Shrug. "My initial comment was a bit inappropriate. But, uh, yeah. I didn't like orchestrate an interdimensional plot purely to cause awkward moments."

Bellona's in a bad mood for objectively no good reason. Okay so it's awkward, but, like, life's awkward.

Doesn't stop the sick feeling in her stomach, but, well. Her body's been intermittently stupid since she got it back.

"It's fine," she says, a bit grouchily, pressing her face into El's shoulder.

She pats the back of Bellona's head.

"So, um. What's your world like?" she offers. "This is the, uh, third one we've visited."

"Huh. This's our - second, I guess. Our world's not in contact with any others. We have near space travel but not, like, farther than our solar system. Magic's not well known's, a big thing - it's secret from just about everyone, so society just runs on normal technology."

"The height of transportation in our world is pretty much the steam locomotive. And the other one we visited was still working off feet and maybe horses."

"Huh! Yeah, we've got flying machines and really expensive space machines."

"So was getting here an unfortunate train mixup, or...?"

"Nah," Bellona says. "We've got an interdimensional transit array - took me a while to modify it so it can take us to unknown worlds, but I managed and now we're exploring."

Pet pet. "She's very clever."

She grins, snuggling into her sister's side, the sick feeling in her stomach unwinding a bit.

"Sounds a bit more advanced than steam locomotives."

"It's alchemy."

"Like lead into gold?"

"No, that's impossible. The first rule of alchemy is equivalent exchange. You can only get out what you put in."

"Nothing can be gained without sacrificing something of equal or greater value," she recites. "I bet you could turn elemental lead into elemental gold with the right array and a deep enough understanding of atoms, but the energy requirements would be astronomical, it'd be dangerous, and, if wide spread, gold would deprecate in value so quickly it'd be pointless."

"Huh."

"It's a science, subject to the laws of physics, same as everything."

"Our magic is a lot more... metaphorical."

Small grin. "It just hasn't been sufficiently investigated and defined, then."

"Maybe."

"Science is a method, not a state of the world. There's nothing that can't be subject to experimentation ever."

"She's you but extra nerdy," she says to Ruby.

Ruby laughs. "I never thought I'd be the bimbo version," she teases.

"You wear it well."

"Exceptionally! I'll have Doctor Ruby Bimbo written on all my business cards."