[PRP] Stranger Than

[Gwennythe]

To say there was a flurry of activity around the labs would have been somewhat of a false statement, simply because, paradoxically, such a thing was almost always true.

Where there were scientific breakthroughs, there was money and power; two things that enabled Team Rocket to exist alongside the organization's ruthless nature and willingness to adapt.
To be on the cutting edge of science, sans the troublesome ethics of more League-legitimized facilities, led to extremely useful tools over and over.
Thus the labs were almost always in a 'flurry of activity'.

That said, among certain departments, perhaps noticeably more than usual, there was a recent air of increased excitement, stress and bafflement.
The very recent, very public, events- a substantial, abnormal, meteorite had broken up and impacted in the middle of the desert to the North of the region- was yielding both interesting and baffling data and providing even more questions with every answer.

This was the subject- or rather, the source of the subject- that produced pursed lips and a puzzled frown turned on the tablet, or data pad, in Tambrey's left hand. Her stylus tapped, silently pointing something out to Turing, represented in sprite-like form, and setting him off to analyze and compare two identical (or seemingly so, at a glance) DNA sequences, set out in a list-like format.

The Elite Agent was sat at her desk, in uniform, with a multitude of folders spread next to a laptop computer in front of her. The tablet was set down atop one of these open folders as Tambrey leaned back to take a breath, and brief break from her work.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Bing bong," Aulus announced as he entered the lab carrying two travel mugs, one with a plate of biscuits balanced on the top. "I've come to pick your brains, and to give you tea," he explained as he approached Tambery's desk and set the offerings down. "If you've not got time right now I'll piss off and ask you later, but I just got off my shift so I thought I'd swing by and see how you were getting on." He couldn't get the mystery of what had happened in the desert out of his head; the misplaced pokemon, their behaviour, the green stuff, the missing meteorite... It all had to add up to something but he was damned if he knew what.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey snorted slightly, amused at Aulus' way of announcing himself; her frown melted off, and the pursed lips reformed into a smile.

She shook her and waved her right hand in a 'floppy' sort of gesture over the various things on her desk. Apparently none of them were too sensitive or classified, for she made no move to close or hide anything that was already open.

"I've got time. Um, was just about to break for a moment anyway. Tea's always welcome, brain might be a little mushy for picking but then maybe that's what it needs to firm up after... Um. Well. All this. How's your day going?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"Good!" Aulus grinned and perched on the edge of Tam's desk, though not on any papers because that would just be rude. He then picked up one of the mugs - black with a tri-force emblazoned across it - and sipped at the hot tea within, shrugging as he did so. "Not too bad," he said once he'd swallowed, "ran a session with a group of trainees first thing, then some battle sessions with some grunts... If you don't mind talking shop while you're having your break though, I was wondering if you'd made any progress on the Weird s**t that happened out in the desert? That is what you're working on, I'm assuming." It might not be but he had a strong suspicion that it would be.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey reached for the other cup, taking a sip and seemingly feeling quite refreshed even by the first sip of the beverage within. She nodded, smiled, thinking over the idea of training and battle sessions, and what they were like for a grunt, and ended up smirking a bit when he mind wandered to how superiors might have been talked about back then; she couldn't help but be amused at what she suspected would be Aulus' reputation, with his somewhat intimidating appearance and robotic arm.

"Sounds fun. Ah. Um, no, I don't mind. I suppose it's kind of obvious..." She nodded, drumming her fingers over an open folder; the first couple of pages were visible and seemed to be lists of various elements and compounds, accompanying what looked to be images taken through a microscope; brown, black, grey and dark musty yellow particles were joined by flakes of glassy green.
"Progress is a... word for it, anyway."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Yeah, 'unknown' wasn't exactly what I expected to come back on my read out," Aulus said as he uncovered the biscuits and took a chocolate hobnob. "And the way the pokemon were acting," he waved the biscuit vaguely and frowned his usual scary-looking thinking frown, "never seen anything like it before," he concluded.

_________________

"Oh, it's strange alright," KO said as he came up behind the scarred agent but not too close behind him just in case the man reacted to being startled by punching him in the face. Luckily Aulus just turned to him with a dark frown on his face, what did he have to be so angry about? Tch, as if the man needed an excuse.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey's interest was obviously refreshed further as Aulus brought up the behaviour of the pokémon.

"Mmhm. Well. Um, we don't everything about meteorites, but yes we know enough that that's not a result I'd think would show up."
She was about to ask Aulus to continue, to be more specific about what he'd encountered, when KO entered, providing an opportunity to elaborate on the strangeness of the meteorite fragments themselves.

"Ah. More strangeness? I, um..." She smiled and held up the lists on her desk to show KO "did look at the initial reports. Did it get weirder?"  

[TawnyAngel]

"You could say that," KO replied; he looked rather pleased but whether this was with himself, the intriguing mystery, or both was unclear. It was both. "We've got more details in now, the green flecks we thought would turn out to be olivine are actually a compound that is proving very difficult to pin down precisely. It has high levels of copper though, which explains the colour."

___________________

KO was wearing a white uniform, when had that happened? Eh. Shrugging internally Aulus took another sip of his tea and bit into his biscuit. "So maybe I'm just an ignorant luddite but I skimmed some stuff about meteorites, lots of copper isn't usual right? Are we looking at some kind of new rock from space," ha, "or... I don't know, something artificial?" An artificial rock from space, great one there Aulus. "Whatever it was it was doing something sodding weird to the pokemon, and there were electric types there where they shouldn't be. They must have moved quickly to congregate so quickly around the site."  

[Gwennythe]

"Mm. It does. But, it lends more questions. In particular, um, that one. We... don't know. We'd have to do a lot more testing but by conventional wisdom, um, this maybe not have been identifiable as a meteorite to us had we not... well, um, known for sure it came out of the sky..." Tambrey bit her lower lip softly for a moment. "It... wouldn't be the strangest thing, artificial or not, we've ever experienced... But that doesn't make it any less strange than it is. And... we don't know where the largest piece of it went. It's very unlikely it could have made that size a crater and vaporized while a smaller piece remained... Unless there were differences in the composition I suppose but... Unless I'm reading it incorrectly," She looked toward KO "all fragments from each part of the debris field, um, are thus far, without becoming too technical, 'the same'?"

Aulus comment on the pokémon, though, was clearly were her mind had been resting foremost.
"Yes. But, we may have a source, if not a reason why, on the... odd behaviour at the least. If not the unprecedented numbers in such a short amount of time. Um, could you clarify the species you remember seeing act... oddly? Because, I'm pretty sure we know what links them."  

[TawnyAngel]

"That's right," KO replied with a nod. "All the samples we recovered had essentially the same composition - to avoid being technical - so we can only assume that our large missing 'meteorite' was the same as well."

__________________

"Yes, bloody great rocks aren't know for just vanishing by and large," Aulus said dryly as he opened up the screen on his arm to retrieve his notes. "From what I remember it was electric types acting out - the others were scared mostly when s**t started getting weird - but let's see... By the biggest chunk we did find I ran across Joltik, piece of the meteorite, Voltorb, and then a green Mareep - got it with me - and that's when I got the report that there was 'unknown' stuff in the meteorite I'd scanned. Moved on to the big crater.... Picked up a screw, because it was there and seemed a bit out of place I guess..." He frowned as he read on, looking for the next relevant. "Meleted sunglasses.... Ah, this is when I met the first pokemon acting strangely, an aggressive Plusle. Found another sample... Ah, and then Juno ran into a Growlithe. I put this in my report, for what good it was, but it said; 'The wrong way. The sky moves. It's not them.'"

He felt as though he ought to be able to put that together to mean something but it was no clearer to him now than it had been when Juno had reported it to him.

"The sky moves could be the meteorite? Not them though, no idea. Unless it meant pokemon not acting like themselves?" Aulus shrugged and look back at his arm. "Anyway next there was an aggressive Voltorb, then I picked up a big white feather, got attacked by an aggressive Pikachu, a Voltorb that self destructed... another angry Plusle... Oh yeah that's when I ran into that prat, some trainer who I ended up paying way too much to let me take the green powder he found." Aulus glanced up at KO. "I'm guessing that was the same copper compound as the green flecks? After that I found a spent shell casing, snapped a picture and picked it up in case it mattered. Oh, wait, I ran into an aggressive Beldum then, not an electric type but... well could be affected by electrical phenomena? Uh... Scared Ponyta, then another aggressive Plusle, and lastly a scared Espurr."

Something was niggling at him, a detail he'd missed? Reading over everything he'd found in order like that was- "Hey," Aulus frowned, "did anyone see any Minum? Seems a bit odd that I'd see so many Plusle but not a single Minum the whole time. Something to do with... uh..." He wished he knew more science, and he was reluctant to make an idiot of himself in front of KO but ******** it there was a point to be made here! "Something to do with," he gestured vaguely, "different charges?"  

[Gwennythe]

"All the aggressive pokémon were electric type then, bar the Beldum." Tambrey nodded to herself and then nodded again, drumming the fingers of her right hand against her desk as Aulus brought up the fact that only Plusles had been observed acting strangely aggressive.
"They do have, um, magnetism in common. Electromagnetism. It's, uh, how Beldum functions at all. Beldum doesn't have blood. Genetically, when we, um, create Beldum, it's practically nano-robotics. We manipulate the, uh, magnetic particles that govern the fields the pokémon uses..."

She looked down at the folders on her desk.
"Ah, that green powder was indeed copper-heavy... and contained traces of magnetite? That's, uh... that's rare..." She looked at KO as though seeking confirmation before turning her attention back to Aulus.
"Even your observation regarding Plusle... That's, um, polarity. I wonder if anyone might have been able to detect anything unusual?" Tambrey mused.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Right," KO agreed with a little nod, "it's a strange find." Was the field agent going to know what magnetite was? His bet was no, the man wasn't as much of a dumb brute as he looked but he was no scientist. "Magnetite is a form of iron oxide, and it's ferrimagnetic which means not only is it attracted to magnets but it can be magnetized to become one itself. If you've heard of a lodestone, that's magnetite."

____________

"So, wait." Aulus closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, trying not to feel stupid compared to the scientists. "We've got electric pokemon, a pokemon that functions with electromagnetism, but noticeably no electric pokemon known for having a negative charge. And we've got weird iron oxide that can take a charge- was it in the meteorite chunks? Or only in the powder? Because either way that tells us...." Something? "But if this stuff had a negative charge maybe Minun would stay away and Plusel would be more attracted?" He really, really felt as though he was grasping at straws here. "And if there is magnetite in the chunks, shards, samples, whatever you call them could our missing rock have...." He was about to sound really thick. "...Floated away? Is that what the Growlithe meant, rocks aren't supposed to go up? But even if so where the hell did it go? You can't just lose a sodding great rock like that."  

[Gwennythe]

"Magnetite is rare in meteorites. It's not unheard of but, um, given the sample size we have, this is quite a lot magnetite compared to similar, uh, objects. It's still not like... loads, but enough to be noticeably unusual. From what I've understood anyway. Also, with the rest of what we've observed it's another bit of, um, 'weird' to add. This is a very strange meteorite... I've read so much on meteorites since this came down..." Tambrey explained, with a slight smirk- she really hadn't minded that part, even if the thing was confusing in a 'tiring' and baffling form of 'interesting'.

She nodded as Aulus ventured his theory, perhaps surprisingly taking it entirely seriously, seeming to agree with it as though it made /perfect sense/.
"Actually. I, um, think that's exactly what happened. Not, uh, of its own accord though. That's... Well. It wouldn't just float off on its own. Anyway. We know the events around, uh, this are linked to magnetism... Are magnetic or, um, electromagnetic at the root. Meaning it has a magnetic field, and, well, a signature so to speak..." Tambrey ventured, drumming her fingers again in thought.  

[TawnyAngel]

"...Seriously?" Well maybe he wasn't so thick after all. "So are you saying we can track this thing somehow?" There had to be a machine that did that but how bulky it might be and what the range might be he had no idea. "It must have been large so it'd give off quite a strong signal right? If we can find the thing maybe we can get a better idea of how it caused the pokemon to behave that way... if it was the meteorite, I know I shouldn't assume but it seems pretty damn obvious that the two are linked. Oh," Aulus took a pokeball from his belt and held it out to Tambery, "this is the green Mareep I caught, I don't know if it might be worth you studying it for... weirdness?" Eh.

____________________

"I'm no expert on magnetism but there are various machines that can measure it," KO confirmed with a thoughtful frown. "If we started a search pattern at the impact site we might just find something, so long as we do have the right tools for the job on base."  

[Gwennythe]

"Seriously." Tambrey nodded in affirmation. "The key is the magnetite. Certain pokémon are, um, well, magnokinetic, for lack of a better word. They can use magnetism as naturally as we use a limb, but the more, uh, magnetic a material is, the easier it becomes for them to manipulate..." She smiled, then, at the pair of them.

"We, um, can actually do just a little better right off the bat. Have either of you heard of MADs, aeromagnetic surveys, or spacecraft magnometers? I mean, um, so this is where my, ahem, nerd-side comes in handy, but uh, two out of three of those are... actually useful to us..."