There was only so much mass that Noah could secure in the remaining 4 minutes (there was enough to bury 4 adult humans and fill the room). Still, he managed the portal and emerged in the hills of Rome... possibly. He couldn't be entirely sure of where since he was going off memory of his time in low orbit.

 Jitters returned almost immediately but Wraith needed to use the portal. He emerged like tendrils of shadow and death with hushed whispers and sympathetic screams in his wake. Even if they were secluded, Wraith's unmasked presence served as a beacon of death to anything sensitive to the supernatural.

 Regardless of the supernatural havoc his presence caused, he took up his vigil over Noah's immobile body and floated as a spectral sentinel over Grey's mass.

"Jitters, I have my spare bottle for Mr. Wraith if he needs it. Left hip, I don't know how well he feels outside the sand nor do I know if he could communicate such. And thank you for being such a bad ass." He flopped over so he could at least be comfortable while the world turned.

"Fate, I am sorry to have kinda ran there on you but thank you for joining me. Could I pressure you to get my slate and contact the directory listed as FreeCouncil? They can get you into contact with the PA Head office. They are going to want some kind of an explanation. If you have any way to figure out who they had been I would be forever grateful. But the PA office needs to know why they had three major beads on their map suddenly pop up before they scry us and find out on their own."

"Ignus, thank you for your work so far. Could you please keep going till Grey is in her fully liquid state, do take care not to touch the material though. I will refill your incorporeal habitat as soon as I can."

"Mr Wraith, thank you for holding back so long as you did. I know our agreement holds no mark over that stuff. You could have just went full bore and murder would have been the soup of the day. I will get you a temp suit once I can get up. But the fact youre not just sublimating makes me think you're the friggen black horseman of the end of days rather than any wraith Salem may have called you. I think we may need to pay them a visit and pin that mage to the ground to see if he really knows something."

Noah took a deep breath and just started infusing mana. He couldn't do much in his state but he could prepare for a hell of a wammy when he did get up.

 Jitters did as he was asked and retrieved the bottle. Wraith, for his part, did not respond... not that he ever actually had. However, when Jitters uncorked the bottle, Wraith returned to it quite quickly.

 "I only wish that I could have done more."

 Ignis, for his part, continued to try and warm Grey but the return to liquid did not happen even once the metal was quite hot. Instead, much of it simply blew away like dust in the wind.

Noah took a deep breath, and with a very ungraceful talon reached out and gripped the ground. "ATLAS!" The only way he knew how to get ahold of Atlas was to make it magic and make it loud.

"Grey is wounded. I need your help sir." He knew only part of her operation. But no risks.

Fate did as she was asked with no hesitation.

 Atlas appeared when no one was looking, standing as if he had always been there dressed in a suit and glowing as much as ever. "Indeed. It seems as though she was subjected to extreme cold while her power was critically low.

 Unlike the rest of us, Grey possesses an abnormally high battery capacity. This is because she likewise possesses an extraordinarily high power consumption rate. Maintaining her mass on a quantum scale requires a phenomenal amount of energy. Can you bring her to the Observatory?"
This message was last updated by the player at 05:22, Sun 26 June 2022.

 As fate took the slate and began to dial, she heard a voice on the other end of the line. A quick chat put you in contact with the Merlin in charge of Pennsylvania. He seemed quite perturbed when he was told about just how much magic had been unleashed but was very much unaware of the black site that had been there. He promised to send a team to look into it.

Noah would have nodded but he was still floored. "Once I can move I will bring us to the shed. Whatever it takes I will get her there." He made sure to clutch the bag as to make sure not too much of her mass escaped to the wind. There was still so much he was going to have to figure out, a lot of ideas on what the group could do... they just raided an MIB site...

 Atlas nodded. "Then I will go and make the preparations. I will meet you there. Make certain not to be followed."

 Then he turned to walk away. The moment no one was looking at him, he was gone.


 Minutes passed and Noah was able to regain his equilibrium to some extent.

 By the time he had, there was news on his slate that a terrorist cell had detonated a nuclear bomb in a Pennsylvania state park.

Noah stood and clapped. He drew a line and started manipulating the line into a cat's cradle. "This one won't be very tough Mr. Wraith. But it will last until I can get you another suit with some real meat on it." He fanned it out so Wraith could jump inside.

Once Mr. Wraith had his suit he turned to all the scrying points he could see. "Ladies, gentlemen, and various magical beings. Yes, I can see your scrying devices. Mr. Wraith, I am sure the one whose presence pulled your attention here, he is unique and has proven himself time and time again."

"If you want questions answered feel free to send them to the Ark Bulletin. I will answer them all in time." He clapped his hands again and magic sucked from the area and pulled into a marble in his hand. He then fell back into yet another portal, one that he would twist until he was sure they could not follow with their eye.

 Noah fell through the portal once more with Wraith now out of his body. Once more he was incapacitated. A moment later Atlas came through the door of the shed with a forklift to pick him up and carry him inside. "I'll stamp your card once you've regained mobility."

 Once inside, Atlas took the latticework heart and placed it upon a pedestal. Then, he moved to one of the portals, sliding it sideways. From Fate and Noah's point of view, it looked as though he was rewinding a tape.

 He played back the portal "video" until he reached a point in time back in the coffee shop. There, he briefly reached through and swiped a hand across the counter while no one was looking.

 When he brought his hand back through, the dust on his finger was glowing. He hit a button to open up the see through floor of the abyss. Currently, the group could see massive serpentine beings swimming in the howling dark around them. However, below that was the light from the two suns orbiting a black hole.

 He rubbed his finger on the pedestal with the latticework heart. "Grey has been linked to the observatory's power network briefly. It will allow her nanites to function. Please do not stare too long at the leviathan's offspring. They will drive you mad and I cannot use the shielding and restore Lady Grey."

 A moment later the glowing dust was jettisoned into the Abyss and their glittering could be seen drawing toward the gravity well of the stars. One of the massive black serpents attempted to consume the dust, only to instantly be converted into more. No other serpents drew near.

 Moments later, the glimmering dust was subsumed by the stars and the black hole. "Now we wait."

Noah just lay there on the pallet while he waited. "She is still able to ID you as a friend even in her current state. That is a good sign." He slid his talon down his body till he got to his bag and pulled out one of the drones. It was a simple deal to tag the monsters as a "To omit" target in a video feed. He just plonked it down to watch what was going on.

"Thank you Atlas." He still had that infused mana so he just started tuning with it. Seeing if he couldn't find the exact antipodal opposite to whatever waveform the monsters seemed to be.

 As Noah lay sprawled out trying to reverse the nature of entropy itself (and producing a singly, highly ordered moment in time), he observed the two stars begin to turn dark (starting at the center and expanding outward) until they vanished entirely. The dust began to gravitate to the black hole... and, over the course of the next few hours, the black hole itself vanished to nothing and the silver, glittering dust began to migrate back toward the Observatory.

Noah looked over at fate as he held up the spell. "Uh, Fate. I don't have enough time magic to finish the spell. I was just kinda playing but I figure they had a resonance, you have to have a powerful one to survive in the abyss. I am thinking of we can introduce a resonance into one of the golden roads, we may be able to get a few of them with a sympathetic resonance. It would slow down the monsters."

When Grey was on her way back he stood up and cheered. "Atta Grey! You did the thing!"

Fate wasn't quite sure what Noah needed her to do, but it was something to do with time magic, the type of magic she specialized in. Pulling out her book that her friend gave her she followed Noah's instruction to the letter.

PM

"Mist, can you hear me? I think Noah and I may need some help. I don't think my power alone can do what he needs." Fate felt a little funny 'praying' to Mistral, but she was powerful enough for it so maybe she'd hear it.

After a long silence a voice reached Fate, sounding strangely distant as if whispered across a seething, oceanic void.  "I am afraid you find me somewhat préoccupée...  Wait...  You have found ma fille."

Another pause, and then the distant voice said, "Un moment s'il vous plaît to divert the devouring of the Fallen World, then all means remaining to moi will be at your disposal."  The connection went silent, with no responses for a time afterward.

"Yea, we raided some kind of MiB black site to get her back. I am sure it will have no lasting consequences or come back to haunt us in any way. And we kinda pissed off Rome by crash landing in the countryside. I'll make you a family home video later so it makes a better logical flow. It was really impressive seeing the boys take on a mech all their own."

Noah did not take his eyes off of Grey and her lil cloud but did wait for Mist to reconnect. "Negentropy is the opposite of entropy. If the spell gets finished you may be able to lock it into Tass, if the Tass is then connected to something it may act like a repellant to the critters." He had hours for his brain to crunch on the ideas, being disabled when it came to the fastest method of transportation did have its advantages.

After some long span of time (read: however long ST determines ;P) Mistral's weary voice rasped from across incalculable distances, "This sounds like un week-end moyen with Noah.  Perhaps you might back up to the part where I may be of assistance."  She sighed and then apologized, "My apologies.  We have both been through our own ordeals.  If I may help ma fille in any way then I wish to do so, and to see the world and those in it again would be welcome."

 Below the Observatory, the black hole and the binary stars winked out of existence, turning fully into glittering grey matter, which slowly began to seep its way back up to the Observatory. The serpents circled but remained a healthy distance away.

 The pedestal containing the latticework heart began to fill with grey fluid, flowing up around the heart and subsuming it. Moments later, the childlike Grey herself materialized upon the pedestal, leaping off lightly and onto her feet, raising both hands with a grin. "I'm back!"

 She lowered her hands and put one finger to her lower lip as she raised her eyes in thought. "I didn't like being blown up and frozen. I don't wanna do that again."

Noah crouched down, sat down, and just gave Grey a hug. "Sorry Kiddo. I didn't mean for someone to use my spell on you. We may need to keep Mana off your diet." He just rumbled. "A nuke went off, we can top off your tank with that."

"God it's good to see you again kid."

He nodded at Mist, "We will need to go to the nuke site once the dust settles. And at some point, you and I need to have a movie night. I think the visuals will be extremely useful for you."

 Grey jumped up and hugged Noah around the neck, hanging off of him like a weightless necklace. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead against his neck. It was only when he hugged her that he felt her little shoulders shaking. When he looked down at her, there were tears in her eyes. "I thought I was gonna die."

Noah just wrapped Grey up and let her hug it out as she needed it. "I've got you. You're ok now. I'm sorry it took so long to pinpoint you."

"Imma black that fallen God's eye, and hunt down the people who taxed your power so hard. But for now you're home, you're with family, and we got you kiddo."

 Grey began to sob in Noah's arms. She may have just consumed three cosmic bodies containing only theoretically measurable power but right now, in this moment, she seemed to be nothing more than a little girl who had survived something scary.