Gremian looked at Alisa then he scanned the room to look at everyone. "Well, I came to the opposite conclusion regarding the storm and the naked lady importance. Pretty sure, that she would be our third friend Dennis told us about. She didn't need any help swimming in the bad weather that knocked out Pr... Pablo. And talking about weather, he didn't sound confused when he mentioned how the storm wasn't on any weather report. That's something he does, checking the weather report and cancelling the trip if the sea wouldn't be fun to go on." He looked at Flea. "Should have let her explain what she got..."

Flea puffed up with great importance! She might almost have been seven inches tall, to fae eyes!

"It was not a storm at all, oh no! Our friend was out fishing. A very helpful crow and squirrel came and told me all about it - and we need to give them food as thanks, and it better not be any moldy old stuff, so you can put your hands in your pockets for once, you miserly old scrotes! Where was I? Oh, yes. Fish! He went out to his usual spot, but oh no!" She wiggled her fingers mysteriously. "Out comes a teensy tiny storm, and it weren't no storm at all! It went and zapped the living daylights outta him! But then, it didn't just go where storms go... where do they go, actually? I mean, where do clouds live when they are not out floating around? What do they eat? I reckon they prob'ly eat unwary geese, which is why I ain't ever goin' up that high! I better warn the crows. Yer lucky they helped out... and the seagulls. They'd rather peck yer eyes out than help a hoomin, so yer'd all be lost without my huge interleck workin' this all out. Um, what was I talkin' 'bout?" She scratched her head and frowned. "Oh, right. The big place. So, after this thing went swirly swirly zap zap all over the fishin' fella, it headed off to the really big stone place with the crinkly walls. And it didn't just zap it! Nope, it went inside the stone place! Ackshually into it! So, yeah. I discovered where baby storms come from! Inside the big stone place what has all the funny wall shapes! SO all we got to do is knock on the door and ask for our friends' brains back. Now, whaddya fink of that, then?"

She buzzed her wings and rose a few inches off the table, ever so proud that she solved the mystery!
This message was last edited by the player at 10:25, Tue 21 July 2020.

Alisa had prepared herself to listen to Flea as she shared her own findings, interested to hear if they had found rumors of this mystery woman as well, but as Flea continued, the expression on her face slowly turned into the blankest of stares. In her defense, pretty much all of what she had just heard made very, VERY little sense to someone still on the other side of the Veil, and she turned to Oscar, giving him a silent look of 'Is there something i should know about?', without trying to offend Flea by asking if she was off her meds out loud.

Oscar chimed in, "It's this old fort near the Throggs Neck Bridge. That's what she's talking about. We should probably go there as a group. With firepower and ready for a fight. Whatever...or whoever is doing this, that's where it came from."

"No, that's where it went!" Flea objected. "We don't know it came from there at the start!" Honestly, people did not listen properly!

Alisa scoffed, and pretended to stand up.

- "A'ight, i'mma go get my AK out the trunk."

She plopped down on her seat again, giving the others an incredulous look.

- "I'm sorry, what? I feel the conversation went from zero to a hundred way too fast there. Couldn't we just call the police? Oh wait, right, we'd be asking them to arrest a cloud and an exhibitionist, with guns drawn. And the cloud only because the birds and a passing squirrel told you so."

With a small groan, she softly slid her hands in front of her face.

- "Explanation. Please. Thirty seconds."

Flea rolled her eyes, then fell back on the table, folded her hands behind her head, and crossed one knee across the other to bounce her foot. "Told ya so!"

Gremian raised and lowered his index a few times, unsure of what to say. "Oh! I know!" he exclaimed for himself. He looked at Alisa. "Well nicknames are a thing that exist." he offered as a possible rationalization. "And anonymous informants too." He paused. "So, yeah... that would make an awkward deposition."

- "Ah, okay. Still makes me think the Avengers are just around the corner, but whatever."

Alisa took a deep breath and took a moment to collect herself.

- "Okay, so with all the codenames and informants most of this i'm probably not supposed to know, so... could you hypothetically describe the situation? As in, tell me what the problem and probably cause is using an example made-up scenario, rather than this set of nicknames i don't know? Or would you prefer i wait outside since, y'know, informants?"

"Why are we wasting time like this?" Oscar complained. "We have one solid lead and that's it. I say we go to the fort and check it out."

He turned to Alisa and commented, "And no cops. This is a Library problem. Something affecting our own people. The cops won't do crap. So you can either hide under a rock and go back to your mundane library business or you can get on the crazy train and help us fix what's going on. You're either in or out here. Which is it?"

Edna listened intently to Flea's description.

At one point she commented, "Old fort under the Throggs Neck bridge.. that would be Fort Schuyler.  It's got one of the least known museums in the city.  Of course, there was a sudden surge of interest in everything historical with the name Schuyler after the musical Hamilton became a hit.. yes, it's named for the father of the girls.. but it's still definitely not on the to do lists of most tourists.  But museums are collections of old things, and where you find that..."

She pauses in thought.

There was another important issue here.  She didn't want to lose Alysa, but somethings had to be managed just right.

Edna had seen this before.  It was rare, when people didn't recognize their own heritage, somehow didn't come naturally to the sight through the veil... but it happened, and such problems became library problems, and so she'd seen it before.

And here was the moment upon which it turned.

There comes a time when even with the aid of the Veil, the weirdness becomes too much.  People without a drop of Fey blood will reject it.  Often, angrily, denouncing the others as demented, or idiotic, and storm away.  Sometimes, fearfully, because when people realize they are dealing with truly insane, fear is the common reaction.

But the ones with that Fey blood... it showed.  They were the ones that stayed and kept listening, when common sense said "these people are crazy, get out of here."

Maybe they sensed it.

Of course the Fey who knew what they were enjoyed the company of the certifiably insane.  They had for centuries.. because contacts with such Humans wouldn't betray any secrets.

But this was different.  Still, Edna couldn't straight out tell her, not before Alysa asked.  But she could soften the way, a little bit.  Maybe.

"Alysa, could I speak with a moment... no doubt you've noticed a few things that seem... odd."

Alisa gave Oscar an exasperated look, before turning to Edna.

- "Yeah, pardon my language, but no shit. It's like i'm expected to make sense out of this situation when eighty percent of what i hear is in code, and people are annoyed when i make apparent that i haven't figured it out yet."

She took a deep breath, annoyed at herself mostly for being annoyed, and not wanting to take it out on anyone in particular.

- "So by all means, tell me why the logical next step of a case of amnesia doing the rounds is to go raid a fortress museum. No code, no leaving out important details, just tell me what i need to know."

"I wouldn't say raid," Edna mutters.  "We don't raid here, this is a Library.  We Investigate."

"Sometimes we Pry.  Or Snoop.  But we do not raid."

She raises her voice just a bit, because she feels they all must hear this.  "We are dealing with something we don't understand... yet.  It would be a bad time to do anything like raiding, I hope we all see that."z

Then she attempts to speak quietly with Alysa.

"I understand how strange it must feel.  Most people in such a situation would assume we are all crazy, here.  Most would run away, because when we meet someone who is truly insane and not just peculiar, we become afraid.  But you feel there is something here you need to know, don't you?  There is.

"The world is not exactly as we are taught.  Most of it is, but there are exceptions.  Things that others might call odd, strange, or even impossible.  But you can see the reality of it, if you try.  It's always been there."

Gremian politely smiled. Or at least, he tried to, because, otherwise, he would be grinning with pride when Alisa accepted his plausible explanation of the situation.

Gremian pounded about the investigation as Edna talked with Alisa. "What kind of protection we could use to go against the zapper? I mean, to go investigate", he asked in a low voice. "It would be pretty useless to show up at the fort just to be zapped like Proge. I'm not confident that my leather work clothes would be enough against a storm."

"If you think about it," Edna said to Alisa, "there are really only two plausible explanations.  One is that everyone around you, Gremian, Botach, Flea, myself included, are all candidates for the Funny Farm.  Now that may well be, this is New York City and we have several of them, the finest in the world.

"The other is that we are not.  Something to ponder: what if we are not crazy?  What then?  What is it, hiding there, just out of reach? I have faith, you'll get there."

Edna returned her attention to the discussion in the room.

"Zapper?  Gremian, is this some kind of device you are talking about?  I would think that is right up your alley."

Alisa sighed, and nodded.

- "Oh, don't worry. If there's one thing i've learned, it's that every area has its... peculiarities, so it's just a matter of time until i get used to yours. It's a mindset thing... as little good as that does me right now. Nothing a little time can't fix though."

She looked at the others present, before ending up at Gremian. She figured she may as well go along with it and not question to herself how strange it sounded. Hypothesizing, simply hypothesizing.

- "Well, getting zapped is just electricity, so a rubber wetsuit under your clothes should technically keep you insulated. If we're talking actual lightning though... yeah, that's going to be a problem. An average lightning bolt is about five times as hot as the surface of the sun, so there's pretty much fuck all you could do against it. What you COULD do is wear shoes with rubber soles to keep from being chosen as the path of least resistance, but you can't actually block it."

BONK... BONK... BONK... BONK...

The sound appeared suddenly. And the origin was Flea, who was lying face down on the table banging her head on it. Thus did she express her opinion of current circumstances. Eventually, she lifted her head and spoke.

"If that thing hits me, it'll be crispy fried pixie everywhere. And what do we know that really screws up electricity, kiddies? WATER! And there's one helluvalotta that out by that big crinkly building. Why don't we just throw water at it?"

If there was any doubt that nature pixies were specialists, this laid it to rest. Flea was something like a genius savant. In her given purview, she was a literal force of nature. Hell on very smelly wheels. But outside of that area of expertise... well. She lacked any real grasp of the circumstances. Or of how the world actually worked. And in a fight she was probably as much use as a chocolate teapot. And nowhere near as delicious.

- "Because water has a tendency to splatter and flow all over the place, and it also conducts electricity really really well. So you'd need a plan to get it into the Bay, which brings us back to our original problem of needing a way to safely get close to it."

Alisa thought for a moment.

- "You know, clouds being basically floating gatherings of ice crystals, i'd say the best way to actually fight one would be to either set up a fan to blow it into an area that would give us the advantage in a fight, or just go ham and use fire to basically melt the ice it's made of. Draining it of its electricity would pretty much do nothing, all that is is just static electricity from friction between ice crystals: It's really similar to getting zapped by a doorknob, only on a much larger scale because all that air around it means the built up electricity has nowhere else to go. Lightning happens because of the raindrops making a less resistant connection."
This message was last edited by the player at 11:39, Mon 03 Aug 2020.

"We're just guessing here," Oscar commented. "We still need eyes on the ground to discover what's really happening. We should go as a group, so we can watch each other's backs. Yeah it's dangerous, but we can't just sit here and pontificate about ideas all day."

"Oh no, not a device. Pr... Pablo only told us about a storm. So zapper is either the thing that zap, the storm. Or the one that control the storm." He explained himself patiently. He was used to having to explain his slang. "or something that look like a storm" he added for Alisa. "But talking about devices, oh! That gives me ideas!" He said excitedly. He closed his eyes and moved his head quickly like he was scanning the room. He was imagining his home and what he could use. "Oh... I think I don't have a glass jar big enough to be of use here", he mumbled to himself, disappointed. "ugh, boots..." he added as he thought of having to put actual boots.

"Hey, it's not a bad thing to look before jumping." he replied to Oscar. "But, except for a quick errand at my home, I'm ready to go to the fort, I think. "

As they prep for a return trip (For Flea, at least) to Fort Schuyler, one important question emerges:

Is this to be a "normal business hours" innocent visit cloaked by the Veil, or are we planning an infiltration?

Gremian is tempt by both. If he is the deciding voter, he would go with normal business hours trip.

The "normal business hours" trip.

• Easier to rationalize to Alisa
• Human shields (they won't be changed by a zap, right?)

infiltration

• Less bystanders having a chance of being zapped
• A chance to climb

Flea sighed. Big people! She was right there! All they had to do was ask!

"If you want something watching, eyes on the ground, then just ASK me! I can have several hundreds eyes there in half an hour! My friends are efficient! And they work for peanuts. Like, literally! You stump up a mountain of literal grubs, I can have every crow, gull, and raccoon from here to... somewhere far away... ogling that place, no problemo!"

OK, explain that one to the confused thinks-they-ain't-a-fairy if you can!

"I say we go at night, after hours. That way we can do whatever we need to to get the job done."

Alisa tenderly raised a hand.

- "Can i be the... voice of reason here and call for a visit during opening hours to scope the place out before making any... battle plans? Especially if whatever this thing is can apparently throw lightning and cause amnesia?"

From her voice it was still clear that she still found it hard to believe most of what she was hearing, ranging from sentient thunderclouds to... Flea controlling insects in ways that reminded her of a webnovel she once read, but right now she had her mind in 'hypothesis mode' where she would basically ignore how silly a situation sounded and seriously weigh the pros and cons as if it all made sense somehow.