"Nope. I'm not stuck here. I'm on an adventure! To find my friend, who probably had a good reason to run away."

The tengu poofs away until one body remains, watching Lenora curiously.

"He's gonna tell the magistrate about you."

"Is the magistrate evil? Do you need help?"

"No! And no. You burnt magic to get here though?"

She nods.

"There's all sorts of kinds of people here. Not just animal-souls, whole different species. And each one only has, like, one or two kinds of magic. Also the planet doesn't spin and it's night forever, here. They're trying their best but I don't like it here that much."

"That sounds amazing! What kinds of magic? How did you make that rainbow on the wall? Can I hug you since I'm glad you're okay?"

"-That's cat fire. The cat people can make fire, that's their magic. We're shining it through a prism and trying to make it brighter. They don't need to spend points on it either."

He doesn't say anything about the hug.

"Cat fire! What kind of person is this - is he your new dad? Do you need healing? I studied medicine a lot to prepare for my quest. I have a book and some seeds and other tools too!"

"No. He's a guard, since there's only one Kaleid here right now! And someone tried to kill me. It hurt. A lot. But I got better and they executed him... Two Kaleids here, I guess. Oh, you're really good at green magic, right?"

"Executed! Oh no... I'm the very best. Everyone else thinks it's so hard, but you just have to... SEE it all at once. I did all my own detail work!"

She shows off and brags about her altered body to Nico, who is honestly kind of fascinated. Her eyes are different, her hands are sticky, her skin is unusually stretchy and tough (and Nico only barely hesitates to touch her), and she's double jointed.

Nico explains the situation to Jake Fuzzer and the Tengu and drags her into reporting catfire observations with those extremely optimized eyes!!! There is SCIENCE to be done!

Uh sure okay?? She will stare at little dark lines? (And set her backpack down in a corner if it's not going to be needed right away.)

They can learn so many cool things together! Maybe Nico will even forget about how he DOESN'T NEED RESCUING with enough Kaleid assistance with his ideas! He spends some time describing how he had to learn to fix eyes, and how it's stupid that attacking with chemicals isn't the same thing as disinuria-

That's a pretty scary story and a pretty scary law! Nico trying to horrify her with bad things that can happen makes her want to hug him more, not less, so his plan backfires!

Disinuria seems stupid, especially because it seems to exclude weapons. Why is it different from murder? Lots of things about her are unique traits!

Also! He clearly DOES need rescuing or at least guarding since he was BLINDED by someone trying to KIDNAP him!

Would Nico like her to check his eyes and see if he did it wrong? Or have superior eyes like hers? She has all her green for the day!

Right. Lenora is a Green prodigy. And that singer, Neffie, was thinking about some pretty scary and dangerous things. Maybe Lenora has any idea how to check if it's safe, unlike him? Also, she's a girl so maybe it will be less weird for her to think about.

(Pregnancy kind of freaks him out. He's aware that this is stupid. However, consider: Being the person responsible for a mouse is already very stressful. He absolutely could not stand being the person responsible for a whole BABY, even very indirectly.)

"...There's a species called humans here. The boy humans don't get any magic, and the girl humans can try to make new species, but this kills them sometimes. When the baby is too wrong, I think. Someone asked me if you could use green magic to check if it was going to kill them right away, before the baby is big. I didn't know but maybe you will."

"Maybe I will. I don't know everything though. And why are you so pale huh? Typical boy, doesn't like talking about babies."

Nico shakes his head in denial. 

"Babies babies babies!"

"I'm never having a baby. Never ever. No way."

"Plants have babies and you helped with that! It's just nature. Just green. Selection of the fittest."

"Plants aren't smart," Nico rejoinders. "Maybe smarter than you though!"

"Your taunts are all tapped out, Nico."

"I don't care. I'm just not. I can't- I can't even think about it without wanting to run away. My dad is evil. What if I inherit that??"

"Yeah, your dad is kind of evil. I don't think 'evil' is a single-gene trait, Nico. It's gotta be epigenetic if anything! Or whatever it's called when you can just, uh, decide to not be evil."

"It's not that easy. I'm scared all the time. And the magistrate really wants me to like her so I let the humans make more Kaleid but I can't, and she knows that so she's just waiting until I grow up because Dad said I'd better not have a baby when I'm a teenager so probably teenagers want babies but I don't want to want that so she's being super super nice and assigning me a guard and things and being patient but I know she wants Kaleids but I can't just run away, I'd freeze to death and starve, and anyway I can't tell if she's secretly evil!"

"Nico, slow down! Take deep breaths please! That was way too fast. And like, confusing."

Does he not know about sex? No, she remembers he does, from some of the conversations before he vanished. It's hard not to learn it when you're near farms and get taught about biology.

...Does he not know about puberty? It'd be just like that mean lumberjack to not explain it at all, really...

"...So, the magistrate is being nice. Because she wants Kaleids to work for her? Kaleids like you? So maybe she wants you to work for her even if there's never going to be any babies."

(Nico.exe is rebooting.)