The Silver Lining?

[Nathan]

An unofficial memo from the Marshal-Paladin had been placed on Dr Staten's desk. It was so nondescript, she did not notice the memo for several days. It merely stated:

Dr Staten - take note of the Cape Event. Develop it. Only you can. This is from the Top.

Nettie Staten considered this for a few seconds. Develop it? Why would I want to develop one of the worst disasters in Natopian history? And why was she alone in being able to do it?

After a few more sips of coffee she began to think about the attack: it was reported to be a result of previously unknown Hazel magic. The Hazel were a deeply religious people, therefore this attack was completely out of the ordinary.

Was that it? Her Ph.D. was in chemistry, which was why she worked for the artillery division, but her first Master's degree was actually in religious studies.

Was the Marshal serious? If so, he wanted this under wraps due to the secrecy and casual note. But for whatever the reason, he was her superior, and she had to follow his orders, which came from "the Top." The obvious capitalization suggests an order from the Butter Bull himself.

Whether she liked it or not, Dr Nettie Staten was going to build a bomb, and she really was the only person who could do it.

[Nathan]

Over the next few days, Nettie had received dozens of packages filled with confiscated hazkisi figures. Her studies told her that hazkisi housed the spirits of the Hazel's ancestors, and that by agitating the figure in some way, would cause the spirit to act. The little information there was showed that such activity was never on such a catastrophic scale as in Cape. The spirit was only supposed to act briefly, to scare away an evil forest spirit or an intruder from outside the Woods. If the Cape Event was normal side effect of the hazkisi power, then chunks of the Great Hazel Woods should be missing like Cape, but imagery from satellites show no such discrepancy.

Some other force had to act on the hazkisi to react the way it did. The Hazel were an isolated people, and would not have access to any sort of nuclear technology which had a similar blast and vaporization pattern, so the principle might be the same as matter fusion/fission. Spiritual fusion? Possible.

With no other leads, she left her office and went across town to the Rian Grass Library of Law which maintained a small collection of Rian Grass's persona belongings. It was the only source of Hazel artifacts not within the Great Hazel Woods, and it was her best bet for her next clue: some sort of reactant.