"That might work, yeah. Uh, there aren't that many eclipsed but I know some from school?"

She nods. "Would you mind introducing me?"

"We're not really... friends, but I can dig up some emails..."

"I'll make it up to you, if it's inconvenient," she says.

"It's not really inconvenient just - socially awkward," says Jackson. He produces his phone and, while intermittently nibbling candied nuts out of a bowl on the table, sends some emails.

She... Hovers socially awkwardly! Wow everyone in this room is very talented at being socially awkward, aren't they.

Brian doesn't seem very awkward! He starts collecting dinner dishes.

"Okay," says Jackson eventually, "I sent some school people an email."

"Thanks."

Jackson's phone bleeps at him after not too long. "Isabella wants to know what kind of unusual powers, what should I tell her?"

"Well if nothing else I can put most non-living things into interdimensional pockets anchored to pieces of paper, which can be very trivially transported, but I have to be on the other side to get them back out. I can effectively indefinitely store all non-magical hazardous materials I know about. I can prevent people from using my native magic system, but I'd have to experiment to see how easily that is to adapt to yours - you mentioned new eclipsed being dangerous? The thing I'd make to prevent someone from using my magic is anchored a piece of paper you can stick to their forehead and pull off when you don't need their powers locked down, which might be more convenient than whatever you're using now. Depending on why new eclipsed are dangerous, I might be able to help address that, too."

"I can sense magic use from my native system. I don't know if that applies here. And I can amplify some types of magic use, too, but same problems as with the lock-down - I'd have to experiment here."

"My medical powers might have advantages yours doesn't - I need to touch people to heal them, but I can affect what I'm counted as 'touching,' which, with some set up, lets me heal people at a distance or very large groups of people. I can also keep going with healing for very long times if I need to - my world had a continent-scale disaster a few years ago, and I ended up healing large groups of people near constantly for over three days without stopping to sleep."

"Can anybody stick the paper to them?" Jackson asks, typing.

"It's possible, but it'll depend on what I end up working out - it needs to be activated each time and I could make one that self activates, but I don't know if I'll be able to get it to sense when it's touching an eclipsed, and the design I'm used to breaks if it's active when not touching someone - though making them deactivate on removal is a lot easier. I can probably create other ways for it to activate itself, but 'will only activate when touching an appropriate target' has the best safety margins and is the most reliable."

"Maybe a kind that works on kids," suggests Brian, while Jackson types more.

"I'd have to define 'kid' well enough to it, but that might be possible actually..." she muses. "There's some other things I can do but they mostly would involve secondary activation seals that'll run down their lifespan faster than the hindrance seals proper, which could cause logistical issues, and that would introduce some risk for false positives and negatives..."

"False how? People can tell if they eclipse or not," Jackson says.

"From the seal's perspective. It might activate when it shouldn't."

"Oh. Well, probably you should talk to lockdown people about that."

She nods. "Depending on how much they want to pay upfront for research, I might want to find somewhere to crash or another job while I'm poking at development, though, if they are interested..."

"Places that hire eclipsed usually do a contract thing where they pay you for some R&D but then you have to work for them a while."

"That'll end up depending on the contract, then, as well as how it's enforced - I'm under existing contracts back home, and new contracts would need to not conflict and to be fairly time-limited, or I'd need to be able to get out of them easily. Admittedly 'easily' includes 'I leave for home without fulfilling it and if our worlds are in contact no one makes this a political issue.'"

"I wouldn't expect it to like start a war or anything."

She shrugs. "I'll read things before I sign them, regardless."

"Yeah, that's a good idea, I kind of didn't but like I work for the government so it probably can't be that bad," says Jackson, "somebody would've noticed and complained by now."

Wow 'contracted with the government' and 'it can't be that bad' are incredibly incongruous statements. Not the most ridiculously so of ones she's ever heard, but, like, pretty up there. Especially sans the usual 'government propagandist' smile. Maybe random distribution of magic users in the population prevents the accumulation of power her world's had? Or disrupts it - you'd either need a government nearly all the randomly selected superpowered people want to defend, to aggressively cull young eclipsed who look likely to cause issues, or just end up with anarchy.

Or her priors don't apply very strongly to this world. Jackson is an eclipsed and doesn't seem to be part of anyone's army.

Maybe they're all adorably non-violent? That'd be a nice break from the other magic aliens she's met.

She nods. "I might disagree about what's a reasonable contract, anyways, and it'd be nice to know that up front."

"Yeah, that makes sense if you don't know basically what would be boilerplate."