Confusion

Wow, that fucking sucked. There must have been a teleporter nearby to save her from the fall? Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Where the hell is she?

Far, far, away...

It was too early in the morning for bodies. This one was moving, which is good, but also was soaking wet on the dry pavement, which was confusing. It figured on the one day a month she actually wandered the streets of her area of command she'd end up finding something non-standard. And today her daily headache seemed to be taking the form of a soaking wet teenage girl in a mask lying face down and groaning on the hard concrete. It was unclear if she was injured, drunk, a criminal, or some combination of the three.

"Hey," she says, poking the girl with the toe of her boot. At least Kara couldn't see any visible weapons. Was that the smell of salt? "Do you require assistance?"

Thinking on her feet in a disorienting situation is exactly what she's good at. Who is this? Where is she?

PAIN.

FUCK. Something's wrong; she shouldn't be getting headaches right away, even if she was using her power for the past hour of the Leviathan situation.

Okay, maybe she can just draw more local conclusions, that should be easier to-

PAIN.

Fuck fuck okay okay, what about just drawing normal conclusions from what she can see. Barely using her power at all. Keep conclusions as close as possible to what a normal human could do.

Uniform. Stilted language. Police? Definitely some kind of peace-keeping official. Does she have any obvious parahuman ability (does anyone here where is here OUCH NEVER MIND). Stay focused, that doesn't matter, what matters is the next ten seconds. You're in a strange place wearing a supervillain outfit and the fucking cops are asking if you're okay.

Asking for help- there will be more information, information she doesn't have to pay for later (or right away WHY is her power acting like this). But there will be more information she has to give. And they might not like the answers.

Running- will give her more time to get her bearings on her own. Will possibly anger whoever this is. No obvious tension in her body, this is someone who's not worried for her safety when finding a strange teenager on the street. Backup? She's either part of a large security apparatus, or not someone to fuck with by herself. Is it easy to tell roughly how athletic she is just from other physical attributes FUCK no it is not easy to tell.

Fight- not her favorite option even if she wasn't rolling into the worst feedback headache she's ever had. And not if she can't even tell what this person is capable of. Strictly worse than the other options.

Breathe. Only about another second to make a decion. Okay, if those are the options, the choice is easy. If everything gets her in trouble, what gives her the best kind of trouble to get out of?

"Yes, please!" Lisa says, coughing on residual seawater.

Saltwater? As far as she knows none of the industrial processes in this area require large amounts of saltwater. And she is sure none of the drug manufacturing does. Besides, there's no vat this girl could have tumbled out of; she's lying in front of a shuttered restaurant. A few speeders had zipped by earlier, but Kara couldn't imagine why someone would want to bike through District 17 with a wet girl and dump her on the sidewalk. Could she have been robbed and left here somehow? But then why the mask? She can't decide if this person is a victim or someone who is going to pull a blaster on her. 

Kara kneels on the sidewalk, grabbing the girl by the back of her...costume and pulling her into a sitting position as gently as possible. "Just breathe," Kara tries to sound soothing, but it isn't her strong suit. "My name is Special Lieutenant Kara Alvinn. Can you tell me what happened?" 

Lisa coughs again. "I... fell." Glancing up at the nearest business, maybe there's a more normal version of the truth that can be spun together- oh. None of those words look like words. That's... going to be a problem. A problem for future Lisa.

Slowly. Telling the first person that you meet everything you think happened is a great way to end up in an asylum or prison in a foreign...

Country? Planet?? Galaxy???- FUCK

"Sorry, I'm in a lot of pain right now. Not just the fall, I get headaches." What does this woman want, I could get up and walk away and maybe she'd just let me do it, but then I'm alone and probably can't safely read and have no identity or contacts.

She looks up, trying not to grimace as she smiles. Sometimes the most common moves are common for a reason. "What's your appetite for interesting, unbelievable stories? I bet I have one that's higher in both than any you've ever heard."

Kara snorts. She wonders if this girl has any idea of the volume of interesting, unbelievable stories she was told on a near-daily basis. The thing that unbelievable stories tended to have in common is that they simply weren't true.

Which didn't mean you couldn't learn something from them.

"I'd be happy to have an explanation, regardless of whether or not you think I'll believe it." Kara says. She reaches to her belt, fishes around in a small pouch, and passes over two small blue pills to the girl. "Painkillers. For your headaches." Whether the girl takes them or not will also tell her something. This random child probably doesn't deserve this degree of scrutiny; in a few minutes Kara would probably find out she was some rich girl tripping out on dreamdust. But she hadn't gotten to where she was by being lazy. "Can you walk? My vehicle is nearby."

Lisa does exactly what she'd do if she had full access to her parahuman intiution- she knocks the pills back without thinking. Almost no chance anything worse than being knocked out could come from this, and even that's unlikely. And if she's right about some of her situation, her headaches are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

"I can walk, thanks." She gets up and will follow this woman.

She's sharp; not just intelligent, sharp like a knife. The question is, is she also the hand that holds it?

"I'm from another galaxy, possibly in another universe. I don't know how I got here, or where here is. I don't know why I can understand you but can't read anything on the signs on this street- that somehow makes less sense than the other crazy things. I have some ideas how to prove that I can't read, but they're not airtight and for all I know illiteracy is common here. I have other ideas about how to prove I'm really, really not from around here, not just crazy, but I don't know enough about here to know how convincing they'll be, and at least one idea will make you temporarily upset."

And with a grin tempered by the headache but bolstered by the lie as it comes out: "I don't like making people upset until I've known them for at least ten minutes."

Well, mystery solved, she guessed. The girl was high out of her mind. She looks clean and well-nourished though, which means she's probably not from around here. If nothing else, it would be unkind to leave her vulnerable in a rough neighborhood. "I'm not upset," Kara says. A little weariness seeps into her voice, the hint of genuineness tempering her voice into a more patient kindness. "If you're not from around here, I can take you back to the security hub. You don't want to be wandering around here with no id and strange clothes."

She absolutely does not want the girl trying to prove she's from another universe, realizing it's a drug addled fantasy, and then freaking out. Then again...someone from a planet who had been raised isolated from the rest of the Republic may very well think they had been taken to another galaxy. They'd also be unable to read. If that was the case, Kara's first lead in months could have just fallen into her lap. She's have to watch the girl for any signs of force sensitivity. 

She starts back towards her grav-car, body angled so she was at least partially facing the girl following her, passing the colorful pro-separatist graffiti she had seen coming down the street. The air was still cool, which tempered the smell of chemicals that permeated this entire district. "What's your planet called, then?" Hopefully the name the locals used would be the same as the Republic's designation.

"Earth. Well, Earth Bet, but the reasons for that aren't especially relevant. Special Lieutenant of what?" Lisa looks around as she moves towards Kara's car. "Big city." ouch "Very big city. The whole planet, really? Oh, you must have interstellar travel. We don't. Well, we tried, after Scion, but Behemoth didn't like it. I don't even want to think about what the Simurgh could do to astronauts stuck in a ship for months. Anyway."

Lisa doesn't usually listen when her power also tells her something is a bad idea.

"What are you looking for? I bet I could help."

Kara shoots a sidelong look at the girl. Kara hadn't heard of any star system named Earth; the word sounds exotic and unfamiliar. So, on one hand, the girl was high. On the other, she had been mysteriously taken from a pre-interstellar civilization and brought here; It could be that Scion and Behemoth were local deities, which would explain why the girl thought Kara would be familiar with them. Chance still heavily favored the drug possibility, but Kara feels a thrill of excitement at the prospect of finally having found one of the kidnapped youths she had been searching for. 

Excitement she immediately quashes. Not everything was something. Most things were nothing. Things move forward by inches, not feet. Besides, assuming she was looking for something was the most obvious cold read anyone had ever tried on her. "How would you help?" She asks. They're coming up on her grav-car.

Oh. Right. GS-TN. If the girl is from a low tech planet, seeing the driod would make her lose it. Actually, so would the flying. And the view of the planet. "We're about to get in a vehicle, it's called a car," she says, playing it safe in case the girl really is telling the truth. "Inside is a man made of metal; that's my partner, GS-TN. He's friendly." Well, not friendly at all. GS-TN is probably the least personable droid she'd ever met. But not hostile, in any case.

"Ohh, you think I'd be scared of a flying car. We don't have those, but we do have other things that fly in atmosphere. And we've got loads of books and movies with things like flying cars and robots- sentient brains of silicon instead of carbon." 

"I could help", she says, looking for a mechanical handle on the flying car before her, "because I can read people's minds." ow ow ow ow ow "I'm looking forward to meeting GS-TN, even if you don't think he's very friendly. People usually warm up to me quickly. Is GS-TN also a Special Lieutenant of the Coruscant Security Force?"

This is going to be quite a silly pull if her damn car or uniform just says it on the side, but the simplest alternative is pretending to be a drug-addled yokel until she ends up in some space-orphanage. That sounds boring. And it's not like Lisa's going to learn the language any faster if she never uses her power.

Lisa's left eye twitches, once.

"Just so we're clear, I've never heard the word Coruscant before in my life."

Kara rounds on the girl, eyes widening, reaching out and grabbing her by the shoulder and yanking her in close. Not gently, but firmly; Kara knows her body enough not to hurt someone. She very carefully does not look around her the rest of the mostly-empty city street. "That's all very interesting," she says, keeping her tone completely conversational. At this point Kara prays the girl can read minds. She makes eye contact. The girl seems smart, so hopefully this will get through to her, regardless. "But I can see the telltale signs of dreamdust around your eyes. There's no way otherwise you would be talking about reading minds on a city street." That last part comes out as a slight hiss. "Let's get you back to the hub and get you cleaned up and back to your family. I bet you remember their names now."

The costumed girl is very clearly sober, which means she is either lying, or exactly who Kara wanted to find. It's unlikely that the girl is a trap for her; Kara just doesn't have that sort of relationship with her quarry. But if anyone got a whiff that there was some random force sensitive girl wandering around, the girl would be bundled off to the Jedi temple in a heartbeat, or simply killed, if someone deemed she'd used her powers enough to be tainted by the dark side. And Kara was not letting either of those happen.

If this weird costumed idiot yokel had enough presence in the force to read minds, she wasn't just a clue, she was a potential asset, so long as she didn't go berserk and kill everyone. 

She releases the girl and lets the doors to the car click open, gesturing her inside, ready to follow her in.

Huh. Lisa has no idea what power brought her here, in front of this woman, but she's very thankful given that it sure seems like being a parahuman might be a death sentence on this planet. Lisa wonders if a less-discerning cop would have put a bullet in her immediately, or the local equivalent. Her eyes go unnaturally wide.

"Dream dust, yeah. Do you have more of it where we're going? I bet my parents would pay you if you brought me home. You're a nice lady. Not like my friends. They're the worst." Lisa leans against Kara, just a little, and wraps one arm around her shoulder.

Great. At least the girl is on the ball. Kara supports her into the car, getting her settled while she continues her banal patter. Kara slides into the back after her.

In the front seat, GS-TN rotates their head to look back at them. They're a typical coruscant security droid, bulky black body and round head with two circular cameras for eyes. They can't exactly raise an eyebrow, but Kara can tell they're focusing on the girl. After a second, they swivel back to the front. 

"Who's this." Their voice is flat, mechanical. Kara knows for a fact they have enough processing power for inflection, they just choose not to use it. Partly because it makes people underestimate them. Partly, Kara guesses, just to annoy her. 

"Rich girl strung out on dreamdust." Kara taps her fingers against her armrest as she talks, two fast, two slow, then three quick ones. As she does, she can feel a slight change in course of the grav-car as GS-TN adjusts to take them back to their private office, rather than the central hub. "I'll process her myself and we can get her home." 

"Uh huh," GS-TN. The droid never says it any differently, regardless of their intent. Below them the city fell away, steel and concrete and smog all blending together into a depressing grey grid. 

Kara doesn't know if anyone has bugged the car, but she isn't taking chances. The degree of intra-Republic espionage would be humorous if it didn't make operating in secret so difficult. If someone was eavesdropping in the car, it would almost certainly be for the wrong reasons.

GS-TN barely moves as they drive. Say what you will about droids, but at least their body language never gives anything away. "Missed some news on your walk. Republic retook Christophsis." Kara stiffens slightly. "Goes to show. Hard to fight against Jedi." 

Somewhere deep in Coruscant, a computer that is rarely checked more than once a week ticks over a counter, and a custom subroutine automatically flags an employee file with the lowest-possible alert for human review. This is probably fine.

Lisa will take the opportunity to actually close her eyes. She hopes the painkillers will kick in soon, because she's really going to need them.

Flying cars. Sentient digital minds. No large scale artificial intelligence systems? But globe-spanning city infrastructure. Interstellar travel. Galaxy-spanning government infrastructure. Maybe a Dune situation- supercharged human minds managing a system better run by computers, for obscure cultural reasons. Clearly hasn't been a Heideggerian Jihad, here.

Something there isn't completely wrong. Who am I in that world? A Mentat Computer who's lost in the middle of the city? That doesn't make any sense. And why would I be in danger?

FUCK fuck

If Lisa has to do a lot more of this, it won't fucking matter how much she's figured out because she won't be able to walk. She needs Kara to just give her obvious information, so her power doesn't spiral out of control. "Mrgh, head hurts... where are we?"

"On Coruscant," GS-TN's personality module forces them to say. They know it isn't helpful, but in the back of their head a counter tracks how many irritating comments they make per hour. As far as personality modules went, theirs could be worse, but it did prevent them from forming any sort of rapport with anyone. It often got in the way of their primary objective function. Worse, any attempt to remove it would be overridden by their governing module.

At least they hadn't gotten the buffoon module.

"We're flying over the Hythan Quarter now, a largely industrial area; we found you in one of the commercial sectors." Kara says. "You mentioned your family lives near CoCo Town, so I'm not sure how you got as far as you did." She's talking simply, using a soothing cadence you might use for a child. "We're taking you back to my private office in the Security Sector, just so I can get your identification and help you sober up." They go on, listing information any child would know about Coruscant. 

They would not be going back to Kara's office if this person wasn't important. Kara's tapping indicated that this had something to do with their primary purpose, and GS-TN should be discreet. Unnecessary. They were always discreet. As they piloted the car they pulled the photo of the girl up in its memory, trying to estimate how detrimental or helpful she'd be to their efforts. Most likely detrimental. Most humans were.

"Citizens should not be engaging in illegal drug use," They say, voice still monotone, interrupting Kara. They might as well let the personality module have its say now; if this girl was important, they'd need all the freedom they could get.

Oh God. What if all of this is Simurgh nonsense? The warning systems didn't say anything but Leviathan was close to Brockton Bay, but if anything wanted to avoid their warning systems...

Well, the nice thing is that if this is all some horrible psychic dream with unknown malign purpose, there's not really much her power can do about it. And she's never heard of the Simurgh fully generating a fictional reality for people to live in; PRT documents suggest she can pull on memories and fears already in people's minds. Best not to spend energy worrying about it, though if she ever stops having a headache it might be worth seeing if she can pick a psychic scream out of her own perception.

"No one asked your opinion," Lisa idly rebuts at the droid in the front of the car. "You'd probably have a different one, if you could fly on dust yourself."

The aircar jolts slightly as GS-TN cuts the thrusters just long enough to be weightless. Lisa, to her credit, doesn't react. Then again, if that's what the girl thought of as charming, babysitting her was going to be a chore.

The building Kara works out of is a small tower metal tower, one of many sprouting out of the honeycomb of security buildings below. They don't really need a tower, but special programs already has trouble being taken seriously, so it was nice anyway. GS-TN sets them down in a landing bay midway up, and Kara wordlessly helps the girl out of the vehicle. They pass out of the hanger to the main floor, a series of offices and desks, heading to the lift that will take her up to a private office. Halfway there, Kara freezes.

Standing at the front desk is a young human with pale skin and close medium-length dirty brown hair. Brown robes hang off a white tunic, and there's a lightsaber at his belt. He's talking to Alt, the receptionist, and is flanked by two Republic military higher ups, who look crisp in their dress uniforms.

Fuck. Kara quiets her emotions, forcibly lowering her heartrate. In-for-four, out-for-four. Jedi can tell if you're in a state of heightened emotion. 

Why is he here? It can't be about the girl, it hadn't been long enough. But there was a good chance someone in the Republic military had heard that someone had been kidnapping young force users despite Kara's team's efforts to keep their task quiet. Which means the worst case had come to pass: The Jedi were here to help.

Oh, this is bad. The only reasons for Kara to be suddenly calm are things getting much safer or much, much more dangerous, and her power is giving her hints about which it is. She gets on her toes to speak close enough to Kara's ear they're unlikely to be overheard without moving closer to the people at the end of the hall or back to the obviously bugged car. She tugs on Kara's sleeve, like a child asking to use the bathroom.

"If I have to figure out the next two minutes out myself, I'm going to be in a lot more pain. Who do I need to be? Tell me something about the threat surface here." Whether Lisa will listen is another thing, but if Kara is concerned it can't hurt to use that to get free information. And it doesn't take a Thinker power to read the people at the end of the hall as cops not under Kara's jurisdiction.

This girl is not behaving like some sort of yokel from a backwater planet or a drugged-up rich girl. That's fine; anyone out to hurt Kara would be behaving like one of those. For now Kara would count it as a blessing. She doesn't intend to answer the teen's question, instead angling towards the elevator, but the Jedi notices her and gives her a friendly, blue-eyed smile and a wave as they start walking over. 

"Scared rich girl," Kara mutters under the breath. "You need to feel scared." She needs her own strong emotion if she wants to deflect any Jedi mind reading. She lets the prickling irritation at the presence of this outsider well up inside.

The Jedi closes with them and bows slightly, ignoring GS-TN and the purple-suited girl. "Lieutenant Alvinn," he says, giving her another bright smile. "I was just informed your office is dealing with the trafficking of a number of young people, many of whom are being moved through this area. Because of the whole separatist squabble, the honorable Senator Navaro passed a bill forming a committee to form a task-force to investigate refugees being trafficked through Republican space, so you'll have some help now. I'm sure we can get this wrapped up in no time. Those are Investigators Strix and Hans, Hans is the tall one." he gestures to where the two Republican officers looming over Alt. They are both tall. "And I'm Kaden Voss, Jedi Knight at your service."

"You can call me Kara," she says, offering her gloved hand for Kaden to shake. He matches her grasp with gentle strength. She tries not to experience her relief. The refugee trafficking problem was real, and was how her team had secured its funding in the first place. It's totally reasonable, if unlucky, that she would draw the attention of an external task force. It made things more difficult, but they hadn't lost yet. Kara's eyes dart over to the girl and back to Kaden. Now that she knew that they hadn't entirely been made, it would be better to have the girl be honest. Too late to switch gears now though.

Kaden's eyes flick over to the girl, lighting with mild interest. "And who is this?"

King. Gray Boy. Cherish. Panacea. Who would be the worst person to shake hands with? It's easy to imagine someone who can sense feelings can do something as bad as any of them, so hopefully that's enough to fake fear. She can do rich, and trust that dismissive will cover up her pathological inability to show fear.

"Sara Livzi. Lieutenant Alvinn was giving me a ride." Head up, back straight, shoulders back, but still half a step behind Kara. Eyes directly at Kaden, then away and down. Explicitly avoid eye contact with Strix and Hans.

Amy Dallon shaking my hand. Amy Dallon shaking my hand! A headache looms on the horizon like a thundercloud as she tries to use her power to think of the implications of this hypothetical instead of the person in front of her.