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Basiluzzo watched, quietly fascinated, as Pendour slipped into the water from her seat. Since Abzu already had the flashlight situation covered, Basiluzzo was content to wait with his in case the battery died on Abzu's. Otherwise, he watched attentively for any sign of trouble or anything else that might indicate Pendour needing help or bailing out from her dive. To Abzu, he offered, "well, only some of us, I guess. I don't get to do that."

Stromboli was trying to stop himself from pacing. It wasn't working. Talking about magic was distracting enough, however, so he tried to lean into that. "What do you get to do? Do you have any extra abilities you haven't told me about yet?"

Basiluzzo shook his head, leaning forward and craning his neck to peer into the water. "Nope, not yet." He crouched down, resting his elbows on his knees. "I'm extra fast, I guess, but that's just a Uranus thing. You should be extra fast, too." He leaned forward, using one hand braced against the ground in front of him to keep himself from toppling forward. "I think she has the orb."

His father breathed a sigh of relief, but the pacing didn't stop until Pendour's head broke the surface again. "Welcome back." He watched anxiously, however, until Basiluzzo reached down and offered a hand to lift Pendour out of the water. It was easy enough with how light she was, though the water did add enough weight that he used his other hand to lend a bit of extra lifting power.

Once she was back on solid ground, Basiluzzo grinned. "That was super cool." Stromboli didn't bother asking before reaching into his subspace to withdraw a blanket and handed it to her. It wasn't the basket of comfortable things he kept for her at the Bell house, but he hoped it would help. While Stromboli fretted, Basiluzzo turned to Abzu. "Maybe doing the resonating will be easier now that we're closer?"

He hoped Pendour would be fine! He would feel bad if she had actually given herself the bends by dipping down into the water to retrieve this. He would have followed that up with he would have gotten it himself, but the whole problem was that he couldn't breathe the water...

No winning in that situation.

"It's okay! I promise, the floor will dry." Abzu snickered. "I think the amphitheatre will survive." Well. It would survive if he took care of the whole code out-of-sync issue. The code piece, that he was holding in his hand, that he needed to resonate with. Resonate by reaching out to it, probably. He probably needed to find a new place for this. Abzu couldn't just throw this back into the depths, considering he wouldn't be able to get back to it again until he enlisted Pendour for that.

... He'd figure it out later.

The problem, for now, was to deal with this.

"Y'all can keep exploring, if you want. Think I'll be here for a minute."

He hated meditation. Zoltan was always promoting meditation to settle the emotions, or maybe quiet the brain in general, but it was boring and honestly just made his brain louder. Abzu felt it already, really, the voices that felt like more than just quiet murmuring and instead an overwhelming wash that kept banging around in his ears unendingly--



"Sir? Sir!"

"Yes?"

"We have a guest here? They're from the surface. They ran in?"

"Ran?" Mito's gaze rose from his sheet music. "Do they seem alright?"

"No." His assistant fell back, putting his hands behind his back. "I think they need help. To run down the tubes to get to us down here, he might have been really trying to get away from something, and he seems panicked--"

"Calm down," Mito passed his assistant, rubbing his shoulder briefly with a practiced touch, as he moved beyond him. "I'll address this." His walk was calm, unbothered, as he regarded everything happening around him with a distant gaze. People interested him innately, and it was part of the reason why he loved his position as much as he did. Observing them, learning what made them tick, learning what made them creative and what made them bloom in that sense, what made them happy. What made them... fear.

Oh. This guy was legitimately terrified.

"Are you alri-" Mito was hushed by their newfound invader, who slipped around him to hide themself into an alleyway. Alright. Why were they--

Abzu was surprised that the man who ran in, and who hid, was not their only guest.

"Sir. You are the caretaker of this wonder, right?" The smile they offered him was perfect. Charismatic in a way that others might have envied. Charming in a way that might have charmed the pants off the right attendees of his wonder. "Have you seen another come through here? I've been trying to bring them back to their home."

... Why was he so terrified, then? "Home?" Mito tilted his head. Something seemed odd about the way the dim lights reflected off the other's eyes. "What is home that it would bring them so deep to get away from it?"

"I don't know." His smile in return was easy. "They have everything they could need. They're provided for well."

Provided for? "Are they your child?"

A pause. Something twitched in his expression.

"They are dependent."

"On?"

His lips upturned slightly, not quite reaching his eyes. "Me. Now, if you would tell me where they went--"

Mito found himself giving the other man a hard glance. He had a few choices in front of him. He could reveal the terrified person in the alleyway who had looked about ready to piss themselves. He could simply claim they weren't there and let this person keep looking, perhaps eventually finding success. He could go off his instinct. Why would this person be so terrified to run down to their depths if it wasn't for a reason? It certainly wasn't to participate in the artistic retreats, and he doubted it was to join the scientists. At least, not at this juncture.

Mito checked behind him, observing the pillars that the other had run behind to hide themselves.

"Is he back there?"

Mito's gaze turned back to the one speaking to him. "Patience, sir."

"I would like him returned to me, now."

Mito's head tilted.

"Returned?"

The other's expression ticked just minutely differently, then. The charm was replaced with another type of charm, entirely. One that Mito knew would be attractive to the right people under the right circumstances, but this one? This one had him advancing.

"No."

"... With all due respect, what rights do you have to interfere?"

"They're here, now. That makes them one of mine." Mito chuckled. "And it seems you choose to threaten one of mine. That would make you a threat."

"Threaten?"

"Did I stutter?"

"What is your name, sir? This is the Abzu Retreat, hm? Mito?" The man's head tilted. "You have a reputation. I'm sure you understand what I need them back for, hm?"

Mito didn't care to find out the name of the person he faced. He knew his people. He knew people. He could hear the way the man breathed at his advance. Goosebumps prickled his arms as Mito pressed his lips to the other's ear. "No, I'm afraid I don't. Please explain."

"I can certainly detail it if you'd like," was a returned purr, perhaps self-defense, perhaps feeling haughty about the whole thing. Mito didn't particularly care.

The moment he heard what he needed to hear, he pulled a knife out of his pocket and sliced it across the other's neck, shoving him to the floor.

"Pity. Sounds like your head is in the wrong place."

... And now to make sure this person was alright. Mito recalled where they had dashed off to, taking his time to pursue where they might have gone. A safe, hidden place, no doubt.

They had crunched themselves into a corner, hoping it protected them from view. They, who looked at him, like they would rather merge into the marbled floors below, never to be seen again.

Mito crouched down in front of them, reaching to touch their shoulder if they would accept it. "You'll be alright now. He can never hurt you again."

There was hesitance, at first, but they relaxed into the shoulder touch.



Abzu jumped, his eyes widening as he realized what he witnessed.

On one hand, he respected the decision. Honestly, he didn't even question it. The concept of what he was hearing chilled him. It was exactly the sort of thing that he would act in defense of. It was exactly the sort of thing he would put himself in the way of for.

... On the other hand, well.

Perhaps he hoped he had experienced that alone.

The Code seemed content, in any case, that he saw himself defending the land. Perhaps it was for the best.

"... Is everyone good out there?" Did they go explore? Elsewhere?

Pendour's eyes fluttered open. Maybe the others had thought that she'd fallen asleep, but she'd tried to fall into steady breathing and meditate, herself, to give Abzu that emotional support, and then, well, something had happened.

"I, um," she looked over at him. "I saw it."

The blanket was pulled tightly around her shoulders, but her expression was as serene as usual.

Yes, she hated violence, with her whole soul, but she'd seen plenty of it, all the same. She wasn't about to get squeamish over something like that, not after everything else that she'd been through.

Yes, she would have handled the situation differently. No, she wasn't about to judge someone who had lived a thousand years ago from making a quick decision in what had been an awful and high pressure mess.

Abzu looked like he was carrying it heavily, though. Pendour's brows inched together. "Are you okay?"

Stromboli moved to bundle Pendour tighter in the blanket, resisting the urge to 'tut' over Pendour and Abzu like an old woman. "Hey, why don't we get somewhere where it's warm and dry?" Basiluzzo echoed his father's sentiments, moving to get to his feet.

The sooner they moved on, maybe the sooner Abzu and Pendour could stop thinking about whatever it was they saw.

"I'd like that," he murmured, rubbing his neck, "but we don't have to, either, if you'd rather not think about it. We're talking about something from a thousand years ago." It was a thousand years ago but it was still sitting on his brain. Was the Code trying to show him that sometimes more extreme actions were justifiable, or was it just something significant in his prior life?

Perhaps trying to pretend it was some sort of moral lesson was a bit much for what it all actually was in the first place. It was probably just a significant event. Abzu figured that if Mito was still his same starseed, they probably had a lot in common even if they weren't quite the same.

"Appreciate you don't hold that against me, though."

Even if he wished she was feeling less of it. He offered an affectionate smile in Stromboli's direction attempting to tuck Pendour in more. Stromboli was an adorable man, honestly. He would tell Safira that, but probably not Luke himself--

"Staying on the same planet sounds like a good idea," he chuckled airily, a hint as to how much he was still in his own head. "That'll let us move gradually closer to Earth, even if it doesn't necessarily get us to drier land."

Not that it really mattered when they were this far away from the Earth in the first place, both conceptually and factually.

"Let's get going. This place isn't going anywhere."