This is not a good Security day. This poor girl was just casually chatting with someone and corrected his assumption of her species "she is a witch-" she says and next thing she knows the dude tries to stab her with a black dagger.

A horse that is on fire and someone in what amounts to power armor are already dashing to the area. "STAND DOWN NOW."

"You hear devil's consort, stand down now and accept your fate." Says the guy, apparently he assumed the order was to Temperance.

Temperance unsheathes her own dagger, but is focusing on keeping a distance instead of using the blade.

"TAKE THE KNIFE!"

Feume arrives before the bounding walker, and physically bites the black dagger, wrenching it away. With a toss of his head embers fly threateningly towards Temperance as well, but don't actually hit her.

"Devil's mare!" Says the attacker.

"Seriously, dude, chill out." Temperance says taking a step further away.

And now the big loud armor thing is right next to both of them, tall and imposing. Walta is visible through the clear visor. "You, calm the heck down. You, put that knife up. Feume, guard."

The attacker hisses.

Temperance puts Walta between herself and the him, she tentatively puts her knife away.

The fire horse keeps one eye on Temperance but turns to face the other guy, still holding his knife.

"Sir, rules are no fighting or other violence in the main bar area. Whatever your issues are, they don't come into milliways. Now, are you going to calm down?"

"SHE CONSORTS WITH THE DEVIL!" Is his reply, his face is turning beet red.

Temperance glares.

"Right, negotiation time over. Jerk." FOOMPH. Now he is covered in incredibly sticky webbing, sourced from wild weedles. 

Ignoring the guy's continuing protests, "Feume, good job, give it here." She puts the knife in a big pocket on the outside of the armor and seals it, and tosses Feume a treat. She picks knife guy up by a clump of webbing almost effortlessly, perhaps a little rougher than necessary, and turns to Temperance. "Ma'am, please follow us to the Security office. I'd like to get both sides of the story no matter what it looks like."

"Sure thing." Temperance follows.

She places the guy in a cell before starting to remove the webbing. "You'll get your knife back when you're done with your five hours subjective time. If you pull shit like this when I'm on duty again, you're getting twenty and then kicked out after."

The place is getting a bit crowded with Feume there too, so Walta recalls him into his ball.

"Ma'am, I'm Walta. You didn't strike and you tried to de-escalate so you get the benefit of the doubt. Was this anything more than the bigotry it looked like?"

"Literally all I did was correct him when he said - I don't remember the exact words - 'usually this place is filled with humans like ourselves' and then he tried to poke new holes in me. I am not even sure if he is anti-witch bigot or anti-nonhuman bigot."

"Ugh. The door is supposed to keep guys whose first response to something they don't like is stabbing out. If he repeat offends precedent says the door will stop showing up for him. Are you injured? Actually-" She shouts the same question into the idiot's cell.

"No, he couldn't even land a hit."

Attempted-stabbing guy glares at her but shakes his head.

"Well. This matter is resolved to my satisfaction." The armor goes back into ready-rest and she contorts out of the hole that appears in its back. "I'm still on duty for now but I'm sure I'll be fascinated to learn about a new kind of witchcraft once I'm done."

"I would love to tell you all about it. If you can't find me, Bar will tell you where to find me. Thank you for the help."

She waves goodbye at Walta and simply ignores Attempted-stabbing guy.

She lets Feume back out and resumes grooming him, humming contently.

Nothing violent happens for the rest of her shift, when she tells her replacement that stabby guy has an hour and a half left on his punishment and ought to be watched 'cause he's probably unstable, here's his knife if you feel like giving it back.

And she asks Bar where that witch she intervened for might have gotten to.

Bar informs her that the witch is in the backyward where Walta can find her flying around in a sort of evergreen branch.

She rides her favorite (only) Ponyta over, shouting and waving when she gets close enough. The walker follows her, empty.

She spots this and lands near her. "Hi!"

"Hi! You doing okay? So you're probably magic? I like learning about new kinds because they could be helpful."

"I'm okay, thank you for the help. I'm in fact magic, my species can do spells if have the right things or say the right words."

"Doing my job is all." She demounts Feume and pets his mane affectionately. "A whole magic species, that's cool. I don't have any magic myself, even if 'mon might look like it."

"Pretty cool," Temperance agrees, "what are mons?"

"Pokémon are what my current world has instead of large animals. They're special in a lot of ways. Take Feume here, have you ever seen a burning horse before? And he'll turn into a burning unicorn, a Rapidash, sooner or later when he's experienced enough."

"That sounds very neat. And you said current world?"

"Er, I moved. My first one wasn't particularly safe for me... And I met someone nice from a nice world. And, yeah."

"Sorry, and I can understand the impulse."

"It's turned out pretty well. The friend who let me in is actually searching for something that could be pretty important, so I make a point to ask anyone with magic if they can do magical searching or information-gathering whenever I'm here."

"Witchcraft can do some divination, but it might depend on what you want to know."

"She's looking for the legendary Pokémon. Incredibly rare 'mon said to be smart as or smarter than humans, which nobody's sure even actually exist and milliways doesn't have any books that are definitely about them from our world."

"I could give it a try, but I have no idea if it will work."

"I wanna know more about how you work first. Would you need to poke into our world? Need any expensive materials? What d'you want as pay?"

"Materials-wise I need various herbs that can be brought from Bar and I an animal sacrifice that I can acquire by myself, then I would need to use the herbs to write a ritual circle while standing in your world," she eyes the armor, "you're probably pretty well suited for the job of doorstep. Witches don't use money, but you could cover the material costs and I would be willing to try just for curiosity's sake, at least for the first time. I think the herbs would cost about..." she names a figure, it isn't expensive. "It would be good to know more about what I'm looking for if you can produce any information."

She outlines what is known (pretty much nil), reasonably suspected (not all that much), and rumored (a whole lot) about various legendary 'mon.

Not promising, but they will give it a try, since there is a fire type around, Temperances thinks they should divine for Entei. They gather the materials and Temperance waits for Walta to open the door.

"...How long will it take? Because someone will probably complain if I stand here for an hour."

 "It is going to take maybe twenty minutes? Mostly to set up the runes in the right way."

"Yeah, Bar will be ticked if I hold the door for twenty minutes. No way to speed it up?"

 "Maybe I could draw the runes on a piece of cloth, using honey to keep the herbs in place, then bring the cloth here and finish the spell. The cloth would be damaged in the process, but it would work."

"And then it'll only take a few minutes...? I'll pay up a modest amount to try it."

 "Only a few minutes of you holding the door, yes. But I will need most of 20 minutes somewhere quiet where I can draw runes."

"I have a room if you want to use it. Security perk."

 "Perfect then! Shall we?"

Temperance will acquire a piece of cloth from bar and some extra honey. She spends the requested time neatly writing the runes with a herb-honey "ink".

Walta will chat at her, asking about other things her kind of witch can do. Or just read if the distraction is too much.

Temperance happily chats! Her kind of witch can do mostly nature based stuff, like calming animals, healing, basic weather control, various wards. It can't deal well with technology, but can do basic things like opening a lock or making a blade very sharp. Is she interested in any of that?

"A magically sharp blade could come in handy. Can you do anything to make Feume happier, you think? Can you mess with materials in other ways - make them more conductive, or less, or frictionless?"

 "I should first try simpler things with Feume, but there should be something. Making something permanently more or less conductive to electricity sounds tricky - there are wards to protect people from electricity though - isolating from heat is easier, frictionless... tricky-but-doable. There are things for durability and noise too..."

"Durability, frictionless, insulating from heat is actually what I meant. Managing heat is challenge number one with a walker as small as my armor, it's based on designs as big as horses or houses."

She grins. "There are definitely spells for that, there are spells to make things cold, you just need to define the area they affect."

"...Ooh, if there's something to make areas hot too I can remove the need for fuel entirely. Even just permanent cold would make a nice passive gas-exchange engine."

"Gas-exchange engine? I'm sorry I don't know much about technology."

"Oh it's a - kind of engine that's different from most engines because it's very very efficient, and it can run off of less temperature difference than most other kinds, it's just kind of delicate and low power. Kind of niche. And wow is explaining what you can do to someone with no clue kind of hard!"

"It is alright. I'm fairly uneducated, but I have magic to compensate. I can piece together an explanation from books if I need to. What exactly would you need for the gas-exchange engine?"

"One object that is always colder, and one object that is always hotter, than each other. Big flat plates if possible. It would be nice to be able to turn them on or off but that's not really necessary."

"Do the plates need to be treated in some special way? Bar could supply regular plates. I could make rocks with different temperatures and that turn on and off if someone says a command word."

"Oh, plates means some kind of big metal disk not something you eat off of - I want lots of surface area. I can just buy those too. Rocks with different temperatures - could work, but that same thing in plates would be better, especially if the hot one is fire-hot. Could extract a couple kilowatts from it."

"Ah, metal plates producing or draining heat is totally doable."

"What kind of temperatures are we talking about? Nevermind, keep at the scrying runes for now and let me do some math, figure out how big a plate I want..."

Temperances focus on the scrying runes and after the estimated time has a sheet of cloth with a spell circle on, they can't roll it up, but they carry it sort of half folded to Walta's world.

Where she acts as doorstop and has Feume patrol around her. Still mostly in Bar so she gets translated, "Wild 'mon might come up to us, but Feume can handle them. This is a rest stop on one of the intercity routes, so probably no people."

Temperance nods, then she recites the verse of the spell and kills a bird (one caught from the backyard, not a mon). There is a weird wind that apparently erases the herbs out of the existence and then she stares vacantly at nothing for a minute.

Then she blinks disappointed. "Sorry, couldn't get anything, not even a confirmation that Entei is not real. Just a fuzzy fog."

"Hey! You speak English! I know a little English from my first world but not enough to actually understand what you said out there, come into Bar and repeat?"

Oh, right. She steps in and repeats herself.

Walta lets the door close for an impatiently waiting vampire of some kind. "Sorry for the inconvenience."

"That's disappointing, but it was totally worth a shot."

"Too bad it didn't work. Do you want try the other thing then?"

"I'm actually really sure it'll work if your magic does in fact keep the plates always the same temperature as described! Building an engine around them will take a while though."

"Sure. We can start on that now? Maybe with small plates," she holds her thumb and index finger a inch apart, "so I can see if we will need adjustments for the bigger version."

"Tiny plates are too small to even be worth trying, start with ones a foot across maybe. I really think you'll get bored and wander off if I build the whole thing right in front of you. Most people do."

"I can fly or swim around the backyard and Milliways is interesting. I suggested the tiny plates so I could adjust the spell which was originally meant for rocks."

"Aha.  Small plates, would it help if they're not like paper-flat? Slightly more rockish that way? I'm making a mental list to run to Bar for."

"Nah, if it works on metal it should work fine either way. It is just sensible to test smaller when you're trying spell variations."

"Alright. I'll be right back."

She is. And they head back to the room with a crate that the walker strains slightly under. This time she unfolds various boxes in the corner into a sort of workshop-ish area. and presses three-inch disks of aluminum out. "Here's the plates."

Temperance creates a ward and starts experimenting with the temporary versions of the spell, trying to get the temperature right first and the analyzing with a simple scry. She makes notes and ask Walta questions before coming up with variations. She can get a disk hot enough to evaporate or freeze water drops after a few minutes, and can probably improve on that.

"The cold one doesn't need to be particularly far below freezing, but the hot one should be as hot as possible unless you can get it to over a thousand degrees in which case any hotter would just be stupidly dangerous. And lots of surface area, maybe I give it spikes. I can run water over it and have it flash to steam... What do you want for payment?"

"What is exactly your budget or what is in offer?" She eyes the machinery, "Besides covering material costs and maybe meals if I stay here long enough, I'm not sure what you can give. Is your robot-armor thing complicated to pilot for a a spin around the lake? Or maybe your pokemon?"

"Walkers are kind of hard to use, yes... And Feume has to like you a fair bit to let you ride him. I've got a bunch of little gadgets, though. If you need electricity sometimes, to charge small to medium devices if you're out in the wild somewhere, I could turn the small plate set into a little miniature generator and fridge? I'd need to see your world's electrical plugs."

"Oooh, electricity is a problem! Witches have their own society and mostly haven't caught up. I bet you that no one ever thought about make a gas-exchange engine before. Maybe something steam powered, except my clan's lands uses gasoline generators, so I don't know."

"For this I was thinking something really little and light, that you can carry with you and hopefully never needs to be fixed."

"Not needing to be fixed would be cool, but if it could be something we can do ourselves, or at least something we can get the parts on a store and assemble ourselves, it would be even better. Bar can probably give tips of common materials."

"I already talked to her about stuff available in your world. Well, lemme sketch some designs..." She seems to prefer using her computer in a very sketchbook-esqe way.

"Cool. I will go back on improving on how to enchant the plates. At some point we'll need to see if the spell sticks and there isn't a better way than wait around for a couple hours."

"Oh, yeah... I don't really want to go through all the effort of making my big one unless I know it'll stick."

Temperance keeps working on the disks. She manages to get the require temperature for a brief moment, and then starts working from there, and eventually she has a couple of disks for the two hours test.

Walta has been poking at designs on the computer. There isn't really simulation software for engines in the Sinnoh region, though, so she's going on intuition for half of it.

"What should we do while we wait for them to hopefully not fail?"

Temperance shrugs. "Dunno, I could go for a swim."

"Mm. I'm not a fan of the water but I should probably go sit by the lake and read or something, so milliways doesn't decide to separate us for the fun of it."

"Sure! Would you have an issue with me swimming naked?"

"Um. K-kind of slightly?"

"Oh, sorry. Witches don't have problem with nudity and cold, it can be hard to calibrate others' expectations."

"Maybe I'd better stay inside if you do that."

"But then there is Milliways' time thing. I could swim with my silks on too."

"I just- Urgh. But then you have to swim with something dragging along." She takes a deep breath. "It's not- I mean, if you don't mind, you don't mind. I'll get over myself."

"I don't mind. I can't, actually. When I said it was a witch thing I meant it is part of our biology to not care about nudity."

"Even if some creepy guy started staring at you?"

"Well, that isn't meaningfully better or worse while I'm clothed and I have magic."

"Well I got all flustered becaaaause I am kind of attracted to girls.... But it's not like I don't have practice ignoring it."

Giggles. "I won't mind, really."

"...Then okay I'll sit by the shore and start putting together some stuff I can use for other things if the plates don't end up working."

"Good idea. Do you need help bringing anything?"

"Nah. What good is a walker if it can't carry your stuff?"

"Same is true to cloudpines," Temperance says pointing a thumb to the evergreen branch where most of her stuff is hanging from black silk bags.

They bring along the disks - presumably Walta can provide a way to transport them - and once they're resettle their stuff Temperance strips off and gets into the water.

They're not that big, and the walker has utility belt equivalents, carabiner-like things, even modular slots for gear.

She has the walker sit down, lets Feume out to graze and run around, and starts cutting and soldering things.

Temperance swims around and plays with the giant squid.

Walta only occasionally stares at her admiringly.

She stops working on the device to play with Feume after maybe an hour.

A bit after that, Temperance gets to land and dresses herself in silks, she still quite damp and the clothes stick to her body.

"Hey, do you wanna race?"

"You can fly, you'll probably win. Maybe not if I use Feume."

"Using Feume was the plan, and we can stick to a course so going over obstacles won't be that much of an advantage."

"Alright. Let's do it. Over that hill, into the woods, and back?"

She can't help but glance over the form-sticking clothes a little more.

Temperance shows no sign of minding the glancing.

"Sounds perfect!"

"Alright! Here, Feume! We get to have a race!" Feume trots over excitedly, tossing fire around into the air a little.

Temperance flies along with giggling at the challenge.

Walta climbs up, holds on, and urges Feume to top speed.

He's pretty fast!

But Temperance turns out to be faster!

Hmm. She'll have to slow down when they get to the forest. Well, so will Feume, but hopefully this turns the tables.

Yes, going around the obstacles instead of over them proves to be difficult.

Feume's natural environment isn't forest, so it's a bit tricky for him too.

The end result of the race is Temperance narrowly winning.

Temperance celebrates by doing a complicated air maneuver.

"Fun! Hey want to go for a spin?" She indicates the cloudpine.

"Uuum-" She realizes both her objections are kind of moot. "Sure!"

Temperance helps her to climb onto the cloudpine and shows her the best way to hold onto it (there are some silk straps that help).

Eeee she's almost as nervous/excited as the first time riding Rachis.

She straps in just fine.

And when they're both secure Temperance speeds making courses around the like, going as fast and as high as Walta wants.

Relatively low, but as fast as Temperance can go!

If she wants low, how about low enough that their feet can graze the lake's waves?

"Ahahahaha! this is greaaaat!"

"I knoooow!" Temperance agrees before speeding up even more.

She's just holding on and giggling.

Walta enthusiasm is contagious!

She does get kind of tired after about half an hour. Broom-riding uses muscles she isn't used to.

That is okay, they can rest by the lake, Temperance even has snacks.

Walta goes back to assembling generator unit-precursors. If the plates work as described, the thing will weigh about five pounds and run a phone or laptop fine, though not a microwave oven if she gets it in her head to hook it up to one of those, and should she give it an attached head-sized freezer for miscellaneous best-kept-cold things or not?

And enough time passes. Temperance announces. "It stable, now I just need to brew a potion and dip the discs to make it permanent. And I can totally make you a freezer."

"That's a no to making a freezer attachment then - this thing will just charge your phone. Okay. It's done except for the disks. Let me show you how to put them in when you're done and you can change them out if the spell ever breaks."

"Sure," and Temperance observes.

"-Don't you need to potion them first?"

"Oh, sorry, I thought you were going to show me then I was going to potion them. I'm going to grab something from the bar to dip them in."

She is back with a wide bowl. She is starts the process: mixing ingredients; calling the goddesses names; dip in; literally rinse; repeat.

And after a few minutes that is done.

"Okay, you put them in this slot here. Tighten the screws - you'll need a screwdriver I guess - then say the activation word and squeeze this little trigger and it'll start buzzing away. Squeeze it again to turn it off and try not to jostle it around too much while it's running?"

Temperance follows the instructions as per Walta's orders, she says the activation word and squeezes the little trigger. Does it work?

It vibrates a bit and settles into a low whirr, kinda like air conditioning in the background of whatever building. And it starts charging her phone.

"This is so cool!" Temperance says spontaneously hugging Walta.

Uh what hugs?

She recovers from surprise, "Thanks! I love making clever stuff like that."

"It's pretty clever!"

"Thanks! If only I could make more of these magic metal plates once you're gone."

The device makes an ominous clicking-grinding noise and comes to a stop.

"Uh... did I break it?"

"Ugh, no, something's unbalanced, my fault. Maybe I didn't give enough tolerance for thermal expansion, but that shouldn't be a big deal. Hit the trigger again?"

Temperance hits the trigger.

It runs. Walta opens it up and watches the blur of motion and pays close attention as it grinds to a halt again a few seconds later.

"Yeah, I can fix this. I think."

"Do you need any help?"

"Mm- don't think so. It's fiddly and I don't think you can convince things not to expand when they get hot, doesn't feel easy from what I can gather about the magic, much easier to just shave it down some." She says the activation word again and lets the plates return to normal before starting to take it apart.

"Okay, I'll wait."

"What's your world like?" She asks while she starts to tinker.

"It is an Earth, pretty close to the standard despite having witches, sapient bears and daemons. The year is 2010 and I live in the United States."

"Ahh, good old Earth. I don't really miss mine. Came straight out of one of the nastier parts of history when I fled it."

"Oh? Which one?"

"Germany, 1926."

"Do you want a hug?"

"You already gave me one earlier. And I'm over it, really."

"Alright.

I don't think you have an standard Earth? They usually don't have walking robot armor by 1920's."

"The point of divergence is Charles Darwin. He figured out genetic engineering in our world. The walking armor borrows a lot from animal anatomy and kinematics."

"Wow, genetic engineering I think that is only like, fictional in our universe. What sort of things it can do?"

"...Mm, borrow a book from Bar later? I never quite got over being terrified and disgusted over them if I have to talk details."

"Sorry."

Shrug. "Everyone has buttons." Something clicks in the little device. "Okay, if it doesn't do that again in five minutes I think it's good. I wanna go start on the big version of this."

Temperance waits.

Walta reads a book.

The charger doesn't fail again.

Temperance reports this.

"Nice."

"Cool. Can you teach me the basic principles so I can teach my clan sisters how to produce their own? Maybe make bigger versions?"

"Eh, that'd take a while... How about blueprints your world's engineers will be likely to understand?"

"That works." Temperance shrugs.

She goes over the very basics anyway while tapping away at her computer, this is how the engine-bit works and turns a heat difference into motion, this is how the generator turns motion into electricity...

"Mind if I get you working on the big version of the same thing? Make them as hot and cold as you can while still being sure it'll stick, please."

Sure thing. Temperance starts working on the bigger version, making a couple of experiments with heat and cold, before finally arriving at an optimal point of spell-stability and temperature.

"Here are some blueprints."

Which Temperance happily accepts and keeps in a plastic bag for her belongings that disagree with water.

"This is one of my better milliways visits so far. I probably don't have much else to say to you or want from you after finishing the big version of your little charger, though?"

Shrug. "It was nice meeting you either way."

"Same. Milliways is good like that. Usually."

"It's a pretty great place regardless."

"Mmmhmm. Follow me so I can mill out the big plates I want you to magic up?"

Temperance follows.

And she does various mechanical things.

And Temperance will do various witchcraft things as needed.

Eventually, her big generator works! It doesn't have quite the same power output as a nice fuel-burning engine, but still... "Today was a nice day. I'm gonna go hang out in the main bar now, good luck with whatever you get up to!"

"I wish the same to you, I will fly around for a bit!"