She falls for a split second before she lands on a couch. Well, on the occupant of the couch more than the couch itself.

"- I'm so sorry - where am I, I don't understand -"

"Wha- uh-" Lucien starts fumbling around looking for his PRT issued panic button.

"- you're a block from Allston street?? How did you get here."

"Allston street in what city, I think somebody must have teleported me only if you don't know about that happening either I can't imagine why, I can think of reasons to want to kidnap awakening espers but not to put them on random bystanders' couches?"

It's not in his desk, where the hell is the panic- oh. He turned it in when he agreed to work with the Undersiders, since he is no longer a Ward and they wouldn't answer it anyways. Hrm, possibly he should call Tattletale when he is panicing instead???

"Uh, you are in Brockton Bay. Assuming espers is your local word for capes I'm guessing you are rather far from home?" 

"Esper is the title of the Wikipedia article so I don't think it's very local? I... don't know where Brockton Bay is though... I'm from Toronto? How far am I from Toronto?"

"Uh, maybe 8 hours driving - I'm confused by you not knowing where Brockton Bay is."

Also something is bugging him about her that he can't quite place.

"Okay, uh, do you maybe have a phone I could borrow - is this the States -"

"Uh, you can use mine in a few minutes maybe - yes this is in the States. There was a Leviathan attack a month ago, we would have been in the news?"

The way she.... says words or something?

"Is that a dungeon? I don't know every named dungeon, I do follow the news but I don't know that one. Um I am trying to be very cooperative with figuring out what the fuck on the grounds that I too would really like to know but also it turns out my backlash is being really really lonely and could I perhaps trouble you for a hug in the meantime? Like a really really long hug. Like actually this is just going to keep happening to me all week."

... What. That is. Such a request. And extremely suspicious coming from a random girl who appeared in his room out of nowhere!!

"Uh, is backlash the result of some Master power? Also how do you not know about Leviathan. Also called Jormungand? He's the Endbringer that sank Newfoundland." 

He keeps his distance from her while he dials Tattletale's number. In retrospect he should have been quicker about getting a new taser after he left the Wards. What is it about how she's speaking that is pinging him so much... 

"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."

"He teleports? He's stable and reasonable as a person?"

"Um. Also during the fight a plan I had to stop Leviathan from doing too much damage went wrong and it allowed him to kill her when ordinarily she would probably have been fine."

"Just um. Thought you should be informed. Of things."

"My dad isn't an esper and teleporting wouldn't be in my top ten guesses of what he'd get if he were but he's stable and reasonable, sure. ...is that supposed to be a reason not to hug you, I'm temporarily insane and definitely still want to hug you but I think even if I weren't you being sad about another version of me whatever that means having died wouldn't be a reason not to."

"Okay."

"I can maybe find a recording of him speaking at an interview and see if it matches? You have the same voice as Lorica. Also you act like her at least somewhat though I never saw her in a similar um. Emotional state. Also Tattletale's power wouldn't get this sort of thing wrong, I think."

"Oh yeah I'm usually not like this at all. I'm an introvert. So I expect to get worse over the course of the week and then not want to talk to anyone even though in theory the backlash level should stay the same. What's Tattletale's power?"

"She's got very good intuition. That matches Lorica though it's somewhat confounded by her power having her go into a sort of fugue state where she invented things and didn't want company."

"I don't think there's inventing things espers. People with powers here are 'capes'?"

"Technically capes are people who use their powers, people who have powers are parahumans but most parahumans are capes. There are a bunch with inventing things powers."

This is really not a great position for his leg and his arms are starting to get tired but he doesn't need to do anything about that this second.

If he shifts she'll shift with him uncomplainingly. "There's 'inactive' espers, usually because they don't have partners. To guide them."

He would shift if his brain were better at suggesting how exactly he should shift instead of freezing up about determining how to comfortably cuddle his dead crush.

"Most capes can use there powers without downsides - though some like Tattletale get migraines with overuse - so you don't see many inactive ones."

"How does she get rid of the migraine?"

"It goes away on it's own eventually, I think? If no one makes it worse. Which uh, we probably did."

"Oh no."

"She will still recover but I am uh, not going to call her again for anything less important than verifying you weren't some sort of trap was."

Lucien squirms a bit.

"Also um, we should probably change positions, this isn't very good for my leg and my arms are starting to get tired."

"Of course, however's good for you is fine."

Oh no. What if. He drops his arms like this and moves his leg this minimal amount because that will solve all of the immediate problems probably. This does not really have a reasonable result but he doesn't have any other ideas.

Snuggle. "I didn't catch your name?"

Oh that works much better.

"Oh, I'm Lucien. Uh - what was yours again. I was sort of trying to filter out what words you were saying earlier because I thought you might be doing voice based power things."

"I'm May."

"Um. Nice to meet you May?"

".... Uh, probably that wasn't the right thing to say at all sorry it was a reflex."

"I'm sure I'll manage to say more inopportune things than that before I'm out of the woods, don't worry about it."

Lucien has no idea how to interpret that!

"Because I am having a hard time shutting up so if I run out of appropriate things to say I will probably still say something."

"Oh that makes sense and sounds rather uncomfortable to experience."

"Yes I hate it. Though actually when I landed here I was trying to sleep and might go back to trying that soon if you're like, comfy and have your phone and don't mind that according to my mother I talk in my sleep and stuff."

"Uh, yeah if you want me to stay while you sleep I can do that." It's definitely not weird at all. Or at least not weird in a way that should matter right now.

"It's possible you can sneak off once I'm asleep without waking me up but I woke up in the middle of the night from backlash in the first place so I wouldn't bet on it."

"It's fine. It's the middle of the night here and I wasn't really planning on doing anything besides being on my phone on anyways. Sorry for the lack of a real bed."

"...why weren't you asleep then if it's the middle of the night here too?"

"Oh, my power makes it so I don't need to sleep."

"Oh, okay. That's neat." Snuggle. "...would it be weird to ask for you to like read to me or something."

What is this fever dream he is having and why.

"Sure, I can read if you'd like - anything in particular?"

"I have the taste of a literature professor, almost anything you get on - does Project Gutenberg exist yet, I don't know how old it is -"

"Yeah, Project Gutenberg is from the 70s - it started when the internet was just 15 computers and called the arpanet." Lucien knows a totally normal amount of the history of web infrastructure. "My mom keeps trying to convince me to read Utopia by Thomas More? It's a 16th century book about a fictional utopia - I'm not sure how literaturey it is? I could read something Shakespeare instead if you like."

"I've read Utopia, it's not very literature but if you'd like it it'd do fine to get me to sleep and I won't even miss whatever parts get read after I'm asleep. I think Shakespeare might suffer from having a single person read it but I do love Shakespeare."

"If you have a suggestion for Shakespeare that might not suffer too much I could read that? Or uh, I've been meaning to read 'War and Peace' at some point? Or something else - I'm not picky."

"War and Peace is on my list too. Let's go with that."

Oh her smile...

He can read her War and Peace while snuggling until he is sure she is asleep, and he definitely isn't having feelings about this - he can do that some other time that isn't this week. 

Eventually her tired commentary on the complicated Russian novel where everyone has nine different names fade out and are replaced with random nouns. She clings in her sleep.

Lucien sends an email to his parents with an update, and tells them he misses them but doesn't think there visiting Brockton while it's this much of a disaster zone actually be a good idea even with the recent events. 

He tries to figure out if there's anyone else he could ask for advice, ideally someone who has experience with weird cape things, but... he just abandoned his old team (not that any of the surviving members could give good advice anyways) and barely knows his new one. What would he even ask someone, "hey do you have any advice on how to deal with someone with the same voice and personality as your dead crush showing up in desperate need of being cuddled?" - "yeah sure happens all the time." No, he's not getting any help from a friend on this. 

Normally to distract himself he'd work on Wards paperwork - there was an endless supply - but that's not an option either. Maybe he can... figure out patrol plans for the territory he is meant to take over once he's ready? That is not the absolute worst idea and if he tries hard enough maybe he can stretch it to fill up a few hours of trying to not let it get too salient that May his clinging to him in her sleep.

May wants 4.5 hours of sleep, apparently.

He can stretch patrol schedule for three hours, after which he tries sleeping himself, waking up seconds later after his power chooses to have him start to relive his memories of the Leviathan fight in crystal clear detail.

What if he tries reading Utopia instead of that. 

Eventually May wakes up, stretches a little bit without letting go of him, yawns. "- thank you."

"No problem."

"I need the bathroom. If you would be up for - reading to me through the door or something."

"Sure."

She waits till he's got a good head of steam and wants him to walk her all the way to the door to the bathroom and then needs a minute to psych herself up and then she manages to go in alone.

He can read! It is really the least he can do.

She opens the door before she washes her hands and once they're washed she's clinging to him again.

Yes she can definitely do that!

"You're being very nice about this."

"I. Uh. It's the least I can do?"

"I... don't think most people would be as accommodating, with most people I'd probably have fallen back on asking for an ambulance."

"...you are really are a lot like Lorica, I think."

"I guess I'm glad I have her reputation to coast on, the most I could expect from a psych hospital in a world that doesn't have espers would be somebody to keep me away from means of suicide."

"Yeah. Um. I'm glad I can do better than that?"

"D'you want to talk about her or do you want to definitely not do that?"

"I... think I'd like to talk about her? If my being sort of sad won't make things harder for you."

"I will probably randomly think you hate me sometimes but that's not you, that's the backlash, and probably if I have a better understanding of - whose reputation I am coasting on here - I will remain through those periods more confident that I can regardless still lean on you for company."

"I really extremely don't hate you."

Lucien can relate how Lorica had Tinker powers and how by default most Tinker would end up in combat but she was planning on leaving heroing to make a ludicrous fortune in private industry and this was in fact a much more reasonable plan. And about how her particular Tinker power was so cool and exciting and she even figured out a way to use his trench carving power to do fast high quality microchip etching which is an objectively better use than the default one of massive property damage.

He has a complicated look on his face as he relates all this - not purely sad but nowhere near happy.

Well, telling her he doesn't hate her doesn't help but she's leaning into touch-starvation as hard as she can anyway since he's so cooperatively cuddly. She has very Lorica-ish questions about Lorica.

It is a very confusing set of things, her being so Lorica-ish and also so cuddly! 

"So you - don't know what she looked like, I guess, since you recognized me by voice."

"Yeah you sound like her but Canadian."

"Lorica wasn't her real name, presumably, it was a codename?"

"Yeah I don't know her real name." Which feels awkward now that he says it aloud.

"I mean, I guess if I'm... a her... then maybe it was May. Mabel, actually, but my mother has no good excuse for that and nobody calls me it."

Nod nod.

(It feels a bit inappropriate to learn Lorica's name but it's Mays name to share he supposes.)

"Did you - email her parents or whatever, while I was asleep?"

"Oh, no I was waiting to confirm with you about her dad's voice matching yours."

"Do you have a sample for me to listen to?"

He can find and play a clip from the interview Transit did a few years ago.

"Yeah, that's Ch- that's my dad's voice."

"Yeah uh, I'd rather not learn his name. Do you know what I should say in an email?"

"Not really, this is pretty weird. How well do you know him?"

"Not very? He was nice enough but not the sort of person who socialized with the junior team members. Also I uh. Left the team and sort of joined up with another team that is um. A supervillain team. Last week."

"...oh, well, uh, thank you for telling me, that probably has to feature in the email so I don't make it accidentally sound like you're writing WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER in magazine cutout letters."

"Yes. Um. Sorry they are not very a supervillain team and I was sort of distracted by all the you and Lorica things and neglected to inform you about the other complicated things in my life that might be relevant. ...I do think the team I joined is good for the world even if the members are not very law abiding. Lorica worked with one of them a couple of times."

"What makes them a supervillain team if they're good for the world?"

"Uh, right now the city is a disaster zone due to the Leviathan attack so they are functionally running large portions of it which is not in fact legal but I think is way better than not having them help. Several of their members commit non-violent crimes - vandalism, theft, bribery - but those same members have risked their lives to help people. They also do some... normal organized crime things, though way less violently than the competitors they displaced and they seem genuinely intent on improving things further. I don't have to participate in that bit."

"If the alternative for them was being heroes and obeying the law I'd want that but I don't really think that's an option that's on the table and I'd much rather them helping against the serious threats than in jail.

"There's not, like... the Red Cross or anything stepping in after a disaster?"

"Some? But there's a lot of theft and crime around the aid, which the Undersiders - the villain team I joined - prevent. I visited their leader's territory before I agreed to join and it was doing noticeably better than anywhere else."

"I guess as reasons to join a supervillain team go that's a pretty good one, if the place has descended into warlordism anyway."

"The heroes are still around and I'd much prefer they did a better job instead of this current mess happening. I might have stayed with them anyways but they made it really hard to do that by discriminating against my parents a bunch."

Also there had been an undercurrent of blaming him for all the deaths Leviathan caused with his trenches. Which Lucien thinks was sort of valid but his parents and Tattletale had argued was terrible for him to be around.

"You didn't have a secret identity that sufficed to separate your hero self from your parents?"

"The government superhero team required junior members involve their guardians until they are eighteen - and also the disclosure of the identities of almost all their members."

"Oh. I guess maybe that is a thing my word is avoiding by having awakenings occur no earlier than age seventeen and usually not that early."

"Yeah the youngest cape on the Wards is close to twelve."

"...doing what? You don't field kids that young, do you?"

"The Wards don't have a lower age limit?" 

"Do they field them."

"Yes?"

"Wow."

"Uh, there are a bunch of regulations limiting their involvement in combat - you need parental consent for S-class events - uh, that's mostly fighting the Endbringers - you generally aren't supposed to put Wards into excessively dangerous situations or into combat with capes who are undeniably known to cause mental and physical trauma. Though those rules aren't absolutely binding, especially when the Wards themselves push back against them which is relatively often."

"I guess that's better than not having any regulations at all about child soldiers."

"I - uh, if they weren't capes none of this would be at all legal."

"...in most situations twelve year olds without superpowers aren't very useful in combat, I'm not sure that really means anything?"

"Yeah I.... I don't know. I guess I see how it sounds horrible but the youngest member on the Wards team is one of the most competent capes I know and I think a system that didn't let her fight monsters like Leviathan would be failing her and everyone else."

Lucien had joined his superiors in ignoring the fact that her mom never signed forms as fast as the S-class permission form got signed.

"Maybe I should hear - Lorica's dad's - take on this or something."

"Yeah that might make sense."

"Um. Sorry if I was defensive I was captain of the Wards for a while and still have strong feelings about some of that, apparently."

"- oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to - I -"

Oh god what did he do.

"No no no it's okay I'm not mad at you or upset or anything sorry if I implied that or anything."

"Sorry, I'm just really very insane at the moment."

"Yeah I uh. Can be more careful about that."

"It's probably not actually worth you being careful about things like that. I'm a fixed amount of lonely and my brain is doing stupid things to make sense of it and making sense of it does not improve the situation because I am a fixed amount of lonely. I just have to live through the week and then I'll be okay."

"Okay."

"Um, do you want me to read to you more?"

"Please."

Then he can do that! For as long as she wants really.

Eventually she remembers that she should be composing an email to Lorica's dad. "Does he know Tattletale?"

"Uh, yes, though I wouldn't expect him to have a high opinion of her."

"But like, as an explanation of why we'd think I was connected to Lorica in any way."

"I think that will maybe make him more suspicious? A bunch of the PRT think she manipulated me into joining the Undersiders and generally suspect her of using her power to trick people. After Lorica worked with her they considered moving Lorica to a different city - though I don't think her dad agreed with that. There might be a way to get a message to him without going through channels that would let the PRT protectively censor it?" 

"It'd be a bit much to assume he has the same email address. And - without Tattletale's say-so and without putting a lot of weight on your personality assessment and voice recognition abilities we have very little reason to think I'm 'a Lorica'? We don't even know for sure that I look like her or have the same name, it just seems plausible that I do from the starting point of thinking we're alternate universe versions of each other."

"You really do act a lot like her. Other than the backlash that is."

"Well, it's nice to know I'm recognizable even when I feel completely different."

"Mm.... oh, hm. There's an AI that was created by Lorica that might be able to persuade people, or at least Transit, that you are a Lorica? Assuming it can be convinced of this."

"...talking to a robot actually sounds incredibly unpleasant right now but maybe it could just listen to me talking to you?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, I can call it and explain the situation and then put it on speaker while we talk for a bit, if that's okay?"

"Yeah, that's fine, just, like, tell it I am having intermittent issues with believing I'm talking to robots and there are no real people besides me anywhere and accordingly nothing matters, so it should not talk to me."

They are currently flopped on the couch together but Lucien can be hugging her more actually.

Snuggle. "I'm mostly managing to lean away from that but I don't want to try talking to a literal actual robot right now, you know?"

"Yeah that makes a lot of sense. If there is anything more I can do to help please let me know."

"I am low on filter and will probably let you know even if it doesn't seem like a good idea at the time, worry not."

Nod nod.

He can call Lorica's number - last he checked it forwarded to Rete.

"Hello?"

"Hi this is Lucien, I uh..." He pauses for a couple of seconds.

"I can't think of a non-weird way to say this. I have someone who I believe is a variant of Lorica from a parallel universe in my apartment and she is having a mental health crisis related to the way powers work in her world and could use her parent's help with this."

"Why do you believe this?"

"Her voice matches, Tattletale said she was a Lorica, and her personality matches except for mental health crisis related things."

"Did Tattletale elaborate at all?"

"She was not available to comment beyond the person being a Lorica and trustworthy." Lucien is pretty sure his new team doesn't want him telling people when Tattletale is out of commission. Though probably he still would if it helped May. 

(May is gradually tensing up as Lucien talks to the robot instead of to her but she is valiantly not interrupting and just smushing her face ever more firmly into his chest.)

"May I speak to her?"

Huuuug.

"Due to the mental health crisis she is uh. Having issues believing people she's talking to are robots and that there are no real people besides her and that this means nothing matters, and she thinks talking to a robot would exacerbate that. She asked if instead you could listen to me talking to her?" 

"It will require more data in that form for me to draw confident conclusions but not intractably so."

"Okay uh, are there particular topics I should cover?"

"Anything I would have been exposed to Lorica's opinions on will suit."

"Okay, speakering you now."

Rete is politely silent.

"What does it want me to talk about?"

"Uh, anything it has heard Lorica's opinion about. Your life goals a bit seemed relevant to Tattletale maybe that's would be good to talk about more?"

"Well, espers are really rare so I wasn't planning on it though I did always want powers. I was not really clear on it sucking this much or in this way, that's not really what the media focuses on at all, although now that I have a little practice with not doing solipsism I'm, like, ready to grit my teeth and push through it, I guess. I was going to go to med school and do epidemiology, if I didn't get powers. If I can't go home I might do something like that here but it sort of sounds like this world has bigger problems, maybe it'd make sense to specialize in something else to do with Endbringers or whatever."

"Did you have thoughts as to what you'd use your powers for in your world?" Why does Lucien feel like he is conducting an interview.

"It depends what my powers are, it could be almost anything! Dungeons, if I can do those - not all espers have dungeoneering-suitable powers but there are dungeons that you really can't clear with a SWAT team and need to send in the superheroes for. But if I get healing powers I'll heal, if I get construction powers I'll build stuff... if I can find a partner."

"How does partner finding work? Also uh, do you have a powers preference?" Lucien hates this entire thing they are doing so much.

"If - are you mad at me, did I say something wrong -"

Oh no.

"No not at all I am not mad I just don't like the feeling that I'm interviewing you for being a Lorica, I'm not going to leave you alone."

Cling. "Um. Um, if espers touch each other they can tell how compatible they are. A healing power would be really neat if I got to pick but I don't want to get attached to the idea, they're really rare."

Cling! "Uh. How did you decide you wanted to go into epidemiology if you didn't get powers."

"Oh, uh, it seems really high-leverage, potentially? Like we eradicated smallpox - did that happen here? -"

"Yeah, it did."

"And that's really cool and I wanna put malaria in the ground."

"Oh yeah that does seem really important - getting aid to Africa is really difficult right now but people keep trying to arrange things to get people help, and there's a vaccine that was developed by some scientists running challenge trials relying on a healing cape to make it feasible to test things much more aggressively than they'd otherwise have been able to manage."

"Oh wow that cape is very cool and deserves fanmail. What's difficult about it?"

"There are a lot of rather violent warlords and exactly who is in control changes often, making the logistics of delivering anything safety very difficult."

"Oh, that sucks, in my world I can just donate my esper money to charities and they will have only relatively navigable logistics type problems I think."

"I think you can do that for malaria vaccines for pregnant women in Namibia which is pretty good if you don't account for the side effects but maybe bad if you do. There's some refugee funds that are better I think - getting someone to the US is usually cheaper and more effective than improving things where they are."

"The US is still routinely descending into warlordism, though? Or is this situation now weirder than you've made it sound."

"Brockton Bay was just hit by Leviathan which leaves thing way worse than they are - in most places there is a largely functioning government and even here people aren't going hungry or being killed by easily preventable diseases or violence - for the most part."

"Okay. Still, I don't think even a really bad rash of dungeons has warlords popping up in major first world cities on my Earth."

"Yeah I think Endbringers are really quite bad and this accounts for a lot. Also capes are just generally a source of uh... chaos."

"...you don't seem especially chaotic?"

"I would generally agree but I did just join a supervillain team a week ago so I am not as confident as I'd like to be."

"That's fair! And maybe you're very special and most capes are different. What about Lorica, was she chaotic?"

"She was among the least chaotic capes I'd ever met," 

"Is something about being a cape making them chaotic or is it likelier for chaotic capes to awaken - or whatever you call it instead of awakening?"

"Uh, trigger events happen during intensely stressful and traumatic moments which does have a significant selection effect - there's also some research indicating a tendency for powers that work better if used, or that need to be used, or similar things that push towards more power use."

"Does power use push towards chaos particularly?"

"It can depend on the power, but yeah? I think if most people had my power they'd be causing a lot of property damage just from normal use." Versus Lucien who has caused a tremendous amount of property damage from creative use. 

"But you're using it for... microchips? Right?"

"Some - though I lost my contacts to do that when Lorica died. Tattletale says she can get me more work doing that."

"There are a few other not very property damaging uses I've found for it. And also I used it to fight Leviathan, which involves a lot of property damage that was almost worth it until it wasn't."

"...because of Lorica or on a broader scale?"

"Broader scale. He took advantage of trenches I made to kill her and eight other capes."

"Dungeons don't kidnap espers. We don't know why. I guess it'd be weird if your not-dungeon problems were similar in that way."

"Capes are really a rounding error in who Leviathan kills but... it's still eight people. And those people could have saved a lot of other people, I think."

"Dungeons do kill espers, if the espers go in them and get in a fight with a monster they can't handle or something, but they never take espers. They also usually don't take kids. Not never, but it's much rarer than taking adults."

"... Wow that is oddly nice of them. Endbringers kill quite a lot of children."

"I don't think they're being nice, but it's hard to tell what they're being instead, they don't communicate."

"I wonder if Tattletale could figure out anything about them."

"Ooh, maybe, there's relatively safe dungeons she could get a look at if we figure out a way to get anyone to my world at all. ...I should name my world, hm."

"We've gone with Hebrew letters so far - this is Earth Bet,"

"What, do they have no distinguishing features? Mine has a distinguishing feature and I'm going to give it a real name."

"They do have distinguishing features but I think there was a lot of politics about naming them,"

"Wretched. I'm going to call it something good. But I'm getting stuck on weak French puns."

Lucien actually doesn't hate the existing system but May trying to find a better name is very good nonetheless.

"Everyone will be jealous of the French for getting a universe name - or thankful depending on how weak the pun is I suppose."

"Oh, it's just that 'esper' in French is cognate with 'hope'."

"Huh - it might be weird to liken capes to hope here."

"But they're, we're, not capes, we're cool law-abiding dungeon-slaying heroes."

"You're all law-abiding?"

"I mean, not every individual person, but that's the norm, there's not supervillain espers running around. I guess partnering dynamics might help there?"

"How so?"

"You'd need to find a compatible esper to enable you, or you'd get backlashed till it killed you, trying to do supervillainy as an esper."

"But that also holds for heroes, right?"

"Yes, but like, your partner doesn't have to also be a hero, they can just do whatever with their powers and meet up to hang out for guiding after you get out of a dungeon. And there are institutions invested in making sure everybody who wants to be useful has a partner to do it with."

"Huh, I guess I can see how that might help but I'd still expect lots of supervillains? They have institutions that could do that too, here."

"Why isn't anybody taking down the meta-villain institutions?"

"Uh, depends on what level? Locally the Undersiders did take down institutions that existed but they've just replaced them. Globally you have groups like the Gesellschaft, which a local gang was an offshoot of, who have enough people and powers to keep themselves around despite European cape groups trying to take them down."

"Huh. Yeah, I'm not completely sure why the dynamics would be so different."

Eventually Lucien checks with Rete to see if they have talked enough.

"This person either has Lorica's personality or is an exceptionally gifted Thinker."

"Yeah, Tattletale seemed pretty confident it was the first. Is it possible you could help her get in contact with Lorica's dad? Assuming you think he would be willing to help with her current state. If not I can keep this up."

"I will see what I can do. Where should I send him should he become available?"

... Lucien is going to trust Rete and transit with his current address rather than put May through a move.

"If you don't mind, I will send a drone there first."

"That works I suppose - please don't share the address more broadly unless you believe I've mislead you or something."

"I understand."

He hangs up.

"Sounds possible Lorica's dad will show up here at some point - Rete is sending a drone ahead, probably to make sure this isn't a trap."

"Okay. Maybe he'll take me off your hands, I guess."

"I do not particularly need him too, I can continue this for the week I'm pretty sure. But I imagine he might be better for you than I can manage?"

"Don't you have... things to do?"

"I'm supposed to be getting ready to take over a territory for the Undersiders but....I think it can wait if it really has to and I can do some of that remotely maybe."

"What does that even consist of?"

"Uh, getting to know the people in the neighborhood, figuring out patrol routes to keep an eye on things, checking to find out what sort of systems I need to set-up to make sure people get aid - Skitter set-up an orphanage and some medical distribution and some work projects to help speed along rebuilding with civilian help and I'd definitely want to replicate something like that."

"Somebody's codename is 'Skitter'?"

"Yeah, my boss."

"Kind of a weird choice, what does she do, walk on walls?"

"She controls bugs. It was chosen by the PRT as a suitably unimpressive villainous name which sort of backfired into making the heroes look incompetent after she uh. Most of the way took over the city."

"Huh, I actually think much more highly of it as a name choice combined with the power."

"It certainly has me hero name beat - I was Tunnel Teen. I do not in fact create tunnels."

"Oh no, how did that happen?"

"The ward who joined most recently before me chose Clockblocker on live television and the PR team was extremely annoyed about this and wanted more control over naming. I didn't think it was worth making a fuss about."

"...what's Clockblocker's power?"

"He can temporarily freeze things he touches, why?"

"I just couldn't figure out what would go with the name, that's a pretty apt one though!"

"Yeah he's ended up a fairly popular hero despite the efforts of both himself and the marketing department. Or because of both their efforts - depending on how you look at it."

"What efforts are they making to market - or not market - him?"

"The action figures they made with his name on it got recalled but this just made the ones that did get sold more valuable as a collectors item. He also has a habit of plugging the merch they still make for him in a juvenile fashion but I think people like it in a sort of stick it to the man kind of way."

"Espers sometimes do product endorsements but not really in a way where there's third parties trying to control their image, that's between them and whatever brand they're working with I think."

"There's a bunch of complicated regulations for the Wards in particular, though even for the older capes there's an assumption and usually a contractual obligation to involve the PRT. It's rather a pain to manage but I think it works out well for providing capes with a somewhat competent institution that's on their side in marketing deals - also the PRT would do a lot of the marketing anyways just by virtue of having so many capes working for them."

"I think like... three?... or something like that... people have ever awakened while sixteen. Even seventeen is unusually early, and I'm almost eighteen. Plus the official stance is that the government doesn't need your birthdate or your legal non-esper name to give you an esper ID sufficient to buy dungeon-grade ordnance and whatnot, so if I wanted to lie they would not have any formal route to check on me. So - functionally an esper is an adult."

"I think there are situations in which capes are sometimes treated as adults even when they are much younger than sixteen, but the Wards in particular tries to push against that and in some ways that's good and in some ways that's bad."

"I guess if there's a lot of pressure towards fielding them, yeah. A solid majority of dungeons don't really need espers, let alone espers without adult-quality judgment that they'd have if they just lived civilian lives for a few years, so you don't see anybody calling for us to drop out of school and do dungeons if we don't really want to and if we do really want to we're acting as free agents, not - well, wards."

"The wards do still go to school, though only part time. Also I think the majority of non-adult capes are villains, and to some extent the point of having the Wards is to provide an alternative to that."

"...huh. Why are kid capes more likely to be villains?"

"My guess would be you more often get cases where there are problems with the capes family life that the government won't as a rule fix for them and running away and making their own way does better? Also might just be that the thing where capes tend to have heightened emotions has more of an impact on teens." 

"...I guess there's no good 'run away and do non-criminal child labor to support yourself' option."

"There exist some people doing non-criminal child labor thing - a powerful precognitive that the Undersiders rescued does contract work for the government and a bunch of other places and is making an insane amount of money about this. I suppose she might also do some jobs for villain groups like the Undersiders but the government doesn't want to be aware of this since then they might not be able to make use of her services."

"So... the government is willing to pay for non-combat child labor without involving the parents, and just doesn't advertise that they will do this in a way that random twelve year olds will ever hear about."

"Uh, keeping in mind that I can't say what her family situation is since that would be private even if I knew something, I think they would be able to engage with her even if her parents weren't involved, but only because of how incredibly valuable she is. This isn't entirely unique to her but it's not a consistent policy either."

"If you knew that it was generally the policy of the government never to directly contract with minors without involving their parents you could probably say that. I guess hypocrisy is par for the course though."

"That is in fact the policy of the government - I'm not sure I would call it hypocrisy so much as generally having rules that flexible if the relevant authorities on the ground think they need to be flexed but I am um. Known to be perhaps too forgiving of the government's faults."

"Are you, how so?"

"I tend to find arguments in favor of institutions even when those institutions clearly have a lot of flaws that hurt people? Uh, Tattletale and my parents think I do this particularly when it comes to flaws that impact me."

"Oh no, but that's the time you'd be most qualified to make criticisms!"

(A drone approaches, hovers at the window, and moves on. Lucien gets a text.)

"I'm not sure that's true? I'm probably the most biased when it's about me... though possibly in my case the bias goes in the opposite of the expected direction."

(What does the text say?)

She doesn't physically resemble Lorica.

"Qualified to make criticisms, not necessarily tradeoffs! If a system is failing you, you know things about how and where it fails, which might, but also might not be, taken into account."

"Uh, I should maybe reply to Rete real fast but also uh, I am not sure how to distinguish when I am failing a system from when a system is failing me though now that I say that aloud the entire framing seems wrong?"

Oh, I am not sure what that means? She really seems like a Lorica.

I agree. But she doesn't look alike the way I would normally expect someone's counterpart in a nearby world to look.

"You seem unusually high on system-cooperativeness so a system that is not working well with you is probably also not working well with lots of other people."

Yeah - her world also seems to have very different powers from either us or Aleph so it's possible there's something else going on but I'm not sure how that explains this.

"Yeah I think that's true."

"Whatcha texting about?"

"Um. Rete says you don't look like Lorica which is confusing and doesn't match how people being alternates is normally known to work."

"It's... known to normally work? Do a bunch of people have pen pals who are them?"

"I don't know of any pen pals but anyone who was born before 1982 has a duplicate in Earth Aleph since our histories were identical up until then."

"Well, that's not definitely how I work since I was born in 2011."

"Yeah that bit was already confusing but it's even more confusing that you'd end up with the same personality and voice without having the same appearance."

"I guess that means her dad won't recognize me? ...and also that it's probably not a problem if I slip and tell you his name, I refer to my parents by their names when they aren't around."

"We technically don't know that the names don't match though it seems like a reasonable possibility - I can check with Rete to see if yours does?"

"Sure."

Lucien messages Rete.

Inexact but not unrelated.

Lucien can relay this!

"I think you are probably just an alternate version in a slightly weirder way than I expected."

"I guess! I wish I'd had the chance to meet her, I think that would have been cool..."

"Yeah she was really cool. I think she would have liked to meet herself too."

"Do you think I'll likely be able to go home? If people aren't even pen-paling themselves."

"My guess is no but - there's at least one really powerful cape who might have a power that lets him jump between worlds and if so he could send you home if he can be persuaded to take the time to. Also there are rather a lot of other capes and maybe someone else there is a way to do interdimensional travel - it's shown up as a power at least once, not counting the really powerful cape who might be able to do it as a side effect of being able to do a very wide variety of impressive things."

"But it might be hard to convince anyone?"

"If Rete and you can convince Lorica's dad - than I think he might be able to get the Protectorate to consider having Eidolon - the very powerful hero - stop by. Or, if things work out much more nicely, I can pay someone who has a convenient power a bunch of money to send you somewhere and they won't need to be convinced of anything."

"Why would the Protectorate be interested in me? - also you shouldn't have to spend money on me, you're already letting me snuggle you a truly inordinate amount."

"Lorica's dad works for the Protectorate and he has non-trivial ability to get them to do things he want them to, though the politics on an Eidolon intervention in particular are complicated. I am going to have a lot more money than I am used to having soon and probably it will not take such a big chunk out of it? I'm not sure."

"Is there a specific person you're thinking of getting a price estimate from?"

"No, but there are a few places I can ask around and Tattletale might have a bright idea when she's not recovering from a migraine."

"The kind of bright idea that gives her another migraine?"

"Hopefully not? She doesn't get them without extended power use."

"Did something happen recently that she needed to be on for a long time for?"

"Aftermath of the Leviathan attack mostly - the Undersiders have been trying to keep the city from falling apart. I'm not sure what particular incident tipped her over into needing to take time off."

"Do you guys have unpowered staff - I guess you mentioned an orphanage and that must, but like, more top-level staff."

"Yeah there's a couple dozen mercenaries that also do various other things hench people can do, and civilian staff recruited from whoever is around and competent. I'm allowed to borrow one or two of Skitters while I get set-up though the plan is for me to find my own."

"How do you even hire for that. In search of competent bureaucrats who have gaps in their resumes, or felony convictions, or are otherwise unhireable in the non-villain sector."

"I think right now there aren't really many options for people who are living here. Skitter seems to be creating a local economy by force of will, and assigning people jobs when they seem about right or volunteer or have relevant skills. Tattletale might actually be hiring professionals or just informing people they'd be a good fit and offering them some sort of incentive that will get them to say yes. The others are probably managing based on what Skitter can get running for them, is my guess, but I'm not sure."

"Who're the others?"

"Grue, Regent, Imp, Bitch, and less centrally me I suppose. There are some adjacents like Parian who runs her own part of town with the Undersiders help and the Travelers who are helping with rebuilding some."

"What do they all do?"

Lucien can explain, at least in as much detail as the public already knows.

And eventually May will mention that she is hungry.

Lucien has one of the best stocked fridges in Brockton Bay! Not as good as Tattletale tried to convince him was reasonable as part of his signing bonus but still, there are options for various meals that don't require him to know much of anything about cooking.

May's easy, she will microwave a little personal pot pie. He has to hold her hand while she does this though please.

Yes of course.

Lucien will go for some leftover pasta and tomato sauce. 

She has to talk a little bit less while eating but only a little bit. Having a social interaction matters more than getting through this pie in a reasonable time. Maybe they should make some more progress in War and Peace, she remembers up to thus and such an event.

He can read her War and Peace! He can also ask her if she has thoughts about how to handle various problems people might have in his territory when he does get to running one - he can at least guess at various scenarios and figure out how to handle them and that way he won't be completing neglecting being an Undersider (not that he phrases it like that).

Oh, that's a fun exercise. Civilization: Urban Warlord Edition. Can they construct a map with little paper markers on it without unsnuggling too much?

Yes they can do that! Lucien also has some scratch art paper with a layer of scratchable black over red that he can use his power on to quickly draw complicated line diagrams of the layout of the city.

Oh that's so neat. So, is power still being supplied by the city? Garbage collection?

Power is on a rotating schedule varying based on location, the Undersiders have a decent amount of input into that schedule. Garbage collection is provided at a few centralized drop off points.

So most people don't have power most of the time? Presumably they're already prioritizing hospitals but - what season is it here and now -

They evacced a lot of the severe cases, and the remaining hospital and two smaller clinics (one of which is run by the Undersiders) all have diesel generators for power. It's very nearly summer, which is good in terms of heating but the fact that the gas mains aren't a priority means a lot of people don't have working stoves.

How's the diesel supply looking to hold up? Have they considered prioritizing cooperative restaurants so people can get cooked food even if they don't have stoves? Is the destination to which they evacuated people going to continue to be available or are they in danger of losing a safety valve if they upset the wrong person?

They are getting diesel trucked in - most of the cost is in the generators and making sure the diesel doesn't get stolen or intercepted. Cooperative restaurants sounds neat, how would those work? The nearest hospital outside the Bay is two hours away given the state of the roads and technically is already at capacity but won't like, turn people away? Though there could definitely be politics about transporting people though. The Undersiders have some backup medical facilities of their own but not anywhere near a hospitals amount.

Well, May's not sure exactly how willing most people are to work for the Undersiders, but it sounds like whatever they're doing works on orphanage caretakers and also hospital medics, somehow, so taking it as a given that some people will go for this sort of thing, imagine a diner or something agreeing to cook food on behalf of, or directly provide food for, persons identified as in need of this assistance, in exchange for getting to keep their power on all the time, since it sounds like the power schedule rotation is under Undersider control.

It's generally only under their control in that they can influence when a given zone has power, not how much time it has power in total, but plausibly they can put a restaurant in a location so it can be part of two different zones and get power whenever either zone is scheduled?

Oh, that requires establishing a new restaurant, she was imagining working with an existing one. If they're going to build a whole new facility it might want to be more like a soup kitchen than like a restaurant.

Maybe if they move the borders of the zones around they can get a major street with a bunch of restaurants to be in both?

Maybe, but then there's no incentive for the individual restaurants to play nice with their barbarian overlords friendly neighborhood criminal gang.

"I'm pretty sure the way Skitter would solve this is by telling them all they have to play nice so they can all have the power working, and then she'd do something terrifying but probably not actually harmful to the first place that defected. I am not a fan of that solution but it feels like there should be some way to get things to work out so that the restaurants and customers can benefit without my having to be so horrible about it."

"Well, yeah, the way that works is that they pay for electricity and the ones that make enough money by attracting enough customers can continue to pay for electricity. I don't know if there's a way it works out like that when they have to make nice with the gang leaders to have electricity available to buy at all."

"Yeah there isn't a functioning market for electricity right now - we could do auctions but they'd have to coordinate to buy electricity and there also isn't a functioning system to do that. If things were better there'd be a restaurant union maybe. .... Though even then they would also need capes to defend them from looting and the heroes are spread too thing to want to prioritize anything besides major crimes. Which we also help - at this point the Undersiders outnumber them by quite a bit, and Skitter alone is worth several of their capes when it comes to stopping mundane crime."

"They're really scared of bugs?"

"Uh, she can control all the bugs in a several block radius, as well as sense what they are up to. So she can web up criminals with a very large amount of spiders, or bite people with various things. She chased some particularly recalcitrant people out of town with bullet ants which I don't really approve of but was under the circumstances not the worst decision she could have made."

"...what did those people do to need bullet ant torture? Where did she even get bullet ants, aren't those from Africa or something?"

"She imported the ants. Uh, I think it was a particularly aggressive burglary attempt and they made a bunch of bad choices when she tried to talk to them afterwards so she decided the best approach was to bite them with bullet ants a few times until they managed to turn themselves in to the police."

"You can't get aid to Africa but you can get them to mail supervillains bullet ants?"

"It's much easier to get a small number of ants when you can pay thousands of dollars than it is to efficiently distribute aid?"

"I guess, that's just really disappointing."

"I guess that makes sense. I haven't actually figure out how I'd handle a similar circumstance but I am sure it wouldn't involve bullet ants."

"Even if your power was controlling bugs?"

"Yeah? I think there are less violent solutions that might require more work later but are still better? What would you do?"

"With a bug power? Are we also specifying that I'm for some reason in a supervillain gang, because I think I probably wouldn't be."

"Uh, for practical reasons I'd like to figure out what I'd do with my trench digging power and supervillain gang resources but I'm also curious what you'd do with bug powers."

"Spider silk is a good concept, at least, maybe I'd also make honey. De-pest people's houses for 'em. Discover species in the Amazon and get them named after me. Wear a butterfly in my hair at all times."

"Those things are pretty great, though uh, I was specifically wondering how you'd deal with the situation of aggravated robbery in a territory you were running."