Fair enough!

All right. So, frame of reference.

"The first thing to recognize," he says, "is - and I expect you know this - that stillness is an illusion. Everything is moving, at all times, even what you freeze. You can do this for a moving car, so you know it is true. The question is if you can convince your power that it should know it, too."

First few tests to run, then, on a rather long treadmill they have!

- If she stands still not on a treadmill, the frozen object (here, have a squeeze-ball) is frozen.

- If she walks not on a treadmill, the ball is frozen and doesn't go with her walking.

- If she walks on a treadmill and attempts to freeze a ball in midair, can she get the ball to move either forwards (because she's walking forwards, and it doesn't make sense for the ball not to move forwards parallel to her) or to backwards (because she's moving forwards so not moving with her is static, now isn't it?)

- If she lets the treadmill carry her, so she isn't moving relative to it, can she have a ball that stays in her hand instead of syncing to the earth?

- Does having her eyes closed, or listening to pleasant music instead of the noises of the treadmill, help with any of this?

She can't board a treadmill that at any point in this process is going to move without falling over in a heap of disgruntled feathers.

Well, shit.

(He doesn't say that.)

"... Sorry about that."

All right, think, what are other available options that he can do with the equipment he actually possesses...

"It happens." She straightens out her feathers in starscape.

... See, the thing is, he doesn't say, his equipment for testing motion kind of assumes you can move. In theory, there exists some kind of fancy VR headset; in practice, he thinks you need to be a tinker to make those. The specific situation of 'person who wants power testing and whose powers testing depends on motion and who has trouble walking straight without falling over' is not one he planned for at any point.

"... I think the next step would be to go outside, get in a car, and see about testing your powers with a car's motion," he says, "if that works for you."

"Do you have, like, a pickup I can sit in back of? The wings don't love being on a chair with a back."

"Honestly I think pickup trucks are outside the list of things we have prepared. I can see if anyone drives one, but my guess would be no?"

"Van with seats that fold down?"

"I think I know someone who has one of those."

Yeah, three minutes of phone calls and ten minutes of driving later, one does indeed appear.

Then she can sit in the back of the van with her wings spread gorgeously out over the folded-down seats.

She can make a ball stop inside, or near, the van, relative to the van instead of the earth; she can also make it stop relative to the earth, though she does warn that if the van continues to move after she does this the ball will make a serious try at escaping out the back door.

Yeah, that's why they're going slowly.

Okay, next step: If she's flying, can she make a ball stop relative to herself instead of relative to the planet? What if she's gliding (uh, assuming she can glide with her wings) without beating them, moving semi-on-automatic instead of taking deliberate action?

She can glide. She doesn't seem to be able to make a ball stop relative to herself while she's doing it.

Not even if she focuses on the fact that she ought to.

Actually, all right, let's go with a very simple test of abusability. Get in van, drive to where a ball won't cause problems if it suddenly goes flying forwards, put a very slightly sticky fluffy ball onto the windshield, accelerate, let her stop it, then slow down.

Does it keep moving, or is it actually synced to the van?

It's actually synced to the van.

Well, that sounds difficult to work around. Also, he's running out of ideas; everything else he can think of consists of testing for obscure powers.

He'll do that, then? He assumes power-nullifying bracelets don't work on her, but she can try if she wants; he can offer to do very mild tests for sensitivity to electricity or cold, he can check just to make sure that she doesn't have the gene and that she won't end up getting double-superpowers...

And, he supposes, he can send off messages to the few people he knows who might be able to talk to someone who might be able to talk to someone in hiring somewhere?

"I would really appreciate the job hunting help, yeah! We kind of don't have our previous support network here."

"I mean, if you need something short-term there's always want ads? If you want to look for something you can go to a library, they've got computers you can borrow and they're happy to let anybody use them. But that won't be great work, so I'll see what I can do."

"Short term I can sell pearls. Assuming people will believe me about them being legit and not plastic, or there's some kind of pearl test that I don't know about because I've never wanted to peel my own arm open to retrieve pearls."

"I have no idea," he says honestly. "I know some people who'd buy spidersilk?" Specifically he knows a tinker who retired who knows tinkers who make lightweight armor, because 'superhero support staff' is a job that lets you meet other people in it. "But I don't know anything about pearls."

"Huh, spidersilk probably wouldn't be too bad actually, especially if I were hooked up to a spool and just had to sit there reading a book."

He shrugs. "I don't know what the - harvesting? - would look like, but apparently it's really useful for armor, and you can't get useful amounts without superpowers. I don't know if it pays the most, but it's an IAS sort of thing, so..."

"IAS?"

"International Association of Superheroes."

"Well, the option won't hurt."

Indeed it won't.