"I've hidden people taller than you before..." Bellona says, shrugging. "There's a trick to not moving too much while I'm walking."

She undoes her front plate while Emma keeps sorting. It is indeed empty in there, except a rune marked near the back of the neck in what looks like dried blood. The leg holes are closed off, and it's got shelves in it. Bellona claps her hands, touches her armor, and the shelves recede, leaving an empty space.

Belmarniss steps in. She fits but her backpack doesn't.

" - Want me to hold that?" Bellona asks. Her voice seems to come roughly from her helmet.

"Yes." She pulls a book out and tucks it against herself rather than relinquish it but hands over the bag.

Bellona settles it carefully against her back. "Right. Good to go?"

"Yes."

Then Bellona can relatch her armor - she points out the internal catch she made so Belmarniss would be able to get out even if Bellona's paralyzed or something weird - and they can head out.

There's two guards outside, one male, one female, from the sound of it. They gripe ask idly what the girls have been working on, and mention that it might be safer for them to stop changing the door to block sound - which seems to be an old argument, because Emma just rather grouchily says that if they get in a fight everyone will notice, and their work's classified, anyways.

Bellona does chat, friendly, with the guards. They seem verbally at least less guarded with her than with Emma.

The barracks are nearby, and the guards are still stationed right outside their room.

There's a crackling sound, and then Bellona unlatches her armor.

"We're here. We sound-proofed the room and swept for bugs," she says. "So we should be clear."

Belmarniss checks her list. "Today?" she asks.

"It'll last until next time we leave the room - we're not supposed to leave it modified and they sometimes put bugs back in while we're gone."

Nod.

"They're not very good - bugs are small listening devices, but they don't have good pickup and they're easy to identify if you start messing with electricity, and generally they're only a problem for higher ranked people but we're apparently special."

"...elaborate on, uh..."

"Bugs?"

Headshake.

She thinks about what else was in that sentence.

"...Electricity?"

"Yes."

Bellona can actually explain electricity quite well, even at a basic overview level - it's not her main field, but she studied pretty widely while she was doing her apprenticeship.

This is apparently really interesting and novel and Belmarniss takes lots of notes.

Since it seems something worthy to take notes on, Bellona starts going into some high value applications, which she actually knows more about since she frequently breaks or repairs electronics via alchemy.

Neat!!

Yeah! Refrigerators and washing machines and air conditioning are pretty important, though they're not close to universal in homes yet, and so are radios, electric lights, telegraphs, printing presses, street cars, automail... Plus there's stuff that's just fun, like films and music.

This is great!!!

"Probably helps that alchemy doesn't work that well if you don't know the underlying science? And it makes manufacturing stuff easy, so this's all be relatively easy to figure out."

So-so gesture.

"We might also have different technologies entirely..."