At around that time, a very distinct feeling suddenly appears to Strawberry's conduit-senses. What was previously just an ordinary bridge to Earth flares, then tredecuples, as if what was one bridge is now twelve all stacked on top of each other, each one leading to a different world. It's not an especially comfortable sensation, liking having your eyes adjust to sunlight on a bright day after spending a while inside.

That's followed by two loud gunshots. Then, the intensity of the world-auras fades, and peel apart, the Earth bridge remaining where it was and a cluster of twelve (including, if Strawberry focuses, a bit of every world she's connected to, and plenty more besides) moving...towards where she is.

Soon enough, two odd humanoid figures peddle up on golden bicycles with translucent pink tires. One is has an androgynous build, with pale orange complexion almost matching the color of the gold and short tusks.The other, perhaps more notable, is a broad-built man literally ablaze with color, his hear and beard wavering like flames in every color of the rainbow (though primarily also gold, at the moment). The former has a long rifle strapped to their back, and the both of them are equipped with armor made from the same gold as their bikes, and have sheathed swords hanging from their waists.

"Oh!" the fiery man exclaims as Strawberry comes into view. "You're new. I'm Fib, and this is Sniper," he gestures to his companion.

The other gives a slight smile and wave.

"I guess we've come too late tonight...or, this morning, to catch Groundskeeper."

She stares, baffled. Somehow she felt like that being on fucking fire like a Pokemon might've come up in conversation. "Uh." She moves to get up from the bench, only to tumble on to the grass. "Wah!" She scampers to her feet. "I, uh, hi! Hello!"

Fuck. "I'm, er, Stawberry, nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you--" / "Nice to meet you--" the both of them begin with nearly the same tone and prosody, before stopping and giving each other a look, then chuckling to themselves. Sniper gestures for Fib to continue, and he does. "Nice to meet you as well, Strawberry, and sorry for giving you a scare."

"No, uh, I'm good, I'm good. I've met Groundskeeper today, actually, she told me a little about you." She looks at Fib and... Sniper? She feels under dressed, clad in fairly normal girl's clothes compared to the men clad in shimmering golden armor.

"I haven't been doing this conduit thing for very long, Groundskeeper was the first other conduit I've met."

"Oh, same! Sort of. We met her a few-- weeks ago, earth-time. I've been wandering around for about a decade, subjectively speaking, or I think just over three years, objectively. Oh! And, Sniper's a friend of mine from way back when I was just getting started. They're not a Conduit but I've got a thing that lets me bring people and stuff along with me, as long as we're riding or driving or whatever. I met another over on the Rim since then, and now you're the third!" He turns to Sniper, "Three all in one outside year. Bit of a streak, isn't it?"

Sniper nods, though they seem to only find the observation a bit droll.

"Who's the other conduit? What're they like?" She sits down on the bench.

"Busy, but trying very hard to do right by her people. She's got a whole country of elves-- the Rim's local people are elves, and they're all women kind of like here in the Academy, though not in exactly the same way. But yeah, she's got a whole country to keep track of over there, which keeps her plenty busy especially since she's doing her damnedest to do it right and not be a tyrant or anything. She's nice, too, keeping some back-up bodies for me and my friends in stasis in case the Bondworks back at my Stone Library fails or I run into some Quellers while I'm on an Earth and don't manage to run away or fight them off."

She opened her mouth, then closed it. That was a lot of words in quick succession that she either didn't understand or was completely new to her. "I feel like I should be taking notes."

Bondworks? Quellers? Backup bodies? Elves? Trying her darndest not to be a tyrant?

Why is that one of the first things he brings up? Is she at risk? Does she go to Tyrants Anonymous? What is happening in the Rim?

"Sorry, there were a lot of new words there, uhm, Bondworks?"

Fib's colors visibly flicker, bluing and dimming briefly before being revived by a seemingly effortful injection of yellow. "Sorry about that. It's hard to remember that not everybody is as used to this as my most of my friends are. The Bondworks is a special bondfire-- like from Crucible? A special one that I have in my Stone Library, so it's protected from all the nasty shit on Crucible, and it can store Color-- that's what makes me look like this," he gestures to his colorful flames, "and use it to protect you from that sort of cold, grey feeling that reviving at a bondfire usually has."

She makes a mental note to ask about what's so bad about resurrecting through a bondfire later. "So your Stone Library, that's in your Bevin? So you essentially have an extra cool bondfire in it?"

"There's a word for it? Convenient. And yeah, it's incorporated into my Bevin's boiler-slash-furnace room."

"That sounds really cool! And super convenient." She opens her mouth to ask another question, then thinks about it. "Actually, do you have anything that you need to be doing right now? What's your routine?"

"Normally I meet Groundskeeper around here, chat and have some food, share the news, deliver any packages we've got, that sort of thing. Then I try and explore this place for a bit, since my Tether is ornery about me having spent so much less time here than my other worlds, Eventually we need to head back to check on stuff at Revival Base, rest and recuperate, do some training or studying, then more mail route stuff and exploration."

"Oh yeah, I remember Groundskeeper talking about how you have to go to the worlds you're connected to." 

"Hm." She holds out her hand as a mason jar filled with jam materializes in it. "We can eat, and if you don't have compunctions about eating food stolen from vending machines, I have plenty more!"

Fib laughs, and Sniper gets a bit of a smile. "Oh, we stole a lot more than just food back during the first couple years, vending machine sounds good!"

"Cool," Her bedsheet appears in her hands, which she spreads over the floor. "it's a picnic." Various snack foods appear one by one in her hands as she drops them on the impromptu picnic blanket. "Lets see, I have chocolate bars, rice balls, chips, cans of coffee, water, these chocolate cookie things..."

Fib and Sniper offer various Rim-sourced goods from an insulated bag, including various alien fruits and vegetables and grilled 'vegan sausages' that seem suspiciously meat-like in aroma and texture. Fib will partake a little of Berry's various sweets, as well as a can of coffee, while Sniper will have one of her rice balls and some water.

As they eat, Fib (and to a lesser degree Sniper) will happily explain more about their situation (and what they know more broadly about the multiverse), if Strawberry seems interested.

She is, in fact, very interested. She asks many questions, and with every word a picture is painted of the multiverse at large. Angels, forests, an endless sea, a pink... sex desert? Fascinating stuff. Crucible though, with every death a little, tiny piece of her gone. She had already died four times, she hasn't noticed yet, so it was a slow decay.

She... wasn't really bothered by this, a slow decay was the default assumption and apparently old age wasn't a problem for her. But even if she did, there was a way around it anyway? She was immortal. It gave her pause.

Quellers, a rumor from Cean about people who made it their business to hunt conduits. Disturbing if true. She couldn't imagine a secret like that keeping itself in her home Earth, but there were many strange powers around, maybe even something that could maintain a masquerade. But with all the Earths that existed, maybe they were based on some antiquated Earth more accommodating of a masquerade.

And Cean. Well, she trusted Groundskeeper, and by the transitive property of trusting her she also trusted Fib. But did that Extend to Cean? She didn't know her at all, for all she knew she had lied to Fib about the Quellers to make him nervous enough to trust her with his DNA, to be used for some arcane purpose she didn't understand. But then again, she could also be completely honest. She supposed that she was suspect of this Cean because she was a long-lived immortal ruling over a primitive society of short-lived- "Fifty years?! But they're elves!" -people, which automatically made her suspect in her books. But apparently that was just how the Rim worked? She didn't voice any of this aloud, merely hummed noncommittally.

She herself told them what she knew of the Academy and Crucible, mostly the Academy. She had made a third copy of her and Groundskeeper's mapping project, showing the bridges to Arbor, Earths, Crucible and Rorch. "You can keep this copy, we just finished this today, we'll add more as we explore."

Fib does not like to draw attention to the fact that his Reservoir makes him an empath, but he fails to resist the urge to reassure Strawberry despite her outward actions not seeming to demand it. "Like I said, she's trying hard to be good to her people. One of the first things she brought up when I first spoke with her was seeing if I might be able to help her make her people immortal too, which I think says a lot."

Ooh, map! Fib will go ahead and pull out his smartphone and take some pictures of it. "We can take it if you want, but it might be better to save it for someone who needs a hard copy. Honestly we should probably make something like this too. Relying on our memories has worked for now but it might not always."

Well, trying to make her people immortal is a noble goal. Frankly, she could've done with more of that attitude back on her Earth. She can't help but notice the way the colors of his flame shifts as they talk, the way they seem to paint a picture of his emotional state on a moment by moment basis. It makes her wonder if he misses the ability to not broadcast his emotions like that.

"I have easy access to photocopiers, making copies of this is no problemo. Take it." She pushes the binder towards them. "This place is so uncanny. It's just colleges, parks, young girls and beaches as far as the eye can see. And that's almost fine, except I killed a monster like a month ago and have no idea what was up with that."

"Fair enough!" and he'll take the map after all, rolling it up gently before handing it over to Sniper.

"It is rather uncanny," Sniper adds as he packs the map away in their pack. "There's an odd sort of homeliness to it, for me at least, though I'm not sure what for other than the linguistic similarity. The mystery of what exactly they're teaching all these young women for, other than to teach the next generation of students, is another conundrum."

"I'll sit in for a few classes after I figure out the language, see what they're teaching, but from what little I can glean, it seems... normal? I don't even know where the girls even come from, or the weird eyeless specters either." She lays back on the sheet. "Hm."

Fib shivers and his fires shift a touch redder, though only briefly. "Those things are fucked, yeah. I'm not a fan of having a third kind of fucked up bullshit monster that can pop-up when I jump, either, especially since they're..." he makes a grasping gesture vaguely, "stickier than wildlife from Rim or Mu. Harder to clean up. At least they're rarer."

She had mostly stayed away from the specters, but they hadn't struck her as aggressive. She'd have to investigate. "Third? It's not just dinosaurs?"

"Nope! Even just from the Rim, I get all sorts of animals. Mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, giant crocodiles, giant spiders, weirder shit that I don't really have a name for in English, the works. The stuff from Mu is usually smaller, but it has a worse habit of coming through in larger numbers, and being more, uh...more fucked up, I guess. There's a lot of animals that do weird body horror or psychic shit there."