To whom it may concern;

  These are the private observations of Sir Ambrose Camden, Special Diplomatic Officer for Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service. While it should be impossible for you to find yourself in possession of these documents without eDV clearance and Sir Camden’s explicit written permission, were this to somehow be the case, this shall be your first and only warning: whatever knowledge you sought from within these pages, it shall not be yours to keep. Your recollection shall fail you. Your copies shall blur. Your photographs shall destroy your implements and corrupt your vessels. Your tongue shall flail with soundless breaths.

  The knowledge within these pages is not for the uninvited. And it will not suffer intruders lightly.

  From the Desk of Sir Ambrose Camden

  Moonshot Dossier: Naomi Ziegler (Foxfire)

  19/12/2003

  This entry has been long overdue. It feels improper to use a more clinical, impersonal approach to this one. And so, much as I should be constraining myself to template, to hell with it.

  My first encounter with Naomi Ziegler defied any expectation I could have built up. Violations of the Repatriation Treaty were few and far between, and the idea that a civilian teenager had done so simply boggled the mind. “What might this child be?”, I remember asking myself. Had some country defied all morality and trained a soldier, expecting to infiltrate and be disregarded? Were they an unwitting patsy, left behind after a mission that was both success and failure? Was this simply the first in a new wave of attempts to pilfer Moonshot, long after we believed such awful endeavors to have ended with the Cold War?

  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw — a scared young woman, barely more than a girl, whose first glimpse into the deeper truths of our world had taken hers from her.

  Naomi Ziegler was born on February 29, 1984. She stands at a rather unimposing 162.5cm in height. However, this is not counting the most singularly remarkable aspect of her physical form — Naomi is only the fifth A1 Moonshot known to have been greatly physically changed by the receipt of her powers, and now wears the ears and tail of a fox upon her otherwise-human body. While counting the ears atop her head is quite generous, doing so would put her closer to 175cm in height.

  Naomi’s powers as an A1 Moonshot manifest in the form of pyrokinesis, pyrogenesis, at-will intangibility, point-to-point teleportation, and self-rejuvenation.

  The flame she conjures is of a brilliant purple colour, with differences in temperature causing the exact shade to fluctuate between magenta, violet, lavender, mauve, and more. This flame, which she calls “foxfire”, possesses some rather interesting properties: it does not need to burn fuel to sustain its existence; it can continue to burn underwater; it can subsume other sources of flame to propagate itself; and it can provide light without heat, though the reverse seems to be beyond Naomi at this point in time.

  There is an additional bit of text written perpendicular to the lines on the page, with an arrow suggesting it should be inserted between the preceding paragraph and the next. (Addendum, 15/03/2006 — Naomi’s foxfire burns hot enough to burn bones to ash, melt metal, and incinerate concrete, though this occurred under the effects of an altered mental state, DO NOT speak of it to her until she is ready)

  Naomi has also shown the ability to simply dissolve her physical form into a roughly body-shaped mass of the same foxfire that she conjures into being. While she cannot be “extinguished” in this state, water does cause her some fatigue upon her return to physical form; the chemicals from a fire extinguisher, paradoxically, appear to have absolutely no effect. While in this elemental state, Naomi has demonstrated the ability to translocate at will, although there do appear to be limitations — she has not shown the ability to teleport into a room which she had not entered before, and attempting to teleport without a visual point of reference requires deep familiarity with the target location in order to succeed; otherwise, the attempt quite literally fizzles out, and Naomi’s flame-form collapses back into her physical body, leaving her visibly disoriented for her trouble.

  The self-rejuvenation aspect of her powers also seems to derive from her teleportation. It would seem that when Naomi returns from elemental to physical, she restores her body from a default template of sorts, eliminating any injuries she suffered in the process. It is unknown whether this would extend to grievous bodily harm such as loss of limb, nor should there ever be a situation in which this is put to the test.

  Possibly more important than the abilities she displays, however, is the source from which she has derived them: a silver-furred, four-tailed, sapient fox.

  By his own account, Gorou is centuries old. At some point in the distant past, he willingly bound himself to the ancestral line from which Naomi descends; if the fox is to be believed, he is Naomi’s many times great-grandfather. It was this connection, combined with a confluence of factors that neither party has elected to describe, which allowed the fox to bestow power upon Naomi in the first place. It would seem, however, that this was not without consequence — the pair independently describe a “soul-deep” connection between them, and have shown marked distress as the distance between them increases. It is unknown what this theoretical maximum distance is, but it shall not be tested, for Gorou was quite clear as to the consequence of exceeding it: if the pair are ever taken too far apart from one another, they will both die.

  I have no way of knowing whether the fox was truthful in saying this, but I have no desire to ever test this.

  This particular issue has been central to the difficulties with the Repatriation Treaty. Neither can be apart from the other, but one is a citizen of the United States, while the other is a citizen (or if the viewpoint of those more foolish men among us somehow prevail, the property) of Japan. Both have an undeniable claim on one, and the refusal to simply cede the other.

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  There does seem to be a potential wedge I can push on here, however. With any luck, a resolution shall be reached before young Naomi’s birthday next year. Her true birthday, that is, as opposed to either day surrounding. It will be a leap year, after all.

  18/03/2006

  (The words scrawled below the date have a frantic, almost angry sloppiness to their penmanship. The page is slightly torn, ink bleeding in places, i’s bereft of dots, t’s bearing the barest impression of a cross, words flowing into one another with hardly a moment to lift the pen, let alone allow the mind to think.)

  It happened. Exactly what I was afraid of. Loose lips sink ships, I have said time and time and time again. But of course somebody talked. Of course somebody put the matter to pen and simply left it out for any buffoon to read, or spoke of such matters heedless of who else might be in the room.

  She is safe, the poor girl. Traumatized, yes, but safe. She was not harmed, nor touched, nor targeted, nor so much as considered. She was not the target.

  It was the fox they were after. They wanted Gorou. Not for the power he might bestow, oh no it was not that, there is nothing for him to give for there was nothing truly given in the first place, I understood this after the very first private conversation he and I shared. No, they did not want power. They wanted knowledge.

  Six hundred years. Six hundred years of knowledge, held by a being seemingly bereft of its ability to fight back after bestowing that power upon another. Oh how wrong they were. Their envoys are ash, now, and not even their souls knew for whom they truly sought the fox.

  I know not who would dare, and I cannot busy myself with such a search. Not now. Not yet. Not when Naomi needs my help. But as I write these words, I make them into a promise. The monsters behind this will be found.

  And they will be made to suffer.

  23/07/2011

  She’s graduated from Oxford.

  It’s bittersweet. Yes, with dear Naomi graduating, my sabbatical is at an end, and I am free to return to the global stage once more. And I will admit, I have felt some pressure to simply leave Naomi with the run of the place, spend a few weeks handling the same matters that I have seen slipping through the fingers of those who are simply less competent, so it shall be with some relief that I am once more free to pursue this endless mission of mine.

  But at the same time, this has been

  (However the sentence may have finished, none shall ever know. The words that continue beneath it are in a different ink, from a different pen.)

  She got me a present. The girl graduates from college, and gets me a present? Bloody hell. I suppose I shall have to remember to wind this pocket watch, then. Far better than a pager, good riddance to bad rubbish, though I am not sure the so-called smartphones of the era are at all an improvement.

  (In the margins is another sentence, written perpendicular: Addendum 23/07/2018, seven years later, ‘smartphones’ are even worse rubbish)

  Regardless. Naomi has come so far from the lost, scared girl I first met eight years ago. She is intelligent, willful, witty, and mischievous; but above all, she is kind. Good. In her chest beats the heart of an altruist.

  She wishes to return to the United States. I had anticipated this, truly, but it will still be hard to watch her walk right back into the same lion’s den that has caused her so much pain. But she has goals, ambitions, and desires, none of which she can see through on this little isle. And so, she must depart. After four years of her company, after four years as an odd little family, it will be hard to see her go.

  And though my heart is heavier for her imminent departure, I am so very proud of her.

  Addendum — never, ever, ever let Naomi near an open bar ever again. That was a mistake. And on the same token, it would be better to not introduce her to Faye until she is more averse to the lure of liquid courage, else whatever city the two are in may not survive the evening.

  07/01/2021

  We are seeing activity in Europe again. Activity from the same sorts as caused Naomi such pain in 2006. I have already passed along a warning to Gorou, away from Naomi’s ears. There is enough on the poor girl’s plate already, and I have no desire to dredge up old ghosts.

  The less she knows of this matter, the better. Should the need arise, Gorou shall inform her, and the pair of us shall weather her ire.

  I remain unsure if they have made any progress on their apparent goals, but if they have, then it is all but inevitable that they shall trouble Naomi and Gorou once more. But should this come to pass, it will not be for the same reason as before.

  Whatever it is these malcontents seek, the insight of Gorou’s centuries as a bodiless spirit will not suffice. No; if whatever led them to the Giant’s Causeway is any indication, they have likely already found some other source of that information. Their interest in Naomi will be the same as their interest in my King.

  They seek a proof of concept.

  But if that is the case, if they do indeed wish to put their apparent goals to the test, then why might they eventually desire Naomi and Gorou once more?

  In hindsight, it is obvious. It is a revelation that has been staring me in the face for the better part of two decades, one that I had been ignoring due to the potential ramifications. The answer has been there, I simply refused to assemble the pieces. But I can deny it no longer. Naomi’s account of her empowerment is very clear: her first willful use of her foxfire was as an unpowered human.

  This should be impossible. And yet, both Naomi and Gorou have corroborated it, and a brief experiment courtesy of her cousins has given a clear answer.

  Despite all appearances, despite all insistence to the contrary, Naomi Ziegler is not an A1 Moonshot.

  The existing classifications, imperfect as they are, cannot properly define her existence. But it is better that they not. The more I witness the results of my involvement in that process, the greater my satisfaction with guiding them as I did. No mortal classification system should be perfect. There must always be those existences that exist outside of humanity’s propensity towards neat little boxes.

  And while I had initially left that hole for myself to slip through, it is sheer serendipity that it would again be so useful a full fifty years later.

  09/09/2022

  Bloody hell, Naomi. Another fox? Were you and Gorou not enough already?