... what a completely unhelpful thing to say. She has the feeling that she's getting maybe 1-2% of the information content of these bursts.

She looks at the most recent burst, tries factoring it out into pieces.

"Schedule/damaged/expected/clean," the mysterious being says.

She doesn't know how to reply, but one part of that seems most like something she'd want to say. She crosses her fingers and transmits the corresponding portion of the burst.

She pulls the burst apart into principle components again.

"Consequence/common/transaction/healing," the being says.

She interrupts Yew to catch her up on the conversation.

"I think we should respond with transaction/healing -- does that sound okay?" she asks.

"I don't really like the idea of engaging in a transaction without knowing the cost. But its fixity field is really messed up -- how about common/healing? And then an explanation of how to feed power into our field as a wide burst across the other media I've been using?"

"Sounds good. Let's see..."

And Yew dumps the code that forbs use to control energy transfer, as neutrinos, light, and sound. Followed by a tiny demonstration, bleeding a little bit of their power into its field.

"Kitten/lifetime/destruction/embrace," the being says.

And then their forb is dumping power from storage into the repair routines as fast as it can, the crystal itself starting to fluoresce from the excess power.

The being pulls them towards it with terrifying speed, guiding their crystal between slabs of dense flesh to nestle softly against an orb very like their own.

She runs their newly repaired fixity field over the being's core, seeing how it is formed.

It's getting a lot of power through a pinhole wormhole. Enough to sustain a large fixity field despite completely inadequate hardware.

She twists, folds, balances, and smooths the fixity field projector into a more efficient configuration. It's not proper fold crystal (that, she's not willing to give away), but it should have about 90% of the range for about 1% of the energy cost and higher peak force output.

When she's done, she gently pushes the being away. It lets her go, vanishing into the ocean almost instantly.

"Well. That was. A thing," she states, leaning back on her cushions. She pulls up the forb's power readings. "It looks like we've got almost enough to make another forb. You reckon it's time to divide and conquer?"

"Sure. Do you want to take India or pretending to be a superhero?" she asks.

"You've done more research. I can handle India," she replies.

Contessa stumbles as her path changes.

"Door to Doctor Mother," she says. "We've got a problem"

She jets through the water, making for Texas.

This Earth has been subject to some horrible tragedies, which doesn't excuse trying to murder a peaceful visitor, but it sure does explain it. On the other hand, there are procedures in place to handle someone showing up with no context on the modern world and get them up to speed and equipped with access to the government and a legal identity. She just has to look somewhat humanoid.

The real question is what she wants her powers to be.

She wants powers that are plausible, possible for her forb to emulate, and that will be useful for establishing her as someone to take seriously.

Ideally, they should also provide a cover explanation for why she wouldn't be letting anything scan her yet-to-be-constructed body.

She ultimately decides to give herself a 'Brute' power in the form of enhanced durability that can also plausibly prevent her from being scanned. She settles on using the timewise-rotation trick to make her hard for other things to injure or move, with her forb backing that up. That would be a fine power on its own, but it doesn't really give her any reason to know things she shouldn't.

She muses a bit more before deciding on a 'Thinker/Striker' power that gives her information on things she touches.

That just leaves the matter of fabricating an appearance that will help sell her story. As she reaches shallower water, she crafts a humanoid body from the sea, tucking her forb into the forming lungs where it won't be seen.

She waffles for a moment on coloration, before setting on a pale purple complexion with wavering white stripes. She gives her new body extendable frills in place of hair, and a slightly more digitigrade gait, but leaves the face and eyes perfectly humanlike.

When she hits the coast near Corpus Christi, she makes sure her optical cloaking is still in place before slipping from the waves, adding a Greek omega to her heel and breaking into a run parallel to I-37 that will see her on the outskirts of San Antonio by morning.