She smiles, soft and approving, and slips her hand back to her lap. 

"I'm glad to hear it." 

Vivian settles her hand back in her own lap. "So, let's talk specifics. Obviously I shouldn't go up against a more dangerous mission world to start with — we should focus on a twenty or maybe thirty point mission. Picking what mission is maybe the most important decision, so... let's talk about that."

She nods obligingly, and brings them up on their screens. 

"Don't be afraid to bring up things that you'd like to see in this sort of mission, even if you don't think it could apply to the ones listed here - I might be able to find one outside of the preapproved list that may fit you better." 

"Of these... I think I'm too sensitized already to historical events that are familiar from my own timeline like the Civil War or World War 2. Spending a long time in a lower-technology world would probably make me miserable due to ambient conditions. Anything over 30 points is probably not good to do as a rookie. That leaves — flashpoint duty, X-COM, saving christmas, the espionage worldsheaf, and the cyberpunk worldsheaf."

She exhales. "What I'm good at naturally, though, is — working one person at a time. A world where if I could heal someone's mind or soul, or enough people's, everything would be different — that's the kind of environment that I'd be able to thrive in, I think."

"I think it depends a little on what makes you uncomfortable about the conditions - I've seen some agents take functional magic or hogwarts graduate as something of a replacement for modern amenities, with some success, though there's a certain... persistent squalor that some find unsettling, even if they can wave away many of the consequences of it. I agree, to an extent - there's some people that thrive the most when they feel that they are facing impossible odds, or are especially suited for a particular powerset that requires a more difficult mission, but I would definitely recommend them as a starting place, at least." 

She hums contemplatively, flicking through the notes on the screen. 

"I think what mission fits that criteria best depends on what kind of person you want to heal? The espionage world is especially driven by a small handful of outlier masterminds and to a lesser extent gadgeteers, for example, while the success and failure of the X-COM project relies on successful political maneuvering and team cohesion, in the worlds I've seen where they are more equipped to succeed without our intervention, for example, and both of those are very different problems to work on, I've found."  

Vivian considers for a moment. 

"I think what I am best at is giving people reasons to hope, rather than redeeming people. So XCOM, more than espionage. I quite enjoy Mafia as a party game but I'm honest to a fault when I'm dealing with people I actually know. The cyberpunk worldsheaf also comes to mind because a lot of the issue is everyone being... inured to the system, you could say." 

She nods along. 

"That's certainly a reasonable path to take - though sometimes part of the appeal of that sort of healing is that helping one person has this - cascading effect to help the material and mental condition of others, and that doesn't quite apply as much in the cyberpunk sheaf as it might in a more magical world." 

"That's true. That has me considering perhaps Camelot as an option, since it is... less bad on historic issues with the treatment of women specifically, could have functional magic brought to serve as amenities, and solving individual people's problems matters deeply if you're a Knight of the Round Table."

"It's also a world where being able to offer those comforts is likely to be especially helpful in working on King Arthur's social aims as well. If you fuzz your requirements a little more, the zombie apocalypse or star wars worlds might also be worth considering for fit." 

"I think I'd get along terribly with the Jedi, what with their emphasis on restraint and neutrality, which would make getting things done in the star wars worldsheaf difficult. As for the zombie apocalypse... It's easier in some ways and harder in others. It might be worth considering. Nightmare Canyon is also worth considering for its relatively small scale if one has functional magic..."

"It might be possible even without taking any personal magical power fit to grant such conveniences to get something relatively comparable as the guest of the fairies in Nightmare Canyon as well." 

Vivian nods and crosses her arms over her chest. "Really, it seems like there's a lot of options. It's hard to narrow things down. Maybe the smart thing is to pick the world I'd be most comfortable with, but I feel pretty generally out of my comfort zone. I feel... the world I'd be most comfortable moving in, doing work in, might be the Cyberpunk one, because in some ways it's most similar to what I've been doing in my own world." 

"I can see the connection. Certainly, there will be a lot of people who would really appreciate that sort of help in that world especially. There's an argument that the zombie apocalypse world might be even more similar, though I think that it'd be a little harder to retreat there. When a world is going through that sort of catastrophe, there's often a certain culture of violence that forms that I think you might find unsettling." 

"Yeah. I think maybe it might come down to what's easier to equip me for and what the equipment sets would feel like from the inside. Zombies are in some ways an ideal enemy — not smart, not people — and in some ways an awful one — rotting, disease-ridden, unsettlingly biological. But there are options to mitigate that kind of thing..."

"It's worth keeping in mind that Xazar has his cultists - though I don't believe he is empowering them per say - and that he is not necessarily bound from leaving his fortress, so a number of strategies that would work effectively against a more animalistic foe wouldn't necessarily work there. On the other hand, there's a direct solution available in the destruction of the shard that isn't available in the cyberpunk worlds, and the degree of intelligent opposition is still rather quantitatively different, especially in the degree of more mundane resources they have access to." 

She hums quietly. 

"I'd say that the tools at hand are more immediately useful for managing at least a small area's zombies than the oppression of the cyberpunk world. Though, there's less variance in the degree and intensity of opposition you can expect if you are trying to work on scaling up outside of your personal abilities. As for the experience of having the powers or equipment... that depends somewhat on the options you choose, of course. Are there any that you have in mind, or would you prefer a broader overview first?"

"The options that I find personally attractive, looking at this list — that I think are just cool and would like to have in the long run — are Sincerity, Iron Will, the Omnicompass, the Paladin and Shining Knight Packages, and maybe the Gamer or Strategocron. Trying to stick to things I could actually buy for this mission. Iron Will feels like it shores up one of my larger weaknesses, while the paladin package and Sincerity... just feel right, in a way. Whereas the Gamer, Shining Knight package and the Omnicompass or Strategocron give — concrete objectives, which is another thing I'm weak on." 

She smiles gently. 

"Going down the list..."

"Iron will doesn't nesscarily 'feel' like anything - it's more that it shifts the proportions of good days and bad days, moments where your mind flows well and your confidence and energy feels close at hand, and the like. With the five token version, there's a certain ceiling to how much you can be mentally drained - at worst, you'll always be able to muddle through the day's work." 

"People with the paladin package tend to report feeling a certain comforting thrum of light and energy running through their bodies, like being marinated in liquid sunlight, or feeling the pulse of a dragon's heart within them. The 'morality sense' tends to feel a little like that, too - a sense of shadows and brightness, shining through into the soul like ordinary light through your eyelids, though with time you can learn to read it a little more finely, and the exact manifestation of each of these effects depends a little on you and your patron deity." 

Vivian listens and nods along. The first sounds... familiar to her, in some ways. She's had bad days where the work simply didn't break her before. And days where it has broken her before. Maintaining motivation sounds like it would be a lot easier with Iron Will, which is good. 

As for the paladin package... She wants that. It feels good. Proper. 

She doesn't say anything, though, instead electing to keep listening closely. 

"The shining knight package is a little more personal and subtle than that, I've found. It's more that you have a feeling of being warm and settled beneath your skin then being flooded with an external power from the inside out; and a felt sense that you've thought things through and found the start of a solution, when a quest comes. It also comes with a number of skill downloads - those tend to manifest as something of a mix of an instinct, an autopilot, and a queryable database, alongside the more ordinary feeling of simply having a skill for yourself." 

"The gamer gives a certain feeling of automaticity - at first, there's usually a lot of manual use of the interface, but as time goes on, it becomes easier to simply know and slip through the process of using a skill or interacting with the interface. It gives a certain sense of separation as well - that at once you are in your body as you might normally be, but that you are also... platonically yourself, seperate from the world, floating free and fine. I think the experience might remind you a little of gender euphoria, actually."  

"The sincerity effect and the omnicompass are both essentially entirely passive and don't feel like anything to use." 

"I hope that answers your question?"

"Gosh. All of it sounds wonderful. I think the knight package is a little less attractive than the others, but the description of the Gamer as 'like gender euphoria' absolutely sells it to me strongly. Iron Will also seems like... a relatively small thing that might have really big payoffs, you know? I think that's not much different than, for example, the cognitive package, but because I'm so often short of willpower day to day it feels a lot more viscerally good to me." 

"I feel that... the paladin package appeals to me deeply because it's so deeply about caring about and reaching out to others. About knowing who to trust, and giving them someone to rely on in turn. And the powers to heal and to banish corruption feel right."

She taps her chin. "On the other hand, the Gamer... is in a sense an exaltation of the mind over the body. It turns you from a person who is a body into a person who has a body, in some ways; it lets you think without relying on meat, gives you direction, and the indefinite reach of its stacking abilities is remarkable. But it comes with the drawback that early on, you're vulnerable, and have little in the way of initial strength. And compared to the paladin package it feels like a more... selfish route, I might say." 

"The quest sense is a powerful tool, and in worlds where excellence in personal combat or the managing of magical creatures or vehicles are especially important skills, the shining knight package can be incredibly useful, though I agree that it's likely doesn't compare too favorably in the context of the worlds that you are focusing on now." 

She relaxes a little more after saying that.

"I should warm you that the paladin package doesn't sense trustworthiness itself, but good and evil, and magics associated with those forces. It's incredibly helpful to have, but not a complete solution to the problem, I'd say." 

"The ability to ignore wounds is often quite helpful early on, as is the ability to 'grind' your skills, but yes, if you can't sufficiently control the start of the conflict, it can be quite limiting. And as for selfishness..." 

She purses her lips. 

"I don't think it's necessarily selfish, to have goals for what you want yourself to be. It's so easy for that line of thought to go too far, and for it to be 'unselfish' to want no one to get to enjoy their lives at all. Still, it can be a little selfish, sometimes, to need to be the one fixing things as directly as you can. In a place like the cyberpunk worldsheaf, you might end up developing technology or methodology that helps others excel, far more than it makes you yourself shine, and that can be a kind of unselfishness. But that doesn't mean that things that are focused on enjoying the experience of doing good yourself are bad, either." 

She shrugs her shoulders with an open smile. 

"I think you would do excellent work with either option." 

Vivian nods, considering Tilea's words. "Then I think the decision between the paladin package and the gamer package comes down to details of build and world, and we should start looking at what would fit in the remaining five to ten tokens for both worlds."

She nods a little. 

"I do think it's still worth considering the 20 token worlds, but it's definitely also worth considering what exactly it would look like to use either of those power sets in those two worlds you've mentioned."

She perks up a little. 

"Oh and... before I forget..."

"Would you like to attend to the body refit and your trip to the light pools now? Because we're offering those services complimentary, there's a little more flexibility available for when to undertake those."  

Vivian considers, listening along with a few nods. She opens her mouth to speak — and is completely blown off course by Tiera's offer. 

"Yes yes yes!" Vivian's eyes light up and a huge grin comes to her face. "That's like asking if I want chocolate cake. Yes, please."

She laughs, bright and warm at her excitement. 

"Alright. Just a moment, and you'll be whisked away, if that's alright with you?" 

She pokes a few commands into her keyboard, then they give her a satisfying bloop.