It's a long ride from Kansas to North Carolina. She's staked a claim to the rear of the bus and spends it there, cuffed hands well out of sight.
Occasionally, she dozes, drifting in and out of consciousness as the noise of the road and quiet murmurs of other passengers break against her perception like waves on a beach. This is the closest to relaxed that she's come in... a while.
Quite a bit - for herself, she has a few clarifying questions about the tech level, capes, the circumstances around powers first showing up in the world - how powers first manifest and how they change over time, more details on the Endbringers... And questions about how to access further research herself.
(She also evaluates the Keres' knowledge of philosophy, assorted sciences, combat, and the like; this most mixes in with questions about the world.)
They've got computers, the Internet (Probably a good way for her to learn more, though they don't have reception out here. Try the library.), airplanes, Anakin's seen cars, guns, grenades, nuclear bombs, pictures from the surface of the moon. Tinker powers usually only mess up local tech levels; their creations are not very suited for duplication or mass production unless you're Masamune.
Capes first started appearing in the early 1980s, about thirty years ago. Scion was the first cape, a glowing golden man who does pretty much whatever crosses his inscrutable path, whether that's rescuing kittens from trees or putting out wildfires or driving off Endbringers. By the end of the decade, capes were common knowledge with more appearing all the time. People get powers from trigger events, moments of intense psychological stress. The mechanism is not well understood; it's basically impossible to force or predict a trigger which makes it hard to study except in retrospect, and a lot of capes don't like to talk about their triggers.
Behemoth showed up in 1992, he manipulates energy, usually to set things extremely on fire. Leviathan was '96, a hydrokinetic that also creates a 'water shadow' that echoes his moves. The Simurgh appeared in 2000 and no one even realized her danger until people in the area she was at all started going crazy six months later. One attacks about every three months on a rotating schedule of appearances.
The Keres herself has a pretty solid grounding in most fields, but she's a generalist, not a specialist.
Yes. The PRT, a governmental organization of non-powered people tasked to police capes and liaise with the Protectorate, a group of heroic (as opposed to villanous) capes, has some broad categories for the general types of powers that exist. Brute, breaker, striker, shaker, changer, blaster, tinker, mover, thinker, master, stranger, trump. These are descriptive rather than proscriptive, based on what tactics are likely to be effective against a given cape. The Keres herself would be called a trump/master. Trump for her ability to collect other capes' powers, master for the shades of those powers she calls up. And of course, depending what she has out, other labels would apply.
"Sure."
She's got a lightning generator, a robotics tinker, a short-range teleporter, a wild energy blaster, one that can walk through walls... and more.
She can only have three out at a time, but has no trouble directing each simultaneously to act independently or in concert.
"Interesting..." she murmurs. "They seem to be accessing something similar to hyperspace tech..."
"Hyperspace is what we use to travel faster than light. It's an alternate dimension, effectively."
"They're not using the Force, so - their effects don't make a ton of sense otherwise."
"I suppose. We don't have a good explanation based on our knowledge of physics."
"My civilization knows a good bit more about that, fortunately, though I've never heard of powers exactly like this."
"Improved base knowledge is quite helpful with using the Force towards something, too."
"Yes - especially in directing my focus, in anchoring my vision, and in interpreting what I feel."
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