[attr="class","spiral"]"The only names I can come up with on the spot," Amalia replies to her companion's observation. Voice playful and smile a bit wider for her ability to pick out the bit of trivia.

A beat of silence passes, just long enough for Amalia to regret putting out her cigarette, before the other woman speaks again. Gives her a distraction strong enough to keep from reaching in her pocket for a fresh one.

"How could you tell? Was it my unmistakable brand?" she answer's the woman's question, a sarcastic humor to her words, "Yes, I am an astronomer. More so than I am most anything else, I think."

Well that was maybe a bit more dramatic than she intended it. Amalia doesn't bother to be embarrassed or amend her comment. Instead she finally does reach in her pocket for a cigarette.

[attr="class","spiral"]The first drag from her cigarette is slow, luxurious. She's still at it when then other woman finishes her question (the cigarette is almost half ash when she flicks it at the stones) and exhales the smoke long enough for her company to finish the rest of her curious musings.

"Deoxys?" Amalia asks, quirking an eyebrow, "That's . . . ah right, the thing that surfaced here during the invasion."

Bits of smoke still trail along the corners of her mouth as she thinks about it for a moment. About the stories from her hometown.

"No, I don't imagine I am. Here to find Deoxys that is," she says confidently. Takes another drag. Shorter this time, it's only a couple seconds before the cigarette leaves her lips and she puffs out a few smoky rings.

"Wormholes," she says finally, once the rings start to break and disperse in the air, "and Ultra Space. That's what I hope to find out here. Not directly of course, but maybe some clues that can lead me to them."

[attr="class","spiral"]Amalia sucks at her cigarette thoughtfully at the other woman's question before speaking on a smoky exhale.

"Probably nothing," she chuckles, "As it stands it's alien technology and alien space -- so if I found them right here right now I'd be at a loss as to how to proceed; but I guess that's part of the fun."

There's a playful glint in her eyes as she speaks that only grows brighter when she looks to her curious friend.

"Of course, I'm sure you're asking a better question. 'What would you do with them', assuming I had control of them when I stumbled upon them," there's a mirthful lilt to her voice as she speaks. As if she thinks herself very clever for the way she's twisted the conversation. Which of course she does.

"I've spent years in a rut as far as my studies are concerned. Chasing questions with answers that are more than elusive, answers that seem almost hostile towards the notion of presenting themselves to me. The origins of the pokemon I study, the unknown truths of space that have produced them, and folklore around both that feel less mythical by the day," she speaks in earnest now, frustration creeping into her voice around the edges.

"If I could learn to harness the potential of that technology the way your recently repelled raiders did, it wouldn't matter how much the answers wished to hide from me. How well they slipped away into dark corners and secret spaces. I could wrest them from their hiding spots with my own two hands and force them to show themselves to me. To let me understand," she's practically growling now. Her free hand reaches out and pulls at some ethereal opponent invisible to everyone present.

"I think I'd go a bit mad with the power of it all. No, I'd let myself."

[attr="class","spiral"]"Only fools," Amalia rolls the words around her mouth while rolling her mostly spent cigarette between her fingers, "I like that." Maybe she doesn't quite agree, but she likes it. When she puts the bud of a cigarette back to her lips (now so small she can barely fit the required two fingers around it) she looks at the other woman. Really looks while she talks.

It's been a while since someone else held such passion for her subject -- much less put that passion on display in a place she could see it so clearly. Amalia's field is, to put it bluntly, an eccentricity to most. Study of extraterrestrial pokemon and the other mysteries of space goes nowhere fast; and beyond studying the odd quirk here and there most of her peers don't see the point in long term research. They don't see the potential.

This young woman, though. She sees it. Doesn't just see it, seems almost as fascinated with it as Amalia is. On the cusp of being consumed by it the same way she has been. The same way another was once.

"A woman after my own heart," she replies simply, smiling ear to ear now as smoke leaks from the corners of her lips, "I don't begrudge the masses, my fellow scientists, too much for their apprehension. Space is vast and frightening and we know now apparently full of cannibals . . . Or at least man-eaters, I guess. But that pull of countless possibilities is exactly why we need people willing to take the risk. 'Man must rise above the Earth, for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives'."