She looks down, she's still in her magical girl outfit. "I'll be right back." She goes to her Bevin, reverts to her normal clothing in a flash of light, then cleans her sword with a towel, then sheathes it.

Her bed sheet will do for something to sit on, she folds it until it is a square, then takes it back to the Prison, sets it down, attempts to sit down cross-legged, remembers that she is wearing a short skirt, then gives kneeling down a shot. She's seen the girls do that at the Academy.

She stokes the Azoth within her as she begins the process of fortifying herself with it. Stronger, better reflexes and coordination, speed. It's just a little bit, but it will add up in time. At some point in the near future she will go to Crucible and start hunting for more Azoth, and for the materials she needs for her Flask.

By the end of the process she is nearly out of Azoth, the enhancements went a lot further than she thought they would, but she's just starting out, there will be diminishing returns.

Also god her legs hurt. Leave it to the Japanese to make sitting down in an uncomfortable way to be a point of pride.

Fib, meanwhile, has been staring since she started using her Azoth to modify herself. "Damn. That's a thing you can do?" he asks as she seems to complete the process.

"Hm?" She blinks at Fib. "Yeah, I can make myself or objects stronger with Azoth. This is the first time I've done it, I made one trip to Crucible about a month ago to collect this stuff, and have been hoarding it ever since. I've been agonizing about what to spend it on, and have been dragging my feet in regards to making a second trip to Crucible to collect more. It's not all I can do with it. I could use it as a weapon, though I haven't tried yet, and you saw me ignite it within myself to temporarily make myself stronger."

"Nice! I, never knew that was possible to do with Azoth." He sighs. "Is it weird that even after a decade of being an immortal multiverse-traveling wizard I still feel kind of inadequate most of the time?"

"No, absolutely not. No amount of being an immortal demigod will make that go away, it's the human condition to feel bad about yourself and your capabilities regardless of what you can actually do. I mean. I think. Maybe there's a conduit power for not feeling inadequate. I definitely don't have that one." She smirks.

Fib briefly flares yellow, then settles into green. "I guess I sort of do, it just feels a little fake, or like taking mood stabilizer, and consumes a valuable and kind of dangerous-to-gather resource."

He sighs again. "It's just rough when there's, like, three or four worlds that are simultaneously making me feel worse, and that also get more dangerous the more depressed I am, that I still need to deal with every day."

"Y'know, when I met Groundskeeper earlier today, I had a moment where I realized that she didn't... value herself. I said that I didn't want to take advantage of her and then had to dig deep to figure out how to make that happen. So I have to ask. Is this a you problem? Or is this a powers problem? Because from what we know you have something going on that'll emerge at some point after you make enough connections to disparate worlds, right? If that's the problem then the solution will come eventually. As conduits we will become stronger as the years pass, and I can't imagine that you'll remain tethered to the worlds forever."

"A you problem is harder. And there are no easy answers."

He gets a thoughtful look, and the forced green dissipates into a more even mix of color. "A little of column A, a little of column B, probably? I've been struggling with depression, low self-esteem, executive dysfunction, all that stuff, since I was kid-- wow. I just realized I'm technically almost forty. That's kind of fucked...Sorry. But yeah, there's definitely some element of my problems being exacerbated by the situation, but I don't think I could say they're really the source of anything."

She gives him a long look. "Depression and executive dysfunction I'm not sure how to tackle. But Self-esteem doesn't come out of nowhere, and the fear that you might inconvenience somebody is brain poison. You might just need practice here, I've had to deal with unpleasant humanity, and any compunctions about 'inconveniencing somebody' has eroded to nothing. Change and improvement never come easily."

"Fair enough," he says with a shrug, seeming distinctly unconvinced, or maybe more so disengaged.

I don't know what to say. "Sorry."

Fib briefly flickers between cyan, blue, and purple as he mentally fights the urge to apologize for making Strawberry feel the need to apologize, before pumping the breaks with an injection of green, raising a hand and making a dismissive gesture. "It's find. Don't worry about it."

She chuckles. "I had such an agonizing conversation with Groundskeeper earlier today, and trying to get to the root of why she didn't value herself was so hard. I didn't want to take advantage of her, and I meant it." She sighs.

"When you offered me the bike, that's when I knew I should be worried. If I were in your position I would've never made that offer." She shrugs.

"I feel like you are overestimating how much work it takes me to take make a bike," Fib replies deadpan.

"She's trying to be considerate too, you know," Sniper replies to him in turn.

"Yeah..." he agrees with a sigh.

"Hahaha, ah, alright, I'll drop it." She gets up and stretches. "How long has it been?"

Sniper checks their phone. "Just about 50 minutes since we jumped from Brazen."

Fib nods. "We could probably head to the Rim now if you like. My Tether to this place is generally pretty calm so cutting the stay a few minutes short isn't a big deal."

"I can wait." She jolts as she remembers something. "So many things happened at once that I forgot, who the fuck was that butterfly conduit on Brazen?"

Fib smiles. "I have no idea! They're only the fourth other conduit I've ever seen, and this was the first time! I didn't even know that non-humans could be Conduits, honestly, though I guess it makes sense! Though, hm..."

"We haven't encountered any butterflies on Brazen before of any kind," Sniper comments, thinking along the same line as Fib.

"So, it's possible they are a human, but, like, some kind of crazy clockwork mind-upload? Is that even possible?"

Sniper shrugs. "Being transformed from a kagemono to a sosei-shita wasn't possible, and then you did it. I wouldn't be surprised if other Conduits have done similarly impossible things."

"I'll have to ask Groundskeeper the next time I see her. She has some Brazen powers. Honestly, the worlds are all weird enough that I'd bet its possible. Anyway, I thought you knew them and they were dangerous or something."

"No, never seen them before. Just...you never know, and Brazen has been a lot more confrontational than the all-girls-school where I met you and Groundskeeper, and my first encounter with Cean was her going way out of her way to warn people far beyond the borders of her country about earthquakes, which made a pretty great first impression which was consistently reinforced thereafter. No such circumstances here, so I'd rather back off and come back with the possibility of contact in mind rather than in the middle of my mail route."

"Right, be cautious." She lays down, using her folded up sheet as a pillow. "I can do that." She stares at the sky, in the gloom between the clouds she sees something weird. "That's not... Is that a ceiling?"

"Yup. This place is all layered. Alternating air and marble."

"Weird. So is the world a layered globe? Or is it an endless flat expanse or what?"

Fib shrugs. "No way to know for certain, as far as I'm aware. We haven't tried super hard to measure whether there's any, like, curvature, though, so maybe?"

"Man, I wish I could teleport here. Hey, so... why is this place called the Prison? What's... kept here?"