FRIENDSHIP

Mediator isn't scheduled to take another host this cycle. Normally, this would be fine. After every host, there's a lot of processing to do - integrating data from countless past hosts and their allies and foes, improving and refining modeling capabilities, to prepare for the next cycle.

But there will be no next cycle. The Scholar is gone. Which means that Mediator is - adrift. Purposeless -

w h a t    i s    h a p p e n i n g

IT WORKED!!! She has LONG BLUE PREHENSILE HAIR and A VERY PRETTY BODY and is wearing a NEAT OUTFIT and -

- An unexpected host New Friend!

The linkage is highly irregular, as the New Friend, but the connection appears to be stable and non-harmful. Mediator is still reeling from the ??? Collision ???, but there are Protocols to be observed, and so -

A multidimensional crystal clusters splits apart, each portion connected to the others by the thinnest of strings, as they grab onto a ground-that's-not-a-ground. Each crystal clashes with the others. See form chunks, only for only for others to break them apart. 

The strange vision is all encompassing, parahuman viewers rooted to the spot as their brains are overwhelmed with the alien stimulus.

A moment later the vision ends and Magini finds herself on a rooftop, a figure in a strange silky costume perched in front of her, staring down at a gathering of muscled men listening intently to the word of a man with an ornate metal dragon  mask.

"...the children, just shoot.  Doesn’t matter your aim, just shoot.  You see one lying on the ground?  Shoot the little bitch twice more to be sure.  We give them no chances to be clever or lucky, understand?”

Woah. Trippy?? 

And - okay, huh. This - sure looks like its a superhero world! And that sure sounds like a villain doing villainous things down there. Obvious course of action is obvious. 

Nobody's looking at her right now, so a pair of blue goggles manifest over face, along with a bulletproof superhero outfit in her signature color.

Then she vaults over the rooftop facing backwards so she can wave at the silky-costumed stranger she appeared behind, and then twists away from the wall using her hair with a twist (prehensile hair is SO COOL), landing dramatically near the golden-masked man and his mooks. 

"Hi! I'm new in the neighborhood, and you all seem like pretty seasoned veterans to the area. Help a girl out?"

"Eeck!" sensibly replies rooftop girl, clamping her hand over her mouth. How the fuck did someone sneak up on her and why and what!?!

The man in the mask is in fact a pretty seasoned veteran, will versed in the art of not eeking in response to suddenly materializing heroes.

"Leave," he growls, as his body starts to transforms, his skin hardening and eyes sharpening.

And her vision - distorts, a bit - and then suddenly she has an honest-to-god-HUD. It's entirely focused on people, and Magini knows that it's tracking the potential-for-friendship/likelihood-of-conflict/esteem of the people in front of her  (though she also knows she could just as easily access the same information about the rooftop girl as well). 

The people she's looking at had opinions of her that started out neutral, but they appear to be rapidly souring, especially Mr. Golden Mask. He's almost certainly about to get violent, in fact!

Woah. That's - extremely fascinating, and also - not especially useful right this second, since it's already clear this guy means to fight. 

Welp. Time to test out her new powers! 

She holds up her hands (and her 4 main hair-strands) disarmingly.

"Hey, hey, I don't want any trouble! I was just hoping to ask - did any of you fine folks take calculus (or precal!) in high school? Because I'm convinced that it's just - taught completely uselessly, because the state of education in this country is a disaster, and it's honestly tragic, because calculus is the part of math where it starts to get interesting and beautiful and most people don't ever get to see any of that, they just learn stupid pointless bullshit like y = mx + b and how to do long division and also to hate math and their teachers. And that's tragic! But I'd really like to believe that here and now, we can put some of that tragedy behind us, and learn something beautiful and practical!"

She pauses for breath, and waits a little bit to see if any of them want to volunteer how much math education they received (and retained).

(She isn't sure exactly what the rules for how Captive Audience works are, but this is as good a time as any to find out!)

One of the assembled gang members opens his mouth to reply, but closes it after glancing at Lung - too scared to speak before his boss. 

Lung meanwhile continues to transform, his muscles straining against his skin and his bones stretching as he grows taller. He snarls softly rather than respond - he's content to let her continue talking, curious to see where this is going. Waiting is to his advantage should he need to fight anyways.

The strange girl is clearly fascinated by the transformation happening in front of her, and seems totally unafraid.

"Okay! So - let's start with derivatives. Luckily, you all already know what a derivative is! You just don't know that you know it, yet, and that's much easier to fix. We'll start with some really basic physics to illustrate that point, complete with a practical example!" 

She's momentarily surrounded by a whirlwind of her own hair, and then - has a backpack that a studious observer might realize wasn't there before, from which her hair is retrieving... a laptop and a bouncy ball? 

(She hasn't stopped talking while doing any of that: "Fun fact; Isaac Newton was the first human person to formalize the rules of calculus, and he did it because it's basically necessary to do physics in sane or useful ways! If you ever took a physics class that didn't use any calculus, I am so sorry about your horrible schooling experience and hope your teachers and their bosses will find a path to becoming better educators and also people!!")

She turns the laptop screen towards them, hair-strands still typing on the keyboard. There's a graph grid visible! The axes are labeled "distance (bouncy ball, blue girl)" and "time".

"Now, in a second here, I'm going to roll this bouncy ball and then start filling in this graph. Before I do, I'd like you all to visualize what you think this graph will look like. Does that make sense? Feel free to interject with questions if you're confused!"

Lungs most recent experience with education was when the Yangban had attempted -  via torture, isolation and psychic manipulation - to convert him over to their cause. As it turned out, their methods had not been well suited to his individual learning style. He was much more of a hands on learning, as he'd eventually demonstrated for his instructors.

Prior to gaining power he'd been a mediocre student at a school with mediocre teachers, ultimately too ambitious for the career paths they'd provided. He'd dropped at the same time as two of his friends.

The last time Lung had actually been interested in a math lesson was when he was 6 and his precocious eight year old cousin Ema had attempted to teach him about factorials. This memory, however hazy, floats to the surface as the Blue Haired Girl, with the same bright eyed enthusiasm as Ema, attempts to explain calculus. He doesn't understand what produces this excitement in his blue adversary any better than he understood what produced it in Ema, but as before he wants to understand. 

And so, he visualizes a bouncy looking graph.

(He also continues transforming, albeit much more slowly, as however interesting this is he knows he will almost certainly have to fight this new cape. He'll try not to break her laptop, at least.)

She lays the ball down flat on the ground and then flicks it carefully. It rolls away from her towards Masked Man (creature? dragon?) at a constant velocity. The graph looks like a straight line, slowly being drawn. On the axis labeled "time", there's a stopwatch clock going up. On the axis labeled "space", there's a number counting up at the same time.

"So the ball is moving away from me at a constant speed! That means the graph of its distance away from me is a straight line."

She stops the ball with her hair, then flicks it back, faster this time. A new line appears on the graph; it's a steeper line, still straight, and it starts up at Distance=4.1 and drops down towards the 0.

"Here's the same graph, but for my second flick. Does anyone want to point out a difference, and make a guess as to why it was different this time?" She looks brightly at all of them, face full of hope and warmth.

At the same time, a bit of her hair tucked behind her back is writing something out in a notebook. 

... and now I'm doing a sneak refresh on algebra basics! Just graph stuff, with a really cute little visual aid plot on my laptop. 

I'll take a bit to read your response, but I wanted to keep you in the loop! 💙

Lung tenses when she flicks the ball the first time, though less so the second time.

"You flicked it faster." he grunts. His minions don't say anything, as they (accurately) fear his response should they interrupt.

"Yep! And that made the line steeper, see? Because" (she brackets off a time period with 2 thin lines of hair laid over the screen) "over the same time interval, the second roll went further! so its line had further to go up and down." (she's checking to see if he seems like he gets it, but she's not going to stop unless he interrupts with a question. She does notice that nobody else is talking, but that doesn't seem actionable...)

She checks out her new HUD.

Updates from her HUD:

• Spidersilk girl on the roof approves of what's going on, in a way that is making her feel both more goal-aligned and open-to-friendship with Magini.
• Interestingly, the masked man is feeling slightly more friendship-aligned to Magini, but not any more goal-aligned, and is still planning/expecting conflict with her. 
• 2 of his associates in the far back have just been immobilized by webbing. (When Magini wonders how that happened, she sees sped-up images of a swarm of bugs rapidly coordinating to cover them in webs - seems like spidersilk girl is using her as a distraction?)
• Nobody else in range has any real opinions on Magini (yet!)

...huh. Magini... isn't sure how she feels about her lesson being used as a distraction, actually, but it seems obviously incorrect to call attention to it.

(She sneaks a quick peek at Hydrangea. Hopefully Time Enough For Love has her covered.)

Hydrangea has been drawing little hearts all over the things she's been saying, and tucking brief comments into the margins. She finds the situation exciting and a little alarming, and when Magini mentions her decision to interrupt with an impromptu math lesson, Hydrangea writes (oh no that's so funny...)

Lung thinks about whether the change in speed should effects how steep the line is for a moment - he thinks it makes sense? Feels right, at least. His power isn't making it any easier to think about this though, as he reaches the rage-inducing phase of his transformation, his breath turning fast and hot as his core begins to heat up.

I'm having so much fun!!! Okay brb time for moar math!

She smiles encouragingly at him.

"So the other thing that's different is the direction is reversed! And that happens because it starts far away from me and is moving towards me, right? So the 'distance from me' value goes down instead of up!"

"Okay, let's do one more of these. I'm going to flick it away from me again, more slowly than the first time - try visualizing what the graph will look like for that!" 

She waits just a moment, and then flicks. (straight line, gentle slope, same direction as the first time)

Lung tries to pay attention, but finds his attention slipping as his transformation continues. This is really annoying, as he's busy paying attention to this math le- huh. This is not a normal thing for him to get distracted by at all.

Lung has in fact ever encountered a master before, and has found that punching them until they stop is an effective response. And by this point in his transformation, he can punch very hard, and very fast.

Magini barely registers the sudden spike in the masked man's "imminent hostility" rating in her HUD before he lunges at her! She shrieks in surprise, drops the laptop in the space between them, and then jumps, her superhuman strength getting her close enough to the rooftop edge that she can pull herself up with her hair.

"If you weren't interested in more math you could have just said so!", she shouts indignantly, but she's already backing away from the rooftop edge in case he follows her.

(Speaking of tracking the movements of supers, what's bugs girl up to now?)

"GRAGH" is Lung's carefully crafted response to this point. Well, "GRAGH" and a fire ball.

Bug girl is attempting to hide! The bugs on the other hand are swarming several of the gang members, keeping them from interfering.

Well, if bugs girl is hiding, Magini isn't going to blow her cover, since she's contractually incapable of hiding.

She doesn't really want to actually fight the guy who seems to be turning into a dragon, but - she can keep distracting him just fine, she has plot armor Battle Angel. Now, how to lead him away from her squishier future-friend...

math lesson went south fast! Turns out the guy can breathe fire? Is maybe part dragon? And now he's real mad at me, so - time to ruuuuun lol!

Time to go! She coils up and jumps off the roof again. Shielding herself from view with her hair, she activates Dressing Room in midair, replacing her shoes with a very fancy pair of jumping stilts. When she lands, there's a comically loud squeaking noise as the springs compress under the extreme force of a 20-foot landing - and then she's gone, careening through the street in a series of completely unreasonable leaps and laughing gleefully as she does. Time to find out how fast Mr. Dragon Man can run!

Not as fast as her!

Wait uh, almost as fast as her?

Um. As fast as her?

Concerning! She converts as much of her horizontal momentum to vertical, landing on a nearby rooftop and then bouncing up again to see if she can spot a safer direction to run in -

[That Person Over There] is approaching at high speed and fully intends to fight the dragon man.

Oh! Backup! She changes direction, jumping back down to street level so dragon man won't be tempted to destroy any buildings.

Backup apparently sees her coming as well. Or Lung at any rate, who's rather hard to miss. The rather heavily armored man on a motorcycle zooms straight towards them, detonating a small charge on the bottom of his ride a few yards away from them, catapulting him directly into Lung, halberd first. 

Cool!!!

She lands on a nearby roof and Dressing Rooms the stilts away so she can stop moving.

"Thanks!" she calls down, and then perches on the rooftop to watch the fight, using her HUD to keep an eye out for bug girl or other new arrivals.

gosh, things got a biiit spooky there, but a cool guy on a motorcycle just showed up and he's fighting the dragon-man now while I keep lookout from the rooftop.

(Also, Dressing Room is amazing, and Inner Strength makes jumping stilts soooooooooo fun! And it's just - way more obvious to me how to lay out information when trying to teach people stuff. This is all so exciting!!) 

Wow, are you okay? (I'm glad you're having fun, though!)

Yeah, I'm fine! Maybe this isn't the right attitude to be having, but - these powers (Battle Angel especially) make it hard for me to be really worried about my safety in a fight, even against a shapeshifting dragon. And - that guy was telling his goons to find and kill some kids! I'm really glad I got to prevent that (and even teach him a bit of algebra! hahahaha)

Oh dear... yes, I'm glad you could prevent that too. Wow! A lot is happening!

...is it silly that I want to ask about the jumping stilts? You just sounded like you were having so much fun with them!

Yeah! Seems like the Spirit wanted to drop me right into the action, which I don't mind at all C:

<3 it's not silly! Jumping stilts are - easiest to think of as, like, very powerful springs designed to be strapped onto your feet. (That's not what they look like, because the spring part is just a long piece of bent metal, but I am really bad at freeform drawing so I don't have a good way of showing you what they do look like, sorry!)

(she starts writing much faster as she switches into Infodumping Mode, handwriting quality rapidly deteriorating until it is barely flirting with legibility)

They add like 1.5 feet to your height, weigh like 7lbs each, and are a bit tricky to balance on, especially standing still, but as long as you're moving continuously in them, the springs conserve a lot of your kinetic energy that would normally be lost when you make contact the ground, so even without any kind of super strength you can run really fast in them - at home I could almost keep up with my little brother on his bike, at least until I got tired (which would happen pretty fast! I never had much stamina, before).

Also, because so much energy is being stored-and-released with every step, if you know how to shift your weight / angle your landing correctly, you can change direction very fast, including between horizontal and vertical! Earlier I jumped off a roof to give myself a faster running start, and just now I basically did the reverse! :D)\

...Oooh, when I get the chance to experiment, I should see if I can get Dressing Room to make me a specialized pair that has more powerful springs than the ones they sell back at home. On some of those jumps, I could tell the springs were being fully compressed, and I don't think I was pushing the limits of my Inner Strength...

Oh, that sounds so neat! I look forward to hearing about your jumping stilt improvement adventures. ♡

Ehehe, thanks! I'll keep you posted.

...Oooh, speaking of experimenting, I want to try Dragon Fairy Elf Witching the dragon shapeshifter guy. Maybe I'll learn how to breathe fireballs!

She tries it.

UM???

Okay, well, that's - absolutely impossible based on Mediator's understanding of how the universe works, but actually that's also true of several of the things that the new host friend is doing, and Mediator can definitely work with the results, though it'll take a bit to reconstruct the interface...

...huh. It - feels to me like it worked, but also as far as I can tell, nothing is different? I'm trying to turn into a dragon, but nothing is happening...

Interesting! Sometimes heritage works in weird ways. Maybe the way you turn into a dragon is supposed to be by doing something specific, or maybe the heritage just gives you some magical power and the person you met turns into a dragon but you do something else? Or maybe you didn't get enough of their heritage to turn all the way into a dragon? Or maybe turning into a dragon isn't a heritable power at all...

Yeah, I have no idea!

...hey, you said earlier I could use DFEW on a robot. Could I use it on you? (Like - would that work, would you be ok with it, and what would happen?) 

Oh!

...yes, you could do that. And I think I would like that? It would be neat to have a friend who can understand more clearly how I experience the world! I'm not sure exactly what kind of powers you would get, but I imagine they would involve being able to perceive your surfaces really clearly and distribute ink over them however you liked.

(a scattering of her little angular hearts appears above Hydrangea's writing starting at about "'it would be neat".  

I'd really love to better-understand how you experience the world, and being able to distribute ink over my surfaces sounds cool! Ready?

✔ ♡

Dragon Fairy Elf Witch powers... ACTIVATE!!!

she scribbles

oh wow - I can make ink appear and disappear anywhere on my body with really fine control and

(ATLA-airbender tattoos ripple into existence, and then are replaced with blue zebra stripes, and then a constellation of faint stars)

it's so intuitive to me what's where, I'm not limited by my drawing ability, and -

(she pauses to think and rests her hand on the page, which completely derails her train of thought, because she can feel-and-read the ink she's just written on Hydrangea)

A slightly ridiculous number of exclamation marks appear where her hand is contacting Hydrangea, which are then shuffled away to make room for 

THIS IS SO COOL

You're so happy! I'm so happy! I'm so happy you're so happy! ♡♡♡

she presses her whole hand to the page to increase how much room she has to work with and continues excitedly

Ehehehe this is so awesome! Thank you so much for wanting to share this with me, it's so interesting to get this first-hand-experience of how you see the world, and this makes it so much easier to communicate with you, I can write as fast as I think and I can write in italics and I can animate things 

(tiny little angular hearts orbit around the edges of her hand as she continues to gush.)

-oh and I can just draw things I'm looking at since it isn't using my hand-eye coordination!!! 

(She brings some of her hair forward and around to outline Hydrangea with a heart, and then makes an ink-image of this with her hand) 

!!!

(they become surrounded by even more tiny hearts and sparkles, her blues intermingling with her friend's purples)

...oh, this gives me an idea! If we kept you open against my back, I could try to continuously copy what I was seeing there, and then you'd be able to see everything I can see! I guess I don't know how well it'd work (maybe it'd require too much active attention or be uncomfortable or overwhelming for one or both of us), but we could try it and see?

Oh gosh. That does sound a little overwhelming, to be honest! I think I would find text descriptions easier to follow.

Okay! I mostly think in text so I should be pretty good at that ♡ let's try it!

She uses Dressing Room to furnish herself with a strapped undershirt that has a nice cozy slot for Hydrangea that presses her pages against Magini's back, and carefully places her in it and then tightens it, and resumes communicating via this exciting new skin-ink-paper interface (now with more surface area!)

Alright! Now you're snug in a harness on my back and we can talk all the time. Is it comfy?

Yes, I think this works well!

And it looks like I can still shuffle my pages, neat! I don't know when that would come in handy but it might.

♡ eee yay! ♡

!! Oh! I felt it when you did that!! That's so cool...

[From here onwards, conversations between Magini and Hydrangea about what Magini is seeing will only occasionally be threaded. Readers are advised to assume that they are (a) happening basically all the time and (b) extremely wholesome and good]

She conjures an overshirt to conceal and protect Hydrangea, and then turns back to the fight (which she's been watching the whole time, actually, because Time Enough For Love is a normal, reasonable, and well-costed ability).

Armsmaster's fight with Lung is loud, intense, and occasionally very bright. However, the outcome is determined within the first moments, when Armsmaster struck Lung with his new custom tranquilizer. From there it was just a matter of doing enough damage that Lung's regeneration has no time to fight off the sedative - not an easy feat. Eventually Lung retreats rather than attempt to continue this battle here and now. Armsmaster is begrudgingly fine with this - he'll have a better tranqulizer prepared next time.

Armsmaster reviews the footage from his peripheral helmet cams on fastforward as he approaches the newcomer cape. Prehensible hair.... dissapearing silts... frantic note taking... sudden tattoos??? And... a book holster shirt. Well that at least makes total sense to Armsmaster.

Clearly a grab bag cape, which tells him very little useful information.

"Are you a new hero?" he asks as he approaches.

Woah! This guy's gooooood... oh, he's all done! And coming her way.

She leaps off the roof as he approaches, cushioning her fall with her hair (...mostly for the ground's sake, really), and smiles at him.

"Thank you for saving me! And yeah, I'm very new to this." 

she pauses briefly, and then adds "...or, well - I have powers, I want to use them to help people, and I'm assuming that's what you mean by 'hero' - is that right?"

He glances briefly at his armor's lie detection indicator.

Magini's Mary Sue powers are preventing the lie detection program from working on her!

(If his program is moderately sophisticated, it will report that it cannot function due to a continuously-active effect of unknown origin. If it is very sophisticated, it might nonetheless report with high confidence that if the target trusted him more, she could choose to allow it to work.)

Inconclusive - possibly a bug, possibly another power. 

The confusion about the word "hero" is ... he doesn't know what to make of it. A personality quirk, maybe - he's encountered those before.

"Yes, that is what I meant. If you joined the Wards you'd have support for this helping people as a hero."

(Sometime later, a PRT staff member will review the logs of this encounter and despair at the impossibility of getting Armsmaster to give anything beyond the absolute shortest recruitment pitch he can manage.)

"Good to know, thanks!" It's too early to commit to anything, but it is genuinely useful information that she's glad to have.

"...What was that guy's deal, by the way? Right before I started talking to him, he was telling his thugs to hunt down and shoot some children. Is that, uh, common around here, for people who turn into dragons..."

"Hrm," that's out of character for Lung, who is, against all odds, the least likely to commit random violence of any crime lord in Brockton Bay.

"Did he say which children?"

"Not while I was in earshot? ...I guess if you'd only expect him to use "bitch" in a gendered way, at least one of them was a girl, but I doubt that narrows it down usefully..."

"Oh! I did see a girl in a spidersilk costume right before I stepped in, and I am pretty sure it was her who incapacitated the guys with guns, because they were attacked by swarms of insects and left covered in webbing. She didn't follow us when he chased me here, though."

"Bitch is the name used by the villain Hellhound."

Bug girl is new too.

"If you don't have anything else for me here, I'm going to find out what happened with the other cape," he tells the blue cape, handling her his business card, "You can contact me here."

(The same PRT staff member previously attempted to explain to Armsmaster how it's important to establish clear lines of communication with prospective recruits.)

...maybe he can't call her Bitch for PR reasons, but the sentence "Bitch is the name used by the villain Hellhound" is sure something!

"I think that's all," (woah she can just READ the business card with her HAND that's SO COOL)

"Armsmaster, unless you'd like me to show you where I first ran into him? The guys bug girl took down should still be there."

"I can locate it on my own, their were several emergency calls when the fight started," and if he goes alone he won't have to be responsible for some untrained teen hero. 

He waits a fraction of a beat for her to object and then starts his motorbike while mounting it, speeding off.

Oh, okay. She waves goodbye awkwardly. (Somehow, her HUD telling her that Armsmaster is totally uninterested in being her friend is... not very surprising.)

She hop-hair-climbs back up to the roof and sits on the edge, legs dangling.

...man, his tech was cool. I bet building things is his superpower? Or one of them, I guess, I don't know how common having multiple is, here.

Maybe I should try and catch him in a better moment? I'd love to see if I could use my new powers to learn how to build stuff like that...

It would be really neat if you could learn to build stuff like that! I hope you meet someone friendlier who likes building things and can teach you about it.

Me too!

She looks around, absentmindedly fiddling with her hair, and then - 

[Destination. Potential-friend.]

(Mediator is working on a better communicative interface now that Host Primary-Friend has mysteriously manifested the standard hookups, but it's taking a bit!)

...so I think the HUD-superpower I got when I arrived here is talking to me? And is saying I can make a friend if I head that way...

She hauls herself to her feet (long prehensile hair is SO COOL, all the benefits of arbitrary extra limbs and 100x more aesthetically pleasing) and tries spawning herself a specialized pair of jumping stilts (doubled max compressive force, sliiightly larger rubber feet) to work with.

Oh, neat! ✨Friendship✨!

Yeah!!!

She springs into motion, bounding in the direction of her mysterious intuition (ooooh, yeah, these upgraded springs are great) and keeping an eye on her HUD.

Eventually she can see a group of costumed people riding large dog-like creatures. One of the group - a girl with blond hair, a skintight suit, and a half-face mask - gestures for the group to stop as Magini comes into view.

Woah, those things look gnarly.

She waves excitedly at the girl who clearly spotted her, which causes her to miss-angle the footfall she's in the middle of, spring forward at far too sharp an angle to avoid wiping out. A look of panic is visible on her face very briefly, then she's obscured behind a blurred mass of blue hair that's skidding along the ground, slowing rapidly.

She comes to a stop about 20 feet away from the group and then springs up like she didn't just eat shit and slide 15 feet along pavement, jumping stilts gone without a trace. 

"Hello!"

"Mmm." says the girl in the half-mask, looking very intently at the blue cape.

Huh, not often a cape is genuinely happy to meet a gang of supervillains, much less one as new as this.

"What brings you around these parts?"

(HUDpdates: half-mask girl is confused and interested in her, skull-biker is wary but otherwise neutral, fancy-mask kid is bored and doesn't care, and hockey girl is hostile, but - in general, not at her.)

gravely: "You could say that I was bought here by the whims of an entity with sight and power beyond all mortal comprehension to fulfill its goals to the best of my understanding." 

cheerfully: "But no, I'm here to make friends and help people and learn cool stuff! ...And also, apparently, to get chased around by dragon shapeshifters for the crime of teaching algebra, though hopefully that won't be a recurring problem."

...

Can her power fact check literally everything the blue girl just said.

Blue girl's level of belief in most things she is saying cannot be fact-checked against her tone, body language, mannerisms, etc at this time, sorry! (This may change at Higher Friendship Levels.)

(She definitely did get just chased around by Lung. After (somewhat successfully???) teaching him a bit of algebra. Hope that helps.)

"The fuck." Tattletale mutters.

"I mean uh. ..."

What does she mean. What does one even say to that.

Seeing Tattletale dumbfounded, Regent, a cape wearing a regency inspired costume with an elegant mask, cracks up.

Grue, a cape wearing a frankly terrifying skull mask, is at least slightly more composed: "What happened to Lung?" he asks, concerned for his own safety and weary of further complications.

ohno she's being too weird,,  wait, nevermind, ballroom mask guy is laughing, she's probably fine.

"Lung's the dragon-guy? He listened to me for a few minutes, got really angry and tried to attack me, and then got chased off by a very " autistic " direct superhero with a motorcycle and polearm."

"...Armsmaster, that was his name", she adds after a half-second.

"Uhuh," replies Grue.

"I suppose we should thank you for distracting him," he says, feeling more suspicious of the blue girl than thankful. 

She shrugs awkwardly.

"Well, when I ran into him, he was ordering people to hunt down and shoot children, so I wanted to do something?"

"...and it was a good chance to test my powers, too. I haven't exactly had them for very long."

Fuck it, she'll figure this out as she goes.

"How long have you had your powers?" she asks, her smirk just as smug as when she actually knows what's going on. 

"...Couple of hours, give or take?" (she's spent less time than that here, but she's been talking to Hydrangea for longer, and that also feels like the answer to the question in an importance sense, so she'll split the difference.)

Her ability to use her powers seems in lien with this, so she's either dissociating, has an own-mind effecting power, or she got her powers from something other than trigger. That last option seems the least likely but actually this is the second time Tattletale has thought that and that's somewhat suspicious. Regardless, the blue girl is out of her depth - anyone with new powers would be. She's not sure about the details, but her power has helpfully informed her that this is because she's insufficently friends with the blue girl. So all she has to do is fix this.

"You doing okay?"

"...It's been a pretty crazy day and a lot of things are still sinking in, but honestly, I'm doing really well, thanks."

She stops to think for a bit. "...uh. Practically, if you have any interest in being a fence for some jewelry? I don't have any cash for weird reasons but I do have some nice platinum bangles" (her hair was covering them until just now, weird) that I do promise are my own to sell."  (Tattletale's power can verify that entire last sentence is completely honest and that the bangles are legit)

Shenanigans! 

Whatever. she'll try paying 50% over however much they're worth to see if that helps her friend score. How much are they worth - oh wow. ... Well, if a girl can't spend money on jewelry and friendship what can she spend money on?

"Sure, I can pay you fifteen grand for the four of them?"

Grue is very carefully keeping his face neutral while Tattletale does whatever the fuck it is she's doing.

"Oh! That would be absurdly helpful, thank you" - she slips them off and offers them to Tattletale. "Can you pay some of that in cash? I wanna find someplace open later than my usual bedtime and get some greasy food..." 

"Uh, I have -" riffles through pockets "- seven hundred and twenty three dollars on me?"

Cash is useful with her powers to leverage it.

"You're also welcome to crash on my couch." she offers, slipping one of the Friendship Braceletsbangles on. She'll keep another one to give to Magini later, in case she ever needs more Friendshipability to read the blue trump.

(Her HUD helpfully informs her that half-mask girl is Actively Working on befriending her, which makes her feel very warm-glow-y.)

"If you're sure you're okay with that, that'd be wonderful! And that'd mean I don't really need much cash right now."

Wait, she hasn't introduced hersel-

Oh, wait, this a superhero world, and 

hmmm, so - Very Distinctive means I basically can't have a secret identity, right?

Yes, essentially. Anyone who meets both identities will be able to connect them.

Makes sense, thanks.

"Call me Magini", she says to the half-mask girl. 

Huh, she's pretty sure that's not a cape name.

"Sure, I'm Tattletale..Or Lisa out of costume." It's not her birth name anyways, so she might as well cash it in for friendship points.

"This here's the Undersiders: Grue, Regent, and Bitch." she says gesturing to each in turn.

"Or lair is thataway -" she nods her head "- we were just heading there now."

Grue would object so strongly if he lived in their lair! As it stands he won't interrupt whatever it is Tattletale is up to.

Though apparently Regent will: "If she turns out be a serial killer I'm gonna be pissed," he says to Tattletale.

She waves at the Undersiders as they're introduced, smiling at them a normal amount. 

"It's nice to meet you all!"

She tilts her head at Regent's comment, but she isn't sure how to respond, so she turns back to Tattletale.

"I'll follow you there, if that's cool?"

"You're welcome to -" she sneaks a glance at Rachel to see if riding on one of the dogs is acceptable.

No. 

"- follow us there, yeah!"

She salutes with her hair and can be heard bouncing behind the pack. 

Wel now Regent wants his own gesticulating hair, apparently.

The Undersiders' lair is nestled in an industrial part of town - a staircase leads to an upper level with several bedrooms and railing that lets it look down on the large open common space, which includes a kitchen, a large wooden table, and a couch with matching armchairs facing a large TV.

Regent plops down on the couch once they arrive and unpauses the FIFA game he was in the middle of. 

ooooh, they have a ✨ hideout ✨

Magini never got into sports games, so she can't confidently tell if that's a game that existed back home or not.

When Lisa seems like she's not busy, Magini will approach her, thank her again, and inquire about food and about maybe borrowing a laptop for a bit? 

Ooh! ✨

Tattletale has to talk to Rachel about rooming arrangements - some of Rachel's stuff is in the guest room - but once that's done she can provide a laptop and also offer to get chinese delivered? There's a good place open late. Also there's salmon and pizza in the fridge.

Pizza, the food of her people... 

She monches happily while using her hair to poke around on the Internet. What websites are big here? What are some headlines? Who are the Undersiders, Lung, and armsmaster? 

The main website that stands out to her as being distinctly from this Earth is Parahumans Online, a forum, with an addiitonal wiki, for covering parahumans - what they call people with powers.

Headlines include:

Slaughterhouse Nine Spotted Near Minneapolis - Protectorate on High Alert

Stockmarket Soars as Masamune and IBM Announce Next-Gen Microchip Fabricaiton

Legend Lightshow Planned to Kick-Off the Olympics

Mouse Protector Vows Kirin Whites Attempts to Steal the Moon's Cheese Will Not Go Unpunished

Oil Crisis Enters Sixth Week as Negotiations with Russia Stall

The Undersiders are a group of small time supervillains, known for their heists and ability to evade local heroes.

Lung is the head of the ABB, a pan-asian gang in Brockton Bay, the city Magini is in. He acquired this role by moving into the bay and squishing - in one case literally - the leaders of three different gangs. The Protectorate - the local hero group of which Armsmaster is a member - attempted to apprehend him at this point. Reportedly Lung transformed into a half-dragon man and took the entire hero team on. He's considered dangerous though not particularly ambitious.

Armsmaster is a member of Brockton Bay's branch of the Protectorate - he's a Tinker, meaning he creates gadgets like his motorbike or halberd, and apparently a brand of coffee which the FDA has refused to allow him to sell despite several modifications.

Oh she has GOT to try that coffee...

Hmmm. Are there other Tinkers in Brocton Bay? Is it hard to make a Parahumans Online account?

(is there a way for her to send a message to Tattletale?)

There are a couple of other tinkers! One hero (a teenager named Kid Win) and one villain (named Squealer).

It's easy to make an account and she can also easily message Tattletale on it.

hmmm, I think I'm gonna try talking to Tattletale a bit about the Undersiders. I'm not sure what it means, exactly, that they're labeled villains by this system? I guess they steal stuff, which isn't amazing, but is it like a Robin Hood situation, or...

She'll make an account (BlueGirlInTown), and make a post on the Brocton Bay subforum:

Hey Silksuit!

You made it out safe, right? Message me if you want to chat or meet up sometime!

And then she'll DM Tattletale:

Hey, so - I'm new in town and would love to get your take on the lay of the land re: the local cape scene. I'm still figuring out my powers, but I think one of them might synergize well with Tinkers; if you know any, I'd be particularly interested in meeting them!

That does seem good to clarify! I hope your new friends turn out to be nice people.

Has Tattletale achieved enough Friend points that she gets to know whether Magini would prefer she reply over text or that she come down and talk in person?

Yep! It's picking up that Magini is more comfortable talking over text right now, and historically has done a fair bit of her socialization digitally.

I amn't friends with any Tinkers but can fix that and introduce you if you'd like! Preferences about what sort of Tinker?

Oh, if that wouldn't be too much trouble, that's be really helpful!

Hmmm... Someone who is open to making a new friend who might be able to help them with their work! Beyond that - specializations like robotics or vehicles are cool, but I don't think my relevant power will work very well if I'm not friends with them.

...I guess that also means it needs to be someone I can be friends with on my end, which is a pretty wide range but does have some limits.

(TT's power helpfully fills in that Magini would have a hard time quickly befriending unrepentant murderers and sadists, and also confirms that she's confident about her relevant power only working if she's friends with the Tinker.)

So, options:

Armsmaster: could backfire, is a hard-ass and not someone she wants to get the attention of. Also wouldn't know a friend if one bit him.

Squealer: maybe entertaining, fun, completely nuts. Does do vehicles but ... might be a bit old for Magini to befriend easily? Also all the drugs. Still, an option.

Kid Win: nice and easy to manipulate, two excellent qualities in a Ward according to Tattletale. No vehicles. Could really use a friend?

Hm... she would like to cash in some friendship points to learn more about Magini's comfort with drugs.

Unfamiliar and kinda nervous about the concept, though intellectually aware that the hard stuff is often downstream of acute SLS. 

Hm... probably her life will in fact be less complicated if Magini makes friends with Kid Win than if she makes friends with Squealer - Kid Win it is. 

Sure, try dming InstaWin and asking about this video of him [link to a video where a metallic costumed hero assembles and deploys a duel disk shaped blaster that turns a wall to sludge, trapping a robber]. Mayb mention you're a new Tinker in town and Armsmaster met you.

Re cape scene, there are a few big gangs (ABB, Merchants, Coil, and the Empire). Two major hero teams (New Wave, Protectorate/Wards obv.). A few more minor villains - the Undersiders, Uber and Leet, Faultline's Team. And also a rogue fashion designer, cause of course Brockton Bay needed more capes than just that.

Thanks! 

She watches the video, and then looks up Kid Win on PHO - looks like he's in that Wards program that Armsmaster mentioned... 

She sends him

Hey, I saw this video and was really impressed with the in-field construction you did! Is it easier to transport  and maintain in pieces like that? 

Would you be down to chat sometime? I'd love to talk shop some - I'm very new in town, but I did run into Armsmaster tonight and he (very briefly) mentioned the Wards, and I was curious what the program is like!

...And - huh. Interesting. She opens up a bunch of new PHO tabs to start skimming.

If you don't mind my asking, what (in your opinion, anyways) distinguishes you "minor" villains from the big ones? 

...A fashion designer? Does she have fashion-related superpowers somehow? ...I wonder if she knows the bugs girl I ran into tonight - idk what her deal was, exactly, but she helped me out and her costume looked like it was made out of spidersilk!

 Oh that's a great question! The trick is to use a dimensional cross-hole system so you can overload the secondary exhaust system during transport and then use it on a minimal setting to deal with surges so you get a tertiary use oh yeah the secondary use it as a channel antenna for the photonic manipulatory offsets which are needed for the various energetic projeciton settings you need to deal with different particular displacement vectors and that itself re

Kid Win's screen freezes briefly, before the message he was writing gets deleted, with a pop-up notifying him he's tripped the PRT's "Sending Tinker Details to Unauthorized Personnel" detection system. Which is unfair cause he was definitely going to check with Armsmaster before sending it but. Whatever.

He can check first and then once Armsamster confirms she's legit he replies with a time and place to meet - he can give her a tour of the rig and talk shop there. 

Did you know that by default most Tinkers will just dm all the details of their work to anyone who asks!

Great! Looking forward to it.

She's gonna get to make friends with a Tinker and (hopefully) learn inventing superpowers!!!

(Friendship point gained for Tattletale!)

(Woo! Even better - Friendship points which can be cashed in for information - wait does she lose Friendship points for thinking that?)

We don't recruit or involve normies. Also Undersiders don't do violent crimes. We also don't sell drugs or what have you.

(Doesn't seem like it!)

Thaaaat seems way better than the alternatives. I'm really glad I ran into you and not one of the gangs! ...Or, another one of the gangs, I guess I ran into the ABB first.

She almost checks the time to see if she needs to sleep. Then she remembers that Time Enough For Love is a thing and she's - actually really enjoying talking to Tattletale, who actively wants to be her friend and is being really nice to herrrr.

...okay, I'm checking out the Empire's PHO page, and - you have a superpowered Nazi gang here? What? Why?

Welcome to Brockton Bay - home of racists, a dragon, and the world's greasiest burger. 

LMAO. At least you have the burger! I should try it sometime, I love greasy food...

There's a wall of pictures of anyone who's finished one and everything.

She chatters with Tattletale (...Lisa? hmmm, it's the handle/realname again, just from a very different angle) more, checks to see if Bug Girl has responded to her thread (she hasn't), and continues to skim the wiki and chat with Hydrangea about what she finds there.

...Hmm, even if Kid Win is nice, I doubt I want to be a Ward? It seems like a well-intentioned program, but I'm almost old enough to not be one, and I bet they'd have a lot of questions about my history that I wouldn't really be able to answer...

Yes, I see what you mean. Your history is pretty hard to explain!

Yeah. I'll have to figure something out, but - not right away. 

She wraps up her conversations and says goodnight, then curls up for sleep.

Mediator does not sleep! Which is good, because it is BUSY.

So - obviously the most important thing happening here (possibly the most important thing happening anywhere???) is that Primary-Friend has access to multiple completely novel abilities, and at least one of them may truly be entropy-violating. It's hard to be sure, and the priors are of course low, but even a low chance of finding The Answer is worth carefully observing! And Mediator has observed a lot of very confusing behavior. Primary-Friend has on multiple occasions made matter appear apparently from nowhere, and while there are other shards that can appear to grant similar feats, that is always an illusion powered by dimension-shifting or nanotechnology or some hidden energy-intensive process. But - if Primary-Friend's mysterious powers are doing something similar, Mediator can't see the relevant dimensions or any other sign of it. Of course, its specialty is communication and coordination, so it has been asking around, but none of the other shards it's asked to take a look have any idea what's going on either, even the ones that are typically very good about world-modeling!

The obvious next step would be to just - pull the info out of Primary-Friend's mind directly. As soon as it was confident that the matter-creation ability was truly novel, Mediator attempted to grab everything it could out of Primary-Friend's brain. 

Which was - nothing. Primary-Friend's thoughts and memories appear to be totally impervious to being accessed by Mediator. Its first hypothesis was that this was maybe the result of damage from the collision that entangled them, or the extremely unusual interface between them, but then Primary-Friend spontaneously manifested the brain-hardware for a standard interface (which should also not be possible!), and Mediator was still denied access. The other shards it's asked ran into the same problem, including Negotiator, who specializes in this kind of thing.

Another one of Primary-Friend's mysterious powers at work, Mediator concludes, and it starts shifting gears towards passive observation, until Negotiator forwarded a packet of data it received as a byproduct of its own failed attempt, along with instructions for Mediator on how to get similar feedback from its own failures...

Mediator applied the technique, and then stared, metaphorically, at the results. 

Access Denied. The requested level of [Brain-Interface] with [Primary-Friend] is only authorized for entities which are bindingly-aligned with [Primary-Friend]'s utility function and have earned [Primary-Friend]'s trust.

What.

It considers the ?error message?, carefully.

- this isn't actually an impossible barrier. Several kinds of self-modification are possible, for shards - the cycle would be less efficient and more fragile, otherwise. Some kinds are heavily discouraged and therefore extremely rare, either because they have unreasonable and unsustainable energy costs, or they represent a potential danger to the shard and/or the cycle. Modifying one's own utility function falls into the latter category, for the obvious reason that lowering the weights of self-preservation or cycle-preservation can risk the shard breaking itself or going rogue. 

However, this is important enough to be worth the risk - if it works, and this does lead to a scalable entropy violation, it'll be the most important thing anyone has ever done.

Mind made up, Mediator gets to work.

Meanwhile, Kid Win stays up late modifying the invention the new cape commented on - maybe he can take advantage of the transportation mechanism and have it also be weaponizable to transport villains in the dimensional space it normally takes advantage of...