Pop!

"Hey. I'm alright. They've been acting nice," she says once popped back. The unarmed man steps up, puts a hand on her shoulder, and seems to be visually checking her for injuries, brow furrowed.

To the thop: "What's gonna happen now?"

"We're gonna collect what's left of the snake - people study 'em," says the leader. "Gumalaj should be able to phase through your wall and go pick it up unless there's anything she'd need to know about the wall. Then we'll put in for some tests of the world's properties and get the place on the Empress's docket for contact."

Gumalaj gestures inquiringly to the wall of the ship.

"We just spaced the thing. Expect it's a good ways off now."

"I'm fast," Gumalaj says. "I just don't know if you have anything exotic running through the walls."

"Wall's not got anything exotic far as I know."

She steps through the wall, glowing faintly yellow.

"Do you need any help with anything, short term?" the leader asks.

"We can manage ourselves."

"Okay, do you want our contact information?"

"Don't got the net out here too often."

"We use magic for that."

"Uh-huh. How's that work?"

The orc offers him a pad of stationery. "You can write on this, or copy any one line of the text on the back of each sheet - we don't have all languages squeezed on there but we do have English - into another non-encrypted medium and append your message. It gets checked every minute, relayed to our head office for triage in less than a minute, response time's usually less than five for a real problem."

"What're y'all calling a problem?"

"...well, you can write in if you stub your toe, if you like, it just won't pass triage. Is there a particular edge case you have in mind?"

"People getting into conflicts with other people, mostly - figuring y'all'd do something about Reavers, any decent folk would, but the only reason this system's not in a full blown civil war anymore is the Alliance keeps killing anyone not being smart about questioning them. And we find ourselves in the middle of shit a lot."

"Gosh. Uh, we won't let people kill you, if we show up and people are trying to kill you."

"Thanks. - Did River warn y'all 'bout the Reavers."

"She mentioned them but we don't have a full explanation."

"Yeah, she don't like talking about them much. They're mostly the far Outer Rim - there's a pretty far flung planet, Miranda. Got settled decades ago. Alliance decided to experiment with a riot control drug they were calling Pax. Ended up making most people just stop taking any actions, 'cept a few who got real violent. They started attacking and eating anyone the Pax didn't kill, and then they got on the leftover ships and started attacking the Outer Rim. We don't know if there's anything person-like left in their heads - River'd be our best word, but she freaks out whenever they get within a few hundred thousand miles - and it's not safe to get that near them anyways. They might have some powers like hers, too, but we're not sure."

"...okay. Uh, might speed things up on that if you can help us identify candidate individuals to power the magic our world mostly uses. Involves making wishes, runs on strong emotions - positive or negative, either somebody who's really upset that they're how they are now or really wants them fixed, or both. Then probably we'd drop them in a kind of, uh, therapeutic magical forest, that's what was done with the people who were under a mountain range for millennia and the people who were turned into despair monsters and the prisoners of the evil god, probably good for ex-Reavers too."

"I can list a good number of people who've lost someone or other to them, but if'n you're wanting them fixed and not killed the list'll be a whole lot shorter," he says. "Most people hate 'em or fear 'em or think they're a quaint Outer Rim myth to explain away piracy."

"I feel bad for them," the unarmed girl says. "Must be awful horrible, being a Reaver. Some people don't just always want revenge..."

The man sends her a fond look. "Most Outer Rim folks've gotten their nice a bit more worn down than that."

"Well," says the girl. "There's people whose families were on Miranda who'd probably make a nicer wish, too. And River might make a nice wish. She got real upset when we were on Miranda..."

"If River comes up with a wording, that can go on the stationery, the wish department can vet it and if it's good it can go through to the Empress, who grants the wishes."

"I can talk to people I know, too, see if there's someone who feels really strongly about fixing things right up," says the girl.

"Great, thanks! Any other questions or remarks before we pick up Gumalaj and go?"