Probably! They can take the waypoint near the Fire Islands gate to the other Fire Islands waypoint they have unlocked north of the Destroyer hive. "Now we have an asuran researcher to find. Should be easy enough, just follow the arrogant orders or the frustrated despair."

She snorts. "There is no in between? All right. Well, the researcher said east, so..."

To the east! Any arrogant barked orders or signs of frustrated despair to be found?

...yes, actually! There's an asura over there on top of an elevated stone platform grumbling at a device that looks very obviously broken, and a skritt in pirate gear watching him.

She doesn't actually know what a skritt is, so seeing one in pirate gear is novel. Not the weirdest thing she's seen, but novel.

"Pardon me," she says, politely. "What's going on here?"

    He looks up at her and looks close to tears. "This miserable device won't activate! And the skritt won't help!"

        "No! Smelly asura will ruin everything! Leave it to skritt! Champions of Rock Face!" says the skritt.

"Are you the researcher in charge of figuring out what's going on with the tremors?"

    "Yes! —wait, you're the Commander. Surely you can help?"

"With what?"

    "According to these skritt, this device has something to do with the building seismic pressure beneath the island. If we can't figure out how to activate it, the pressure builds and builds until... well, as the skritt say, 'pop'."

        "Pop! Pop! Weeeee hee hee!"

She frowns at the device. It's clearly inactive, and it's not obvious how to change that, but it feels rather like some kind of, of pressure release valve.

"Is this... dwarven?" she says, blinking thoughtfully at it.

        "Yes! Rock face old dwarf face! Dwaaaaaaarf heee hee hee!"

    "Oh, my," says the researcher. "A dwarf? Here?"

"You haven't spoken to them?"

    "The skritt won't let me get close enough to ask how to work this blasted machine."

"Do the champions of Rock Face mind terribly if we go pay our respects to their esteemed leader, and maybe pay tribute in, uh." She considers the intelligence and goals of a cackling pirate rat thing. "... Shinies?"

    "Ooooh! Shinies! Yes yes!" It pauses. "No! No! No bribing thirdish mate! Talk to firstish mate first! Yes! Friends of skritt only!"

James perks up at that last thing.

"Okay, then I suppose we'll just have to be very helpful and charming. Could you please direct us to the first...ish... mate?"

    "Yes! Yes! Come with me! Come come come!"

James shrugs and follows.

"Thank you," she says as she follows, wondering when Tyria got this weird.

The skritt leads them east over a lava river then a ways south to a shack made of scrap metal. There's another skritt pirate there guarding the entrance.

    "You! What do you want with the Rock Face? Speak! Speak!"

"Let me pass. I need to speak with the... 'Rock Face'."

    "No! Nobody sees Rock Face without skritt say-so! Friends of skritt only!"

"Is there some way we could prove to be your friends?" Preferably quickly, before the islands go 'pop'?

    "Hm... Help the skritt! Yes! Save skritt from fire! Arm skritt against the Destroyers! Become a friend of the skritt."

"We'll see what we can do."

Vetareh nods, then looks to James.

"Saving skritt from destroyers and fire first, then arming them? Otherwise we have no skritt to arm, which would probably make us bad friends."

"A sound plan. Let's go."

She nods. Any nearby destroyer magic in use? She can't find skritt, but she can probably find destroyers that have found skritt.

There is very definitely Destroyer magic that-a-way!

"Active destroyer magic, thataway," she reports, pointing. "Might be skritt nearby, let's go check."

Are there skritt nearby the destroyer magic?

There are! There are some skritt in pirate gear fighting Destroyers.

Excellent! Then she and James can go be heroic and save the pirate rats from the lava bug things.

... Man, her life is weird. Whatever, she's having fun.

They can!

There are also some skritt passed out or injured on islands in the middle of a lava river.

Well, that looks uncomfortable. And rather hard to get to without burning to a crisp, even with the magical protections enchanted into her clothes and carefully woven around her.

She looks at James. "Think you can fetch them with the glider?"

"Probably!" he says cheerfully, and goes on to prove that he can, in fact, do exactly that.