Session 39 - Don't Drink The Water

Ahem.
Previously, across the Horizon...
The Nanab Foundation hosted multiple presentations by aspiring lettered scholars, though no presentation attracted the attention that Celeste Meracydia's did. Of course, none of the other presentations had people invade the auditorium and attempt to murder the speaker.
While the last attempt on Celeste's life was foiled by happenstance, this one was foiled with careful planning, with the party stationed strategically throughout the room. Serenye had help -- the other two people hired by Liga Kine to save Orrey's father, Liga said -- but they were not on Serenye's level, and Serenye could not match the full party on his own.
When the smoke cleared, the Nanab Foundation was severely damaged and also rather empty, presenters and audience both scattering to the winds. Celeste escaped safely about thirty seconds before the battle ended, Liga arrived to wish her well and collect the unconscious body of the would-be assassin, and the other assailants lost their jobs and then split.
With the presentation concluded, the map to the Forgotten City still safely in Celeste's possession, and the people responsible putting as much distance between the party and themselves as possible, we join the other people responsible as they finish up brunch the next morning at a local restaurant by the water's edge...
**
Celeste picks at her pancakes without too much enthusiasm. "Well, I'm probably fired," she says glumly.
Isa looks around at the table. "Hasn't stopped the rest of us," she notes.
"I think I'm technically on indefinite furlough," Yves volunteers.
Bast tilts his head curiously. "You'd think something like that would have would-be discoverers all over you."
"Join the club of Indeterminate Leave, Celeste. We have beignets!" Linnet slides one onto her new friend's plate. "Why do you seek when you do not know? Seriously, what kind of a stupid question is that? You seek BECAUSE you do not know. It's like he's never set foot in a library. Twerp."
"Oh, I'm sure there will be openings for me to tag along on another expedition, or someone will want to swoop in and try to take credit for mine," Celeste says. "But getting the Foundation trashed wasn't really something that's going to go over well. I had Hollow show up on my doorstep this morning and berate me for damaging the stage. Did you know that the stage floor was built from the same trees that formed the oldest boat in the Foundation's history?"
"They gave their service for a noble cause - namely, the cause of not getting you killed." (Linnet is half a mimosa in and the filters have hit the floor.) "Anyway, I'm probably overstepping my captain to say this, but as far as I'm concerned you're welcome with us as long as you want to be here."
"Way it looked to me, they were idiots for not getting better security after the first attempt," Bast says.
"And we don't have any historical stage planks to worry about." Linnet winks.
"And what sort of advance of mortal knowledge doesn't involve a few destroyed buildings along the way?" asks Yves, who does not have the excuse of /any/ alcohol in him right now. Maybe some coffee.
Orrey smiles as he listens to his new family working on adopting a new member.
"The map would be safer on your ship than it would be anywhere else, I imagine..." Celeste muses. "And everyone on that ship has been carefully vetted before they signed on, of course. Like you have with me."
"Oh shit. We forgot to vet her," Isa says.
"...we /have/ been attacked a few times," Yves notes, out of some sort of brief regard for full knowledge before making decisions about safety. "Like, sometimes there have been giant birds made of lightning or weird nihilists or--well, the giant air monster we talked into signing up with us, that one's cool now."
"Like Linnet said, we have plenty of room. And happen to be looking for a cartographer. If the Nanab foundation is blind enough to not give you an expedition after yesterday, I say they don't deserve to be in on the discovery." Bast leans back and smiles with a hungry glint in his eye.
"What does our vetting process normally entail? Do I need to come up with interview questions? Celeste, if you were a brunch dish, what would you be?" Linnet asks.
"Oh, the daily special, because I change with the seasons and am never quite as good as the experts would have you believe," she answers immediately.
"In my interview for my first real job, they asked what kind of tree I would be," Yves says thoughtfully. "But I think it was just to check that I wasn't an eco-terrorist. Because of the viera thing. Honestly, some people think that just because of the ears, I'm going to go set factories on fire, and that's /so/ prejudiced." Yves adds under his breath, "And /so/ old-fashioned." "So what do you need a cartographer for? In the immediate," Celeste clarifies. Two bites of pancake vanish. "I know Isa, and you all showed up with purpose."
"Oh gods. Isa, show her the map," Bast says.
Celeste considers Yves, new frontiers of curiosity unfolding before her.
"Ah...the map that's locked up in the chart locker on the ship?" Isa asks.
Yves blinks placidly back at Celeste, nibbling on a beignet.
"...yeah, that one. We are being sent to to go diving for a Lost Shipment, y'see. Which is to be found...somewhere west of a crease and north of a coffee stain, apparently. So that's the short term. Longer-term, well, I expect we'll be hitting every corner of the Dicelan sooner or later, going off the main shipping routes quite a bit."
“Do you have any maps or charts of the ocean nearby? We’re looking for a sunken ship. Or more specifically, what’s on the ship.” Orrey says.
"Two in my old office, one back at the apartment," Celeste says. "I can get them all and join you at your ship?"
"...maybe with an escort?" Yves suggests, trying to get powdered sugar off his fur.
"You'll understand if I say I'm coming with you," Isa says.
“I could use a walk.” Orrey adds.
"Sounds like we're all due to stretch our legs a bit," Bast says.
Celeste beams at Orrey. "Delighted, then."
"Where to first?" Isa asks.
Linnet is still giggling at "west of a crease and north of a coffee stain," but she gestures her assent.
"Apartment first, then the office. I want to go ahead and grab a change of clothes and a better pair of shoes, too. If I'm carrying my bags, then I shouldn't have to stay at the Foundation for more than a minute."
Isa nods. "Lead the way," she says.
Shortly...
The Starfall welcomes its newest passenger, with Rahel giving her a very quick tour, Jasper offering her a cinnamon roll, Apoc taking her things and stashing them in a room with a lock, and Shula pausing to say a brief hello before returning to fixing the boards on the exterior disguise.
Within a few minutes and a round of drinks, the conference room has a multitude of maps, the full officer contingent, and the prospective navigator.
Celeste snaps into action, pinning two maps down side by side and scribbling notes in the margin of her notepad as she works. "Did your contact say where this map came from?" she asks around the pencil between her teeth.
"I don't think so. I'd like to think he would have been embarrassed to," Linnet says.
"Not as I recall," Bast confirms.
"Understandable. It's actually perfect, though!"
Isa looks dubious. "Perfectly something."
Celeste beams. "I mean, it's a terrible map, but what it does do is narrow down the location perfectly. It's northeast, right? There are three routes that come through that way, at least that are traditionally used. But this bit here--" she points to what for all the world is a tear in the map --"only makes sense if it's here--" she points to a particular hook-nosed bit on her actual map --"because otherwise the path would be too far east, and I know that the reefs there are higher than the shipping vessels like to deal with."
"Isa, are all your friends such geniuses in their fields? Good heavens, Celeste, you're amazing!" Linnet exclaims.
"...so it's like one of those brain puzzles where it's all 'The moogle doesn't like mushrooms' and 'The person wearing green is not sitting at the table with the roses' and you need to figure out the one wedding table arrangement where no blood feuds break out," Yves says.
"So that means that the Errant Signal came in on the Tertiary -- I don't know why they call it that -- meaning it was coming from a lot further away than Machanon, following the coast from that far. Maybe a Cardian harbor? Even still, they tend to deal with airships in the winter... anyway."
Isa smiles at Linnet in a way that is deliberately short of "toldja" but conveys the implication thoroughly.
"So if it's the Tertiary, then the ship sank somewhere... here." Celeste traces her N-painted fingernail in a circle. "And that also means that it wasn't a natural shipwreck, because the reef is too far east of here, and the cliffs are too far west. Whatever sank it was planned."
“How close can you get us to the a reasonable location?” Orrey asks.
"Within a few square miles, I'll bet. You may need to do some diving to narrow down the location, but I'm sure it's there. An afternoon? This afternoon? We'll want to do this before it gets too late, visibility is going to drop as soon as the sun does."
Bast gives Isa a raised-eyebrow look over Celeste's thoroughly absorbed head.
"Three'll get you five it's monsters, not pirates," Isa says to Bast.
"So far, monsters are more likely to see reason and make a rational arrangement for the good of all involved," Yves mutters.
“Or another mask.” Orrey says as he frowns.
"Well, we wouldn't want this to be boring, would we now," Bast grouses.
"ADVENTURE!" Linnet exclaims, louder this time.
"Wouldn't know what to do with myself if it was, Captain," Isa says dryly.
"So, um, who among us is doing the actual diving? I'm happy to help, but I haven't mysteriously learned to swim in the last few weeks."
"Which of you is good at diving?" Celeste asks, looking around the group, careful not to look at Orrey after hearing his story in Alterna.
Yves' ears droop, somehow, even lower than usual.
"I grew up in the Triad. Not much in the way of deep dives, but at least I won't drown without some determined assistance," Bast says.
"Yves, maybe you and I can try to enchant something to float. Couple of wineskins, maybe..." Linnet muses.
“I’ve been to the bottom of the ocean, but not on purpose...” Orrey says doubtfully.
"I'm familiar with the process," Isa admits, reluctantly.
"Swimming is maybe the thing I'm worst at," Celeste admits, "so unless you need someone to paddle around in a circle while wishing she could hang onto the edge, I'll supervise."
"I mean, give me a bathyscaphe and I could probably figure it out," Yves says. "I know how to--well, I know the /theory/ on those. I read a paper."
"Captain, Commander, looks like it's one of you two. Team Nerd, let's spend the trip over trying to figure out ways we can be useful." Linnet slings an arm around each of Orrey and Yves and grins sheepishly. "Celeste, you might end up classified with Team Nerd, but I assure you it's an affectionate title."
"After the training facility, that's a fair assessment of my skills," Celeste says.
"If we're going to be doing salvage regularly, I really want to budget for a diving bell." Isa still looks vaguely like she's going to be sick.
"I mean, we have our captain, who's also an explosives expert, and we have our commander, who's in charge of tactics and training the less militarily inclined which end of a sword is the poky bit. Yves can explode anything that looks at him funny. Orrey and I, well. We're mainly the information gathering sort." Linnet smiles. "Also the 'talking people out of trying to get us in serious trouble' sort, but that's a teeny bit less frequent."
Bast looks at Isa again. "Your call. Sounds like you've got more experience, but you standing by in case I get in trouble probably works better than the other way around."
“Don’t sell yourself short, Linnet. You were the one that ended the last fight.” Orrey shakes his head at Linnet’s modesty.
The Starfall takes to the sky.
Marina snaps at Celeste twice when the directions are delivered in a decidedly non-aeronautical fashion, but fifteen minutes later the two have worked it out without saying anything and Marina's corrections are never repeated.
Isa takes the lifeline, gladly, and agrees to be backup for Bast's dive.
The airship skims over the edge of the water, Apoc serving as a spyglass operator on the deck as Jasper collects the diving equipment the team has managed to find or purchase in the last couple of weeks.
(Linnet's enchanted wineskin floaties do not make the cut.)
(Yves' idea to just build a bathyscaphe from scratch also grounds itself on the rocks of reality, which mostly consist of the twin boulders of Not Enough Parts and Can't Find That Journal Article Again.)
As the sun drifts past its peak in the sky, the collected information narrows the region down to a relatively manageable section of the ocean. With clear skies and calm waters, the conditions for a dive are optimal.
The Starfall slowly comes to a stop, Shula hanging over the railing to watch her construction as the ship settles into the water, willing the recently-treated wood to cooperate and not require more work once they return to Thalatte.
With the journey completed, most likely... the dive remains.
The bulk of the crew has assembled on deck as well, as word of a shipwreck is a far more appealing spectator event than "maybe we'll all die to boarders."
"Friends, don't all crowd on one side, we'll put undue stress on the ship." Linnet herds some of the cast to the opposite railing.
"We've got six dive suits," Jasper says as he inspects the lines and hooks on the harnesses. "And I'm even mostly sure they're usable."
"...where have those been hiding?" Bast looks up from his checks of the ropes.
"...do airships normally stock dive suits?" Linnet asks.
“Well if we have enough for a whole group of us, I’d love to see what’s down there. Though it’s going to be awfully hard to sketch underwater.” Orrey checks out the suits after sketching on deck most of the trip.
"Three of them are from back in town," Jasper says, gesturing with surprising accuracy over his shoulder at the direction of Thalatte over the horizon. "One Apoc built once he heard about Orrey taking a trip over the railing back in Alterna. One we found in one of the few hundred rooms it feels like this place is hiding. One is mine."
Unwilling to risk her family spear to the crushing black deep, Isa is practicing a few thrusts with a fishing trident. "Just going to have to remember real hard, Orrey."
"Let's find this ship first, then see about outfitting an expedition. Someone want to test these and make sure they don't leak while I'm diving?" Bast asks.
"Wait, shit. Are we all going?" Linnet is normally pretty pale but looks almost translucent, and kind of seasick.
Yves is doing some careful examination of the hands of the dive suits. "I mean, I think that I could cast with this on, no problem, but thunder does some weird things underwater sometimes...."
"Only if you want!" Rahel calls out from the railing, by Apoc's side. "We just dug everything up that we could."
Bast gives the rope he's tied off a solid tug, looking satisfied, and starts pulling his shirt off.
Linnet whistles appreciatively.
Rahel and Apoc both whistle.
(Linnet and Rahel are soon busy comparing the merits of various shirtless crew members.)
Isa gives a look that promises swift and merciful death to any future whistlers, and strips down to a one-piece to claim another suit. Wait, not merciful. The other one.
Orrey shrugs and joins them.
Celeste sits with her legs dangling over the edge, arms wrapped around a support on the railing, watching.
Bast looks back with a mildly sour expression, then sketches an ironic bow to the assembled company, old scars standing out on his back where a moogle's wings might usually be. He stretches briefly and looks down into the water, not apparently inclined to claim a suit at the moment.
Marina drags a chair out and sits down away from the theater troupe, but close to the railing so she can watch as well.
A slight murmur runs through the troupe at Bast's bow and back, one that is shushed out almost immediately.
"I mean, if we have suits," Yves is saying to himself, and hangs up his neatly stitched coat (now with a cool giant battle scar X in the back!) to get into a proper diving suit.
"So. I'll go down and see if I can spot the wreck while you get these suits sorted out. Three yanks or lots of thrashing, do be so kind as to pull me out; something big decides the ship is too tasty to resist, take off and pull me along, I'll get back on eventually," Bast says.
Jasper takes up position on the line, nodding to Bast.
Orrey notices after the murmur and asks in a quiet voice, “What happened to your wings? If you don’t mind me asking. Really none of my business...” Orrey trails off.
"Or maybe I'm vastly overestimating my diving here and I'll be back here under a minute to claim one of these for myself." His smile is decidedly lopsided as he takes deep, slow breaths.
Isa nods. "You start thrashing, look out above. Won't get quite the same velocity, but the principle is the same."
Bast turns to Orrey briefly as he picks up his goggles and snaps them on. "Story for another time. Let's see what's waiting for us here." A tap between the lenses makes a faint light shine out from between his eyes - and then he's on the railing, and dropping feet-first into the water below.
Orrey nods and wishes him luck.
The water hits like a shock, and then the expanse of the deep sea is all around Bast, the filtered sunlight waving around him.
"The captain has left the ship!" Rahel booms in a rather good impersonation of Jasper.
The rope around his waist is both a weight and a lifeline - not common in his experience, but not a major distraction either. He pauses briefly to get his bearings, and dives deeper.
“Who takes over when the captain is gone? Or do we just have a party until he’s back?” Orrey grins as he watches Bast swim around below.
"First officer, and then there's a chart after that." Isa scowls at Orrey. "You were supposed to have read it."
"We did, we just have some difficulty remembering everyone's titles," Linnet says.
“Oh I read it, I just didn’t memorize it. That takes a lot of time and effort.” Orrey says.
"The idea," Isa explains, "is that you shouldn't have to think about who's in charge if you're in a situation where someone needs to be in charge."
The murky water gives way to more details as Bast dives, the undulating light in the waves illuminating the rise and fall of the dirt and grime close to the bottom. Towers of coral rise up, a faint bluish-white glow that casts an eerie light on the fish swimming in schools, and right where Celeste said it would... on the broken mast of a sailing ship.
Yves is still trying to remember where he is on the chart. Somewhere... below Isa and above Apoc, right?
"Default strategy, Isa: follow the person who either looks the most like they know what they're doing, or is running the fastest," Linnet says.
"That's a terrible strategy."
"And yet highly effective."
This seems almost too easy. Bast makes his way closer, looking for anything that might take an interest in him in return.
"Only until you have two people who look like they know what they're doing, doing the opposite of one another. A clear chain of command saves time and saves lives." Isa recites this last bit like a catechism.
“Maybe we should have outfits to tell each officer apart.” Orrey suggests. “Or HATS!”
"Isn't that what the hats are for-- Exactly!" Yves exclaims.
Yves is now contemplating what the most appropriate Officer Yves hat would be. Something cool, but also distinctive, but also subtle, but also cool.
"I have some preliminary thoughts on insignia," Isa offers earnestly.
“We all need to vote this into ship law immediately. Captain wears the captain’s hat, first officer gets a slightly smaller one and so on.”
Up on the deck, there is the slightest of splashes from the port side (the dive is on starboard), and two of the Hive rush over to the railing. Eiri holds her hands up. "It's fine! I dropped the penlight I bought yesterday overboard, that's all!"
"Didn't you get that at that weird Magical Melodies store or whatever it was?" one of the Hive asks.
"Yeah, it plays a tune when you turn it on. A really silly enchantment."
"You can't do hat size for the org chart," Yves says indignantly. "Not only is it impractical both in terms of head size and some people at the bottom needing to wear adorably tiny hats, you would have to stop and compare sizes in the middle of an emergency."
"Insignia needs to be quickly recognizable in the field but not so large and distinctive as to give information to distant observers." Isa frowns. "Hats are too obvious."
Yves nods seriously. "...so, are there insignia options that glow in the dark? For, like, night battles? Presumably there'd be a stealth option too."
A fish darts out from near the shipwreck -- not in, just near -- and heads over toward the Starfall. About ten feet in length, with a blue body and pink fins, and a jaw that looks downright upsetting, it swims over to investigate something that fell into the water -- though not the moogle that also fell into the water.
Orrey pulls out his sketchbook. “What are you thinking in terms of design, Isa?” Orrey looks down at the only halfway on diving suit. “Maybe a talk for later?”
"Stealth operations are usually small enough to support flatter command structures," Isa says to Yves. To Orrey, she opens her mouth just as he speaks, then nods. "Later. I will show you my ideas."
"If you get into a situation where you need a chain of command underwater, insignia aren't gonna be much help," Linnet says.
That...doesn't look like enough to sink a ship, but also seems distinctly unwelcome. Bast takes one more look around the shipwreck for any clues to how it ended up here, and any more Suprise Fish.
Yves is not so much staring at the water as mostly in a diving suit, staring into the distance while contemplating glowing insignia.
Orrey finishes getting suited up and straps on his big knife.
Then again, that feels like enough for this dive. More than enough, before too long. Bast makes his way back to the surface, following the rope back to the Starfall.
Three surprised 'eeps' come from the port side, and then, "Well, you're not getting that light back," from Ivy.
Celeste leans forward as Bast's head crests the surface. "What did you find?" she calls out.
"Let's just say the job is yours if you want it." Bast tosses his head to get the dripping pom out of his face and grins up at Celeste. "We're almost on top of the ship. And there's also a decidedly unfriendly-looking fish down there." He covers the distance back to the ship with an easy stroke and climbs up the side.
Celeste cheers, and then feels bad about it, what with the fish.
Isa gives Celeste a celebratory clap on the shoulder, and looks at Bast. "So what's the plan?"
"Maybe it's amenable to reason," Yves says. "...how does this helmet fasten?"
"The fish ate my magic light, if that's at all helpful," Eiri says from the port side. The tonberry pushes the glasses up her nose, which is difficult on account of tonberries not really having conventional noses. "It wasn't a very good light."
"Any suits get tested yet? That first, for anyone going down. Then we either scare off or deal with the fishy welcome. I couldn't get close enough to see if there were more and what hit the ship, so let's keep some lookouts."
“I suppose we just...dive right in?” Orrey smiles and drops overboard.
Yves points to the splash where Orrey hit the water. "...I guess that one's tested, now?"
Bast stops toweling off and knocks his head softly against a nearby wall. "...if he wants to be a hero, that's his problem. I've got a suit to put on." He does seem to be reasonably efficient about getting into the suit.
Yves has mostly figured out how to make the helmet work. "I don't hear any screaming," he says, voice more muffled now, "so that probably means everything's fine, right?"
Isa shakes her head, seals her helmet, and jumps in after Orrey.
Yves waves awkwardly to Linnet and Bast, and lurches over the railing. Can't let Orrey show him up! Or possibly he can, given the size of the splash he just made.
Bast grimaces at Linnet. "Watch for anything getting too interested in the ship, yeah?" Then he closes the seals on his helmet, picks up a presently unused marlinspike, and follows the rest into the water.
The Errant Signal is about 85 feet below the surface, alongside one of the coral towers, on top of the remains of another. For a three-week-old wreck, it looks like it went through considerable hell getting here. As the successful swimmers draw closer, they have a few options -- exploring along the deck, exploring along the hull, or combing the surrounding coral.
Orrey is very interested in the ship itself and will explore the deck.
Bast is perfectly willing to let Orrey do his own thing, and dives down to the hull.
Isa takes the coral, then.
Yves flails near to the ship, with very little precision, and finally thinks better of this whole matter, letting himself bob back to the surface of the water.
The hull has split almost straight in two, with wreckage spreading out over the coral and the sand below, beams twisted out as if ruptured from within. Crates litter the coral, most unbreached. The one Isa finds that has been broken apart looks to be full of ruined foodstuffs.
"I should probably just... help observe," Yves shouts, from the surface of the water. He will probably need some help getting back aboard.
The deck is full of bodies, bodies held still in dramatic poses, a sailor still holding his short sword, another clutching the rope of the sail.
Orrey stares, shocked at what he’s seeing.
There's a flicker in the water on the port side, Linnet notices, drifting over toward the lightly drifting black mage.
"Someone wanna gives Yves a yank back up before he gets munched?"
Apoc grabs Yves's line and starts to bring him in. "Fish looking to expand its menu?" he asks Linnet.
"Unclear, but he sounds like he wants to come back up and there's something heading his way."
Yves stares balefully at the water, muttering something inaudible through the helmet, though it seems to be about theory, practice, and lack of instruction manuals.
There is a name on the side of the cracked crate Isa finds -- DAECARUS. That matches the other crates strewn about.
Yves is hauled up onto the deck clear through the mutter.
"Hi, Thunderbun. Did you happen to get the license number of that fish?"
Bast stares, and makes a couple of slow strokes that would bring him closer to the exploded hull - then shakes his head and rises toward the surface.
Yves works his helmet off once he's back on deck. "I didn't even see the fish. It's hard to navigate underwater." He sounds downright indignant, as if the ocean has personally offended him thereby.
"Whenever I get water on all sides of me, I get completely turned around and lose all of my bearings," Celeste sympathizes. "2-D planes only, please."
When she sees Bast start to surface, Isa looks around for Orrey to make sure he's seen the signal.
Orrey rises to the surface once he recovers from the initial shock.
The fish Linnet is tracking swims away from the surfacing divers.
Isa kicks up, following the other two to the surface of the water.
80% of the ship is leaning over the railing to learn what was found. The Starfall does not list to one side with their motion, but Marina is watching that carefully.
Isa hoists herself up over the railing, opening her helmet and taking a deep lungful of air.
Yves works himself out of the suit, and gets his coat back on, regardless of current dampness levels.
Celeste joins the group, nearly bouncing on the balls of her feet in anticipation. "What sank it? What's going on? What did you find?"
"Explosion, if I had to guess. Hull's split from the inside," Isa says.
Bast, rope looped around one hand to hold him against the side of the ship, loosens the seals on his helmet to speak. "One: Orrey, you go off on your own like that again and I'll hold you under myself until the lesson sinks in. Don't run off on your own, especially when we might need to pull your ass out of trouble. Two: Yeah, that ship looked like something burst it from the inside. I do believe we don't have the full story on its last run."
“There are bodies...fully intact bodies on the deck.” Orrey gulps as he takes the reprimand.
Isa squints. "That shouldn't be right. They've been down there for weeks."
"...that sounds like a magic sort of problem," Linnet says.
"Doesn't make much sense with an explosion, either," Bast says.
"And the sort of problem where you might need tactical support topside," Linnet adds.
Isa rolls her shoulders. "Does the name Daecarus mean anything to any of you? It's not the name of the ship or the captain, and it's not unfamiliar, but I can't place it."
"Not the sort of magic problem to be solved by hitting it immediately with more magic," Yves says woefully. "...I mean, depending on what we mean by 'solved', anyway."
"Clearly we just haven't tried enough magic." Linnet is staring off across the horizon, turning the name "Daecarus" over in her mind and in her mouth...
"...think they have an office in the Triad? Shipping, basic materials," Bast says.
“Whatever it means, we still have more exploring to do. Captain, where should we go next?” Orrey asks, with a hint of chagrin from his earlier actions.
"They were the university's food supplier. Did any of that look like food? I mean, they seemed legit, even if they did call us in at the crack of dawn to help unload."
Isa nods. "Some of the crates were smashed open, and it looked like they'd had food in them. That's not the intended salvage though, so I didn't poke too hard."
"I think the company I worked for did some shipping with them," Yves says, rather uncertain. "That's... well. I mean. All sorts of people ship with them."
"Hm. Well, we mark this location, after we do our job, maybe they'll pay for the information," Isa says.
The Hive return from below decks, carrying about fifteen towels (for Yves) and at least eighty percent of a net.
Yves cannot look elegant about scrubbing his fur dry, and rapidly stops trying to project any such thing.
Bast glances at Yves. "They ship anything that might turn a ship inside out, in your experience?"
Yves is rubbing his face with a towel. Vigorously. "Daecarus shipped all sorts of things, I don't know any specific regulations on that," he says, muffled again. "AZYS had. Lots. Of divisions. Projects. Stuff. All sorts of stuff. Things. A lot of it, I didn't work on. I didn't blow anything up. Not my fault."
The horizon of curiosity stretches out even further than Celeste could have imagined.
"Orrey, Bast, either of you catch sight of the chest we're here for?"
Orrey shakes his head no.
Bast spreads his hands. "No clues off the name, then. I didn't see anything like a chest, figure our chances are best either in the hull or around it. Time to try again?" He catches sight of the Hive trying to sort out the mostly-net. "Ah, good, I was going to ask. See if you can rig this to pull things up from the wreck?"
Isa nods. "Yeah," she says, and fastens her helmet up again.
"Sure!" five voices answer in harmonic unison.
"I'll keep an eye out for any more big fish," Linnet says.
Orrey follows suit and then shouts. “Where to?” Which comes out muffled.
"I'm thinking hull first. Don't push too hard, come up if you need to - we've got time. If you feel like you can stay longer, use your judgment." Bast fastens his own helmet and drops in. He makes it about twenty feet down before reversing course, waving the others on.
Orrey jumps in after Bast, finds him underwater, and then swims alongside him towards the hull. “Well that plan went well...” Orrey signals a thumbs up and heads down.
There is water visibly sloshing in Bast's helmet, and he spits rather emphatically as he loosens something around his neck to pour out the excess. "Sharding seals" carries faintly back up to the crew.
Isa drops like a slow-motion version of one of her dragoon assaults, landing on the seabed with a puff of silt before probing at the open section of hull.
Isa finds the chest, or at least the only thing that doesn't look like the Daecarus chests -- a comparatively small box, about the length of Isa's arm from elbow to fingertips, inside the hull, where it was split apart.
A lot of people up on the deck are sure that those gripes are aimed at someone else, definitely not them.
"There are seals down there? Well, those shouldn't be a threat. In fact, they should be adorable." Linnet is now peering intensely over the railing in search of adorable seals.
Orrey joins Isa and points at the box, then points up, then tilts his head.
"Oh, you don't know what they do to penguins, do you," Yves says ominously.
Isa attaches a lanyard to the box, and then nods to Orrey. She points up first, then to the box, and then back down.
"...it's way too warm for penguins, Yves."
Engineering temporarily defeated by nature, Bast makes the climb back up the side more slowly, weighed down by a suit full of water, and sets about pouring it out.
The fish is deep, and out of Linnet's range now. She hasn't seen it make any move to return.
"What a seal will do to a penguin," Yves says darkly, "it will do to anything else it thinks it can sealhandle."
Isa starts hoisting the box, which does not seem to want to cooperate. She waves at Orrey to surface, and keeps tugging.
Orrey nods and swims upwards, trying not to get too far ahead of Isa just in case there’s trouble.
The fish from before swims by Orrey, maybe twenty feet away, and pays him no mind.
Orrey really wants to pause and watch the fish but continues up instead.
Once free of the grime and the cracked timbers around it, the chest in Isa's grasp is light and fairly easy to move. It is oddly cold to the touch, especially compared to the temperature of the water.
Feeling the air in her suit beginning to go stale, Isa kicks free of the seabed, heading up towards the light as fast as she can. Even still, her body starts to send early warning signals of hypoxia.
The light up above gets stronger and brighter as Isa nears the surface, the dark of the depth giving way.
Orrey climbs back on board just as his air gives out and takes his helmet off. “Isa got it!”
Bast steps over to the rail to watch for Isa, helmet left on deck.
Yves, looking fluffier than normal, has given up on the towels.
“And that fish was SOMEthing. Seemed friendly enough. You might be able to make friends, Yves.” Orrey says.
Celeste watches the water's surface, waiting for Isa before she celebrates.
Isa's unbuckling her helmet before it's even fully out of the water, pulling in enormous ragged breaths before trying to find her way back onto the deck. "Got it," she manages between gulps of air. "Tied secure." Gulp. "Too cold." Gasp. "Real weird." Breath. "Get me out of here."
"Whoo." Bast lends a hand with hauling Isa back in.
Apoc and Jasper grab Isa's line, Celeste hanging onto the railing to grab the box so Isa can focus on getting out of the water.
Yves grabs the less damp towels, ready to offer them to Isa as soon as she gets to deck.
Once Isa is on deck, Orrey balls up a piece of paper from his notebook and tosses it up in the air, and then it EXPLODES in beautiful purple and green fireworks that spells out “VICTORY!!!”
Isa gets the box on deck first, then herself, then takes the towel from Yves. "Thanks. Get that secured and maybe it's just me, but let's get it on shore and off our ship as quick as we can, alright?"
Yves flinches, lighting leaping to his fingertips and towel dropped.
“But what about the weirdness down there?” Orrey asks. “Should we investigate further?”
The lightning disappears rapidly, and Yves nonchalantly puts the sparkiness away, like he totally meant to do that, he wasn't startled or anything.
The box in question, now that it's on the deck, is interesting. It's wooden, the wood a brownish-gray, and it doesn't look that wet. It also doesn't look in any way damaged or weathered by being submerged for that long.
"If we want to come back, we know exactly where it is. Thanks, Celeste, by the way. But something doesn't feel right about that box and I want it gone. Remember that the ship was breached from inside."
"...again, this sounds like a weird magic thing."
"Of course," Celeste says to Isa. She sits down cross-legged on the deck and quirks her lips, staring at the box. "What did you do to take out a whole ship, then, hmm?"
“Do we take it to a safe place and open it?” Orrey asks.
Isa, now stretched out on the deck, says "No. We take it to our agent and collect our gil. It's not our box, Orrey. We don't get to play with it."
Bast stops examining the weird box. "We've got our contract here. I want to know what's going on with that ship myself, but Isa has seen more of it than most of us and she's our best diver, and I'm not sending her down again like this. Let's head back for now."
"It's not playing, Isa, it's investigating," Linnet tries.
“How do we know the client’s goods are still inside the box?” Orrey asks.
"We're not being paid to investigate. Remember that this is a trial contract for us. Stick to the letter," Isa says.
“They didn’t say not to open it and check that it’s all there, did they?” Orrey asks hopefully.
"Intact. Retrieval. We don't have a manifest to compare it to anyway."
Linnet pokes experimentally at the box. "Are we sure this is wood? If it hasn't rotted after being underwater for weeks, and it doesn't give at all when poked...but it looks like wood.. Who the hell makes food shipping boxes out of petrified wood?"
Isa stands up, and walks over to Linnet and Orrey with her hand out. "Eight thousand gil, please."
"Isa, all I did was poke the side of it."
"Don't care. That's what it's going to cost if we fuck this up. So if you want to poke and prod, pay up. Because otherwise you're taking the money from everyone on this crew."
"...I've met that." Yves clears his throat.
Orrey holds his hands up, not touching the box. “Understood, Isa.”
"I will write you an IOU when I get back to the cabin, and I am much less likely to break a petrified box."
"I mean. The wood. That the box is made of. I've met it before. When we..." Yves shakes his head. "Never mind. Not our box. I need to go to my room and, uh, ask someone a question."
“The woods in Alterna?!” Orrey exclaims.
"Seriously, though, aren't you the least bit weirded out by this? Are we helping someone smuggle weapons? Or weird magitek? Do you want to be complicit in smuggling weird magitek in endangered boxes?" Linnet asks.
Yves looks rather distressed. "I mean, that's... it's /dead/. It's a corpse. Do trees have corpses? It's not our box. I shouldn't touch it. I just need to go ask a mask about this, just in case." He departs the deck briskly.
There is also, Yves notes, a small crack in the corner of the lid. Perhaps a millimeter thick, but it's there.
"I am extremely weirded out by this but I also know that your friends are eventually going to want us to pay them, and we can't do that if no one will hire us because we renege on the first contract that comes our way. And I am a little frustrated with every plan that we agree to being tossed over the railing every time something slightly unusual comes along like a shiny distraction."
Yves leans back from the doorway he's just gone through to call back, "Don't open the box! There's already a crack!" and then vanishes again.
"So, just once, can we stick to the plan?" Isa finishes. "Just to see what it feels like?"
Some chatter from the crowd seems to indicate that they, too, enjoy the concept of being paid.
"Alright, that's enough of that. We're not poking the weird box from the exploded ship in any way while it's on ours, and not any more than it takes to get it to the people who will give us money for it after. Isa? Well done on the retrieval; please secure it, and then knock off for the rest of the trip. You look like you could use it."
Linnet throws up her hands and stalks off to her cabin, muttering about deficiencies in the spirit of scientific inquiry.
Isa visibly defuses, and nods to Bast. "Aye, Captain."
Orrey shrugs, takes another long look over the side, and then starts sketching who he saw down there as a way of dealing with those lingering images of the frozen bodies.
In his cabin, Yves addresses the wooden mask he was given by the forest. "Look, I don't even know if this works for communication, but... is that box a part of you? Or was it? Was it a friend? Is wood like that just like fingernails and fur, or is it like a body? Is anything of /you/ inside? ...I'm hoping it's fine. Or that it's, like, the legacy of an ancient tragedy, which is still bad, but less our problem, but, uh, I could use some clarity, here." He stares at the mask. "...usually I have to be on more drugs to ask inanimate objects this sort of thing, but we both know full well you're not /just/ that."
The mask stares, unseeing, back at Yves.
The ship creaks as Marina starts the engines back up, the hum drawing Yves's attention for a split second.
When he looks back at the mask, it continues to stare, unseeing, back at him.
But he cannot shake the sense that it blinked.
End session.