[ChicletPrime]

NEXT!

Chapter 5 - Long Lost Treasures

• Before reading... Zayne?
  
• Huh. Okay, we got us a kidnapping/potential murder victim. Codename "Raincoat" has a film director named Tony in the truck of his car. He normally doesn't target public figures but EVER made it worth his while it sounds like.
  
• So he hacks Tony's phone looking for recordings, which apparently implicate Tony for "knowing too much" which means he's even higher on Ever's target list than before. He's supposed to delete the files, toss the phone and then get rid of Tony but he opts instead to play the voice recordings he's found (is he thinking he's got blackmail material then?)
  
• Mention of Thomas. Tony was preparing a fantasy film using Lemuria as the setting. Ah, so this is Rafayel-centric.  He's recording.. ah, he's talking to Rafayel (hi, boyfriend!) who was apparently fingered by (nice) the Deepspace Acadey as a Lemurian expert or something, which Rafayel completely denies. He's "just a painter". uh huh.
  
• Rayafel denies his ocean paintings are anything special and tells Tony to go back to the Academy if he's all fired up about Lemuria, as they have an archeological team searching for the ruins.
  
• Now it sounds like Tony is interviewing the archeo team. This handyman guy stayed on the ship and sorted the relics and didn't go diving himself. The actual dive team was Eleanor (team lead), Fred, Yennifer and Prof. Sean.
  
• sidenote: Yennifer? did she wiggle out from under Geralt's leash again?
  
• So the team sets up an underwater base of sorts with communication to the ship above. They went down in the submersible on the 20th and were supposed to come back up on the 4th, but didn't actually come back until the 11th, a week later than schedule. The handyman was never given an explanation as to why, but says that he heard that Eleanor and Fred (both senior members) left the Deepspace Academy the very next day after 'an argument'
  
• Oh, then Yennifer disappears a few days after that. There was a deleted video clip on her camera which is a no no for site research. Handyguy can't reach her and Prof Sean won't talk either, hanging up on him.
  
• Now Tony is making his own audio notes - he just wanted research for a film, but he puts together that Eleanor, Fred and Yennifer haven't just left the Academy, they've vanished. Now he's thinking of pivoting his film into a mystery movie, yadda yadda and that he has to get to Prof Sean before he too goes missing.
  
• Aaaand he gets to Sean's house and.. Sean is packing up to leave! And says he's no longer with the Deepspace Academy either.
  
• What the hell did they find or film down there in the ruins?
  
• So Sean is willing to talk about what he saw, as if its for a movie it can just be treated as a story (and I guess he doesn't get laughed at during Academy conferences as the kooky one).
  
• So on the 20th (the start of the dive) they encountered a whirlpool (unexpected) and all their sensors malfunctioned (as they do in whirlpools) and everyone got scared (naturally). They were eventually guided to the Lemurians ruins by a school of blue fish (as one does).
  
• Sean is very invested in the knowledge that the fish were sentient. Tony is less convinced.
  
• "They were real fish with their own thoughts and feelings."  Huh. I guess the fish made a serious impression?
  
• And Sean remembers nothing of the ruins themselves, only that they 'saw someone' who was 'dressed like us'. But Sean's not sure and he can't say and he's really got to go now...
  
• So, was like Rafayel just cruising underwater in his bohemian painter outfit and suddenly all these archeologists submersify themselves across his sight line?
  
• Double huh. Tony points out that according to the Academy report, the topside ship never lost communication with the submersible, but Sean says the sensors all malfunctioned pretty much right away. So who was communicating with the ship?
  
• Door slams. Exit Sean.
  
• Tony now pins his hopes on the deleted video recording on Yennifer's camera being restored.
  
• Next recording: Tony has found an old friend to try and salvage the recording. He was only able to restore one frame of the footage (well, this guy isn't very good, is he? oh. muahah! next line: "I'm self-taught!" well, yay for him that he was able to get a frame out of it then, good job little dude). He was able to restore the call history though, and whoever was on it talked really loudly.
  
• So Tony says the mysterious fifth person was.. a skeleton! o0o0o0ooo0oo. And the skeleton has a Protcore equipped weapon. which is impossible as Protocore weapons were only invented in the last decade and this skeleton is sitting in the ruins of long lost Atla... Lemuria. So there we go, yet more confirmation that protocores have been around for yoinks and that Lemuria used them.
  
• Now we've found Fred's phone?
  
• Fred has left an impassioned voicemail to Eleanor. He's out, he's leaving, he wants nothing to do with Lemuria, any implications that protocore weapon has for the EVER group, and he'd like to get ahead of the (EVER?) stalkers that are going after them. He calls Yennifer and Sean 'naive' for thinking its Lemuria's god, no, its just somebodies spying on them, nothing supernatural at all.
  
• Eleanor is still looking into Lemuria and Sean is begging her on this voicemail to stop as it will endanger all their lives.
  
• That's the last of the recording and now we're back to Codename: Raincoat. The way this reads, it sounds like Tony dug up the protocore weapon that was in the Lemurian ruins? and that's how he got on EVER's execution list. But just as Raincoat is about to toss the phone 'a flame materializes on his palm' and the phone screen shatters.
  
• Hiya, Rafayel!
  
• Raf's voice is described as 'silky as brocade' and i love that for all of us.
  
• Raincoat freezes as he realizes that the person in front of him had to have walked out of the sea as that's the only place that wasn't in his line of sight.
  
• Nice! Okay, so there's some posturing and Rafayel points out that Raincoat can't continue too much longer before he also ends up knowing too much for EVER's liking and will end up on the hit list himself. Raf offers to be Raincoat's employer instead, if he hands over any information out a single name (guess who's!) that might be on that list.
  
• Raincoat hands over an address to Raf to meet the person who has the full execution list as Raincoat only has the names he's personally been given. The address is, o0o0o0o, at The Nest.
  
• Mysterious Nest Guy With The Possible Jewelry Box Ahoy!
  
• wow, Rafayel boldly says artists don't have enemies and that the girl is his lover.
  
• Apparently Rafayel is sixth on the hit list himself. nice! Is Lumiere on top?
  
• Raf is miffed he's so low. Aww, buddy! Maybe you need to put your back into it. Lumiere's only been on the job for 200 years and he's light(cough) years ahead of you. 
  
• And yeah, Rafayel has his own murder list too and Raincoat doesn't rank on it. Yet.
  

I feel like I learned a bunch of stuff here, only I don't know what exactly.