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Recovering from the slight disorientation of teleporting, Talon tried to place exactly where it was they -were- first. He wasn't sure he'd been to this particular part of Rome when he'd gone the first time.

"Its..." he started, peering at the rooftops and looking for the white curve of the dome or the towers of the cathedral-like structure that he remembered from the last time. Seeing neither of those, he was about to tell Julius that he was sorry but he didn't know -where- to go from there, when a rumbling motor cut him short.

Turning, he watched as a tour bus pulled up along the curb of a sidestreet and opened its doors, letting off a small scattering of tourists that were among, oh thank gods, a swarm of elderly women in black and white habits. He'd seen that particular uniform quite frequently within the Vatican walls while watching the goings-on from the ceiling.

"Five minutes!" the tour director called as they dispersed to assault the area with their cameras, and then repeated himself in Italian and French to cover his bases.

What sightseeing tour of Rome would be complete without stopping at the Vatican?

Talon flinched as one of the nuns bustled toward them and then passed them by completely without a second look. Puzzled, he cast a look at the ground and found that neither he nor Julius was casting a shadow...he'd been unaware that the ancient's invisibility cloak could work on both of them at once.

Looking back to Julius, he jerked his head slightly toward the bus in suggestion. "We would get there faster that way." And if they were, in fact, invisible, they wouldn't need to resort to clinging to the undercarriage either, thankfully.

Talon was silent, seeming similarly disinterested in speaking with Julius...and was finding himself basking in the full glory of why it was he seldomly went out anymore. Gods, he disliked strangers badly enough on their own, but put in a big cluster this way they were intolerable.

As he made himself a bit more comfortable against the nylon zippered lunchbox he was pressed against, the bus turned again, making him lurch a bit.

He snarled inwardly...if that driver took one more turn that fast, he was going to--

And then the squealing of brakes resounded through the main cab and there was instantly a bustle of activity. People straightened and began shouldering into their jackets while a few overly-zealous people snapped pictures out of the bus window.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, we have arrived at the Vatican, our final stop of the day. We will be dividing you into groups of six and you will be assigned a guide. Please line up outside of the bus." the tired-sounding voice of the driver announced through the loudspeaker, and then parroted himself again in two other languages.

However, no one seemed to be listening to him as they rose from their seats, beginning to fumble out their personal belongings as Talon ducked out of the way just in time to avoid the questing hand of a middle-aged balding man.

Talon had no sooner pulled up behind Julius, relieved to be in open air instead of the confinement of the bus, than the ancient drifted away again. As a tour group passed to their left, Talon caught up with Julius partially to avoid them and partially to keep from losing sight of the ancient.

He'd learned from experience, after all, that getting separated from your travelling partner in an unfamiliar country, quite frankly, sucked.

Talon had been about to continue following the man and faltered in mid-air to instead keep up with Julius. A warning would have been nice....he didn't require much, even just a "This way" or "C'mon".

Oh well...

As he, Irisa, and Hadrian's activity had been done mostly at night, he was not well-acquainted with the daytime goings-on of the Vatican and footsteps resounded through the hallways on all sides of them. They ranged from the purposeful echo of boots to the timid shuffling of nuns, but even this noise was preferrable to the din of the bus.

He looked pointedly at the back of Julius's head as they moved, as though that might make him willing to explain where they were going and what they intended to do when they got there.

Talon started a bit, having just resigned himself to Julius not speaking to him for the rest of this excursion and getting used to the idea.

"Not well, I'm afraid." he said, looking upward at the dark singular eye of the ventilation shaft. His senses had grown keen since merging and there were many things he had become good at detecting. Noises? No problem. Scents? You got it. Sensations? Ten-Four. But Talon could not remember ever having been able to detect magic belonging to different feien or otherwise.

Talon floated in after him, narrowing his eyes a bit at the glow Julius emitted in the otherwise pitch-black duct. Object, he wondered...what object? He felt this would likely be a bad time to tell Julius that there was very little about magic that he was aware of and the spells he possessed were most usually uncovered by chance and only then were they honed to a useable state.

But yes, a skill such as that would have been most useful in this particular instance. "In that case, that's something I would very much consider learning." Of course, considering learning it really didn't help much at the moment...not unless Julius was willing to stop and teach him, of course.

Talon gratefully emerged from the air vent, reaching up to brush away a bit of spidersilk clinging to his singular forehead antler. He was grateful he hadn't been able to see the inside of the shaft otherwise he wasn't sure if he would have been able to refrain from taking out his annoyance at the situation on any insects therein.

The air of the storage room wasn't precisely fresh, and smelled of gently rotting wood and old paper, but he breathed deeply of it nonetheless. Alighting on one of the higher stacks of boxes, he looked to Julius, again, for what to do next.

Talon followed the direction of Julius's pointing finger, singling out the box in question before hovering over to land on top of the larger crate to examine it more closely. The box was wooden, just as the crate was, though not as sturdily built with only a few nails holding its lid in place.

The wood itself looked to be worn with age, and the nails sported a most unsavory coating of rust. Experimentally, he wedged his fingers beneath the head of one of them and pulled. The wood offered more give than he'd thought it might and the nail loosened itself easily like a decayed tooth.

The same could be said for the other three of the four nails holding the box's lid in place as they likewise came out easily. Talon would find, however, it was not removing the nails that was the hard part. The lid of the box had been wedged into place, likely with a hammer, before the nails had been applied.

It took several moments of fumbling and effort to lever the lid enough to attempt to lift it off, but his fingers, finally, found enough purchase to exert a good amount of force.

Eyes narrowed, teeth gritted, and biceps straining, the box's lid came free with a resounding CRACK which sounded very loud in the otherwise-silence of the room. Gratefully pushing it aside, he peered over the edge of the box to see what it contained.