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"I think TV is probably not the best guide to how these things really work." Kairatos muttered, rubbing a hand over his face uneasily.

There was literally nothing not awkward about this. There was probably even more about it that was flat out a terrible idea.

"What the hell is the plan if we get caught? Am I supposed to try and do my oath in a hurry and port us to Mars? What if we get separated?"

Could he be identified by his fingerprints? Would they give him away as the missing Falco Marks? Castor had known he had been Realgar.. he wasn't sure how much faith he had in magic right now, especially with the fun little bit where there were some hints pointing toward it's involvement in this death. Had the guy been a knight? An agent? A senshi? Maybe the lifting a car had been a little colorful embroidery on an already colorful story, maybe it wasn't...

Of course chattering about it probably wasn't a good idea either.

"Maybe we should have tried to get in touch with.. ********.. what's her name. Senshi of Medicine. She works at a hospital... she might have an in.

Yeah. Use the person whose name he couldn't even remember as an in. Fantastic idea.

"Not entirely television," The Mauvian quipped as she contentedly shifted back and forth between feline forms. "I did a lot of Google searching too."

In fact, she had printed stacks of reports on her mystery murmuring man to dramatically throw down on the table at breakfast and from that point on had been stubborn ever since. She could not be reasoned with, and maintained a manic focus that bordered on obsession.

The signage that spelled out "Autopsy" had been fawned over once located, and the large cat's prowling about circled back tightly to her knightly companion once his aura was joined by the distinct flavor of something a bit more youma.

She shifted up to cat-girl form and leaned one elbow on Kairatos' shoulder, flashing Bischofite an inappropriatly enthusiastic grin as she took in his appearance.

"We've been on worse dates. You look like hell," She sounded absolutely chipper. "I'd have more to say but..."

She glanced around, taking a dazed step or two before turning to Kairatos. "This way, I think... If I'm reading it right?"

She turned back to Bischofite, "There's a body being kept here for testing, help me find it."

She willfully ignored the Mars knight and his questions and concerns. She didn't have answers, or a plan. She only had a hunch and so far had only muttered something about not wanting to say if she wasn't sure.

She moved along as if she expected them to follow without objection, taking whichever form necessary to look at what caught her interest along the way, until she stopped. She was in full on animal form when she abruptly halted in the hallway, and she laid down flat on her belly with forepaws extended out, ears swiveling as something played on her senses.

"Do you feel it?" She whispered lowly.

An aura, small and faint was resounding just beyond where she suspected her quarry was lying in a cabinet somewhere. A tiny sensation, almost swallowed up by the stronger auras between the three of them. It wasn't similar to any power class, although it felt faintly similar to something of the parallel variety.

"Is there someone in there?" That cat whispered, apparently deciding now of all times was the time to be stealthy. She got up and doubled back, scurrying behind Kairatos's ankles. There was no one, though. Not even a security patrol. "There has to be, right?"

Unless the dead had apparently spawned auras.

During their slow (and often troublesome) venture, Alois frequently considered seizing a handful of fur in tarred claws solely to irritate Zirconia in a manner she never knew possible, but the promise of some explanation behind search and seizure of a corpse intrigued him more. 'For testing' didn't offer much of an answer. Testing by who? For what purpose? Alois offered no reply; rather, he kept along with the pair, often at the back of the group, calm with the knowledge that he could effectively murder any civilian that managed discovery of the three. The other two, however, seemed rather hellbent on sneaking around.

Maybe they weren't used to being monsters.

While the pair might've crept along, Alois only walked. He managed no intention of stealthily skulking about. He never deliberately made noise, not beyond ruffling his feathers when they reached a particularly vacant hallway, but there were a pair of instances where a flight feather caught along the edge of a half-empty stock box and toppled its contents to the floor, startling him thoroughly enough to freeze the creature in place for the span of several long seconds. So far, no one had come running - no one needed to die by starseed theft.

Afterward Alois maintained a measure of stealth to match the pair, keeping silent until they finally approached the morgue vault. Zirconia took vigil, but something beyond the door distracted him from making observations about the audacity of a lilac cat in the middle of a medical center.

Alois leaned forward slightly, just over Kairatos' shoulder while one clawed hand rested near the blonde's neck. "How curious," he muttered softly. "It's unlike anysing I'f ever felt." Afterward he emerged from behind the knight to advance, albeit slowly, toward the medical doors. "It doesn't exactly feel terribly fierce, whatever it is. If previous experience holds, it shouldn't pose much of a sreat between ze pair of us. Besides, we bos' know how effectif' purification was on me. My life is razzer expendable in ze state of... Emergency." He finished just as he reached the door, and he braced his hands against its surface for a breath.

Slowly he pushed open the doors to peer inside, uncertain of what to expect.

"I don't think he's taking solicitors today." Kairatos managed to joke. He didn't brush away Bishophite's hand, but he made a mock jab at the half youma's midsection with his elbow, stopping short of actually jabbing into him. No need to get tarred if he could avoid it.

"Your attitude is expendable." He muttered. "Knock that off." He moved to help Zia with the drawer, checking for a lock before giving her a hand pulling the drawer free, since it was a hair uncooperative.

"Seriously this is so weird...." He could still feel that little aura, and was trying to pin it down, but that was sort of the problem with auras. They gave you an area, not a thumb tack on the map.

Once the drawer was opened however... this one came a little closer than most to doing so.

It was coming from the corpse.

...Which he sort of wished was a little more shocking, instead of just intensely creepy.

"...Oh you have got to be kidding."

"Uh, it's a late-30s, mid-40s Caucasian male?" Was the snide answer to the question.

She lowered her face down close to the cold skin and did an animated sweeping hover that culminated with craning her neck to see into the open mouth as Bischofite used is talons, subconsciously opening her own mouth to mimic it.

"I vote for viscera, we don't have a lot of time, and he has been conveniently pre-cracked," She quipped, knocking on his chest with a rubbery and muffled thump. Apparently whatever part of her brain that was supposed to be disgusted or aware of how unsanitary it was had been completely turned off. She did recoil when she fiddle with the sutures, only to pull her hands back with the sudden realization, "Human skin is pretty gross, yeah?"

She made rapid gestures to Bischofite's talons. "You got no problem with that, right? Or... hey," She bounced on her heels with the sudden excitement of a question. "Do dead people have starseed hammer space? Do your funky fingers still pull starseeds?"

She managed to contain her theories and questions to at least acknowledge his, though.

"I found the mirror, a special one, that belonged to Nehelenia. It thinned the barrier between universes. But I think... I think it's been calling for a while now..." Her ears twitched in a minor thinking tic.

She stopped and looked over the corpse again, running her hands over the space above his torso and lingering over the chest, fingers outspread and held steady as she took on a sudden, thoughtful air.

"I've been thinking a lot about what the priestess said," She murmured and added strictly for Bischofite's benefit, "The priestess of Tartaros, the parallel dream world, Cassandra. The barrier thinned... just enough to mirrortalk with her... And she was focusing on the prince's crystal..."

She held her position, as if she was going to magically divine something.

"I saw this guy on the news and his symptoms uh... they seemed sort of familiar... and I was thinking. I looked him up. He was in the coma epidemic in 2010. He had a hard time waking up, and then he had that reaction..."

She trailed off, attempting to focus her magic on something that for all appearances seemed difficult, although magic force was always hard to gauge visibly, save for the sudden energy burst.

Something was pulled out of his chest, but it wasn't a starseed, and it didn't come quietly. The sutures holding him closed burned and began to split, and where it was inside of him left a visible mark. It had been extracted from magical hammerspace, as it was, but its exit left destruction to its vessel in its wake. When she rested, his chest had been split open and among the red ruination of flesh sat her prize.

A chunk of glimmering, golden crystal about as big as her thumb.

There was a completely undignified squealing gasp of excitement that made its way out before she exhibited some sort of control over herself.

"Because you see, Earth's greater crystal was held by the crown prince, the Cavalier of Oblivion, and if he was holding it in Tartaros when he died then..."

She very carefully reached for it, and then hesitated as if she felt adverse to touching the thing regardless of how precious it was.

"Then prolonged exposure... especially with the barrier to its homeworld thinned enough to allow a flow of power, would have some unpleasant effects..."

Alois huffed, brandishing his middle finger toward the offending party. "Pull zis." You're one to talk with your cat ears and tail when in a human body. You're not so terribly far from youma characteristics yourself.

After a breath, Alois demonstrated his own placid knowledge of human anatomy as compared to other sources. "Interestingly, human skin has ten times ze elasticity of animal skin, which is where my experience lies. Effectively, one can assume zat human skin is pretty gross by zat difference but... Skin cells were never terribly fascinating. However, zat elasticity is why so few taxidermied human models exist - ze skin tears far too easily in comparison to animal skin once zat elasticity dissipates in deas'. But zat is neizer here nor zere - we don't care if ze skin rips; we're not suturing togezzer some facsimile of him wis' dental floss and polyuresane foam." Though Alois would've liked to embark on taxidermy processes once more for homage to old hobbies.

However, he received no such boon, for Zirconia called upon a magic unfamiliar to call the curiosity out of the man's body. It popped a variety of stitches, producing a garbled squelch of flesh while the ostensibly crystalline object emerged from its confines. And there it lay in the guts of the man, exposed to all - a piece of gold with properties unlike any metal - or crystal - Alois had ever witnessed.

I don't think that's a starseed, he thought to himself. It certainly doesn't look like one.

"You're referencing zis ozzer world you hail from, yes?" Taking a pause, Alois considered the juxtaposition between that knowledge and the reference of mirrors and barriers. "So our worlds are coming closer togezzer or somesing? If ze barriers between worlds narrow, zen zere's more chance of your kind cropping up, or exporting you back to your natif'e realm?"

However, further information provided complicated matters beyond his narrow scope of knowledge concerning the subject. "I don't know anysing about dream worlds, let alone yours. But if our worlds aligned enough to talk wis' zis priestess, and she was focusing on some crystal, are you zen assuming zis is ze crystal she was interested in?" Alois leaned closer for a hands-off examination of it, though he could discern no special properties that might attract attention beyond its wan aura. "Why is it important, whatever it is? And what symptoms were you referencing?"

Though, at least Kairatos' response gave some indication of the latter answer.

"Are you trying to say zat zis prince's crystal somehow got stuck here because of sinning barriers between worlds? I don't know what any of zis has to do wis' dream realms..." Ultimately he was taking shots in the dark, expecting Zirconia to carry on with a more complete and useful explanation. "So some unlucky b*****d gets a chunk of crystal stuck in his guts because some prince in a universe parallel to ours died in some dream realm while holding zis same crystal? Do you know how little sense zat makes?"

In hopes of procuring real information from the cat, Alois reached in and plucked the golden gem from the man's cold viscera for closer examination. He held it above eye level, toward the fluorescent light to examine any translucence or imperfections in the material - and conveniently kept it beyond Zirconia's reach. Kairatos' grasp was a little longer, but still manageable if he hyperextended his arm.

"For ******** sake are you Two?" A guy was dead for this piece of rock, and they were playing keep away?

"How about we don't start." He snapped, making a grab of his own for the chunk of the Crystal, having forgotten in that moment of irritability that he had, two seconds ago, concluded that he wanted absolutely nothing to do with touching it. He'd escaped the Coma, but fatigue and nightmares? That he was already familiar with.

"Explain..." he added the question as he sought to lay hands on the debated ticket home. "The dream mirror thing. Are we going to see more of this?"

Would other people have other pieces of this damn thing inside their 'dream mirror'?

It really would make civilians think there was an epidemic, and he couldn't blame them if it happened.