She is delighted that someone feels something more than detached frustrated loathing for them from sheer exposure, really. And it's nice that all of her hard work in the Mists is not going unnoticed. It almost makes it feel sort of like all of that awful time was worth it! Almost.

At one point Grumby looks up from the puzzle and blinks at something in the distance. "Well either he's back now or we got mursaat again."

"Hm?" she says, blinking and dropping her concentration on updating the illusion for his progress in the puzzle. She can keep it active without concentrating, but changing as a result of his actions takes actual focus and care.

She looks over to the something in the distance. Is the maybe-a-mursaat walking in slightly clunky bird feet boots?

He sure is!

She beams, and waves at him. The tension she'd been carefully smoothing over and ignoring disappears, though Grumby might not be observant enough to notice. He didn't die the moment she let him out of her sight! Hooray!!!

"He's back. Mursaat obnoxiously float everywhere, whereas I couldn't believably fake it with an illusion."

"Hello again, princess," calls James's voice from the mursaat-like person.

    "Wait. Princess. Vetareh. Mists." Grumby stares at her. "Are you...?"

"Whoops."

"Oh no. I mean, yes, I am, but the princess part was poetic exaggeration by the bards after the fact, I am definitely not in line for any thrones."

    "Well, I met two celebrities today! I'll be telling this story."

"But we," says James, removing the helmet, "are done here. We should get back to Rhoban."

It would be very rude for Vetareh to ask just precisely who Grumby would be telling this story to, so she doesn't. But she thinks it.

"Have fun," she says instead. Then she looks to James. "We should! You... didn't take any notes on the interior of the fortress, did you."

"I'm... afraid I did not. There was not much of note."

She makes a long-suffering expression, then steps forward and hugs him.

"I'm glad you're okay," she says, in lieu of telling him that there definitely were a lot of things of note in there, he just wasn't specialized in noting them.

He wasn't, that's true.

He changes back to his spiky uniform, bids Grumby farewell, and back to Rhoban they can go.

They can leave the mursaat disguise with Grumby, so that someone later can perhaps don the armor and do a more thorough job of studying the fortress. She'll... send some asura this way. Even though they wouldn't fit in the armor unless two stood on each other's shoulders. They're smart, they'll figure a way to use it. Right? Right.

Hopefully the trip back to Rhoban will be uneventful. ... And filled with hand holding. Look, she was worried, okay.

Both things happen! And then they reach the skritt camp again and Rhoban's broken-off bust is waiting for them there.

    "The isles are downright peaceful. Guess you found all of the contraptions, eh?" he calls when he spots them. "Of course, it won't be long until the torrent builds up again. Perhaps by then I'll have these skritt whipped into shape..."

"Best of luck. Should we send some asura your way to assist, or... Would that be the opposite of helpful?"

    "Skritt are nervous around asura, what with all the experimenting. If the asura promise to behave... uh, Commander, you still with us?"

James does not, actually, look to be still with them. He's staring into the distance with a glassy-eyed look...

"I could actually get you and the skritt some leverage if their behaving is in question..." she says thoughtfully, then she notices the boyfriend that is spacing out.

She waves a hand in front of his face. Yeah, he's not still with them. Well, that's unexpected, if not quite into alarming just yet. Probably not a delayed trap from the mursaat fortress, she'd have noticed if there was some sort of hex on him, even if it was just dormant and waiting to activate. It's not clear what's going on instead, though. Nothing's punctured his magical defenses, which either means it's friendly and he's letting it in, or it's very, very bad.

"Ah, James..?"

It takes a few more seconds, but eventually James blinks and shakes his head quickly as if to dispel some thought.

    "Hey! Where'd you float off to just now?" Rhoban asks, a frown creasing his eyebrows. "You alright?"

"I just had a vision. A pretty ominous one."

    "A vision? You sure it's not just the heat playing tricks on you?"

"This was no hallucination." He turns to Vetareh with an intense look in his eyes. "I have to get back to Tarir as soon as possible."

She nods sharply. "Okay. Go, then. I'll wrap things up here and get everyone talking to each other. Toss me a teleport thing for Tarir if you have one, but if not, don't wait up."

James does have a waypoint stone, yeah. He hands it to her, and after a second's pause also gives her the stone thumb. "I'll see you soon," he says, and nods to Rhoban.

    "Don't let me hold you up. Good luck, Commander!"

And off he goes to the closest local waypoint.

She blows him a fond kiss, then returns to business.

Since the torrent building up again is likely to be a problem, then she'll give directions to Captain Grumby and the disguise to Rhoban. Clearly he's the one that needs access to it the most, after all.

"It also means," she adds, "that if the asura would like to study the mursaat fortress with the suit of armor, they'll need to work with you. Do you expect that will get them to behave?"

Rhoban grins widely. "It just might, yes. I'm sure they've already got their grubby little fingers all over some of these devices, so they'd die if they couldn't get to all of them."

"Precisely. And here's your thumb back, thank you for lending it out." And now she put it down and stop touching it, which is excellent, because ew ew ew ew. Not that this shows on her face, she's a mesmer, but: yeah, ew.

"I'll see about sending friendly asura your way - is there anything you might need from a bunch of obsessive researchers? Or from me?"

"Well... the skritt are much more useful when they're together, cooperating... if the asura's terrible, terrible experiments shed any light on how to get them to do that..."

"I'll ask and have the data sent to you if I find anything," she says, nodding.