"Uh, hang on, there's kinda fifty options," Emma laughs.

The other students crowd around, staring at the menu and chattering about their favorite toppings. The store was already busy even before they arrived, and their group has promoted it from "crowded" to "downright packed". Nita's the only one among them with a Linear kid's instincts, the only one who might have been keeping an eye out, but the mall is supposed to be safe. They're in a group, they come here all the time; no one's on edge.

But the Center and its parapsychics are not universally popular, and the negative propaganda claiming they "malingered" on space station work persists in some places, and a group of Center-clad children in one of their known hangouts are a tempting target.

The older members of the Center have mostly shielded their charges from the political workings of the world outside. If they hadn't, maybe the students would have understood why suddenly there were angry adults charging at them, yelling.

Some have weapons. Everyone screams.

Nita's up near the front and can't tell what's happening- she grabs for Emma-

Emma grabs back. "I don't- Nita- get us out, get us out-"

And Nita sees the people charging, and the one nearest her has a gun, why does he have a gun, he's aiming at them and screaming about parapsychic freaks- her mind is jumping, she sees him and then her father and then the gun and then <Witch! Witch!> in her mother's voice- and she screams, not again, not again, she's not a freak, what, why- and she flails for power, the store goes dark as she draws power from the lights, the mall goes dark, the mall's generators, she has to get them out out out-

And then they're somewhere else.

Somewhere else is a farmful of cocoa plants, near a little building with a sign in a completely unfamiliar language.

Nita takes a step towards it. Or she tries, and then falls over. That took sooOOooo much enERgyyyzzzzz.

Someone with vibrantly orange hair sees them out the window and frowns in puzzlement.

Emma goes from panic (GUNS) to less panic (Nita got them away, these are unthreatening plants) to panic again (those are unfamiliar plants, where ARE they?) to more panic (NITA) to calmer (she's seen Nita overwork herself before) and then right back to panic. She attempts to get Nita to be at least slightly more comfortable, then sits next to her to have a nice, protracted freakout. She does not notice the people inside.

The orange lady limps out of the building towards her.

She looks up when the lady is close enough. She doesn't stare at the weird dye choice, because it's not polite to stare, but that means she doesn't pay her much mind either; she's just petting Nita's hair and sitting awkwardly in the field. She can stop sobbing for the sake of a spectator but she's definitely still sniffling.

The orange lady says, "Excuse me, is your friend hurt?"

...that's... a weird language. This fact gets examined briefly, then discarded in favor of the more pressing internal freakout. And responding, she should probably do that.

"Uh, she-" sniff "she's, no, I don't think, um. Just. Just overworked? She saved us-" and then the tears are back.

"...from what?"

"My birthday party?" Emma says bitterly. "I don't even know, they just, um- there was yelling and people I didn't know and they had guns and she got us out-" sniff.

"...your what party?"

Emma tries to clear her throat and sniffle less; speaking the language doesn't help if she mumbles. "My birthday party."

"......I didn't hear any guns."

"I didn't hear- oh god I hope everyone's okay-" she has to wipe her eyes before continuing, "Nita, um, my friend? She 'ported us out, the guns weren't here."

"...beg pardon?"

"Sorry, um, there were people with guns, we got away, can we just-" she rubs at her eyes again, more out of exhaustion than need. "Um, could we maybe have some water, please? She'll be tired, when she wakes up. This is, uh, I don't even recognize here, she must have jumped us a really long way."

"...I can get you water, yes."

She goes and comes out with paper cupsful of water.

"Thank you," Emma says politely, then sips hers quietly while she watches her friend.

Halfway through the cup of water, Nita stirs.

"Nita? Nita! God, you scared me- here, drink this-" she offers the second cup.

Nita groans. "Ow, my head. I am not doing that again aaaanytime soon." She manages a couple sips of water from a mostly reclining position, then blinks up at the woman next to Emma. "Er, Ems, who's she?"

"She-" She blinks, then switches back from English to, well, whatever this is. "She says thank you." She's sure Nita would've, really. "What's your name? I'm Emma, she's Nita."

Nita does not know enough about languages to notice any oddities, and has the migraine of the year. Possibly the century. She'll just sit here and drink her water and let Emma do the translating, that seems like a good plan right now.

"I'm Vae," says the local. "I still don't understand where you came from."

"We're from just outside Jerhattan. Where are we now, please?"

"...this is Yvalta. Where is Jerhattan?"

It's... kind of weird not to have heard of Jerhattan, since even if you're not from America it's still by far the biggest city on the Eastern seaboard, but it's not like Emma's heard of Yvalta either. "It's in America, on the east coast. What country is Yvalta in?"

"Yvalta is a country. I've never heard of America, is it a province of Tapa or something?"

...

"Nita, have you ever heard of a country called Yvalta? Or Tapa?"

"No..? And aaaah don't make me think, ow."

"Okay, then I have no idea where we are." She pets Nita's hair carefully. "Except safe, so, uh, thanks again for that."

To the woman, she replies, "I have never heard of Yvalta, and, um, I studied a lot of countries." She didn't take the optional Teacher module on it originally, but once they started her on languages at the Center they made sure she at least knew the list of member states, and there was definitely no Yvalta, or Tapa. And she'd be able to translate the name, if it was just a problem with the local language... "America is a country. And a continent, I guess. I think we are, uh, lost." Is there a more emphatic word for lost? They are very lost.

"...a continent? I'm sure I know all the continents..."

"Um, do you have a map? I could maybe point it out."

The woman pulls a device out of a pocket and looks one up.

The device is unfamiliar, and weirdly high tech for a farm, and that map is not Earth.

"Nita, look at this, I don't know where we are."

Nita peers at the device. "What's this a map of?"

"Apparently the planet!"

"...noooo it's not."

"I know!"

"I think my friend teleported us, um, much farther than we thought."

"...teleported?" asks the woman skeptically.

"Uh. Yes? Psychic talents got discovered, um, maybe a hundred years ago, I forget."

"...oh, is this a role playing thing? You're very talented actors - I'm a doctor and I really thought she was out -"

The language doesn't have gendered pronouns and she's switched from uncertain-generic to specifically something.

Emma's encountered more than one language without gendered pronouns, but none of the options she's coming up with for that specific pronoun make any sense (neither of them is wearing green?) so she ignores it. "Out where? Oh, like unconscious- uh, no, no acting here. I do languages, she can teleport-"

"Hey, Nita, can you lift something quick? I'm sorry, I know it'll hurt like hell, but she's never heard of the Center and she thinks I'm making it up..."

"Argh. You owe me aaaaaall the painkillers, you know that, right?" And Emma's empty water cup can bob its way through thin air over to the woman. "Does she seriously think that map is right, that's not even sorta the right continents."

The woman shrieks when the cup levitates.

And Nita [flinches slightly and braces herself for the shouts of "freak" that can't happen when she doesn't even know the language and] drops the cup back with Emma.

"I promise we teleported!" Nita teleported, Emma can barely manage telepathy, close enough. "If that is really a map of the world and not, um, a prank or a book or something, we are very lost and I don't know how to get back to Jerhattan!"

"How did you do that?!?!"

"...I, uh, am really not good at theory and all I know is 'quantum mechanics somehow', sorry." She hides the offending cup behind her back. "Um, I didn't mean to scare you, I'm sorry, it was just an easy way to explain."

"Are you really aliens?"

Emma doesn't want to start an entirely telepathic conversation with Nita while she's still recovering, but she can manage bouncing a translation of that last word with a visual of their faces with green antenna. Nita giggles weakly around another sip of water.

"Uh, you look pretty normal to me except for the hair, but unless you're lying about what the planet looks like, um, that is not my planet. So we're going to have to figure out how to get home, but uh. Yeah, I guess?"

"The hair - the - that's your real hair colors, then?"

"Yes! And people know about telekinesis and I know where all the countries are and- oh god, you're not going to burn us as witches or something, are you, once Nita is rested we can just go home..."

"- what? No! You're aliens who can travel to other planets!"

"...uh... it wasn't really on purpose? And we want to go home eventually, I mean, it's, um. Home. My parents are there, Nita has siblings, you know. But I bet there's like, businessmen who'd pay Nita to run trade ships or something eventually." She can just imagine her father's face- well, now she's tearing up again, but he'll be so excited when (yes when, not if) they get home to Jerhattan.

"I - we need to get to more planets, we need to be able to colonize planets -"

"Uh. I mean, that's not that surprising? Um, we're working on it but I don't know how the ships are doing, they only even just finished the space station. Maybe Nita can get that to work too, but we don't even know what she did? Seems like the sort of thing that governments and business people would talk about, all our governments are working on the space stuff together."

"- you only have one space station?"

"We only just finished it so, uh, yeah?"

"We have moon arcologies, we can live in space, we just need to get to planets with the right length of seasons and atmosphere -"

"Uh, we have a moon base, if that's what you mean by arcology? The space station is to build colony ships, not to live on."

Nita tugs on Emma's leg. "...I moved a cup and she shrieked and you have just been babbling. Explaaaaaain," she complains.

"She's really into space or something? Uh, or drank their version of the space station koolaid, I don't know. She keeps asking about planets but their space stuff sounds way ahead of ours, it's weird. You okay? I can't talk to both of you at the same time unless I" bounce the translation, and-

-ow, okay, later.

"- do you need anything besides water -"

"She wants to know if we need anything. Um, you're probably our only way home, so... what do you need?"

"Sleep. And food and water. And sleep," Nita says, tempted to laugh but far too tired to try. "I don't even know how I got us here, either."

"She says mostly just tired and hungry, but we don't have, um, money or ID or anything, is there somewhere we could go? A shelter or something?" She probably needs a longer term plan than that, but she has a lot of internal screaming to do before she can worry about anything else.

"- I can take you into the clinic but people will notice you. They won't - nobody'll hurt you, you're aliens, but you might get whisked off or asked a lot of questions or something, I don't know, I'm not an alien -"

"I could deal with questions, but would they, um, separate us?"

Nita's the only one who can teleport, if people take them away and split them up Emma can never get home...

"I don't know. I'm not anybody important, I don't even have one kid, I don't know the blues, I'm sorry."

Emma looks down at Nita, exhausted and hungry and clearly fighting a migraine, and just as stranded as she is. She'll just have to take her chances with this weird unfamiliar country. "That's okay, it's okay! Uh, sorry to stress you out, it's just. Been a long day." She gathers up Nita's cup and offers both cups back to the woman. "Food and a place to sleep would be amazing, if it's not too much trouble to show us where."

"I can put you in the clinic and feed you blood draw snacks if nobody's figured out you're not just cosplayers by the time my shift is over I can bring you home?"

It occurs to Emma briefly to worry about trusting a random stranger. But exhaustion and the fact that the random stranger is not literally shooting her win out. "Yes, please."

The local leads them to the clinic and puts them in beds and gives them starchy sweet things in packets.

The starchy sweet things are unfamiliar but Emma barely manages to worry if they're edible. Wherever they are, the only thing that seems abnormal is the hair and the languages; the food gets about the same level of concern as she might in a new place at home, wondering if unfamiliar dishes are spicy.

Nita barely manages half a packet before dropping off on her bed. Emma eats the rest of it in addition to hers, and tucks a couple extras in her purse just in case. Then she lies there, trying not to panic. She doesn't know what's going on, she doesn't know where they are, and if this isn't an elaborate prank and they really did land somewhere totally alien, with no parapsychics at all... well, she needs to stay with Nita, that's the most important thing. She lies on her cot, staring worriedly at her friend, while reviewing the things she's already said as best she can. She wishes she knew how to help or what to d......

...and the adrenaline crash catches up to her and she's out too.

The orange attempts to wake them up when her shift is over a few hours later.

"grrrrrrnphhhhhl."

Nita is a bit more of a morning person, and manages, "Hmm? Oh. Morning." This would probably be more useful if she spoke any form of the local language.

She tries to sit up and open her eyes, re-encounters her earlier migraine, and flops back down with a whimper of pain.

"...the clinic is closing."

"Clo-" Emma blinks a lot and sits up, looks around in confusion. Then her eyes focus on the woman's hair and her brain near-visibly catches up with her.

Why couldn't it have been a bad dream-

She rubs her eyes and makes a somewhat futile attempt at getting her hair out of her eyes. Stuttering an awkward thank you, she reaches over to shake her friend. "Nita, c'mon, we gotta go," she mumbles sleepily.

"It hurts, I can't- my head-"

"Wha-" Emma pets her hair soothingly, trying to think, "-it wasn't this bad before, was it-"

"It hurt then too, I just sorta tried to ignore it..." Nita tries to focus. She did this earlier, through the pain. Did the pain get worse? What was she- "I don't think the cup helped, Ems, I did way too much, ow."

Emma flinches. She asked Nita for that, asked her to move that cup, and now she was crying in pain and couldn't sit up and why didn't she think of something else to prove her point. "She's got a migraine, I don't know if she can get far," she says, still worriedly petting Nita's hair. "Do you have painkillers? Uh, can she even take painkillers, I don't know..."

"...if you're aliens I don't know if you can take the same things. I have them but they might hurt her."

"I could try saying, um... acetaminophen? Ibuprofen? Opioids? Uh, I don't know how well it all translates."

"I don't know how your translation thing works - do you know any of the chemical structures -"

Emma is not an exemplary chemistry student, but her courses in Teacher were fairly recent as it goes and she took some medical focused units just for fun; she can manage most of acetaminophen's.

"Yes, I have that. Do you know how much is safe for you?"

"...Um. I can give you my weight in kilograms and convert it to milligrams, I think?"

"Sure -" She can weigh Emma and do some arithmetic.

Emma measures Nita a reasonably strong dose and offers it to her. "They found Tylenol. Uh, it won't kick in yet, but if I get you water and maybe something to cover your eyes, can you move? We should, uh, not sleep here past close, probably."

Nita mumbles something unhappy but manages to become mobile with a combination of water, painkillers, and hair petting. The pillow case wrapped around her head will not set fashion standards, but at least it's darker.

The orange finds a scarf for Emma's hair so they will get fewer questions on the bus. The bus ride is bumpy.

Nita curls up on Emma's shoulder-then-lap and whimpers occasionally when they hit a particularly bad bump, but eventually slides into a less painful state half dozing, half painkillers. Emma pets her quietly and is careful not to dislodge her pillowcase.

And now they are at a little apartment building and the elevator ride up to the orange's place is quite smooth.

Nita is asleep again as soon as she hits a horizontal surface.

The horizontal surface is a soft couch, from which the orange has hastily cleared decorative pillows. There's another just like it, at a shallower-than-right angle to the first and oriented around a glass-topped table; the orange motions for Emma to sit there. "Can I get you anything -"

Emma does not so much sit as let her legs give out. She's not tired, per se, she's not burned out like Nita and she already napped through the adrenaline crash at the clinic. But she's lost and confused and Nita is sick and she has no idea what to do- she derails the train of thought as best she can before she starts crying again. It won't help, it won't-

Some tears sneak out. She manages not to start sobbing outright.

"I don't- I just- thank you, um, you've been so nice already, I just. Really need her to be okay."

"Can I get her anything?"

"Uh, I don't really know, I'm not a doctor or anything... painkillers and water and sleep, is most of it I think? It takes a long time to recover." She looks worriedly at Nita's couch. "And I can't just leave her on your couch, you've been too kind already." (And we're already imposing and can't forever, but we're stranded and clueless and don't know anything else...)

"If she stays unconscious I know how to get water into - Amentans, and you look similar... My husband won't mind."

Emma has no useful life skills here beyond an ability to translate, she can't take care of Nita herself. Imposing it is. "Thank you. Thank you, I don't know what we'd have done. Um, is there anything I could do to help around the house or anything? I can cook- uh, maybe not here I can't- I can clean things?"

"- oh, no, that's not necessary."

"Are you sure? Or if you need something translated, but, uh. There's not much I know how to do here."

"It's really all right. You're lost aliens and we don't mind having you on the sofas."

Emma manages a weak giggle. "I don't feel like an alien."

"I suppose one wouldn't."

"You don't even look that different. I guess some science people somewhere will be happy." She frowns. She recognizes that grammar, the woman used it earlier about actors- "...are your words colored somehow?"

"- colored?"

"I'm not sure I have the right concepts- uh, the words for doctors and scientists are different and I can't figure out how and all my brain is coming up with is 'green'?"

"Oh, yes, greens are scientists. Oranges are doctors. In some countries greens are doctors but not here."

Those are clearly noun-colors not adjective-colors. "Uh, so what, oranges like your hair? Am I a brown?"

"I don't know if you're a brown. Is that how aliens do castes?"

"Oh, it's a caste system thing? No, we mostly don't have those. Well, um, some of my dad's business friends are [Vaishya], I guess?"

"Oh, how odd. We have a caste system. I'm an orange."