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 -
"Is this a normal thing in Fairyland? If someone here were torturing people until they could control them they'd get Birdcaged, and I don't think even I would object."
"Took some rocks," coughs Yellow, "turned out to be part of an art project."
"Only would be pushing it. And little as I hold with torture it's probably not fair to summarize it solely as 'he took some of her art and so she tortured him'. If she thought he was planning to escalate at some moment not of her choosing, or thought that looking like a pushover to him or someone else would make her seem like a good target for similar treatment..."
"Well, that's a little less bad. And still somehow doesn't make it any less of a place to stay away from."
Promise and Yellow go through a different gate.
It does have water. Paige washes off what she can, then she leaves a note for Promise and leaves to change clothes and re-acclimatize to the normal world.
And then thinks of an experiment she wants to try, but first she has to fly to the PRT building and use her existing gate. (And stop to see if there are any messages for her there.)
Nothing urgent. Nilbog is still surprisingly content and is gradually coming around to the idea of helping them. The E88 has been doing more or less their normal amount of crime, aside from trying to expand into what used to be ABB territory before all three ABB capes got captured. They're occasionally skirmishing with the Travelers, Undersiders, or heroes. None of the E88 news is obviously relevant to the names situation. They could bring in the top two now, but the PRT would prefer to wait a bit longer for extra surety.
Promise has been meaning to spend some downtime checking out that cape forum. She is not too familiar with the interface, but eventually she figures out how to make an account, name it "Promise" (...that wouldn't be her nickname if it was not what she wanted to be called), and write a reassurance in her profile that she uses a custom computer that redacts names for her so you're safe even if your screen name is a pun or shortening or something.
What are they talking about here today?
Some of the threads are obvious continuations of ongoing conversations ("The Endbringers, Thread XXXIII"), some are things currently in the headlines (a Protectorate hero used a racial slur on camera), and in Boards ► News ► Events ►America there's a topic about her. Speculating on her powers, whether the invisible person who got Bakuda is the same unknown winged figure who was seen immediately afterward, and, if she's as powerful as she appeared in that fight, why there are still villains in Brockton Bay. The general consensus is that there's probably some limitation other than the names. Once she does anything people will see, the warning on her profile might dispel that.
A "verified cape" tag has appeared next to her name. Well, this is her weird custom computer, maybe the software can sense that somehow.
One or two commenters are even reassured by her being ethical about manes.
I am not a mortal. I am a fairy.
The name redaction might make that post incomprehensible, but the general sense of it is shared by some of the ones around it.
I don't have either of those proper nouns in my safe list so I'm just seeing numbers ("096773" and "133468"), which probably means I've never heard of them. When I say I'm a fairy I mean I am an immortal winged sapient creature from Fairyland, and I am not and have never been a human. I can't speculate on why 096773 might call herself a fairy; I'm told that no one matching my description of fairies has been encountered before.
But most of the responses are about fairies and Fairyland: how did she get here, can she go back, can other people go there, how immortal, are there more of her. For mow most are taking it roughly like that one cape in Chicago who calls himself a wizard: no need to believe Promise, but that doesn't mean they can't be curious.
She got here by accident. She can go back; she certainly doesn't live here. Other people should definitely not go there because most fairies have at least some of her powers and are not really big on the whole being nice to mortals thing. She is pretty sure she is totally immortal but she can still be injured like anyone else and doesn't like it so she'd rather not undergo any tests. The kind of fairy she in particular is is called a "leaflet", and there are more leaflets (although she hasn't personally met any others; they aren't that common) and many more fairies in general.
Other people want to know about Fairyland's society and population and physics and will basically never run out of questions until she stops giving information. Interspersed are requests for her to shut down particular villains, requests for her not to prioritize other ones, and people of varying degrees of impoliteness asking why she hasn't already.
She reminds everyone that she only sees numbers when they type names, personal or cape, and therefore cannot do anything about any of their requests because she does not know who they are talking about and she's not going to circumvent her own security measures to find out.
The end result is people being broadly the correct amount of scared of Fairyland, along with a general norm of not trying to come up with ways around the proper noun filter. (Not that everyone follows it, but even they usually test with names of places instead of people.) The geography, in particular the non-roundness of the location, gets some of the posters excited about how gravity must be different there, but most of the PHO denizens are more interested in her career as a cape.
Promise considers the wisdom of actually listing supervillains (several) and rogues (one) and PRT directors (one) who are currently her vassals. She considers the wisdom of this action inadequate. I think I'll let people who know more about information security than I do tell you what I've been up to or not as the case may be. I don't think of myself as having a 'career' as a cape, though. That seems like a very mortal concept. I just want to be helpful and pick up useful things while I'm here.
Er, so we're clear, 'useful things' doesn't include mortals, does it? If fairies in general aren't worried about ethics....
Really? You've seen how careful she is about names.
I'm just saying, what're the odds we get the single decent one. For all we know she's just holding out until she can get the Triumvirate or something.
Useful things like Tinkertech and the concept of the internet, people. Although if someone wants to take the question of whether I could collect whoever the Triumvirate are with various sets of who I'm rumored to already have to the "versus" forum that would be kind of entertaining.