Not much makes sense for a moment. She's falling, but she's still, but there's light but it's spiraling sound - 

And then she lands with a soft puff of pale blue light on a cobblestone road slowly being reclaimed by plants. It's dark, the buildings around her quiet, the night sky above coruscating through mostly purples and greens with flashes of yellow-white, roiling layers trapping only a few thin stars that blink and look away, thick clouds caught in serrated sheets. There's a few intermittent gentle glows in the distance.

She lies still for a few seconds, eyes screwed shut and braced for pain. When she opens them she stares upward in awe. It's... Beautiful. Wrong. But beautiful. Hallucination, pocket dimension, or something weirder, pick your poison. Nothing else would really do the situation justice than, "Aww shit."

Her vocal cords produce a rather lovely pink glow. No sound escapes.

!

"Something weirder" indeed. It's completely silent and light is noise. What the fuck.

She scrabbles to her feet and tries to scream. Then she peers around at whatever is near, trying to not panic.

That produces a very bright pink light!

Nearby is mostly ruined buildings, that look like old brownstones. Some of the windows are gone. Many of the doors have been broken. The colors are muted, but they were probably once reds and yellows and browns, with shutters in cheery colors and grey roofs. The little patches of yard are overgrown, advancing up walls and across paths. The ones here are three stories for the most part, built into a gentle hill. 

There's a flare of pink light in a window down the block, and little puffs of blue light on a sill that turn out to be from a cat when it releases a curl of orange light. It stops, staring at her, then turns and runs off.

There's things in the undergrowth, too, blue and green for the most part. Some little motes in the grass hum faintly with specks of yellow.

This is all really freaky, but 'sound is color' makes... A certain sort of twisted sense, given how powers work...

It's pretty. But creepy. Silence is eerie. She's in some cape's pocket dimension and any minute now something will crush her, or spear her, or turn her mind to mush.

Aaaah.

...Any gang tags? Recent trash? Cars? Other signs of habitation? She'll poke around one of the buildings carefully, too.

No gang tags, no recent trash, no cars. There's streetcar tracks that go along a cross street at the bottom of the hill if she squints.

The most intact house as a door painted with faded chips of dark blue, which opens into a narrow hallway. To her right is even narrower stairs, which seem intact. To her left is a front room, a living room probably given what furniture remains. She has a clear view into a back room, a rather plain kitchen. There's likely a room between the two, going by the presence of a door off the hallway. The dust on the floor is thick, and glimmers in the soft blue of her footsteps.

It's all abandoned, whatever this place is.

Does the kitchen have any appliances? ...Or food?

The appliances are really outdated. Like, the 1950s had better stuff. There is, however, a pantry, which still has a few intact cans and glass jars.

(The angle from the kitchen reveals steps going down, too, under the hallway stairs.)

Her tinkery skills are confusing, but lean towards the mechanical anyway. She can use a few bits of this stuff. Like the springs in that incredibly ancient toaster. An old vacuum would be a juicy find.

She checks out the whole house carefully, stun gun held at the ready, before letting herself think too much about parts, though.

There's bedrooms upstairs, with metal frame beds and sparse desks containing crinkling remnants of paper. A few books, damaged by time and too yellowed to read more than a few words. Hand mirrors and fancy combs and dried makeup and once modest dresses now eaten by moths. A single bathroom on the second floor. No signs the house is wired for electricity. There's a gun, an old revolver, in the third floor front bedroom, and no ammunition for it.

The basement has mostly broken bits and bobs - it seems to have been used as a generic storage space. Mostly furniture being repaired; there's some old iron nails not attached to anything, and a hammer. There's some more cans and jars of food down here. The basement walks out to a back garden, which has a small brick shed with 'ICE' over the door.

The water in the bathroom doesn't work, but the kitchen has a few drips.

Like something out of the 80s. The 1880s. Geez.

...A gun. Not very heroic. Kind of really scary. But  she might need it. She takes the gun and stares at it for a while, letting her power rise up.

Nothing happens. Well, not quite nothing. She knows quite a bit about machines, after all, great and powerful and minor alike, so her mind's able to analyze the gun quite as easily as she'd read a book.

But it's her. Her own mind. No fugue. No external ideas.

"Aaaaah." Attention-getting pink glow or not, this deserves it. Her power is fucked up now!

Perfect. Perfect.

...Well, it's not pupetting her hands to disassemble the gun into something new, with her only able to latch on to vague ideas and feelings to direct the fugue, so maybe this is actually better?

The gun needs a new this-thing-she-doesn't-know-the-name-of-but-perfectly-understands-how-it-functions, it's too rusted to work. Normally she might be able to go 'well maybe I'll just tear out the entire back end and rebuild it better' but she doesn't immediately know a design that will allow her to latch back the thingy and spring it forward when the trigger is pulled, nor immediately know whether the parts to make one are nearby.

...She could make a percussion cap if she could find the right chemicals. Gunpowder too. It's brass forming for a cartridge that would be tricky. And none of this is leaping to the front of her mind like she'd gotten used to, she's having to reach and stretch - metal forming tools are their own big category...

She puts the gun in her backpack. She lets her face fall into her hands for a minute. She finds a nice, solid-looking pipe from the basement to use as a club maybe, and then tries to deduce with this... Library-style tinker power... If any of the food in the kitchen might still be edible.

The stuff in cans should be checked that it hasn't gone metallic or grown bacteria if it was poorly canned, but might be fine, the stuff in glass jars - depends on the thing. She knows more chemistry than biology or nutrition, though, but she might have some luck identifying problems with the food by smell.

Well, she starts opening cans and jars. An empty one can sit below the slowly dripping tap. Maybe she can tell if the water's safe too, and have a drink if it is.

She takes apart the appliances looking for things like springs, gears, wires, and switches. If there's any bleach or other household chemicals intact in decent containers here that'd be nice too.

She considers just going out and walking, but it was already pretty late and she was sprinting through a junkyard. She picks a bedroom, preferably one with no windows or at least heavy curtains, blocks the door with whatever is available, and tries to sleep.

Probably about half of the jars and a third of the cans have some obvious spoilage. The rest might be safe to eat.

Those are all findable; there's fewer wires than she'll have been used to with modern appliances, though, and the internal layout of most is a bit odd. There's a sewing machine, two typewriters, oil lamps with some oil left over, a wood-burning stove, a very early toaster that relies on simply setting a piece of bread on a rack leaning against a heating element, a medicine cabinet with a few highly suspicious medicines... There isn't any hydrogen peroxide, but there's calcium hypochlorite. 

The basement has a small bedroom with no windows, though the bed is small and uncomfortable, or there's a larger bedroom with a soft bed and intact curtains on the third floor, overlooking the back garden.

Nothing disturbs her in her sleep.

A first floor bedroom would have been nice. Two escape routes in case of trouble. As it is, she'll take the third floor one, going off a gut feeling.

In the 'morning' (or whenever she wakes up) she eats and drinks a bit, refills a jar with water from the dripping tap, picks a direction and starts walking. Looking around her every minute or two, trying to stay alert.

She could poke around all the houses for more parts but this is still probably someone's pocket dimension or something and it's probably better to keep moving.

It's actually bright out, a brilliant circle of light tracing its way across the blue-white-grey sky, though someone seems to have been confused about whether clouds go in front of or behind the sky layer. The sun's about midway up, and there's birds hopping around outside, letting out trills of yellow and purple.

The thing at the base of the hill is definitely streetcar tracks. The cross road is much wider, and there's what might be shop signs near where it curves away to her right. The road she's on keeps going down after it levels out for the cross street, towards another cross street and then a dead end. The houses at the bottom look much worse off, with clear signs of fire damage spread from the missing windows and doors.

She peers into a couple of shops, including back rooms, for potential loot. Picks a streetcar track to follow towards wherever seems the most 'out of here' and does that, walking along the side of the road instead of the middle.

God, it's creepy here. She keeps stumbling, not able to use the sound of her own footsteps to gauge herself. She can't hear herself breathe which keeps her  consciously thinking about breathing a lot. Hopefully she'll be able to get out of here.

She'll see a humanoid figure in one of the back rooms of the shops. Still. Facing away from her. Hard to discern details in the shadows.

Her brain goes straight to zombie flicks. Creepy otherdimension with monsters in it seems more like a real power, too.

Back out. Move on quickly.

It's hard to tell if she's followed, without sound, but while she's backing out the thing doesn't move.

There's the occasional humanoid shadow in a window, utterly still. A few faint glows, but the sound-light is much harder to see in the daytime.

At least there's still no signs of gangs, druggies, or cops. She keeps a steady pace.

Are there any intact streetcars on this long street?

She finds one, the roof partially caved in and the windows broken, but it looks intact.

Engine and internals intact?

The cosmetic stuff not so much - 

And it seems to run by means of a belt embedded in the ground, which the streetcar merely grips onto as it runs around the city. But the mechanisms for that are fully intact. Not even rusted.

Weird. And useless to her goal of getting out of here faster if there's nothing engine-y.

Not at all.

There is, however, something moving in her peripheral vision.

She turns from the streetcar, scanning around in alarm.

When she turns, there's a humanoid figure, skin rotted and covered in thick patches of scar tissue, face entirely obscured, hair thin and wispy, fingers and toes far too long, clothes grimy but clearly once a fine vest and shirt and pants, crouched in the window of the streetcar. It's not moving.

She jumps. Gaaah. Yeah, this place really, really gives her the creeps. The colorsound thing would be beautiful if not for everything it implies and the eerie silence.

...She watches it warily for a minute, occasionally glancing at the rest of the street. It's definitely not moving?

Maybe a little bit. Very slowly. Sort of leaning towards her. Tilting the head.

Zombie. Fuck.

She gathers up her stuff and starts walking a bit faster. Following the streetcar tracks, looking around for more of them every 30 seconds or so.

She won't catch too many, but there's more present than before. Looking at her, often, and she'll sometimes feel gusts of wind across the back of her neck - but there's nothing behind when she turns to look.

At the end of the street, overlooking a small green lake, is a large building that the tracks run into.

She has a decent view of the city from here. It's all ruins, no skyscrapers. There's no signs of an edge.

She had better start thinking of, like, making a home base. Or something.

She walks the perimeter of the terminal building, counting the number of exits. She wants to go in, but you can't be reckless.

It's two buildings, actually, with a thick wall between them. Each has a single large bay with complicated tracks and mechanisms inside allowing the cars to be turned around, stored, or otherwise moved. 

There's also two exterior doors on each building, along the side and back, six tall ground-level windows, and two windows at about head height. The construction is brick, sturdy. There's a second floor, which seems to contain a few small offices. The ground floor has storage space for tools and spare parts.

O-ho. A veritable bounty of spare parts.

She pokes around the inside a bit, looking for anything like heavy tools or intact motors.

A very large stationary motor - well, series of motors - is findable near the back. It's even mostly intact.

Yeah, there you go.

With like a week and some heavy tools she might be able to take one apart and put it together again right on one of the empty cars. She thinks about it and sketches it out. (Tinkering is relaxing.)

The sun's already crested the horizon, and is heading down - it's hard to tell, since she hasn't made a detailed measurement, but it might be going faster than hers, and it's not moving at an entirely constant rate.

This is a freaky abandoned cape zone. The sun not behaving properly is worrying but not really groundbreaking news.

She thinks she could mount one of these big motors to the streetcars and make it steerable and rig up some extremely makeshift batteries. And it'll be easy enough to put one into working condition with spares from the others.

She's starting to be pretty freaked out by this place. Jumping at shadows, intensely unsettled by the silence of everything. Tinkering her way out is appealing, since just plain walking is unlikely to find an end to this place for a while.

Sun is setting. What's in the block surrounding the tram yard?

Mostly warehouses, mostly for fishing, and a number of humanoid figures staring at her from second floor windows and rooftops and dead trees.

...She avoids any places with zombies in them and checks her escape routes before going into any building. This is terrifying, she wants to move to somewhere with less... Zombies... She doesn't even know how deadly they are yet. But turning one of these trams mobile might be her ticket out if anything is. 

She searches around for a defensible place to sleep, first floor because she read it's a lot easier to escape from something on the first floor than on uppers, and also more intact canned food, and any source of water. Maybe she should have scavenged a few more houses in that nice neighborhood before coming down here, oh well, she can go back if she really needs to.

There's a butcher's shop with a lockable freezer, but the meat's all gone and the ice is mostly melted, and an old general store that seems to have been picked over in a hurry but she'll be able to find some cans rolled under things. There's a graveyard not too far away at all - and if she looks, the mausoleum can be locked and unlocked from the inside, and has two separated exits with intact doors, but no windows large enough for a human to fit through. Some of the other buildings have working locks on their doors, and a few have wrought-iron fittings on the first floor windows.

For water, the remaining ice in the butcher's shop, the bay if she wants to set up a filtering system, or a few places still have running water - but it's reddish and smells metallic. 

It's only when she starts thinking about how to make a reverse osmotic filter or a distillation trap with what's available that she notices she doesn't really have much urge to tinker. None of that itch to make something. And still ideas refuse to leap up to prominence.

...Probably good? Well, her power is screwed up, she knew that. But the tinkering urge was getting pretty unpleasant whenever she had to do anything else. The soundlessness is still awful.

Ice broken up and melted into her empty cans for now for now, somewhere with a door and a window she could both escape from to sleep in. She can make a water source tomorrow. She might tear up a curtain or something for a blanket. A place to sleep hopefully secured, she goes about gathering tools and bits and bobs in the tramhouse for her project to hopefully make a vehicle. Figuring out if there's any gas or oil around is an important step in there.

The engines are all gas fired, and there's some lamps with lamp oil. Extra gas is a harder sell; it really should be possible to have cars at the same technology level as the cable cars, and there's no indication of a reason she hasn't seen any.

Lamp oil can burn, she'll just have to... Open up a whole engine and modify it to take the different viscosity and specific heat and ash quality and stuff. Doable. Probably.

For now, if unimterrupted, she sketches out and measures things a lot more. This is a really weird way to tinker, she knows it all but keeps having to double check things.

Eventually she goes to her chosen safe spot and sleeps.

Nothing breaks in.

But when she wakes there are streaks on her window, and when she emerges, things have been knocked over outside, and there's a humanoid watching her from across the street.

Creepy. Creepy creepy ugh, they were poking around and - ugh.

That convinces her even more that she's got to leave. She goes straight for the tramyard and gets to work. Big engines and big tools are heavy and she's just a teenage girl but that's what chains and pulleys are for. She works pretty hard, pushing herself in her skin-crawling urge to get outta here.

The things are really, really curious about what she's doing. They don't directly interfere, but, well...

Sometimes they move things. Sometimes they break things. Sometimes she turns and there's one crouching behind her.

But they don't significantly hamper her from converting a cable car to a proper car, and as she gets the hang of her new knowledge it becomes easier to work.

The first time one turns out to have been behind her she goes out - calmly, calmly do not get the zombies' attention even though these aren't zombies exactly (aaah) - scavenging for more food cans and curtains and clothes and stuff like that. She has to pause and use a tarp and build a fire to make a water trap too. Water: Nice to have. She stores up some jugs of it.

She's increasingly tense and jumpy and scared and trying not to let it affect her too much but yeah, this sucks. She's starting to get in the compulsive habit of making 360-degree turns every minute or so.

She seems to be what passes for local entertainment. Not a lot of them are on the streets, but if she looks up she'll see groups gathering on the rooftops by the time she finishes.

Climbing not-zombies. Perfect.

Okay, well. This is a hack job. Engine, lamp oil, crude steering, jugs of water and cans of food. It takes most of two days. They always seem to find her. She spends an hour making a super crude pipe gun that might work or might just blow up on her in the "secret" area of one of her sleeping spots.

She sleeps with a knife and the pipe-gun in reach in a room with two escape routes with her trusty backpack ready to be grabbed, planning to leave in the 'morning'. Is this day... Three? Four? Her parents will have been looking for her. Might have actually gone to the police by now. If whatever-the-fuck brought here wherever-the-fuck 'here' is didn't leave a body. Don't you go crazy if you spend too long not talking to anyone? Sound not being real is probably worse. Not to mention the zombies.

Whatever. Sleep, as best she can, to be alert and maybe enact the great escape tomorrow.

She'll have odd dreams, starting a few days in. Fragments of memories that are definitely hers except how they're not. People her brain insists are familiar except how she's never met them. Flashes of deja vu in the daytime, rarely - a sense of what some things are for, in mundane ways. A feeling she's seen this street, that vista.

Early in the morning, when a grasping fog climbs up the hills around the bay, it's quieter. Fewer odd humanoids about. 

Hallucinations or some kind of master power? No way to tell. Only thing she can do is write down what seems to be happening to her.

...It doesn't seem like she's being overwritten with a new personality or anything gruesome like that... She's definitely a poor white girl whose dad owes money to a bunch of Asian gangs, for all that she knows that empty cafe over there, somehow, or that graveyard...

Whatever. Her tram monstrosity is as complete as it's probably getting any time soon. There aren't as many zombies around. Good a time as any. She loads it with all her stuff and turns on the engine.

It flashes a bright red, sending waves of yellows and oranges and whites into the air around it as it pulses, brighter and faster than the dull glow from her thumping heart. It reflects off the low fog like a second sunrise.

Welp! Blocking the engine off from the driver's cab was a good idea, that's really bright! But it works! It works!

This will probably make the zombies freak out. Time to go - do or die. The tram lurches forward.

There's waves of blue and pink rising - the blue gets brighter, the pink twisting into orange and echoing among the horde - 

And it's a horde now.

They give chase, paying no heed to the blue they send washing over the city.

Her heart's pounding, her breath is fast. This shouldn't be a silent dance of coruscating colors, silence and the sheer adrenaline rush together feels wronger than ever - Turn turn tuuurn and get slammed into the side of the cab and then floor it away from the things!

They're fast, especially when she's not looking - 'zombie' might have been an overexageration. They stop whenever they get close enough for her to see, but more than a few manage to grab onto the back of the tram, and start breaking and crawling in windows.

She is not really paying enough attention to notice that they're any faster or slower under certain conditions! Staying on the road is challenging enough! Making an escape seemed like such a brilliant plan...

...Oh no! She still doesn't have any real weapons except her pipe gun which is clattering around next to her. She panics and tries to grab at it - this takes her eyes off the road for a bit too long and she gouges across someone's lawn, spitting fragments of fence ahead of her and cracking the glass at the front of the tram, and losing some speed. And they're all over the tram-

No no no no no-

There's a flash of orange light which somehow clearly communicates: 'Hey assholes! Pick on someone your own size!'

And then either a very effeminate guy wearing a magical girl outfit for some reason, or a very androgynous magical girl flies by, knocking the zombies clear with blasts of what seem to be lasers. They're not wearing a mask, and are almost supernaturally pretty.

The ones too close to her for lasers get taken out in a whirl of black feathers and flashing blades. This person - who isn't really staying still enough to get a good look at but is covered in odd black wings - seems more devoted to clearing out the zombies than to shouting at them.

Local heroes! Or something! Hooray! She registers this with about a tenth of her attention as she tries to regain control of the tram and hits the brakes.

The zombies are no longer chasing her. They are, in fact, running away.

The winged woman flashes to the side of the tram, and it goes up in the air slightly, comes to a gentle halt, and then lowers.

They look kind of freaky. The black-themed one does at least. Monstrous capes... Wait, is that racist? Eh. They're not trying to kill her, that's probably good.

Her hands are shaking. Her whole body is shaking. She's crying. She... Cuts the engine and weakly says "hi". Then frowns, brow knitting, when all that comes out is a bit of light. "Ugh." She waves, instead.

Awkward wave back. The black wings - underlaid by a truly unacceptable number of eyes, attached to some painter's abstract thought of a human form - shimmer and break away, revealing a teenaged girl in yoga pants and a t-shirt and no mask, her black hair cut short and loose.

'Hi!' says the orange light magical girl person is producing. 'Uh my power lets me communicate with everyone, I can understand you. You - okay? The things are gone.'

"Well I'm no longer about to be gutted by zombies so thanks but I am very freaked out and very lost sound should not behave this way and I don't know who you two are or what you want, so."

"I'm Nereus, she's Ink. We can get you out of here, no strings. The light's a localized thing, we came here for practice and saw a lot of light and figured we'd help out."

"Yes. Good. This place is creepy. But something is - where is here? I was in Brockton Bay and there was a weird cape and then suddenly I wasn't."

"This's the Dreamlands. Dunno the city name, it's been ruins a while. We're kinda near Ulthar? - Or if you're this freaked, uh, are you from Earth?"

He's usually not one of the ones dealing with newly Entangled people but she seems to have been doing well for herself at least.

"Yeah. Earth. And I was in the middle of a fight with a strange power involved. And then I was here."

Her hands are still shaking. Can she make them not do that? Somehow this is a pretty monumental task. "...So this. Is not Earth?"

"Uhhhh no. Nope. And - " He turns to Ink and starts making faces - "I haven't been in a while but Ink goes to school there and says people on Earth don't have powers?"

"Most people, no. You're capes. Changer. I mean I, I guess my power changed when I fell in here? Wait, um. Are- Are those zombies going to come back?"

"If we leave, but they're scared of us. Well, Ink mostly. Haven't heard of capes before, and, uh, here Earth has nothing. Stuff like this only becomes possible elsewhere. Do you want to get out of this city? You'll be able to talk to people who aren't me and also like it's less dangerous in civilization."

...Earth Gimel?

"-Yeah I want to get out of here. If- If you can't take the whole tram gimmie a minute to pack?"

"We can get it, unless it's like way heavier than it looks." Glance at Ink. "Yeah, we can get it."

"Great it's- it's kind of all I have right now. I'm-" Maskless anyway, so, "Walta. You're Ink and...?"

"Nereus. And yeah, I get that. Uh, okay if Ink goes ahead and picks up the tram?"

"Sooner I'm out of here the better."

The tram rises smoothly into the air, as do Ink and Nereus, well above the city. The revealed landscape is mostly normal - the city's bay empties into a sea that's reclaimed several neighborhoods, and mountains rise behind it, and plains sweep between the mountains and the sea to the north. Their little group starts heading over the mountains, the ground falling away below them far quicker than any plane Walta's ever been in. Sound reasserts itself just past the last of the ruins - birdsong in the distance, and wind, and the beat of her own heart and the rush of her own breath.

Swooping through the air is just another scary experience to add to the list at this point.

"I can hear again! Sound is weird!"

...Still so very very extremely lost, though. After the one relieved outburst she goes back to being tense and scared.

"It's good you're out of there!" he calls. "We'll be at the town we're staying in soon. Sorry about the ride!"

Be cool and brash, this seems like that kind of hero team. Maybe. Ink is more... Broody.

"B- Better than being eaten by zombies!"

"List of things that're worse is pretty short. Still, you were doing really well for yourself."

She... Is not sure what to say about that. Maybe they don't realize she's a tinker because her power's been acting up, and this monstrosity isn't really impressive by tinker standards. And joy at being rescued is fighting with general paranoia and stress.

So she just shrugs and takes a deep breath.

A small town appears over the curve of a mountain soon enough. It clings to the steep streets, short buildings built into terraces - but it, at least, has heard of cars.

Old cars. Like, Model T's. But there's electric streetlamps and incandescent lights shining through windows and a few people out this early.

They land on the outskirts of town, in a wide lot near what's possibly a two-story motel, although the writing on the sign is incomprehensible. Seems to be pictograms, vaguely reminiscent of hieroglyphics.

"Well, here's where Ink and I are staying," Nereus says. "Our friends are a bit scattered right now, whole gang wasn't intending to meet back up until finals are over in a week or two. You can stay with us, or Miss Gloria'll probably trade a room for some help with the mechanical stuff, or someone in town might have a room."

"This place is... Really weird. The geography doesn't seem right... So you're like, a wandering hero group?"

"...Uh we fight Incursions and like assorted monsters if that's what you mean? And sometimes help shut down somebody doing something stupid and apocalyptic? But yeah, we're not really tied to one place, though we tend to stick to this region. And Ink and I are the closest to a proper group, others are just - kind of our friends we sometimes have reunions with or work together."

" - Oh, Incursions. You probably don't know what those are - they're kind of when reality gets really thin in one place and a bunch of monsters come through at once, or one really big freaky something, and we push it back long enough for evacuations pretty much."

"So like Endbringer fights. Yeah that's heroic alright. Uh... I don't suppose you know how to get me home."

"Not really? Ink's mom might, she's gone farther than anyone I know?"

"Yeah, that... Home, uh..."

Deep breath. Hands are staying still now, progress.

"I'm really overwhelmed here - I - Haven't had coffee in three days, I'm not on Earth and that oughta be impossible, I would have died half an hour ago if not for you, I kind of really need a shower and am maybe not at my best right now."

"...Yeah. I get that. Shower and coffee's totally doable."

"Of course that depends on what I'll owe for 'em... I don't exactly have any money and I could maybe fix some things but I won't know that until I look at them either."

"Cheap coffee's like less than a buck. Something fancy's like four. And that's assuming we go to like a cafe and don't just raid the free breakfast bar. Shower doesn't cost us anything, so it wouldn't make sense to ask you to repay us for nothing. That's really stuff me and Ink can just - pick up."

"Oh, right. Room with - you and Ink?" She glances over at Ink.

Well. It's probably not like they're going to drug her and pimp her out or something, which is what her father insisted any friendly strangers are probably up to. But something about this makes her anxious.

"I need new clothes too. Maybe I can pawn things. I got a few watches and stuff from the ruins."

"We'll talk to Miss Gloria, get you your own room, how about? She'll have a better idea what trade's worth what. And yeah, there's a pawn shop in town."

...They're heroes, they're not expecting anything in return maybe?

"Thanks. I appreciate it. Let me just..." Prime fuel pump spin up the little flywheel, yank a lever-

Ch-ch-vrr. "...I'll take a look at the engine later. Wasn't really meant for that."

"Might be able to get some stuff in town, too, when you're pawning, to help fix it?"

"And gas. But I want that coffee and shower though... Four, maybe five days I was in there?"

"Yeah, let's get that first." He points towards a smaller building separated from the rest of the thing. "That's Miss Gloria's. She knows English, but I can go with you?"

"If you've got nothing better to do I don't object...?"

She grabs her backpack. She leaves the pipe gun (after disarming it by taking out a bobby pin). She steps gingerly over broken glass, filthy jeans and hoodie and sneakers more evident in the outside light.

"Alright!"

He leads her over to the building, only slightly bouncing, and knocks. The door opens to reveal an elderly lady, probably Latina, who looks at Walta over the edge of her spectacles. "Who's this?" she asks. "A dream-walker? She doesn't feel like an entangled."

"Me and Ink found her in some ruins, she fell from another Earth and is really clever. She was thinking she could help fix some of those mechanical problems you've been having for room and board?" Nereus says all in a rush.

The woman hums, and looks at Walta. "Well? Is that the case?"

"I hooked an engine that hadn't been touched in like decades up to an old tram car and got it to run, depending on what the problems are exactly I can probably figure something out, might need tools and parts. What's a dream walker, and what's an entangled? Different kinds of capes?"

"Impressive. And don't know what you mean by capes, but a dream-walker's someone who goes between places, Earth and the Dreamlands, Dreamlands and Magelands, or such. An entangled's someone with powers that don't fit where they are. Magic in the Dreamlands and such."

"...Well, I am so very extremely lost, guys. I don't think your Earth works like mine. There are plenty of people with powers where I'm from. Teleporters, people who can make metal spikes come out of things, people who are invulnerable and can fly, who can turn invisible or fire off lasers or make shields. Sorta like you and Ink, Neurus. But just... On Earth. Earth Bet. They found an alternate Earth a while ago, I don't know the details, that's Earth Aleph. They're called capes. And I've never heard of the Dreamlands."

"Huh," Gloria says. "Wouldn't be surprised by an entangled doing any of that. But I'm not one, don't really know what any can do."

"I can explain stuff later," Nereus says.

Gloria nods. "You do that. For now... Let me show you what's broke."

"Sure, let's see it and I'll see how tricky it would be to fix. No diagnostic fee. Heh."

"Right this way, then."

The main thing in question is an air conditioning system. The woman also has an old car that hasn't run in over a year, but the town's in walking distance, so, she doesn't care as much about that. She knows cars are more specialized, though - six days room and board for the air, ten for the car, how about? Now or on credit for later.

"Well, let's have a quick look at what exactly's wrong before I agree to that... And if I need to find or make parts I might need more. Car probably needs new oil by now if nothing else."

At least she should be pretty good at making parts, or at least makeshift replacements, with her bonkers weirdly-altered tinker power. Handy, that. And the immediate problem of fixing something to earn room and board is nice and distracting from the larger problem of what the hell this world has turned into.

What is wrong with the AC unit and car?

Nothing she can't fix, though she'll need some tools and a few new parts - nothing that should be expensive, and Gloria will cover any costs for that sort of thing.

"Yyyyes... I can fix this. The AC first."

And this kind of stings - taking payment before doing the work but she's really tired and grimy, so, "I'd appreciate it if I could get a little settled first before getting started, if you don't mind. Find some clothes, eat something, and shower."

"Oh, of course. Wasn't expecting you to dive right in."

"Yeah. Thanks. I'll be back later - going to, uh, go into town real quick."

Into town it is, with her backpack and small bag of watches and jewelry. She got a few pieces from the ruined city, not an entire sackful but maybe a dozen things. She can probably fix the watches, actually, but the jewelry is destined for a pawn shop.

She looks around as she heads 'into town', walking the don't-mind-me city 'hood walk, fast strides and closed-down body language. What are people like here? What are they doing? How are they carrying themselves? Any signs of gangs or violence? Is it a small town or are there three-story buildings? Secondhand clothes shops or other interesting stores?

The people seem to be fairly diverse racially for such a small town, but lean some variant on 'ambiguously brown.' Not all of them seem to match up neatly to an Earth ethnicity. They're mostly walking around, talking with each other, postures open and relaxed - but a few are glancing worried at the horizon, and one mentions something that makes her companions all shush her and make a strange hand sign. The streets, though, are clean. No broken glass, nor graffiti, nor even much indication shop owners expect shop lifters to be a problem. The buildings in downtown are sometimes three stories but most are two. There's a second hand clothing shop between the pawn shop and an antiques store, across from an art gallery and a public library. There's also what's probably a shrine with an altar stone the color of blood and a human-sized statue of what vaguely resembles a dragon, if dragons were made out of eyes.

...Weird. It's like the Boardwalk or Downtown, but all over? And no enforcers.

Makes it easier to pawn old jewelry for probably nowhere near what it's really worth and buy a few vaguely fitting outfits in as close to modern style as possible, and a couple of specific tools. The dragon-thing reminds her of Ink. Shower, coffee, food, decompressing, sleep not in fear of not-quite-zombies breaking through her window (though she still has a nightmare).

The next day she fixes the air conditioner and pokes at Gloria's car a bit and cleans up the broken glass in her tram-monstrosity, boarding up the broken windows for now (which nobody seems to have touched, imagine that!) and is overall in a much better mood... But still very lost on an alternate earth where things don't work quite right and now feeling sort of at loose ends. Immediate problems solved and running out of short-term productive things to do, she wanders around looking for Ink or Nereus.

Ink's the easiest found, sitting under a tree and reading. She glances up when Walta approaches, raises an eyebrow.

"Hi. Do you think - We could talk? I'm- Uh. I would appreciate it. And thanks, for yesterday."

She nods, and waves a hand a bit at the thanks. "I don't - talk much. But I can some."

"I sort of know that feeling. I can just look for Nereus instead?"

She shrugs. "I don't mind?"

"I want to know - I think your Earth is different from mine. We knew about alternate Earths already, and someone said nobody has powers there... Lots of people have powers there where I'm from. There are superhero teams and gangs of supervillains. And Dreamland is... Not. Anything I'm familiar with at all."

"Earth is - normal." She pauses. She's probably the best one she knows to explain this - she can see the threads spinning out, defining what's possible. But putting that into words (that don't drive their listeners insane at least) is... Hard.

"There... Is a thing. It says what's possible. On Earth - it's defined. Set. Powers are not. Here it's... Looser? And farther it's looser. Entangled have - a piece of farther. They can do more."

"You mean reality? Well we don't understand where powers come from either. It only started like a few years ago. Does Earth know about... This place?"

"Some do. Most don't."

"I don't think the Earth you mean is my Earth. Have you heard of the Endbringers? Behemoth and Leviathan. They destroy a whole city on Earth once every few months and lotsa people with powers team up to drive them back."

"No. I go to Earth often. No powers."

"So I've got to think about... Can I get back?"

Also, do I even want to?

"You got here? A - lot is possible. Not safe. But."

"...My world kind of needs help. And I'll miss my family a little bit. They're - kind of bad. But still. But I don't know if I even can help. I wasn't in a great spot even before I got thrown here. And I'm rambling at you aren't I?"

And revealing too much to someone who seems sincere but she doesn't know, at least they're a hero, that's probably good enough? Maybe? Aaah.

Ink: Not good with humans.

She shrugs. "If - my thing works there? I can help? Or. Others can?"

She's never bothered fighting a universe to define her powers as greater, but she can feel it's possible. And Walta doesn't seem to think what Ink and Nereus do is impossible, which suggests her home reality may have a broader definition of possibility...

They're strange capes. People with powers have become the new reality - she even had them herself.

"I dont know if you'd keep your powers. Maybe. Maybe a bad idea. So many 'maybes'." Headshake

"I don't. On Earth. Can - return here?"

"Yeah, but- My Earth. Seems different. People have powers there." Shrug. "No way to tell for now I suppose."

She nods.

What now. She could talk about maybe not evem wanting to go home and also feeling guilty about that but Ink is... Shy or something adjacent. And she knows everyone else except maybe Gloria even less.

...Nereus is not visible?

Ink seems content to just sit.

Nereus isn't visible.

Eh forget the shyness, "Do you know where Nereus is?"

She nods, and points.

...Alright, she heads in that direction.

Nereus is findable, apparently coming back from a run. He slows down when he sees Walta, beaming and waving.

"Hi! Thanks for the - everything - again. This place is still pretty weird to me, though... It's a little scary. Also if you want me to pay you back somehow I would be glad to figure out something reasonable."

"It's no problem, really! Maybe pay it forward? Help someone else out."

"Maybe. But - Ink is quiet I asked and she didn't seem to know but - I'm wondering if you know if it might be possible for me to go home? Not to your Earth, to my Earth. I think it's different..."

"I think they're different Earths too, yeah. And you got here somehow? Means getting to or from's possible."

"Well, thing is, I'm not sure I even want to? And then I feel awful for maybe not wanting to." Shrug.

"...I get you. I haven't been back to my Earth in years... But... If we can go one way - you might be able to go, solve whatever, then come back here. I'd bet - if there's one path, there's more."

"There's kind of a lot of problems. I was gonna be a hero. But it's dangerous there. The Endbringers..." She grimaces. "And I wasn't from a great part of town, and my folks... Are not the best parents. Dad's worse. So. Maybe I should just count my luck that I'm still alive here, figure out something new. But that means, you know, never seeing them again probably." Shrug.

"Yeah. I only ever had foster parents. Pretty even mix of good and bad there, and I haven't kept in touch with any set."

"The Endbringers sound like a really big problem - I bet a lot of people'd volunteer to go and help out. Especially people who're from Earth originally. There's not a lot big to do here - stuff from the Idealands isn't a big threat, and the nasty things from higher levels can't exist here, and the powerful Dreamers kind of keep each other in check. There's the mad gods, but... They haven't done anything in a while, and they're not really something to fight. An enemy with a face to punch is - people'll feel they can actually do something."

She shivers. "Maybe. You'd - I just mentioned them by name you don't know what they're like. They can't kill the Endbringers, only drive them away sometimes. And lots and lots of people who fight, die. But it's not like I'm going to deny anyone who wants to fight Endbringers. Even villains shape up long enough to try and hold them off. A truce."

"...Honestly they sound kind of like small mad gods. Mad gods - if you piss one off, your city might get turned to ash. Your county might get turned into a volcano. Your state might end up sunken under a thousand feet of glass. It's... Not even the most powerful Dreamers can hold them off. And Dreamers can shape the world - the really strong ones can say what's possible or not around them." He shakes his head. "Dunno where they come from, and I remember there being some counted number but not how many - lots, though."

"Well, Leviathan sank Kyushu. Which is the southernmost main island of Japan. There's two Endbringers... But we thought there was only one at first, so."

"Yeah, I get it - just. I don't think we lack things on that scale. Or bigger. Just... The visible part of the glass plains under Haneth are probably about that big?"

"Well, at least they respond to being fought. And you can save people by evacuating them and stuff. This place is - you said what the world is like changes a lot? Like that place where sound is light?"

"Yeah. That's - I'm pretty sure that's some kind of damage? Or Ink says it is. Rules from elsewhere bleeding into here. Here usually all that changes is the geography, or if someone magic decides to move things around."

"Crazy stuff... You and Ink haven't done anything the strongest heroes couldn't do but you've both got pretty good powers by our standards - Most powers are pretty narrow and specific. And most heroes, like, have secret identities, wear masks and costumes. The idea is so their friends and family are safe from retaliation, I think?"

That's really not a thing here but she is still a bit hesitant to admit to being a (former?) tinker.

"- I'm not sure why people's vulnerable friends and family don't, like, have guards then, but. Here mostly your friends and family are back on Earth, or you're nomadic, or you're powerful enough people don't try to anger you - and there's kind of a very strong cultural thing here of 'you don't anger the powerful person.' Especially since people who overuse their powers go insane. What I've shown... Maybe a tenth what I could do if I was being kind of reckless? And Ink's got a bigger gap."

"Its a little weird, yeah. Might've kind of grew out of a culture thing? Superhero stories were popular when capes started appearing. Comic books. And yeah, people follow capes. Places in Africa are basically at constant war between squabbling powered folk. It seems like both of you can do lots of different stuff. Powers back home are like specifically make metal spikes grow out of things, and nothing else. No flying, no moving metal around, just the one thing."

"Individual powers can be kind of like that? They're - everyone can Dream, every entangled person can use magic, and then each entangled has their own thing that magic can't do. Like, communication or teleportation. And Earth has superhero stuff, I was actually really big into comics before getting entangled - the stuff I hear this place compared to is Lovecraft and magical girls."

"...Magic?"

"Yeah? I mean pretty much everything that's not possible on Earth can be called magic, but what most of us call magic is the Magelands stuff. Uh there's a bunch of categories... Changing stuff, summoning items, summoning energy, making people better at doing things, healing, making items do fancy stuff, and illusions."

"Well... Not as ridiculous as it woulda seemed last week. Is this stuff something anyone can learn? ...Wait, you said only some folk can. People who call their powers magic aren't taken very seriously, back home."

"I mean we've also had this a lot longer, so - it's been called magic for centuries. And everyone in the Magelands can use magic, everyone in the Dreamlands can dream - superpowers-wise that's kind of low-level range-limited reality warping. So if you went to the Magelands, you'd have magic."

"Hmm. Probably dangerous there. Changing things would be real useful for making stuff though."

Deep breath.

"I actually had powers before. They - changed? - when I fell into that old city. No idea why."

"I mean it depends on where you live? Some places aren't dangerous at all, I've been there a lot. And you can use Dreaming to change stuff. And - might be here has a different definition of possible. I lose my powers when I go to Earth, because they're not possible there."

It's really really not a big deal here, huh.

"Yeah, well. Tinkers are a category of powers, lots of people have the same kind of thing. But my tinker power turned less - less helpful, but also friendlier? It's really weird. I just know how to make and fix a bunch of stuff now, like I spent twenty years learning engineering. Used to be the power would sort of - puppet me - to make things I didn't really understand, and I'd kind of steer it. I don't think I can make stuff that's quite as good now, but I actually understand most of it, so."

"Getting puppeted by a power sounds like it'd be really alarming! I bet once you practice with it you can probably do more now though? Like, at least long term."

"Also I got this urge to make stuff constantly. It could get pretty annoying if I didn't want to be making stuff at the time. I could shake it off and I didn't accidentally break things while it was going on, and it's how tinkers work... And it was easier to do complicated stuff. Like, I basically just ripped that engine off the ground and put it in here? And beefed it up a bit so it could burn lamp oil at least for a little bit before dying. The gearings are barely working and- Anyway. Hmm. What might help me now is, like, a laptop with CAD stuff."

"I don't know any engineering stuff, but I know Ink's got a laptop back on Earth for college stuff? She might let you borrow it? Or, like, be able to help you go laptop shopping or something, I think some of them get kind of cheap?"

"Beefy computers to run CAD software are more expensive. Buuuut I'll think about all that later. I don't suppose you and Ink need any things fixed? Or would be up for going back to the ruins and scavenging some stuff if I make something for you?"

"Ink probably has or wants some stuff, especially back on Earth. I travel light, so, not really?"

"Ahh. Well, I had an idea of tagging along with you guys and doing fix-it work along the way, maybe..." Shrug. "Too soon to tell, I guess? You said the rest of your group is coming back in a few days, right?"

"We're gonna meet up with them elsewhere, but yeah! We'd love to have you along."

"I'd be interested to meet the others - and your groups seems... Like useful people to know and nice guys, so."

"I bet they'd like to meet you too! I can describe them if you'd like?"

"-Sure!"

"There's me. I can communicate pretty much with everyone, kind of just by intending to if I know them really well. They're Reynard. You're unlikely to see him much; he's got a body share with me, different Ideal Form though, different power. He does self-manipulation. There's Silver. They're nice, one of the people who don't really leave their Ideal Forms. Silver's kind of socially awkward, though, might get flustered around you. Mal's Silver's friend, and is only kind of a teammate? She's still in school so isn't around much, and doesn't come along on anything dangerous. Carol's here and there, kind of more a solo person we ally with. She's got a job in the US Air Force, so, also not around much. There's also Decima, who, uh, has this rapid teleport that she likes to scare people with. She's also I'm pretty sure like seven, she kind of shows up sometimes and smiles creepily at people. Decima lives in the Dreamlands full time, most of us don't. Ink's mom is also sometimes around, Miku. She's really good at the Dreaming stuff - shaping reality - and at Dreamwalking, could probably teach you all that? Her power lets her pick up skills crazy fast, so, she'd be good at it."

"...World's so much bigger than I thought, huh. Sounds like a good bunch of friends. I'll be happy to meet 'em. What's an ideal form, again?"

"An Ideal Form is, like, what you want to be, or what you'd be given unlimited shapeshifting magic. People can take it with a bit of effort in the Dreamlands."

"I hope you realize, this place is so weird, but in a pretty cool way."

"Yeah, I know. It's way different from our Earth, too."

"All I can do is try and make the most of it... I don't suppose any of your friends would want me to fix stuff, or make stuff? Or sell off scrap? I got Gloria's car working again in a day." She snaps her fingers. "Just like that. And it's nice to have somethin' to do that you're good at and you can just solve."

"I get that. Hm... Mal's most likely, she does a lot of computer work, or Carol might have some old plane or another."

"Neat. Planes are trickier than most things, though. If you mean real airplanes, to carry people, I mean. Anyway, I'd appreciate an introduction whenever you guys meet up again. I'll probably bounce around the town fixing things, maybe try and turn my salvaged tram monstrosity into something usable. If you want to find me later."

"Not, like, a big one? But yeah she has this thing for old planes. And that sounds like a plan! We'll be around, mostly, can try to meet up a few times?"

"Yes indeed-y. And I want to learn how to... Get to places around here at some point. Maybe after fixing the trolley? ...Heh. I actually like the stupid thing, now."

"Yeah, I can explain that - lots of it works kind of like Earth? Like, you can walk or catch a ride or take a ship... But there's some weirdness with long-distance travel."