Next plot beat says, "Hi there! Welcome to Milliways!"

"Thank you oh are you a vampire? Sparkle-in-the-sun vampire?"

"My reputation precedes me!"

"This is excellent yes! I'm Peter, it's great to meet you."

"Is it! I'm Addy, pleasure to make your acquaintance, what has you so delighted?"

"Your kind of vampire has really cool and enviable powers and just before I came here—well, a while before I came here—I had been talking to some friends about how cool it would be to have a pure upside no downside version of your powers. But I needed to actually meet a vampire like you for that to work and I wasn't really expecting the powers that be to really give me that this early."

"Interesting! How does it work, that you need to meet me?"

"Well, you see, at any time I can discover previously unknown heritage from any type of being I encounter," he says, having memorized the words. "And I get the upsides without the downsides. The thing where half-vampires have enforced sleep schedules? Terrible. So instead I'll just..." And his skin changes, acquiring some of the sheen of half-vampires, the not-quite-glitter. He's already beautiful, so there's not much change there, but the better senses and body awareness and strength and stuff make him change his posture and the way he holds himself. His Quirky And Cute™ body language is still there, though. "Not."

"That's so fascinating!" says Addy, collecting his hand as though for closer inspection.

His main power is delicious. The immediate comparison that might come to mind is blood after becoming a vampire, but this tastes nicer. Unique, in the way humans smell unique; Peter's smell isn't Addy's singer but his taste—or the taste of his power—might be. And despite it being ~unique~ and ~special~ and ~unlike anything else~, if it were like something, it would be most like the smell of a brand-new notebook and the taste of a snowflake melting on your tongue and the feeling of the cool breeze right before a summer rainstorm after a long hot day. But most of all he tastes like potential, a mostly-untapped infinite well of it, a power that could grow into anything and everything. There is nothing he couldn't be, if he wanted to be it and went after it. There's nothing he couldn't do. Maybe not right now, but someday.

Aaaaand it's nearly all of that just beyond Addy's reach. She can taste it, feel it, see it, but she can't, actually, grab it. It's there only to inform her that it's not hers.

There's one bit of it that isn't out of reach, though, a smaller, tamer power that Addy can get to. This one is more recognizable, and Addy might infer (correctly) that he got this power as soon as he became a half-vampire (which, to be clear, isn't itself a power, he just happens to be a half-vampire now). That one tastes like... sprinkles. Sprinkles on top of the explosion of flavor that is the rest of his suite. Sprinkles and lightness and a dream.

How delicious and absolutely frustrating! What is the sprinkles power.

...flight? Seems like it might be flight.

That's a pretty good consolation prize. Suppose she lifts off?

It is incredibly intuitive. As soon as she forms the intention to be aloft, she is.

"—oh! Right! People from your" setting "world have extra magic! Flight is such cool witchcraft."

"It's not mine, it's yours! I'm a mimic. Try it!"

"...a mimic!" So can he just—oh! He can just! "This is awesome," he says, taking off and doing two quick laps of the room before floating over to the bar and settling back down hovering just above a stool.

"Unfortunately that's the only thing I was able to mimic and you've got a lot more going on. I moonlight as a witchcraft tutor, I'd love to help you figure out anything you don't have the hang of, but it's all locked up."

"You know what, that makes sense. The other magic is all..." He waves a hand vaguely. "Meta. It's more about getting more magic than being, itself, magic. Kind of. Terms and conditions apply. I am however interested in witchcraft tutoring, if that's the kind of thing that could help with the power you could touch? How does that work, I thought magic from your world was mostly pretty discrete."

"Well, I don't know who you've been talking to, but an arm is pretty discrete too and some people can play piano and some cannot."

"...huh. What a good analogy. Maybe my sources weren't very good." It was admittedly a pretty bad and shallow set of books (he says about a series that he liked enough to have read in its entirety three or four times). "—oh hey before we get into that are you a fan of the Volturi, are they a thing, are they around?" It's occurring to him that maybe the plot here is "do what the Cullens should've done and overthrow the evil vampire government". He can't say he's opposed to the idea.

"They are not around. I never had a strong opinion on them."

"...so they had been around? Where, uh, are they now instead?"

"Dead."

"—oh! Good on, uh, whoever killed them, unless they're worse I guess. Are they worse?"

"Depends on what you're into. We get along all right."

"Sapient flourishing. I know it's corny but I figure if this weren't the right kind of thing to say I wouldn't be saying it, you know?"

"New management looooves sapient flourishing."

"Oh, good for them, then, the Volturi had it coming. In my humble opinion." He hums thoughtfully and then floats down the rest of the way to the stool. "But then I don't know why the powers that be decided to send me here, with you. ...well, I mean, I guess maybe it just was about the witchcraft tutoring? What's your going rate for that?"

"I do it out of the goodness of my heart and professional interest."

"Oh! Color me interested, then!"

"That's what I like to hear! Backyard? More room to swoop around."

"Lead the way," he says, hopping off the stool. Then he pauses and looks at the bar again: "We'll be right back! Or I will, at any rate."

I'll be right here.

Backyard. There's a muddy grassy area, with a forest off to the left and a big lake off to the right and some mountains in the distance up ahead. It's lightly drizzling from the overbearing clouds above.

Peter's seifuku doesn't seem to agree. Not that it doesn't get wet, per se, but it does so in a way that makes him look cute and sparkly rather than sopping. The mud also has the good sense to not get attached to his shoes.

Cute. If only she had this ability. Maybe if she eats him? Well, that's a last resort. She lifts off into the air.

He also lifts off into the air! "So how does this usually go?"

"We find out what limits your power has, and dig into why it has them, and see if we can't bust them."

"Sensible! So limits like... I guess in this case speed, acceleration, maybe maximum height if there is one?"

"It's a place to start. Catch me if you can!" Off she zooms.

Is he the kind of Mary Sue that will definitely catch her? Probably not, he didn't take the powers that would bend in that direction with loved ones or whatever and they definitely wouldn't bend in that direction with a random witch mimic that has a special interest in witchcraft.

Anyway Addy can accelerate more than Peter can, it seems.

She circles back. "Me being better at it in some way like that often just means that being a vampire helps, but I'm not sure what I ought to think given how you are now slightly vampiric, how does that work?"

"So the way that that magic power works is that at any point I may discover a previously unknown heritage from any type of being I encounter, even if it makes no sense or contradicts previously-established descriptions of my family tree and even if this would not normally be a type of being that was interfertile with whatever other heritage I have. I get the powers without the drawbacks unless the drawbacks are cool and dramatic and any given visible features will appear at narratively appropriate moments and be cute, pretty, beautiful, or striking rather than weird, ugly, disgusting, or uncomfortable." He's not quite reciting it from heart but he almost is. "So today I discovered a previously unknown heritage from your kind of vampire, in which I get the immortality and nice skin and senses and strength and speed but not the forced downtime of sleep. I don't remember exactly how food works for hybrids? I know they can eat food but if there was anything about it not tasting nice or whatever I'm probably not going to have that issue either."

"They like their meat raw and they're really into eggs but they can have salad without this being a huge deal. I guess this is the first time anyone who already existed has started being a half-vampire, so it stands to reason this could, like starting to be a vampire, give you witchcraft... where did you come by this curious ability?"

"You're from an Earth, right, are you aware of Mary Sue fiction?"

"It's not really my genre, but yes."

"I'm also from an Earth and I got visited by a magic notebook offering me magic powers themed around being a Mary Sue. This particular one is called Dragon Fairy Elf Witch."

"How does one get in on that?"

"So I think you definitely can't while I'm around because that wouldn't make me very much of a Mary Sue, would it, if there were another? Or, well, there was actually an option while I was picking these powers for being able to run into another Mary Sue but I didn't pick it. But it's not impossible for the Spirit—uh, the power that gave me the notebook and the powers—to decide to choose you later, so long as you are, ah, open to being powerful and beautiful and special in a feminine way."

"Are you even a girl?"

"Complicated! Mostly not exactly. Not right now, anyway." Right now he's Astolfo. "But you don't need to be, you just need to be, oh I bet I can bend the medium to make this come off right to you, that sounds like something I should be able to do... You just need to be ✨open to the feminine✨! Did that come through?"

"How did you make that sound with your mouth? I don't think I could do that and I'm very good at impressions!"

"It's the genre. Or something. So when I said my magic so far is pretty meta, this is kind of what I mean, it's more about shaping the medium and the narrative around me. I picked powers that still allowed for some actually interesting stories but if someone wanted to just go ham on the they're super special nothing they ever do is wrong or goes wrong they are perfect and beautiful forever angle the notebook had options for that, too."

"That sounds so fun, I want one!"

"It's a lot of fun, yeah! I... don't know how likely you are to get one even after I'm gone, though. Probably more likely than you'd been until just before you met me? It'd be a pretty interesting, or at least kind of funny story, me leaving and you getting your very own notebook. And that's probably the sort of thing that matters, here. Oh, here, I want to check whether my thoughts about how this would work are right: am I anime?"

"You are striking in that direction but you have, like, hair follicles."

"Hmm, no, like, look really hard, especially at the edges between me and the world. Pay attention to your eyes and try to ignore what your brain was saying. At least it worked for me when I tried but maybe it'll turn out it only works for me."

"Okay, you're... fucking with my depth perception certainly. I'd think that would be uncomfortable but I suppose that wouldn't be very Mary Sue unless it made people really sorry for you."

"Oh excellent okay I'm glad you can see it too. So what happened here is that when I was choosing my powers and designing my femmesona in my head there was this specific anime character I was thinking of, and I didn't, like, particularly want to be him exactly but I think my powers or the Spirit thought it would be funny if I was. So I am. But not in a way where it matters. Unless it does.

"Sorry, I hope this isn't too uncomfortable for you."

"I'm mostly just fascinated and jealous."

"I probably can't rely on this because it would be really broken if I could but..." He looks at the camera. Or, well, given the medium, he looks through the screen. "Hey, author or uh authors I think it'd be really fun if sometimes people who met me also got the opportunity to become beautiful and powerful and special in a feminine way. ...well, you know, assuming this would all follow my narrative preferences, but we know that part."

? ??

"...sorry I don't expect this to work instantaneously. Just, it might be the kind of thing that would, you know? And I want to at least give it a shot. It would feel mean to rub it in like this and not do anything about it, even if it was an accident."

"I do appreciate the thought."

"But anyway, back on the original topic, yeah, when I just turned out to always have been a vampire hybrid I got witchcraft of the sort your world throws out, sometimes. And I am, I think, just straightforwardly a half-vampire hybrid now, so whatever inferences you were drawing from the difference between us and how it affects the power should assume that much."

"Hm. I've met one other witch half-vamp but her power wasn't remotely as quantitative as flight. It's not obvious to me why you'd be slower than me, though - possibilities include that it's directly derived from landspeed somehow, so it's based off bodily strength and agility even though those aren't in play, or that we're flying at the speed of thought, or that I'm more aerodynamic, or that your special snowflake magic thinks it's fun if you get a longer training montage."

"It's... probably not that last one. I think the personalization options here make sure that if I'm not as good as you are there must be a reason for it, there's not going to be a training montage just so that a training montage can exist. Speed of thought seems maybe plausible? How would we test that?"

"I dunno, do you have a way to suddenly think faster? Failing that we could play video games and see if I win by a similar margin."

"Does the bar have video games? What am I asking, it's a magic interdimensional bar, of course it does. Yeah, alright, let's do it, training montage time!"