She is in a room that appears to be covered in swirls of colored light that shift and slide and mix with each other in a way that ought to leave them all either a muddy brown or simply white, depending on if you use the color-mixing rules for paint or light, but aren't; yet fail to obscure the view of whatever is on the other side of them. 

The room itself is some kind of amphitheater, a rounded triangle with an enormous thronelike chair at each corner. 

Oh.

This is in fact a pretty alarming variety of Somewhere Else.

(But she feels so proud of herself. She was fearless. She was like a superhero!)

She takes a few steps. Stumbles.

Does this trippy rainbow room have doors? Windows?

Ember turns in a slow circle, taking her surroundings in as best she can.

The room doesn't appear to have doors. 

--But part of one wall depresses and slides in, and a woman appropriately sized for one of the thrones strides in. Other obvious physical traits besides her size include her extreme pinkness; her skin is magenta and her hair is a pale pale poofy pink like someone salted a cloud with a hint of pink lemonade. 

She initially heads for one of the thrones--one with some kind of pink gemstone set into the top--but spots Ember almost immediately and changes direction to come towards her. 

This situation is almost terrifying in its absurdity, but Ember's blood still surges with frantic heroism and she does not back down as the giant bears down on her.

"My husband is a very powerful man. He won't be pleased if I'm harmed."

If the statement doesn't work in English, she'll try it in French. If it doesn't work in French she'll try it in Vietnamese. If it doesn't work in Vietnamese, she's in trouble.

The statement works in English. 

"I'm not planning to harm you," the woman says, shrinking as she walks until she's only slightly taller than Ember. "I want to know how you got here, but in my experience, when people show up randomly in parts of this palace it's more likely to be by accident than to plot an assassination."

"It wasn't an accident. I was sent here by a tinker-tech weapon..."

"...where is here, anyway?"

She sweeps an arm around, grinning briefly. 

"This is the royal palace of the Lightpeople Empire. It's prettier in parts that aren't courtrooms."

“And I’m not a prisoner here or anything?”

This seems like a reasonable thing to clarify when deposited into an enclosed room by a villainous cape’s portal gun.

"No. Not unless you are in fact an assassin."

“I have absolutely no desire or meaningful capacity to kill anyone.”

Except maybe Displacer Beast.

She’s pretty sure she bought enough time just now for the maniacal tinker to be harmlessly subdued...

...but if she didn’t? If she gets back to find her husband’s hurt or killed?

Then, cape or no, Ember will hunt Displacer Beast to the ends of the Earth and throttle the life from him with her own hands.

"I thought as much. Are you alright? What exactly happened?"

“We were attacked in the street in broad daylight. The enemy cape—a deranged tinker—tried to get the jump on us using a portal.”

”I threw myself in the way, between him and my husband. He hit me with the beam from some weird tinker-tech contraption... and then I suddenly found myself here?”

"Can you tell me what a cape is, in context?"

The hell kind of provincial backwater speaks perfect English but doesn’t know what a cape is?

“A small subset of the human population has the potential to develop superpowers when subjected to intense trauma. The specific powerset varies based on the type of trauma that triggers them. After triggering, such individuals are called capes.”

“I’m not a cape, and all signs point to me never being one. You, on the other hand, clearly are: I definitely saw you sizeshift just a minute ago.”

"Oh, no, I'm simply not human."

...

...

"...is this Earth?"

"Not at all. This isn't any Earth, of which there are several." She gives her a sympathetic smile. "If all you wanted was to be on an Earth, that would be trivial, but since I imagine you'd rather be returned to yours and I've never heard of this cape thing before, I imagine it will take some time."

Oh no. This isn't okay.

"Some time" before she even knows how far she is from home.

"Some time" before she even knows if he's alive or dead.

Deep breath. Calm. Calm. Calm.

Ember was expecting to be obliterated when she threw herself in front of Displacer Beast, she reminds herself. This is objectively less bad than that.

"Okay. What do I need to do?"

She clasps her hands excitedly. 

"Tell me everything."

An astute voice in the back of her head points out that this whole sequence of events sure does conspicuously resemble a post-abduction interrogation.

Ember needs to do anything she can to get back home, but she also absolutely cannot risk compromising any details of clandestine superheroic enterprises to somebody who might be in cahoots with Displacer Beast..?

Okay. She can strike a balance here. Everything she knows about Earth's history. Everything she learned in college about how the world works. Nothing personal. Nothing about her household. Nothing one of their enemies could use against them.

"So, the first humans appeared on Earth about two hundred thousand years ago..."

Pink nods along, occasionally commenting. 

Everything up until Scion appeared is pretty standard. 

"Right. That was in 1982. By 1987, you started seeing capes of all sorts cropping up. These days, they make up somewhere between 0.01% and 0.1% of the population..."

"What kinds of powers do capes have?"

"A lot of power classification systems have cropped up over the years, but the PRT's 12-Category Threat Response system sees the most widespread use these days. You've got Striker and Blaster powers, which inflict harm up close or at range respectively. You've got Brute and Mover powers--the former enhance strength or durability, the latter enhance movement. Tinker and Thinker are cognitive enhancements: Tinker allows people to go into fugue states where they can construct alien technology, Thinker gives more direct augmentation to information gathering and processing. Changer and Breaker are easy to mix up--Changer powers alter your shape and form, while Breaker powers straight up replace your body with something else... I could explain better, but it'd take a long time, I actually wrote a college essay about it back in the day..." Ember stops, takes a quick breath of air, and then dives back into her ongoing list. "Master powers let a cape control people or create minions. Stranger powers make a cape harder to detect. And, hmmm... Shaker has a powerset that can impact a wider area and a Trump has a powerset that can impact powers themselves."

"Interesting," she says thoughtfully. "What would healing be, in that system? Matter conjuration?"

Oh, this is fun. It's like a Parabiology Quiz.

"Self-healing is a fairly common manifestation of the Brute powerset, and can also crop up among Changers or Breakers. Other-healing is a rare and valuable power possessed only by a handful of individuals--it's often a manifestation of the Tinker powerset. Matter Conjuration can crop up as part of almost any powerset--some Blasters can conjure projectiles, some Masters can conjure creatures--but plays an almost mandatory role for Breakers. You can't have an alternate material form without getting it from somewhere, right?"

"Yes, that does follow...what about something like this?" she asks, producing an opaque wineglass the same color as her skin. "It's not for throwing at anyone, it's not a creature, and it's not part of me."

"Well, if it doesn't have the potential to make you or anyone else substantially more threatening, then it has no PRT Threat Response classification?"

"Oh, I see." She frowns. "Why is the most popular classification a Threat Response one?"

"It turns out that when you give extraordinary power to a random cross-section of the human population whose only unifying characteristic is having recently experienced overwhelming trauma..."

Ember sighs. The academic excitement buoying her through earlier questioning has drained from the girl very suddenly.

"Not all capes are threats to public wellfare. But for every good cape like the one I married, there are two or three deranged maniacs like the one that attacked us this morning."

Softly: "That sounds unfortunate."

“...is this getting you closer to being able to send me back?”

"The more I know about your world, the more easily I'll be able to find it."

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. Heroic capes usually have better access to organization and resources, and a lot of the more dangerous capes are in custody instead of out on the streets, and there have been some success cases with rehabilitation programs...”

"That's good..."

“...though we do also have these apocalypse monsters called Endbringers that show up every once in a while and try to destroy everything, so that’s not great?”

"Apocalypse monsters. No, that doesn't sound great."

Ember paces a little. Fidgets.

"So um, you're not human... but you know about humans, from Earths aside from mine you've been to?"

"Oh, yes. I've spent quite a lot of time there."

"So, um, food and drink and other things along those lines won't be a problem around here? I haven't eaten since yesterday, and..."

"Oh, of course!"

She reaches out a hand and a flat plane appears parallel to her palm; after a few moments of rippling it clears up into a portal to what seems to be a beach. 

More portals?

Okay, sure, the giant magenta lady seems nice enough. She'll go for it.

The giant magenta lady steps through the portal after her, and--ripples--and then there is a large human woman standing there instead. She strides off cheerfully to a house against the cliffs. 

So she's either looking at a Mover+Breaker who just shifted back to natural human form, or an actual alien with some sort of Mover+Changer equivalent for whom a human face is just one more mask to wear...

Well, either way. A high level Mover is a high level Mover. If Ember wants to get back where she came from (which she does!) then sticking close to somebody with a Mover rating is her best bet.

She follows the woman, scanning the beach and the cliff side as she goes.

The beach is very beachy. Some people are on it; none of them take any particular notice of the portal. A few of them wave to her host; she waves back. 

Ember hustles to catch up with her host, drawing alongside her as they reach the foot of the cliff.

”My name’s Ember, by the way?”

"I'm Pink! Or Rose, when I'm wearing a human skin."

“Okay, I think I can keep track of that.”

Ember keeps right on Rose’s heels as they approach the front door of the house.

Rose throws the door open and calls: "I brought a guest! She got lost in the palace and she's not magic but her world has an interesting magic system!"

A human-looking girl in her late teens or early twenties looks up from her book. "Oh, fun! I'm Sharon."

“Ember, nice to meet you.”

"Neddy's coming over later, if you need space we can scoot." She looks at Rose and the two of them have some kind of silent exchange. "Kaiju problems, huh? That sucks."

Ember updates her mental model of her host’s powerset, shuffles by and finds a spot to sit down.

Sharon scoots over on the couch. 

"So, um, I guess I should expect to be here a while?"

"Probably! I'll make up the guest bed, do you have any dietary requirements or sleep habits that need accommodating or anything?"

"If 'human' means approximately the same thing here that it does back where I come from, then not really? I'm a little asthmatic and I don't do great with shellfish, but neither of those're likely to kill me."

"If 'human' doesn't mean the same thing to both of us, though? Then things could get Very Complicated."

"May I check?"

"Sure."

She takes one of Ember's hands and hums for a moment.

"Everything looks perfectly normal."

"...even my brain? There aren't, um, any weird growths up there that humans from around here don't have?"

"...No?"

Fuck.

...

"Well. Um. I guess that means dietary stuff will probably be a cinch?"

"I'm sorry," she says at the look on Ember's face. "I take it that means something to you."

"It means I'll definitely never get superpowers of my own."

"I knew the odds weren't good. Most people destined to trigger, unless they have really idyllic lives, do so before my age. But if I don't have a corono pollentia?" Ember taps the side of her head, pointing out the spot where the brain growth would have been. "That settles the matter. It'll never happen to me."

"Aw, that sucks. But cheer up, there's lots of kinds of magic out there, you can probably learn some."

Oh wow she doesn't know exactly what Rose means by 'magic' in this context but she knows she wants it.

She wants to get back to her husband more, though.

"Huh that's... certainly something I'd like to learn more about sometime? But before learning anything else here, I think my priority is learning how to get home..."

"Yeah, that makes sense. Good luck."

"Could I get some water? And maybe a bite of local cuisine--probably better to find out sooner rather than later whether I can definitely stomach it?"

"Sure," she says, putting her book down and loping off to the kitchen. She comes back a couple minutes later with a glass of water and a plate of rotini with meatsauce. 

Ember partakes warily...

...and finds the taste no different than the food she left behind.

“Well. Transdimensional amenities continue to be way more convenient than they have any right to be!”

“Thank you.”

"You're welcome."

"Earths are remarkably similar in some ways and amazingly diverse in others."

“So, um, what’s the mechanism involved in getting from one Earth to another?”

Ember glances around. It sounds, from what Rose just said, that they’re on an Earth now...

"Oh, it's less about Earths and more about--some worlds are adjacent to each other, and others aren't, and you can only go directly between adjacent worlds, usually--there have been exceptions but none of them scale so far--and it's possible to create portals between adjacent worlds! A lot of them are permanent but I can create temporary ones."

“Does that apply to all sort of portals, do you think? Even tinker-tech ones?”

"That they go between adjacent worlds? I suppose I don't know enough about tinker-tech to be sure but I can't see why they wouldn't."

“So that means my Earth has to be adjacent to wherever it was you found me. Because the tinker-tech Displacer Beast used... it didn’t take me anywhere else in between, it portal’d me straight from the site of the ambush to that trippy rainbow room...”

"Yes."

Eeeeee!

This all sounds like good news to Ember!

(She was sure she was going to die. But now not only does she get to live, she gets to go back too? It seems almost too good to be true!)

"It'll still probably take a while," Sharon offers apologetically. "Lots of worlds are adjacent to Lighthome."

"Mmmm. Well." Stay positive. There's no point in not being positive, is there. "I should keep just fine until that happens. And I'll do whatever I can to help, and to make helping me worthwhile. I know that, as a baseline, I don't have much to offer... but of what I have, I'll offer it all."

"That's the spirit! Don't worry too hard about being useful, everyone has something of their own to contribute."

"Dad's as baseline human as you are, and we like him fine."

Oh wow, this sounds like Such A Good Place.

(A good wholesome family. Maybe she and Sharon's Dad can compare notes? So few people understand the stresses and the joys involved in being a baseline who's adjacent to a superhuman.)

"Alright. Please let me know what I could make myself most useful with? I'm good at keeping spaces clean and at tending to clothes... I can cook too but my skill at that's only so-so..." She stops, thinking through her skillset, and laughs a little. "Oh, and I graduated college with a degree in Philosophy? I haven't found much use for that yet, though."

"Is fun a use?" Sharon asks. 

"Yeah, I guess so."

(Ember is very fun. She is used for fun frequently. That is certainly a thing she's reasonably good at...)

"Philosophy isn't very practical, but things don't have to be!"

"Right, yes!"

Philosophy. Of course that's what she'd meant.

(For a second there Ember's mind had gone somewhere else and she has no idea why. She can just be kind of dumb about things sometimes?)

"Dad's a musician; it worked out well for him, but, y'know."

"Mmhmmm. I was fearsome debater at your age. A natural firebrand."

"But then I settled down, same as I imagine your dad did, and I've gotten a little rusty..."

"Oh, Dad still plays! Just not as professionally. Got anything you wanna debate?"

"No. Not right now."

(Starting a random argument, on an alien planet, with the nice people taking her in seems like Possibly Not The Best Idea.)

"Oh well. Let me know if you think of something, that sounds like fun."

"Okay."

"Neddy," it turns out, is a pretty girl Sharon's age; she shows up and the two leave. 

Sharon's dad--Greg, or "Mr. Universe," as Rose flirtatiously calls him--shows up a few hours later. He doesn't bat an eye at Ember.

Greg doesn’t look the way Ember expects the baseline spouse of a high-level-cape-equivalent-to.

(He’s too schlubby. Too round.)

Maybe schlubby is the height of attractiveness here? All beauty is culturally mediated, after all, and she’s a long way from home...

(If she gets stuck here she’ll need to gain weight.)

Why is she thinking like that? She’s going home. 

“Hello, I’m Ember. Nice to meet you.”

"Hey! Nice to meet you too," he says, offering her his hand. 

(Rose is on the heavy side too, but Pink and Sharon weren't. More data needed?)

She takes Mr. Universe's hand and shakes it in what she hopes parses in the local culture as a gesture of friendly greeting (if language lines up across dimension, why not assume handshakes work the same here too)?

"So, it looks like I might be staying with your family for a while. I was just talking to Sharon and Rose a little while ago about making myself useful here until they can find the dimension I came from."

"Oh, I'm from another dimension by the way. Just in case nobody mentioned that?"

"It happens," he says, rubbing the back of his head. "Don't worry too much about being useful here, we've got everything we need."

"Okay!" Ember replies in what she hopes is the chipper tone of a person not viscerally terrified by the prospect of not being useful.

"So, hey, you want the grand tour?"

"That'd be great!"

Ember rises from the couch and stretches her legs.

The house is a little on the large side, but not by a whole lot: certainly not any kind of mansion or anything. Greg and Rose's room, Sharon's room, a handful of guest bedrooms, kitchen, living room, rec room. No separate dining room, just a kitchen table. Comfortable. Homey. Hospitable. 

This is a good house. These are good people. She is lucky.

As they pass the guest rooms: "Do you know which one's mine?"

"No, which?"

Ember jumps a little.

(Does Rose have a Stranger rating too? No, probably not, Ember is just unobservant.)

"Um, this one looks nice." She gestures at the guest room she currently stands at the entryway of.

"Any reason in particular?"

"Um."

"May I have some time to think it over, actually?"

"...Sure."

Oh gosh why is she tripping over this so hard?

(She has difficulty making decisions.)

Does not!

(Then explain why it seems so tricky to pick out a room to sleep in...)

She just had a near death experience. She's in another dimension.

Of course day-to-day stuff is gonna give her trouble for a while?

Ember gives Rose a quick nod and a smile.

She scurries off to give the available guest rooms a close look and, hopefully, discover that she has a preference for one of them...

(...or, failing that, at least come up with a valid-sounding excuse for picking one of them at random?)

Some of the guest rooms have pretty beach views. 

Sharon and Neddy are out on the beach. Neddy is theoretically trying to read, and Sharon is foiling her by putting on lightshows more interesting than the book. 

Looks like she inherited her mom's powers. She looks considerably less human right now, albeit much more recognizable as Sharon than Pink is as Rose. 

Hmmm, okay, so she likes the beach view.

Next she tries out the beds in the relevant rooms. Decides she prefers the one with the harder mattress.

Yes. Good. That works.

She steps back into the hall. Rose has moved along by now, so Ember goes looking for her. (Ember shouldn't keep her waiting.)

Rose meets Ember at the bottom of the stairs between the second and first floors. 

Okay! Reporting in!

”I’d like the upstairs room in... that corner, there?” She points. “My reasons are that its window has a good view of the beach and the bed is comfier!”

Chuckle. "Okay! Do you need linens or toiletries right now?"

“Not right this second.” Ember shrugs, feet teetering on the edge of the stair she stands on (even still partway up the staircase, she has to crane her neck back a bit to look Rose in the eye.) “But, yeah, it’s true that Displacer Beast didn’t exactly give me a chance to pack a toothbrush?”

Linens and toiletries are procured!

"Would now be a good time to talk more about your Earth?"

"Yeah, sure. I'm not busy."

There anyplace to sit down nearby?

This is a house filled with comfy surfaces. If there is any place where a comfy surface could be, there is one. 

Ember avails herself of such a surface and resumes her dissertation on Where She Comes from.

She does omit certain information. She, like the rest of her family, know how to avoid saying anything to outsiders that could be dangerous in the hands of an enemy Thinker.

Which is fine, really. She can convey more than enough about the Earth she grew up on without having to reference anything that's happened since her life started Mattering in requires-informational-security sort of way.

Rose is...nonetheless alarmed. A lot. 

Endbringers! Slaughterhouse Nine! Nilbog! Augh!

"So most Earths aren't like that?"

Ember supposes that's a reassuring thought.

"No! I mean, plenty of Earths have some threat or other, but not--not like that!"

"Well. It sounds like out of all the Earths you know of the one I come from is the one that needs people like my husband most. Which is all the more reason why I need to get back there, and do what I can to support him."

"What's your husband do?"

"He's a cape. A 'superhero' so to speak. Not one of those people that runs around in a costume punching bad guys, mind... which I always thought was pretty dumb, actually? Do you have that here?"

Giggle. "Not outside of comic books."

"So how are you going to look for my Earth? A machine of some sort? A superpower of yours? Will you be going through a list of adjacent dimensions trying to pick one out... will you be comparing their histories, or what they look like, or some kind of Dimensional Energy Readings, or what?"

"Uh, the answer is closest to 'a superpower of mine' and 'a machine of some sort' combined...I'm going to use magic to look for it, and there are artifacts that make the process much more efficient."

"Okay. I'm just trying to get a sense of what sort of information will help get me back fastest."

"Not that I, uh, don't like it here or anything. I really appreciate the hospitality and all. It's just, um, getting back is important and..."

"I understand. Being separated from your family is no fun at all."

"Yeah."

"It was my sisters, when it happened to me."

"I'm sorry."

"It all worked out in the end, right? You got to see them again?"

"Yeah. We're better than ever, now."

"That's good."

Maybe things will be better than ever when Ember gets back to her family, too.

(Maybe this absurd detour her life's taken will somehow make her the sort of person that he really deserves?)

"And I was away much longer than you're going to be. It'll work out."

"Thank you."

"--Do you want a hug?"

Ember loots up at Rose again, her lips wavering between a smile and something else.

She says, in a very small voice: "yes please."

Hug. 

Rose is very soft and very warm and gives very good hugs. 

Ember clings to her desperately.

Hug hug hug. 

Rose is a magic alien who does not have to worry about the aches and pains of the human body if she does not wish to. She is not going to kick Ember out of this hug. 

...why does she need this?

(It's obvious. She's so fragile. She was attacked by a villain, she's far from home, she hasn't ever been any good at fending for herself so of course she's traumatized.)

Rose is actually kind of inhumanly warm and soft, not that Ember probably has the experience hugging people Rose's size to notice. 

(Is this... okay?)

Why would it not be okay.

(She likes it too much. Needs it too much.)

Why is that not okay.

(It's disloyal.)

What. What.

(Ember buries her face in Rose's front and makes ambivalent sounds.)

Rose pets her hair. 

Ember feels like she's melting.

(This isn't right! Maybe this alien has some sort of Master power? Maybe Ember's being ensorcelled?)

Or. Or. Ember is having a really challenging day and now she's being comforted.

The latter seems quite a bit more likely, doesn't it?

(It feels like more than that.)

All she knows for sure is that it feels good to be held right now. She's pretty sure it's a waste to fret over why.

Whether or not Rose has a Master power, she has ethics, so comfort is definitely all that's going on right now. 

Ember keeps hugging her host until the strain of staying in one position for so long starts to make her bones ache.

When she finally does let go and back away, she looks more than a little sheepish.

"It's alright," Rose says, her eyes crinkling with the kind of silent mirth that is definitely not laughing at you.

Ember smiles up at her, eyes still watering. Gratitude shines on her features.

Her hands clink together at her waist, unsure what to do now that the embrace has ended.

"I'm sure you know this already, but you're very good at hugs."

"I am literally magic!"

"I know you don't expect any repayment for your hospitality, ma'am. But if you could find anything for me to do for you, it'd make me quite happy."

"Well--I really do have everything I need. So--I'll let you know if I see a way for you to pay it back or pay it forward, alright?"

Oh. She likes the sound of that last.

"Alright."

"Paying it forward is much more efficient!"

"Definitely!"

"I mean, I'm sure it is here. Back home, I'm always just working to streamline things for the person closest to me... but that isn't because I think you should only take care of your kin as a rule or anything that's just how things sort of worked out in my life in particular..?"

"Housespouse is a totally valid life path."

"Yeah! It's not exactly what I went to school for but... what can I say? I fell in love."

"Trust me, I completely understand."