[Fin] Fishing for Answers

[TawnyAngel]

Somebody else had been cloning pokemon, and there was a big mysterious fog bank out there. You couldn't help but wonder, least he couldn't. It would probably be better for his health to leave the matter well enough alone but it niggled at him, he couldn't stand to give up on it. Anyway, something in there had shot missiles at Asgard and he very much wanted to give it his opinions on that. Anyway, doing this was a good way to keep his mind off what had happened with Faleen. He could still hardly believe she'd actually done it.

"Ready then?" Aulus asked, turning to Tambery and reaching to his belt for Agard's pokeball.

The plan was, more or less, this: fly out to the fog, fly around the fog plotting their progress so they could see how large it was. Knowing that much would be a start, and perhaps they could send the ghosts in again? Perhaps. They'd planned their squads carefully; he had Asguard as transport, Foxtrot to conceal them, Red to scout, Killer for Protect, and Puck for ghostly dealings. The final member of his party was Char, seen as if there was going to be a battle it would be an Aerial one it made sense to have as many pokemon that could fly as possible.  

[Gwennythe]

It was, quite honestly, a bit of a slap in the face.
Well, not /personally/ of course, as much as Tambrey did, she was /far/ from the only geneticist in the labs, and not even the highest ranking one, but it did /feel/ like a slap in the face.
Sure, Rocket might see it as someone moving in on their business territory, but from a /scientific/ point of view, it was just infuriating that someone had gotten their hands on a legendary and produced such a well engineered clone product.
Even the size limitation! It was fairly genius, really.
... And they hadn't thought of it.

Still, she did have the pleasure of meeting and working with the rather adorable source of Team Rocket's genetic material for the red and black deathbird...

This, too, wasn't the strangest of occurrences; so much was going on and still unresolved- Faleen (disturbing), the lab incident (traumatic and frustrating), people who should be dead just walking around (that one was actually quite nice- she got a friend back- but still weird) and this whole dead Sharpedo plus fog bank mystery....

Standing on the beach in a uniform fitted more for flight than standard, goggles replacing her glasses, and a small pouch for them (plus two sample jars, and a pair of tweezers, just in case) fit to her belt next to six pokéballs of her own, Tambrey offered a thumbs up.

"As much as, um, ever. I'm tired of knowing nothing..."  

[TawnyAngel]

"It's bollocks," Aulus agreed with a scowl. "Seems like everything is just... weird lately. You know?" She knew, of course, it was kind of hard to overlook.

Aulus sighed and shook his head as he released his team - bar Char - from their pokeballs. As soon as Foxtrot appeared she cast a veil of invisibility over Asgard just in case anyone happened by, he attracted far more attention than they needed.

"Right then," Aulus nodded at the assembled pokemon, and the empty patch of air of course, "you all remember the plan? I don't think I need to remind you that we need to be very careful, whatever's in there is not at all friendly."  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey nodded and gave a small sigh.

"Like living in the X-Files, except, um, y'know... no aliens yet and uh, we're not the government. Maybe X-Files is a bad choice..." She mused, bit her lip for a moment, then shrugged. "Weird though. 'Weird' is right."

The scientist took a step back as Aulus released his team to address them about the plan, and supposed it to be a good idea.
Seconds later, Jubilee sat on her shoulder while Lasi, Pygi, Tarana, Franklin, and Gauntlet stood assembled with Aulus' team.

There were some signs of assent, though only Franklin actually spoke up to reply from Tambrey's team in an 'English' telepathic response.

< The psychic type sounded a bit proud of herself.  

[TawnyAngel]

"Heh, I know what you mean though," Aulus replied with a brief flash of a smile and a nod. After a moment he added; "Maybe it is aliens. You never know. Zygons maybe? That'd explain Faleen.... Anyway." He didn't want to think about her today, she could tell the league everything, including his identity and the identities of all of his friends.

"Anyway," Aulus repeated, turning to Franklin and nodding, "that's right! Time to saddle up." It was amazing the skills you could find around HQ if you asked around, he would have thought 'saddler' was a push but apparently not. The resulting contraption was less a saddle than a harness really, lots of straps to go around the legs and waist for three passengers. Today those three passengers were himself, Tam, and Fox. Killer would go in somebody's lap, Jubilee was with Tam, and the others could fly for themselves though some might need help keeping up, which could be arranged by the pair of Pidgeot.

Aulus stepped inside the field of invisibility to put on the 'saddle', he was pretty well practised at doing so by now so despite the complexity of the thing it didn't take long. "Right then!" Aulus stepped back out of the bubble and rubbed his hands together, having broken the habit of clapping them together because ow. "Are we all ready? Nobody needs to pee before we take off?"  

[Gwennythe]

"That would explain Faleen!" Tambrey agreed but with a touch of humour in her expression mingled with the apprehension that was likely expected given the scenario and all they'd experienced in recent months.

She, too, was happy to move along from the topic for the moment, however.

The saddle was a bit of a marvel- it was 'cool' and Tambrey had already said so more than once- but not the fixing of it to an invisible creature, while Aulus and it were invisible, just brought a rather bemused, yet impressed, smirk to her features.
"Um. I think we're already. None of, uh, that, I hope."

Franklin vigorously shook her head.

Tambrey stepped forward to mount the invisible bird then, while Jubilee clung tightly to her, and snuggled down securely.

Gauntlet and Franklin drifted and stuck close to Pygi. Tarana trusted himself to Lasi's care.

"Yep. We're ready!"  

[TawnyAngel]

"What?" Aulus responded with a bit of a laugh, "It's what you're supposed to ask before a road trip, right? Alright, more of an airtrip, and with more chance of missiles and such than most roadtrips, but still. If we're all ready though let's mount up." Aulus stepped back inside the field of invisibility so that he could see Asgard and waited for Tam to join him before asking; "Where do you want to sit? I think it would make most sense for Fox to sit at the front, then you, then me given our sizes but I don't really mind." The saddle did put all three passengers pretty close together so regardless of being able to see - or not - wherever Tam was happiest sitting was fine with him.  

[Gwennythe]

"That is true... Hrm. I, um, am hoping for less missiles but, well, honestly I'm kind of expecting there to be. It's just our luck. So, um... Yes. I'm ready."

Tambrey nodded.

"We all are." She confirmed of her pokémon, offering a reassuring tickle to Jubilee, with an apprehensive smile still on her face.
"And that makes sense."

Another nod.

"I um, would like to be able to see where we're going... Hm." She frowned, and then went in for a quick hug before turning to mount.
"Might not get a chance for that later."  

[TawnyAngel]

"Oh!" Though rather caught off guard Aulus managed to return the hug for a moment before Tam turned away to mount. "Right, good idea," he agreed, smiling despite the implication that what they were about to do was potentially very dangerous. Still smiling to himself he climbed up behind Tambery and fastened the harness around his waist and legs. "Um, I'm really glad you're here Tam. Just... heh, just saying, right?" Well that had been kind of awkward but he doubted she'd mind.

Foxtrot meanwhile had clambered up into position before Tambery, fastening herself in before reaching out her arms to Killer, who jumped up into them with only a bit of scrabbling.

<> Asgard grumbled at the eeveeloution, but without any real rancour. Anyway most of his attention was focused on what was to come, he was very aware of the potential danger ahead but at least this time they were as prepared as it was possible to be.  

[Gwennythe]

Tambrey smiled, mounted carefully, and began buckling herself in.

"Um. Thank you. And! The same, from me I mean. I mean, I'm glad you're here. We're a good team. We can do this." She found herself, without quite thing about it, reaching to pat what she could of Asgard, gently, when he grumbled.

"Ready?" She called to her team, receiving a myriad of pokéspeech responses and a bright telepathic affirmative from Franklin.

She offered a thumbs up to tell Aulus they were, well, ready, and sighed a little with tension /and/ a relief that they were finally going to be off to investigate.  

[TawnyAngel]

<> With that Asgard launched himself into the air, a fairly gentle process given his flight had a lot more to do with psychic power than wings when it came right down to it.

As they took off Aulus opened up the screen on his arm and activated the GPS tracking app; it would record their speed, altitude, and position and save them so they could look over all the data later. For now however it was simply showing a map; Aulus zoomed out a bit and then raised his eyes to the horizon ahead of them. "Well here we go then!"

A few moments later Red overtook them and held point a couple of Asgard-lengths ahead, ready to warn them of anything out of the ordinary that her keen eyes picked up.

"Do you think this fog bank... base, ship, whatever it is has something to do with whoever's making clones?" Aulus asked after a moment. "I was thinking that it might... and if it does, does that mean it belongs to those women from Paladin Island?"  

[Gwennythe]

"Here we go..." Tambrey repeated, tightening herself a little where she sat, despite the gentleness of the flight.
Jubilee, sensing the apprehension, gave a small chirp and snuggled against her neck.

Lasi and Pygi, like red, were quick to catch up, along with their charges, and took up positions on either side of the large bird, but spread wide enough that from some point of views it wouldn't be obvious that they were escorting anything, nor with each other.
Pygi kept a higher altitude than Lasi.

"Um. Hrm. I, um," Tambrey stalled as she tried to work out the best way to answer Aulus- her own thoughts being embarrassingly lacking in scientific proof, for a scientist, but circumstantial evidence sure /seemed/ to be backing the idea "honestly do."

She sighed.

"Our little bacon bird friend... Very tame. Cared for. A clone that was cared for, yet Sync and I found, um, well, on the road side. You remember how they were with their... uh... large version? And what they, um, talked about..."  

[TawnyAngel]

"I remember," Aulus confirmed with a grimace; it hadn't been the most comfortable experience ever, though it was fair to say he'd had a lot worse. "Wish we knew a bit more about them. A lot more. What are their motives and where have they been? What are their resources? If they're into cloning they must be pretty considerable.... But surely our people have thoroughly investigated this fog now, right? We alerted them ages ago... so either they've done it and not told us the results, done it and found nothing, or not done it. And how do any of those possibilities tie in with the bacon bird women, and this new clone?" Aulus huffed and shook his head, tugging his scarf a bit closer around his neck against the cold. "It's all bloody speculation at the moment, and I don't like it.... If we can plot how big the fog bank is, do you think we should try a foray inside? Or try sending the ghosts again? I know the former would be dangerous but we've got a lot of backup this time.... I dunno." He wanted answers and it was pretty damn clear that the only way they were getting any was if they got them for themselves.  

[Gwennythe]

"The sequence shows, um, some /very/ impressive engineering. Like, um, one of ours. It really is fairly comparable. Uh. Very... deliberately engineered in the way it has been. Almost an artwork." Slap in the face or not, she couldn't help but admire the work.
To stunt the size, genetically, and of a legendary, was not something one could just 'do' off the bat; it took quite a bit of trial and error, despite experience, before it could be refined into a 'production line' style cloning operation...

Another soft sigh.
"I don't, um, believe in, y'know, fate and um, all that but I cannot help but feel like we're going in there. Sooner or later I just... I just feel like we're going to end up going inside there ourselves."  

[TawnyAngel]

He couldn't help but agree, it seemed inevitable really. Aulus reached up to give Tam's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "Yeah, me too, but we're going in together and we've survived worse than a few missiles right? Whatever's in there we'll face it together... and with our teams, of course. We've planned for as many eventualities as possible right? And if it all goes really south Killer can protect us for long enough to retreat." Probably.