If she spoke the language, she might have a better idea of what just happened. As it is, a lot of people turn to start walking in a different direction than they had been going, or speak in excited or dismissive tones to their friends, or begin looking around at the other passers by.

A man emerges from the café with a thermos of something and then pauses in the doorway to look her up and down.

It's always men who

Wrongthought.

Ugh. Ugh ugh. Why did the rift have to drop her IN THE MIDDLE OF A BANK. She can't even be mad at the cops. Invisible giant foxes are pretty alarming.

Nonchalantly enjoying the park here, alert but not concerned. She stands and starts walking in a people-less direction.

The man calls out after her, but doesn't seem inclined to pursue. It's easy enough to slip away between the buildings, and find an unoccupied corner. This one is not a park, but a little loading dock area for a group of stores. There's nothing currently being unloaded, though — just some elevated doors and suggestive tire tracks in the snow. 

She (invisibly) clambers up to a roof and peers over the streets.

It's a shame she came up the back side, since the street-facing side of this roof has some ropes for self-belay and a set of handholds. The roof itself just has some sparse chairs and a big solar panel.

As for the people on the streets ...

It's clear that something is happening. Not everyone is reacting in the same way, but there's a sense of some unexpected disruption to routine. Where before, people were going about their business or sitting and chatting, now people are mostly walking with a determined stride, or discussing in large groups. During the first few minutes, a number of people put red lights in their hair, or change their lights from blue to red. A few minutes after that, the people with red lights have almost completely vanished from the street, although they left in different directions.

The smell of bread from the café is still apparent to her sensitive nose, even from the roof, tempting her.

Another golf cart is visible in the distance, a pair of people stopping people on the street and speaking to them before moving on.

In the distance, she can still hear the normal sounds of the city. Whatever they think is happening, the trains are still running, and people are still working and living.

"... so then we get some spotlights in, to make the right building really obvious," Veramat pitches.

Their colleagues nod thoughtfully. "So we can start with SCOL and LCTL, partially so everyone knows what's happening, and then what? Fox calls?"

    "Now that Smaller Continent Dispatch has confirmed it, I think we can probably get an expert on foxes pretty easily. Þummil, would you make the request?"

"What do we do if they don't show?"

    "We'll need to give them some time, certainly. But it's early in the day — we won't be doing anything that will need an impact payment until the evening. And then we can try again the next day."

"Are foxes nocturnal?"

    "I think they're crepuscular, actually, like wolves. I think it's worth the impact payment, personally. See if Dispatch will authorize the expense."

"Okay, what do we do if they do show?"

    "Senior Diplomat Tatenika and her team are already being flown in, just in case. Their plane should touch down in about four hours."

"I have a biologist specializing in dogs and foxes on the line," Þummil announces.

   "Put them on speaker — Specialist, what have you heard about the situation?"

Uuuuuugh. She probably can't avoid it forever. Also, piecing together more than greetings in a completely new language is a frustrating task.

And now it's a big fucking deal and they're freaking out. Probably tons of screaming behind the scenes.

Uuuuugh. 

Ugh.

She should just cut to the heart of it.

She stops being invisible, stops manifesting her extra clothes that hide her ears and tail, and walks straight down the middle of the street.

Of course, she's actually twenty feet back from where it looks like she is.

That will immediately get people's attention. There's a suserration as people notice and turn and say things to their neighbors.

The people in purple pants hurry up the street, just shy of running. One of them hangs back with the cart, and the other walks toward Weiss's image with her hands empty, and held out palm-outward at waist level. She stops about ten feet away, and speaks in a quiet, calm voice that Weiss might have trouble hearing from thirty feet away.

"Hello. I'm pretty sure you can't understand me, but nod if you can."

Then she slowly places one hand on her chest and says "Kyaris".

A lot of people have their phones out, and are recording the interaction. Back with the cart, the other purple pants person is speaking into their phone and rummaging through a bag in the back.

Illusion which only purple people can see: Weiss cringing away from a blank faced crowd. Then Weiss in a private room with two people in purple, looking tense but not upset.

Kyaris looks at (the illusion of) Weiss, and then over at the crowd.

She turns away and cups her hands to her mouth.

"By the power vested in me by Central River City Emergency Services, I am establishing a minimum perimeter around the alien," she calls. "The alien may possibly be tushot. Nobody not currently working with Emergency Services is permitted to intentionally approach more closely than a hundred paces. Please back away."

There is some grumbling, but people back away from Weiss and Kyaris, giving them plenty of space.

Kyaris starts to slowly walk back toward the golf cart, beckoning to Weiss.

Ugg ugh ugh ughhgggggghhhgh there are millions of at least a couple thousand people paying attention to her and Important People are going to want Answers and ugh.

(The illusion of) Weiss will get in the golf cart, bearing defensive body language. Actual Weiss will run along behind it.

Kyaris and her coworker are both scrupulously careful not to touch the illusion of Weiss. They murmur quietly to each other as they travel.

The golf cart moves slowly, and the crowds melt away in front of it, leaving the street empty and the shop windows full of curious faces. But it doesn't have to travel far, before they pull up to a small building with a solar panel on the roof and a charging spot for the golf cart.

Kyaris opens the door and steps in, holding it open to show Weiss that the room contains nothing but a table, and a large number of labeled boxes on wire shelves. Her coworker plugs in the cart, and then sits back in it, apparently not going to join her in the building.

Yeah alright the actual Weiss will go inside with the illusion. She leans against a wall in the corner even as the illusion hops up onto the table (making it shift a realistic amount) and sits cross-legged, though.

She predicted this would suck and her prediction was correct.

"I'm Weiss. You're- Kyaris?"

The politeness agreement is incorrect, and Kyaris privately doubts that the alien is gendering themselves correctly — but that's a very promising utterance, she thinks! At least the alien is trying, which is something she knows the folks at dispatch were worried about.

Kyaris is totally and utterly not trained for this. But, she's the one who's here, so she'll just have to do her best. She has a personal dispatcher sitting on her earbud, ready to give her updates from the experts as she needs them.

"I'm Kyaris," she confirms, nodding. "You're Weiss?"

She uses a different interrogative pronoun than Weiss used.

Her patience for this started at 'low' and is already going down. But it's not going to go away just because she wants it to.

How about she repeats all the different versions of "I'm" and "you're" she's overheard rapid-fire and then gives a helpless shrug? This shit is like the tones in Atsosi: Completely incomprehensible from the outside.

Kyaris winces. Yeah, that's valid. Probably they should have done what Larger Continent did, honestly. She murmurs a question to the experts in her ear.

She makes a 'wait' gesture, and wanders off into the shelves. She returns a moment later with a whiteboard and a set of colored markers. She props it up against one wall, and draws a picture of a leaf, a muffin, a bird, and a rock.

She points to the leaf. "I eat this. I eat a leaf."

Then she points to the bird. "I eat this. I eat a bird."

Then she points to the muffin. "I eat this. I eat a muffin."

She points to the rock. "I don't eat this. I don't eat rocks."

"What does Weiss eat?" 

"...It's kinda hard to explain..."

Wait, are they doing language learning or interrogation, here? (She thinks of an old meme: Both? Both. Both is good.)

"I eat," she changes languages to Noten, whose numbers make the most sense in her opinion, and counts off fingers, "One, two, three, four, five, kinds of thing."

From left to right: A blank spot. Ordinary food, bread, meat, fruit, etc. Obvious confectionary- Candy, sweet pastries, donuts, cake. Another blank spot. And then, a crescent moon sending down a visible white moonbeam shining on a mini-Weiss.

"Leaf... Bird... Muffin... Rocks... Hmm..."

...She'll take notes in phonetic Noten floating in air for now.

... uhhhh.

Okay, this is normal, actually. Of course the alien eats something weird. The scientists were probably already worrying about whether they would have to synthesize right-handed meals in a lab. Would Weiss have ended up with a nutrient deficiency if þereminia didn't have a moon?

Kyaris thinks for a moment, and then nods and erases her whiteboard. She makes another 'wait' gesture, and goes off into the shelves. When she returns, she has an unfolded space blanket, an uncapped gallon glass jug of water, a rolled up self-inflating inflatable air mattress, and a flashlight.

She sets these things on the floor in front of the table, and then walks to the door.

She grasps the door and opens it. "I open the door."

She closes it again. "I close the door. I can close the door."

She mimes biting her knuckle. "I can eat myself. I cannot eat Weiss."

She opens the door again and steps through it to stand on the step. Behind her, the street is deserted, other than a group of people standing off to one side down the block. "Weiss can open the door. Weiss can close the door. I can close the door. I cannot open the door."

Wait, is "can", can, or may? Does she even have 'eat' right???

She feels her energy ebbing away. Her invisible-self hops up onto the table and joins where her illusion-self is sitting, and then the illusion-self expires without anything seeming to change, reclaiming a bit of energy. They don't seem to have sent in the cops immediately, and she doesn't feel a SWAT team breathing right outside the door with her whiskers, at least...

...She whips up the Noten alphabet in midair and starts pointing to letters and assigning them sounds.

Okay, sure. Kyaris can repeat sounds (and make sure to stand enough to the side that her colleague with the camera in the backup group can stream it to the linguists at the university).

She is not really a languages person, but it's not actually difficult to learn a phonetic alphabet; everybody knows a handful of ciphers, anyway.

She remains standing on the step, in case Weiss decides to close the door in her face.

About half-way into the alphabet, another golf cart arrives, and one of Kyaris's colleagues comes to the door with a selection platter of sandwiches and pastries. He sets it just inside the door, and then slides it into the room, before retreating back to the group of people hanging back down the street.

-Uuuuuuuugh. Frustration!

Illusion: One person talking to her.

Half a dozen rooms with a dozen people each staring at a screen that shows her!

And she herself kind of waves in vague frustration about it. Gods, there was supposed to be a masquerade or something, this is just... It's way too much of a thing, a huge, impersonal system trying to make sense of her and UGH.

Facepalm. Deep breath.

"This is alphabet of Noten. You," vague wave to indicate it's a general you, "have a alphabet?"