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Time passes. Canada is cooperative about portals and now there's one each in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, on a second floor of the hub with customs agents Isabella is tolerating for the time being as long as they're well-behaved. Japan and Australia and the UK all follow suit at roughly the same time, so then there are portals in their big cities, too, a couple new ones per week. Other nations are slated to trickle in as they handle their red tape to deal with sudden new national borders that don't have the built-in delay of airplanes. Some of the parking garages are being replaced with custom-built installations. Isabella pays off her loan, renegotiates for the continued use of her shiny credit card, and has reason to be grateful for her retained law firm, which is kept busy by frivolous lawsuits by airline companies. She's not appreciably cutting into their traffic yet - sure, the price point is dropping, but they're still competitive. They can just smell their own demise coming from a mile away.
Five witches besides Isabella ward the colony site. Robots guard the site of the portal, obligingly letting colonists through during scheduled trips and reporting to Isabella by mirror if anybody else shows up. Other robots help the colonists with setting up their farms and houses in the warded area. It'll hold a city, no problem, although another transfer of silks and bags to pay for warding a second site is going to be called for before they get literally everyone across, since in addition to city they need farmland, and since they can't build vertically as effectively as fully industrialized Earthlings or the deceased aliens.
One day:
"It's been exactly a year now since you crashed my picnic. Let's go to a fancy restaurant and celebrate."
dark_light
dark_light
"I don't recommend doing that in an Earth city. You might be fine, but you might wander somewhere you aren't supposed to be because you can't read the signs or recognize what conventions of buildings here are likely to mean and if you get picked up by the cops you can't speak the language."
dark_light
"We're in a city. A city with nearly three million people in it and surrounded by suburbs where it doesn't border water. It will take you several days to get to be not-in-a-city unless by 'walk' you in fact meant 'boat' or 'swim'. The portals don't lead to anywhere substantially less inhabited except for the portal hub. So unless Adarin wants to volunteer to give you a ride - I'm not putting you on my cloudpine for the hours it would take to drop you off in rural Wisconsin - you will be spending the next while in a city."
prodigal_miser
"Translation spells are one thing, but teleportation spells are a bit bigger. Sorry, no. I need the mana."
ofthefallen
Xiara seems honestly surprised for the first time since she's arrived. Her cat flicks his tail, back and forth, agitated. "... Your cities are that large? Then I shall take the lodgings. Perhaps the translation spell would also be wise."
dark_light
"This is a large city, but not the largest in the country," says Isabella. "This is a very thoroughly inhabited and developed country in a very thoroughly inhabited and developed world. So I guess I'm putting more mages up in a hotel."
prodigal_miser
Adarin will just be over here, casting another translation spell on Xiara. There it goes, translation spell. He is the Dude That Casts the Translation Spell, now.
"There you are, now you both can understand and speak English," says Adarin in English. "And also every other language ever."
"There you are, now you both can understand and speak English," says Adarin in English. "And also every other language ever."
dark_light
"It's the cleverest of spells," says Isabella. Sappily. "All right, let's see where I can book a hotel for the night..." She pulls out her phone.
dark_light
"Thank you," says Isabella. "There's a Doubletree a ways north of here. But I don't think I can fit you all on my cloudpine at once and trying to transport you by bus sounds like a sitcom waiting to happen. Let's just walk into town and see if we pass a hotel." Isabella hauls herself to her feet.
prodigal_miser
Up Adarin goes, as well. "Let's aim for a nice one, I kind of don't want to see what sort of trouble they would get into at an unsavory one."
ofthefallen
"I have been in many unsavory places before. Is there something that would make this any different from those?"
dark_light
"The fact that I'll be annoyed with you if you use magic to get out of an unsavory situation," says Isabella archly. "The fact that you probably wouldn't recognize a likely possible deadly weapon if you saw one. The fact that you aren't familiar with local customs and laws. I do not understand why mages keep thinking they can drop into American metropolises and be anything less than hilariously unprepared."
prodigal_miser
"Well, to be fair, there's absolutely no frame of reference to compare them with. Out largest cities before the invasion don't compare to what you have here."
dark_light
"Welcome to Chicago," says Isabella, gesturing at the city as they approach it from the shore. "The Windy City."
It has tall buildings and lights and cars and people in it.
It has tall buildings and lights and cars and people in it.
ofthefallen
"... Hm," says Xiara. "That's something I haven't seen before."
And that's the end of Xiara's commentary. Her cat prances along behind her, looking up towards the buildings but otherwise unaffected.
And that's the end of Xiara's commentary. Her cat prances along behind her, looking up towards the buildings but otherwise unaffected.
dark_light
"Don't walk in the streets unless you see somebody else who knows what the hell they're doing going right there, right then," says Isabella, "or you are likely to be arrested and/or hit by one of the cars."
ofthefallen
"I was not going to walk in front of the large, fast moving, metal magical constructs. I am not an idiot."