runningred | OOM: Travelling with Jemma.

Jay laughs and hugs her back. He follows along after her happily, enjoying her glee as she darts from sight to sight. He stops to take a couple of photos of his own.

"Check these out." He points to a tree of hanging white flowers. "Angel Trumpets, stunning but very poisonous."

{ooc: found some fantastic photos.}

"In Peru, a version of this plant was fed to the women and slaves of dead royalty so they would submit to being buried with their lord." She replies cheerfully, because she'll always have words for her primary field of study, "From all reports the effects are quite rapid and horrific."

She pauses, reviews that, and pulls a face.

"And they're also very pretty?" With cool toxic properties!

"Really? I didn't know that." Jay smiles, not teasing at all. "I can imagine it wouldn't be pleasant. You have thought they've have gone with something faster. But I guess the lord really doesn't care what state the slaves arrive in the afterlife."

{ooc: sorry!}

"It seems about par for the course for the civilization at the time." She shrugs, and fails to mention that many of the toxins in these plants have found a home in her own lab, for various purposes - some to aid field agents, as an addition to their medical kits, some... well. She did make a decent attempt at re-creating the Haitian zombie drug with some of those compounds.

"But did you see the turquoise above the archway? I have no idea what pigment could be used to get such a long-standing effect, it's simply stunning..." Now it seems that she's found her words again, she has an over-abundance of them, and has an opinion or questions for just about everything.

Oh what Jay wouldn't give to have a play with her lab. "I guess that's true."

Jay follows her over to have a closer look. "I'd offer to take a sample and find out for you but it is a world heritage listed area. It'd be sacrilegious." He's been an assassin but he has lines. And defacing monuments is one of them. "We could always find a museum with a research department and ask."

{ooc: Sorry, seriously having a shocker tonight.}

"What? Oh, no, you needn't do that, really," (She would, given opportunity, but she's aware enough to know that's definitely not going to happen ever) "It's just rather curious, don't you think? I wonder if there were other colors that were less persistent."

"There is no blue without yellow and without orange." Jay quotes wistfully, wandering between the pillars and frescos.

There's a pause while she tries to remember from boarding-school forced-culture classes. The quote sounds familiar, but she can't quite place it.

She's deep into copying an interesting pattern carved into a lintel when suddenly she laughs.

"Van Gogh! I knew I had heard that somewhere."

"I got caught up in a stake out at the Gotham Museum of Art for... about a week and a half. I think I can give almost every tour they have."

"Oh, that sounds wonderful." She grins, then pauses and backpedals furiously. "Oh, not the stake-out bit, I'm sure it isn't wonderful waiting for someone who might be violent and it's terrible they were at a museum but... a week at an art museum."
That'd probably actually be her upper limit before she needed to do some hard science, stat, but it'd be a wonderful few days in the meantime.

"It wasn't that bad, even when the stake-out paid off. Turned out to be someone we knew and it wasn't hard to distract her from when she had in mind." Well, that's not exactly what happened but close enough. "On the upside I learnt a lot about art."

"It's a very good upside - I know just enough to get myself in trouble, and sound vaguely intelligent when someone talks about what they did on the weekend." Just enough that when someone mentions a name she can reply with 'oh, French Impressionism!' and then pray that they don't ask what she thinks about their use of color.

"I pretty much knew nothing before that week. It was impressively educational. The tour guides assumed I was hiding out from bullies or something and kinda took me under their wing. It made for a fantastic cover and I learnt a lot." He wonders through the ruins, stopping every now and then to take photos or admire the architecture.

She burns through half of a notebook before finding herself on a rocky outcropping on what was probably once a very important road, soaking in sunlight and watching the birds argue amongst themselves overhead.

Even workaholic diehard science geeks have a hard time resisting the lure of a nice sunny spot with a gorgeous view.

Jay pulls himself up a seat next to her, closing his eyes as he turns his face up to the sun. "Having fun?"

"Loads." Her smile has lost it's manic edge of 'Must Study All The Things' in the face of this place's tranquility. "I never could have imagined there are places in the world like this. It's so different than just pictures."

Jay shoulder bumps her warmly. "Some things can't be studied from afar. Sometimes you've got to throw yourself over the edge and just feel."

His phone rings and he excuses himself for a moment, chatting away in fluent French.

He comes back after a few minutes with a grin on his face. "Pulled a few stings. We have a dinner reservation and a place to crash tonight."

Edited 2014-05-01 07:48 (UTC)

"Fantastic - in Tangiers, or...?" She trails off questioningly, tucking the bangs that have inevitably escaped her pony tail behind her ear.

"Talassemtane actually. It's a bit of a ride but I promise it'll be worth it."

"I'm looking forward to it then. I suppose that means we should be getting on?" She asks, dusting rock dust off her trousers as she stands. She's fully aware that she can happily get buried in the details of any interesting project, and as much as she could very easily spend days here, it would be a shame to miss everything else.

"We can take our time and stop along the way if you spot something you want to check out." He gets up and dusts himself off, wandering back towards the bike.

"Oh goodness, we may never get anywhere with that sort of leeway." She grins self-deprecatingly as she follows. "Don't you know everything is interesting?" But she settles back behind him without making any mad dashes for More Studying back amongst the ruins.

There are some agents who would be duly impressed. Or at least a bit surprised.

"I'll keep us on track, don't you worry." Jay laughs, kicking the bike into gear.

He takes them off the highway and onto some back streets. There is so much history here, so much time invested in the land. He finds interesting places to stop along the way - little villages and old ruins, outcrops of coloured stone and interesting plants.

As the afternoon ticks away, Jemma's glad she managed to pack more than one notebook - even in her cramped shorthand, she's filling pages and pages with questions and comments and descriptions, sketches scattered throughout to break up the wall of text. She's also learned how to move with the bike (somewhat), and what fun it is to not have to worry about what time it might be now.

"Is that Talassemtane up ahead?"

"That's it. It's one of the larger national parks in Africa."

There's a rather large four-wheel drive waiting for them at the gate. The very tall, very dark African gentleman is sitting on the hood. "Mr Todd, I presume? We've been expecting you."

Jay brings the bike up next to him, flipping up his helmet with a smile. "Nice of you to meet us."

"Your donation was more than generous, the least we can do is drive you in." He greets Jemma with a very wide smile and holds a hand out to her. "I'm Chilogola but most people call me Chill."

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