"I don't know what my powers are going to be yet, they won't kick in till the end of the week. ...also the last time I heard anything about Newfoundland it didn't... sink?" That's apparently a no on the hug. She curls up very small and sad.

Oh god her voice sounds exactly like Lorica. A Lorica who he is being the absolute worst person to right now and he hates this so much but also he really really should not hug the possible Stranger.

"It sank in 2005? I don't know of powers that predictably take a week to appear. Also I am so sorry."

Tattletale doesn't pick up on the first ring.

"Okay well maybe I'm having a complete psychotic break, I guess. Complete with seventeen years of remembering Newfoundland being totally fine and remembering it being pretty common knowledge that espers awaken and have powers show up after hell week. 2005 was before I was even born."

Someone who is not Tattletale picks up on the second ring:

"Tattletale is indisposed right now, but if you tell me the nature of your call I can forward it on as appropriate,"

"A possible Stranger who sounds exactly like Lorica teleported into my room and asked me to hug her whatamisupposedtodo?????"

"Forwarding you to Tattletale," says the secretary.

"Mrrr?" comes the extremely unhappy Tattletale who is in the middle of what promises to be a truly epic migraine, even without this interruption that presumably is about to make everything so much worse.

Lucien can repeat the question, adding in that the Stranger sounds like she is not from this Earth maybe.

.... It would be really nice if he could say that slower so she wouldn't have to use her power to parse it, but explaining this sounds way too hard. 

"Speaker mode." She says, waiting a moment.

"Stranger, say words." 

"...is Lorica a codename or just a regular name? It's not my name, I'm May."

"It's another person," he replies.

"Is that enough?" Because he would like to go back to causing at most one person a terrible time and really ideally zero people.

Goddammit why can't this be over.

"No. Life goals?"

"I don't even know what powers I'm going to get! It really depends on that! Like if I can do dungeons I'll do that and if I'm a healing esper that's cool as fuck and if I'm having a psychotic break I want to get medicated enough that I can go be an epidemiologist!"

"Ts a Lorica. 'nd trustworthy. Bye." and she hangs up and vomits into the strategically placed bucket next to her bed.

That sort of clears things up but not really all that much!

"I'm so sorry, I can answer things now. Alsodoyoustillwantahug??"

"All week. Please."

Lucien can hug her now!

It doesn't help but she wants it anyway and isn't going to stop wanting it and the wanting it is fully capable of co-opting all her goal-orienting capacities. "Thank you."

"I can figure something out for all week if you'll need it. Also I can answer your questions now I am very sorry for not doing that earlier but I was worried you were some sort of trap."

"My, uh, universe, doesn't... contact other universes? Is that a thing here, how does that work, can I ever go home?"

"We only have contact with one and I'm pretty sure they don't have espers and would know about Leviathan - also they are the same year as us which is 2011. I don't think it's impossible to send you home in theory but don't know if it will happen in practice. I can. Try to help with that. If you want."

"I won't be able to try out my powers enough to even figure out what they are, if I'm the only esper. This right now is awakening backlash and it'll go away on its own in a week but power-use backlash needs guiding from a compatible esper to go away. So I need to go home to my universe. If you can do it this week I can stop imposing you and go back to the plan where I impose on my parents."

"I don't think I'll be able to do it this week - there's maybe one or two people on the planet who I know about who could help and they are both very very busy with saving lots of people. Possibly there is some sort of more common power that could help with backlash?"

"Also the alternate version of you who lived here had parents - or at least a dad - who I could contact if that would be helpful? But if you need to impose on me that is um. Also okay. If that's what you want."

"I don't really know what it means for this Lorica person to be an alternate version of me. Could we just ask her?"

"She was killed by Leviathan about a month ago," with Lucien's oh so clever plan contributing. Probably he should tell her that soon so she's not receiving hugs from him under false pretenses.

"Oh. I have actually no idea if my dad would like it if, should I be killed in action, an alternate universe version of me should show up to demand hugs and attention, but I guess it might be worth asking in case that would be welcome. I guess that's - assuming our dads are also the same, I don't know if they would be."