"Well, no, but given what Mesmerra said about the death ward, I bet we'll learn things that can be used to destroy things that don't have minds."

"Might just be about people who walk in with already lethal powers."

"Well. Either they'll be friendly and we can ask them a favor or they'll be unfriendly and we'll have to do something to stop them from coming after us. Edie and I won't do anything to anyone who doesn't come after us first, but..." Shrug. "I'd love to say 'neither of us will nonconsensually mind-control anyone no matter what,' but. That's really not practical here."

"If I have to for my classes or something I'm planning to rescue townies."

"That is an excellent thought! Edie and I were planning to do class exercises on each other wherever we could get away with it."

"That works too. Neither of my brothers were invited and I don't think I'd have wanted them here anyway, though."

"Yeah, in our case...I mean. Killer robots. I think even our townies are better off here than back there, honestly."

"Are they likely to be from the part of the world with the killer robots?"

"I think so? If they're not then I retract that statement but Edie and I are both less at risk here than there."

"I wish you luck. I can't really say the same for my townies, the scout didn't do that much damage."

"Yes, that would be the difference between an imminent problem and an ongoing one. ...I don't know about you, but we weren't warned about the neighborhoods thing beforehand."

"I wasn't either! It - wouldn't have changed anything, but."

"But this way you at least didn't decide to sacrifice them, which might help if you have to actually interact with them. I don't know, I'm probably not helping."

"I dunno, the one way you've got guilt about deciding to sacrifice them and the other way you've got guilt about taking on behalf of my entire world crazy risks that I was not fully informed about."

"Somehow I suspect we have still not been informed of all the risks."

"Yeah-huh. Except insofar as 'there are lots' covers it."

"Yyyep. Oh, uh--do you want an overview of who was, like, bad news and not successfully concealing it from Edie, I have qualms about mental privacy but I also have qualms about some of those people."

"Yes please." She flips to her notes on the attendees of the orientation.

"The most concerning one was the bubbly girl with dark hair who asked about children. She's from some kind of hell dimension or something but she's one of the people making it hellish, not one of the victims. The one with the baby that Edie agreed to room with isn't, like, malicious, but she came from some place with an evil god and doesn't really understand why someone might want mental privacy aside from, like, 'I want to hurt you and I want to hide it.' The cheerful blonde who asked about non-enslaving forms of mind control wants to use some non-enslaving mind control to make everyone love her. The guy holding the flute was a devotee of an evil god. The guy in the plain black robes is really racist against anyone who doesn't have his kind of magic. The really pale brunette with the really blue eyes has some kind of passive mind-affecting ability that makes people like her and want to do what she wants. The guy with the white hair and the guy with the bronze hair were both unhappy to be here and both thinking about slavery-related issues back home that needed dealt with. The Asian woman--you probably don't have an Asia, um. Okay, did you notice two guys and one woman as being noticeably a different ethnicity and/or looking noticeably similar?"

Scribble scribble - "With the kinda -" she squints - "eyes?"

"Yeah exactly--she was thinking about some girl from back in her universe, in a very protective sort of way. The not-human purple creature was terrified of everyone else; Edie got the impression they've had bad experiences with humans and was lured here without a good idea of the risks either. That's everyone who was actively thinking anything we could use as evidence one way or the other."

"Huh." She finishes writing down these assessments. "Thank you. Um, I'm not urgently hungry if you want to settle in a little longer but I would prefer not to go alone to the cafeteria for dinner."

"That's valid. I, uh, just came from a post-apocalyptic wasteland, I will welcome food whenever it's convenient and can be arbitrarily patient about it; if you'd rather go now that's fine by me."

"Okay. Let's go - maybe meet white hair and bronze hair, if they're there, form a here-to-save-our-worlds-from-shit coalition."

"Sounds legit!"