The uncostumed one makes a move toward a fourth, who is keeping as much distance as being backed against a wall will allow. Before he can get within striking range, the distance increases. The space between him and the other two simultaneously shrinks, and the mortal in a black cloak strikes him across the jaw. He has every size advantage and fights back, but any time something should have hit her she turns into a dark gaslike substance and it passes straight through. He goes down quickly.

This is not sorcery. Sorcery can't do that. Even if sorcery does, apparently, work in the mortal world. ...Maybe they've invented some unprecedented applications.

As does her inaudibility, so they can all hear her go: "Eep!"

"We're capes. People with powers, top of the food chain, heroes and villains. I assumed the trick with appearing out of thin air meant you were one. You call them something different where you're from, or are you just from under a rock?" She lowers the weapon, more out of confusion than trust. Denying having heard of capes is at least not what a villain would do. Disappointing.

"Appearing here was not something I did, it's something that happened to me. I was briefly invisible, which I did do but don't seem to be able to re-do which is very confusing from a sorcery theoretic standpoint on both counts but might have had something to do with your 'powers'? I don't know. I'm not a cape, I'm a fairy. And I'm not from under a rock but I am from inside of a tree."

"I mean, if 'cape' just means 'someone who can do things non-sorcerer mortals cannot do', then I'm that for the wings alone, yes."

"...do you know many immortals? Most capes are very much not that."

"Fairies in general are immortal, yes."

"I'm from Fairyland. And if I knew how to make sorcery go back to working like it was a couple of minutes ago I'd go back, not that you haven't been hospitable... Are there several mortal worlds? I didn't know that but it would explain a lot."

"There's at least one other Earth. It's pretty much like this one, just with less capes. But the number two is ridiculous and can't exist, so there might be more. If you're from one, you should probably come talk to someone who outranks us."

"I'm not from an Earth, I'm from Fairyland. I'm given to understand that Earth is round? I am not from a round location."

"I don't mind." Her current best guess is that Vista is the only way to make sorcery work around here, and a gate could take ages to settle and this looks like a lousy place for one.

"Good. Rooftops OK? It's a short trip; we can show you the way." Both capes ascend one, while somehow also not leaving mid-conversation.

Promise flies obligingly after them.

"Oh, by the way, if there's anyone around who doesn't use nicknames they should probably start."

"Why? Capes do, pretty much all of us, but non-capes don't."

"Am I going to meet any non-capes?"

"Well, I'll just avoid those people, then, I guess. And if you meet any other winged people just introduce yourself as Vista."

"Well, if you're lucky they don't do anything, but names let fairies do things. ...With that having been duly warned I don't think I want to completely explain fairies right now. I wasn't expecting the mortal world to be this full of unfamiliar magic and people aiming weapons at me."

Promise doesn't enter the building expecting to need to read the walls, and it's a bit above eye-level, and metal plates with words on them are frankly less attention-getting than the coffee machine over there. She actually doesn't see it.

"I'm a fairy."

"I heard that part. What happens if one tells a fairy one's name?"

"Promise, if this is something that endangers my people I have little tolerance for games. Our precautions might be insufficient, or if we succeed in getting you back to Fairyland some other fairy might come here, or any number of failures. That holds even if you yourself are both completely trustworthy and never slip once. In such a case, I should at least like to know what the danger is."

Sigh. "Apparently there are a lot of Earths and I didn't even gate here, so if you haven't had a lot of fairies visiting in the past it's unlikely to start happening, but I suppose that's reasonable. When a fairy has a person's name then that person is the fairy's vassal until the name is forgotten; vassals must obey orders from their masters and can't harm them. But you already have this policy of the people with the non-sorcery magic powers using nicknames, which are safe."

"Nothing happens if the vassal does not because the vassal does. It's not a choice. Literally impossible orders don't apply, though, if a fairy ordered a mortal - who couldn't fly - to fly then this wouldn't constrain them in any way. Vassals can still, say, stumble and step on their master's feet, but can't plan and then actually take actions that will hurt their master, and self-deception can work around some badly phrased orders but won't help with harm."

Promise staggers into a bookshelf and then slips onto the floor; one of her wings bends in a way that looks quite uncomfortable. She shrieks and flings her arms over her head.

"Promise?" This was unexpected, but at least it's better than the more likely bad outcome. "I needed to make sure you hadn't heard my name anywhere. I'm not going to do anything of the kind again. Can I help you up?"

"I could fly like this if I have to. I could heal myself if sorcery worked, which," she checks, "it isn't. It seems like it works a little bit when Vista is doing the space warping thing. Maybe not well enough to let a gate stabilize, but I don't know yet."

"Shadow Stalker reports that you were invisible when you arrived. While that may well have been in the area of Vista's effect, is invisibility within the scope of what you call a little bit?"

"Continuing to be invisible having already been so, yes. Starting would be harder."

"Vista's power does scale easily, if doing more of it might help. I can have her test it. Some others might be useful as well, depending on what determines how hard it is to use your powers."

"I don't know why sorcery doesn't usually work in the mortal world in the first place. It's not supposed to work at all; my invisibility should have been gone as soon as I came through the tear regardless of where exactly I landed. But if there are several Earths they might work differently and I could have information only about other ones. How long can she apply her power to an area?"

"It lasts until she corrects it. Which she is ordinarily required to do at the earliest opportunity for obvious reasons, but some place suitably unoccupied could be found."

"Then I can try making a gate in the suitably unoccupied place and see if it'll settle."

"Then it sounds like I might really not want to explain them, doesn't it?"

"If you appear vulnerable, the existence of the gates is enough information for the more trigger-happy factions to think it worth a try. I can order Shadow Stalker and Vista not to mention the possibility, unless it's us you're worried about."

"It currently seems like I may need Vista's help to go home, but if you really want to help me go home you don't need a full explanation of everything I can do, and if you don't want to help me go home, I oughtn't tell you."

"If sorcery is not unique to you, this is another addition to the list of concerns if other fairies appear. And I still hold out some hope of recruiting you non-forcibly. Your Master power alone could save quite a few lives."

"Again, you are not about to get a torrent of fairies. Sorcery is not unique to me but most fairies never learn any and it flat out doesn't work under normal conditions here. By 'Master power' you mean the names thing?"

"Yes. We use the word for a general category of power, which includes the names thing."

"And you frequently have people threatening others' lives, whose names you want to hand over to me, who will listen to me telling them not to kill anybody? This is a routine problem you have."

"I don't know what those are. Are they mortals with particularly troubling powers...?"

"Every few months, one of three city-destroying monsters attacks and capes fight it. Heroes and villains call a truce, strictly enforced. We evacuate as best we can, but thousands of civilians die. Your ability offers an outside chance at being the only thing that can stop this entirely."

"If they're monsters, not people, I doubt very much it'll work on them."

"Gates can sometimes take days to settle. And going through Fairyland would be dangerous for you."

"Low speed would make it less effective. Do fairies or sorcerers have any offensive or defensive capabilities?"

"There are a lot of kinds of fairies. I'm pretty harmless as far as natural weapons are concerned, but there are some who have other non-sorcery kind magic which could be hazardous, and sorcerers can do a lot of different things, which I am not presently inclined to list."

"Thank you," Promise tells Vista. She scans the room for sorcerously relevant things. A lot of light sources, but she can work with that. To make sure that this isn't going to be a completely wasted attempt at a gate, she first makes a fairylight, too, hovering above her hand; when it doesn't disappear, she nods to herself and then says, "I should probably mark on the floor where the gate will be. How do you prefer I do that?"

"Whatever non-destructive method is easiest. It's an unimportant room in every way not related to sorcery. Are there any mundane supplies that would help?"

"A pen or something is fine. The sorcery doesn't care about the marks, it would just be so no one wanders into Fairyland by accident. I'm planning to put the gate a mile above the ground, by the by, so I don't recommend that anyone who can't fly follow me even if they want to see the place."

"You're not planning to close it from the other side?"

"I could, if you don't want me to come back after all? I suppose while it's settling you could tell me the Endbringers' names and I can see if they count."

"...I would need to know a little more about them. Besides that they belong in this category. I don't have to encounter them in person."

"That's easy enough." She takes a small rectangle out of a pocket, pokes at it, and in a few seconds is showing Promise a Wikipedia page describing Behemoth. Forty-five feet tall, externally appearing to be made of magma and obsidian, capable of manipulating all known forms of energy, and with a habit of killing capes en masse. A picture accompanies the text, and the full page is very long.

"That's to be expected, unfortunately. They are immune to most ordinary Master powers."

"I can try the others. Or if he may have been called something else first, that might be what counts as his real name."

"Alexandria called him that when he first appeared, if that matters. If there was an earlier name, we have no way of knowing." But she shows the descriptions of the other two anyway.

"No and no, likewise. I'm sorry."

"Because there are fairies there. It's extremely unlikely that any fairies will find my gate in midair, and I will close it when I'm not using it, particularly since I should be able to close it from either side."

"Unless fairies are more dangerous than you've seen fit to mention, we should be able to handle that risk simply by not using names. Certainly not worth avoiding an entire world for."

"You may take that risk as you like, but if one fairy gets one of you that fairy then has all the names that person knows. And fairies as a group are always immortal, often risk-seeking, frequently interested in possessing mortals, and not necessarily opposed to torture or force-feeding. ...Food works more or less like names do."

"I don't know nearly enough about your organization to know if I wish to hand it large strategic advantages, but I am willing to remain nearby and learn more, as long as I'm treated well and can go back to Fairyland through this gate on my own schedule."

"Fairies don't use currency. Or, apart from the Queen herself and the various masters of larger courts, anything resembling government or law enforcement. ...And of course I've never heard of New Wave or Haven."

"Not really."

"I could try explaining from the ground up why having a remotely functional system of laws is better than having none, but the relevant part is that the Protectorate is what stops any sufficiently powerful parahuman from moving to a city with fewer heroes than villains and committing as much crime as they please. Or to be honest, more like limits it."

"I think I have the general idea, but so far I only have your word on any of this. And I still need something to mark the floor with."

Promise marks a roughly door-width distance on the floor. Then she stares at it. Then she reaches into her bag, pulls out a little bit of plant matter, and throws it past the marks. It lands on the floor. She goes and picks it up. "Not an instant settle."

"Any idea where it falls on the scale between instant and days? We can accommodate you for that long if you need it."

"I can't tell in advance. I can just wait here for it, if that's all right."

"Here?" The humans glance around at the enormous empty room. "If you'd prefer. I'll make sure everyone is warned about the names so you're less confined, but leaving wherever you wait is still going to be a risk."

"I wasn't planning to wander around. Sorcery works here, which is very comforting."

"I was packed for a trip when I fell through. I have never eaten mortal food and don't want to start. If I'm going to come back here later I'd like to know more about how the world is, in general. I don't know enough to know what to ask."

"I'm willing to tell you some general things about Fairyland, but I don't have a prepared answer on hand."

"For my own curiosity, why is so much of it in anarchy? Humans have had societies beyond what could be described as someone's court for most of our history, and even capes can be organized. Are most fairies just extremely averse to cooperation?"

"Some fairies do live in largish groups. Mostly breeding kinds. Most individual fairies are breeders, but most kinds of fairies aren't. But there's nowhere as densely populated as the city I just overflew implied. And we can be self-sufficient pretty easily."

"Are capes harder to organize than other mortals?"

"Definitely. Who can gain powers is an essentially random sample, but powers only activate after some form of trauma. I admit some are perfectly well-adjusted individuals, but they're not exactly selected for that. And then they wind up obviously unique, powerful, and socially expected to bash one another's faces in. The general trend is that parahumans are much more likely than normals to do their own thing and in unpleasantly direct ways."

"But mortals in general are pretty easily coordinated, I gather."

"I suppose. To me it always seemed normal."

"How many people live in this city?"

"About three hundred fifty thousand. Brockton Bay is larger than most cities, but there are fifty or so larger in this country alone."

"You'd need to assemble continentsful of fairies to get that many together."

"For us it was mostly made possible by the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It sounds like Fairyland never had those. But the causes are ancient history now; large cities are just taken for granted."

"Fairies do some agriculture, but not in a particularly revolutionary way."

"I'll dig up some information on how it happened and add it to the list, if you're interested. History in general probably wouldn't even need to be redacted, the owners of any names being safely dead."

"...I have heard that humans re-use names a lot."

"You need to avoid hearing names even if there's no one attached? That sounds more dangerous than before."

"It wouldn't do anything by itself, but if I think of a name in connection with another mortal later and it happens to be right that works just as well as being told about someone's name in particular."

Piggot frowns. "If it's that easy, I may have to reconsider the suggestion about telling you some names. Any criminal who isn't too dangerous to get you close to might not be worth the risk to everyone who happens to share their name."

"If names are reused that often, yeah."

"Few names are unique, and some are common. I'll make sure everything is as redacted as possible."

"Okay. I really don't have any plans to mistreat any vassals I acquire here but I understand the desire for caution."

"You did accrue quite a bit of credibility by warning us in the first place. But people are justifiably terrified of Masters, and if it were to come out that we had potentially put random people under the complete control of a previously unknown hero, public opinion would turn against everyone involved in a heartbeat."

"I'd hesitate to describe the control as 'complete'. Vassals can escape sometimes. But yeah."

"Anything else before I arrange for what we've talked about so far?"

"Can these... machine lights be moved out of the way? I'd prefer to do my own lighting."

"They can be turned off easily like this." She flicks the switch on the nearest one, and it winks out. "If you want them moved physically too, I can send someone."

"Yes please. They're... not exactly decorative."

This is true. "All right. None of this should take very long."

"Thank you." Pause. "Oh, there is one thing fairies can do you might find useful that I don't mind doing. Mortals have a lot of different languages, right? I should be able to translate between them very easily and can't think of a good reason not to, if you need that done."

The Director pauses for a bit, then says "We do have translators for the languages that come up, but I'll keep it in mind. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Director Piggot has a lot of Promise-related paperwork. But first she digs up the introductory explanation on "so you appeared on Earth Bet with no memory," and directs minions to help arrange Promise's accommodations. Then she gets down to making sure everything Promise said is officially known to the PRT.

Promise reads the pamphlet. It is not really intended for her, but it is still interesting and informative. When the lights have been taken away, she fills the room with a scattering of fairylights. Occasionally she throws a bit of plant stem through where the gate will be. She puts off eating for the time being; she didn't bring that much food. She asks a minion for paper to draw on, though, and doodles.

At a point where no one else is present, a dark gaseous form glides through the door and solidifies. "Hello again, fairy."

"Hello. ...It's Promise."

"I was already invisible when I arrived, and certainly didn't understand enough of what was going on to be confident in helping more than I hurt if I did something. The Director has already confirmed that my 'Master power' doesn't work on Endbringers and might consider it too much of a risk to give me any more common mortal names. I did offer to do translation as long as I'm here."

"...Do you have a point?"

She shrugs. "Not really. I just came to find out if you were a fighter or a victim. Wasn't expecting it to be that obvious. But at least you'll fit right in with the rest of these people."

"Is this a normal classification mortals make amongst themselves or just you?"

"Some don't. Others pretend not to. But when things get bad enough that's the question that matters."

"Who exactly would you have me fighting? Property thieves?"

"Thieves. Drug pushers. Murderers. Rapists. And the capes that protect them. We've got all kinds of scum here."

"If you bring me a murderer or rapist and tell me what their name is, I will be willing to tell them to stop that. Sorcery is not a suitable field weapon in this world."

"You can go invisible. I don't know what else you can do, but don't tell me you can't fight. If you choose not to, that's you choosing."

"I can turn invisible in this room. If I walk out the door, that ends. Sorcery doesn't work in most parts of the mortal world."

"Your powers were working when I took down that guy today. If you wanted it to be a weapon, it'd be a weapon. But if you're opposed to fighting effectively like the Pig is, that's on you."

"The what?"

"The Director. It's a nickname. She's always on my case about going easy on the bad guys, no serious injury and all that, even though I know for a fact that some have gotten away because of it."

Shadow Stalker freezes for a fraction of a second, then recovers. "So what? You going to do anything to her?"

"You know what I bet? I bet she knows your name."

"She's not going to tell you, and you can't make her without letting her know you know hers. Obvious bluff."

"I'm planning to tell her that I have it and where I got it."

"She can find out anyway. I told her how to check. If she wants me gone all she has to do is not invite me to come back again after my gate settles."

"She'll have to invite you back. You're less replaceable than she is and she knows it. But even before the gate's ready, you tell her and that door stays locked."

"I have no particular desire to wander around."

"You tell her and the PRT considers you a threat, is what I'm saying. And you don't have any reason to, unless it's to get back at me for letting it slip."

"What part of she can check is unclear to you?"

"I can't help but notice that this would be convenient for you, while I was planning to stay in this room until my gate settled anyway."

"Doesn't mean it's wrong."

"I really don't care if they lock the door. I have enough paper to entertain myself. I will tell the Director what happened the next time I see her."

"Maybe I'll tell them first, see what precautions they come up with."

"I'm hardly going to stop you."

Stalker disappears, either to talk to the Director or to go punch something. Probably not both.

Promise draws.

Promise has learned from her informative visitors what Tinkers are. "...That is tentatively okay with me."

The Tinkers, when they arrive, look less like nerdy inventor types than people who might have their own action figures. One, a tall man in blue armor, skips straight to business. "I'm Armsmaster. We've heard that what you can do is a different kind of thing from powers, and more versatile than most. Can you demonstrate some sorcery?" As he speaks, he's setting up unrecognizable sensory equipment.

"They might, but not obviously. Some things affect harmonics, more obviously - sorcery has feedback effects with it; living things affect harmonics; other things back in Fairyland like sky islands or crystal deposits or mercury wells can have bizarre harmonic patterns around them."

"I don't know. I've never been to these in person and the book I read that in didn't include harmonic maps or a verbal comparison."

"If you give me a moment to make a quick map of part of the area it will affect while it's not affecting it, and then when it is, yes."

"Of course." It slows down to ordinary pendulum speed, and collapses back into the halberd shape.

"It can be stable." It rearranges itself again, and Armsmaster holds it steady while the chain lowers the sphere.

"I could probably build something to have more of that effect. Would it help if I did, or is the change in a wrong direction?"

"The important thing isn't that the harmonics be anything in particular, the important thing is that I know what I'm working with. If you think Vista's power is just spreading out the normal harmonics of this world, that makes a lot of sense; it means that under conditions where she hasn't done anything, all of the slopes are very sharp and change too rapidly for me to adjust and instantly shred sorcery in it. The optimum casting condition would be completely flat or even absent harmonics; I think the natural condition of the world must be chaotic noise."

"If that is what stops people from being able to do sorcery, this is very likely worth trying. How hard is it for humans to learn?"

"No harder than it is for fairies, I imagine, although where this gate will take me I don't know where to find a library and it might take me a while to get books."

"And how hard is it for fairies? I'm told you're immortal; we might weigh time investments differently." As he speaks, Armsmaster dismantles the piece of his halberd they tested and tinkers with the inside.

"I've lost track, but I think I'm less than a hundred years old. I started learning sorcery when I was very new. I'm pretty talented at it, but I could do simple things within a few years of work."

"What would be a reasonable amount of progress in the first few weeks? Assume ideal harmonics." He reconfigures the machinery, doesn't bother closing the casing, and turns it on. "Map the area again, please."

"With flat harmonics you could probably learn to do lights in the first few weeks, and maybe one other thing, like purifying water or warming things up." She re-maps the area.

"Or cooling things down?" He checks the sensors to tell what non-harmonics things were affected by the altered device, then rearranges it again and holds it out.

"Yes, that too." Re-map.

"Gates are complicated. I'd been a sorcerer for years before I picked up the skill and it took me weeks."

"Not that, then. Healing? Or making myself stronger?"

"I learned healing pretty early but it's complicated and you really have to know what you're doing or nasty things can happen, which would probably be worse for a mortal than for a fairy, you could actually die doing it wrong... making yourself stronger I don't actually know how to do, but it seems doable, I could probably figure it out, but it's not common or basic."

"The cooling alone could let me fight Behemoth for that much longer, but if it's just that I'd be better off working on something else. What do combat sorcerers usually do in your world?"

"Depends on the end goal. Turn other fairies into animals, sometimes. Fire and lightning and ice. The opposite of healing is strictly speaking easier than healing, all else being equal. Occasionally rapid plant growth sees combat use."

"Because they'd try to take it, or just removing competition?"

"Usually a fight between two sorcerers of similar skill is decided by who knows the territory better. A harmonics-flattener would destroy that advantage and replace it with an advantage from the person who knew the harmonics were flat, but only until that occurred to their opponent."

"The opposite effect - to make mortal-world type harmonic noise in Fairyland?"

"Or something similarly chaotic, yes. Then whoever has the machine would at least know which state the battlefield is in and when."

"Good sorcerers can adapt to conditions very rapidly, but yes, that might make a large difference."

"Do sorcerers fight one another often?"

"No, not really. It's usually too obvious who'd win."

After a particularly favorable result on the next test, Armsmaster asks "Can you try this one outside?"

The Tinkers set up the enormous mass of incomprehensibility and turn it on.

Promise attempts a fairylight in the affected area.

It flickers and stabilizes, then winks out. "Two point seven seconds. Good, needs to be better."

"By a lot. Lights are the simplest thing. If it shredded a light that fast, invisibility or something like that wouldn't last long enough to be worth casting."

"Traditionally, the first test doesn't work at all. We can probably have one that lasts a useful time by... do fairies need to sleep?"

"Yes."

"Probably some time tomorrow."

"That would be nice, especially if I'm going to be traveling back and forth and doing things here."

"The device won't last forever – maybe years, not centuries – but I can maintain it in exchange for sorcery training. Though I imagine the Protectorate would want me to keep it working anyway."

"I haven't fully decided how comfortable I am working with the Protectorate. It seems... well-intentioned, and I'm not sure how high a standard is realistic for human organizations, but..."

"Without the Protectorate, the country would have fallen apart ten years ago. Probably the world. It's not the only thing preventing that, but it's the main one, and working with us is definitely better than not doing it."

"I don't really have a good understanding of why one might value a country per se. Or what you mean by 'fallen apart'. How do you know what would have happened?"

"For one, it's the reason we don't have powerful parahumans proclaiming themselves warlords of Brockton Bay. There was one, before my time, but the heroes stopped him. Other places don't have a Protectorate, and sometimes they do have exactly that happen. And in Endbringer fights it's more often than not this group that makes the difference."

"I think we've more or less determined that my abilities are a nonentity versus Endbringers."

"Directly, yes. That's true of most capes. You'd be surprised how many powers can be useful in support roles, and for yours I don't even have to think very hard."

"What do you have in mind?"

"I'm good enough at healing that I won't accidentally kill anyone, although healing strangers is dicey. The gates would have to go through Fairyland; gates in general only go between worlds, not point to point within them. And that has its own pitfalls. I can do darkness; I don't know about radiation shielding. I can freeze water, but I don't know how large a quantity you have in mind."

"I could maybe put them very close together so that you'd spend almost no time at all between them."

"Then they'd only go between two cities instead of to anywhere with a gate, but I'm sure the people making the call would be in favor if you tell them Fairyland is that dangerous."

"Gates don't take long to make, anyway, it's only that they take a while to settle if they don't do it right away." She goes back into her Vistaed room and throws something at her gate in progress.

"Well, according to my informative pamphlets that's the socially responsible thing to do, but I'm a little concerned about how filtered my information has been. I'll probably want to retain independent status regardless of whether I wind up following 'independent' with 'hero' or 'rogue' and regardless of how much work I wind up doing with the Protectorate. I suspect trying to fit me into a formal organization intended for mortals would not work very well."

"I didn't plan on it."

"One thing I'm concerned about is that if I go out and about I'm more likely to run across someone's name by mistake. I managed to get a name I wasn't even looking for by sitting in my room keeping to myself except when visited. If I travel to make gates and heal and so on... The nature of the power makes it very easy for people to try to use me as a weapon against each other, and however scrupulous I am about that this will eventually make someone very frightened of me, I expect. I'm worried that eventually that will get ugly."

"Well, then I suppose I can sit around healing people as best I can during Endbringer fights. But it's harder to heal people I haven't observed for a while beforehand."

"You won't have that. They'd be from all around the world, even more so if you agree to make gates. And many of them are villains outside of the truce, whom I hope you aren't going to spend much time around."

"Well, I could probably still do it if the harmonics were flat and there were no distractions in the room. ...Probably just ordinary mortals; I wouldn't know what to do with a Case 53 unless a lot of those are secretly fairies, which I imagine would have been noticed."

"There's no one who both looks like a fairy and has similar Master powers."

"We don't all look alike, but the Master power is consistent, yes."

"A few capes can give and enforce commands, and the reliance on names could theoretically be hidden. But they don't seem to operate that way, and none of them have wings."

"Probably not fairies, then. Do you need me to make you any more harmonic maps or are you all set?"

"We can't test the intermediate versions without them. If you need us to leave you alone, by the time we return we'll have something that seems like it should work, but it will have been built blind."

The device is making progress. A few times one cape or the other will leave and come back with tools or parts; part of the huge room is turning into an impromptu workshop. When one of the attempts manages to make the harmonics within the room undetectably close to flat, they move the equipment closer to the door and keep working.

Promise can make finer-grained maps if they're getting that close. And three-dimensional maps.

Promise does eventually need to sleep.

Physical needs are inconvenient. But when she turns down their offer of advanced stimulants they are capable of acknowledging that decision. They'll be back the next day.

And Promise curls up on the bed she was supplied, with her bag under her arm and a ward around her and it both.

They leave a cell phone and instructions for whenever she wants to continue. They never did ask how much down time fairies prefer, and for that matter Armsmaster has more or less forgotten how much humans who aren't him do.

Well, Promise sleeps for about eight hours and then tests her gate and nibbles on her food and calls.

"This is Armsmaster. You're ready to resume?"

"Yes, whenever you like."

Fairylight!

It works as expected. Then Armsmaster touches a switch and the fairylight gets shredded. "That was the easy part. And outside?"

Fairylight. At least for longer than a few seconds. After a minute or so, "Can you try something more complicated?"

She attempts to turn invisible.

She disappears—not according to his vibration sensors, Armsmaster notes, though maybe she has something else for that—and a few minutes later the machine starts smoking. Promise reappears and the light stops.

"Is it supposed to smoke like that?"

"No. But it means the problem was with building it, not designing it. Should be easier to fix." As he and Dragon resume working on it, Armsmaster asks, "How does your translation work? I was almost expecting the phone call to come through as gibberish."

"I don't really know. I just talk, and people can understand me when I talk, and I can understand them, and it seems strange that mortals do it any other way. As though you've invented an elaborate code or something. But how it works I couldn't tell you."

"It's not as if it's logically impossible. Time to express something isn't constant; maybe some people would just think fairies talk faster or slower to get through however many words it is in their language."

"Maybe. You're welcome to have me talk to people who speak denser or more spread-out languages and see what they say, I guess, I did say I don't mind translating."

So Promise does another map to check - "confirm flatness" is a lot faster than "map complexity" - and then she turns invisible again.

It outlasts the last attempt with no loss of the magic smoke. "This might be premature, but it seems to have worked. Try adding more sorcery, as complex as you can, and see if it gets overwhelmed."

The device's power consumption rises (marginally; Promise's sorcery affects harmonics far less than being in the mortal world does) but it continues to not explode.

Presently she zeroes everything out, except the hair growth, which stays. "Putting it further through its paces would begin to be difficult."

"That's good; it means it can handle at least as much as it's likely to need to. Though I wouldn't recommend relying on this for anything important until its duration has been tested more. Tested by something other than long-term invisibility, obviously."

"I could bring it back to Fairyland and try using it to grow plants rapidly. I can work on that for hours, and if I'm interrupted it's not a disaster."

"That works as well as anything else."

"In a day or two, depending." She picks up the flattener. "How do I work this?"

"This button turns it on or off, that switch is if you want to reverse the effect, and you can alter the affected area with these knobs. If it breaks there isn't likely to be much you can do about it, but ask me and I'll fix it. By the time you're back we'll have a proposition drawn up about the gates, and hopefully some way to convince you to work with us."

The human successfully becomes less stabbed, and assumes Promise is a cape. She manages to cough out a brief description: teleporter, temporary duplicates stay behind, watch out for suicide bombings. He's got to be here to rescue Lung, locked up three floors down but he'll be checking them one at a time.

"Do you know the teleporter's name?"

On the way, she passes more injured people. Not all of them are dead yet.

She heals them all. She's good at it. The flatness helps.

"If we all want to operate in the dark, I can make it dark."

The humans confer briefly, and then decide. "Do it. But be ready to cancel it, he has to have come prepared. If that means his own light source we're good, if it means night vision we're doomed."

"I can bring the darkness down?"

"Just briefly. We don't know his status."

The darkness goes.

Promise goes dark. She got a look at the human she was talking to; she can heal that one in flat harmonics even in the dark.

Fighting blind, the numbers advantage means less than it could, but at least no teleporting is going on. The attacker is still better at close combat than they are, and he starts taking the defenders out of commission one after the other. Simultaneously, explosions start coming from inside Lung's cell.

With the darkness gone, the teleporter deserves that title again. He doesn't see the blood right away, but one of him is immediately charging through the area where the yelp came from while another follows up on the impact with a knife.

Now that he knows where she is, he's going to continue stabbing until he's confident she's dead. A stream of containment foam comes from a still-active PRT agent, but he's facing away. Even if all of it hit him he could teleport out. And killing the cape takes priority.

Her attacker doesn't know. He stops after enough wounds to kill most Brutes. Then he teleports repeatedly, gives each agent a stab to make sure they are and stay down, and three of him resume throwing explosives toward Lung.

"Stop," Promise adds, now to include her new vassal.

They are thoroughly and truly stopped.

"You may, without in any way inconveniencing me, breathe," she adds magnanimously, and then she goes from PRT agent to PRT agent, leaving bloody footprints, and heals.

He does. "Wasn't counting. More than five, less than fifty. A few dozen maybe."

The agent nods. Then she speaks into a gadget, "Healer on-site. I'm giving her my radio, direct her to your location if someone is injured," and hands it to Promise.

"Thank you." Promise takes the radio. She follows its directions.

"Birdcage, no question. Uh, that's the prison built for parahumans that can't be held normally."

"...And the parahumans therein do what with their time? From a 'stop' order I have to either be quite thorough or risk being overgeneral. The alternative is inhumane."

"Do? No idea. I know they have TV stations, books and things get sent in every so often, there's probably some kind of rec facilities. Far as I care, they spend all their time not killing innocent people." The rest generally agree with the sentiment.

Neither of them chooses to.

The minion doesn't ask why, but speculates. And escorts Promise toward the Director's office.

Promise sits outside of the Director's office and tells the minion, "Please tell the Director that as I understand it, the conditions of the Birdcage are considered necessary for containing dangerous parahumans because the only way mortals have to reliably do it is to send them on a one-way trip into a pit ruled by unpoliced sociopaths, and that since I can contain dangerous parahumans by telling them to be contained, I submit that I should retain custody of Oni Lee and Lung unless they themselves prefer the Birdcage for some reason. I am happy to do this by putting them in Fairyland if it would upset people to have them here."

"Oni Lee stabbed me enough times that I think I have an idea of why locking him up for the rest of his life might be appealing, and I appreciate the fact that I'm a single point of failure - but it seems like there could be reasonable precautions taken that would mitigate that considerably. Also, Sarkany described it as though she personally controlled the Birdcage as-is, and she is also only one person. Who seems perfectly nice, but apparently didn't have any better ideas than 'pit of unpoliced sociopaths'."

"I don't necessarily have to be the only factor involved. If they can't hear me, I can't order them; I could give them some reasonable starting set of orders to let them coexist without tormenting each other and a second facility, run by Sarkany if that's the going consensus, which I can't get into, could be established. But I feel responsible enough for them that I don't want them thrown into the existing Birdcage to have their welfare all but ignored for the rest of their lives. Without my help they would be completely at large and more of the wounded would be dead; is this the only time it will be convenient to have me willing to assume mastery of a supervillain?"

"There are others. Some even more dangerous than Lung and with names we already know." Notably including one Emily has some history with. "Are you saying you would be unwilling to capture such people as long as villains are being sent to the Birdcage?"

"I don't like it when mortals die, but you're all going to do it anyway eventually. I really don't like it when people torment other people, and that, you are not necessarily going to do anyway. I am willing to remove your threats. I will find something else useful to do with my time, though, if the only place I can remove them to is unnecessary torment. I have no wish to legitimize, say, Canary's imprisonment, which Sarkany mentioned."

"If my choices were only 'fill the Birdcage' or 'do nothing whatsoever', then I would probably go with the former. But I have other options. I could, for example, find a library of sorcery back in Fairyland, learn to de-age mortals, and do that all day long. No obvious distressing side effects and a nice beneficial effect on local mortal lifespan. I assume old age does still sometimes kill people even with supervillains running around."