It's on your clothes? Hell, let's let you go into the wasteroom at least, get some privacy-

Veeka quickly ushers her there, after a brief and kind of hostile exchange with the bureaucrat.

That is shockingly friendly of them. Really makes her not regret deciding to be vulnerable here.

Once she's in the bathroom and has handed over her clothes she can get to work on... which piercing is it, she has one for illusions and one for protection and she's been assuming she's having problems because of the first one - since they need to cast a spell on her - but it could be the second one. Or it could be both. It's probably the one for protection against other people's magic, though.

Either way, she got both of them fused shut by a structure mage. It seemed like a good idea at the time since her threat model was someone trying to attack her and having a force mage unscrew her jewelry and remove it, and if she ever wanted it removed she could pay a structure mage for that too. So now here she is grabbing it by the little balls on the ends and trying to rip it out. If only it would not come across as insanely suspicious to ask for a knife.

Are you okay in there?

There is a pause and then a scream and then a string of what is not technically swearing but might as well be.

Veeka barges in, eyes scanning the room. Then she swears herself and quickly pulls out a small medical kit.

Oh, smoke and thunder. This is going to sting a bit but it'll be quick, okay- She rinses the wound with water and then a little bit of antiseptic and then more water, then slaps on a wide sticky bandage onto it. This process hurts.

You had it actually implanted? Wish I'd known that, could have prevented some bloodstains. That's honestly clever, such a shame you have to do this, it's not really fair but that's life you know? More wound-cleaning with rags taken from her little belt. She tries to get some of the blood off Saira. It... Doesn't really work That doesn't look too deep, so you'll probably be fine. Here's some more rags, the sink will give you water. I'll - leave you be now. Why don't you clean up a bit more and hold your hand out the door when you're ready? I'll have to recast on myself too, this is about to expire... Ugh, that's a lot of my mana allotment...

Veeka goes out the door, flustered and muttering, accidentally brushing Saira with her tail as she leaves the small room

These people continue to be shockingly friendly, she notices on several seconds' delay when her brain starts processing things again.

If she ends up having to take the other one out too she's going to be so mad. Hopefully some government will track the snake down and torture them to death, though, and then that'll be fine.

She cleans the blood up a bit. She holds her hand out the door, with three fingers up because she isn't completely sure it'll work now but - assuming magic works similarly enough here, which is a big if - then even if her illusions get in the way the spell should stick and she can just take the other piercing out without them needing to recast the spell. And she is really, really hoping she doesn't need to do that anyway. That would suck. This already sucks.

Veeka does the same long chant and taps her hand. And-

It's obvious that she can send thoughts to other people, now. For a fewish minutes, steadily ticking down. There's no mental indication of how, exactly, one does that, but it is an obvious fact about the state of the world that she can.

Oh, I think it worked!

Testing. Can you hear me?

I can hear you. Now we can actually make some progress.

I am from Anavel Sani in Har. A snake with an illusion of a mirror over its face ran into me and teleported me here against my will. I'm a trained inheritance mage and a free adult but not familiar with the idea of sharing power with other people or with this kind of translation - where I'm from, it's done the opposite way: people use magic to become able to understand, rather than able to speak. Not that I can do that myself anyway.

I see. So you're - not a wizard, it's an innate power like Gnoll strength? You might have less mana production, then. There are other translation spells, this is just the one the police know as a matter of routine, in case we have to give instructions to foreigners. I've never heard of Har, but the world was broken not too long ago. There are lots of places I wouldn't have heard of. Inheritance magic is your useful skill? I'm not really getting a clear picture of it yet.

I can alter - and to a somewhat lesser extent directly perceive - the material that is passed down from parent to child that causes adopted children to resemble their biological parents more than their adoptive parents. So not things like being taught your parents' language or something, but having their fur color, being tall or short - I can't directly alter an adult's height but I can alter the height a baby will grow into; I can't alter the color of someone's grown-in hair but I can make it start coming in a different color. I've never practiced on a gnoll before, though, only on humans and caralendri and beluli and I trained for agerah and ereli but I haven't had a client who was one of those yet. And some plant species, I sometimes help some hybrid seeds breed true, but I have no idea if you have the same crops here. I expect I'd be most able to make money off of treating humans with genetic diseases if you have a way to verify that that's what I'm doing.

Wow. I guess that depends on how many people have a genetic disease and can actually afford to pay you. Giving rich people better babies- You could be a millionaire in a month like that, if you actually had a reputation for it.

Yeah. Any idea how I can prove I'm legit?

How about this. If you let me cast a spell that monitors your mindstate for signs of deception - it's illegal without permission or suspicion of a crime, normally - and then say that you really have this skill, I'll go take on a huge risk to myself and get a payday loan and give it to you, get you on your feet, in exchange for you paying me back a small part of your earnings for a while until you hit some fairly large multiple of the loan amount. I'll help you figure out monetization too, where I can, since that gets me more money faster. If you can't do it, I'm screwed over just as hard as you with a debt I can't easily pay back, but if you can, that much money will hardly matter to you at that point. Sure, I benefit a lot too, but you need money to make money, yes?

These people have been shockingly good to her so far, so she's more inclined to get herself into debt than she would otherwise be.

I might need to take out the other thing to let you do that - do you maybe have a knife so I don't have to rip it out, by the way, I didn't try to ask before because why would you have given me one, but now you know why I want it - my other thing should block divinations like that. I was kind of worried it might block this spell, actually. Um, but assuming it works, I'm - probably okay with that idea but I want to pin down exactly how much I'd owe you and exactly how long I'd be paying it back over and how much help with housing and getting food is included in that price. And how much your best guess is that I'd have left over of my earnings while paying the installments, I don't want to end up having to borrow more for some small thing and then end up taking out loans to pay the loans I took out to pay the loans I took out to pay the loans and so on. 

Yeah, I'm thinking. This one worked, but I wouldn't know if the other one would. You can borrow my knife if you need to.

I can get maybe ten 100s Kromer from a payday loan place, probably at a long payoff rate damn the interest. Maybe a bit less? My salary is not amazing but it's considered a pretty stable job. That's... A rowhouse bunk will run you 10 Kromer a week but they're incredibly bad, you'll need to be presentable, you'll need lots of miscellany. A moderate budget would be maybe 100 Kromer a week between a decent place to live, food, and keeping yourself presentable, plus 200 to get settled in one time. You could probably get that down to 50 if you really needed to. If we make some kind of deal I'll be happy to spend a couple hours each day situating you or helping with this and that - when I don't have shifts of course. Free of charge because this is a big investment for me that's going to be a big part of my life, and I don't want you getting into trouble that means you can't pay me back. 

I'll want 50 Kromer a week after the first two weeks if we can swing it, to start paying back the payday loan. Gonna be lean living for me for a while. Long term, I want something like one-of-ten of what you earn with your magic until you hit whatever end cap we agree on. Until the total amount paid to me over time reaches whatever limit, I mean. If I'm essentially acting as a manager or something by that point - I don't know if that will make sense to do in a month- Here and now is not a great place for a long contract discussion, honestly, the local manager is glaring at me pretty hard now. I'm going to have to bribe him to forget this trouble, ugh.

Tentatively agreeable pending further specifics. What do we do to get the local manager to stop glaring?

We go up all politely smiling and I apologize for the trouble and give him 10 Kromer as an apology about how I brought in a girl who is bureaucratically inconvenient and cut herself in his bathroom, that's all. If we don't they'll find some rule to keep that temporary visa from you when we come back after the loan place.

Oh, is that the kind of place this is. I can try to smile politely.

Yeah, you'll find that a Kromer or ten makes everything much faster. Can't make too much of a habit of it, of course. So that's our tentative agreement until we get it down officially, which we can probably do tomorrow. You all cleaned up in there?

Sort of but more blood keeps coming out.

If that field dressing's not cutting it I need to do a couple firstaid spells on you and redo it and probably get you to a doctor, too. More startup expenses, but there's nothing for it. May I come in for those firstaid spells?

Depends on our exact tolerances here, you can come see if you think that's worth it. Bearing in mind that my clothes won't stain unless they rip and they probably won't rip either. I wouldn't be worried about it at home but I don't know if it'd be a catastrophe here if I got a little blood on something.

She peeks in, nods, and pulls her head back out.

Yeah okay, that doesn't look urgently life-threatening, you're right. We'll want to keep it clean and hit it with antiseptic every few hours though. At this point I don't need to verify that you can do what you say, the mask and robe would sell well enough for you to pay back my payday loan in the unlikely event you're actually just insane or something, so we can just head out and get you settled.