Sometimes, even when fate deals you a strong hand, the table you are playing at means its not enough.  The Maritime Industry Museum is that kind of place.  It's a fine institution filled with models and artifacts and historical exhibits, but it's in New York City, a veritable city of museums, and it's stuck way, way out on the fringe of the Bronx, certainly well off the tourist trails.  It's also well off the public transportation trails, has no advertising at all, and let's be real, if a family is headed into the Bronx for an outing, it's to the zoo.

This is despite the fact that unlike most of the city's attractions, this one is free.

As a result, if the characters scope the place out at night, it is empty.  If they appear during the day, somewhat less empty- they might find some ship aficionados, college students, and of course the small crew of eager docents (retired ship aficionados) that patrol the halls looking to ensnare innocent visitors with lengthy stories maritime stories.

Fort Schuyler is not all museum, it is home to the State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College.  The school is spread out over the grounds, and they share the main fort building with the museum, and the students help at the museum.  As the SUNY Martime College is rated among the best colleges in the United States for future career earnings potential of graduates, (the courses are highly focused on "things you can get a good job with), these are mostly quiet and serious students.  Hence, it is empty at night.  Everyone is studying.

And during the day it is quiet.  Everyone is in classes.

It's just a quiet place.

If Flea wants to have animals observe it, she has squirrels, pigeons and seagulls to choose from.

If Gremian wants to sneak in night, he will find that on the one hand, the lack of campus activity makes noise stand out, but on the other, the lack of people means fewer chances to be seen.  And the security at the museum is not tight:  thieves are not interested in a replica of an 18th century steam ship.

It was morning, not too soon, yet not really close to noon. Gremian was waiting for others to join him for a visit of the Museum. He was standing in the shadow of the Throggs Neck Bridge on the corner of Shepard Avenue and Patterson Street. Bored, he looked up and studied the bridge.

Flea dropped off the bridge and landed down by Gremain's side. "It's all fine now. I'm here! No need to panic!" As if... She rubbed her tiny hands in a businesslike manner. "All right then! I have the seagulls watching the place from the watery side, and the squirrels and pigeons are keeping an eye out from land. If anyone who looks not normal comes in or out, or approaches, I reckon they can tell us. They're looking for secret doors and stuff. You need anything else, I can tell 'em!"

Pigeons have navigational abilities so extraordinary they amaze Humans and Fey alike.  The difference, of course, is that where Fey explain it simply with "It's Pigeon Magic!" Humans always feel the need to dig deeper, and have spent great effort in figuring out how pigeons do it.  They've studied the brains and eyes of pigeons, and tracked them with GPS receivers, and bombarded them with magnetic pulses.  That's just a thing Humans do.  But hold on to this for a moment.

Flea's first spies reporting in are pigeons, a flock of them, and they gather around.  A few scout out the ground: perhaps Flea has been thoughtful enough to scatter crumbs, so that any passing Human would just see "odd woman feeding pigeons" and think nothing of it.

"It's a terrible place," one pigeon says.  "DON'T GO THERE."

"Tell her, Tony," another pigeon says.

"Yeah," agrees a third.

The pigeon smooths a few feathers.  "Foist, you said this was a museum?  Ain't no decent museum, I can tell you.  I been to museums, and you know what they got?  Food carts, outside, serving up hot dogs and stuff.  None of that here.  Not even any packs of little Human kids coming out of those yellow buses.  You know, with the lunch bags and the lunch boxes, and right on cue all the little slobs gather in a picnic area and start to eat... and one starts a food fight and soon the buffet is on the floor for every pigeon..."

"Tell her about that time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the Twinkies!" a bird says.

"Yeah, that was.. that was freakin awesome.  Man, I was stuffed.  That kid brought like a whole case, but it fell and... hey, no, I'm supposed to be talkin bout this place. Don't distract me, Angie.

"Anyhoot, this utter and inexcusable lack of lunch is one thing, but... lemme see if I can explain.  There's thing thing pigeons feel... hear, but it's not hearing.  Just,it comes to us.  And it comes from everywhere, and we just like different places have their different smells, they have their different... whatever this is.  Humans don't ever get it, I think, but we do.  But this place... lemme tell you, I've flown past this place before.  It's different now.  I can't tell you how, there's no words for it if you're not a pigeon.  But something changed.  That doesn't happen very often.  Places are  places,  they keep feeling the same way.  Things would be pretty screwed up for pigeons if they changed, right?"

Flea listened with patience. The problems of animals were far more important than the silly petty issues of humans, of course. Although pigeons had a real problem getting to the point. But it was worth having some stoic tolerance for their random tangents, as they usually had some pretty juicy things to say. Pigeons were everywhere in the city, and sooner or later, they knew more or less everything that was going on. All it took was a little patience, and some creative brainwork to translate concepts from pigeon into pixie.

"Well, that's pretty amazing!" She cooed, her knowledge of pigeon being as good as any native speaking bird. "And you're right. A museum is supposed to be a great place to find food, and a mate! Dinner and a tumble, that's what museums are all about! This place is useless, if you ask me. No wonder someone is using it for something shady. It isn't like it has anything decent to offer!" She snorted derisively.

"But this new thing, the way it feels different, that's important." She scratched her head. "I know the feeling you talk about. I sort of have a thing a bit like it. You can know where you are flying because it feels right. If that changed... hrm." She scowld darkly. "Someone is screwin' up how stuff is meant to work. Well, I won't have THAT! I'll get it fixed, my friends, don't you worry! You've been amazing, as always. I'll tell you what, I'll make sure there's a feast fit for all the pigeons in the city at the museum tomorrow afternoon! You earned it!"

She turned and looked up at Gremian, and started cooing at him, until she remembered that he didn't know how to talk like a sensible person. So she switched to English instead.

"Pigeons say that the place doesn't seem to have anybody coming and going. They're pretty good at watching, so we can take 'em at their word. And the special pigeon magic is gone weird, too. It feels weird when they fly over it. That ain't right. The Pigeon tingly flapsense for when they fly, that never changes, unless someone sticks one of those stupid big metal pointy things up with the dishes on it, or builds one of the big buzzy 'lectric places. Maybe someone put a load of tingly dish things inside, I dunno."

Flea knew all about phones and stuff, and electricity. What she didn't have was the vocabulary to describe stuff like satellites or cellphone towers. Big metal dish tower was far more use as a descriptor for birds. But if the birds said something changed, she had to pass that on, in whatever language she could find.

Alisa resisted the urge to sigh, and lent her assistance in translating and explaining with her more scientific background.

- "I think what she means is the electrical field must have changed. Thunderstorms often throw off birds' sense of direction because all the electricity in the air makes it hard for them to determine where the magnetic north is, and if it's a localized thunderstorm we're looking for, that would... pretty much be a good way of tracking it."

"Great, so we know there is some crazy shit happening here." Oscar helpfully chimed in. "I'm goin' in. All this waiting is for the birds. Literally."

With that, Oscar headed for the front door of the museum.

Gremian picked up a tissue crumbled like a makeshift bag from his pocket. He gave it to Flea. "There, not the mountain you asked for... I've tried fitting three handfuls, but it was kinda full already." Inside the tissue was two Gremian size handfuls of peanuts, salt peanuts he a bought, with some of his pocket change, from a vending machine on the way here.

"So we could make a makeshift compass to find the storm quicker then?" Gremian asked Alisa. "Should be easy to do." He looked around for a small splinter of metal, just in case.

"Well... I would have prep some more, but Oscar is probably right, we should be ready enough, I guess." Gremian said with some deception in his voice. But he started walking to join Oscar at the front door.

Adrika shook her head quickly when Gremian brought up a compass.

- "Ehh... No, if it's to the degree it'd throw compasses off, we'd be having a solar storm and you could see auroras in the sky. WHOLE different scale, even radios would be feeling it. Happened a few years ago back home actually. Anyway, i'm talking more like... homing pigeons getting lost en route."

She turned to Flea.

- "So if your pigeons are actual trained pigeons instead of some code word, they could help us track it down. If we can figure out where the edges of the effect are, then the storm should be somewhere around the center of it, disregarding doors and walls and such of course."

Oscar, Gremian, and anyone following with them, travels to the museum.

As noted before, the museum shares its space with a maritime college.  As New York City colleges go, this one in is a little tougher on Fey folk.  That is because the Veil has to work harder to stretch appearances and actions, to cloak the bizarre behind a shield of normalcy.  The Veil works with what's available to make Humans ignore the presence of Fey.  This is very easy around New York University- people are already used to seeing the strangest things (including a woman who talks to flocks of pigeons, some of which are fake) in the local parks.  Wear anything, do anything.. In Union Square and Washington Park, no one notices.

This is a different kind of place.  Quiet and dignified, full of very serious academically minded students studying the broad range of college offerings that spans from "things involving ships" to "other things involving ships".  No one roller skates around tossing glitter into the air.  This is pure... normality.

The Fey present can feel, just on the edge of sensation, that the Veil is strained here.  It's working harder, it has to... but of course it is only magic, it can't have inexhaustible, eternal strength... can it?

A tension in the air, something pulled tight.  But something invisible.

Oscar and Gremian's Veiled looks are nothing unusual.  Short, human, ordinary... Quite normal in the city, they never get a second look.  But today, it seems like a few head turns.  They pass a few students, and just for a moment, they attract their attention.  Almost as if they thought they saw something unusual, turned, looked again... and nothing was amiss.

The students shrug it off and go on their way.

Gremian hesitated after the first few students had looked behind their shoulder. He moved a little closer to Oscar and whispered: "You felt it too? The boredness... Make me wonder if the Storm took his zapping abilities from here. I would definitively feel safer if we would return tonight instead, with the cover of the Night. What do you thing?"

He was a Gremlin, much of his mischief happened in the Night. And, in the Night, a place like that would lose some of his "normalcy"; Gremian was assuming. That would be bad otherwise that with less lights and less humans around that the Veil would stay as strained.