On the other side, there's a charming forest of pine trees in the shadow of a mass of skyscrapers, reaching far away between relatively narrow streets. The weather is pleasantly warm, maybe even a touch too hot. And there are people dressed in shiny, bright hiking gear making their way towards the outskirts of the woods where Weiss finds herself.

Ooh! Is this... Earth? She remembers skyscrapers and cities... Sort of. Rifts are always fun- You never really know what you're going to get.

She takes human form quickly, and weaves an illusion over her usual loose, minimal outfit of something more traveller-y; In this case, thinking about city clothes, a swooshy and fairly flared out dark grey pleated skirt that goes to mid-shin and a blue hoodie with a graphic of a fox on the front. To hide her tail and ears, respectively, without the hassle of keeping up an active illusion of invisibility, and instead allowing the more passive one of fake clothes to work. And then she walks casually straight towards the city.

The hikers wave at her, and taking a closer look, she sees that the buildings are invariably super-tall, forming big courtyards around large pools, playgrounds and parks. The architecture seems very... efficient, but the simple buildings look appealling still, and there are absolutely huge amounts of glass all over the skyscrapers. People are going places sitting on bikes where the wheels spin themselves. There are cars, but Weiss only sees a few; all of them are ambulance-sized, for whatever reason. She doesn't smell any diesel or gasoline or really smell much tire dust, either.

Nice place. Europe, maybe? Resort town? She takes a casual stroll and listens in to conversations with ears a lot better than it looks like she has and tries to figure out if she recognized the language.

She knows it, somehow. She doesn't recognize it. It's... efficient, blunt, informative? It almost has the vibe of computer code. As she keeps going, she sees a small group of teens wearing what looks like latex spacesuits making their way into a waiting black car.

(Hehe. You're welcome.)

Okaaaay that's always a little unsettling but it's best not to dwell.  Thank you, Tamamo.

"It looks like you're headed somewhere interesting," she calls to them.

They wave at Weiss. "Yes, we're doing mountain climbing, it's supposed to be our big expedition project. Don't want to be slowed down by altitude sickness, you know."

"Huh! Good skill with that."

She's noticed odd clothing choices twice already. She starts paying more attention to the clothes people wear. Her hoodie might be out of distribution!

Her hoodie is out of distribution, yes. People's clothes aren't too unusual, outside of significantly more people dressed in athletic clothing and men wearing skirts, as well as school uniforms having skirts for boys and girls (judging by the kids she occasionally sees walking around dressed identically). Occasionally, she sees a massive and impractical dress, or a fursuit, or something else that's more weird like that, and almost nobody wears a hoodie, at least in this weather, but it's not like local fashions are totally alien or anything.

If she were wearing a massive and impractical dress, or a fursuit, she'd welcome appreciation and comments about them.

"How do you get it to stay up like that?" she asks of the dress.

"Well, I'm wearing a polymer frame under it, mostly. And I'm careful to walk slowly and deliberately so I don't trip over myself, although that's almost subconscious at this point. I'm glad you asked!"

"I figured you would be. Which is why I did." She could cheat something similar but it would be a cheat. It really is quite cool.

She nods before bowing somewhat rapidly, the fabric of the dress moving in unexpected and mesmerizing ways as she does so.

Clapclapclap!

"It's almost like flower petals unfolding in the sun. Did you design it yourself, is this a group project?"

"No, this wasn't me. I saw something I liked, said what I wanted, and contacted a tailor who I knew could put this whole mess together." The woman makes a few gestures with her hands and feet, showing off how flexible she can be in the dress.

...She can't ask what country or language this is without sticking out too far so she will stay quiet and move to walk off.

"It's still really cool." Tirra may be beyond literal medieval levels of fashion but, like, nowhere near this much. Her tail is trying to wag. "Hope you have a great day~"

"That's a guarantee when you're here at the Foxwoods." She grins at Weiss.

-pfffha! Resort town, check.

She grins and nods in return. "Maybe there are even actual foxes around."

Most of the amenities probably require, like, money, though. She wanders a bit more with an eye to identifying said amenities and also any street performers, buskers, or the like, to see how that works.

When it comes to amenities, there's quite a wide range of options: there are many different kinds of restaurants providing what looks like all the world's food, incredibly impressive arcade games sometimes having 4 or 5 players playing them together, karaoke studios, pools and water slides every once in a while, and lots of options for places to play board games. There's an outdoor stage with actors in the middle of some kind of play; they're talking about a powerful lord who's about to do... something important, so Weiss doesn't have much context about what's happening.

Ooh, food. She can't pay. Ooh, video and board games! Those seem fun. She lurks nearby, watching.

Many of the board games involve putting your soldiers in the right places Risk-style, with the depth of strategy being incredibly clear in the contempative faces of the players, and lots of the video games involve swinging swords at things flying from you out of a screen.

She watches a match, hands in pockets and fidgeting, and attempts to divine the rules, if this does not seem to be Incredibly Rude.

It is almost purely Risk, but with extra rules that are probably based on which character you're playing as. It's the only way it makes sense for everyone's turns to go so differently.

She decides to take a chess set "from a pocket" (it's really a solid illusion) and sit at a table and smile invitingly at passersby.

Weiss gets a stream of people that smile at her, and look on in curiosity, although none choose to approach her and ask about the chess set.

Her interest flips back over to boredom really easily; This is a known Weiss Fact.

Maybe she can try to join one of the arcade-playing groups? Do they seem to be paying to run the machines?

One of them swipes a card once in a while against a reader, but they don't pay constantly like you did for arcade games back on Earth. One of the boys finds so Weiss so cute that he just hands over one of the extra plastic swords, and soon she can just join them, blocking virtual arrows and flying bats. It's incredibly fun.

Aaaaaaa she feels a little bit skeevy getting random gifts from boys aaa-

-Don't overthink it, just have fun! She's more athletic than a small frame would suggest. She hits everything almost perfectly, and tries to set up everyone else for cool moves and not show off too much. She's barely breathing hard when it ends, though.

"Is that a good score?" She wonders aloud at the end.

Well, it's higher than the other guy's, but the scores on the leaderboard are much higher.

She puts the plastic sword back and/or hands it back over, whichever seems correct, with a flourish and a bow.

"That was fun, thanks. Do you know a good way to find people interested in playing complicated board games around here?"

"Well, I think the most high-end board game club is probably the one on the first floor of the Rain Dance Hotel & Game Room? It's..." he points awkwardly behind a few skyscrapers. "A fair bit away, I think it'd be a bit far for a walk".

"I like walking on nice days like this. Thanks. Hope you have a good day."

She bounces and hums as she begins her quest walk.

He waves at Weiss as she heads off. If she just keeps going, it takes around 40 minutes, walking past many beautiful parks, including water parks, and tall buildings, before finding a very culturally-dubious looking skyscraper. It's decorated to look like it's made with animal skins, and there's a big totem pole-like column that splits the building's left and right sides by the front entrance.

She gets distracted wandering through a flower garden for half an hour on the way but-

-Eugh, why, this is some cringy mall-tier thing- No, no, don't be too harsh. Is there a sign indicating that this is Rain Dance Hotel & Game Room?

Looking closer, she can indeed see the sign above the main entrance, although the text is fairly small; clearly, the totem pole is meant to let you know.

She will enter the hotel, walking like she clearly knows where she's going, and take a look around.

She enters straight into the lobby, but looking through a side door, she can see that there's a huge room full of casino-style tables with green felt, with people playing board and card games of all types taking up most of the first floor.

Exactly what she was looking for!

...Do people seem to be betting? The tables make her think of poker...

Maybe? A few of the games actually use poker-style chips, and sometimes chips switch hands, but it seems to be quite rarely, not every round like in poker, and it doesn't seem like people can control how much they lose if they lose.

....Any obvious GMs or staff?

There are a few tables further apart from the others with judges keeping a close eye on the players and the game, but nowhere else has anything that looks remotely like staff or GMs.

Instructions or explanations written anywhere?

Nowhere to be seen! Apparently, the players know everything that it's necessary for them to know.

Annoying. Also, what she gets for sneaking around, maybe.

She'll have another wander around the environs of the hotel, trying to look talk-to-able and not vaguely mad.

Quickly afterwards, a man dressed in a short blue skirt notices her wandering. "Most people that get here go straight to the game room! Is there something you're doing while you're wandering around like that?"

Yeahhh between the weird language and weird clothes she must have been gone from Earth longer than she thought.

"-Well, I don't know the rules, and I didn't want to... Bother people by asking. Hi. Oh, also, I might have a few experimental games."

"Nice to meet you! I'm a bit surprised that you'd come here without knowing the rules for the games you were hoping to play, but if you were thinking about the experimental games of your own, I can see why you'd go somewhere with so many fanatic boardgamers. What are they like?"

"I have one about farming and building a town that's mostly cooperative worker placement, and one called chess that I'm not sure if it's popular here, and one that's a dice game where your characters are trying to win a tournament and each one has a different ability."

"I mean, you can get a phone or a computer and use a tabletop simulator and show them off to people? If you walk around the game floor, I'm sure you'll find more curious and eager boardgamers to try your new game ideas than you know what to do with."

But where is phone. She totally doesn't have one. And navigating that right now sounds un-fun.

"I guess so. Think anyone would mind if I just set up half of one of them on one of the tables and invited people over? I could always just clear out if someone does." Shrug. "Yeah, I'll do that, thanks for the suggestion- I have to get over my own anxiety more often, huh?"

"That's so bold I think you'll get even more interest, honestly. Makes you really stand out."

"Fun!"

She'll go- 'To the bathroom' or something, somewhere out of sight at least, to pull things out of her tail of holding and set up her display- She does have a physical copy of Homestead, complete with nice wooden painted house and well and tool and animal and person and crop and fence pieces and so on- The rulebook is a leather-bound notebook, hand-written, and she has to go over it and cover everything with a translation into this language, which takes a bit.

And she whips up another fake chess set, and then sets them both up in initial position near each other on one of the tables, and smiles at people who look interested.

Weiss can find an emergency stairwell that seems almost abandoned, judging by how dusty and disused it is. A few minutes later, a trio of men make their way over to Weiss' table, almost salivating at seeing the completely alien games. "What's the more abstract game about? You know, the one with black and white pieces?"

So, they don't know chess.

...Weird. Weird weird weird if this is Earth. Which. It might not be. Other places can invent skyscrapers.

"'Chess', a piece capturing game for two players- Each player takes turns moving one piece according to the rules. Each piece moves a bit differently and can capture other pieces if it moves onto them. The goal of the game is to capture your opponent's king-" Tap. "By making it so there are no moves they can take that get the king out of danger. White moves first."

"I think that's a fun rule for who starts!" says one of the guys. "I play who wins?" he continues, leading the 2 others to begin playing chess. They're playing quickly, and poorly, and it quickly ends with white losing. "There's a really beautiful combinatorial explosion... I think you've managed to hit some real magic here, young lady." The man who just lost closes his eyes and begins slowly pacing, trying to come up with strategies for the game, occasionally making gestures to aid his thinking.

Next time, the winner and the third player are more slow and deliberate, but they still make blunders and incredibly short-sighted decisions. "Do you have this game out somewhere? I'm pretty sure you're well past needing playtesting for this, just going off my gut feeling. Every decision feels like it could go a billion ways, and I mean, it's symmetrical so you already know the balance is there."

'Young lady', pah! But she's in a good enough mood watching them enjoy it that it's just a momentary flicker of irritation.

(She makes sure to explain castling and the Weird Pawn Rules, too.)

"Oh, I didn't invent chess. You wouldn't believe me if I said where I did get it, though."

"Wait, what happened then? Not that it matters, this game kicks ass! I think it's very much time to show it to the world. If the other game is anywhere near as good, you'd want to show it for the world, too."

"Hmmmmm... I'm a bit less confident of Homestead's pedigree, I admit."

"Well, if you're wanting a playtest team so you can be more sure about that game, ask around? It won't hurt anyone, and I'm sure they'd be excited to help you make something if it turns out anywhere near as good as chess turned out to be."

Sure. These guys are nerdy enough she feels more comfortable ... imposing. She'll ask people who seem relatively unoccupied about playtesting a semi-cooperative worker placement game.

She gets positive responses from many of the people she asks, so she gets more than enough playtesters in no time at all.

The core concept here is cooperative but competitive. Up to six people have farmsteads and each turn is a 'year'. The four people on the farm can do a lot of different tasks, and each playable character has a special power that helps the community- Watering one field on every player's farm, or building the shared upgrades faster, or giving everyone a wood resource, or everyone a hired temp worker, and so on. You want to score the most points, and there's a lot of ways to score points, but if the community doesn't manage to build all the upgrades by end of turn 12, everyone loses, so you can't interfere with each other too much. There's a random event card stack and dice for a couple things and it's overall fairly complicated. There's card art, fantasy-theme, the water-every-field power is rain calling and so on.

The playtesters take to the game impressively quickly, as they can relate so much of the game to what they've played before; they have a lot of positive things to say the first time they play it. "There's probably a game store or library around here that has a 24/7 table? Means you could get feedback for this game about as fast as would be possible. I think it's fantastic, but it needs more eyes and more playtime for us to really know."

"That could be neat. Anyway, I'm glad people like it- I hired someone for the art and everything."

"Well, I can point you to one of the 24/7 shops if you wish? It's not just your game 24/7, of course. But a shop with a new game going through testing is going to get tons of players from all over, especially if the game is new and early in its design history."

"If you think that's a good next step...?"

"Well, it'd do more to find out how to make the game better than anything else I can think of? It sounds like that is a goal of yours, to me."

"Oh, I rarely think that far ahead," she says dismissively. "I try to enjoy whatever the moment brings."

He chuckles, ever so slightly, and even gives her a thumbs-up. "It's the easiest approach, and always works like magic whenever it works at all. Good luck."

She'll wait for the current round of chess players to finish and pack away her games at this point- The chess set will fade eventually anyway and they can always go make their own somewhere, or substitute pieces so whatever- And see if any of the games being played are interesting enough to join in on. She likes ones that let you stack advantage on advantage over the course of a game. Failing that, it's probably getting on in the day and she should maybe head back forestwards to get ready to sleep.

Looking around the tables, Weiss sees a kind of RISK clone that adds the ability to play cards with special effects drawn from a common pool; it seems to have the similar kind of growing advantage that a normal RISK game has, with the cards being better for weaker players and making it harder to run away with the game.

She'll play Not Risk if someone's free for that. Try to see things in terms of expected advantage...

The game is really fun! It's different in a way that really makes the game much more interesting and unpredictable. The time flies as she plays a game.

...One more game she can win this time, she's sure.

...Oooor not, she loses again. Okay, there's a limited time that the basic formula of Risk, however fancied up, can hold her attention.

She's starting to get antsy. Time for another walk. A jog, rather.

Weiss can get past so many beautiful places during her walk: there are parks of colorful flowers, cute statues, men and women dressed in spectacular, sometimes revealing outfits, and quite a few waterslides and pools that people swim around in in this fantastic weather.

Too bad she can't go for a swim. Her tail would stick out, and hiding just that requires her to actively focus on her illusions. She'd definitely slip.

The spectacular outfits are making her more and more tempted to display her ears and tail, though. Maybe they really could be passed off as good fakes.

...She tries to pay attention for how things... Work. Are there any visible cops? Where's the infrastructure that underlies everything? Garages? Charging stations or gas stations? Food places?

There are no visible cops, no, certainly none that she's seen. Garages are few and far between, similarly for charging stations; she hasn't seen a gas station, yet. Nor has she seen a grocery store, only restaurants.

It makes her want to go down in the tunnels, metaphorically, and explore. But she's not in a hurry- Moonlight will sustain her as long as she doesn't get profligate with the magic.

Some of the food looks really tasty though...

Bah, she'd better go nap if she's going to be up at night. She starts heading back towards the outskirts of everything.

Weiss can quickly find a hiking trail near the outskirts, with signs, a rest stop building and what even looks like a wheelchair ramp. Luckily, she just needs to turn away from the trail to quickly get between dense trees perfect for hiding between.

She naps in a tree until moonrise.

Weiss is totally undisturbed, and can easily get a restful nap in any of the relatively thick trees.

She does her moonlight dance when she wakes up and night has fallen, moving back onto the path for clear space and putting up an illusion of nothing-there for it.

The dance is a slow methodical thing. It's good for processing through thoughts while feeling the trickles of moonlight-energy. Almost meditative.

She's on another world. Probably not Earth. But not Tirra. She's seen no sign of monsters, or any other major crisis. And she knows she can't be pushing after big, dangerous things all the time- She needs breaks!

But this is another world. It has people. Maybe there's some sort of important opportunity here. Nobody knows of the Light Gods, and maybe that's for a good reason? She can try praying, later, or doing some of the few rituals she can sometimes manage, but... Perhaps not. Urgently pushing the big picture is what burned her once before; Got dozens of people killed in a riot she incited with good intentions... Lost some friends who decided she was leading them on the whole time... And Light Gods only know how many knock-on effects.

Yeah. Remembering that always, without fail, makes her feel like a piece of shit. Which is why she makes sure to do it. Because it SHOULD. It was wrong of her.

No grand plans of interuniversal trade and teaching magic today. Just enjoy your vacation, Weiss.

...She dances for hours, ducking away into the trees if anyone approaches after midnight, and then naps again, and then heads back into town at a leisurely pre-dawn walk.

The town is similarly leisurely, with people walking about, working out, playing and talking to each other.

...Not having access to the local credit cards or whatever would really suck if she didn't basically not need anything...

Aaanyway, twenty four hour game store?

She can quickly get to it; there's only one table with players at it right now, this early in the day.

They're playing more not!Risk, aren't they?

No, they're playing a complicated mish-mash of mafia and some game about guessing how many cards of a certain type all the players have put together, based on what other players say based on their own cards.

Oh cool! She watches with interest, silently.

...she doesn't think she's managing to wrap her head around the rules, but the game is full of excitement and tension all the same.

"Is there a rulebook I can read?" She asks quietly at what seems an opportune, low tension moment.

Someone knocked out of the game walks off, returning with a thankfully thin booklet with all the rules for Weiss to read.

"Thanks."

It's like Poker and Mafia and Among Us had a baby, sort of.

Seems a little too much for her. Especially if fanatics are playing.

Eventually, the game ends, and the guy who gave her the instructions suggests joining them for the next round.

"Uh, I kind of have no idea what I'm doing? But I guess it can't cost me anything more than some time."

Playing it is thankfully singificantly easier than the instructions made it seem; Weiss quickly learns to keep track of both the poker and the social deduction parts, and the way they blend together to make for a game with constant decision-making and tense moments.

She has a decent poker face when her ears aren't visible. Though her hood is twitching slightly at times.

She plays with deliberate unpredictability- Conservative, then hyper-aggressive, then somewhere in the middle.

Her first time playing doesn't also result in her first win; the other players are using strategies she's not quite sure how work, but they end up putting themselves significantly ahead of Weiss and costing her team the game.

Yeah, knowing the meta is a major advantage. 

"I have a new game that I was hoping to get feedback about. I designed it with some of my friends. Up to six co-op with scoring for highest score." She mentions during the Cleanup/reset.

"Well, it's important to test new games so people get more options? Let's get going, unless there's something you have to tell us first." It's the man who gave her the instructions talking again.

"Only if you want to!"

She sets up Homestead on a different table. She explains the rules and will talk about design choices and the theming- It sounds like she has a whole setting imagined. She knows a lot about how actual people of this tech level would do things, too.

She picks the Priestess character, who nullifies some of the worst events and can let people adjust die results by +1.

She quickly gets enough people to join her. As they play, they talk in terms of unfamiliar board-game lingo and make constant comparisons to other games, playing slowly and taking their time to think about the game that they're playing.

She has a lot of clarifying questions about the lingo where her knowledge doesn't match.

They shrug, surprised at Weiss' ignorance about board game technology given her being a designer. But they don't do anything more than that as they finish a game.

She awaits condemnation feedback, feeling... Surprisingly nervous?

The conclusion is that the game is a competent, if "old-school", worker placement game that hasn't learned much from the genre's evolution. That makes it refreshingly different, at least, from the sometimes cliche and bland games that follow the supposed rules of good game design so much they get samey.

But what about the THEME. Was it COOL.

She knows she's in the wrong room for that. She tries not to feel suddenly alienated, she is literally HIDING and not being shiny and special is the GOAL here, ugh, brains.

(Externally this looks like her sitting there thinking for a while.)

The players testing her game let her be. "So... we can probably get a good stream of people to test this game? Leave it lying out, put up some signs, gather some feedback? We'd need to know how to get it to you, though."

"...Yeah that's, hmm. Can I just come back in a day or two to collect the game, maybe?"

"You'd have to be specific about how long the game is here. One day, or two? Until then, we're happy to see how much playtesting of it we can get done, and how much we end up liking it."

"Two days, and then I'll be back shortly after sunrise for it? And- Thank you! It's not quite what I expected but I do like getting the feedback."

An eyebrow raises slightly when Weiss says "shortly after sunrise". "Sure, we're happy to have it here until shortly after sunrise, I bet that'd let us really put your game through its paces. Think you'd be into playing it some yourself? If you haven't played it into the ground already, of course."

"Oh, for sure, just not for two days straight!"

"Enjoy yourself! We have quite the variety of game options, here."

She will look foooor... A deck-builder!

She finds one with a sci-fi theme, where the strongest cards must be found by digging through a deck of cards, so you don't have perfect control of how your deck ends up. It's a very good game!

Fun!

...She gets bored of the board game club eventually, and heads out for another wander.

...Hmm. She does have an urge to show off, somehow, but ideally not in a way that reveals the magic and everything... Well, maybe yes showing her ears and tail, but it's kind of scary to consider. Most places aren't exactly... Uncomplicatedly happy to have a kitsune sniffing around, unless she has the right reputation there already... She'll think about it.

She walks down the street she remembers from before, on the way to the super-competitive game hotel, and tries to identify places she passes. Is it really all entertainment things? Which ones are residences? Anything official-looking?

It is mostly residences, as a matter of fact, and Weiss can't see anywhere that stands out much at all; she can see offices, but they look quite similar from the outside, and there's nothing that has the vibe of being "official-looking".

Her Bad Idea alarm is really going off. She wants to see if anyone would try to arrest her or something if she were... Openly magic.

Bad! Idea!

But it would be very funny to, just, have a huge complicated illusion rolling along behind her and pretend not to notice, or something like that... Maybe have it 'disappear' when she turns around and pretend she doesn't notice anything? Hmm...

She whips up an illusion of a fox, a real-looking fox, coming out from some bushes and moving apparently independently from her, and has it stroll down the street ahead of her, and watches people react as it playfully wanders, being moderately more friendly than a normal fox. That should get some of the pranky urge out.

People look on with confusion at seeing a well-behaved animal walking around and playing with people, keeping a close eye on the fox. They're confused at not seeing its proud owner anywhere, or a tag showing that it's part of some program ran by the city.

...It's a little funny, but people seem... Anxious? Which isn't really a fun vibe to be causing.

The fox 'runs away' into a gardeny area and vanishes at the first real opportunity, then. She sighs, quietly.

And people walk around having a perfectly normal day again, enjoying the weather and conversations with each other.

She waits a bit and wanders for a while sp it wpn't be connected with the illusory fox- Before deciding to remove her tail from the poof skirt; Holding it weirdly stiff (for her) should make it look 'fancy elaborate dress' tier and not 'an actual body part' and she's itching in a vague way.

Weiss manages to blend in and people don't pay her much attention, beyond being curious about the thought behind having the tail as part of her outfit.

More garden-wandering. Maybe sniffing around cafes to see if there's any angle on the electronic payment system?

(She occasionally forgets that her tail is supposed to be a prop and lets it behave more naturally. Until she remembers again.)

People just... move their phones over a symbol of a cash register on the table, and that's whatever they ordered paid for. The way that the payment system works is completely unpenetrable. It doesn't even look like they have to put in anything on their phones!

Once in a while, people do take confused glances at Weiss' tail; but they don't pay her attention, it's more them behaving naturally.

Boooored.

...Ears too, and she'll stop pretending they're props. Let them wiggle and wag naturally, as she wanders!

This time, Weiss gets lots of attention. Although people still keep a respectful distance, the movement of her ears elicits stunned and curious looks from just about everyone she walks past.

Well if nobody is going to impose about it she'll just prance around smugly.

After a while, people decide to take out their phones, judging from the way that Weiss moves that she wants the world to see her amazing, foxlike outfit. One of them walks up to her, asking if she wants to pose for a video that shows her from all angles.

"Why, of course~ Depending on what kind of poses you mean."

"Surprise me!" the woman holding the phone says, smiling at Weiss.

She does a battle-ready stance, hands held like claws, low and balanced pose, ears back somewhat and tail lashing in agitation as she faces an imaginary foe.

She rushes around, taking a picture of Weiss from all angles. "You look awesome! How do you get everything to move so naturally?"

"It's magic."

She just laughs. "Well, you don't have to tell everyone if you don't want to!"

She laughs and does a standing backflip.

"Are you planning on doing a show of some kind? I feel like you must have trained a long time to be able to do that, and you'd need a good reason like that. Am I right?"

At this point she's mostly just seeing just how audacious she can be with people who have really low priors on magic.

"I bet I could whip something up!"

"Yeah, you could probably get a super-good slot on a Perpetual Revue. You look awesome, and if you can do a backflip that casually, I'm sure you can do things that are, like, 100 times cooler than that."

"Do you know who to talk to about that?"

"Well, no, but I can look it up for you and tell them what's happening? Most perpetual revues let basically anyone start performing, if they're willing to start on a bad slot, so I can just tell them you're an acrobat with an amazing outfit and they'll tell you to show up for your first show."

"I'd appreciate if you did that... Hmm..."

Most of her moves, per se, are remembered combat against monsters.

Even if against the real monsters she uses illusion from start to finish. Fair fights are for suckers.

She can have a "fog machine" and "projector" to create vague smokey figures of enemies for her to "fight", maybe?

"I'll just... find someone real quick." She quickly taps through her phone, before instructing Weiss on where to go. "The perpetual revue lady will be ready for you now, so just... head over there to get things set up for your performance."

"I do appreciate it, not having one of those," She nods at the phone.

She will head off in what seems to be the correct direction? The perpetual revues must be the stages she saw earlier.

As a matter of fact, the perpetual revue is indoors! Once inside, she can see the schedule: concerts, comedy performances, magic, and all kinds of other live performances. In the evenings, there are empty slots for Weiss in case she wants to perform; she gets the impression that they really, really want to keep the schedule full.

"I mean, I'll do a thing, I have, let's call it some acrobatics and projector tricks, but what happens if it's not perpetual and nobody wants to present themselves at, like, early morning before dawn?"

"Well, then you showed up and we took one step closer to being a "real" perpetual revue? Which would make me really happy! And there'll probably be a few people showing up just because they want a place to sit and think for a bit."

"...Fair enough. I'm enough of a chaos brain that  I don't think I want to commit to coming back again on any particular schedule though."

"Shows that you only get one chance to catch makes it cooler! How long of a lead time do you need for technical preparations? And... do you already have all the logistics ready? All the other performers do, so I can't really help you in that area."

"I'll just have to go fetch," make up with illusions somewhere out of the way, "A big 'ol backpack."

"Good, good... it makes it sound like you're ready to perform already tonight? Is that the case? I'll put you on the schedule, and let everyone know there's a new performer. What should I write in the message I send out to subscribers? Like, what's your name and what's your show about?"

"I'm Weiss, and I'll be doing acrobatics and smoke and shadow."

The woman nods at Weiss before rapidly typing something on her phone. "And when are you doing it today? There's one slot in 3, 4 and 6 hours from now. Assuming you're doing it today."

Her tail twitches as she thinks.

"I'm a little worried about forgetting the right time. So I'll just hang out nearby and do the one three hours from now. Do you know any nice nearby activities that take up about two hours?"

"Well, there's a huge range of board games that take around 2 hours? And there's game clubs, like, everywhere. 2 hours is also a good amount of time to spend doing foam sword fighting, but it might leave you too tired for the performance."