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Our small thread of fate attached to Galileo's telescope lead deeper and deeper into the Holy See until finally we could go no further via simply walking or sneaking. We eyeballed a guard before an extremely heavy door and Gail cross-referenced it with a spot on the map. She declared this to be the door leading to the more sacred or sensitive archives. And, we would have to get through it to make further progress in our quest.

Gail peered at the door for a minute and then said she'd seen this type of door before. We would either need to call someone inside to let us in, or we'd need to extract some sort of key fob from the guard plus a personal password out of the guy's brain. Or, we could simply have Niko smash it, but it would probably not be in our best interest to get into a fight before we have the info we need… in the middle of the Vatican.

I glanced at the guard one more time and told everyone to go loiter like they belonged here and I would take care of this, no problem.

I walked out from around the wall hesitantly, appearing unsure of myself, and as soon as I saw the guard, I my face lit up and I hurried over to him. I asked him in Italian if he knew where the office of Bishop Marco De Marc Antonio was. He radioed some guy named Luigi, who told the guy before me, apparently Mario, that the bishop's office was on the second floor, down the hall. I studied the way he talked over the radio, the sound of his voice. Unfortunately, he basically shooed me off at that point.

So I went off down the hallway and then came back around from the other side after a few minutes in tears because “I can't find it…!” He radio'd Luigi again, who came downstairs and the two of them helped me off toward the Bishop's office. As we neared his office, I feigned tripping and, bumped into Luigi, filching his radio. I thanked the two profusely as they left me at the door to the Bishop's office, then snuck over into an alcove and radioed inside the Archives, telling them this was Mario, and that some people were here with credentials, and that they should open the door to admit them.

They complied, and now everyone was inside but me. I needed to think of a way to Mario away from the door one more time. A moment later I smiled. I headed back downstairs near the opposite end of the hallway from Mario and raised my voice in the tembre of Luigi. I yelled down the hallway, but not too loud, “Hey Mario, I cannot find my radio, could you do a once over down here while I look upstairs?”

I heard an exasperated sigh and finally, “Sure, my friend, I can take a look.”

A moment later I heard footsteps heading my way slowly. I moved behind a planter and called inside the archives again really quickly and asked them, as Luigi, to open the door again, that there was a straggler from the previous group who'd taken too long at the Vatican starbucks. As soon as they gave me an affirmative, I hid the radio next to a planter (not too hidden – so that if you weren't looking for it you wouldn't see it, but if you were looking for it, you'd find it), and snuck across the hallway and then ran around back to the archive door which was had just unlocked.

I strode inside casually, the door shutting behind me, and met the others on the otherside of the second airlock door.

And, of course, the dude at the desk asked for our papers. I smiled, waved my hand, and told him, with a curious expression on my face, “But you just look at them…”

The guy stared at me, rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed, “long day,” he said, and waved us through. We headed out into the main body of shelves and I commented that it looked as though what we were after was down one floor. With that, Jack disappeared. Gail was already disappearing amongst the shelves, so I hurried after her and convinced her to look through some papal edicts and such in order to construct us some replicas of actual official papers that should hopefully get us into any level of this place we needed to go.

It took a few minutes, during which time I notice Niko uncomfortably side-stepping people and trying not to knock bookshelves over.

Wit the papers finished, we nabbed Niko and headed off down the hallway where the elevator sign pointed. Jack stood there casually, and we hopped onto the elevator. This elevator had a dude manning it, and he asked for papers, which I presented, and we stood with authority, and the guy was completely overcome. As he leaned over to press the 2 button for us, I noticed the elevator numbers went from 1 to 10. My curiosity was piqued, but for now, the task at hand.

The door opened and we headed into a darkish area lit only by the glowing angelic beings patrolling it. Jack scouted ahead while I told him the direction Galileo's thread ran, and we managed to circumvent the angelic patrols and arrive at Galileo's repository of junk. Gail popped the lock and we all breezed inside and began our search. We found a lot of useful information, but discovered that while Urania had been here once, she was no longer here.

Pope Urban the VIII had ordered her captured by Vatican Warlock Assassins. Apparently they retrieved the spear of destiny from level 7 of the archives to do it. After they had captured her, they put her in some kind of holding cell on level 10 of the archives. This was in 1639. Ohh, so THAT's what they had on level 10. INTERESTING. But, there was a note scribbled in modern-ish ink that said “see addendum 51A”.

At this point one of the glowy angels headed this way, and everyone hid. Well, except I sneezed, catching his attention. So I stepped outside the room, telling him that the dust was causing my sinuses to go crazy while I was searching through all this old stuff for some research. He seemed mildly suspicious, but I talked to him for a few minutes, playing it off as innocent-I'm-totally-supposed-to-be-here. He seemed nice enough, for an angel type. Anyway, I totally had him going, so much so, that after he left to resume patrol, he stopped by a second time a few minutes later to ask me how it was going. Everyone scrambled to hide again, and I chatted amicably with him for a few more minutes before he left again. Thank goodness he didn't bother us again!

Anyway, after resuming our search, we finally found addendum 51A, which said that the Vatican had transferred her to Benito Mussolini in 1929 as part of the Lateran Pacts. Which meant she was no longer here in the Vatican. Which in a way was good, because breaking her out of here would probably be nearly impossible. We searched a little more, to see if we could find any more papers or whatnot that was newer than WWII-era for possible updates like “she was returned to vatican holding” or “she was transferred from Mussolini's compound to X”, but there didn't seem to be any newer notes. All we had to go on was that she was last known to be in Mussolini's custody.

Gail then whipped out her smartphone and began muttering to herself as she typed furiously. A few minutes later she declared we needed to go to Penismouth, Germany (Peenemunde), that the Germans had built a low-orbit missile during WWII, and that this place was where it had been manufactured. Oh yeah, and that she was pretty sure Mussolini had transferred Urania to the Germans when the Axis Powers was formed, which was why they had her to inspire the creation of such a ridiculous rocket in the first place.

We headed out, avoiding the angel things, and hopped back on the elevator. Jack argued with the elevator conductor to get him to go down to 10, but it turns out he physically could not. His elevator key would only allow him to go between 1 and 7. That the pope himself had to escort people to level 10. So instead we went to level 7. When the door opened, I was nearly blinded by the amount of supernatural force emanating from the room. High-level Artifacts covered the walls, and an angelic being of way higher Legend than us sat in the middle of the room.

Gail and Jack stepped out to explore (after convincing some mook we were allowed to be here), while Niko and I stayed wide-eyed in the elevator.

They puttered for only a few minutes and then returned to the elevator. We headed up and out, with great relief. We called BOOBS from the outside and had him pick us up in his magical schoolbus boat, and take us to Penismouth, Germany, via the Peene river. BOOBS was in a much better mood this time, and we debriefed with him while we traveled. I like BOOBS, he is quite the character.

He dropped us off in Penismouth at about 5am, and so we headed straight for the WWII museum and broke in and looked at stuff. They kept telling me not to turn the lights on, I don't know why. So when Jack and Gail headed down to the basement to look at their old, dusty records from WWII, I flipped the lights on and started taking arm-out pictures of myself sitting on WWII rockets. But then I got bored of that, and they were taking forever, so I started rearranging things in the museum to blow the minds of the employees when they showed up in the morning.

FINALLY they emerged from the basement, and declared… well, she could be in Russia (operation osoaviakhim) or the USA (operation paperclip). Anywhere in one of those two places. Possibly Britain (operation backfire), but very unlikely. After debating for about a half an hour, we decided that while the Russians did have a leg up on the USA in regards to space “firsts”, the USA had an overall more successful space program. So, USA it is. But the USA is big…. so where?

Cape Canaveral? Kennedy Space Center? Houston?

Well, since Mission Control was in Houston, we figured that was a good place to start. Fort Bliss it was.

So we got BOOBS back on the phone, and he picked us up and then dropped us off in the the Rio Grande near El Paso, Texas. We thanked him and hopped off again, and made our way to a coffee shop to kill some time while Gail called up her gubment buddies in order to get us access to the Fort Bliss.

Finally, she hung up the phone and said we would have a personally guided tour the next morning at the base, and that our names were already on the list so we'd have no trouble getting in. We acquired a Hummer in the meantime, and then the next day, we headed off toward Fort Bliss just outside of town.

The guy we met was some military guy Gail or her people knew, but I didn't pay much attention to him. I had turned on my ability to see the supernatural and the place was just HUMMING with power. There was no doubt in my mind that someone was here of Urania's power level, and given the evidence, it was most probably her.

While Gail was chatting with the Colonel, keeping him busy, I gave Jack a few vectors toward the source of the power as best I could. He with my input he seemed confident that he was able to triangulate the location of the source of power, and thus, slipped away from the group. Typical Jack.

We puttered around with the Colonel some more and then eventually parted ways and headed back to our Hummer. Jack called us up a few minutes later saying he'd located a small bunker that he believed to be where she was being held. He sent us GPS coordinates while he told us this, and we said we'd head on up there. He told us he was going off-com for a while to do some reconnaissance and clear a path for us. We told him ok, and headed out.

It took us a little while to drive out there, over the dirt road (that was obviously well-worn) and out into the desert. We finally approached a building, and noticed a tower on top of the small bunker with what looked like dudes in it. A buzzing drone flew nearby, and Niko jumped up out of the Hummer to axe it a question. Actually, he just ripped it in half with his hands. Meanwhile, we'd sent Gail's ghost up to inspect the bunker and he returned and declared that he could not go inside without materializing. Hm, so there was no sending him in to open the door. Furthermore, he also noted that the three guys in the tower had machine guns with ammo that seemed to resonate with Legend. Uh oh. Well, we'd deal.

Also, where was Jack? We'd tried his cell a few times, but nada. Normally he would've appeared by now to give us recommendation about how/where to proceed. Could it be possible he was caught? More likely, we surmised, he was already somehow inside. Although normally he waited for us just beyond where the action was likely to begin. Well, hmm. Nowhere to go but forward.

After a bit of discussion, we sent the ghost out to scare the ever-loving shiat out of the guys in the tower, while we drove straight for the front door.

Ghost boy made an illusion that was both visual and auditory. Gail'd had him make A LOT of sound to cover the sound of our engine as we drove up. Once the show got going, Gail roared the engine and sent us at full speed toward the front door of the bunker. I got my catboy brigade out as we drove forward, and readied my spear. Meanwhile, Niko climbed outside of the Hummer and crouched on the hood. As we got close, he leapt from the jeep, axe over head, and slammed his axe down on the door, causing a deep gash in it. Meanwhile, Gail spun the wheel of the Hummer and slammed on the brakes, sliding the Hummer to a sudden halt right up next to the building, exactly where she'd wanted it to be.

As we all piled out, Niko took another two blindingly fast, hard swings with his axe, carving the two-foot-thick-steel nuclear-blast-shielding-door into two pieces, the heavy chunks of metal crashing to the ground on either side of the doorway. As I walked up, I noticed a guy inside behind the desk all wide-eyed and panicked. A moment later, he passed out on the floor behind the desk.

“Great!” I said, clapping my hands once and smiling. I strode inside and drug his unconscious body outside and flopped it onto the ground unceremoniously. “Here you go, ghostie!” Gail nodded, and with that, her ghost boy possessed the unconscious doof, wearing him like a t-shirt. And we all strode inside: three Scions, five catboys, and one doof-wearing-ghost ready for action!