She is in a room that appears to be covered in swirls of colored light that shift and slide and mix with each other in a way that ought to leave them all either a muddy brown or simply white, depending on if you use the color-mixing rules for paint or light, but aren't; yet fail to obscure the view of whatever is on the other side of them. 

The room itself is some kind of amphitheater, a rounded triangle with an enormous thronelike chair at each corner. 

Oh.

This is in fact a pretty alarming variety of Somewhere Else.

(But she feels so proud of herself. She was fearless. She was like a superhero!)

She takes a few steps. Stumbles.

Does this trippy rainbow room have doors? Windows?

Ember turns in a slow circle, taking her surroundings in as best she can.

The room doesn't appear to have doors. 

--But part of one wall depresses and slides in, and a woman appropriately sized for one of the thrones strides in. Other obvious physical traits besides her size include her extreme pinkness; her skin is magenta and her hair is a pale pale poofy pink like someone salted a cloud with a hint of pink lemonade. 

She initially heads for one of the thrones--one with some kind of pink gemstone set into the top--but spots Ember almost immediately and changes direction to come towards her. 

This situation is almost terrifying in its absurdity, but Ember's blood still surges with frantic heroism and she does not back down as the giant bears down on her.

"My husband is a very powerful man. He won't be pleased if I'm harmed."

If the statement doesn't work in English, she'll try it in French. If it doesn't work in French she'll try it in Vietnamese. If it doesn't work in Vietnamese, she's in trouble.

The statement works in English. 

"I'm not planning to harm you," the woman says, shrinking as she walks until she's only slightly taller than Ember. "I want to know how you got here, but in my experience, when people show up randomly in parts of this palace it's more likely to be by accident than to plot an assassination."

"It wasn't an accident. I was sent here by a tinker-tech weapon..."

"...where is here, anyway?"

She sweeps an arm around, grinning briefly. 

"This is the royal palace of the Lightpeople Empire. It's prettier in parts that aren't courtrooms."

“And I’m not a prisoner here or anything?”

This seems like a reasonable thing to clarify when deposited into an enclosed room by a villainous cape’s portal gun.

"No. Not unless you are in fact an assassin."

“I have absolutely no desire or meaningful capacity to kill anyone.”

Except maybe Displacer Beast.

She’s pretty sure she bought enough time just now for the maniacal tinker to be harmlessly subdued...

...but if she didn’t? If she gets back to find her husband’s hurt or killed?

Then, cape or no, Ember will hunt Displacer Beast to the ends of the Earth and throttle the life from him with her own hands.

"I thought as much. Are you alright? What exactly happened?"

“We were attacked in the street in broad daylight. The enemy cape—a deranged tinker—tried to get the jump on us using a portal.”

”I threw myself in the way, between him and my husband. He hit me with the beam from some weird tinker-tech contraption... and then I suddenly found myself here?”

"Can you tell me what a cape is, in context?"

The hell kind of provincial backwater speaks perfect English but doesn’t know what a cape is?

“A small subset of the human population has the potential to develop superpowers when subjected to intense trauma. The specific powerset varies based on the type of trauma that triggers them. After triggering, such individuals are called capes.”

“I’m not a cape, and all signs point to me never being one. You, on the other hand, clearly are: I definitely saw you sizeshift just a minute ago.”

"Oh, no, I'm simply not human."

...

...

"...is this Earth?"

"Not at all. This isn't any Earth, of which there are several." She gives her a sympathetic smile. "If all you wanted was to be on an Earth, that would be trivial, but since I imagine you'd rather be returned to yours and I've never heard of this cape thing before, I imagine it will take some time."

Oh no. This isn't okay.

"Some time" before she even knows how far she is from home.

"Some time" before she even knows if he's alive or dead.

Deep breath. Calm. Calm. Calm.

Ember was expecting to be obliterated when she threw herself in front of Displacer Beast, she reminds herself. This is objectively less bad than that.

"Okay. What do I need to do?"

She clasps her hands excitedly. 

"Tell me everything."

An astute voice in the back of her head points out that this whole sequence of events sure does conspicuously resemble a post-abduction interrogation.

Ember needs to do anything she can to get back home, but she also absolutely cannot risk compromising any details of clandestine superheroic enterprises to somebody who might be in cahoots with Displacer Beast..?

Okay. She can strike a balance here. Everything she knows about Earth's history. Everything she learned in college about how the world works. Nothing personal. Nothing about her household. Nothing one of their enemies could use against them.

"So, the first humans appeared on Earth about two hundred thousand years ago..."

Pink nods along, occasionally commenting. 

Everything up until Scion appeared is pretty standard. 

"Right. That was in 1982. By 1987, you started seeing capes of all sorts cropping up. These days, they make up somewhere between 0.01% and 0.1% of the population..."

"What kinds of powers do capes have?"

"A lot of power classification systems have cropped up over the years, but the PRT's 12-Category Threat Response system sees the most widespread use these days. You've got Striker and Blaster powers, which inflict harm up close or at range respectively. You've got Brute and Mover powers--the former enhance strength or durability, the latter enhance movement. Tinker and Thinker are cognitive enhancements: Tinker allows people to go into fugue states where they can construct alien technology, Thinker gives more direct augmentation to information gathering and processing. Changer and Breaker are easy to mix up--Changer powers alter your shape and form, while Breaker powers straight up replace your body with something else... I could explain better, but it'd take a long time, I actually wrote a college essay about it back in the day..." Ember stops, takes a quick breath of air, and then dives back into her ongoing list. "Master powers let a cape control people or create minions. Stranger powers make a cape harder to detect. And, hmmm... Shaker has a powerset that can impact a wider area and a Trump has a powerset that can impact powers themselves."