Watershed's got her fancy wetsuit on again.

Mandragora's wetsuit looks like it was probably made by the same people, but doesn't have nearly as many zippers.

Traceless has his own scuba equipment too - the wetsuit isn't particularly weird but it has the full face mask so he can have comms in there. Still, worth checking - "Any of you have ASL?"

She shakes her head for the pair of them.

<I'm a bit rusty, but fluent>, Kevin signs. 

Peeler shakes her head. "I know dungeon sign, but that's it." 

"I'm not expecting this one to be too rough on me but if it is I will be very chatty and talking just to talk so it's good to know who'll be able to chat most easily around the scuba," he explains to Peeler and Watershed while he pulls on his swimfins. "My gut says it won't be much inside, a couple critters that haven't left yet that only jump if you flinch, but of course a gut and a fretboard'll string a guitar, so they're playing it conservatively. I assume everyone heard that they want the monsters intact but if you skimmed that part the punctuation mark after it is pronounced 'several million dollars each'."

That's a lot of money, even by dungeon standards! She'll reassure them all she's not here to use her power. 

Kevin smiles. "Always happy to chat!" Maybe Traceless can tell him what Cricket's been watching lately. 

"I'm not very useful for catching monsters, but I'll point them out when I see them. My sensing range is quite good in water, and they stick out like a sore thumb."

"I'm not a combat esper but I'm hard to startle; I wouldn't mind lending a hand with captures, especially with the reward in mind."

"I have brought plenty of cages suitable for the size range expected. Anything else anybody wants to cover before we dive?"

Kevin glances at Peeler, who shakes her head. "We're good to go!" 

Mandragora concurs.

Then they can dive.

On the way they encounter an adorable little griffin-kitten. "Watershed, can you tell if that thing is breathing water or just holding its breath?"

She activates her power. How does the water flow?

It is breathing the water even though it is a griffin! How silly.

She indicates that it's the latter, then.

Traceless snags it without heading back up to the boat, then.

Down down into the shipwreck.

Camera onna stick underwater drone indicated that it's water on the other side too, and pretty dark. Watershed first.

In she goes. She's not bleeding this time, so her power spreads a little slower than it did when she was scouting for the portal, but that's fine. Menagerie is hopefully smaller than the bay.

It feels very small, actually. Still water with a desultory layer of aquarium gravel at the bottom and full of underwater pens. Can she feel the interface of the water with air above?

Yes.

There's one of those! The water has a surface.

She swims for it. If it turns out the light's too bad to see anything when she pokes her head out, she has a tiny flashlight for just such a contingency.

It's dim and spooky in here, but not actually lightless. Beyond the aquarium pens, which end infinity-pool style opposite the portal, there are rows and rows of cages. Big ones that would suit much larger creatures than Menagerie has ever fielded, littler ones for mouse-sized guys though still generously appointed with correct animal welfare proportions. Piled on top of each other, extending into the dark recesses of the dungeon, full of hamster wheels and chew toys and ratty blankets and water bottles and hay mangers and food dishes.

Every one of them is hanging open, hinges creaking as the occasional air current passes through the aisles of cages.

Well then. No obvious immediate danger means she should head back out the portal and beckon everybody in.

In they go!

"Wow, it must send them out as fast as it can make them."

"Some of these cages definitely seem too big for any Menagerie monster I've seen, but then, I guess there's no reason it would specifically have cages suited to its monsters..."

"...woah."

(He doesn't bother putting a shield up. There's nothing here.)

"Or it's suited to them because they want a lot of space relative to their size. Like platypuses."

"Do you suppose it makes a new cage for each one, then...?"

"...this'd be on the high end of estimates for how many monsters it might have generated this time but not completely crazy? I don't know." He's taking pictures.

"If I were Menagerie I'd keep empty cages for all my old monsters too, but if I were Menagerie I would also be doing several other things quite differently."

"What would you do if you were Menagerie?"

"'Not murder anyone' tops the list. Step zero of any reasonable plan, really."

(Mandragora chuckles fondly.)

Peeler looks around suspiciously. (Can she figure out which cages were more recently occupied?)

"Admittedly most dungeons don’t wind up killing people but that’s because of rescue teams. In principle this one is not attached to it since it doesn’t kidnap."

There is no obvious distinguishing characteristic.

(She shrugs and returns to Kevin's side.)

"Should we explore a bit? I'm not much good as a sensor without more water to map, but my eyes are still as good as the next esper's."

"If you folks want to maybe knock off early I can yell and see if I pick up any backlash and if I don't the place is deserted and I can solo it but I would like the company for the core hunt. I assume you'd've said if it was in the aquarium?"

"I didn't feel anything core-shaped and I didn't feel anywhere something core-shaped could reasonably be hiding," she confirms. "We don't mind sticking around, do we?"

"We do not."

He glances at Peeler, and then - "We're good to stick around, yeah."

Traceless takes point, stalking through the cage aisles and inspecting each for a hiding place sufficient to conceal a core. "I am going to throw a party if we kill this one. Separately and on top of the celebration of opening the petting zoo."

(Peeler will suggest that everyone to stay close to Kevin, just in case.)

"Hell yeah! Down here or up in Toronto?"

"I think it'd be a little tricky to source party swag here what with the quake and Carnapper throwing everything into a logistical tizzy."

"Oh! Yeah, probably." He strokes his chin thoughtfully. "But also... Maybe that means they need the party here more?"

"I see what you mean."

"I do not feel personally responsible for equipping San Diego with a party and I'd need to check in with my partner to overstay my plans but it's not like it's a bad idea."

"I think it could be fun to throw a big party at the hotel, invite the folks we've worked with from the DRT, any locals we collectively know who can make it to the hotel..."

Mandragora nods thoughtfully along.

"Yeah! I can help, I love parties." 

Peeler keeps her sigh internal.

"Maybe we can invite everybody who got themselves a pet monster. Would it be mean to talk up zoo security and how often nutjobs try to steal the furbearing snake? I'm not going to steal Raspberry the magic walrus from a little girl, but if someone else does the zoo only has an interest in retrieval if it's ours..."

"Oh, inviting people with pet monsters is a clever idea."

"Preparing people for the realities of their situation can be done unkindly, but is not itself mean, I don't think."

"I wish Menagerie'd hit somewhere closer so the lifetime membership'd be more of a draw. Plus it was a bad combo with the quake, it might have attacked half as many people in Chicago."

Nod nod. "Yes, that was a very bad coincidence, if it was one."

Peeler frowns. "We don't know if they'll survive the dungeon closure yet, right?" 

"You think dungeons can predict natural disasters? Analysis on that is subjective as hell and I'm not convinced they've accounted for emotional saliency bias. - I think they will, because they were fine for years in Vadodara et al. But it could be they all die when we kill this thing." That's a real big cage with a chinchilla sized pet bed. Picture goes flash and then another without to capture ambient lighting information.

Have they seen any pet beds sized for bigger critters? Watershed is keeping an eye out now that she's been prompted to be curious.

"I don't know if they can or not, it just seems premature to rule out the possibility."

Some beds are generous but none are absurd for creatures that weigh twenty pounds tops but may have long tails or other extremities. The bed size correlates only weakly with cage size, and only some enclosures have beds instead of bare bars or perches or wood shavings.

"I do want to see more research on it, but I'm unimpressed with the people currently on the topic."

Curious noise.

"The main name on disasters and dungeons publishing in English is - ugh, I forget her name, starts with an M - she coasts on these things that are like, this heap of citations show that dungeons can ever aim and time appearances for conditions on Earth at all, such as 'is it night right now', and also precogs exist, so in theory they could predict the weather, here is a case study on a hurricane and a single handpicked dungeon in Miami during it which maybe benefited in some speculative way from this event. It's, uh, really not how I'd do it."

-nod. (That does sound sloppy!)

"So how's Cricket doing these days? Haven't seen him in a while."

"He's doing good! There's a new guy he'll tolerate. I have begun to wonder if he systematically disprefers women but he thinks it's a coincidence and he's turned up his nose at a few shieldy dudes too."

"Ooooh, who's the new guy? You met him?" 

"Aumento. Buffer-healer all-rounder. We both had Arrakis involvement and also spoke on the phone while he was deployed with Cricket. Green but I think he'll grow into it, you know?"

...huh, she's heard that name but she's not sure where...

"Yeah, for sure! We have a pair of fresh faces in my part of the the Seattle scene right now, actually, Silver Bulwark and Foreshadow. They're pretty neat."

Watershed is wondering now whether she and Mandragora count as fresh faces from these people's perspective. Maybe? She isn't sure how to ask.

"I can't believe Foreshadow wasn't taken on Racehorse!"

"Oh, you're right, that is a pretty good name for a precog."

He shrugs. "Hourglass says precogs are pretty rare - maybe that's why?" 

"They are but it’s been decades."

"Maybe this one is the first precog in a while who's interested in literary analysis."

"Oh yeah, it might have recently opened up? I should ask her on the flight back..." 

"The system for releasing old names is jank."

"Is it? I've never looked into how it works."

"Mostly it doesn’t! You can do names that would be too close to be allowed with permission from an esper or a dead one's estate, which lets you do successors like Pendragon II. So maybe there was a Forewarn or something and Racehorse was conservative about it and then unlocked it for her. They need to get a broader procedure in place soon though."

"Honestly the whole thing seemed too fiddly! I like how I did it." He grins.

This gets him an eyeroll from Peeler, though it's a fond one.

"It works for you! It would not work for people with less namely powers. Nobody would buy that my surname is Invisible."

Watershed giggles softly. "I'm trying to picture the codename I end up with in a world where all codenames must be structured Firstname Power... I don't think it would be very good."

"Speak for yourself. I'd just end up as Somebody Gardener, which is perfectly serviceable."

"Waters is a surname."

"Oh, that's true! Though by analogy to Shields it would imply a very different power than the one I have."

"I guess it can't work for everyone." He shrugs. "I wouldn't mind the thing they do over in the East, but maybe it needs guilds to work right?" 

"I think that's not related, they just think codenames are silly. It's not like we mandate their use."

Kevin laughs. "That's fair." it is kind of silly, when you think about it! 

After more chat and the thorough search of cages they ultimately find a basketball-sized sphere, covered in dappled fawn fur and rainbow feathers.

Traceless takes a picture. "Dungeons are weird."

"Dungeons are very weird. Is it really as undefended as all that? I guess that's convenient for our purposes."

"Maybe it only has a boss monster if we flinch?" Seems like a bad strategy to Kevin, but hey, he's not a dungeon.

"It won't have noticed me, so I should hold this and maybe you guys should skedaddle in case it's going to rustle up a boss monster and is just taking a minute? It could be doing pure security through obscurity though."

Hmm. Watershed glances toward the exit.

Peeler frowns. "Disadvantage of splitting up is that Kevin can only protect one group... They can't perceive you, but that might not matter for something very big, right?"

"I think that is probably a low percentage risk, but if it decides this is the time to bust out a mammoth bigger than these aisles would accommodate I'd have trouble with that, yes."

(Kevin peers down the aisles, thinking about giant mammoths.)

"Do you get warning, when something is trying to perceive you? That might give you time to call for help or get out of the way..."

"Yeah, I get some backlash ping. I also get an eensy bit from touching a dungeon core and from being in some dungeons at all, but this one didn't ping me till I scooped the core."

Kevin shrugs. "I'm good with whatever! Just need everyone I'll be shielding near me." 

"I would like a few more pics and we haven't seen every cage yet if there's a monster spawning..."

"I don't mind everyone staying together if that's the best way to be sure you're protected in case of trouble."

Peeler looks more comfortable with that idea, yes.

"Sure, 'preciate it."

When they reach the end of the aisle (some of the cages are weird shapes, very deep so you can see the next aisle through the glass, or very tall and narrow, or this last one wide and flat like a pizza box, all puzzled together mesh to plastic like it’s a coincidence that they fit) a sheep comes around the corner, black in most of its wool and with white tufts, just barely tall enough to clear the height of Traceless's boots.

"Baaa," says the sheep.

Awww, it's cute!

...Kevin, who had gotten distracted looking at the oddly-shaped cages, startles a bit at the noise. "Huh?"

Traceless catches the sheep mid-leap in one of his collapsible travel cages; it smashes into the back of it and doesn't about-face before it's latched in.

The ceiling, though - metal panels at angles to one another - starts rumbling faintly.

"—time to go?"

Kevin's shield springs into existence all around them. "Shit. ...my bad."