Better not linger in her starting place too much longer. Yellow's faster than her and may have already come home to a wreck. Thorn might have a habit of checking up on the place, even, just in case. She's invisible, inaudible, unsmellable - that won't help if he sends someone thorough. Or comes in person.
She sets out.
She's been flying for about thirty minutes after her shopping trip when she falls through a tear and squeaks inaudibly and lands in the middle of -
"I am, in fact, talking, for a real period of time," Promise says. "I have no idea what it sounds like to you, but so far in my life I haven't run into anyone who thinks I'm done talking before or after I really am."
"It's not as if it's logically impossible. Time to express something isn't constant; maybe some people would just think fairies talk faster or slower to get through however many words it is in their language."
"Maybe. You're welcome to have me talk to people who speak denser or more spread-out languages and see what they say, I guess, I did say I don't mind translating."
Speaking of directly useful, the defect in the harmonics flattener has hopefully been fixed.
So Promise does another map to check - "confirm flatness" is a lot faster than "map complexity" - and then she turns invisible again.
It outlasts the last attempt with no loss of the magic smoke. "This might be premature, but it seems to have worked. Try adding more sorcery, as complex as you can, and see if it gets overwhelmed."
She layers on her other undetectabilities - she will still show up on the vibration sensor, but goes inaudible and unsmellable. She grows her hair a half-inch, in lieu of actual healing. She screws around with the temperature in fine-grained ways, all within the boundaries of comfort.
The device's power consumption rises (marginally; Promise's sorcery affects harmonics far less than being in the mortal world does) but it continues to not explode.
Presently she zeroes everything out, except the hair growth, which stays. "Putting it further through its paces would begin to be difficult."
"That's good; it means it can handle at least as much as it's likely to need to. Though I wouldn't recommend relying on this for anything important until its duration has been tested more. Tested by something other than long-term invisibility, obviously."
"I could bring it back to Fairyland and try using it to grow plants rapidly. I can work on that for hours, and if I'm interrupted it's not a disaster."
"This button turns it on or off, that switch is if you want to reverse the effect, and you can alter the affected area with these knobs. If it breaks there isn't likely to be much you can do about it, but ask me and I'll fix it. By the time you're back we'll have a proposition drawn up about the gates, and hopefully some way to convince you to work with us."
She puts the flattener under her arm and her bag over her other shoulder and goes through the gate.
On the other side, she shuts the gate, and then she investigates the Valley Continent.
Eventually she finds a nice roomy glade with no nearby neighbors and a brook and space for her tree and food. She sets up the flattener, and she plants the tree cutting from her bag, and she plants the rest of her seeds, and then she grows the fuck out of all of them until they are big and she can have a satisfying lunch. Then she concentrates on the tree; she misses sleeping inside her tree.
The flattener works just fine. Presently her tree is big enough to curl up inside and tuck the flattener into as well. She force grows a bit of fluff for a pillow. She sleeps.
When she wakes up, she forces more growth into the tree, does a more thorough inspection of the environs, and then collects the flattener, goes back to her gate, opens it, and goes through.
A man in a grinning mask appears out of nowhere at one end of the hallway, stabs a human with one of his myriad knives, and then dissolves into ash. During the stabbing an identical man appears at the other end, drops a handheld object, and dives down a staircase. An explosion fills the corridor while he makes his escape.
The fuck.
Well, her room is still expanded and she still has the flattener. She can fix the human and maybe the human knows what's going on. Flattener on and near-enough human: check. Healing - go.
The human successfully becomes less stabbed, and assumes Promise is a cape. She manages to cough out a brief description: teleporter, temporary duplicates stay behind, watch out for suicide bombings. He's got to be here to rescue Lung, locked up three floors down but he'll be checking them one at a time.
"Lung is very dangerous, he gets stronger the longer he fights and whole teams have failed to bring him in. If you think you can prevent the breakout, go quick, but more capes won't be here for minutes. It's just you and the PRT."
Down she and her flattener, both invisible etc., go.