She startles, then bounces up on her toes, floating up in the air for a brief moment before catching herself with a blush, floating back down to the ground, more carried by buoying hope than defiant will. 

...Okay! She's pretty sure she's got that down, now.

She lets her little skittering shards of hope add more of the structure of flight to her blue ring - doing something FTL-adjacent is probably something she should take the time to do properly and seperately, but flight alone with a bit of futzing around in the background should be plenty!

She walks around and waters a bit, stretching out for the day to come. 

Alright then! 

So! 

She's got a bunch of things to make. In rough order of straightforwardness...

Probably the simplest thing she wants to demonstrate is a green charger? Robin is probably going to want to test the difference there, too, so she'll add the charge glow feature, but it's probably worthwhile to have it on hand to see if it works out alright, too. The design is simple enough - she'll do it in sapphire, since the limiting factor is probably going to be more about the interactions with the hope charging system than with shaping the green light that comes out the other end. 

The beacon is really just the blue charger set up again, with only some differences on the control mechanism for the light emission - just an empathically controlled 'slider', and a bit more direction than just an omnidirectional glow from a point, but rather a proper column of light coming out from the 'plate'. 

The blue and green emotional batteries are... fairly simple? Mixing them requires a bit of finesse that's it feels a little too early in the morning to force out of her brain when she's not feeling excited about it quite yet, she has enough confidence and curiosity in the matter to make it work still pretty readily. Her intuition guides her to shape them like bars or 'jade slips' in their corresponding crystal, though she adds in just enough blue to the will battery to make it at least a little self-charging. She deliberately makes it... not quite sloppy, but sort of - compressed, the structure for 'storage' designed to squeeze the impressions together. The point isn't to store or export them in perfect fidelity, the point is to get a general, broadly compatible rush of feeling that the brain and soul can interpret as it likes without making it too alienly pure. 

Next... She makes a proper blue-green defense talisman, using the new insights into how to manage the membrane.  She even grabs that stupid will-infused knife she made earlier and fusses with the imbuement a little to make it harder, sharper, and help steady her hand as she carves a mandala into a thin glassy layer atop the sigils to help solidify the image. It's meditative, having something in her hands and something to lean down and focus herself into, but by the time she's done, she's feeling pretty drained. She's pretty sure she's not just... shoving off parts of her soul or capacity for emotion into these, but that doesn't mean that there's not still some sort of limit, if only from the normal rigors of work and psychology.

Still, there's something heartwarming about seeing it sparkle and shine to her eyes and 'soul' alike, filled to the brim with her power.   

She stretches out a little, and goes and makes herself lunch, too. They should probably resupply soon, given how bare the cupboards are, but that is a tommorow topaz problem. 

Hey robin! Made an improved defense talisman that should also supply air and defend against conventional chemical attacks, and a basic blue light distress beacon. Feel free to come by to check those out sometime if you'd like? I'll probably want the talisman for my appointments with Zatara and Green lantern, though. Feeling a little tired, so taking a break on making imbued items for now. 
Do you have anything in mind for the form factor for a sunstone, more of the ice crystal, or the will converter assembly, btw? Was thinking that might be a good next thing to work on 'til I've got the apptments.

It's summer vacation, so Robin gets back to her by the time she's finishing up her lunch.

For sunstones, there's a standard Kryptonian form factor that would probably be most useful because it can socket into their existing designs:

[Kryptonian Sunstone Socket.stl]

For the others, I don't think it matters quite as much? The ice crystal we can just build around, since we've been using adjustable clamps. The will converter it makes sense to keep small enough to carry around in a pocket, I think, in order to test the recharge rate. Maybe the size of a coin cell would work?

I'll drop by and try the anti-chemical attack one when I get the chance! We actually have a forced airflow chamber for testing mask designs; does the defense talisman need to be worn to function, or could you rig it to protect a dummy's head for airflow chamber testing?

Oh, I meant for the cold gun design - the converter to the 'mental force'? Got the chargers already figured out I think in that general direction. 

Oh forgot to mention - got the emotional batteries done, too! 

I think I've got a general idea of what I'm looking for, though - should probably just fit to the basic gun-tube design.

Uh... I think I'll have to fuss a little to make it work that way? Works best when it's on a person with the right emotions, but should be pokeable into working more or less normally with a bit of fussing.  

She gets to work on the sunstone, and starts idly thinking about how to tweak the activation conditions - should be simple enough to add a little something to the cord attachment loop for that... 

Robin replies to her various points, particularly:

If it's more accurate to test with a person we can do that, it just limits the kinds of poisons we'd want to test.

Nothing else of particular note disturbs her at her work.

It should work much the same either way, in terms of atmosphere management? You just won't get quite the same level of durability from the general defensive features, and it might somewhat affect marginal cases with some intensely magical toxins, but I think it should test fine for your purposes? 

She finishes up the tweak, and then starts on the converter.

The converter is pretty complicated, but thankfully not too too empathically complicated - that mostly just needs a resevoir of green light (and associated bicolor charging system), and an output that turns into it something more loosely formatted for the converter crystal to break down and keep flowing into storage, with it's own output system. The end result is a cylinder about as wide around as her palm and nearly as long as her forearm made with a series of three different crystals. 

There! 

She checks the time, and looks like it's just about time for the meeting! She scurries over to her room to change her clothes - wouldn't do to look uncomposed and dirty - before flying over to a conference room to wait for him a good five minutes early. 

Zatara arrives right on time, tophat and all.

"Good afternoon! You must be Topaz?" he asks, leaning in through the door.

"Mhm!" 

She pops up and offers her hand to shake. 

He has a firm and practiced handshake, to go with his practiced smile.

"So as I understand it, you're from another planet, and you want a magical checkup to make sure that isn't going to cause problems? And also to test your reactions to local magic in safe conditions?"

As he asks this, he takes off the hat and white magician's stage gloves and hangs them on a piece of empty air beside the door.

"Mhm! That's the main thing, at least. I assume batman has forwarded you what he has on my powers? I'm pretty sure they're magical and can help me interact with magic, but I didn't want to start on that before talking it over with someone who knows what they're talking about, so I was hoping to squeeze some advice on that from you as well." 

"Oh! Yes, that makes perfect sense," he agrees. "I won't be the best thaumaturgy instructor, because I have a family talent that makes things a little different for me, but I can at least give you a rundown of things to be careful of, and be available to answer questions."

"!raeppa ,serutcurts luoS"

A web of glowing golden lines form over Topaz's skin and floating around her head. Zatara leans forward to study them, and then suddenly jerks back.

"Good Lord!" he exclaims, before seeming to remember the situation and coughing awkwardly. "Ah, that is to say — there doesn't appear to be anything wrong on first look, I just wasn't expecting the appearance of your ... passenger?"

She pauses a moment, then relaxes back into a slightly sheepish smile. 

"It's pretty unobtrusive, in it's own way? I half-forget that it's something other than a native part of me sometimes, even though it's been all of a day since we bonded." 

"Hmm. I see."

He strokes his chin in thought.

Zatara waves a hand, and a floating mirror appears in front of her. The delicate lines of gold twist and braid across her skin, billowing out around her head like hair underwater to form a cloud of light.

And perched on her head, like a fascinator, is the gift, picked out in a slightly ruddier and more tightly wound gold. A bright flame burns in its bulb, and two dimmer ones can be seen circling it. It has the same frond-like (or perhaps squid-like) shape that she intuited when she asked for a power with information about it, but this view of it makes it seem almost mechanical, somehow. Still delicate and complex, but more machine-like than the wild and twisting lights of her own soul.

"Soul sight is a little metaphorical," Zatara explains. "It's not literally on your head, it's just ... close to the center of your soul and of your thoughts."

He points out a tiny section where Topaz's brighter gold soul-threads have started twining through and around the gift's ruddy copper.

"And I can clearly see that it isn't native to your soul, but I'm not surprised that it feels like part of you. Your soul is starting to adapt to it, and it is ... welcoming that. I could still detach it if you ever wanted that, but I think it's acting like something of a trellis? Even if you got rid of it, you might retain a ... natural aptitude for the kind of thing it lets you do. That growth would probably accelerate if you started practicing magic through or with it."

She nods firmly. 

"It felt pretty - straightforward and external, at the start? But I can definitely see how leaning on the intuition and empathic powers so much would create a bit of a different relationship." 

She hums, and wrinkles her brow. 

"I do kind of wonder how easy it would be to do something directed with extracting it - I know it would be pretty simple to just press the 'eject' button, but not sure how easy it would be to do something more deliberate than that..." 

Does she want it to go away? Or maybe she would like it to grow and eject a seed pod?

"Oh, it gave me some thoughts about that - give me a moment..." 

What does ejecting a seed pod actually like... do? 

It shares an impression of a spark igniting (although no new spark is yet forthcoming), and then being pushed away and disappearing. But now the spark is also the source of the impressions, and it tumbles along through an ill-defined space, before fetching up against her and asking to help her with things.

The impression comes with the idea that a seed is weaker than it is, and has to grow. It also comes with the idea that there are limits, of some kind, on doing this, but not pressing ones.

Okay so... she can create a seed pod, that works kind of like the gift, but would be weaker? And some sort of rate limit, of course. 

Really the big question is where it goes, when she makes it? Does it just float out into the multiverse or can she send it somewhere in particular? 

This is, apparently, a hard question. The gift puzzles over how to respond for a moment.

She gets the impression of two ways a marble can be: a marble on a table could roll anywhere, but a marble in someone's hand goes where they put it.

Does she want a power that allows her to manipulate the trajectories of nearby stable magic patterns?

Would she need a dedicated power to bud things, or...? 

"Okay, apparently it has a - reproduction function? I can make a nascent version of the whole shebang that will either float out into the cosmos, or I think pop up here into a controllable way, with some work? It's thinking about making some sort of magic pattern controlling power to help with that." 

She shakes out her hair. 

"I'm going to want to test that eventually but first things first... Are there any powers you want me to test generating, or advice before I make a dedicated magic interaction power?" 

"Oh! Yes, sorry, I'm quite off track. Just a moment."

He resumes his study of her soul structures before stepping back, apparently satisfied.

"You seem to have an almost perfectly normal soul, so it should be safe for you to practice thaumaturgy, wizardry, evocation, and enchantment. The 'almost' is because your soul isn't tied in to the Earth's background magic networks — which I didn't realize was a thing that could happen, but its unsurprising that it would come up in the context of coming here from a parallel world. That should fix itself in time as you integrate into this world and metabolize bits of background magic. Until then, I recommend against practicing astral projection, since you might find yourself more weakly anchored than a native practitioner. Now that I do know it's a possibility, though ..."

He reaches into his jacket for a ritual focus, and pricks his finger. ".esiugsid tpada"

"Anyway, I think almost any 'magical' power would tell me about how you and your passenger interact during spellcasting, but ... maybe a power for aptitude with the common light spell, if that's how it works? I have a reference chart somewhere here ..."

He puts the ritual focus away, and then checks an improbable number of pockets before eventually coming up with a page covered in arcane sigils.

"I don't think it likes making powers that are that specific? But..." 

She pokes the gift. Could she make a power that lets her cast spells like this one, right here? While she's at it, she might as well ask if she could make a power that just lets her cast exactly that spell.

Yes, it can do those. Does she want a power that lets her read and understand simple spells in this notation well enough to follow their directions? Or does she want talent at and intuition for casting this specific spell in the specific way described on that paper? Or just a power that can make floating globes of light?