"I don't think there's a single person in the universe whose opinion I don't care about, so almost anyone will do, really.  It doesn't have to be the people I'm losing face in front of today, it just has to outweigh the mass of the couple of dozen Barons here.  One Count would do it, or five million mundanes."

"You won't improvise any attempts to help me.  You'll wait until I ask."

"We also haven't talked about what you might want from me, perhaps."

Fair enough! Opalyn has certainly been on the wrong end of enough attempts to "help" that she can understand Tiraff not wanting Opalyn just to guess.

Opalyn does not particularly care for the bossy tone, but presumably Tiraff includes the two men at the table as "people to impress" so Opalyn will let it pass.

Opalyn wants information, of course, but has decided not to broadcast her isekai story broadly in this place as she doesn't think it will be believed. It's better to try to get library access, and to get that, she needs to power the lightlines.

"How do I get a chance to power the lightlines sooner rather than later?"

"Petition the Headstompers and expect 'no' for an answer.  Influence on that level is beyond my remit entire, to say nothing of what I'd do for you."

"They are a little more likely to say 'yes' if you emphasize that you have anger or grief to give, rather than that you want your status set early.  But even so, we ultimately exist for their convenience and at their whim, and they value our knowing that beyond almost anything else we can do for them."

"Does it by any chance help if I start having a tantrum or weeping and tearing my hair or otherwise visibly freaking out?"

"And whose attention am I actually trying to get? Like, will they even notice if I start to freak out?"

She smiles, briefly, at that.  "If you knew the name of a Headstomper who could be so easily moved by a brat wasting her feelings so, you could trade that information for a great deal indeed.  They'd tell you that you were the author of your own loss."

"The obvious person to talk to would be the Deputy Secretary to Headstomper Wumi's Secretary's Assistant Secretary, if you were trying anyways."

Opalyn can't quite manage to stifle her amusement at this title.

"So... you're telling me that people actually do manage to save up their emotions and then then have them all at once at the right time?"

This is news! Opalyn previously had the notion that everyone here was a completely dysregulated mess!

"Hardly anything so dangerously self-controlled.  We manage to save up the triggers."

"Well.  Some of us do.  Others do more poorly, and end up as prey to their superiors in the art."

"Okay, so let me get this straight. People who play the game well arrange to get triggered by other people right before they go charge the lightlines? Because... those people owe you a favor? Or why do they do it at the time that's most convenient for you?"

"You can ask for your lovers, or your enemies, to be brought with you to lightline-charging; or go out of turn to theirs, if you've recovered enough by then.  Though they'll hardly let you bring along someone more productive than you, to start a fight with--the emotion of the stronger sorcerer is the one they'll prioritize harvesting."

"To be concrete, say, if Duchess Carnidine felt like bringing me with on her next charging-trip, so she could let out some of her feelings and slap me and berate me, they'd bring me with to her.  I could hardly ask the same in reverse, for it's not worth wasting any of her feelings to strengthen the feelings of a Baron-level like me.  But if Carnidine made a habit of it, and gave me no recompense, she'd be making an enemy, for whatever the enmity of a Baroness could matter to her.  And if she made enough of a habit of asking for me to be brought along, they'd synchronize our charging-trips, and hook me up to the same lightline."

"If Duchess Carnidine wants to bring you, does she ask you, or does she inform the Headstompers and they bring you along, like it or not?"

"What planet do you even come from where it'd ever be the first one?"

Okay, fair. Opalyn did actual think these people had some notion of collaboration, and thought that the power games involved in negotiating who was going to a charging session would be a source of drama, but apparently not.

"Can I ask for anyone to be brought to my very first charging session? I don't actually have feelings about anybody here yet so I probably wouldn't ask, but just curious."

"Certainly, if the Facility already knows you to outrank them as a sorceress, and you don't mind making enemies of your lessers and whatever unknown friends they might have."

"And this is probably completely obvious and basic, but I like to say things out loud to make sure I understand them. If I direct that a specific person be brought with me, that's considered... unkind... to that person. Because... it uses up some of their emotional energy and tires them out, and then they can't charge as much the next time?"

Opalyn wonders about that. She believes that for some emotional wounds, rehearsing them only makes them more powerful. It's not the case that every time you rehash a fight in your head, you feel better about it. But she decides not to wonder about that out loud.

"Depends on what you do with them, really.  Climactic breakup that they've been building up to for months?  If they're not entirely below you, I think the Facility would look unkindly on the two of you not being hooked up simultaneously."

"Grinding them into the dirt the same way you have five times before, if you have some hold over them where they've no way to fight you back?  Why, that you could do every time you went to a lightline, over and over, and the Facility will smile on you for it."

Tiraff's misunderstanding is telling but Opalyn will try again!

"I don't actually mean to ask what the Farm thinks about it, I meant to ask what the other sorcerer will think about it! They take it as a hardship?"

"I'm truly confused about the concept of a planet where you can do someone an injury, in the form of setting them up to gain fewer credits of their own, purposefully to your own benefit, and have that not held against you."

"Like I said, I like to say even very basic things out loud, especially when I'm in a new situation, so I can be sure I've understood what's going on! I catch a lot of mistakes that way!"

Opalyn is really not sure yet that the lower-status person is necessarily going to end up with fewer credits out of the deal, even if they get dragged to a higher-status person's charging session. Seems like it would all be grist for the lower-status person's mill, but maybe there's some other factors she hasn't properly understood yet.

Her current theory is that people here are so entrenched in their beliefs about power and hierarchy that they're not actually measuring the results of various combinations of actions, they're just making assumptions and to some extent their prophecies are self-fulfilling. But only experimentation will settle this question.

"This policy will cause everyone to think you're an idiot, in case you hadn't realized that."

(There is something really off about this weird person...)

"I'm curious, at this point, what turn of events brought you to our Prince Purplesupper Memorial Facility for the Harvest of High-Drama Slutty Supercriminals."

"I feel cheerful about being underestimated, for the most part!"

"I seem to be here because I set too many of the wrong people on fire."

Opalyn has a policy of telling the truth, but the words 'I seem' are doing a lot of work in that sentence.

"How would you kill anyone who mattered using fire?"

"Well, in the end, it didn't work out for me, did it?" Opalyn is not having trouble being cheerfully dopey about what happened there, as she actually has no idea!

"I think, if I were in your shoes, I'd be asking me about who here might be inclined to guide me around the place and what I might offer them."

"Thank you, that is a very helpful suggestion! Yes, please tell me who here might help me, what I might explicitly offer them, and what else they might be getting out of helping me!"

"Well, only now I need a moment to actually think about it, you see.  This might take three quarters of a minute, or even, dare I say, longer."  Tiraff begins drumming her fingers on the table, leaning back some into her chair.