....Well.  Thank you, nonetheless.

Hokay.  Can she figure anything out about these arrows while she's waiting for her package to arrive?  Like, in 'poking them with magic and seeing what happens' ways, or any other ways that might reveal themselves to have poking enabled.

Gold and black feel a little similar. Emotional? Red and blue and green feel a little similar. Immaterial? White feels... Heavy?

And Pink, for comparison?

Pink doesn't really feel like anything in particular.

Great, that's totally helpful, thanks, magic,

...Say, if she has a pink arrow, and other examples - could she change the pink arrow to be a different color?  And can she do...She doesn't know, a controlled detonation of just the arrow without shooting it at somebody?

Changing colors........ No? Making a pink arrow feels like a primitive action, kind of like breathing out really hard, and there aren't a lot of ways to do that differently.

If she intends to set a pink arrow off too hard, it will explode into pink light in her hands! The wash of light leaves her a bit stunned. It's not painful, and it's even kind of pleasant in a warm-tingly way, but mostly it just really seems like doing anything would be really hard right now. It would be really lovely to just stand there instead.

It fades after about thirty seconds.

"...the hell kind of executive-dysfunction-ass effect is that," she mutters, frustratedly.  She hadn't actually been intending to set it off in her face.  "...Well, at least I have a good fuck you to people with big red buttons.  And holy hell this should have pinged the emotion signal, for fuck's sake...  I guess that means that the magnitude of the effect is therefore that much greater in the case of black and gold....  But then there's...Huh.  What could it be?  "

...There are like half a bajillion different ways to breathe out really hard, she might never have done much herself but there's a whole family of wind instruments - but she was thinking more about using an existing pink arrow as a vessel for further empowerment, not - creating a further-empowered arrow directly by the same means.  She's not sure how they work but she's sure there's going to be a method, considering it would be poor game balance if she only ever got so many arrows of those colors ever.

...Here, hold on a second, these bits don't make sense -

...Well, maybe they do if they - but then - how?

What the hell are these things supposed to be doing?

...Alright.  So.  Rebasing the value of 0 to pink...

Maybe the danger-signal arrows are nociceptive?  Or - but then why would - oh, but hm, black has the emotional bit set, and if 'emotional' therefore has something to do with amplifying the stunning effect -

--

If she has magic horny powers she is going to have to email Salem.

...But then what's gold, if black is possibly "incredibly disastrous amounts of arousal"?

What does it play up relative to -

- and is red simply pure nociception?  Yikes.

- But really, what is gold?

...She supposes the answer is kind of obvious, given the givens, and especially looking at the cultural associations that could be in play - it's magic, after all.

Also looking at the emotive-tactile experience of the pink one detonating, since it already had quite a bit of what she suspects might be in the gold, hidden beneath or within the fuzzy nature of the fuckery around executive action.

...This is going to be an interesting powerset, that's for sure.

She needs another space on the table for what she expects the arrows to be, doesn't she.

...Hm.  She wants to take a closer look at White, actually and see if it has, like, less emotion than pink, comparatively.

And she has this funny feeling that blue's actually sleep, but no solid reason why besides the utter vibes of it.

White does seem to have less emotion than pink. Actually, so do red, blue, and green. It's almost like Pink's emotion signal is, like, 0.1.

Interesting.  And explanatory of much - she's a lot more confident in her read of red, black, and blue, knowing that - as well as white, obviously.  From the fact that these are arrows, that these are weaponry in general --

That is what has her suspecting that the white is a physical sort of restraint, from the principles established by pink acting as executive restraint.

...Mm.  She could be incredibly force-multiplied by Chronos.

Anywho, she never really did finish that deep dive into Capes Lore Tee Emm - has anybody been talking about their trigger events?

And she should proooobably update Ms. Sky on the actual effects of Pink Arrow.

After what I am going to call an 'oops' moment, I would like to inform you that I now have some idea of what the arrows that came with this bow actually do do, if that is of interest.

Hey this is Stella, not my bot. You managed to say enough concerning things to bounce up to the top of the list, congrats.

That's definitely either a superpower-weapon of some kind or someone went to a LOT of video editing effort to fool me about it. 

When you say you 'came into possession of' this thing, it's actually important whether you found it somewhere, or you took it from somewhere. If it appeared for you, for example in your room or in your hands, it's likely that you've gained superpowers, and the bow is part of them. In this case it's probably safe for you to handle them. Almost all powers seem to come with built in safeties for their users. If you found it on the street or in storage somewhere or anywhere else, it's probably someone else's tinkertech and there will be no such protections and your little 'oops' could mean you need to run to the hospital now in case something subtle is wrong. If that's an actual risk, I'd advise you to get it checked out. Secrecy is not worth your life in my opinion.

Also, good on you for taking basic cyber-sanitation. All I found in thirty seconds was your VPN. I won't say it's definitely necessary, but better to have and not need than need and not have.

-SSky

On the one hand wow it's really cool to be talking to you, on the other hand ouch I wish it was for a less That sort of reason!

I did not find the magical artifact on the side of the road, no.  It's mine.  Or it was at least given to me as part of the same coherent powerset, with the arrows.  Goodness knows that I've not the slightest clue if someone made it, as a separate invention, prior to it ending up in my hands, which is honestly one of the things that has bemused me the most about the contrast in what I instinctively expect our respective situations to be.  Like.  You're a Tinker, not a thaumaturgical engineer (Right?).  And then over here I'm getting a magical bow handed to me in my dreams because of reasons.  Which said reasons seem to have mostly been 'for shits and giggles' as best as my limited ability to analyze whatever the fuck that was, suggest.  ...Really, though, there's a lot of things about this that have me scratching my head.

You had a power dream? That's uncommon.

It's sounding like we should maybe talk in person. I'd be up for a few hours of advising and helping you figure your powers out in exchange for scans of it in use.

Yeah, and I still remember it while I'm awake and thinking, which is even weirder than usual for my dreams.  They usually drop out of cache rather quickly, though there's clearly some underlying memory of them given that I have on occasion remembered the future events of a past dream that's being repeated in the now, while I was dreaming - utterly trippy and mostly useless because they never do like attempts to throw them off the rails, but still, an interesting bit of neurology or something.

I'd be quite glad to let you take a look at some of this stuff - if it's possible to crack the thing that I'm pretty sure is straight-up healing into something someone could automate production and perhaps even distribution of, then I have already accomplished a lot of what I hope to achieve with my life.  Bonus points for creating some sort of photo negative of the executive dysfunction arrow, while I'm at it, because dear gods executive dysfunction is absolutely the most awful thing ever.  (This being the one that got 'oops'ed.)

...Though I will admit to some amount of hubristic desire to attempt to crack open the underlying mechanisms of powers qua powers.  There's some things I've already found digging around in the backend that already suggest rather a few interesting implications of future possibilities.

...I wouldn't want to say more on an unsecured line, so, yeah, uh, we probably should meet.  I don't know if I'd know where you work from, these days?  Like obviously the space shuttle in your garage mentioned your garage but if I were you I would have absolutely moved so people stopped trampling down my door about it.

Figuring out powers hasn't really worked so far but I think it's early days yet. It would certainly be the most important modern discovery. I can at the very least help quantify your healing. If it really is healing. I hope you haven't tested it on anyone, least of all yourself.

I'm pretty private and cagy about my actual powers and operations, for bigger fish reasons. I can send you a VTOL jet tho. Same tech as the shuttle believe it or not! I do also realize you don't have THAT much reason to trust me, positive reputation or not. So feel free to suggest precautions.

Goodness, no, I am not that reckless, to test healing I don't know what it even does, on anybody, least of all myself, outside of direly exigent circumstances.  I actually also asked a certain local internationally renowned hospital if they had their own two cents to chip in about the appropriate procedures there, though they clearly don't have your autoresponder, and do have much more bureaucracy, so I haven't heard back from them yet.

Incidentally, by the time we we meet, I'm probably going to have completely forgotten this thought I just had, so I hope you don't mind if I mention that the thought crossed my mind that given certain aspects of the framework under which I believe these arrows may be constructed, there may be multiple pure-ish sources of something that would not otherwise be readily apparent - though, it's equally possible that the visual effects of production choices are purely cosmetic, or that the almost synesthetic pinkness that's part of the 'baseline' is just its own thing...But I do wonder if it could hold true on a wider scale.  ...I suppose I should see if I can make an arrow that comes in 'translucent' the same way the default is pink...

...Okay, I really hope you don't mind me rambling a bit, that sounds kind of absolutely fuckin' nuts when I read it back, especially with the layer of indirection I slapped on, but it does, like, actually contain a thought or two that I want to poke at with, like, better sensors and all that jazz.

...The dramatic irony of your choice of idiom with which to reference opsec sure is dramatic, especially since from my perspective you're the biggest fish in the whole dang pond.  But I do get that you would rather not get caught up in any Grand Games that may be afoot - and neither would I, really, despite my suspicions that this whole thing is one.  So I'd rather follow your lead on actual precautions, because it's not like I understand the threat surface better than you.

Though I suppose there are some modest subterfuges it could be useful to pull, with the local geography and points of interest known to me - like, if you already hang around at JPL I could probably show up - and it's not like I actually have room for a wholeass VTOL in my back yard at the moment!  Or ever, considering that it's a pretty steep hill right into a cul-de-sac.

My VTOLs fit in a driveway and can land on 30 degree slopes. Kind of have to if I want them to replace cars for me! And I suppose I am a pretty big fish in the super pond, but I'm also one of the most visible. There are certainly some who are hiding their existence or ill intentions well, and some of those might be dangerous.

I'm not at all sure what your musings on color have to do with anything. Anything sensitive about your power should wait for a lab visit. 

I wouldn't expect an American hospital to respond quickly, no. By the way, I hope you don't mind the use of lab rats. (For what it's worth, I think 'induced executive dysfunction' is actually a very interesting concept for nonlethal takedowns. Drugs and restraints can both be very dangerous.)

> Drugs and restraints can both be very dangerous

Don't I fucking know it; I've read the literature on that one - thank goodness I've never been on the receiving end of it myself - and it is not pretty.  And yeah, sensitive information is sensitive, I just want to make sure I can pick up my train of thought, so it's good to know the layer of obfuscation worked!  ;P

But anyway, the thing I was hoping to elide over is that your VTOL landing at my house would be, uh, the death of any privacy I could possibly hope to have.  So I figure maybe I could meet it at the airport or something. (Which airport, I'll tell you when we're down to the brass tacks phase, but right now it's a bit premature.)  It's not that much additional travel for me, and I say that as a horrible NEET.

Something came up. Villain.

Negotiate with the bot plz

Bye

Best of luck.  Stay safe out there.

And she can hammer out the details with the Autoresponder, presumably.  Belying its so-called simple responses, if she says so herself, but she supposes she's no way of proving one way or the other short of seeing if her magic affects the computer.  And even then, it could be her own subconscious pressuring her powers, so who knows?

Still, she can't help but think of Person of Interest, for some reason.

(Well.  Because Person of Interest is really fucking cool and also good commentary on the surveillance state and AI risk in practice instead of in Yudkowskian xrisk theory (Hello, Samaritan, yes, she does mean you.).  But also because it's vaguely relevant.  And the music's pretty awesome.)

(...She wonders if Stella's watched it at all.)

Anyway.  She's going to distract herself by seeing if she can a) hover and b) infuse arrows with powers that aren't the ones she natively started with - can she make a levitation arrow, since she can levitate?

AutoResponder will negotiate logistics all day.

She can hover and float slowly in any direction. She can't make any new kinds of arrows. She does get a sense that the colored ones will come back over time.

"...Well fuck you too, magic powers, I want to make cool and new magic arrows."  Can she make a magicless arrow?

This fails to work. 

God.  Dammit.  This should work.  But it doesn't.  Presumably for, fucking, balance reasons or some shit.  She bets she can't even change the ratio of arrows she gets despite the fact that there's no fucking way she's gonna go through nociception arrows as much as she goes through healing ones.  Right, magic?

Grumble grumble.

Anywho.  Other tests: are the arrows, like, sharp at all, or are they just arrow-shaped?