Alexandria nods, slowly. She's remembering the time she lost her eye, the time a teammate used a civilian as bait to keep a notorious villain in place for their ambush. She was so angry, then. She'd be angry if it happened now, too; ambushes don't work on the Siberian, so it would be a pure worthless waste of human life. But back then she was angry because using innocents as bait is wrong.

It's been a long time since she had the luxury of thinking so simply. Was it Good, by your lights, what we did back then? What we're doing now? Would Samora's goddess call their methods Evil, when they're prioritizing ruthlessly to slay the most evil thing there is? If so, well, someday Samora will learn. Or, no, probably she won't; if you serve a Good goddess, Samora said, you can't surrender your ideals without surrendering your powers too. You have to follow them, no matter where they take you.

And Samora didn't quite answer her question about Holy Smite, did she? Goodness is all those good things; Samora clearly believed that with every fiber of her soul. But it's also a way to hurt people, if you have the kinds of powers Samora does.

These aren't reasons not to work together. Lots of things can hurt people, and Good clerics with the simplest powers Samora described would be a huge boon, even if they couldn't lead. Capes die for all sorts of stupid unlikely reasons, despite Cauldron's work. It would be worth a lot, to add a few more percentage points to that survival rate. It's just a matter of retaining control.

"The greatest risk inherent in your plan, as I see it, is the potential involvement of the Evil and Chaotic gods. It could fail in several ways, but that's not a reason not to try. But if it could make things much worse than they are now, on net, then we have to think more carefully.

What sort of intervention would you expect? Would they create anti-clerics, who kill at a distance instead of healing? Would they send their own champions to Earth Bet, as I've begun to suspect your goddess sent you?"

She'll switch to Norwegian for that question, just as a test.

Samora gives no sign of noticing the language change and continues speaking in what sounds like English. "If the Evil gods intervene, I would expect it to be by choosing Evil clerics who channel negative energy, yes. I do not know whether my goddess sent me, but if she did, yes, it is possible other gods will do the same. The battles of the gods extend across many planets, and I do not know how expensive it was to send me--only that if it was the Inheritor's work, She must have believed it was the most effective use of those resources to accomplish Good. And gods are generally correct about such things, even with--oh. Prophecy isn't broken on this planet, is it?"

"Powers can sometimes show us the future, but never well," Alexandria says, very persuasively.

"I'll need to think about the implications of that later. I think you have another question about Good?"

Dangerous.  That particular question is fine, but maybe someone else should do the follow-up interviews, just to be on the safe side.

She'll switch to Spanish, just because she doesn't get to use it as much as she'd like. "I'm still wondering about your Holy Smite. Hurting people can be necessary to do Good, if I've understood your framework correctly, but is never Good as an end in itself. What does it mean, then, for an attack to do Good damage? What effect does it have on a human body?"

"Oh, I see. Yes, hurting people is never an end in itself, even if we sometimes have to hurt or kill to stop worse things from happening. Good damage is a type of damage that doesn't harm Good people, harms Neutral people some, and harms Evil people and especially beings from the Evil planes more.  It's very handy when you've got a bunch of allies and a bunch of enemies all in melee, at least if your allies are all either Good, or both Neutral and don't mind taking some weaker hits. And it gets through the resistance that Lower Planes beings have to being damaged. The other aligned damage types work symmetrically. I don't know if the gods made it be that way or if it's just inherently that way, but I don't know that about fire or acid either. The effect on the body is similar to fire or radiant* damage."

*Translator's note: not the same as damage from radioactivity exposure. More like damage from a very bright UV light.

"Type of damage" isn't a fundamental concept in Alexandria's ontology, the way it apparently(??) is in Samora's. She resists the urge to follow up with more detailed questions like "what does it do on a cellular level?" and "can it set fire to flammable evil targets?"; that's what power testing chambers are for.

"So Good and Evil aren't just properties of gods and goddesses, or ways of acting; normal people have it too, in a sense which your powers can act on. I wasn't present when your attack struck Behemoth, but field reports say it did affect him a little. We infer from this that Behemoth is Evil -- or at any rate, not Good? Does being Good or Evil have other effects that we could straightforwardly check for? Or for Law and Chaos?"

What would have happened if it struck Alexandria? Nothing, obviously, even Behemoth's famous kill aura can't touch her.

You've made it back up onto the roof by now. The sun is much higher in the sky, and on a different side of the building -- it must be a little after noon. Toward the east, everything's intact: giant, blocky buildings laid out in a grid, with shining towers in the distance. To the west it's the same, but cut with a wide, wavering swath of jagged rubble. One distant tower seems to have had a big chunk ripped out of it, and is noticeably leaning.

This was a big city, and still is; to the north there's the lake and field where you landed, but in every other direction it stretches as far as your eyes can see.

Samora takes a moment to scan the skyline, looking at the strange technology and the scale of the damage. 

"I have constant Detect Evil, and there are spells I could prepare to detect the other three. They only work on sufficiently powerful beings; most ordinary people don't show up as anything no matter what they've done. My range is too short to say for sure, but I would be very surprised if Behemoth wasn't Evil, if he's enough of a person to be responsible for his actions."

She doesn't say anything about Alexandria's alignment. One doesn't, generally. Alexandria isn't Evil, but if you go around reassuring people who haven't specifically asked about it, it gets to be conspicuous when you don't. 

Her turn for a question. "Downstairs, I was asking about capes, and when I asked how people come to be capes, they said people just woke up one morning with powers. They were lying."

Huh, so Alexandria isn't Evil; if she were, it would show on Samora's face.  A good sign, in terms of longer-term collaboration.  And Behemoth is a person, at least according to this strange world's rules.  The Endbringers can plan somewhat, and bluff, but so can a dog.  Their real intelligence level isn't well-understood.  But the gods of this other world already have an opinion.  That would be pretty surprising, if the two had never encountered each other before today.  Or maybe they just made up their minds quickly. And I don't show Evil because I haven't done anything Evil since Samora arrived.

She accepts the change of topic with a nod. "They weren't quite lying, but they were holding something back. When a person gets powers, they always lose consciousness for a few moments, and so does every other powered person around them. We don't know why. We do know that it only happens at moments of extreme psychological strain; typically, the worst moment of that person's life." At least, up until then. "It's easier for people whose parents also had powers, but not really easy for anyone. Never ask a cape about the day they got their powers, not unless they bring the subject up themselves. Even among heroes, it can be a sensitive subject."

And then, as though the idea had just struck her, "Are animals ever Good or Evil, that you've seen? How smart do you have to be, before the gods begin to judge you?"

That's useful information; she will avoid prying.

"Hmm, you might say that question gets a bit circular, because one of the ways you can tell how much of a mind something has is if it has an alignment. Generally speaking most creatures that can use language can have alignments and vice versa, but there's edge cases both ways. Kids under twelve or so almost never have alignments, but I don't know if that's because they can't make the kinds of decisions you have to be able to make, or because most kids just don't do much. And then griffons and pegasi can't talk but can understand human speech, and pegasi have alignments and griffons don't." Shrug. 

"Pegasi are winged horses, and griffins are part lion, part eagle?"

Assuming Samora agrees: "As far as anyone knows, those creatures never existed in our world. They're what we call mythological: things we make up stories about, even though we know they aren't real." Like friendly gods. "Striking, that our worlds should overlap this way."

Alexandria's armband beeps twice, in a rather demanding way.

She barely glances at it. "It seems I'm needed elsewhere. We'll send you a phone - a way to communicate" she corrects. "Your new friends inside can show you how to use it. We'll have food for you, and a place to sleep, and if you have any other needs, please ask. Samora, I'm very glad to have met you, and I think in time the rest of the world will be too."

There are worlds where that isn't true but none, she thinks, where it's the wrong thing to say. She'll give Samora a very short beat to interrupt, and then she's up and gone.

A phone, or at any rate a rounded gray rectangle, does quickly appear, brought by a knee-high woman who runs incredibly fast.  If Samora so much as hints that she doesn't know how to use it she'll be instantly drowned in eager helpers.

The eager helpers will be much appreciated, because Samora cannot read any Earth languages! There's a spell she can prep tomorrow to get the ability to read for a couple hours per casting, but tonight she does not know what any of the symbols in the little glass box mean. She will occupy the approximate social role "charmingly confused exchange student" for as long as people want to tell her things.

That...is not a problem anyone was expecting her to have!  But plenty of the folks she's healed have time to kill before they catch their rides or teleports home, and they're willing to sit with her until, through pure repetition, she can receive calls and use the built-in map function.  If this can't be made to work, she can also have her choice of native guides.

(PRT-issue phones have about 40 hours of charge, so no one has to explain what electricity is or how to get it into the phone battery.  Just as well, since right now most parts of Denver are running on generators or not at all).

Samora dutifully memorizes the button for picking up calls and how to scroll around the map, and also where on the map the PRT building is. She is So Impressed by the size and detail of this map and the accuracy implied by people's apparent level of trust in it. 

And then if nobody needs her to do anything in particular, she'd like to spend a while walking around the city and getting a sense of it. She can aim to be at a particular place at a particular time if there's a time and a place it would help for her to be.

If people need her to be somewhere they can call her and say so, and if that somehow doesn't work the PRT can find the phone.  Probably that will happen around dinnertime, in 3 or 4 hours?

Then she will wander Denver until that happens!

Samora's conclusions from wandering Denver:

- This society is very rich. There are richer and poorer neighborhoods like she's used to and even the poor ones seem pretty rich. Even if there are a bunch of regular poor people out in the hinterlands, they're still quite rich on net.

- There's very little magic around, given how rich they are. Maybe capes are worse at crafting than wizards on average, or maybe they've all specced into fighting Endbringers (and each other) and don't have enough collective slack for crafting, or maybe they've gotten so good at doing things without magic that they just don't need crafters for anything.

- Almost nobody has pox scars and some people have scars from injuries that healed the long way, which squares with what she's heard about their healing situation.

- Cars will only go on the wide black part of the street and not the narrow gray part on either side, which is good, because it would cause a lot of trouble if she got hit by one. Also they obey the red and green and white and orange lights, except the ones that themselves have lights and make extra noise and clearly have priority over all the other ones. And they all smell terrible.

- When everyone can read you end up with so much text on everything.

- Crime: they have a basically normal amount of it. 

- Nobody has any kids??

There will be some more crime eventually, but not during the day and not in front of the obvious cape.

After a while, an unusually large car with a big window in the side stops by Samora, and a man leans out to offer her something he calls a "green chili burrito".  If you served in the Endbringer defense there's no charge!

And then, as the sun is just starting to set, Samora's phone starts to vibrate and sing.  The caller is a PRT officer; she explains that the teleports home are being arranged now, and would Samora please return to field hospital B?  If she likes, a guide can be sent to escort her.

She politely declines the burrito; it's a nice offer but what with all the Behemoth there might not be enough to go around.

She made sure not to go too far in any one direction; she can be back at Field Hospital B in about half an hour.

That's plenty.  Another large car is waiting for her; the boxy back end of it turns out to just have two long benches, about half-full of PRT officers (Samora can tell by the distinctive outfits and lack of masks).  The general vibe is "too tired for small talk, or to even look at each other much", but they just barely manage to nod to Samora when she arrives.  The car is even louder from the inside but the trip is short...

...and when you emerge you're greeted by a tall man in heavy blue power armor.

"Samora?" he asks, as though another woman in breastplate and shield might emerge from the car at any moment and he doesn't want to make a mistake.  "I'm Armsmaster, head of the Protectorate team in the city of Brockton Bay.  We had a discussion among the Protectorate leadership" - more like a five-sided knife fight, but despite his reputation Armsmaster can be diplomatic, a little, sometimes - "and we'd like to offer you guest quarters there for as long as you choose to stay.  You're free to make other choices, now or later, but we think Brockton Bay is the best environment for you to learn about our world and pursue your stated goals."  He shrugs, a little irritably.  "Of course, this may all be moot if you have to leave tomorrow, but we'll see."

"I have no reason to prefer anywhere else, but I'm curious what features of Brockton Bay make it the best option."