“All right. I wish you all the luck in all the worlds.”

Sigh. "Thanks. Which son of yours is the pharaoh?"

“Eldest.”

"Of course it is. Okay. I'm - gonna go get you guys some more food and I guess see if I can loop your pharaoh in. And I guess turn the translation off now. If anybody needs to communicate anything to me next time I'm here, just - wave at me and I'll read your mind, I guess."

She snaps her fingers and turns translation off.

"D'you wanna stay here again while I get your brother?" she asks Connor.

“Do you want me with you?”

"It - would probably save time if you were the one to order pizza." Also I might need a hug away from all of -  this.

“I’ll come.”

"Okay."

And they're back in her bedroom. She hugs him and turns telepathy on.

She is really glad they did this still but it is actually incredibly amazingly stressful to be going around kidnapping kings and she is not really sure that she's qualified to do interdimensional diplomacy really at all, and suddenly they're doing important stuff and the demiplane doesn't pause and this kind of means that she can't take a break and hide under her covers for the rest of the weekend even though there is definitely some sense in which she wants to do this.

Also she kind of doesn't want to invite Matt to her demiplane but this seems kind of petty under the circumstances, probably, and also at this point the situation might be socially aaaa enough that having him there would actually make it less stressful.

It’s really very rude of everyone to be upset and have problems instead of being excited about this and trusting that the problems will go away eventually! Maybe... how big is the demiplane, if it’s infinite she could have one faraway bit of it for politics and a near bit for the cool people? Alternatively she could just not get Matt, if she doesn’t wanna, though he does really seem like a good person to get? Why does she not want to get him, is it the thing where she thinks he might be evil? She could telepathy him and then she’d know? He feels kinda weird about that because their telepathy is a them thing but objectively this is stupid. She can even do it one way now so he doesn’t read her mind too.

She is very brave and good and he loves her.

She doesn't really think that Matt is evil, exactly, he's just, like, weirdly perfect and the center of all of the things he's involved in and she kind of doesn't want him to end up being the center of all of the people she's called to her demiplane, or think her demiplane is stupid, which is objectively kind of a weird thing to worry about because it's not like Matt has a demiplane, but. She feels like she's way dumber and more incompetent and less perfect than he is and this is extremely annoying. She doesn't think the demiplane is infinite but it probably is big enough to have at least two separate gathering places, maybe that would be okay. They should find, like, tents, or something, for people to set up in it.

She didn't know the telepathy was specifically a them thing and it's good to know that that's something that's special to him, she'll remember that in the future. She feels like the full-on mind melds like this are special, she wouldn't wanna do this with anyone she didn't really really trust. Maybe she would do it with Azalea ever if she could touch Azalea. She did use the ranged telepathy to communicate with the one of him who goes with the Karen from Hell, although maybe that's less of a thing because because that one seems to be a telepath anyway, he contacted her first. She should maybe be concerned about that at all but honestly he mostly seems to have sensible priorities.

Probably if she had met herself a couple years ago then she would have had a lot of problems too and it is important to be patient and supportive of her other selves who have more problems. 

He's very very good and she loves him very much and it would be so good if they could just pause this and snuggle and kiss and telepathy for an hour but probably this would be really irresponsible.

She could put Matt in her debt and then he couldn’t be in charge of everything and it’d be obvious to all the fairies at least that everyone worked for her. He’d agree to it if it meant he could have all these extra dimensional adventures. This is probably a bad plan even though it’d totally work.

Reading his mind might make him seem less perfect? Pretty much no one’s so perfect their thoughts are.

The thing that feels like it’s theirs is this thing, not just using it to talk. Also it’s kind of stupid he feels this way about it. 

Probably her other versions will get less confused and scared over time like she did but he’s worried that he was important for that and now some of him - well, one of him - is mad because Connor tried to convince him that he should serve his Karen. That was kinda stupid possibly but it was correct advice.

Awww. It is probably the sort of thing that's very unhealthy to force. Also has she mentioned that she loves him. She loves him a lot. He's good and hers and ugh she should go contact his brother before she gets distracted. Probably once everything's a little less on fire and there's more food for their other selves she'll feel like she's allowed to take a break.

Could he order like four large pizzas and raid the pantry for snacks and maybe figure out how to obtain some tents.

Yeah he can do that.

Squeeze. Kiss.

And she lets him go.

Heyyy Matt this is Karen. Contacting you telepathically. Are you doing anything more important than interdimensional diplomacy right now.

He was not expecting to be telepathy-d at and she can read all his thoughts.

That sounds like it beats math homework, he says. He's not doing math homework. (He's reading the Wall Street Journal to his youngest brothers, over pancakes with chocolate sprinkles on them.) He puts it down and tries to catch a glimpse of himself in the window and says to them "I might need to go" and then thinks to wonder how her telepathy works, and at what range, and wow she's really gotten very powerful very quickly and it's bizarrre, there's got to be some catch or someone would've done it before she did - hopefully she's not getting all of this? He should maybe act on the assumption that she is but he's not sure how without getting distracted by - whatever.

What can I do for you?

Oh hey he's home and not at college, she should have just gone over to his house. It is a weekend and stuff and maybe he wasn't going very far away. Oh well.

I, uh, contacted a bunch of alternate versions of myself and your brother from other dimensions, and apparently in one universe you guys are royalty and now I have kidnapped royalty, and I sort of volunteered to attempt to slay an evil god for them, and now they want me to talk to the alternate version of you, who they think will have ideas about how to do this, but who is also a king and stuff, and I feel like I am rapidly approaching the edge of my social competence.

Uh, I'm gonna stop telepathying and just come over, I'm sorry, I thought you were off at college and stuff and I didn't have your number.

And a couple minutes later she's knocking on his door.

He opens it right away. He's taller, and growing his hair out, and otherwise looks just the same as when she last saw him. 

"Hey. Are you okay?"

"I've been better! But I think nothing horrible has happened so far other than accidentally kidnapping royalty."

"Do you know the saying 'if you owe the bank a million dollars...'"

"...no."

"The saying is 'if you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you. If you owe the bank a billion dollars, you own the bank.' Because they need you a whole lot more than you need them, at that point. Because, at some point, the rules change. - do you want a hug?"

"...possibly."

Hug. 

Hug.

" - okay, so - right now Connor's working on getting everybody, like, food, and stuff, and then I told the royal version of your dad that I would get the royal version of you, except I think maybe I should have, like, a plan, before I do this, and right now I mostly don't? - I think probably their people have not processed it as an act of war or anything because right now time is paused in their dimension. So that's something."

"Also they'd probably rather not think of it that way, right, if they have any outs, because unless they have the means to hop dimensions and stuff themselves they don't have a good way to fight you."