"Yeah. Ranked play can get toxic, but a little competition can be fun. When I have more words for it I want to figure out what things cost. Oh!" She produces one of the gold coins. "For the museum, like the other two. You can pay me by weight of gold, but if you want to pay more because it's alien, I won't say no."

"Thank you," Tatenika responds, taking the coin and setting it aside to be picked up. "I will ask what the museum will pay."

"I can say how much some things cost," she offers. "This math machine — computer — cost about 2,0000 marks. A good muffin costs about 4 marks. The amount it pays to live for a year — Universal Basic Income — in this city is about 1,1000 marks. But the cost it takes to live in the city is more than 13,0000 in a year. Outside the city, it is about 4,3000."

She casts around for other examples.

"A robe cost about 530 marks, a meal cost about 30. You can learn it fast. Careful of lightning monster!"

.......And a silver Ecu was worth one??????

"I want to buy raw silver and copper."

Tatenika blinks.

"... yes," she agrees. "How much? For just you, or selling with the rift?"

"I don't know, it's just- One silver ecu got me one mark and that's twenty copper centimes- 32-" Base six, base six... "Which is... You can eat bread and stew for three days."

"Uh."

Tatenika does some quick mental math of her own.

"This is learning me some things of Tirra," she says. "The people there ... mostly they farm? And they do not have machines for digging?"

"Machines are good for digging — they can dig good amounts of down, not many humans need to dig. Machines are good for farming, also, but ... farming is more ... there are lots of bits that are not the same, they need a human to look at them. Also, food must be eaten now, rocks can wait to go the slow boat way. Also, machines can be turning silver rocks into silver better than fires ..."

She does not have the vocabulary to explain modern ore washing.

"Lots of small things, all together is a big difference in price. Years ago, silver costs more. Years ago food costs more. But getting less costs are not the same."

"Tirra mostly does not have machines. More than half of people farm. It is getting better, slowly. There is better magic, there are better roads, there are more boats, there is more metal. A person came through a rift with a hand computer and from it showed people how to make good metal." Behold, a Bessemer converter. "Other people came through rifts sometimes but rifts are always only sometimes so far. A long time ago there was... How much are you telling everyone on the planet? There are things it's not good to tell everyone."

"We are telling everyone ... things about Tirra, and about plans, and about meeting-neighbors process, but not about ... your things that are private things," she explains. "We are telling everyone about monsters, so they can be safe. If there is a thing that is not good to know, we don't have to tell everyone."

Tatenika bites her lip and looks worried.

"There are stories about ... things where it is the knowing of the things that is bad, not the doing with the knowing. Is this a like-that thing? Or is it like knowing how to make a weapon, and if everyone knows there is more fighting?"

She thinks.

"More like the second thing. Maybe a little bit first thing."

Tatenika sets down her controller and looks serious.

"We will not telling everyone, then," she promises. "Is it safe for the Emergency Services people —"

She gestures to the tent.

"— to know? Or should you tell only me?"

"It's probably okay to tell people who are careful and serious. I have to think about how to say it probably."

Tatenika waits patiently.

"People are reading parables of the light gods? The light gods are people who are ... made of magic. 'Praying' is thinking about them in a way that tells them things and maybe also feeds them. They are good people, who want to help. They are not just stories. They are called the light gods, a category of a more general thing that is just called 'gods'."

... oh. She can see where this is going. That explains how a world could have, apparently, occasional visitors with knowledge of advanced metallurgy, and still have a problem with monsters that are vulnerable to guns.

Frankly, it sounds like it might explain what's going on with magic, even, if there's a more advanced alien species that uses it. And Weiss's magic already works here, so they're already contaminated. Fuck.

"Can you ... tell whether praying works? Does it feel different than thinking normally?"

If there's a noticeable difference, they might be able to tell whether the whole planet is affected yet, or whether it's time to make very fast very serious decisions about nukes, depending on how bad the non-light gods are.

"Priestesses, people who are favored by a god, can do god-specific magic. They can definitely tell if they are praying, because the god-specific magic, divine magic, works or doesn't work. Ordinary people can't, unless the god answers them. The next part maybe I say to just you and you choose what to say to other people."

None of Tatenika's panic shows on her face, by dint of long practice. She cuts the hardware switch on her earpiece, and sets it on the table, and then leans in to listen to what Weiss has to say.

She whips up a strong baffle.

"The light gods broke the dark gods into small pieces during a terrible war- War is everyone fighting everyone- A long time ago. The pieces aren't dead and can only be killed very slowly, but they can't do much as long as they stay apart. The pieces are curses and undead and Cryptids. There is a problem sometimes with people thinking, I will take this piece of a God and be strong and tell people what to do! Or I will take these pieces and put them together into a God and the God will reward me for making it! This would be... Really really bad. So we don't talk about it much in case people get ideas."

... okay, that's a lot less bad than Tatenika was expecting, actually. It also smells like a story and not a complete explanation.

She thinks about this for a moment — but actually it's not her job to figure out how to handle these things; it's her job to get information for those people so they can do their jobs.

"We have weapons that can kill cities for thousands of years," she tells Weiss. "Everyone knows how to make them, because they are simple. The people of all the world, the Global Minimum Standards Body, tells people not to make them, and mostly people don't. When people do, the GMSB finds out by watching for weapon-building-stuff and makes them stop."

"Is taking dark-god-pieces like making a weapon? People can see it and stop it? Or is it like praying, and people can't tell if you are thinking, and then poof there is a god?"

...Nukes: Check.

"I think the light gods would be more worried if just praying could bring the dark ones back. I think it's more like making a weapon, yes."

Tatenika nods.

"If you can tell us what it looks like, we can ask the GMSB to tell people not to do it. And they know how to look good and stop people. And, if someone does get a dark-god-piece, we won't do what they say anyway."

"Oh good. Maybe you can find the right people to tell and I'll tell them later. After this heavy talk I'm going to take a break and vanish for a bit."

Tatenika really wants to insist on learning details of the potential unfriendly magical alien empowering process now, but she's worked hard on getting Weiss less skittish, and pushing it probably isn't going to help.

"There is a GMSB Inspector here to look at the meeting you process; you can tell them," she offers. "They wear purple and gold little stripes. But if you want to take a break it is okay."

"...So, the thing is, you want me to explain more and help you all be safe. You're not pressing but I can almost kind of tell. I know. I get that. I am trying to be good at this, and say the things that should be said. It's important. But... You said you don't want me to be sad because of this? I also don't! I am not... Mmmrh... I am going to rant, to talk a lot in an upset way, for a bit, because I know myself and I know that I woke that feeling up and now, I won't calm down until I do. It's not your fault."

Pause.

"Thinking hard about what to do, what is best, what is worst, will this hurt people, is this better than that, do I keep secrets, how do I make people like me, will this be scary, will they like this... I can't do that. I am not a Diplomat," she loanwords. "Nobody sent me. I'm just a girl who spends a lot of time out in the woods, hanging out with friends and killing monsters when they're in front of me. And now a whole city, a whole planet, a thousand thousand thousand people and more, are going - Alien! Kitsune! Aaaaa, excited scared! It's too big! It's too big. I can't think about it. I... Will feel guilty, sad that I did not help or that I hurt someone by not helping, and I will help and help and help and help, fix the big problems, deal with the problems of towers and cities not houses and villages, I was suffering to help people who I'd never meet, making decisions that can help or hurt a thousand people at once, agonizing over whether I did it right or I could have done better, until I was tired and miserable, until I cannot think anymore, until I feel so sad and worn-out that I go - wear red in the forest for twenty years. I did that. I tried too hard, and broke myself, and... I know not to do it again."

She grabs her ears and rubs them some, some kind of stimming, then looks like she's feeling self-conscious about it and stops, and her tail lashes around instead.

Deeeeep breath. 

"So I'll help. I'll be responsible, and say the things we need to say, and answer the questions, and be smart and careful and- I'll do the basic duty of - trying to do an unknown amount of good to a billion people I'll never meet. But I'll hate it the whole way. I'll only help so much. I'll be perfectly fine and calm and playing games one moment and just - not at all the next. I do a lot better with small problems, personal problems, people I know. My friends, who I'm going to try to go get when I'm more sure you won't set off one of those giant bombs 'cause you're too scared and twitchy. -I don't think you are, I think you're being a lot more sane and calm than you've any right to be, I'm really glad about that and was worried you'd be sending people with guns to try and lock me in a metal box. Which, uh, would not have worked at all, by the way. But you haven't. It's great. I'm not nearly so competent at calming the fuck down and getting over myself. So, I'm trying. I care that meeting people of another world goes well. Just... Only so much. Only ever so much. Tamamo's tails, most kitsunes wouldn't be half as patient, helpful, serious..."

"...Okay, rant over."

Then she takes down the baffle and sighs.

"So... Yeah. It's not a problem now, it's a problem in six months if things go badly. I'll be back in like... An hour, and tell whoever all about the signs."

And then- It looks distinct from when she just goes invisible, it's like she's turning a corner into nowhere- She's gone.

Tatenika's first thought is something along the lines of "Aliens: They're just like us".

She gives Weiss's former location a fond smile, just in case she can still see her, and then pulls out the storage media from the computer to save their game and puts her earpiece back in.

She stands and heads back to the tent, tapping her earpiece to get a dispatcher's attention.

"Kavri, I've got something that needs attention from Inspector Dafika. Could you send them a message to meet me in the temporary conference room? We can kick out the linguists."