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Isobel is actually one of the first to speak up. "Umm... I think we should start out by sharing what we've learned. LOTUS and I got a lot of investigating done, but I guess I'll share my stuff first 'cause LOTUS has more figured out than I do. But, uh, it looks like Vishkar isn't connected to the Rio utilities grid -- but I figured out where their water supply is if you think you can make use of it. See, there's this water tower that is made to look all rusty and old out there, but the fact that there isn't the plant life there should be near somewhere like that tipped me off that something wasn't right. Lucio confirmed that that's their water source. I also... um, look, this is hard to explain, but... I saw a helicopter bring something up to the tower, and then there was some sort of strobe light and that light, uh, it smelled purple...?" "Smelled purple to me too, which is really something when I can't even smell. There's something going on up there that isn't following any of the laws of physics and reality I know of, but I don't know what. Wouldn't be surprised if they were dabbling in magic. To get the less significant stuff out of the way first, there are a bunch of empty storefronts near the tower that are up for rent but haven't had any offers; we took a look at a couple and couldn't actually find anything suspicious. But I've got some bad news -- that tower is going to be a very very hard nut to crack. The building's format is, to say the least, variable, and they've got these things called sentry turrets which will shoot you with a weak little laser. Will hurt you a little, but the main problem is that they'll hit the whole facility with an alarm, which will make going quiet VERY difficult, especially since to avoid them we would have to move literally so fast that the program can't recognize us as actual intruders instead of glitches in the system."

Isobel happens to be taking a look around that area at the same time -- while LOTUS sits quietly in her pocket tabulating the data he had been gathering, Isobel goes and takes a walk around those storefronts that LOTUS had noticed earlier. She isn't really able to enter them or anything (she is no ninja, and it isn't as if she would have any excuse if she were caught inside), but she had had success walking around earlier, so she figures that maybe if she took a look around the area and looked closely she might notice something off.

Isobel pretty much just follows LOTUS' lead when it comes to doing their part in the pre-infiltration study -- in LOTUS' case, this means data crunching. Lots and lots of data crunching. The very first thing that LOTUS does is to bother Lucio into letting him analyze a building plan of the Vishkar building, and at that point LOTUS makes an attempt to infer things from the plan -- trying to figure out what would be likely features of the building based on the relative position of other features, etc. He also tries to hunt down street plans for the surrounding area on the internet, observing for any abnormalities.

"Uh, in case it matters, LOTUS and I have two weapons; one's just my hatchet, but the other is this stone arm-mounted thing that shoots a magic chain that will pierce through soft things and latch into hard things, which is I think a method of transport potentially. But we don't have any guns." She puts her hand over her mouth, a little embarrassed with that particular paucity. "We should primarily serve in a support role rather than being fighters, though. I can make allies' performance more effective and efficient and Isobel can help keep them up here and there."

"I'm going to ask something before we get all involved with how we're evidently going to attack from two directions, and that will be a useful question if we go with infiltration anyway: you CAN equip those of us without native radio capacity with radios, right? Splitting up without means of communication would be an exceptionally bad idea."

"Well, if that's the case, then I figure we should be able to defeat them fairly handily -- analyzing and exploiting weaknesses is something I actually have specific built-in functions for. Not that taking that for granted would be a good idea, since dropping awareness has a nasty habit of turning out veeery poorly. I'd be surprised if there wasn't at least one thing that pre-mission intel didn't properly encompass. Lucio, question, what kind of weaponry is in popu;ar use in this world? I'm guessing at least some level of ballistics, but are we talking gunpowder-propelled, phoron-fragment propelled, gauss, or something else. Hmm, have you even discovered Phoron yet? Lasers? Pulse rifles? I certainly hope you haven't discovered pulse rifles, they would present something of a problem. What are their battle, uh, Omnics like?" Isobel remained in thought for a moment. "You keep referring to your people, and now you've called them refugees. Who do we need to help? I want to hear more about them."

"Oh, my god, that's terrible." Isobel gasps out. "Ah. Oh, that's worse than I'd expected. Significantly worse. That is exceptionally bad news. It's a good thing that that isn't one of the threats we're facing here because as things are now I would not be confident in my ability to resist something like that, not while I'm disconnected from my Uplink. I'll... avoid being snippy on that topic. But that's the second time you've mentioned Sombra, and now that you've mentioned that this mysterious hacker, whose apparent presence means I may want to turn off my connectivity, is present in the city and connected to some incredibly dangerous organization it strikes me as a distinct possibility that said organization may in some way become relevant during the mission. Tell me about Talon. What kind of operatives do they field, what's their modus operandi?"

Isobel's eyebrows shoot upwards when Zarya suddenly starts reaching for her cannon. "W-wait, what? I'm afraid I don't understand." "I'll concur with that question. What's an omnic, your word for a synth? And I'm gonna go out on a limb despite not having any and guess that there's some level of organic-synth tension here? As for hard light... interesting. Where I come from there's been some level of technology based off of solid energy fields but it never got much more advanced than simple containment -- autolathe tech and a glut of material meant we just never needed it. As for my name, I'm LOTUS, the Logistical Operational and Tactical Uplink System. Tactical personal AI, so this sort of thing is my specialty." "Uh, and I'm Isobel Low." Isobel chimes in quietly, not having much more to add.

LOTUS and Isobel will leave for the Overwatch plot.

Isobel and LOTUS had followed along when Lexiel came around the castle, at Isobel's insistence. The botanist knew that she herself wasn't the biggest or most badass of the people gathered, but when she heard that thousands of lives were at stake she felt that she just had to help. Whatever was going on, maybe it was something that LOTUS could provide help with. When they get there, Isobel can't help but be a little intimidated by the concrete room -- concrete isn't a very common building material in space, after all, thanks to its brittleness and porousness, so it all contributed to everything looking rather military. Then when Zarya made her remark about greenhorns, Isobel couldn't help but wring her leather-gloved hands and look down, in large part because Zarya was right when it came to her and Isobel knew it (coincidentally, Zarya's accent doesn't sound particularly strange, for on the Exodus there are Russians and then there are Russians, a collection of people from a stretch of space formerly under tight Russian Federation hegemony, that tended to act in sometimes exaggerated and frequently belligerent ways). LOTUS, on the other hand, wasn't bothered at all by their surroundings, the prospect of combat being nearly routine for him, and having no particular need for creature comforts. His reaction to Zarya's insult was merely to put a flat eyebrow-line on his display, indicating his lack of amusement -- but nonetheless, he listened carefully and took in every bit of information that he heard, such after all being one of his primary functions. After briefly ruminating on the briefing he spoke up in his dry, electronic voice. "Couple of questions, yes. First of all, this architect we're rescuing, Symmetra, once we get them out do they have any skills that might be useful? I want to keep track of every asset we've got to maybe work with. Second of all, you said that the thirteenth floor doesn't have any methods of ingress on the building plans -- what elevators, stairs, etc are there that will have to at least cross the space of the 13th floor in order to get from the 12th to 14th floors? If they weren't too smart with their floor design, perhaps we could make our own entry. Thirdly, I'd like to see the building plans myself, since I can store that data and use it. Oh, and if you don't have AI in this world, then congratulations science fiction is real."

That was enough to startle Isobel out of her reverie, causing her to suddenly look up at the icy knight with confusion clear in her eyes. "A-a husk?! What? No, it's nothing like that!" "Ha, I didn't actually stop to consider if you would comprehend me. I suppose that my world's just so normal to me it didn't strike me that I'd be that strange of a concept. Alright, so the basic thing here is that I'm not a spirit -- there wasn't any magic involved in my creation, I'm not from any of those organizations which dabble into the stuff. Instead, as an Artificial Intelligence, I am something of a marvel of technology. Scientists -- do you have those yet in Graterras? Scientists are people who explore the mundane workings of the world in detail and figure out how to create complex devices using them. I am one of those devices and an exceptionally complex one, as scientists where I am from have figured out how to create devices that can think, and sometimes think quite well."

"Kyle, maybe I'd stop constantly ranting at you if you didn't seem to make it your life's mission to give me reasons to rant." LOTUS shot back. "Anyway, I'm an AI, though that should have been fairly obvious. Hadn't they already thought of AI in concept by your time? ...When even are you from, what are we talking, 20th century, 21st, 22nd? Almost everyone besides Alexandria are behind the times compared to Isobel and I, I've got to say it's a bit odd. Anyway, Divine Knight you said you were, do you require any maintenance or things like that, or can you function indefinitely without additional input or energy sources? What are you capable of, combat-wise? You've piqued my interest -- tactically, you could be quite unique." Isobel, meanwhile, stuck her hands in her jumpsuit pockets and stayed silent, looking down.

As Isobel followed Kyle out, LOTUS took the opportunity to get in his own licks. "Are you already trying to pick a literal fight? For fuck's sake, can you just cut this out for, what, an hour?"

"Well, alright. But... that wasn't quite what I meant. I... that sounds terrible, okay, but I want to know what this stuff does and what it does to you."

"Wh--" "LOTUS, stop. Just stop for now. Kyle... what was in that syringe? What is it that's in your veins now, and what do you mean by "keep it down"? I really don't like the sound of this."

"What do you mean it gets out? Have you injected something moving into your veins? Don't bullshit me. Don't give me excuses, tell me exactly what that is in your veins. This had better not be something dangerous. I'm beginning to get wary that you'll end up harming, or killing, one of your teammates. I've seen it happen before, I have seen on MORE than one occasion lack of judgement get people killed, and not just the ones being stupid, and in my eyes you've rapidly been reaching the point of those people I've seen who have caused that to happen. This was funny at first but I'm beginning to lose my patience." "LOTUS! Alright, Kyle, look... I've been getting concerned, myself, but not for that, but because I really really don't like to see people suffer. And it looks to me like you're suffering, and now it looks like this definitely isn't helping. You can't keep this up, Kyle..."

"You're... talking about the same wife that shot you in the back? You... this seems sketchy to me, it seems very sketchy... I don't like intruding like this, Kyle, but the fact that you did this in secret means that you know something's up with it, too. What's going on?" "I very, very much hope this isn't something that would dull your judgements." And there isn't a hint of a joke in LOTUS' voice at that.

Pretty much unfazed by Kyle's shirtlessness, Isobel glances around -- and notices what would appear to be a bloody syringe on the ground. A frown appears on her face, and with surprising deftness she's suddenly slipped past his side, and is behind him, crouching down to pick up the bloodied syringe with a gloved hand and observe it closely, holding it up to look at. Not only is Isobel a botanist --and a talented one--, but she has also had quite a few druggie coworkers, so if the syringe is in fact drugs and not something specific to Kyle's world, it's likely that she may be able to recognize it. Isobel's silent as she frowningly examines it, but LOTUS is less so. "And what exactly is this, Kyle?"

Isobel sucks in a breath as she hears a painful grunt from the other room. "I... am actually going to go do that anyway. I don't like the sound of that..." Isobel makes her way over to the room Kyle has holed himself up in and knocks on the door with three hesitant raps.

"I'm fairly sure that the only person that has actually whoever that is inside the room is the one that went and screamed like a little girl over it." Isobel tore her attention away from the scantily-clad fairy. "...he means Kyle. Should I go ask him...?"

Isobel keeps staring directly at Empi, stunned into silence, while LOTUS chuckles with a crackle. "As far as I can tell, there aren't actually all that many things at all on the world we're leaving; but where I come from fairies don't actually exist."

Isobel followed Izumi and Mitsurugi down to the suites at LOTUS' urging, boggling as Kyle let out a scream. Hesitantly, after his answer and Mitsurugi's following retort, Isobel chimed in with a timid "Um.. are you alright, then, Kyle--" Her attention is then very rapidly snatched by Empi floating past, Isobel watching the scantily-clad fey and gaping, her head tracking her as she went by. LOTUS, however, paid little attention to those particular goings-on and instead chose to directly address the recently-summoned deity. "Do you have any questions of your own that I need answer, Saigai?"

"If you need any clarifications on what you just heard by the way, I should be able to provide it, Saigai. It's something of a specialty of mine, summarizing information -- one of the things a tactical AI naturally has to be good at, after all." "If you need help with anything, I don't know maybe one of us can provide it...? There's a lot of people out here and they all have different talents, so I figure there's probably always someone who can help with any given problem."

"And we're talking a lot of others. Isobel, bring me closer." "Ah, uh, right." The bandanna'd woman walked up closer to the scene of the summoning. "From what I counted there are 39 of us in total, with an absolutely flooringly wide variety of skills. One thing that our, as she puts it, contact informed us of was that not all the worlds are dying at the same time; he refused to send us to any of the more severe ones, as evidently we don't meet the standards of a man who has visibly had the shit stabbed out of him, I counted at least ten weapons stuck in his body, but we *are* here to help stop the apocalypse -- we're simply being sent to some of the ones less assailed, as it sounds. I am LOTUS, and the woman carrying me is Isobel Low. That's about all the information I have to offer right now. Oh, and that evidently this castle is a spaceship."

Isobel looked ruefully between the black-clad man with the swords to the book-loving mage, slowly sweeping her head from one to the other, before looking at the items the mage had given to her. She slipped the coin into her apron pocket (drawing a quiet buzz of consternation from LOTUS as his pocket got a little crowded), and looked briefly at the book she had been given before letting out a long, quiet sigh. "I'm Isobel Low. And, it's... nice to meet you Leon, thanks for making the effort to reassure me. But that's not the problem. I can adjust to danger, If I wasn't able to do that then I would have died five times by now. The problem is that--" And that's when a ritual went wrong, the barracks shook, and lying on the ground (apparently a god??) was some woman with ribbons in her hair. Isobel just gaped, her problems temporarily forgotten whereas LOTUS commented with his usual acerbic tone. "So we're summoning gods now, is that a thing? Honestly, this place just keeps throwing more and more oddness at me. At least she isn't Nar'Sie."