She hates interrogation. Not that punishment has many traits to recommend it, but at least there's usually some connection in there to something you did. (Maybe there is here too, in as much as something she did is 'be grabbed by enemy agents'). And an endpoint.

Hating it is a nicer thing to keep in mind than that she's also terrified of it. Less that when it's other governments - they may not own her, but there's treaties as far as she understands and all that, keeping the punishments-for-mages-who-cross-certain-lines reserved for mages who do cross those lines. Keeping mages properly deterred is for the common good isn't it. 

Nonlegal armed organizations - maybe they care about the common good on this. And maybe they care more about trying to make a captured CIA mage tell them what she's not allowed to tell them.

At the moment she's lucky. They mostly just kick her around, ask her things she genuinely truthfully doesn't even know. 

Some alarm goes off. The human standing over her changes facial expressions, looks away from her. Looks back.

"Get up. Close your eyes." She does that. He pushes her, off to a side and then around some corner. "End of the hall, through the door, and five steps past it. Open your eyes before that and you won't get to keep them."

She nods understanding very hard. She walks, down the hall and through the door when it opens in front of her, and very definitely five steps after that. She opens her eyes.

It's nothing like where she left. It's a bar, for one, nicely appointed. A fireplace to her left, a restaurant area to her right, with a curving glass window showing what appears to be numerous exploding stars. Most of the patrons - and there are few - seem disinterested in her. One, a woman at the bar, glances over when the door opens and closes, and then carefully sets her drink down on the counter, stands, and walks over, stopping a safe distance from Elvira.

"Welcome to Milliways, interdimensional bar. Usually I'd explain what's going on here right away, but you look like you could use an infirmary," she says. "Of course, it's your call between 'I talk now, you do your own thing given that information' and 'I talk while we walk to the healer.' The infirmary here's free of charge. Complimentary for patrons and all."

What

(She was expecting a cell, or some place being used as a cell, or maybe some other room with more that-organization-belonging humans where they were going to do something else with her. Which she would not expect to look like this, or involve anyone talking to her like that.)

People stopping a distance from her isn't weird, even if she's wearing her waist and ankle chains and couldn't really kick or punch anyone if for some reason she decided to try that. That's one of about the only few things that isn't weird.

"At your disposal, ma'am." That's ground in enough that it comes out without her having to finish trying to process anything first. Which is convenient, because she doesn't think that task is going especially well.

(Did they drug her somehow? This really doesn't seem to be the kind of thing a drug does.)

"Do you have an objection to being healed?"

Well that successfully distracts a lot of her from trying to figure anything out because instead she is dropping to her knees shaking.

"No, ma'am. I'm sorry, ma'am. At your disposal, ma'am."

(-Is this some kind of setup to get more information out of her how would that even work-)

"You don't need to kneel. I'm not above you. The medics here are good, they got my tracking chip out of me - I'm not going to touch you but I'd like it if you could stand so we can walk and not make a scene."

She has no idea what 'I'm not above' you is supposed to mean or why the human is telling her about medic quality, but 'don't kneel' and 'stand, walk, don't make a scene' are pretty unambiguous as orders go. She stands quickly. "I'm sorry, ma'am." Will start following as soon as she gets to know where.

(Given that this is a bar (for - some reason?) and she saw her with a drink, possibly the human's just drunk. Drunk humans around mages usually means short tempers and shorter fuses (well, more than usual), but she knows talking randomly can be involved.)

(Is some part of it illusions...?)

Walking.

"So. Milliways. This isn't your home universe. It isn't anyone's, as far as I can tell. Milliways could be said to exist outside of time and space. It connects many universes, with different peoples, stories, magics, traditions. Doors from other universes sometimes connect to Milliways - it's also possible to wander in from places without doors, someone came in through a cave once and there's a giant squid in the lake out back. Milliways has a prohibition on violence in the main room, and a few other things. There's an infirmary for any injured guests."

"My universe doesn't have legal slavery in the polity I live in, not anymore, and mistreating prisoners is illegal, no matter what crimes they committed."

(Following)

What

Maybe the human is very drunk, or took something else with her alcohol. (Something bizarre is definitely going on. Her captors hadn't let her see where she was brought, but this is still a weird amount of space for them to have there, and to be doing with it, not to even begin to mention why they sent her to this part. But she is not three and not going to randomly believe someone telling her the answer is 'walking out of the universe to outside of space and time'.)

'Prohibition on violence in the main room' might explain why the human hadn't hit her there.

She nods, because 'you don't argue' continues to not be the kind of rule with exceptions, and it's pretty obvious the human wants to be acknowledged as giving a useful explanation. Tries,

"Enslaving humans is illegal in the county I come from too, ma'am," as a check for how she feels about being responded to. (Usually she'd obviously not do that, but usually doesn't involve humans talking to her like that to begin with.)

"Your world has multiple sapient species? Interesting. I find myself curious about your technology level - oddly, many of the worlds with multiple sapients on the same planet are lower technology and possessed of magic. In my polity, enslaving any sapient is illegal. Obviously some people don't follow this well - I've been using Milliways in an attempt to gather resources against a certain man who has been threatening me into working for him."

At some point the human is going to stop being drunk, high, or both and will probably retain her memories of the preceding time period, and may decide to be unhappy about rambling at mages. And she continues to be captive, with all the implications that has for possible retaliation. That's cheerfully terrifying, but it's not as though there's anything she can do.

It would be nice if she knew whether the human would end up more or less angry that she's been talking. This is, of course, not the case. But even a human who's not thinking straight seems unlikely not to notice if they want a mage to shut the fuck up. Might be more likely not to notice they'd like it better later if the mage was talking. She keeps trying talking.

"One species, ma'am, I'm sorry, ma'am.

Might I know what you want to know about technology?"  

"If you name an invention in the past ten years I can probably place you on a standard technological timeline, assuming magic hasn't dramatically influenced the path. My universe has faster than light travel and no magic per se, though from what I can tell the thing that enables the faster than light travel is due to a minor difference in underlying physics. I've been reading books on technology from other worlds. If you don't feel like answering me, that's fine, I can satisfy my curiosity through such books."

"Is there a particular reason you're distinguishing between yourself and humans, if you're the same species? - I am aware that's the standard some areas, there are many who'd claim I'm non-human despite being of human stock and presumably capable of interbreeding, I'm just being nosy."

"I'm sorry, I don't know. There are smart phones, not very long ago. And not faster than light travel." Flinch. "At your disposal, ma'am."

What is the human on

"I'm a mage, ma'am." 

"Either 2000s or early 2010s, then. Do you want me to prove I'm not from your world? Or you can ask the healer questions, we're just about at the infirmary." She gestures to a nearby door.

Symptoms include ridiculously roundabout ways to get at the year, apparently. She decides it's better not to say anything, this time.

Flinch. "At your disposal, ma'am." She'll walk through the door if it's open or opened.

She opens it - 

And the person past is very, very distinctly not human. Does, in fact, appear to be a humanoid elephant of indeterminate gender, looking up as they enter - 

And a woman with red skin and horns lying on a bed towards the back.

Being in the middle of following orders is enough that she doesn't freeze until she's through the door. Has enough training that freezing doesn't last more than an extra moment before she's standing more properly.

(What)

...it can be possible that someone somewhere has invented some high effort higher possibility advance on disguise spells, and the CIA hasn't found out yet or hasn't gotten around to briefing field mages and all that. And then want a CIA mage for - something related to this project, and that's why they took her here, and the human is also some weird experiment, or does something they want to keep around despite the getting high and talking nonsense (if she was human she'd consider that that was meant to distract her, but she's not in the kind of state where there could be any doubt about what she is.)

"You appear injured," the elephant says, addressed to Elvira. "I possess both healing magic and knowledge of the healing sciences. Do I have your permission to treat you?"

Looking down and shaking. "At your disposal." 

(Why -

they want her for their magical experimenting so they want to remind/test that she knows to behave?)

(The elephant appearance moves naturally in speaking, in shifting - really major advance on disguise spells...)

"A brief touch is required for the magic, but it is the most effective." Assuming she doesn't object, he mutters an incantation, deep and rumbling and musical, and gestures, and gently, telegraphing his movements, taps her forehead.

There's a warmth that spreads through her, like sunlight and a soft breeze, and she's healed.

"There. Won't handle old scars or problems present from birth - those require a separate spell - but your wounds should be healed," he says, sounding satisfied. "If you have old injuries you would like to be rid of, I can handle those just as well."

She does not in fact have objections to being healed, and if for some reason she did would not be in the mood for being tortured for expressing objections.

She starts out somewhat confused - this person is definitely not talking like a mage (hence her responding like they're a human), and obviously she's well familiar with mages with 'act a human' as their job but field mages don't generally do that and overt magic at the same time. So maybe they mean they have some spelled object or something?

Then the muttering starts and she gets more confused - that's a weird way to set off a spelled object - and then -

She knows very well what healing magic feels like. Also what magic feels like, in general, and what mages feel like. She hasn't had her senses out since her captors ordered her not to, but once something's working on her she's going to feel it. And she is quite absolutely sure this isn't the magic she knows. At all. 'Someone randomly telling her' won't make her believe she walked out of the universe. This is about what will.

"At your disposal," she says automatically. 

"He's pretty good, fixed my old bum leg right up," the red-skinned woman says, spade-pointed tail swaying above where she's turned on her stomach. "Don't directly fix the shit I've got in my lungs, but he says I'll be better by tomorrow, so, hey, free bed."

...maybe this human(-or-something?) is also drugged - as she understands that's part of human medicine sometimes. Or maybe - humans in France and some other places hug mages, if she has information correctly; maybe wherever-here-is they talk at them.

She's not sure what she's supposed to do and also doesn't actually have response ideas. She nods.

(The first human had mentioned 'Milliways' connecting places through doors. She isn't clear enough on how that works - isn't sure if that means her captors sent her here on purpose, or if they didn't and are going to be surprised at it. If the former isn't sure what they wanted her here for. If the latter, isn't sure if the people here are going to try to keep her when her captors presumably notice and come to try and get her back.)

"I think she's a bit overwhelmed right now. We can always come back later?" Mikoto says, and the elephant-man nods. To Elvira: "Now that you're healed, do you want me to explain more?"

Flinch. (...of course they're testing her, they want to check if this mage walking in from another world has been properly taught and all that.)

She does her best at radiating compliance and well-taughtness. "At your disposal, ma'am."

"Thank you for your time," she says to the elephant-person, who nods, then gestures for Elvira to follow her. She stops in a hallway, leans against the wall. "Alright. Look. You don't have to do what I say. If I attacked you, I'd be the one thrown in a cell to cool off. I don't have enough information to know why you're obeying random people, but - whoever's where you came from most likely can't follow. Time's almost always paused in source worlds; only time I've heard of that not happening was when someone dreamed themselves in, or if they had active interdimensional communication with home."

She follows. She attempts to parse this.

Time paused and whoever's-where-she-came-from-most-likely-can't-follow - that's important. Probably makes it less likely her captors sent her through on purpose (unless they didn't know about that), which really already didn't make much sense. And if it's true then she's - pretty thoroughly essentially-kidnapped, unless there's some way around it and the CIA will both realize they should figure it out and do that. (Accidentally kidnapped, so to speak, which doesn't really happen often (in modern times, she thinks) but did ever show up in lectures as a concept.)

And - the woman is trying to tell her that - she's not the one in charge of her, someone else is, and they'll be mad at her if she hits their mage? Something like that?

Looking down. "Yes ma'am. I'm sorry ma'am.

Might I know who is in charge of me here ma'am?"

"No one. You're in charge of yourself. That's thoroughly true in Milliways, and would be true in many of the worlds you could possibly go to upon leaving. Which you don't, actually, ever have to do - you can stay here, rooms aren't free but there's work you can do, and if you decide to leave you don't have to go back to your world. If you open the door it'll lead to where you came from - and if I opened it, it'd go to my world."

Flinch and shiver. That is - too far for testing (or at least far enough that she can't respond in usual ways without risking getting into arguing). Arguing with humans does not become allowed if they're saying things that are blatantly not the case.

She already said she's a mage; she doesn't know how people in actual real life other worlds might mark their mages but she is wearing a magic containing collar (two of them even) and chains, it doesn't seem likely lack of clarity is the issue here. (Which is good; trying to walk the line between 'arguing' and 'letting someone think she is not what she is' does not sound like an entertaining activity.)

Presumably at some point whoever is more in charge here or deals with mages here or whatever will come along and actually handle her. (And probably issue a punishment lest she get ideas from being told she's in charge of herself, but what is there to do about it.)

"I'm sorry, ma'am," she says. Tries to see if there'll be any indication of what she should possibly do in the meanwhile. 

"Are the chains magic? I can likely get them off if not, or if any magic doesn't add to durability or prevent picking locks. If I can't, we can probably find someone in the main room who can."

"I feel, perhaps, I should clarify. You are not a prisoner here. You are not a slave here. You can legally and without repercussions tell me to fuck off. If you did, I'd leave you alone and return to my seat to keep trying to gather resources."

"I don't know, ma'am. I could check if you would want." Basic sensing is permitted before the four days are over, and not blocked by either of her collars.

...Maybe testing after all, just for whether she'll try anything and not for whether drop to her knees and look very obeisant. She's not sure what to say - yes ma'am sounds like it might make it worse when whoever will actually be in charge shows up with punishment, but what else is there? She tries not saying anything.

(New situation (a whole new extreme level of new even) means likely punishments all over the place until she learns the specifics of how everything's done here. Which - nothing to do about that either. Maybe it won't be as bad as the Authority of Mages.

Maybe she'll get lucky and it won't even be as bad as the CIA.)

"That would, in fact, be appreciated."

"Yes, ma'am." She checks. It wouldn't be weird if some chains didn't have any magic on them - the point of chains is getting in the way of physical movements someone doesn't want a mage making; humans aren't about to let a mage be in position to start breaking chains or picking locks. These ones do have magic as it turns out though; probably to annoy the CIA if and when they'd get her back.

"Magic, ma'am," she reports.

"Do you know what it's likely to do? I can rather easily pick a lock, or I have a tool that will cut metal but not flesh, if it won't hinder those."

"Durability and anti-lock-picking, as you said, ma'am. Not too much, ma'am." Probably had other things they wanted to spend their magic resources on.

"So it won't attempt to kill me - or you - if I try cutting them."

She checks again, because that would be even worse to be wrong on than usual. 

"No, ma'am."

"I'm going to remove them, now," she warns, before approaching Elvira closer and removing what looks like a cross between a tube of lipstick and a large floss-stick, that develops a glowing blue beam at a subtle movement from Mikoto. It slices through the chains easily.

"Anything special about the collars?" Mikoto asks, after she's removed everything not next to someone's neck.

The chains will put up some resistance but the magic is just some extra durability; if her instrument can get through that then they'll give way. Elvira is still and cooperative and compliant.

Sudden shock of terror. It hadn't occurred to her to think of them when she'd thought of the chains, not even approaching the same sort of category in her mind. But she's in a different world, that connects to multitudes of them. Has no idea how they do things here - for all she knows they'd expect an implant for the power control.

"They're what contain and control permission for mages' magic in - the world I'm from, ma'am."

"If I take them off, does the magic revert to your control?"

Terror. 

If the earlier things weren't testing she's worried that saying it's illegal will get her too close to arguing. Or just not help. (She is, of course, not in any way thinking that saying she will be tortured a lot will help.)

"They'll explode ma'am."

"Why? How do you prevent them from exploding?"

"It's an involution of energy with - my magic, ma'am.

When one is exchanged for another it can be done safely."

"What happens if one is removed entirely? Are you unable to control your own magic?"

"I'm sorry, I don't understand." 

"If I removed the collars, ensuring no direct backlash from them, and did not put on a new collar or equivalent, what happens?"

Trembling. But she can't not answer a direct question. "A mage without a working collar can use their magic without permission, ma'm."

And - she doesn't know what will help, she doesn't know what to say - "Please ma'am -" She'd drop to her knees except the woman hadn't liked that - 

"No one here needs permission to use magic that doesn't involve others. You can do whatever you want with your own self. You don't need to ever return to your source world. Whatever consequences you would face there don't matter."

Terror and - it doesn't look like there's anything she can do about it, except hope whoever actually deals with mages here shows up sooner or something.

If she's utterly careful about not actually using any magic it won't - actually be that bad, having a collar off is getting there in as bad as non-volitional gets but it's still non-volitional -

(Terror)

"I don't know why you're afraid, or why you're so reluctant to have it removed! It's holding you back! No one here cares, Milliways doesn't even care about crimes committed outside the main room. If you don't believe me, we can ask Bar. We can ask other people. I can get someone to demonstrate magic to you and that theirs isn't bound. I can't show you myself, because my world doesn't even have magic."

More flinching at that tone and nonverbals. (She doesn't know what to do, and she can redouble on compliant and cooperative and trying-not-to-be-trouble but it doesn't seem like that helps and she doesn't know what else to do-)

"There's only mages in - the world I came from, but there's - fiction with power-havers who aren't mages. Who are - still" she says a sci-fi word for 'like humans but including other species too'. "I - understand if that's real in some other worlds."

"If your definition of 'mage' doesn't include all power-havers then I can say with some confidence that no other world I've heard of has your world's version of mages."

She doesn't know what to say to that, what she's supposed to say to that.

(She's spent enough of her on recess time reading, she's read enough sci-fi and fantasy and all that. They've got worlds with mages, and worlds without magic, and worlds with 'witches' or 'empowered' or 'metahumans' who have powers but count as humans-and-the-like, and worlds with mages and also that. And sometimes there's renegade mages who try to misinform some poor unsuspecting magicless kingdom about what they are, or try to pretend to be some other thing. She's read enough about how those kinds of stories end. 

(The stories are for humans, don't tend to specify once the mage disappears offscreen if it's torture to death or being sold off to someone who thinks that torturing mages more than punishment allows is just great fun, or if occasionally the Authority of Mages eventually finishes tearing them apart repeatedly and telling its own mages to put them back together and sends them off to some high oversight factory for the next decades where someone thinks their work is worth putting up with them screaming at night.) 

She doesn't know what worlds this woman has heard of. She doesn't know if this is some elaborate test or the woman is - very confused about something somehow or only ran into worlds with non-mage power-havers or - 

She does know what'll happen to her, if someone who definitely knows what a mage is and isn't pretending about it comes by and she's talking (or giving any sign she's thinking) about oh, what if she doesn't wear a collar and wanders around with people telling her that acting like a human power-haver is just totally fine. (Well, maybe not exactly what'll happen - probably aliens invented their own punishments and didn't just somehow copy Earth's exactly. She's not imagining that'll make them any better from the receiving end).) 

Looks down and doesn't say anything.

"...Look, why don't you talk to Bar, who knows more about different worlds than me, and - you can recommend a book or several to me that explains mages, and your world, so I'll understand the inferential gaps better. Bar can provide me with any openly published book in any accessible world."

"Yes, ma'am.

I'm sorry, I don't think I know books like that, ma'am."

"I'll ask Bar for recommendations, then. Are you alright to return to the main room?"

"Yes, ma'am." (She has no idea what could possibly make her not alright for that - she's healed and everything, and she wasn't even injured to the point of unfunctionality to begin with. But that doesn't particularly matter. And at least the stupidly terrifying interactions seemed to have stopped for the moment, and the woman is not currently trying to take her collar off.)

"This way, then." And she'll lead the way back into the main room, and up to Bar, where she asks for a few books on Elvira's world to be transferred to her data pad.

She apparently ignores Elvira after than, speed reading through the books. Going by how fast her screen's scrolling, her reading speed is firmly in 'inhuman' levels - there's no way she's looking at any given screen significantly longer than the human eye can register an image as distinct.

She follows, stands next to the bar (Bar?). Isn't sure how to talk to them(?), attempts out loud as the woman had done.

"I was told to talk to you, sir or ma'am?"

(She is not about to try reading over the human's shoulder.)

Elvira's world has mages! They do magic. Compared to other kinds of magic she might have seen worlds have, not super powerful but pretty varied. Healing, wards, imperfect but existent truth magic, constrained but existent teleportation, senses, detection, some disguise, enhancing technology, integrating with computers, making items with magically given properties, various fine scientific applications, improvements to crops and roads and buildings. A few violent applications though those aren't used much in the present day. And so on.

Mages are enslaved. Specific policies have varied and do vary, but - all of them, for all of recorded history and everywhere in the present. It's both considered quite important and taken for granted. 

US mages grow up in facilities called magehouses before being sold or sent off to various jobs. They are never left alone with each other, or for that matter alone at all (with a few occasional exceptions including field mages). They never have their own space, nearly never have belongings. They do have free time, usually on a schedule like everything else. 

Mages who break rules, seem like they're considering breaking rules, or might have ended up with the idea that they might break rules are punished. Rules include actual behavior as well as details like attitude. Mages who look like they're going to be too much trouble are killed in childhood. Mages who were not killed in childhood but then turn out to be too much trouble are usually tortured to death.

To Elvira: a napkin appears on the bartop, saying, "Ma'am is fine. I'm Bar. First drink is free, and I can also answer questions. Not all of them, but many."

(For Mikoto: Does it say where mages come from? Are they born exclusively from other mages, scattered in the human population...? Is there a justification given for this - even societies with deeply ingrained slavery tend to have some kind of spiel saying why it's okay.)

And that explains some of why Elvira seems so reluctant to trust her. Mikoto figures it's likely she's refusing to believe - or risk believing - that no, this place doesn't have a concept of mages like her world does, and most from Mikoto's world wouldn't even think to enslave them.

"Yes, ma'am." 

She was told to talk, so she can't just stand here. Can't ask about who's in charge of her because the human who was insisting no one is is still right there; can't ask about said human, same reason. (Can't ask the kinds of things mages have no business asking about in general, obviously.)

"Might I know if someone wanted me to come here?"

By natural default mages are born scattered. Mages are somewhat more likely to have a mage kid, but pretty much no one allows that to happen if they can help it, because after a point the pregnant mage can use the unborn mage's power and it's hard to contain properly. There's a way to 'draw' mage births to desired targets. These days in most developed nations mages are born in artificial wombs (no one else is; the artificial wombs aren't good enough to successfully carry a non-mage human.)

Mages are fundamentally untrustworthy, dangerous, treacherous, and generally terrible. If they're not contained properly they're a threat to society and everyone, but with the right handling they can be kept in place and useful. Occasionally despite all precautions a mage gets away and starts destroying things and attacking people, which just goes to show why they need to be kept under control.

For Elvira: "The landlords control the door. They don't communicate with me otherwise."

For Mikoto: Hm. She'll try to find more about the collars.

"Might I know who the landlords are?

Might I know what they would want me to do?"

Collars keep a mage's power contained, and keep a mage from using it without permission. They come with controls, which are keyed to those authorized to give a particular mage permissions. Out of range of any controls, they'll generally go to a default suppression level - no active magic, but they allow a mage's magical senses and passive healing. (You can tighten controls beyond that, but outside of neutralization in an emergency (which collars can thus conveniently double as!) you generally shouldn't - it's pretty bad for the mage on the receiving end.)

The technical explanation for how collars work is complicated and magic-involving and not generally published publicly in full. 'If you try to take it off it'll explode' is pretty common knowledge, though, and there's a variety of attempts at layman explanations for why that's the case.

Basically: you might naively imagine that a collar contains magic the way you might contain a physical creature by putting a wall around it. This is incorrect. The collar is in interaction with the mage's power, and this is what creates the containment, and suddenly breaking it causes the explosion. (There are attempts at analogy with diagrams of popping a balloon, or two people standing up leaning against each other and one of them disappearing causing the other to fall over, even though it's not quite the same.)

For Elvira: "The landlords control the door. I don't know their identities. They don't make demands of anyone, except the rules for the main room, which are no nudity and no violence."

For Mikoto: So she'll need other magic, preferably meta-magic of some kind, or else some way of - making the explosion not matter.

She's pretty sure that translates to 'if they got her here for a reason she's not getting to know it'. 

Attempts to think of more questions that are probably permitted.

"...Might I have a drink?" (She doesn't know if local mages have the same rule about being allowed to ask that, but it is hopefully not too dangerous a test, and possibly to some extent an informative one. And she is thirsty.

She keeps an eye on the human for objections.)

For Elvira: a drink tailored exactly to her tastes appears!

For Mikoto: She writes a note to Bar asking if security is likely to be able to get Elvira's collar off. The response is that Bar's not sure, but some of the people who've worked security in the past have had likely powers. (She's also continuing to read about magic and collars throughout this, but she doesn't expect to find much more useful information).

...that isn't water, but it looks like she was allowed to ask, and you drink what you're given as well as eat. She drinks it. 

...it tastes very good. She's briefly distracted and somewhat worried about this (was she supposed to be given a taste suppressant?), but, well, it was given. She drinks while she tries to come up with more questions again.

"Might I be permitted to ask about a mages' code" ...they might not call it that "- rules for mages of - a world that isn't mine?" That might be pushing it but she's going to be in for something anyway, and if she doesn't try anything she'll take longer to learn anything. 

Well, if she was wondering why Elvira was concerned about the collar, her reading will inform her that mages who end up without collars can expect some amount of torture as deterrent in case they could have avoided this and so they don't get ideas, and mages who end up without collars and then do unpermitted magic can expect quite a lot of torture. 

For Elvira: "Yes, but relatively few worlds have mages with the same magic system as your world, and many of those worlds are variants on yours. Rules for different magic users exist in many worlds, either as formalized laws or as informal codes of conduct. Do you want examples of rules pertaining to your magic system, or examples pertaining to magic in general?"

For Mikoto: Does it describe what mages are capable of, once relieved of their collar?

(...that's a kind of weird concept to think about in reality, variants. Not that most of this isn't weird to have in reality.)

...if they're getting people from all sorts of worlds there must be some kind of translation here. She remembers a word for mages that shows up in fantasy and sci-fi sometimes (used by aliens/fairies/whatever and humans to talk about both their mages when they're being fancy and also saying things like 'Terran homeworld', or when they're trying to figure out what kind of power-havers someone new has); if translated conceptually it'd come across as something like 'power-haver/inherently bad and can't be trusted/needs to be controlled').

"Might I know some examples of rules for [that word]?"

Mages in collars can do the same magic as mages not in collars, mages not in collars can just do it whenever they want without needing someone with their collar's control to let them do that piece of magic in particular.

For Elvira: Bar can supply a few publicly available codes, including with what-the-legalese-means summaries for the ones that have that. "You can borrow these for free."

For Mikoto: She'll skim through a few more things about collars, but if that's not fruitful turn to figuring out how technology interfaces with magic in general - she achieved cutting edge results in a number of fields in under a year with technology centuries ahead of her time, she's confident she can reverse engineer the collars fairly trivially, even if she can't make them without magic. 

"Thank you, ma'am." She'll look at those.

Collars themselves aren't much of an example of technology interfacing with magic - there's some technology involved, but technology isn't considered dependable enough for most of it. And collars have a long development history before modern technology existed at all.

But there is definitely a lot of magic-technology interfacing! Mages can be taught to read information they obtain by magical investigation into a computer readable format. They can also work on technology. Having magic involved has meant this world has some technologies, like real-time translation for spoken conversation, that Mikoto may (or may not) know were not available at the parallel time period and tech level without it.

For Elvira: The codes are all translated into English terms she's familiar with.

For Mikoto: She'll try to poke more at collars, but for now it looks like she's finding a meta-mage - hopefully security will have someone, that collar should be hardly safe.

Information on collars continues to be bereft of any 'how to take off collars in three easy steps' contents. 

It is possible to remove a collar without replacing it; if she can get not publicly published materials she can even find descriptions of how to do it. They do involve magic though. 

She looks at codes (for practical matters; she understands magic can also work differently in other worlds but that is not what she's looking for right now).

This place seems to have not invented collars with permission capabilities. In lieu of that they keep the mages in restraints that prevent magic use except when they're working, arm their minders with crossbows whose bolts prevent magic use if fired into a mage, and kill mages above a certain power threshold in childhood. In rules diverging from ones she's familiar with, their mages aren't allowed to have names. Not even serial numbers (they seem to have something like serial numbers, but the mages aren't allowed to use them or even find them out).

This place seems to not have one unified approach to mages across the world. This one group uses a lot of restraints (that also work partially like a net) and masks. They sometimes sew their mages' lips closed or cut out their tongues. Mages who were out of range of a minder are executed. The mages are used as weapons.

Another group keeps their mages in fortresses. The mages study a lot and do research, but also learn fighting. There's some kind of intense testing event you're really not supposed to fail. There's a punishment that involves having your emotions and magic cut out. They also have group punishment executions.

This place seems to have two kinds of power haver (three?), only one of whom are mages. They keep their mages in something like villages. They're allowed to have families, though there's very strict rules about declaring all children born. They seem to get quite a lot of leeway, by her standards, as long as they're respectful and show up for work and cooperate with some kind of power-drawing thing their humans use them for.

Well. Apparently aside from being terrified there's also being terrified in whole new direction.

Inside her head she can react to things. She's not really that attached to name use; does kind of really prefer having more interesting work if she can get it. Combat is interesting, though she's not opposed to studying or anything. She continues to really not want to die. Also doesn't want to have her tongue cut out, though apparently on the scale of things that can be cut out there's much worse available.

She's not, of course, expecting it to matter (unless maybe there's some kind of situation with multiple parties and there's some way she can try influence it that won't end worse than any of them. Or unless she decides something is so bad she wants to risk trying for the door. (Maybe for the ones with the out-of-range execution, if they'd count her for it, if her chances are good enough to risk dying much more painfully if she fails against dying for sure if she doesn't try.))

(She's good at making herself function under terror. Conveniently.)

Mikoto, having finished reading everything she could find that's potentially relevant and moved to reviewing the scientific and engineering publications she'd been reading before this mess, turns to Elvira once it seems she's done.

...What the hell did she read that has her this scared.

Mikoto reviews her half-paid-attention-to memories of Elvira's half of the conversation, and doesn't sigh but it's close. It seems Elvira is flatly refusing to believe not everywhere has any concept that anyone needs to be forcibly controlled.

"Most worlds don't work like yours. I understand that people in your worlds, and ones you've found that're similar, might work that way. But those codes don't apply here. Milliways is sometimes host to people who can imagine planets out of existence. Your powers are not that strong. Milliways manages to keep the peace despite having, as far as I can tell, exactly two codes that apply to patrons - 'don't be violent in the main room' and 'don't be naked in the main room.' It does this by ensuring there's always someone on security who could stop anyone violent, and that people who will immediately start fights don't get doors. I can guarantee, if we removed your limits entirely, whoever is on security would be able to handle even the cleverest, greatest expression of your power. Survey ships in my world have weapons that could lay waste to a continent in seconds. Everyone easily has access to extremely potentially dangerous technology. If you can't blow up a planet, no one will be particularly concerned about your power levels being a threat. There's worlds with interventionist gods who simply don't let tragedies happen. There's a death world where no one has any rules, but there's automatic resurrection if people die. There's worlds where it's physically impossible for people to interact with each other non-consensually. There's here, where if you stay in the main room no one can hurt you, and where the people in charge as far as I can tell are omnipotent beings who care mostly about facilitating interesting meetings."