"Well I have not been able to find tech, but several hours ago there was a covenant attack against a Class IV. It was taken out by two unknown females wielding covenant like powers. They took down the Class IV without a problem where we struggle against one. I was lucky to get research data from the battle. I wish I could make something but the Director puts a kibosh on any idea for the military which frustrates me to no end" said Ashley and frowns on the fact that it would not open that easy. He then moves over for Taika to work on the case and hoped that none of the tool marks would show up on it. And when Taika mentioned that they should have invested in better stuff, this encouraged him to do some better action to help the JDF.

"Agreed we should but there is something else going on here. Anyway be careful, if they find tool marks we are screwed" said Ashley as he that they were doing a massive gamble on this thing. Although if it was something that they could take a small sample from then no one would be the wiser at the moment. "Also later on I recovered a piece of the Class IV covenant so if you want to take a look at it. I'll bring you to it later" he said knowing that would get her intrest.

Taika gives Ashley a look as he mentions tool marks. “Tool marks? I am not a novice. Hell, not even novices normally fuck up that bad…” She pulls the case towards here, and begins to work the locks. “Only 3 pins… they are really cutting corners.”

“So you saw a Class IV Covenant and are still standing. Most people couldn’t tell a story like that. I am curious about the girls though… I thought Covenant didn’t attack their own. They seemed like such a coordinate force. I wonder if some members regained their minds… or whether they are some rogue experiment.” Taika says as she is working.

The lock clicks open without much issue. She keeps it the lid of the case closed as she looks at Ashley. “You can be charged with some pretty high crimes for something like this… I have no issue with this, but maybe you would like to reconsider?”

When the case inevitably gets opened, the pair of scientists would find six hazardous material bags containing small amounts of thin crystal. The crystal seemed to be white, but shimmered in the light faintly. Looking at the crystal alone would cause an eerie sense of ease and potentially hypnosis is stared at for too long.

"I already opened Pandora's box. I am not going to run away from this" said Ashley as he then watches Taika open the container. And as he looks in, the science officer sees the bio hazord bags and was about to touch them. But stops as he watches the light coming off of it and was taken in by the colors and then shakes out of it. He knew that he could not take a sample out or take too much more time on it. This got him very frustrated as he did not have the time to tamper with the bag. Since they would know if it was messed up and check for fingerprints could be explained on the box but not on the bags.

"Taika what do you make of this, also how much time would you estimate we would have to get to the director's office" he said trying to run the numbers himself. He did not know how delicate the ghosts were when being worked on in some manner. Right now Ashley wished he had infinite time to study the shards. But again this was classified stuff and wanted to be very very careful on handling the bags right now.

Taika takes a look at the biohazard bags. She is grinning like a maniac when Ashley asks how much time they have. That could be a problem. “First, Pandora had a jar, not a box. Second, the Director said he was going to fix one of the toaster’s biostabilizer. Give him maybe 45 min for minor repairs and some test runs. But we should keep it to 30 min if we can.”

“We can try to shave off a tiny amount, and with how little there appears to be, I wouldn’t say we should take any more than a few grams or so. That way they won’t notice a difference. However, it means we are a little limited in what sorts of things we can do. But that would be safest route.” She obviously starts to look a little deflated. A few grams would be difficult to work with. It would require using the smallest concentrations and absolutely no fuckups. And there was the possibility she ran out before even discovering anything.

“Ordinarily, one would get into hazmat before you handle anything like this. But the prep for that would take some time, which we don’t have much of. So do you have any heavy gloves and ethanol in here?”

While Ashley may have the gloves, he wouldn't have the ethanol on hand. Engineering types don't really use it after all!

"Semantics, that's what was known to me on Pandora. I don't have any of the ethanol but I do have the gloves" said Ashley as he goes and gets them and comes back to Taika. He also thought of the time she guessed and figured that there safe time would be 20 minutes just in case something happened. "Lets take what we can then, and wait before we can do any research on it. Or until its safe to do so" he said and was curious on the ethanol. Although did not argue with the woman in general on what they were doing "Forgive my ignorance but why is the ethanol needed" he asked and was already clicking off the seconds in his head and hoped that they could get what they needed and return the container to the Director without any questions.

"None the less I want to find out if it emits some sort of energy. I want to make something that can scan for magical energies for the soldiers out there. But Director Pinky Pie here hates all other ideas besides his own. It makes we wonder why I was even brought to this unit in the first place. Do you have the same kind of frustartions that I have Taika" he sighed and asked her the question.

Taika huffs as he mentions semantics, “But I had that idiom. So misleading…”

“The ethanol? Well… that will keep things clean. It’s mostly for our benefit. But we’ll be fine without it. Maybe. Ummm…Here’s hoping we don’t wake up dead tomorrow from handling this stuff?” Taika jokes as she puts on the gloves. “Actually, maybe you have acetone around here? It’s a good solvent, you maybe use it for cleaning? Sort of a heavy duty degreaser…”

Without asking, she takes the first paper she can find. She grabs one of the biohazard bags and carefully pours a few of the crystals onto the paper. “We probably need a better container for these as well. But they definitely have an interesting glow to them.”

She is half paying attention to what Ashley’s saying. It seems somewhat heartfelt, but the crystals interested her more. “Pinkie Pie… Hmmm… they call him Flamingo on the 4th floor. But yeah, I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t have similar feelings around here. He doesn’t do much to earn good cheer and rejects a ton of projects on top of that.” She looks at the other bags for a second, and emulates a similar knot in the bag she just opened. “Wait? Did you just say magic?”

The extraction process seemed to go without a hitch, and the replaced bag looks passable at a casual glance. Whatever the pair do with the shards now is entirely up to them.

Ashley nods and gets what Taika needed for cleaning and then thinks over at least he was not the only one that was having problems. He also got some containers for the crystal pieces as well to make sure that they would be safe. None the less they had something to work with now and it would be a major risk. But the earth and all living beings on the planet had a death sentence over there heads because if the planet stopped spinning it would be over. When the mentioning of the word of magic made Taika perk up he nodded his head. "Yeah I got footage from a attack I was in earlier. Do you want to see it" he said since it seemed that Taika did not get out in the field.

"There seems like some kind hypnotic effect on those things" he said as he did see his partner look at them a bit more then a focused look. It could have been his imangenation though.

“I tend not to use the word magic since it makes the frontline people superstitious. Also, it makes it sound like there isn’t a biological or technological basis for their powers. I think that some of the things may be reproducible. But if you got video of the Class IV and the girls using their powers, yeah, I’d like to see it,” Taika says finally tearing her eyes off the crystals. “After that, we should probably put the case back though…”

When Ash mentions the crystals having a hypnotic effect, she takes a good look back at them. Besides being relatively interesting, there was something else to them that she found engrossing. “Some of the samples do that. There are a few protocols for that. You are supposed to take five minute breaks from working with them every hour or so. Do some other experiment. Stare at a wall. Get some coffee. Whatever really. And there is a maximum amount of time you can spend with them in a given week. I think no more than 10 hours exposure. Admittedly though, those precautions are somewhat arbitrary. Some people have shown… disturbances for less exposure while some never suffer ill effects.”

"I agree with you there, I have therorized that magic is some sort of energy that has some sort of raidiation effect. It could explain the mutations of those that have become a Class II to Class IV Covenant. I am not sure if anyone in your department has made a conclusion or a theory on that matter" Ashley said and brought up the footage he got from the battle. The quality was extremely good and there were no edits done to the raw footage. "I do a bit of field work so I can see how some of these covenant people work. Now with those girls there unknowns" he said pointing to the two sailor senshi that were there.

"Good protocols at least but that is fascinating that some are effected more then others, to the expoture of some of those crystals....I will keep that in mind when working on them" he said and was making sure in his head there would be enough time to get the container back to the director. For the most part there was and not to worry so much at all.

Taika makes a face, “You like the gene mutation theory?” Frankly, she thought the authors of that particular paper with no imagination. “Yeah, radiation mutations are the generally accepted by large portions here. However, not that a single piece has been proven. It just has big names attached to it. Though, a process like that would be messy. I mean, it requires very specific genotypes. And you probably tons of mistakes from a process like that as well as probably a lot of cell death. And getting a full body change… well, that seems damn near impossible. I can’t think of way to make that process really go,” she speaks while watching the video. She had her own theories on the matter. A process that would be far more elegant and work far better… However, there was no precedent for it, and previous models for it hadn’t yielded much success, which led to the whole idea getting abandoned.

"Whether they have magic from some kind of radiation effect or not, I don't think that's how they are made. I can't speak to their abilities though. I would be interested in hearing your explanation though. If the Covenant was letting loose tons of ionizing radiation, it might explain some of the massive die-offs around the Obelisks."

Taika shrugs at his mention of the difference. “Susceptibility probably depends on many factors. Genotype being the obvious one and more talked about. But probably things like mood or suggestibility factor in as well, I imagine.”

“Those girls though. I’m not even sure what to make of that. They just took down the Class IV and left? Makes me wonder if we have anymore sightings of them or similar people around Tokyo. Did they say anything?”

"It seemed to be the best theory to me, I remember watching a documentary awhile back about it. It was somewhere out in the south pacific ocean. Where some of the nuclear testing went off and some of the aquatic creatures were changed by the raidiation. So I figured that theory would be a plausible explanation" said Ashley as he then heard Taika go into a more detail and some technical stuff with biology. It was taking him a bit to understand the terms as he did have some knowlage on biology. But he himself knew that there was some grain of truth to things on anything. Then he heard her ask something "Its possible since all kinds of odd things happen near those blasted obelisks. I am shocked that no one has been able to get a chunk from those things " Ashley said and heard her asking if there would be more of them poping up in the future.

"More then likely I would guess there would be at least 10 in total since the silver haired one refered to herself as Sailor Moon and the red head Jupiter. If there naming themselves after the planets and our moon. They also said that they are not the enemy.......I believe them they had clarity then a Covenant freak. Although on the other hand, what if they got out of control we could not stop them. I am conflicted as a person, scientist, and a soldier on what there intentions are. None the less I will be back, I am going to run this back to the director" said Ashley said as he made sure everything was in and closed it. Making sure it would not open out on the way to the director's office. Since he also wanted to speak to Taika on what the first test should be on the shards.

Ashley was curious on what the crystals were made out of since if they were able to find out what the crystals were made out of. They could duplicate the crystals for more study. Plus he needed to work on that personal project at home, since it had been awhile since he fiddled with that device.

“Such a strange team. I’m not sure about the assessment of only 10. I mean, there could be one for each planet’s moons. Maybe there is some kind of Sailor Sun that runs the whole operation. Time will tell though. And I can’t say I trust an organization that recruits adolescents. I’d be surprised if they weren’t brainwashed a little. As for their allegiances… The Covenant doesn’t make a habit of attacking their own to my knowledge. And I don’t think they hold polite conversations with JDSF. Perhaps, they were created by a private contractor. It isn’t like we don’t shell out tons of money for that kind of work. However, I didn’t think R&D had gotten that far,” Taika says as she replays parts of video again.

She nods as Ash leaves to return the case to the Director. Crystals… They were perhaps an easier mystery than the nature of the Sailor Celestial Bodies. There were NMR, Mass Spec, and IR machines. They could get a pretty good idea about chemical structure. She waits for him to return to ask, "So want to take a visit to the NMR, Mass spec, and IR machines? We're bound to get some kind of interesting result. And least find out if this an organic compound or not..."