An owl flies down from the sky with the usual eerie quietness, flapping down to perch on the windowsill. Attached to its claws is a letter, sealed in red wax, tied up in a felty bow. 

It pecks gently at the frame of the window, and makes a soft owly cry. 

That's new. Owls carrying letters. She's never seen that before.

Well, might as well see what it says. She reaches out slowly. "I'm gonna take the letter, okay?" If it holds still, she'll carefully untie the letter and sit back down, opening it.

It bobs its head down, an almost condescending look on its face, staying still as she unwraps the letter. 

Dear Miss Hailey Harper, 

I hope this letter finds you well. We at the F.I.X.F.I.C. Agency have a job opportunity for you that we believe that you may be interested in. Contrary to what you might have expected, the multiverse is both quite real and quite accessible, with the right technology or 'magic'. Naturally, this both means that there are all the more problems to solve, and all the more options for how to solve them.

The F.I.X.F.I.C. Agency are but one amongst many groups that has access to multiversal travel and the fruits thereof. Our mission is to ensure the thriving of sapient life, with an especial focus on inserting our empowered agents into worlds undergoing great peril to 'fix' the arc of their world into something brighter and better. You in particular have been identified as likely to be especially compatible with both our empowerment methodologies and our missions. 

The job is far from an easy one, but we have millennia of experience shepherding and supporting would-be heroes, and a broad selection of benefits available for those willing to undertake the task. 

If you wish to speak with us in more detail about joining us, please tear the enclosed talisman, which will transport you to one of our bases, where you will be fully briefed and offered a selection of abilities and missions to undertake. Unfortunately, due to security considerations, a further explanation of those details cannot be included here, but rest assured that even if you decline, the worst that could happen would simply that you return to your life as it was before. 

If you wish to decline, simply discard or destroy the letter, and we shall trouble you no more. 

Agent Braveheart
F.I.X.F.I.C. Office f182b0

All preceding content is hereby certified to be true and accurate to the best of the knowledge of the F.I.X.F.I.C. organization, to be designed for honest and open communication, and to contain no geas, pact, glamour, enchantment or similar working, nor any supertechnological or esosteric enhancements to alter effective persuasiveness or the circumstances of reception, beyond your identification as an adequate potential and a discernment of minimum availability to read the contents of the letter. If you have any complaints about the manner or contents of this communication, please either discard this letter or report your concerns to Sapient Resources at your earliest convenience. 

What.

That's an impossible offer, but how do they know that name? There is literally no one other than herself who knows that name. And the letter was delivered by a trained owl. 

Bloody hell. This shite can't be real, but testing it costs her basically nothing. She throws some tools in a sling bag, along with a notebook, some pens and pencils, her phone and a charger, and puts on a pair of shoes.

Damn it all.

She tears the talisman.

There's a brief moment of the feeling of being nowhere in particular, then something indescribable and imperceptible - 

The place that she reappears is almost insultingly normal. It's a comfy office, with teak wallpanels and neutral brown rugs. Before her sits a black-stained wooden desk, with a desktop setup set off to the side and a refined Japanese woman wearing a pale blue cheongsam, sitting with her hands folded between her thighs. Just aside where she appeared, there's a sinfully soft recliner, a quiet invitation to sit, if she'd like.   

She arches an eyebrow and doesn't sit yet. "How do you know that name?"

"That information is produced as a byproduct of the fundamental operation of the potential identification system. As a courtesy, the most preferred referent is divined and used in internal and external communications and records where practical." 

Her voice is gentle and smooth, pleasingly lilting yet slightly clipped. 

"Huh."

She sits.

"So what're the details, and do the benefits include transition help?"

"One augmentation included as standard for all of our agents is a body redesign within the scope of the plausible for your species, which may be kept freely after your mission. If you have transition goals not compatible with that limitation, then we'll need to look a little further afield." 

Her lips purse for a brief moment. 

"We monitor a certain 'area' within the multiverse for places that we have the capacity to travel to and where an intervention of someone sufficiently skilled and well-equipped could make a significant difference to continued well-being of sapient beings. To that end, we empower agents for the duration of their missions with some combination of skill downloads, physical and magical augmentations, and equipment in order to remedy the situation. A large portion of our work is dominated both by the limitations imposed by 'cosmic balance', differing physical and metaphysical laws and ordinary resource constraints. To help operationalize those constraints, we use the internal currency of 'tokens' to denote the extent of mission resources available for our agents in a given world, and 'boons' to reflect the extent of our capacity to improve you and your circumstances outside of the context of a mission." 

She reaches out her hand, and turns the second monitor to show her the contents of the screen, and slides a keyboard and mouse over for navigation of the page. 

"Here is a preliminary listing, if you wish to peruse it yourself. Alternatively, I am available to answer any further questions you may have." 

She starts flipping through the available enhancements and equipment. "Hell of a list. I see skill downloads on here, what happens to those after a mission?"

"Without other powers, you completely lose the 'instinct for excellence', the 'database' features, and all associated metaphysical support for supernatural performance. In terms of the mundane skill itself, while it doesn't rip out things that you've learned on top of the download or your memories of using the skills, it's almost always reported that even exercised skills are essentially universally remembered more like something that you remember hearing a description of, rather than particularly usefully formatted procedural knowledge." 

"Mm. Well, it's at least a headstart on recovering it in downtime. What's the pay like?"

She tilts her head slightly. 

"Mission success is rewarded with Boons, as laid out in each mission profile. Would a sample mission profile be helpful? Boons can be converted into a number of rewards, such as those listed here. Generally, those are considerably more valuable then similar boon expenditures towards financial offerings, but if you have a particular desire for that, I can send an inquiry to Fulfillment as to what they can offer on that front." 

"Boons sound great, and I probably prefer them to money in most cases, with the sole caveat that they don't directly pay for my flat, and this job would likely conflict with my old one."

She nods acknowledgingly.

"Due to the nature of our preferred multiversal travel methods, it can be easily arranged for no time to have passed in your absence, or for you to be put back at a later date of your choice, so that isn't necessarily an issue." 

She hums a bit more. "I hate being untransitioned at the job more than I hate working as a mechanic itself, so I don't mind thinking of it as a cover job of sorts. On the other hand, the kinds of missions you're talking about sound like the kind of thing that agents need downtime between every so often for mental health reasons, and working a day-joy does not precisely count as a relaxing holiday. Some minor degree of mundane pay could be useful if just to enable that."

"A moment please." 

She types at her own keyboard for a moment, before nodding approvingly. 

"For one boon point, I can get you a hundred thousand pounds, and for two one million and three a hundred million. Another popular option is to take the immigration boon, which comes with sufficient resources for a comfortable livelihood at your destination. Please note we also offer a few days stay and counselling at the conclusion of missions as part of the debriefing process, and that's enough rest for many." 

Her eyes widen a touch at the sums. "That'll do it. I suppose that's enough to see y'all have sufficient resources and rewards, and really specifics are hard to decide without knowing what I'm up against. What missions are available to me?"

"A considerable number. In general, I'd advise focusing on lower token value worlds - an exponential increase in mission difficulty is often associated with only a relatively linear increase in token allotment. While the power of the higher token cost options somewhat makes up for that, that problem generally remains. Here is a selection of missions, now queued and available for you."

She shows the list, with options sorted by point cost ending at the 50 point options with a message printed below.

60+ token missions require additional screening and special dispensation to undertake, due to elevated risks. 

She carefully picks through the list. "The Flashpoints mission set looks promising as an introduction. In particular I like the smaller and more flexible set of objectives."

She smiles faintly. 

"I'm glad. Many agent candidates note that the scope and responsibility of other missions is rather overwhelming for them. Sadly, the specific circumstances that enable this type of mission appear to be relatively rare." 

"Guess I'm lucky there's one for my first round, then. 'Course now that means I have to pick an order and an initial loadout." She looks over the list of crises. "Probably the thing to do is to put them in an order that uses similar capabilities, shooting missions next to each other for example. How flexible are your insetion points?"

"You should be able to appear more or less anywhere not inside the threshold of a building or home unless the space is warded against dimensional travel within a few AU of the crisis point. In terms of time, we can send you later then the time indicated relatively easily, but earlier is almost entirely infeasible. If you have something specific in mind that would benefit from a small degree of additional flexibility, I can see if it can be arranged at a reasonable token cost."

She nods, getting out a notebook and pen. Each mission gets two pages of its own. She breaks each page into two sections, for a total of four: Threat Model, Solution Models, Outstanding Questions, and Resource Priorities.

As she flips back and forth between the individual missions and writes down questions, speaking up every so often with a few.

"Okay, for Kira and Ryuk, it's been a while since I've read or watched Death Note. Has Kira recruited Misa yet and given her the name-identifying eyes? For that matter, which name is relevant here, my chosen name or my deadname? And how close to Naomi can you get me, and can I have a photo and coordinates of someplace secure and close to L and the task force?"

"No, this is a good bit earlier then when he would recruit her." 

Her lips purse into a dissatisfied expression. 

"Fundamental secrets of the operation of magic aren't freely shareable here, unfortunately. I can get you to just outside Naomi's place of work or home, or the site of her death. Beyond that, the system isn't designed to track people, though if you have a specific set of valid coordinates I can drop you there. Similarly, I don't think that I'd be able to insert you at L or the task force's location. With the basic equipment allotment, you could have a few week's access to a reasonably well appointed rental property along with a several hundred thousand yen in funds or ordinary equipment. If you wanted security beyond that, that would require an additional expenditure." 

She shakes her head. "No worries about the name thing, I'll just call myself Jade or something to avoid using either. And I don't want an insertion in L or the task force's location, just want a photo and either coordinates or a dot drawn on a map. If you can't get me those, I'll probably settle for the short-term rental near the task force."

She shakes her head. 

"That's not freely available." 

"Okay." She hums. "Map and photo of a discreet alleyway as close as possible to Chief Yagami's place of work?"

"I can include a detailed map of the area around the NPA headquarters in the basic equipment, certainly. Detailed photography of the area is likely sufficiently unusual that it'd require an additional expenditure to ensure it would be available." 

"We'll see how much budget slack I have, then." She makes a few notes. "How much would the photo cost?"

She types away for a moment. 

"Looks like it'd just be a single token." 

"Can I make the decision after integrating the knowledge from another purchase?"

"Decisions about allocation and what they represent are made at the point of insertion. In the context of a flashpoint, you can for example decide which world is to be your second and what to spend your tokens on in advance, or after failing or completing the first world." 

"So if I want to use the knowledge of one purchase to make a decision about another purchase, the second purchase has to follow a crisis where I used the first purchase, okay. That means Death Note is not first. Next question," she looks down at her notes, "is about the Library of Jebristan. Is one claimant to the throne going to treat the citizenry noticeably better than the other, or suck less in some meaningful fashion?"

"As I understand it, the analysis system and team determined that preventing the fire was vastly more important to the future of that world then altering any other details of that battle, and as part of the mechanism of the flashpoint, regardless of how things go, you will move on within the next three days. Speculatively, it seems plausible to me that that result would be most naturally generated if the both claimants were either fundamentally fairly similar in quality by our metrics, or alternatively that their quality as leaders is relatively irrelevant to longer term flourishing, perhaps because of external factors that would apply similarly to them both. You are free to make your own determinations in that regard, though of course I would recommend first and foremost ensuring the success of the mission."  

She nods. "I ask because one of my ideas for preventing the destruction of the library is preventing the battle, such as by forcibly resolving the civil war in favor of one claimant or the other. If there is no war, there is no battle, and no resulting fire. Do the claims hinge on the specific claimants currently leading their respective sides, or are there backup claimants on one or both sides?"

"This sort of divination is rarely so precise. Usually, it's wisest to read them narrowly as a 'without intervention' projection, and little more then that. Generally speaking, though, I would note that those rallied to war are rarely inclined to throw down their arms without a satisfactory resolution to the conflict, win or lose. And even without any particular named backup candidate, it is rather difficult for a war to fail to produce a number of secondary locuses of power that could become claimants, with a bit of work." 

She hums. "Rules out a tidy end via ending a claimant. How's the fire as far as casualties?"

"A hundred souls dead, a few thousand displaced and suffering from smoke inhalation and the like, perhaps, though not all of that in the immediate vicinity of the library." 

She makes another note. "Do you know why the battle happens in the city, and not some open field?"

"The fight was over military control of Jebristan's capital itself in order to capture the seat of the Kingdom's power, with preparations make in advance by both sides for the conflict in the city itself." 

She tuts and makes another note. "Can't get the battle out of the city, then. Daft bloody fools. Any info on whether the accelerants hit the library directly, or the fire spread from a different burning building?"

She shakes her head. 

"We merely know that, more or less regardless of random factors yet to come, that without intevention the library will be burnt down and the contents lost. Still, that surety is rather telling in its own way."

She hums, checks the text of a purchasable resource, makes another note, and looks back at Jun. "Are there any resources required for warding a building the size of the library with Hogwarts magic that I would not be able to find in the vicinity, apart from my wand itself?"

"Fine details like that on magic are difficult to disclose, but I would suggest you also consider whether or not you would have the time and opportunity to do such a thing satisfactorily, even if doing it without additional tools is reasonably practical otherwise." 

"Good point." She makes a couple more notes. "While I'm looking I'm looking at this, can you explain anything about why the Hogwarts books feel like looking at something I've forgotten, but through a funhouse mirror? Or why my reflexive first choice was the magic?"

"There's a limit as to what I can discern without invasive scanning - but if I were to give a guess as to what it was, if it isn't simply a matter of ordinary psychology..." 

She traces her fingers slowly along the desk. 

"Part of the screening process searches for souls that are especially compatible with our work - both psychologically and on other, more esoteric factors. It's far from impossible that part of the reason why you are as compatible as you are with FIXFIC's augmentations is that part of your... 'soul' or 'reality thread' somehow reflects the 'rules' of some particular subset of the worlds that we've optimized our capacities most directly for to some degree. As you might expect, it takes some considerable work to bundle up all of the requisites for the 'Hogwarts Graduate' ability, so Empowerment has put in a great deal of work ensuring that our systems work well things that are like what you would expect in that sort of universe." 

She taps her fingertip against her lip in thought. 

"It's certainly possible that it reflects more then that, but the options for that are considerable and the requirements for definitively proving anyone in particular are rather difficult to accomplish in a terribly timely manner. Still, I'd expect it to be reasonably feasible for you to determine such things for yourself to some degree if you invest in a broadly scoped adaptive power system and focus your efforts in that direction." 

"Huh." She tuts softly and shakes her head. "More than I expected and less than I hoped. Maybe I'll figure out the whole answer eventually, though."

She nods quickly. 

"While we're digressing, when would you like to go through the body customization process? I should also note that the trip to the light pools is also undertaken prior to mission solidification, due to the minimal cost and help it can offer with the psychological aspects of planning." 

"As soon as possible. I'll absolutely plan better without dysphoria, and the light pools definitely seem like they'll help as well, agreed."

"Any preference for which first, or any particular cultural or religious requirements I should be aware of before we begin? Please note that I'm qualified to administer the body reshaping process, though of course other staff are available as well."

"You're fine, body first, majority of the modesty-drive I have is dysphoria-related, and I'm an atheist."

She nods, presses a button, and they both disappear in a shimmer of light.

The bodywork room is a study of flat greys, from the tone of the floor to the ceiling to the sturdy firmness of the bed beneath her. Metal consoles shrouded in black plastic are scattered throughout the space, glowing with soft patterns of greens and blues and reds, with Jun herself standing behind the lone one jutting from the floor. Directly above and in front of Hailey, a series of metal wires are formed into indented 'x's in a cubical grid. 

"Where would you like to start on redesigning your body?" 

A little energy slips into her voice, though her tone remains steady. 

She paces a bit. "Overall figure, probably. Slender and athletic, short, like a hundred sixty centimeters. Probably medium breasts? Something like a B-cup, if those measurements mean anything here?"

A moment's fussing at her keyboard, and a rough doll-like shape appears with those approximate dimensions, slender but not truly slim, with a frame a little on the boxier side, with understated muscle visible flowing up and down from the hips. It gives the overall impression of a comfortable level of health, but not one truly focused on refining the body. 

"Using those units for a baseline isn't a particular issue, beyond the imprecision of the cup system." 

She talks through some subtler changes to the proportions, widening the hips a bit, narrowing the waist slightly, improving the muscle tone on the legs and ass, little tweaks to breast shape and size.

"Black hair, chin-length bob, can stay messy like this. Wanna keep my eyes at least this green, for sure." Her eyes are already pretty close to peak human green, honestly.

"Definitely swap the cock and balls for a sexy little cunt."

She obliges, producing a result a little more like this, with impressively green eyes. She inquires as to her preferences as to the details of her sex, then pauses politely for a moment, a light smile on her face, and a touch of breathlessness in her voice.

"Do you have any thoughts as to your desired hormonal profile? Some prefer to swap as directly as possible towards the cisfeminine experience while others want to taper towards something like that from what they are more used to." 

She bobbles her head back and forth a bit, considering. Tapers are usually easier in most things? "Taper, I guess, but a fast taper? Oh, and d'you have any kinda fertility control options? Don't wanna get pregnant."

"That's available readily enough - I'll put you on the two week taper.  Please do tell if there's anything you have in mind in terms of optimization targets for your body's hormones and drives as well. As for fertility... The default option for that would be a hormonal IUD, though I can also offer a copper one - though for some missions it can be a risk having metal implanted inside your body - or I can leave your body without a supply of eggs, or change your default hormonal profile to prevent pregnancies, though those approaches are generally harder to revert in the mission world." 

"I assume y'all can make sure the hormones balance out well enough to give me easy-ish periods, even with the complication of a hormonal IUD?"

She nods quickly.

"That shouldn't be much of an issue, no." 

"Great." She smiles a bit. "As for other hormone changes, if you can make it a little easier to get back to sleep when something wakes me up in the night, that'd help. I don't mind waking easily, but not being able to get back to sleep after I've handled whatever it is gets annoying. And maybe something to do with keeping athletic performance and training in easy reach?"

She taps away at her console, a few acknowledging warbles coming out approvingly. 

"Those are quite doable - though the effect won't be particularly dramatic. Do you have a type of athletic performance you want to optimize in particular for?" 

"Acrobatics, fights, and runs. Basically an agility-stamina mix."

The model shifts to be a little bit more lithe, with a touch more meat on the legs.

"Do you have anything else in mind that you'd like to adjust?" 

She hums for a moment, then frowns. That wouldn't work, would it? "Any idea how much of my touch-trauma is fixable hormonally?"

"Likely not too much of it, though I should be able to largely fix any physical oversensitivity issues you may have." 

Her voice is a little quieter, now. 

"Figures." She sighs softly. "Haven't seen the bastard in more than ten years, and it's still too recent."

She takes a deep long breath, her head tilting slightly down in acknowledgement. 

"If that's all... I suppose the only remaining question would be if you'd like to wake up to the transformation being complete or do it while you are conscious." 

"Hm. What's it feel like?"

"It's not painful, but it can be a quite odd and even disconcerting experience, feeling everything flow and slide into place. I believe it's also typical to experience it as a 'sea of warmth' or an intense massage spread throughout your body." 

"How much touch is involved?"

"No touch is strictly necessary for the process, but it's not unusual for the effect to parse similarly to being touched." 

She takes a slow breath. "Asleep, then. Dun wanna spend the whole time clenching and cramping as I resist lashing out at phantom touches. Not something as importantly positive as this."

"I understand. May I anesthetize you now?"

She takes another breath.

And another.

And then nods.

The lights in the room dim gently, and a soft streamer of starlight slips from her fingers, sinking into her shoulder. The moment it makes contact, her consciousness, swiftly starts to fade into a soft fuzz of comforting darkness. In a few seconds, she's out like a light. 

Anesthesia should leave her groggy, waking up slowly, but this clearly isn't mortal-tier anesthesia. She gets her normal hypervigilant awakening instead. As soon as it wears off, she goes from sound asleep—

—To wide awake, cataloguing everything around her. There's a vague warm and pampered feeling lingering in her skin and muscles and bones, but that doesn't stop her instincts.

Empty room, metal grid, hologram or the body she designed with Jun.

No Jun.

Wearing a thin little hospital gown thing.

Right, she was getting the bodymod done. 

She checks herself out, running her hands over her body, stretching, examining herself thoroughly.

Bloody hell.

She's bloody small. Lithe and strong and elegant, cute little pert tits, an arse you could bounce a quid off of, and a gymnast's legs. 

She steps out and twirls, stumbling at first, then dancing through the empty spaces in the room, delighting in the change. Every stumble as she gets used to her new body just serves to drive home that she's basically been reborn, she's a whole new girl, this is amazing.

Pretty soon she's laughing, reveling in the relief and the thrill, even the stumbles of adjustment fading.

Then she comes to a stop, just breathing and taking it in.

"Thank you!" she calls, grinning. "This is amazing!"

The door swishes open, and Jun steps in, a wry snort and smile alike on her lips. 

"You're welcome. Really, it's the least we can do for those willing to take on whole worlds for us." 

She settles down a little, but there's still an extra little beaming brightness in her eyes. 

"I'm glad that the process has gone so well for you." 

"It's fine bloody work, and a load off my back. Should we figure out clothes before going to the light pools, or after?"

"No need to wait. I have the effects you had on you in storage if you're attached, but it shouldn't be an issue to replicate something suitable." 

She walks over to a wall, and taps it, the illusion fading away. 

"Just describe what you have in mind and it should be able to make anything ordinary you have in mind." 

She hums for a moment. "Hip-hugging black jeans that don't impede movement, black socks that stop just above the boots, midriff-bearing black tank top with a silver knife print on the chest, black sports bra with green trim, black bikini-cut panties."

The moment she starts dictating, she clicks a button on the replicator's console. Once she finishes, they fizzle into existence in neatly folded stacks. 

Ooh, clothes. She fishes the panties out first, then steps into them and pulls them up under the hospital gown. Next the jeans, she'll slip into those, marveling at the fit. Then the bra, she'll turn around, tug the gown off, pull the bra on, and then turn back to finish off with the tank top. Once that's on, she gets into the socks and boots, and bounces just a bit on the balls of her feet.

"Fuckin' brill."

She smiles warmly. 

"It's truly quite a joy, yes." 

She battens down the urge to offer her hand, and simply folds her hands against her thighs. 

"Would you like a little while longer to settle in, or would you like to go to the light pools now?"

"Pools, I think. I don't do stillness well. Never have."

There's a brief moment of dislocation, like the moment you tear yourself away from a good book into a world with space and objects and things outside the world you thought yourself in. 

The walls of the room glint an ominious obsidian black. Strips of harsh blue-white fluorescent lights fill the room with a moody glow that seems dimmer then it ought to be. Shelves of black-painted steel hold rows and rows of sunglasses in countless different stylings, alongside a number of circular tubes of sunscreen and lotions. A shadowy veil cloaks one-side of the room, violet-fading-to-darkness folds in space like a crumpled hankerchiefs flicking and flitting in the air. 

There's perhaps a dozen other people in the room - a green-haired catgirl with a bow slung atop her shoulder, A klingon woman decked out in full plate, An asari dressed in a flattering dress, some sort of many-footed insectoid, amongst others. 

"Please select a pair of sunglasses and listen to me carefully. The Light Pools are not dangerous to you, persay, but they are immensely powerful, and something of the like that you never before seen. The primary mechanism of the empowerment is through the unfiltered sight, though you'll likely notice some effects by simply having the light hit your skin. If it's too much for you at any time, just put on the glasses and the effect should drop precipitously. It's absolutely normal for the effect to be too intense for comfort, and is no judgement as to the quality of your character. It's normal for you to see many different things, especially with the sunglasses off - it's too complicated for your soul to comprehend as of yet, and has its own myriad nature. Don't immerse yourself entirely in any symbolic font of power you see, and it will be perfectly safe. Once you feel the effect having fully settled on your soul, take the highlighted path back here, at which point you can be transported back to base. Do you understand me?" 

Hailey nods, taking a pair of sunglasses and hooking them into the neckline of her tank top for convenient storage. "Understood. Are there any circumstances under which we should immerse ourselves partially, or should we just say no to immersion altogether?"

"It's alright to do so - it's just that willingly attempting to completely submerge yourself in it entails a ritual process you are unprepared for." 

She nods. "Noted. Should partial immersion be expected to do anything in particular?"

"Not particularly - though in principle it might make it a little slower for the glasses to reset you back towards normality while you're submerged." 

"Gotcha."

That's all her questions. Anyone else?

It looks like the process is fairly desynced - single minders debriefing agents in the background, with people stepping out after they're personally satisfied. The veil every so often has a small ripple that seems to come from the other side, and people are still trickling in two by two as they talk. 

She glances wordlessly and inquisitively towards the veil. 

Okay then. "Thanks, Jun. I'll go take that look, then."

And she takes a steadying breath, then off she walks through the veil to gaze upon the pools.

The pools are the perfect picture of a Summer's Idyll. You stand alone in a verdant forest glade, the canopy of emerald and jade leaves shifting and swaying in the sweet Spring wind. You can almost feel the grain of each leaf, the way the air caresses over the paper-thin feather-light surface, the way the dreamy drips of dew slide along the surface, sometimes like droplets slipping along slick stone, and sometimes clinging tightly to the barely there surface. The regal gale of Winter slips through her hair, rustling playfully as its sings the poignant song, each mote of dust and petrichor glinting with Glory. The warm tones of sunset are spilled along the fertile soil, a tapestry of Fall at its finest still fresh, despite the welcoming warmth in the air and the gorgeous greens of the grass. 

But front and center, there's the Pool, radiant and oh so real, every droplet oh so real and resplendent - like every drop of water spilling from the waterfall that feeds it holds it's own rainbow that you could stare at forever, and never know the truest extent of it's beauty. Grey and brown rocks sit against the soil, polished by the soft tide of water 'til even the most ordinary of stones shines like a gem in-and-of-itself. The water itself is blue and clear, the surface's shine preening through the incredible transparency, showing off the texture of the silt and the swishing of the sand beneath the surface. 

An immense waterfall towers over the scene, niagra falls writ large, writ close. A wash akin to rain streams through the air amid the thunderous downpouring of the flow, down into the pool far below. The surface is concrete, here, with steel railings shining almost defiantly against the storm of power. The space is almost crowded - dozens, perhaps hundreds of souls standing loosely bunched together to take in the sight. 

It's white and frothing, enough that's hard to make out any individual droplet or any part of it sitting truly idle. The foam twinkles a proud platinum and white-gold, radiating it's own version of a sunlike strength, churning with the will to persist, to grind down obstacles and burst through barriers.

A greenhouse hums with light, dozens of layers of glass panes tinted every color of the rainbow letting the sunlight slip stream in waves, leaving the pool beneath dappled with a dizzying array of colors and combinations, shifting along the surface. Marble-white steps descend into the pool, with limestone tiles cladding the space around the pool and a deep granite filling out the underlayer. Little jets are inset into the walls, ready to please and pamper the worthy. A handful of souls dip in and out of the space, indistinct mirages and shadows no matter how closely she looks. 

She's in her own hands, standing atop her wrist, a pool of water, fresh and clear, shining of electrum and energy between her palms, fingers clenched together to hold it together for just one moment longer -

Behind her, the veil of shadow still blooms like a crudely copied-in in background.  

She gasps, stunned at the intensity. It's more than she expected, it's so much.

She doesn't try to hold onto any one version, just lets the changes whip past her, perspective after perspective, as long as she can stand it.

Eventually, though, it's just too much. She can't.

On go the sunglasses. And she stands there, breathing a bit heavily, processing all that.

There's an overwhelming sense of somewhereness that crashes over her the moment the glasses go on, or perhaps a lack of the opposite. 

It was... probably a good bit easier to do that then it would have been, before she saw all that. 

If she looks through the glasses, she just sees... a vague foggy white space, with the phantom suggestion of an ordinary pool a few meters in front of her. 

She settles herself for a bit. Does more feel advisable?

While there's no mysterious mystical outcome-sense power included in the upgrade package, unforunately. 

But...

There's a certain - lack of give she can feel in her body? The moment was so fast and furious that she felt it all just... sweep through and past her, like a leaf on a wind or a stone in stream. There's a certain something to that that doesn't feel quite as true now as it did then. And the process doesn't feel complete, either. 

Okay. Okay. Here she goes.

Off go the sunglasses again. She wants to learn what this place has to teach her.

She's not going to cross the limit of immersing in any one form, just keep letting it flicker while she tries to learn.

Glinting grass, freshly wet and springing up at the edges of the pool 

The feeling of her fingers flexing, trying to hold on to something slipperier then water 

A complex of mirrors, floating in space, a circle of dazzling mirrors and a pipe surrounded by blazing reflected light, and a connection to the greenhouse pool 

The sight of dozens with stars in their eyes, staring up at the crest of the waterfall 

It flickers, for a moment, countless images flitting through her senses, 'til they float, idle and placid, the warmth of relief streaming through her like light through a window at high noon. It feels... refreshing. 

Oh. That's... much more settled, now. That's nice.

She soaks it in happily for a while longer.

Eventually, she strolls back out along the path, ready to return to base and talk with Jun.

There's that sense of disconnection again, and the two of them are back at her office. 

"Went well, I trust?"

"Yeah, it did. That's pretty great, honestly."

She relaxes back in her seat, and lets a rather indulgent smile dawn across her face. 

"I'm very happy we get to include it as part of our basic package - there's... so much to see in the wider multiverse and starting out on a positive note alone is something that can really help, I think." 

"Definitely. Makes a lot of things feel a little easier and stabler. The old aches are more distant."

She stretches, grinning a bit.

"Okay. Work to do."

She nods back. 

"The edge in will and the basic magic resistance come up suprisingly often as well, I've found." 

She pulls back up pages they were working from in mission and power selection, and settles a little deeper into her chair. 

"I bet. So what can you tell me about the plonkers out to kill Doctor King? Numbers? Daft bastards in charge?"

"I don't know much about them - though it's likely to be at most a few men with pistols." 

"Hmm." She nods, makes a few notes, then asks, "Okay, now with Lu Si Na, is the fall an accident, or closer to the Call of the Void winning during a moment of overwhelm?"

"No, It would be part of the training itself."

"Concerning. So her master's gonna keep doing dodgy shite unless he has some sense knocked into him?"

"As I understand it. there's a relatively limited scope to this mission? If saving her from the training that she would under take in one day from insertion would be expected to cause her to die to a different training accident one week later, then it would be a considerably different mission." 

"Tch. Can get her with an cushioner and an arresto momentum on her way down. Make a note to put me at the bottom of the cliff she's gonna pitch off?"

She tuts a little. 

"The exact position that she falls off isn't predetermined to that level of precision, nor is the exact time." 

"Disillusionment won't hold up against what sound like basically cultivators, they'll spot me quick. Can you say how their culture treats unexpected guests and travelers?"

"There's little I can say to you in particular about this world on that matter, but I can offer you a handful of options - for example, you could take perfect diplomat, which would give you a flawless understanding of the social protocol in play, a relevant skill package, or include some reference material on the subject of social protocols as part of your basic equipment and peruse it beforehand. In terms of worlds like those... I wouldn't bet on a tradition of sacred hospitality or the like, though I'd also expect that those who have seriously studied the lessons of immortals wouldn't be the most keen to casually challenge those that they are unsure they would survive a fight with." 

"Okay, so if I'm tough but not trying to threaten them I might be able to travel with them for a day or so, at a vague guess, and I can't count on any kinda hospitality thing being paramount, and somewhat more specific reference material could come in the basic package. Yeah, that works."

She makes more notes.

"I presume there's no advance list available of which Elven Republic senators are a sure thing and which are swayable, on each side? Gotta figure that out on-site?"

"It's not unusual for political organizations to keep their own records as to who is where on the issues, though simply providing the list in advance from on high isn't available, no." 

A nod and more notes.

"I presume you can't drop me directly on one of the Spear Fleet ships. Are they docked somewhere, like a station or planetary spaceport, at or after drop-time?"

"No, the spear fleet is mobilized from the moment of insertion, and begins out of range of the insertion system. At a considerable delay, it might be possible to insert you in on one of their ships, but at that point it's plausible the fighting would have more or less already begun." 

"Well that scuppers my whole plan," Hailey replies, scratching out a whole section of ideas.

She looks through the list of resources, frowns, flips through again, and then hums.

"It looks like my best bets are maybe enhancing the Third Fleet's ships and officers, pitching in myself, and trying to bootstrap some kinda bombardment angle?"

She shakes her head.

"What's Danger Sense do if the danger's moving too fast for a few seconds to make a difference? Like if you need a minute or more to react in time?"

"The effect might extend to being able to warn you about being within the threat range of someone actively trying to hunt you, but it won't extend past a few seconds warning of the triggering condition regardless of the exact scenario." 

"Bollocks. That's definitely going to be a tough one. Probably I need enhancement capabilities and instant credibility. Charisma, psychic paper, and magic to try to reinforce the hulls?"

She shakes her head. "I'll come back to this one." A few more notes, and she looks at the next mission.

"Does the betrayal depend on Jev making it to the meeting? And does the revolution have magic of their own?"

"It's not nesscarily the only way for Jev to cause problems, but it's by far the primary concern, here. They have some access to magic, yes, though of a lower quality and quantity then their opposition." 

"Okay, that's doable. Probably stun Jev, deliver him to them with an explanation that he got caught and his mind bent, let them fix his mind if their magic can manage it, or clean it up myself if they can't. Can you include a photo of him so I can recognize him, or do I just need to talk my way into their midst? I assume the Midnight Club is a public establishment of some sort?"

"That can be included easily enough. As for the midnight club, it is part of a hotel complex." 

"Brill. So that's the magocracy handled."

More notes. "Is anyone resisting Artea's recognition, suppressing it, or is it just her lack of connections and social skills? Also, does the existing academic milieu have any meaningful periodical publications?"

A moment after she asks the question, though, she frowns. She's... really been distant. Normally she wouldn't care, but this is her handler, and the pain's muted now.

"Nn. Sorry for being so curt. Been on tilt my whole life, and the light pools are some of the first things easing that up any."

"I understand. Certainly, going through the process myself made an enormous difference for me, though it's only in retrospect that it stands out against access to modern pharmaceuticals and the opportunity to have real allies. And... do tell if there's anything more I can do to make you feel more comfortable or... centered. I know it can be far from the easiest thing to just... push forward, even if it might be the most 'natural' thing to do." 

Her eyes flick down slightly, and she sighs quietly, before pursing her lips slightly.   

"It's less necessarily that there's a dedicated conspiracy then that there's a large number of social and practical factors that are simply not on her side for the people who would help to be convinced to find her worth entertaining. There's no true comprehensive periodical, though there are a handful of loose organizations with mailing lists and meeting notes that detail their work to a degree."  

She looks down at the desk. "Just... Bear with me. I've not tried to actually relate to another person in most of a decade. Out of practice."

She smiles faintly. 

"Of course." 

Her eyes glance over to her monitor, for a moment, before she drags them away. 

"Would it help to hear a bit about me?" 

"Yeah. Would." She nods softly.

"I was born on a world with an... inordinate focus on martial arts. Every skill, every trade, every practice that was not the martial path itself was considered at most a 'side hustle' fit only for the strong, and at worst something that marked you out as someone volunteering to be enslaved. If you studied architecture, you were expected to keep yourself fed and knowledgeable, so that you could be picked up like a book off a shelf to work beneath a martial artist, and to thank them for the privilege of their protection. I wasn't forunate enough to be born with enough talent in the esoteric arts, wealth or natural fitness to become much of a warrior, so I was simply left to farm. I was scouted by fixfic in my twenties as an agent. I remember being so..." 

She stares off into the distance for a moment. 

"So excited that I could do something meaningful, that I could be one of the people who were allowed to have meaning. I took a mission in a world of low technology and the wuxia package, for few other options seemed like they would truly make me strong, and because I convinced myself that it was the best option, for the improved skill in martial arts would not fade, even if some of the physical benefits might." 

She slips her hand up to her head, and gently strokes a finger beneath her eye. 

"I... distinctly remember spending most of that mission bloodied and bruised in bed, because for all that the package gave me everything that it promised, it merely made it difficult to injure me with the conventional weapons they had on hand, and harder still to put me down, it was far from infeasible for a sufficiently large bomb or gun to take me out of the fight, and when I could attend oh so many fights in so short a span..." 

She shakes her head a little ruefully. 

"I spent more time being fussed over by nurses and debriefing them on my insight on how to best fight with the changing weapons of the era then I ever spent fighting, and to this day I'm still not entirely sure if it was that what mattered most, over the contributions of my own presence on the field of battle. I remember being... quite shaken. I looked into other powers, other missions, other ways to excel, because I oh so sure that couldn't be it. Eventually, I got the hint from my..."

A faint chuckle breaks through her usually rather placid face. 

"'Mission Mommy' - she always insisted I call her that - that I needed to take missions with partners, and try to work more purposefully with people. A number of the stories of what I did on those missions are not exactly mine to share, but I found that I did, in fact, enjoy the martial path, amongst others, for all that it wasn't something that I truly wanted to... be my life. So I ended up with the package permanently, and amongst the other things I've done, I've ended up working in the administration, refining the reference methodologies for multipresence techniques, and mentoring and managing agents like you."  

Huh, some of that rhymes. Craving a particular thing, being out of place...

She winces at the thought of spending so much time laid up from overdoing it on the fights. That's very much the kind of mistake she could make.

Then she snickers at the phrase "Mission Mommy," shaking her head in amusement.

"Not working with partners near enough sounds like my kind of cock up, yeah. Sort of daft shite I'd do." She smiles thinly. "And someone was being cheeky, matching us up. Shite rhymes."

She leans forward a little. 

"How so?" 

"Out of place, craving being Strong Enough that you can outpace the bloody awful shite that did or could've happened to you, craving a particular package down to your bones, stubbornly getting into perhaps too many fights, staying distant when there's an argument company'd do you good until someone calls out how you've lost the plot?"

She smiles wryly.

Her head slides to the side, a little rueful glint in her eyes. 

"I've always wanted to be strong, true, but I've met a number of agents that have a... true calling to their path. It's inspiring, in it's own way, to see people who can scarcely imagine being anything else but what makes them the finest fighter or wisest wizard. I'm not like that, for all that people who were like that back home were utterly lionized and for all that I thought that was what I was 'supposed' to be, for a good long while. But... It really does make me feel so much more... complete, despite that." 

She slips a little lower into her chair. 

"And as for the mission... I don't think it was so much wrong as it was an inevitable part of fighting that kind of war with those kind of powers - it's easy to imagine endurance powers as just another facet of untouchable superiority, until you have that power and realize that with enough mobility it fundamentally changes how a protracted campaign flows. It was... disillusioning, in a way." 

She smiles faintly.

"But yes, I 'see it', as it were." 

"Maybe this'll work out after all," she grins. "Got a handler who gets it better than I expected, at a weird but brill new job, and a shot at getting to keep magic of my own. Mebbe I'm due some luck, after all this time!"

A hand slides up and fusses through her hair as she smiles wistfully at that. 

"So my hunch is that Artea needs a bit o' spit an' polish, some help shining up her notes for a paper, an' a few introductions. Maybe some help getting around. But it's basically all social work."

"That seems likely enough - though it might take a few more steps of follow through to complete the process of acceptance. It's unforunately rather easy for people to find themselves conveniently forgetting lessons they've learned, I've found." 

Her tone is more long suffering than snippy, though there's plenty of traces of that.

"Yeah, some lessons don't stick unless you stick around to make them."

"Still, sounds pretty doable." More notes, then her eyes drift back to the space battle.

"How much leeway can you give me on swapping builds between missions?"

"In what sense?"

"If I take Hogwarts magic, I'm looking at sinking either three quarters or my whole budget into one purchase. That'll serve me well in a lot of places, and be usable in most, but swapping it out goes well over the ten token swap limit between missions."

"You can swap out perks with a value greater than 10 tokens, but you will still only get 10 tokens freed up, and if you take any points out of the perk, it will be non-functional. This process can be repeated to allow the swapping out of higher cost perks, if desired."  

She nods and looks down at her notes, then at the catalog. "With the five-token identity purchase, can you make me an admiral authorized and ordered to take over the whole defensive fleet and command it into the battle against the invaders?"

She shakes her head. 

"The 'Identity' option grants a role that is more non-specific than that. At 5 tokens, you could still get you a reasonably senior role on one of the ships or a reputation as a genius tactician with an unimpeachable loyalty, which might still be fit for purpose, especially with the aid of psychic paper or the like." 

"That probably works, but I'll need to fit a low-perk mission in before the battle if I want to be sure. Do you know if the fleet has FTL comms and sensors, and whether the battle takes place at sane scales or or knife-fighting range?"

Her lips purse a little. 

"They have FTL comms and sensors, I believe, and some capacity to fight at both of those ranges." 

"Okay, definitely psychic paper, possibly five-token identity, very likely upper-left blue, fill the rest of the budget with tactics and space combat skills. Talk my way into tactical command of the whole battle, or at least as much of it as I can manage, give a speech to inspire everyone to peak performance, and use superhuman tactical and command skills to win the battle as hard as possible."

"An eminently reasonable approach." 

She nods approvingly. 

"Got opinions on whether or not to spring for the identity, Jun?"

"I feel like your intuition is perhaps rather backwards - in so much as psychic paper is helpful, I think it would be as a privilege escalation attack based on implicit trust in your Identity and the visible content of your character, rather then something that you should rely on being effective as a way to commandeer something as secured as a large war fleet in a combat zone by simply insisting that it is 'What your paper say'." 

"Fair point. Both then. Definitely need a ten-pointer before the battle, though."

A quiet and sharp little nod. 

"Hm. I think probably the best ten-pointer is going to be helping Artea. That's mostly a case for charisma and social engineering, not the big guns, no serious need for stealth or power. Just persuasion."

"It's perhaps the least demanding of the missions, in that sense - though the mission in Angevon is similarly more or less purely social." 

"Oh! Good point. That might be an even better fit. Some political skills and persuasion skills would handle that pretty tidily, plus some version of identity that gets me in enough to talk to King Jaino. Think the three-pointer'd do?"

"A three point identity is likely around the minimum you'd need to not to be instantly laughed away for asking, I'd think, rather than enough to expect a positive answer." 

"So a fiver and be ready to talk fast even with that, just to be sure. I can fit enough social skills to convince the king not to delay into five points, though, that should be doable: two-point political maneuvering, two-point persuasion, one-point governmental policy. Maybe swap the maneuvering and the policy?"

"I'd consider sincerity and perfect diplomat as well - it's not necessarily that you need to have any great mastery of politics in general, merely that you need to be able to make a persuasive case on the subject, and cut through his hesitations, which might justify a somewhat different approach." 

"Good picks, both, but my budget's getting tight for that. Maybe switch to a three-point identity, take sincerity and perfect diplomat, add a point each of persuasion and politics, and count on the combo to talk my way into the meeting? Alternatively, swap perfect diplomat for a hyperspecific 'attending and addressing the king and royal court of Angevon' one-pointer to free up a couple?"

She taps her finger against her lip. 

"A three token identity would be enough to insert you as a reasonably senior member of the palace help, if you think that would be sufficient? I might be able to find you a role that would give you room to see him in the course of your duties for two, though it'd likely be a little more awkward to make use of  You might also want to consider an upgraded basic equipment purchase - it seems likely feasible to get a meeting through a bribe, or a chain of them, with enough ready funds." 

"As I understand it, an important aspect of the scenario is that the king himself is an outlier in how reform minded he is - so it may not be much use to address the court as it is." 

She nods. "May need to workshop the phrasing of that skill some. The idea was just enough courtly behavior to get me both to and through the meeting. Bribes are an option too, though. Three token ident as a wealthy merchant with some clout, upgraded equipment to fund bribes brings us to four, sincerity brings us to six, two token persuasion, two token talking-slash-bribing one's way through the royal court to wherever you're trying to be?"

She purses her lips. 

"Or perhaps a favour... I can give you a skill download for contemporary politics, which I think should serve?" 

"Would that cover How To Bribe too?"

"If that's part of the political process there, yes." 

"Okay, so two points of persuasion and two points of that. Yeah, that probably works, and it fits into ten points, which means it can be my buffer before the space battle."

A little acknowledgement in her eyes, a brief moment of tapping at her keys and glancing at her screen. 

She nods and makes a few more notes. "So Xazar. What're your thoughts on how paranoid the adventuring party is likely to be?"

"Adventuring parties have a habit of being meticulously diligent about the precautions that have been drilled into them, but impressively reckless when colorable." 

There's a faint disbelieving - if wistful - tone in her voice, and a headshake she mostly represses. 

"The dynamic changes a little, with less durability and healing magic in the equation, but less then you might hope." 

A wry smirk flits across her face. "Seen that first-hand, have you?"

"Quite." 

Her head bows down with a breathless snort. 

"There's a certain... excitability that is hard to train away in many of the people who develop the talents for it, and when there's so much at stake, it can be hard to blame them, especially when much of it is a reflexive adaptation to make the best use out of a heroic destiny, but well." 

She tilts her head to the side. 

"That does unfortunately little to make it less stressful, and much to make to make more proffesional operations pleasant, for all those can be stifling, at times." 

She nods. "Well. Probably this bunch won't've been trained to be suspicious of new faces, then, which means I can talk my way onto the party and save them from the traps. Magic here, I think, for peak flexibility and adaptation."

"Actually... Would you wager there's much that'll parse as unhealably cursed wounds?"

"I'd expect that to be a threat (alongside curses that don't inflict conventional wounds) yes - not that they'd nesscarily be unhealable with the tools that they have at all, but that it's quite a plausible threat that it would make it an issue not likely instantly remediable the way it might normally be." 

"Hm. If I heal everything that isn't cursed to bleedin' hell, and I can maybe at least stall some of the cursed shite in the field, then they can probably recover from the rest. Hopefully. Maybe."

She nods lightly. 

"A worthwhile approach -  for all that Xazar isn't the type to avoid quick and efficient kills, when he can get them, for all that he is inclined to cruelty." 

"Ah. That's good, then. I can abuse physical shields down most corridors and keep bubblehead charms on everyone. to avoid their getting gassed."

Her brow furrows a little. 

"A wider variety of threats to handle is hardly good news. I'm not too sure if it would be quite that simple to use Hogwarts graduate for that, either - as I understand it that system of magic has a particular focus in their protections on the strictly personal, which might make that less than practical." 

"Good point, never was depicted being applied to others. Hm, what about getting a pile of gas masks with my equipment allotment?"

"That should be reasonably possible, yes." 

"And a backpack compatible with expansion charms should be cheap too, that'll let me fill it up with supplies like the gas masks and everything else we'll need. Think I'm missing something obvious here?"

"A ten-foot poles are a must for the daring dungeon-delver." 

She laughs and smirks. "Too true. Definitely wedge a few of those in the sack. And a towel, of course. A hitchhiker should never be caught without her towel."

"Quite." 

She smiles wryly. 

"Beyond that... materials for a specialized wand, perhaps? A map of the area around the mission site is customary as well, as is paper for further notetaking." 

"Absolutely. Presumably the rules of the Hogwarts Graduate perk mean that I can always make wands or other foci out of either or both of shite from the allotment or shite I scrounge up?"

"A wand is included gratis, as are the skills to relatively easily make one with the materials available in the mission world. I would expect three days to be more than enough to ensure you could ensure the usability of an additional wand or two, if you desired - though the overall performance quality will likely be a little worse, without acquiring quality magical reagents suitable for the task outside the scope of the free level of the basic equipment allotment." 

She nods. "But backups don't need to be perfect, yeah? They just need to save your life and recover your primary if it's still intact. Knives, picks, axes, bloody tonnes of rope, book o' knots, book identifying plants and fungi, bloody fucking mundane first aid for the shite too cursed to bloody heal..."

She nods along cooperatively. 

"Having backups can be quite useful, yes." 

"Say... 100 ft of 1/2 inch rope, a backpack, 6 knives, a pick, an axe, a basic reference book on knots and the flora of the region around Xazar's temple, a first aid kit, a set of six gas masks, a foldable pole, a towel, a map, a notebook, a few pens and two wand-blanks..." 

She hums gently. 

"I believe I can fit that in narrowly - the rest of the allotment would go to petty cash, unless you have something else in mind?" 

She nods, making notes, then looks up suddenly. "Can you get me photos and map pins of alleys near useful supply stores in apparation range? Case we need other shite? Or enough lead-time to scout 'em?"

"Photography hasn't been spread widely enough for that sort of reference to commonly exist. I can include a basic map of a relatively nearby town, however, and you have three days before the deadline of Xazar's release for gaining additional supplies, if you believe that the best use of your time." 

"Probably I just try t'eye a few places while I'm gathering other things before the party shows up. It's not the most important thing, just one more precaution."

She nods. 

More notes.

"D'you know where the cholera body is being kept before the burial?"

"I believe you misread the mission description - he is to die in a day from the point of insertion, absent intervention? But beyond that, I can look into giving you resources on what amenities around the area, which should be reasonably indicative." 

"Oh huh. Yeah, I did." She frowns and considers. "I could pull the traveling witch routine, whip up some oral rehydration solution. Can I get powder packets of ORS on my equipment allotment there, or is that ruled out by all the processing they don't have yet in Taramel?"

"Anything anachronistic is off the table, but for example, quantities of salt, sugar and water sufficient for a simple approximation would be feasible." 

"Okay, that'll do. Maybe throw in a glazed wooden cup that happens to have markings for appropriate measurements. And if I don't manage it and he dies anyway, I'll transfigure an equivalent mass of water into a replacement body for them to bury, and take the original out several miles away and burn it."

"Reasonable enough." 

"Palpatine's gonna be tricky."

"Dealing with those sort of... 'prepackaged preparation' powers always are, especially when the goal is something as direct as elimination of their user is your goal." 

"Too true. What I really need there is precog-blocking..."

"Perhaps. Mastery of the force also comes with some degree of enhanced senses and empathic awareness as well, which limits somewhat the options you have for simple surprise, and the sort of person who can succeed with those sorts of 'grand plots' often have a certain degree of luck, too, which hardly helps matters." 

"Does he still give public outdoor speeches at this point?"

"I believe he focuses more on speeches within the political sphere, rather than outdoors persay, though I'd expect that he does some."

"Are a hypersonic sniper rifle and a magazine of beskar bullets something I could fit into an upgraded equipment allotment?"

"I believe so - though it would certainly require the maximum level." 

"Combine that with sniper training, and that's a start. Do you have any precog-blocking stealth solutions?"

"There's a handful of more indirect magical solutions possible through more general skillsets, but the most canonical solution would be anti-scrying." 

"How many tokens'll that run me?"

"Five for a considerable degree of resistance, or ten for immunity, at least to what you'll find within the scope of these missions." 

She hums. "Two for the beskar sniper kit, three for superhuman sniper skills fit to guarantee a hit at that range, ten to make sure he doesn't see me coming, five to spare. That's another mission where I could really use a ten-and-under as a buffer to free up the whole budget. Got any ideas other than psychic paper for the last five?"

"An identity, perhaps? It depends a little on what you have in mind, in terms of the sniper set-up." 

"The idea is to talk my way into some overlook on a building a few kilometers off, maybe claim maintenance or something."

She hums. 

"Skillsets regarding stealth and the like might be wise to acquire? Getting inconspicuously to a location like that can be a trial in and of itself." 

"Reasonable. I'm already decent at it, spent most of my childhood and teen years sneaking in and out of things just to keep my aunt and uncle off me, but always room for improvement."

A quick nod. 

"Okay, that's probably doable then. I'm just glad one o' my mates online had been talking about beskar bullets a few months back, and that those could be bought."

Note note note.

"Hm. D'you think there are spells for detecting specific categories of inanimate objects, like guns?"

"In what system?"

"Hogwarts, whether 'basic' or 'expanded'?"

"I don't believe there's much if any of that sort of working available in the 'basic' version - there's a few methods for divination that might technically do that task, I believe, though not one I'd expect you to find particularly useful. I believe in the 'expanded' version that there's a handful of reasonably wieldy options, though as I understand it the range for most effects of the Hogwarts Graduate system aren't terribly large." 

"Hm. Fair. D'you have a rec for something what does?"

"Functional magic is reasonably serviceable for most such tasks. I believe that Ascension magic can be reasonably suitable for that as well, with the right set of spheres. There's also the omnicompass and the shroedinger files, if you wish to specialize in that direction. Do you have a specific goal in mind for what you wish to be able to find?" 

"Blighters with guns and malicious intent. So I can temporarily confiscate their consciousness privileges."

She taps her chin. 

"Detecting guns should be reasonable feasible with all of those systems - including Expanded Hogwarts Graduate - but malicious intent is trickier, and would likely require a dedicated power, more individualized scrutiny of each case, or some particularly clever working." 

"I can probably bloody surmise malicious intent if they're in the crowd or a building rather than a uniformed part of the Count's guard."

"Weapons are often considerably more common in times of unrest - but being able to find such things can often be an excellent way to reduce the number of candidates to investigate." 

"Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Gives me a reduced set to watch for hostile action."

She nods obligingly. 

She looks down at the final mission and scowls. "Okay, so what do we know about Omega Woman's bloody relatives?"

"Not substantively more than what you see in the description, unfortunately." 

"Do we know if the gormless pricks are empowered or mundane?"

"I don't believe they have particularly impressive powers, but that isn't to say that they have none, or that they have no powered support." 

She frowns down at her notes. "My gut says 'battlemage time' but I might be missing a better option, yeah?"

"Entirely possible. For one... While omega woman is noted as by far the most powerful superhuman in her world, a level well below hers might still be awkward to combat with the budget you have. It's not necessarily the case that they have powers surpassing or even rivaling what you would be able to bring, but it's a possibility I'd ponder, in your place."

"I'm a mite concerned about that, yeah. Maybe the angle is having somewhere unreachable to put the wife while I dodge the relatives and call Omega Woman?"

"That's certainly possible. There are also superheroes who you might be able to call on to help, if given adequate cause, perhaps even before their operation begins." 

"How's this world feel about interdimensional travelers? They seen many of those?"

"I don't expect it's common enough that there's a preprepared social script about that sort of situation - and the number of different kinds that can emerge in places where such things are more common tends to make it difficult to have much ready at hand. At a guess... It'd be perhaps a way to get your case considered more interesting, for both good and bad." 

"Okay, try this'un on: land on the street near Omega Woman's house, apparate from there to an alley near some hero agency that's likely to have a safehouse or panic room and is absolutely gonna back Omega Woman to the hilt when shite goes down, get their permission to make a portkey targeting their panic room and get them to agree to come help when I send someone there, then when the attack starts I toss the portkey at the wife and shout the trigger word. She's safe in the next town over and backup's coming, so now I fight to stall while everyone else comes to beat the piss out of the berks who came to attack their ally's wife."

She tilts her head back slightly in thought. 

"I could see that working - though it working exactly like that assumes a good deal about how the defenses interact with the options that you have. Though I suppose if the problem is at the safe house, it's likely relatively simple to simply stage someone outside the perimeter to usher her in, if you can get them fully on your side." 

"That's the idea. I don't expect anyone to believe me about who or when, I just want enough agreement that they'll shelter a victim I send their way."

A nod. 

"I wouldn't imagine that would be too difficult - supervillains are hardly known for their temperance or deliberation in choosing their targets, so it's hardly implausible that that's a relatively normal function of some such places." 

"Right. Can you throw in a guidebook on major hero agencies and the like in the target city and nearby ones? Maybe an apparation point near a couple?"

"Certainly. I assume that if you are to be using hogwarts graduate you'll want the wand blanks as well - anything else in mind beyond that?" 

"Beanbags make decent throwable portkeys, although... got sommat sticky?"

"The world is fairly modern by your standards, so they have a version of 'velcro' usable, as well as a number of glues. Do you have something in mind?" 

"Don't want her to fumble the portkey. Easier if I know contact's enough an' I can just shout 'safety' when it hits."

"I don't think there would be anything available at the consumer level that would be reliable enough for that. However, I believe it's possible with that system of magic to telekinetically control objects, which might be able to serve the same purpose." 

"True. Tag it with a hover charm and I can just push it against her. Hell, tag it with a bloody sticking charm. What's the poor woman's name?"

"Laura Miller." 

"Laura Miller deserves better than her in-laws. If I do my job, though, by this time tomorrow the lot of 'em'll be in jail. Well, the particularly stubborn ones might be dead. No great loss."

Her shoulders settle gently down and she leans forwards a little. 

"Speaking of... The first kill and the first combat is often an exceptionally bracing experience. Is there anything you would like me to prepare in advance for when you return, after that?" 

"Good question." She tilts her head, thinking a moment. "Dunno if I'll need it, but a cold room, a warm blanket, and time to vent'd probably do me. Mebbe an iced coffee, lightly sweet. Decent view'd help."

She nods, and reaches out her hand. 

"That can be easily arranged. Would you like to be alone for it? If you'd like, I can arrange it so that you can transport yourself to my desk once you've steadied yourself, though I can of course be there to listen, if that's what you'd like instead."  

She reaches out a hand for a moment, hesitantly, then pulls it away.

"Company'd help, yeah."

She drifts her hand back to her side, and nods solemnly.

Bloody hell she hates her uncle.

"Then throw in a couple beanbags for portkeys and I think that's our list. All that's left is ordering."

She shuffles her notes around for a moment, then nods.

"MLK, Lu Si Na, Abolition, Kira, Jebristan, Fridover, Laura Miller, Mage Revolution, Xazar, Cholera, Artea, Stellar Union, Angevon, Palpatine. How's that?"

"Sounds reasonable enough. I'll just need you to finalize your intended build for the first mission, and I can send you off for final review." 

"Hogwarts Graduate, expanded and rationalized edition. Also, do I get to do outfit customization beforehand and get someone to double-check for local suitability and suggest alternatives if needed?"

"We can do that now. Additionally, do you have anything in mind for your basic equipment?" 

"My first instinct for this shite is a crisp black suit that hugs my curves — since I have those now — and has ballistic weave layered through. Black shirt, dark green waistcoat, concealed holsters for whatever my weapon of choice is. Ominous and professional at once. Maybe find a way to make it look more punk if we can get away with that while keeping the spooky bodyguard vibes, but job first and style second. I figure we can vary from that to something with the same overall vibe in dissimilar-enough destinations."

She hums.

"The outfit is essentially part of the basic equipment allotment, rather than something where there's too much room to stretch beyond the norm. I believe that'd likely only be feasible in the United Elven Republic, Stellar Union and star wars mission, but most missions should be able to support something reasonable similarly to that, beyond defensive properties. Do you have anything in mind as to what you prefer in lower technology worlds where a suit would be infeasible?"

"Whatever communicates 'ominous but helpful witch' for most of them. Angevon needs merchantwear, probably to help Artea I need something more like a dress and coat. Those two're special, can't back up witch vibes."

She hums and nods, notetaking herself a little. 

"Would you prefer to adjudicate that when it's the pending mission world or now?" 

"Pending, I think."

She nods. 

"Something like these?" 

She shares a handful of references for various items.

Hailey looks the images over, then nods. "That's the right impression, yeah."

She nods lightly. 

"I think that an outfit like that would be reasonably suitable for your first mission as well - though I'd expect a looser fit would be more appropriate for the time." 

"Think I'd draw the wrong kind of attention with a tight fit, there?"

"That seems reasonably likely, yes." 

"Tragic. I'll have to cope with a looser cut." She grins wryly and shakes her head. "Been this fit for less than a day and I'm already getting attached to styles."

She snorts faintly. 

"I remember getting so attached myself - albiet largely to enchantments on my clothes rather than anything more prosaic. Still, needs must." 

"Bet you looked sharp, though."

She smiles slyly. 

"I really did." 

A little chuckle flows out of her. 

"I justified in terms of 'poise', but really it was just so much easier to convince myself to fight if I thought I'd look dashing doing it." 

She shakes her head slightly. 

"Worth it. We have to find our little joys to keep facing the challenges, yeah?"

"Quite." 

She sighs wistfully. 

"Any last advice for me?"

"I think the biggest thing to remember is that there's always things that you didn't account for, and that success is never guaranteed through the fog of war. Learning that was a trial for me, but I'm grateful it came relatively early, in my journey."  

"Yeah, if things were predisposed to go right we wouldn't have a job. Murphy's a cunt, as expected. Honestly today, right here, has been the first thing to go well and proper right in my life. I expect we'll be back on the usual routine of shite going wrong and my having to improvise as soon as I leave the base."

She nods, and fusses her hand through her hair. 

"An eminently sensible expectation." 

"I believe the only thing we have left to do is finalize your basic equipment - there's the clothes, petty cash, wand blanks... Anything else in mind?" 

"Probably a pistol, just in case. Probably a duffel with a first aid kit and such. Wouldn't say no to kevlar, but I'll cope. Binoculars would be nice. A radio that can listen in on local authorities and an earpiece for it, maybe?"

She adds a pistol (with ammunition), a duffel bag bag with a first aid kit, a handheld radio, and a pair of binoculars, alongside a thermos of water. 

"I believe the rest of those aren't too available. I hope this should suffice?"

"That'll do. Thank you, Jun."

"You're welcome, and good skill." 

A prompt appears on her screen, asking her for confirmation of her build and her readiness.

Hailey takes a slow breath. Then another.

Then a wry grin comes over her face. She looks like herself, finally, and she's going to go kick ass and save lives. 

She hits the button.

There's a fizz of disconnection, like static over the line, and she is gone like wash of the wind.