TNI: Crack Ascension Team

A few weeks pass with little event. Gavin goes to the Peterson Rest Home in upstate New York for some intensive rest, and Gwen goes with him. Alexandra makes a new crossbow. School lets out for Tina. And the team (plus Tina) gets sent on a two-week vacation by Damien to get over the recent trauma. The location - Vera Cruz del Mar, a small resort town on the Pacific coast of Mexico. Angelina makes sure to pack lots of swimsuits, her kevlar vest, and her guns.

While on vacation, little of substance occurs until they start noticing people with strange scars on their heads (and dimples in their auras) and track them down to the local Church of Mu, which believes that Mu will rise again from the Pacific and everyone's souls will come back from there (your soul has been in Mu, that's why your life is difficult). Of course, unless you cut a little hole in your skull, the soul won't be able to get back in, which explains the scar. They investigate a bit more before deciding that the cult is weird but harmless and go back to vacationing.

Also on vacation, Thielo catches a Carribean Narrow-Mouth Grouper, which would be fine except that it's a long way from its normal habitat. There's some consternation about this, too, but nothing comes of it.

"Or there's an archetype about to ascend!" "Or, it could have been in some ship's ballast water." "Maybe." "Want a pina colada?" - Exchange about the fish.

Angelina goes to confession once again and surprises a Mexican priest who normally doesn't have to deal with these things. He accepts her explanation of being in the body-guarding business as an excuse for violence, but makes her say a lot of prayers for her other sins anyway. She does confess to adultery (though not with anyone actually married, but strictly speaking that's still adultery) and the priest is happy to be on more familiar ground. That doesn't save her from a lecture and more penance, though.

Gavin, meanwhile, has been slowly being weaned away from thinking of the world as a giant puppet conspiracy. There's a bit of a setback when it is revealed that his progress has been playing along with the conspiracy waiting for the proper moment to strike, but once they start in again he genuinely gets better. Horse therapy, especially, brings him back towards sanity.

MIN:

Bob and Betty Jones are a middle aged couple who rent the cabana next to the Strauss's. They are incredibly normal. Thielo and Lexa have trouble relating to them, but they discuss the resort over a bottle of sangria and all is pleasant.

MIN:

The narrator kindly underemphasized the preoccupation with the fish and the Church of Mu. The fish is sent to our favorite lab technician in Chicago to be identified. The red glasses are sent down from Santa Fe so that the leader of the Church of Mu can be examined. He doesn't have a sigil, though the possibility that this is only because he's defining a new archetype is considered.

RH:

Angelina stayed up all night on midsummer's eve, armed to the teeth and dressed in kevlar. Esteban volunteered to accompany her during the vigil. Nothing happened, so she will continue to bide her time until the next equinox.