Oh good.

She misses Rete and hopes her home world has not regressed to widespread tribalism but it's pretty nice here.

And, shortly thereafter, there's a crack and a flash in her front yard, and Wiccan appears in mid-air, a bit wobbly.

Lorica pokes her head out. "You found me! Hi."

"Hey! Sorry about the stranding - turns out going between worlds on purpose and targeting that is really hard... Have you been okay?"

"I like it here, actually. Not that I prefer to be stranded forever but if I were going to be here'd be fine."

"I've been able to come and go from worlds I've actually successfully found so far, if you want to go back and forth - but, uh, completely understand not wanting to risk my powers misbehaving..."

"What are your odds on being able to find my home world within the next, oh, year?"

"Uh. Not really sure? I've mostly been jumping at random or trying to target 'people I've met,' 'places people I've met have been' is really hard... I think it's higher than the chance of me losing the ability to jump between worlds I've been to - I'd expect if I can get to your world I'll still be able to get here and find you?"

"This might be a better place for me to park than your world if I have to pick one and me being out of sight wouldn't slow you down on finding Earth Bet but I don't know if either assumption is safe."

"I mean I can always park here while I'm fiddling with targeting? - I think if my ability to get here breaks because of, like, reasons other than something about this universe, my ability to get anywhere'd probably break."

"Are you thinking you'll just... stay here for weeks working on it?"

"I'm also gonna try to fetch everyone else but yeah, I'm gonna get you home? Can also practice smaller steps than across universes on other people if I need to be elsewhere..."

"Everybody else got scattered too? Uh, maybe if you're not running down scarce resources and I'm not the last one you should try to find them all now, make sure nobody's in a bad way wherever they wound up, I'm stable."

"Yeah, and you're actually second I've found - I don't think there's scarce resources... Was gonna find people then help you out, basically?"

"You can come back in a month or whatever and I'll be okay, if it gets you to everyone else quicker. We can figure out what next then."

"Okay, yeah. Thanks for - being patient." She runs a hand through her hair.

"Some places I could have wound up I'd be very impatient about but this place has a quirk that works really well with my power. And no supervillain problem."

"Yeah, that sounds like it'd help - what's the quirk?"

"If you build stuff here - or compose music - then it gets magically better at whatever it does. I stopped using Rete because I was worried it'd turn into a person but everything else I make it doing nicely with it."

" - Huh. Not sure how that'd interact with my spells."

"...good question. Might make them even less predictable."

"Yeah - I think I'll try practicing targeting maybe in my home universe then come back here if I figure something out or it's been a while or - maybe just at decently frequent intervals in case something goes wrong and you need something?"

"Sure, if that's not inconvenient you can come by every week or two?"

"Yeah. Might do every two weeks while I'm trying to track down everyone else, as long as things are stable here?"

"I have a house and projects and lots of robots. But I have been told there is sometimes concerningly angry weather and I haven't seen it yet, maybe after that I'll want a bailout."