The Tinkers set up the enormous mass of incomprehensibility and turn it on.

Promise attempts a fairylight in the affected area.

It flickers and stabilizes, then winks out. "Two point seven seconds. Good, needs to be better."

"By a lot. Lights are the simplest thing. If it shredded a light that fast, invisibility or something like that wouldn't last long enough to be worth casting."

"Traditionally, the first test doesn't work at all. We can probably have one that lasts a useful time by... do fairies need to sleep?"

"Yes."

"Probably some time tomorrow."

"That would be nice, especially if I'm going to be traveling back and forth and doing things here."

"The device won't last forever – maybe years, not centuries – but I can maintain it in exchange for sorcery training. Though I imagine the Protectorate would want me to keep it working anyway."

"I haven't fully decided how comfortable I am working with the Protectorate. It seems... well-intentioned, and I'm not sure how high a standard is realistic for human organizations, but..."

"Without the Protectorate, the country would have fallen apart ten years ago. Probably the world. It's not the only thing preventing that, but it's the main one, and working with us is definitely better than not doing it."

"I don't really have a good understanding of why one might value a country per se. Or what you mean by 'fallen apart'. How do you know what would have happened?"

"For one, it's the reason we don't have powerful parahumans proclaiming themselves warlords of Brockton Bay. There was one, before my time, but the heroes stopped him. Other places don't have a Protectorate, and sometimes they do have exactly that happen. And in Endbringer fights it's more often than not this group that makes the difference."

"I think we've more or less determined that my abilities are a nonentity versus Endbringers."

"Directly, yes. That's true of most capes. You'd be surprised how many powers can be useful in support roles, and for yours I don't even have to think very hard."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I'm good enough at healing that I won't accidentally kill anyone, although healing strangers is dicey. The gates would have to go through Fairyland; gates in general only go between worlds, not point to point within them. And that has its own pitfalls. I can do darkness; I don't know about radiation shielding. I can freeze water, but I don't know how large a quantity you have in mind."

"I could maybe put them very close together so that you'd spend almost no time at all between them."

"Then they'd only go between two cities instead of to anywhere with a gate, but I'm sure the people making the call would be in favor if you tell them Fairyland is that dangerous."

"Gates don't take long to make, anyway, it's only that they take a while to settle if they don't do it right away." She goes back into her Vistaed room and throws something at her gate in progress.

"Well, according to my informative pamphlets that's the socially responsible thing to do, but I'm a little concerned about how filtered my information has been. I'll probably want to retain independent status regardless of whether I wind up following 'independent' with 'hero' or 'rogue' and regardless of how much work I wind up doing with the Protectorate. I suspect trying to fit me into a formal organization intended for mortals would not work very well."