"Short answer is we don't know. Long answer is we can't spread news, can't communicate effectively, emails get lost, transmissions from other countries are filtered before they ever get here... Anything that's not in person can be intercepted or modified."

"- huh. Epic -"

"Haven't observed it to affect me but maybe I wouldn't. Contessa ought to know about it."

"—the Contessa?" asks John after Bernardo translates this, sounding alarmed.

"I don't know if there are two, I haven't been here very long and I've been busy."

"Appears out of nowhere, takes someone down, or does something weird, disappears later, doesn't seem to have any powers except no one can ever hit her and she can take down even the most powerful—"

Bernardo dutifully translates all of this for Maitimo.

" - yeah that'd be her."

"She's part of your organization." That's not a question.

"She's not part of my interdimensional humanitarian organization but she's part of the social-experiment one, yeah."

"And what's she for?"

"She's trying to prevent the destruction of the world."

" - kiddo are you just telling them lots of highly critical secrets -"

"People they care about got tortured for Cauldron's social experiment, they deserve to know."

"I got tortured!" Bernardo chirps cheerily. "I hope that datum helped someone!"

Jade pats his arm.

"Uh huh. So yeah, Contessa works for that organization and she gave me instructions on how to get what I wanted in Brazil so I assume if my information was getting filtered she'd have said."

"We don't know how our info gets filtered," says John. "It's always perfectly explainable, but the coincidences—mount."

- nod.

After Bernardo translates that for Maitimo's benefit, he says, "So what is the foreign stance on what's going on here?"

"Legend warned me that Brazil was a military dictatorship so I shouldn't go."

"...that's all?"

"I look six, he wasn't going to tell me about torture. - also I think I said in response that Shine was a military dictatorship during the war -"

...Maitimo sighs.

"...Shine?"

"Another dimension. Maitimo was king and they had a war and it was a military dictatorship but I don't think they tortured anybody."

"They did not."