"That sounds terribly useful- I'm sure many people would be glad to have that."

     "You probably won't have to worry about the cough, either,"  Peg adds. "Like, not that it's especially worrying, it just sucks."

"Sorry, that is a natural born sorcery ability... it is innate, but people can still use ritual sorcery to get better at those things."

Cressy pokes her head back in the door.  "Hey, Dad wants to know how much meat do they need?"

"We need normal amounts of meat for a baseline human, leaning a bit on the more side than the less side, but not noticeably much."

"Huh, okay.  You should be fine, then, we've got plenty."

"Okay, what now? Should we, uh, introduce yourselves to the rest of the house or something?"

"Could do, not everyone's home right now- Cressy, your mom took the little ones to the clinic, right?"

     "Yep."

"So they won't be back till at least shift-end, but there's Uncle Marr.  Or Doors probably hasn't hit the dinner rush, we could go down, ask your synth questions to someone who's lived it?"

"Sounds like a plan. Can you stir us away from the questions that might be too uncomfortable?"

"Sure thing, but with Doors you don't really have to worry about her being upset and hiding it."  Peg downs the last of her tea and leads them into the hallway, grabbing her scarf and jacket back off their hook.  "Assuming you start out like you know she's people, I guess, she's polite with like, cops and stuff."

The main hall seems to lead a little more than half the length of the building, concrete-floored with doors and curtained openings off either side.  There's very little decoration, aside from an actual paper map in pride of place facing the head of the interior staircase, pinned to the wall by a sheet of clear plastic.

They make a face. "Is that that much of a common thing?"

"Yeah.  Not everyone, but- there's this idea got around that they don't have souls, which is stupid, they'd show up in the spirit world if that was true, but why listen to werewolves, we just hold the universe together..."  She sighs and starts putting her scarf back on.  "Anyway, yeah, people assume that means they also don't have feelings, so sometimes they'll pretend like that's true 'cause it's safer or they don't want to deal with whatever."

"Nice to know that people be like that in every universe. Or rather, it's better to have the information than not."

"There isn't magic that could detect emotions or what have you?"

"I mean, yeah?  But no one listens to changelings any more than us, mages are the ones getting into the technical definition of souls half the time, seems like... and there's not that many of any of us and supernaturals aren't allowed in the Core at all, so- ugh, okay, lightning geography lesson, the Core is the oldest set of colonies, seat of the government, super rich, all the Corp headquarters are there, all that."

"So basically, the people who can perceive the truth through magical means and the people who would find the truth inconvenient are in different locations? Gosh, I am sure nothing about that was by design."

"Heh.  Not the only reason, we are legitimately scary, but I bet it didn't hurt."

"I might be underestimating how much given that we apparently don't get lunatic upon seeing you."

"What?  I- yeah, if you think lunacy is the biggest problem I have completely failed to get across how much damage I could actually do."  She closes her eyes and runs a hand along the wall for a moment.  "If I lost control in a populated area- not even if I woke up and decided 'oh, I think I'll be a murderer today,' if one idiot with a silver bullet got really unlucky- picture a high-speed train derailing.  With claws.  And I'm the youngest wolf in the pack."

"Okay, okay. I get it, cray werewolf is bad."

"The thing he was underestimating is how scared they are and how hard is to act rationally when presented the knowledge of your traits. Experiencing some kind of mental alteration by just witnessing relatively harmless displays of power does not imply competence from non-supernatural governments."

Peg sighs and brushes her fingers briefly across the plastic covering the map before unlocking the staircase door.  "It's not that they're incompetent, really, they're just competent at different goals than we've got."

"Dunno, I still don't find myself particularly inclined to advocate the people that think other people are not, well, people."

"No argument here.  Speaking of people, you okay with just saying you're from a planet way off in the Verge without any synths there and leave the different universe for later?  Doors I trust, but not every random person in the street."

"Yeah, we figured that something like that would be our cover. Any other details we should work out before hand?"

"Uh- d'you actually want a kebab, 's not strictly cricket for me to buy you one but it's not like I haven't done worse before."