Xaviers!

"If you seriously suggest shoving a giant cork into it I will have to lower your grades." she says, sounding vaguely amused.

"Well, not literally, anyway." He tapped his lower lip as he pondered the idea. "Nothing physical would work. And, even if it did, it wouldn't hold for long."

Ashlie nods. "Even if there are no high-energy particles involved, the spatial stress would likely wear down most materials. Previously the weakspots were more like sub-atomic overlaps, particles sharing enough properties to allow excitation to create sudden transference. Strictly speaking there was no need for physical movement aside from stepping into the affected area to be... rotated from one dimensional frequency to the other. This is an actual connection. A doorway that's spatially connected somehow..."

"Do you need closer readings?" Katarina called from the river, shouting to be heard over the distance and the droning science mumbo-jumbo.

"Ideally I'd like to send one into the anomaly. Do you think you can tether it so it doesn't go through and reel it back in?"

Katarina frowned for a moment. "I can certainly try, but the pull gets stronger the closer you get..."

"Your call. You can always let it go through and hopefully retrieve and destroy it when you return home, but it is risky."

"I'll try getting a bit closer first," Katarina said, swimming a bit closer to the whirlpool. Ashlie and Tosh could see that she was accelerating as she approached the center of the vortex, faster than the visual flow of the water or her swimming stroke would indicate...

"Affinity for water." Ashlie rolls her eyes slightly. "She might not be a mutant but she certainly acts like one who has some deeply ingrained bigotry to deal with. It's a shame."

Meanwhile they receive some more detailed data about the immediate interior of the funnel. It starts as a coherent spatial distortion, space curving neatly. But the deeper it gets the more the space grows increasingly distorted and twisted. "Are those... fractal patterns in space-time? That can't be right, something is throwing off the sensor." Ashlie mutters.

"Could that be interference from all the universes the tunnel passes through? The two endpoints are further apart than anything we've encountered before," Tosh theorized. "Either that or there are exotic, quote unquote mystical energies at play."

"Distant Universe is just an expression, there's no actual length involved, it shouldn't work like that." she says although infuriatingly it makes more sense than trying to fit it into mathematical models. "I hate magic. Doesn't even have the decency to be clearly identifiable as such."

As Ashlie and Tosh debated, Katarina had turned back towards shore, and was taking long, exaggerated strokes. And yet, she wasn't moving forward as fast as she should be -- if anything, she might even be losing some ground towards the whirlpool...

Tosh's expression grew concerned as he noticed the problem. "Oh, shit, she's, ah, not outpacing the current anymore!"

He rushed to the coiled-up safety line and, as Bruce, threw her a line. "Grab on! I'll pull you in!"

Becoming Kabuto, he braced him to pull.

Katarina, it appeared, was being pulled towards the whirlpool faster than anything else in the water around her, in a clear violation of physics that would surely make ASHLIE that much angrier at the world in general.

However, she was able to grab the safety line, looping it around her wrist, and letting Kabuto pull. He would be able to overcome the pull of the whirlpool with maybe a little more effort than anticipated, but nothing beyond his power level.

"How in the world..." Ashlie says, looking down at a read-out from the sensors. "How is it dragging her in faster than anything else!?"

"Worry not, good Headmistress! I will best this dastardly whirlpool, or I am not the great Kabuto!" Kabuto assured heroically as he pulled the line with all four arms.

The retro hero shtick was going to get old fast.

"Keep talking like this and at this rate you'll conjure up those so-called Redcaps again." Ashlie huffs.

"You've had run-ins with them, too? The Fae Court can sit on one, if you ask me," Katarina said, as she dragged herself onto land.

"Your water appears to be broken, headmistress."

"I noticed." she sighs. "I could speculate on the affinity of identical dimensional amplitudes but... Well we've discovered that at a certain depth of quantum mechanics things operate on strange correlations."

"That is to say, I have no idea why it tried to pull you in specifically and I'd almost rather it be magic than a physical breakdown between our reality and the Quantum Substrate."

"Might it simply be a sort of...pressure?" Katarina mused.

"If you put a denser fluid on top of a lighter one, it will attempt to sink down through it. Perhaps something similar is going on here, but with whatever those...dimensional...amplitudes are? Like attracting like?"

"It's not... impossible. If some gravitational force is curving space it might attract similarly patterned matter. Which would explain how it is a whirlpool on both sides. It's pulling in the water that passed through back into itself in a feedback loop."

Tosh once again, he scratched the back of his head in thought. "If only there were a way to keep the water from one side from being pulled through, then the whirlpool would stabilize. And maybe the tunnel would be able to collapse."

"Too bad my water manipulation abilities aren't strong enough to accomplish that, not without getting dangerously close. But probably not even then."

"We'd probably have to do it on both sides at the same time anyway. If it'd even work."

Tosh pointed up into the air in front of his face as something occurred to him. "What if we freeze it? Would that accomplish anything?"

"Like, with ice? You can keep something frozen that long?"

"With enough effort? Yes. But we have no information as to how much pressure is being exerted inside the whirlpool. And if it doesn't work then we'd almost certainly draw peoples' attention to this."

"I know you are looser with your secrets over here, but that would seem to be a bad thing. If anything, we should be striving to hide the portal if we can't control it. Wouldn't want someone deciding to slip back into my time with your advanced technology."

"Yes, if we can't solve this in the immediate future we need to ensure no one discovers it accidentally."

"This is beyond my paygrade somewhat. However, perhaps there might be something else on my end we can use to shut this down..."

"You clearly have more resources in the supernatural department. I'm, like, super bad at secrecy, so I'm hoping that between our science and your mystical... stuff, maybe we won't need to cover anything up."

"I gather you don't get much practice at it," Katarina said. "It's a skill I had to pick up, as well."

"Not much to cover up on our end, really. Any detritus wouldn't raise suspicions and for the time being we can monitor the site in case someone does stray too close on accident. Fortunately this part of the estuary is under environmental protection anyway, so no boats. The occasional bird-watching enthusiast maybe."

"So, what's our plan? Do Agent Ryn and I return and start scouring our resources for some kind of block? Or do we want to try something from this end, first?"

"I'm hesitant to aim particle physics at something I don't remotely understand yet. The potential complications are too severe and there's no pressing need as long as we can restrict access to the area. And some simple netting around the perimeter should keep any technological detritus from passing through."

"Then I suppose I should round up my team and head back, then?"

"If you think you'll have alternate resources at your disposal. Research and regroup in 48 hours?"

"Well, if everything goes swimmingly, there won't be a way back. Closed off tight and sealed from our end. But if we're unable to, we may be able to check back in, yes."

"Interdimensional door slammed in our face." she says, amused. "But I understand."

As Ashlie and Tosh continue theorizing about the deeper nature of the breach, a figure is headed across the swampy marshland. She's not hurrying but Ryn's pace is still brisk as she makes her way towards the three. Any normal person would get bogged down trying to shortcut across the estuary, but Ryn's bare feet uncannily find just were to step to avoid sinking into the muck more than an inch. As such her new surprisingly colorful clothes are pretty much clean, a mild spray of salt water aside. She comes to a sliding stop that can only be described as smug.

"Did the machines help?" she asks with a glance at Ashlie.

"No, it looks like we may need to look into alternate options to fix things," Katarina said, with a smile.

"...New look?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.