"If I weren't a cape I'd probably go live in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah.... I considered it. But I don't want to bury my head in the sand if that makes any sense?"

"You can get the news in the middle of nowhere."

"If the news was any good than I wouldn't be inviting a cape I just met into my house - no offense."

"Fair enough."

"Why does being a parahuman mean you have to live out here?"

"Oh, it doesn't mean I have to, it just means that I have more leverage to work with. I did die that one time but I did it saving people."

"What are using the leverage for?"

"Saving people, I just said! Though now that there are more of us we may resettle."

"How are you going about saving people?"

"During the Leviathan attack I was doing evac, my drones found people who were stuck in untenable locations or downed combatants and I hauled them out of the danger zone."

"Does the clones thing change what you'll be doing?" 

"If it didn't wouldn't that be weird?"

Tessa chuckles.

"Comfortable elaborating?"

"Well, we've all got different powers, and we can work together, and also none of us belong to the Wards right now like I did back when it was Leviathan so we can arrange our lives however we want."

"Mm. My parahuman psych class has a unit on instability of cape groups and they spend a bunch of time on all the different things the Wards and Protectorate do to discourage and defuse conflict between their members. They definitely try to give the impression that those groups are the only ones that manage to not fall apart due to infighting."

"Oh, yeah, capes are like that as a group but I'm not. I guess it might be my mind-alteration immunity?"

"What sort of differences have you noticed between you and other capes?"

"I mean, apart from that one it's mostly just the same things that make me - us - different from other people in general."

"Mm, do your powers into the other differences too or do you just mean mundane personality variation?"

"Mundane personality variation."

"What leads you to think there's something else going on with you doing better in groups?"

"I'm not especially good in groups of other people but I seem to have a really convenient instinct for dealing with groups of me! I didn't expect this to come up and don't know why I have it but there is a way it is natural to interact with five more of myself and it's awesome."

"That's neat! What did you mean earlier when you said mind-alteration immunity was helpful for something related to getting along with capes if it's not you getting along with yourselves?"

"Oh, I think possibly getting powers makes people more combative and possibly could not make me do anything."