8650/A Little Razzle Dazzle Under the Stars

A Little Razzle Dazzle Under the Stars
Date of Scene:	12 November 2021
Location:	Hayden Planetarium
Synopsis:	Zee has a concern, Jane has possible solutions. Until next time...
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Zatanna Zatara

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Jane Foster has posed:
The Hayden Planetarium keeps a busy schedule, being the premier institution for astronomy (arguably) in the city and smackdab inside the Central Park museum complex. Thursday evenings feature a variety of different shows, though the current one, Worlds Beyond Earth, wraps up a dazzling display of imagined and real alien realms beyond the solar system. A limited audience chatters to one another as the sound- and light-proof doors open to let them spill out to the long walkway leading from the planetarium theatre back into the exhibit space. Another fifteen minutes and the ANMH will close.

Rules are a bit different when the Hayden director is on the grounds, which she currently is. Her fingertips on the rail, Jane offers a quick grin to a passing child of about seven who stares goggle-eyed at everything and chatters to his parents about twenty miles-a-minute about space volcanoes and ice giants.

She isn't hard to spot, brown hair pulled back into a casual French braid -- yes, it's casual, Mathilde -- and wearing a teal blue sweater with fluttery sleeves.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The woman magician has left all the accouterments of her craft at the theatre; nothing marks her out from the late afternoon visitors to the center. She rubbernecks marveling at the sphere encased in the crystalline glass of the center like everyone else, a map in her hand to find her way. The early winter sunset makes the sphere glow.

"Magical," the woman murmurs to herself before finding a guard that can direct her to the office of Dr. Jane Foster, Director, an astrophysicist with extraordinary talents, none of which figure on the business card that Zatanna carries.

Another guard accompanies her past huge photos of distant galaxies to the more mundane and plainer corridors where the scientists and administrators work up to the gallery where Dr. Foster waits.

Zatanna wears a tailored black suit, an asymmetrical cut jacket over pegged pants, and refined Goth lace-up boots from her favorite Japanese designer, Yohji Yamamoto. Her glossy black hair, brushed back from her high forehead, falls past her shoulders. On recognizing Jane, Zatanna's blue eyes light up, and she smiles, quickening her pace, hand extended in greeting. "It's so good of you to meet me, Dr. Foster. You must be very busy with your work, so it's much appreciated."

Jane Foster has posed:
One of the best things about New York -- and Gotham maybe -- is the blase attitude even casual civilians hold for celebrities. That a billionaire can march through the Chelsea Markets or an A-list actor or singer lounge at a bar without getting too much goggling is proof that New Yorkers give no effs. Maybe the city's too big and life moving too fast for anything else. Few allowances get made. A famous magician earns an appraising look from someone who passes on. A Nobel Prize winner gets overlooked in favour of a precise depiction of the dark side of the Moon currently projected onto the wall where someone could intimately map every cracked crater from the Late Heavy Bombardment laid under crisper, sharper byproducts of the Eratosthenian period. Science, cool stuff. A different stripe of wonder, really.

The same could be said for Zatanna, if anyone overheard her.

Examining the Zeiss projector responsible for bringing interstellar wonders to terrestrial viewers, sans one Matt Damon, she holds up her hand and points something that looks like a round-tipped wand. The rotating glass facets crackle and shift soundlessly, throwing a landscape in lush detail: raging bands of clouds like the most monstrous layer cake, burnt orange and cream brindled by speckled vanilla chai and the rotating monsoon in a brick-red roil at the corner. Jupiter, from a damn personal view. The rest of the slowly rotating violence is nearly beautiful, as a glacier or an erupting volcano flowing into the sea might be. She is outlined against it, just as calm, not half as well-dressed as Zatanna.

Bit of a work hazard when anything she wears is subject to immediate replacement at the whims of the All-Father. "Ms. Zatara," she says with clear enthusiasm. Two steps, four, and her hand intercepts Zatanna's. A silent golden bangle of no consequence graces her wrist, mute and unimportant. "Please, call me Jane. I could say the same for you; your schedule must be chockful this time of year, to say nothing of the Justice League. Do you care for some tea or would you like the accompaniment of the stars for now?"

Or the great Jovian disc, limb illuminated by its own wild auroras.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
As used as Zatanna is, to working with illusions of her own making or tripping along on the astral plane for her work, the projections make her slightly tipsy feeling as she touches Jane's hand.

That gold bangle resonates; Zatanna's fingertips brush an amulet that sparkles darkly in the otherworldly light, laying at the base of her throat atop the buttoned white shirt. "If I call you Jane, will you call me Zee like most of my friends do? Tea and privacy would be magical if you'll pardon the term," she smiles. "Most of what I want to talk to you about is not for public consumption."

Jane Foster has posed:
God help if Zatanna looks in the Astral Plane at any point of the present. Things are not right in the Hayden Planetarium, not the way they should be.

"Glad to. Half of my work has been wrapped up in Zoom meetings with Doctor this and Minister that," she emulates the rather forceful, arch behaviour that academics and government employees in their self-importance get. "I could kill for a conversation that didn't require an org chart to know if I'm about to mortally insult someone by calling them Mr. Smith." Not idle chitchat, though it might seem so. The light roll of her shoulder and she turns, walking the circumference of the theatre up to the top of the seats and then along the curved walkway. "My office is this way, and fully soundproofed. Do you prefer white, black, oolong? I should have an herbal caramel amaretti if you like."

Her office isn't far, locked by conventional means and the scan of a badge that takes two and a half tries. The electronic lock gives, grumpy. Normal, of course, but the interior is chic and clean, not piled in paper. A squared-off black couch sits opposite a pair of comfortable chairs, and the delicate gold-foil map picked out on the wall could be thought of as abstract art. Look closer and it might seem a Renaissance sphere of the heavens, but not so: the exoplanets and stars are all known only to the most modern of astronomers.

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
The small talk, types of tea, dealing with bureaucrats helps Zatanna find her balance again. She is tempted to look at Jane, not with her normal eyes but through the astral lens. If there was the least hint of darkness to the Doctor she would look with no compunction. But, she is squiffy clean of any demonic aura as far as the homo magi can sense without casting a spell.

"Black, no sugar will be fine. Thank you. I hope it's no bother."

Zatanna seats herself in one of the comfortable chairs facing the map. She studies it intently for a moment, finding it beautiful and thinking, were she an astronomer, informative.

"Do you know Barbara Gordon?" She has rehearsed how to bring the subject up to the Doctor because murder investigations are generally out of her purview.

Jane Foster has posed:
Darkness has no real hold on Jane, unless one fears death. A trickiness to the slippery Old One-Eyed, sure, though his mischief and cunning doesn't quite touch the woman who hung from Yggdrasil's branches far too long. Definitely no traces of the demonic, thankfully, or else Zatanna might have a petition to get rid of the darkness.

"A bother? Never." Jane has an electric kettle plugged in to a small cabinet that masquerades as just another file station, but once opened, shows itself to have a niche with neat shelves. Tea tins, coffee, even a small sleeve of Jammie Dodgers all have their place. Meetings can be long. Two mugs end up on a Japanese lacquered tray, and she sets the water to boil.

"Glancingly. Ms. Gordon's the eldest daughter of Commissioner Gordon in Gotham. I believe she is respected in the IT world, but we don't cross circles often." Jane plumbs her memory on that front, sifting through pieces. Making a spread of the mugs so they display their lovely raku finish, she pours the hot water and divvies out the tea. It won't be a moment before she carries it over for Zatanna's approval or doctoring. "Must be tough as nails, I expect, if she takes after her father."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna takes in the signs of someone who spends a lot of time working, the tea, the kettle. She accepts her cup with a grateful nod. Smiling her agreement gleefully at Jane's description of Barbara, Zatanna nods, "To everyone but her friends, thankfully. I watched her grow up when Gotham was a darker place. My father, moved us there." Literally, moved the family mansion with its inter-dimensional rooms to the City from Italy. An odd choice but consider the man who did it.

"She contacted me with facts concerning a man who perpetrated murder, who in fact, had a 'murder' hotel and a magical object."

"That's where I come in, disposing of the magical object. But its provenance brings me to you. The man who brought the object to the US, Gustov Gantz, was the son of a Nazi who it is suspected was a member of HYDRA or involved with them somehow. His wife died under mysterious circumstances before the end of the war. The details of the story are macabre, to say the least, the death of nearly an entire boy scout troop some twenty years ago while they were staying at his hotel."

"The boys deserved to be remembered but I won't dwell on their heroics because they managed to kill their murderer or so it seemed." She takes a sip of tea, giving Jane time to digest the story so far.

Jane Foster has posed:
Depressing, somewhat, how often she spends time in the office but astrophysics is by definition a long game. Breakthroughs involve crunching exhaustive amounts of linear data to look for a wobble, to transform sensory readings into any kind of visual pattern using a heap of rubber bands, a jar of ketchup, and the industrial aerosol output of Kazakhstan. NFTs have it /easy/. Pixels come naturally there. The intuitive leaps needed on the colossal celestial or miniature subatomic scale don't translate or scale well to easy to digest models much of the time.

"A blessing to have good friends who see past the exterior," Jane agrees. She takes a seat in the opposite chair so they face one another instead of dealing with her loitering behind a desk or lounging on a wall. Too impersonal for her tastes. "Gotham's positively transformed since the upheaval. I can hardly believe it was ten years ago, next year." Was it only ten? Feels like a lifetime, given the rapid pace of rebuilding in the Big Dark.

Her expression changes when it comes to Zatanna mentioning the facts around a magical object. Surprise colours in her features pretty clearly. "Gantz smuggled a Nazi-era artifact to the US. That's one glaring legal violation, and an international one at that. Did he set up the hotel, then? I take it from your tone he came back or his death didn't stick."

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna nods, shifts in place, crossing her legs, mouth pressed into a frown before resuming the story, "It looks like it didn't stick. All of this came to light when the second group of kids, a debate team led by the school drama teacher, returned to the hotel not too long ago."

"Did you read about the Sovereign Hotel? It was in the papers. That's Mr. Leist, the teacher in charge of the students, found the bodies. So naturally, the police mobbed the place." She sighs at what comes next.

Forehead furrowed, she continues, "Everyone returned to Gotham, and not a week later, Mr. Leist is murdered as well as some of the students who went on the trip at a school dance on Halloween, the murders continued with reports of a monster on the lose."

Another sip of tea to fortify her for the next part of the marathon. "Students aided by some of the Bat Team trapped the monster and stopped it, melted it into the floor. I now have the floor in my possession. Since it came through the Nazis, I suspect that it might be of Asgardian provenance. I wanted to bounce my ideas off of you."

Balancing the tea in her lap, she fixes Jane with an earnest look, "This is delicate ground, I know. I likely should have prefaced this by saying members of the Justice League know a lot more about who is who than the average woman on the street. Could this be an Asgardian artifact?"

Jane Foster has posed:
"The Sovereign Hotel," Jane rolls the name around on her tongue. Then comes the wince. "Yes, unfortunately, that was a ghastly headline and reminded me why Willie Nelson always said we should stop reading the news and go plant a garden." The notion's lovely even if it will never happen.

She can look up details on how many died unexpectedly without derailing Zatanna's narrative. Performance arts don't differ enormously from laying out a crime of the decade from Gotham. "Monsters tend to be a byword for unidentified sources, be it a criminal that evaded cameras to functional cryptids not anywhere in our zoological record. With HYDRA, the truth could possibly lie between either. I heard a little about their work in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, mostly as it pertains to scientific breakthroughs. The kind we'd rather forget the origin of." She sighs, then retreats for a sip of tea to order her thoughts. No pressure on Zee to come around to /why/ Jane of all people is involved, allowing that in its good old time. Her breath hitches at the floor in the Homo magi's possession. "You've got the floor?" Mustn't laugh. Okay, grimly chuckle. Death has mordant humour along with the sweet; her handmaidens do too.

A moment to compose herself and she puts the teacup aside. "I promise not to take offense and you have nothing to apologize for. I can help identify an item as Asgardian, absolutely." Just like that, an offer made and done. "Lady Sif or Thor obviously can provide excellent resources, though these matters can be delicate. No one want a diplomatic incident over something that could be straight-up human misdeed. What gave you an impression of Asgardian context, though? Patterns, words on it?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
Zatanna stifles a giggle herself at how crazy it all seems and repeats, "I have the floor."

She taps her forehead with the delicate fingers of a sleight-of-hand artist saying, "A feeling."

Then, nods with a shrug at the absurdity of it, "Yes, a feeling. I listen to them, now and that has saved my life sometimes. It coming from Nazi Germany, the idea that someone could have immortality, obscene and grisly as it might be, the type of monster that they described seeing. It moved like a snake. I had to consult my books and when I came on the name, Gjoll, it felt right."

After a deep breath, "Magicians like myself with blood magic intuit these things."

Jane Foster has posed:
Repeating it won't stop her shoulders from silently twitching. Jane can laugh silently with the best of them; literally that. Someone who can tear the fabric of space asunder by errant amusement is a great teacher.

On the Meyer Briggs Types that no one trusts, she probably leans pretty hard into INFJ. That borderline T... oh, who are we kidding? It's all nonsense. But intuition has value to her, that's something. "Feelings are the beginnings of a hypothesis, the inklings of an idea. You will not hear me discount them." Shock! Reed Richards and Tony Stark embody hard, unyielding logic so often. Hers is a slightly more fluid brand. "Asgardian artifacts, though not always labelled so, have a verified presence in Nazi Germany and Scandinavia during the Second World War. Probable examples from medieval sites through to the 15th century in Scotland also exist. I get calls and try to keep up on the discoveries, but there's practically a black market for antiquities of that nature not helped at all by the Thor fans or the white supremacy groups." Let's not recall the horrible display the year prior down a major New York artery, in front of the Empire State Building.

"The loud river," she muses when Zee mentions Gjoll. "A parallel of the River Styx, cold and miserable. You know that also happens to be the great stone where the Fenris wolf is chained until Ragnarok? The Eddas were, unfortunately, prone to repetition now and then. Something grim and serpentine, connected to the realms of the dead, preying on a teacher and children, on boy scouts. I'm seeing a troubling pattern of children being convenient. Please tell me there were more adults we haven't named?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"Yes," she nods several times thoughtfully, looking into the distance, "Hel, Hades...Death."

She wrinkles her nose, answering Jane's last question, "Yes, the ratio is about one adult to four or five children. The detectives don't know how many were disposed of during the years that Gantz operated the hotel."

leaning forward, she says, "I think it will try to jump to someone new. The jail it's in is temporary. If I release it, the question is, can /I/ destroy it quickly enough? I thought reinforcements might be handy, truth be told. I'm good," she waggles a hand, making a face, "but not that good."

Jane Foster has posed:
Jane's smile wasn't long for this world and Zatanna puts a nail through the expiring remnants. "Yes. I see, this floor needs to be dealt with immediately." Her breath is held for a moment, dealing with the practicalities in a sweep. "Gantz's operation would have probably blurred any records. Not impossible to find evidence, but that's much more a police officer or forensic expert's role."

Her cool expression isn't turned outward, though she considers each new fact. "Is it possible to see the Nazi object in question? We might be able to narrow down our options. If it is Asgardian, what would you like to happen to it? Handed over to Thor? Destroyed?"

Zatanna Zatara has posed:
"It would depend on how likely it is to jump to someone and murder someone new. Thor? It might need a God to destroy it. I had thought in terms of magic. If I release it, perhaps having Thor or Hel on hand would be what is needed."

Zatanna finishes the now cooled tea,"I've taken up enough of your precious time. Should we consult with Thor or should I leave that in your hands?"

Jane Foster has posed:
"I only propose they might take responsibility for something gone astray, but it's just that, a proposal. It came to you, and the matter is one you are clearly suited to. You wisely would not want Hela on hand right now," Jane warns quietly. "Her malice towards humanity is fairly substantial. Recent events put her in a bad position."

That's the lightest way to put it. She sets the tea aside. "I will be happy to look at the item and I can contact Lady Sif or Thor about it. He's been rather absent lately, I should warn you."