Wilhelm nods and begins doing so."I see...keep looking, we have no idea how far on the trail she is to realizing-"
Suddenly, he stopped when he discovered the material. The photo, torn to pieces. They were only married days ago, which means...
His hand brushed aside a neglected pile of papers, tabled numbers holding a record of some years-forgotten brilliance. Two scientists of like mind...and habits. Perhaps the photograph was something Jinzi had left laying around, discovered in as much a change encounter as this. After all, his brilliance and boundless curiosity had a habit of neglected little things from moment to moment; how the little things draw together and accumulate over time, until they could no longer escape notice. What else have you pulled from Pantaloon? Soon, Ochazuke found the subterfugre were not quite as onesided as it appeared.
"Cybernetic augmentation," he though aloud. The red line and stamp gleaned many a folio set aside: 'REJECTED'. "Without funding, she had no test subjects that would comply, save one."
But this he star map and its dotted initials. "...the Big Ghetti Star." A piece of it lay upon the Guardian Evangeline. "How did she access something like this so far out of the way?"
However what he found next, the crimson axe of the Red Raiders. Were these not the base coordinates Pantaloon had set Held and the others on but two years ago? Willa Rautt had plotted a revolution, and as Battersea's Bastard, she had access to the Champions purse. Materiel and logistics for war.
"If she couldn't secure funding from the government, and if Pantaloon wouldn't listen to her, it seems like she found someone else who would." Four years, perhaps even longer now. He braced himself on the edge of the desk. He palmed the coordinates of the star map "We'll need to take this down," he said to Wilhelm, "it seems the pieces have been in motion long before either of us had got here."