"Now, about the Council..."

Siobhán puts on a pleased expression though a careful observer might note she doesn't see the compliment entirely in the spirit it's intended. She doesn't comment though. She is quite interested in any information on local political figures that will be useful in her work.

Meanwhile, Atlas wants all of the science. Pietro introduces Riley to a dozen experts in various fields, ready to have their minds blown by Starlight's expertise in medicine, agriculture, space travel, and immortality magic. 

Riley is willing to answer questions for a time, though on some topics she acts as the voice for distant archivists rather than talking from her own knowledge. Eventually she delegates, offering a video link to a group of archivists and looking personally to move back towards learning and researching rather than teaching.

Pietro reluctantly peels away from the seminars. It's his job to accommodate the alien scientist, after all. And after all their sharing, it's only fair to share back. What does Riley want to investigate next? 

"My main concern at the point is the Grimm, I'm not sure how easy it is to make arrangements to study them though. I've also been informed that my superiors want to see what happens when someone with an awakened Aura leaves this realm but we don't have any idea what the risks of that are so we'd understand if there aren't any volunteers. We can find volunteers among our own people who would be willing to be awakened for the purposes of the experiment."

"Our people can and often do capture some of the lesser Grimm for training purposes. The Grimm have largely eluded our attempts to understand their biology - or rather, their failure to follow the rules thereof - but we can probably restrain a Boarbatusk for you to look at. 

"As for leaving this realm...help me understand what risks you might expect? Huntsmen and Huntresses travel quite frequently with no ill effects, but I gather that's not what you mean." 

"I'm also entirely willing to go into the field to do my investigations, I don't expect any Grimm who do physical damage to be a significant threat to me and I'm reasonably capable of protecting those around me. More exotic Grimm might be more concerning of course. Exotic effects are always harder to predict. As for your other question, the underlying rules of reality vary between realms. Some things are pretty consistent, we call that set of rules base physics, but otherwise, there are no guarantees. We've seen everything from magics becoming easier to use, to people exploding without warning. And there generally isn't a way to predict what will happen in advance. We just have to test it and see."

Pietro looks torn. "You shouldn't underestimate the Grimm. Many a competent Huntress has made that mistake before. I've seen...well, suffice to say there are Grimm out there with nonphysical means of attack, and some can overwhelm even an experienced Huntress before she has a chance to use any of her strengths..." he trails off, frowning. "And they know it, too. Wilderness Grimm are smart and powerful enough to pose a danger to whole squads of well-armed and well-trained awakened warriors. If they weren't, we would have driven them back centuries ago." 

The scientist takes a deep breath. "The risks you describe are...alarming. I'll recommend you to our senior physicist later. Even if it's not going to be easy to predict, any common ground we can establish would be helpful.

"I expect you'll have some volunteers to try traveling between worlds, whatever the risks. I suppose it's not fair to deny you the chance to do the same, for the sake of knowledge. But if you must venture outside the cities, be careful. It's an ugly world out there." 

"Well, I'm not a death collector so I will try to be careful. And yes if non-physical attacks are a substantial risk then I'd want to know more about the risks in detail so I can try to prepare. Depending on what exactly the risk is there are precautions I can take. As for physical attacks, I can handle a lot of force with my own generation and I can supplement that. It's certainly possible to overwhelm me with enough simultaneous attacks though if I'm unable to dodge."

"...a death collector?" 

"People who try to experience as many different ways to die as possible. They're a small minority but they're strange enough that people talk about them a lot."

"...What an alien concept. Sadly, I've no doubt Remnant could be of interest to such people, flush as it is with ways to die." 

"It may well be, that depends on your realm being sufficiently safe to allow untasked travel though. I suppose that might sound contradictory, but the assessment isn't so much about personal risks as about the possibility of harmful contagions or the existence of beings capable of being a threat to our civilization as a whole."

"Which of course is part of what you're here to establish. Right, let's see if they have the training room available..." Pietro busies himself with his scroll for a bit, then nods. "We're cleared. If you'll kindly follow me..." Escorted by a quartet of Atlas guards, Pietro leads Riley out of the laboratory offices towards another part of the Atlas Academy. The training area is underground, or what passes for underground in a flying city. Three long hallways and two elevators later, they pass through a set of metal doors and a deactivated hardlight barrier into a brightly lit but mostly featureless room...

...where a black-furred creature studded with thick white plates is being restrained by lines of glowing light. 

"Well, that looks unfriendly." She starts casting her analyses. The simplest check and one she expects to be negative is whether it's made of normal matter. Assuming she's right she follows up with tests to learn about the exotic matter it's made of.

Comparing normal matter to Grimm is rather like comparing a ballerina to a tutu-clad howler monkey. It is not remotely behaving like the shape it resembles on the surface. 

In fact, the creature - which Pietro identifies as a Boarbatusk - has more in common with the hard-light restraints that bind it than with the floor it's resting on. 

"Hmm, well as expected it's not made of normal matter." She refines her scans, is the pattern stable? Are there any hints to a way to destabilize it? Are there any links outward?

It is more stable than Dust, by a wide margin, but still not in its lowest-energy state. It seems at least to pay lip service to biology, in that one can theoretically destabilize it by stabbing it enough times. If it has a different weakness, it is not apparent to an initial probe. The creature itself appears relatively self-contained and self-sustaining; it is not obviously linked to an external source of power or command. 

"It seems like this creature is self-contained. So far no obvious weaknesses I've noticed. I'm still looking though." Her next check is for conceptual resonance. Some of the sources she's read suggest they're connected to negative emotions is that borne out by magical analysis?

The substance of which the Grimm is composed, whatever it may be, is in some way attuned to suffering, after the manner of an otherwise inert metal responding to magnetism. 

"It doesn't look like flooding it with joy or happiness will work. It isn't an embodied concept like dust or a creature composed of negative energy with a clear opposite. That would have been convenient." She starts poking at it magically, at first she tests how it responds to physical forces being introduced at external and internal points but if that doesn't show anything interesting she'll move on to testing how it responds to various 'flavors' of magic being dumped inside it.

Some parts of its body seem more "real" than others. The bone plates seem to have more stable physical properties - hardness, cracking under pressure, and such. The creature's skin can be cut or pierced, but rather than bleed, it leaks black smoke. Applying forces internally is trickier, but seems more effective at destabilizing the creature's form. It can take a great deal more damage than a flesh and blood creature of similar size. 

"It seems like I could tear it apart from the inside if I tried, I'm not sure where the best place to target would be. I'll keep trying other things though before doing anything that could kill it since you implied that it was a pain to bring this one here." She'll try to see if she can conjure the Grimm equivalent of antimatter inside it. About a joule's worth to start just to see if she can. Conjuring tends to be a pretty inefficient way to destroy things but it's worth testing.