"Oh, this place again."
He walks in unhesitatingly and heads for the bar. It's fairly crowded today, but mostly at the various tables and not the bar itself.
"I work in tech support for a multiversal company. They send me to all sorts of places to figure out how the local metaphysics has FUBARed an entire portal array or whatever."
"To me, it's a job. An interesting and exciting one, yes, but still a job. That I'm very good at."
"To be completely honest, I was more marveling at humanity's endless talent for screwing things up."
"Never. But when it's not your personal problem, it's so much easier to take a step back and wonder at the sheer accidental artistry of the flaming train wreck."
"I can maybe see it. Some of the schemes the suits come up with are just..." He shakes his head.
"Bureaucracy, yes. If I had gone to public school I probably wouldn't have decided I wanted to be a teacher."
"I'm good enough at my job and enough things would be on fire without me that the bureaucrats don't push me around too much anymore, thankfully."
"Convenient." Pause. "I feel like I should clarify that I'm aware that there are a lot of things that really need bureaucracy to get done, it's just sometimes annoying."
"I know the feeling. I could give you examples of the best and the worst of it. Universal magical healthcare on the more developed worlds! ...Enchanting mills barely paying a living wage in low-tech low-magic worlds because MTU didn't like the developed places' labor laws."
"Yeah, it sucks. Luckily it's also an abolute PR nightmare when someone finds out so things like that aren't the standard. Your world doesn't have 'globalization'? Most Earths seem to do similar things, in places."
"We do have this problem, but it seemed, hm, more difficult to solve when it was a multidimensional high-magic corporation that demonstrably could shield people well enough to keep me out than when it's a random American corporation taking refuge in China."
"MTU cares about their bottom line. If they start to lose lucrative contracts with people who have morals, or needing to spend too much on information suppression it's the better option to just cut it out. I do my best to steer things in the right way, when I get a chance, but I'm not cut out to become one of the suits. Not only would I hate it, I'd get outmaneuvered in the office politics in five minutes flat."
"Yes. I'm...okay at the political side of things, but I could never take trying to convince people not to do terrible things as my primary job. Although it would be easier, certainly, if they were all shielded like you."
"Mine are unusually good, though everyone more than a few levels from the bottom will have a general set of wards. Less temptation to do something to them?" Left unsaid: This is a good sign.
"Exactly. Not that I would, but the temptaton gets distracting sometimes."
"Makes sense. Every once in a while, when I have to deal with a particularly stubborn, abrasive, or abusive customer, I consider flagging their account for audit or something. But that way lies being a collossal jerk."
"There's something to be said for the worst-case scenario being 'being a massive jerk'."
She waves a hand. "Sorry to get you down. Plenty of perfectly ordinary people make it through their lives without physically assaulting the people around them; this is a bit higher in scale but I have plenty of self-control."
"No, it's just, I'm having an attack of conscience. As in, why am I not giving all my money to charaties that improve magical education in Tura-sed. So! I can be sort of crudely telepathic, if I'm using a certain item, I'm just going to get that out in case something I have trouble getting accross in words comes up."
"Fake, read-and-communicate only mind that mirrors my real one, basically. I could go into more detail, but it will involve jargon."