks. It's one thing for an EGO drawn from a person to be able to avoid sharing information by virtue of their personality inherently influencing the stories drawn from them, but while the Voyager Space Probe would naturally have a narrative impression, especially in this situation, it doesn't have a personality. Right? Hm.

"I am not sure how an antenna could repel or disrupt this EGO like that--is it made out of a peculiar material? Or sending some sort of--"

She thinks of the Eversion Cannon and its effect on Rose. But if it was something like that, shouldn't she have been affected too? Or it could be different because it was a personal EGO? This speculation draws Angela no closer to answers.

"Antipsionic field?" She murmurs.

Angela looks over the page again and again in case she missed something out of cope.