"On it!"

The Flash and Kid Flash both disappear in blurs of red and yellow.

"—show Topaz to ..."

Batman sighs.

"Or, I suppose I will show you to the League facility in question, and then come figure out how many toes Flash managed to step on. This way, please."

That's an - interesting way to do it? Maybe it's some sort of coded message for superhearing, though, so she really shouldn't judge - at least beyond the little reflex scrunching up of her face at the loudness.

She nods and follows along. 

The batcave is designed with many contingencies in mind — including the need to guide people through it without actually showing them anything. So the route to the teleporter is a little winding.

"I have some questions that I'll need answered as part of setting up a legal identity for you — but that's not urgent at the moment. I imagine you must have questions for me?" he asks.

A careful observer might note that he subtly grabs one edge of his cloak to make it swoop dramatically whenever the route goes around a corner.

She hums softly, and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. 

"I have a lot of questions! I'm not quite sure if you're the right person to ask, though, but the first one on my mind is..." 

"Is there anything special legally I need to know about being a metahuman, here?" 

Hopefully, they're not too protectionist? It'll probably be a headache either way working on most big things but... 

He nods approvingly.

"If you don't put on a costume and go fight crime, no," he replies. "There is no mandatory registration, or anything like that. Of course, there is also no special treatment for metahumans in law — with the sole exception that if your powers give you dietary or more esoteric requirements, those must be accommodated under the Americans with Disabilities Act."

"On the other hand, if you choose to help with League activities such as disaster response, there are some things you need to know. Good samaritan laws, under what circumstances you can perform a citizen's arrest, and so on. There's a training module for that in the computer system, so you can review it at your leisure."

He pauses at a computer terminal beside the teleporter (a large tube-shaped contraption with a worryingly futuristic design) to link her biometrics from the scanners to a league identity file.

Her eyes drift up in thought, before she nods along at the comment about the tutorial. 

"I wasn't too too worried about that? I think before you go into the field looking for a fight or to butt heads with people, there's plenty you should figure out how you want to go even if there isn't any particularized law saying that it has to go one way or the other. Honestly, I was most worried that there would be some sort of sweeping rule against commercialization of superpowers - there's a lot of really dumb law and contracts on the books about automation back in my world, and having someone with superpowers doing things seems like it might cause the same kind of institutional problems." 

She watches him work quietly for a moment, then perks up a little. 

"...What would you say the Justice League is missing, as a team?" 

He pauses for a moment, to give the question due consideration.

"That's a very interesting question."

And he is not about to list the league's actual weaknesses, so he needs to find an answer that is probable, helpful, and doesn't give those away.

"I think one of our biggest problems is mobility," he finally answers. "Outside of a few members like the Flash or Green Lantern, who can quickly make their way to anywhere on Earth, we rely on a UN-funded system of teleporters, like this one here, in order to respond to emergencies. Unfortunately, the teleporters, while very safe and reliable, are expensive to construct and maintain. Only major population centers can justify installing them, which leaves the League unable to respond as quickly as I would like."

He turns to her.

"I think an ideal mobility solution would allow any League member to show up anywhere on Earth instantaneously — but all the systems that I've considered for accomplishing that would be prohibitively expensive, unreliable, or both. What do you think?"

She hums thoughtfully. 

"I think... Realistically, a lot of the high value targets are naturally pretty concentrated there anyways? I'm not sure how much superpowered situations present themselves outside of those kinds of areas - I wouldn't expect it to be that that common? And I don't really know exactly how fast the Flashes and Green Lanterns are, but it seems like it might be reasonable to try to set something up for making it easier for them to carry people to where they need to be, with shifts so you always have someone on standby for that purpose. Even if they're not quite as fast as I'm picturing, you could probably get pretty decent coverage out of that and the teleporter network. Failing that... some sort of network of planes or helicopters on standby to use by the teleporters instead? But there's never really 'fast enough' when you're the first and last real line of superpowered defense, I suppose." 

And now that she thinks about it, that's not really an answer to the question she asked? It's a closely related one, and one that she'd probably want to ask anyways but... She's not exactly skeptical, but the more she runs through it in her head the more it seems  more like a recently lagging KPI than a truly foundational issue. 

Can she get a sense of what's possible with higher level mergers? The 'seed power' of teleportation is probably a bit hard to squeeze into a slot, but she already has a few ideas for how she could build a decent long range teleportation power - maybe some sort of low mass limit low range teleportation power and a way to reduce effective mass, or maybe some sort of distance compression or sympathetic connection trick to make things closer then they'd otherwise be... It doesn't seem obviously unbuildable, at any rate. 

Wait...

She startles, and blinks back dramatically. 

"You have teleporters?! Honestly, I'm suprised it's that much of a problem to have enough of them if they're that reliable - rich people in my world spend tens or hundreds of millions on private jets, and a teleporter network seems like the sort of huge improvement over that that they'd be happy to set oodles of money on fire to make that scale as best it possibly can, even if they'd have to let you jump the queue once in a blue moon." 

It isn't very good at speculation; it would need to see her actual concepts to see if they fit together. But that seems like the kind of thing that is possible in principle.

"Regulatory capture and fearmongering," he replies. "The underlying technology of zeta beams is strong enough to teleport people between planets — and that is actually how the League's Martian Manhunter arrived on Earth — but using it with an unanchored endpoint is considerably riskier. The League's zeta beams are strictly point-to-point because the receiving end can act as a focusing crystal to prevent molecular decomposition in transit."

All of this is public, although little-known, information. The downside of UN funding.

"The problem is that some transport and oil executives got a copy of preliminary experiments with unfocused zeta rays, and used that to lobby to effectively ban the technology as unsafe. It's only because the League teleporters are for private use that I was able to get a waiver from the FAA&T."

"As for the locations that regularly need a League response: you're not wrong that the majority of our deployments are near population centers. But we also handle stopping natural disasters and alien invasions, both of which are not so correlated with population density."

She winces sympathetically. 

"I can see why that'd be a problem! Imagine that means that even if you had a different method that didn't have those sorts of problems it'd be hard to invest the time and money into it when there's a good chance much the same people would end up playing whack-a-mole, there." 

Probably there's also magic problems that happen in awkward places too - though it's hard to get a good sense of the base rates on those.

...This is honestly more awkward then she expected, but brave heart, Topaz! There'll be a chance to explain everything soon, she's sure of it, even if it's not now-now. 

"Are there any other technologies that come to mind with stories like that?" 

"Many," he agrees. "There is a particular kind of brilliant inventor who will create something revolutionary, without stopping to consider basic safety measures. And then their creations go rogue, or they can't find anybody willing to adapt the designs and put them into production, so they start to believe the whole world is against them, and sooner or later it becomes our problem. The League funnels a lot of the technology we recover from criminal operations to STAR labs—" and Waynetech "— to see if it can be adapted for safe civilian use, but with that kind of initial impression, many of the most useful technologies don't get adoption. We have successfully released better clotting-inducing bandages, and a few kinds of industrial equipment, but it's slow going."

"You're set up with temporary guest access to the teleporters," he declares, hitting a final key at the console. "So if you would just step through there ..."

She frownily nods along. 

"I'm glad that someone is working on it, at least." 

She steps through obligingly. 

"A-01: Topaz; 02: Batman"

The room on the far side is a wide open space, with colored sections of floor indicating that it might be a multi-purpose room. A pool of water sits in the corner, smelling faintly of the sea. In the distance, the sound of construction faintly echos.

"Welcome to Mount Justice. Formerly one of the League's fallback shelters, we've been refitting it for use by the proposed young hero team," he explains. "There is still some work being done on the backup systems, but the living quarters are fully ready. They're just through there, and you should feel free to claim whichever room you'd like, since you're the first person to stay here since the refit. The kitchen is down that corridor, as are the locker-rooms. Both should be stocked with essentials."

"There is a small town about a mile away, but for security reasons I'd ask that you not go there until you've taken the League's covert entry and exit courses. The teleporter will let you go to the Hall of Justice in D.C. and return the same way if you need to head out. I'll arrange for someone to come help with less urgent things like replacing your wardrobe tomorrow."

His tone becomes slightly gentler and less business like.

"I know losing your home like this can be difficult. Life often is. But I believe you have already shown the intelligence and strength of character to overcome it. Is there anything else you need from me before I go catch up with the Flash?"

She stares up at the room - it's pretty nice, for a fallback shelter, and pretty roomy too, nodding along distantly. 

"Is there a computer I can use to look things up and write things down here? Also, I'm not sure what exactly you have in mind, but having someone to contact to help keep figuring things out would be helpful? Don't think it's the best idea to do before I get settled, but I'd like to talk someone through my powers and maybe have a point of contact for odd problems that might crop up here or there." 

He nods.

"Sensible. For the computer, if you press here ..."

He taps a button on the wall, and a surprisingly orange holographic computer interface springs to life in the center of the room.

"For a point of contact, you can use the computer to message me. Or, in the case of an emergency, to send a general League alert. We'll get something more permanent sorted out in a little while — the plan is for the team here to have a rotating League member in residence to do training in different subjects — but you arrived before we had everything perfectly ready. Your first prospective teammate should be moving in tomorrow, though. My schedule is, unfortunately, seldom predictable, but I should have time at 17:00 tomorrow for a less rushed conversation, about your powers, the League, or anything else on your mind."

She pauses a bit, then bobs her head down firmly. 

"I'm happy enough to lock that in, then."

"...I think that should be all, for now?" 

There is a quiet movement of air, and if she turns to look, Batman will be gone.

The teleporter doesn't seem to have announced his departure, either.

..She titters lightly. It makes sense that the stealth guy would have stealth options, but... 

She grins a little. 

Okay! She claps her hands together excitedly, and subs out the anti-synergy power to be anti-synergistic with her current loadout instead of her previous one, pulling up a clock widget to get a sense of how fast the change is. 

Research time, research time! 

Do they have global warming here? She should probably double check the intel on what's up and who is in the justice league, too, and if it is all on the up and up... 

Are there any credible online resources about learning magic or psychic defense? That's honestly something that she should have patched earlier, now that she thinks about it - nothing would have stopped martian manhunter from just reading her mind from out of view and that could have gone in some nasty directions if they were worse people. 

Figuring out how to monetize her powers is... probably something that she should wait a little on? Ideally they have some sort of lawyer to talk to about it or maybe a business consultant? Really, the most obvious idea is just pumping her healing power and seeing what arrangements they can make to make use of that, but doing something with idk, chemical synthesis or a courier service. Getting a few million honestly sounds like it's probably not that that hard, if she gets some sort of pipeline set-up for it. Hopefully they have a person for that, but even if they don't, it's not like they look like they're angling that much to keep her contained-contained. 

She hems and haws about it for a bit, before sending batman a message: 

Looked things up a bit and saw that magic is a thing here! I'm not sure if it would be a good use of his time, but I'd appreciate it if e.g. Mr. Zatara would give me a look over, magically speaking? I'm a little worried that being from another universe might mean that I'll have some problems interacting with the magic of this world. 

Oh and yeah! What's up with aliens? There's a few aliens in the league, and there's a whole planet full of martians. Is there any sort of special rules around copying alien technology or media, for that matter? That's probably another angle worth considering. 

Also geopolitics is a good thing to get a bit of a better sense of - she tries to find a big ol' list of countries and pokes through them briefly to see if there's anything too glaringly different from what she remembers, and then looks for the bird's eye view of american history, letting the common knowledge power fill in the gaps and guide her a little. It's a little overwhelming, honestly, despite how natural it is, so she's glad that she's not pushing it too too much by just stacking a kajillion other powers to get more of a sense of things. 

And metahuman businesses! Any canonical examples of non-combaty non-superhero-y things where a metahuman just provides the service of their power? Might be worth seeing if she can track them down a bit later. 

At some point, her stomach starts rumbling and she has to go and check out the kitchen and nab a sandwich or something. This can be pretty hungry work! 

Globe: Warming, but slightly less than her Earth, if she can remember exact WMO predictions.

Current League roster, per justiceleague.org: Aquaman (King Orin), Captain Atom, Batman, Captain Marvel, Zatara (No relation to famous stage magician Giovanni Zatara — they've been seen in the same place at the same time), The Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern A, Green Lantern 1, Hawkman, Hawkwoman, Icon, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man (Patrick O'Brian), Red Tornado, Superman, and Wonder Woman (Princess Diana of Themyscira).

Justiceleague.org looks very official, and has links to their UN charter. There are news stories about the various members doing various good things. There are also stories about how Superman is working to take over the world, and also pregnant with Batman's hybrid alien baby, but they're from tabloid-y places, not credible news sources.

Magic and psychic powers are definitely real and acknowledged, but weirdly under-discussed. There are no findable, reputable websites that will teach her about defending against either, although there are places willing to send her a correspondence course if she just provides a credit card.

Her message gets a read notification instantly, and a reply about 30 minutes later.

My scans detected no large enchantments, but it's still a good idea for Zatara to give you a more thorough checkup. If you go here you can see the League scheduling software and find a time when he's free. You should also remember to arrange a time to get all your normal vaccinations, although that will have to wait on your legal identity.

Aliens: there are a lot, apparently! Known kinds include Kryptonians, Martians, Appelexians, Dhorians, Guardians, and Rannians.

Rannians are Earth's closest neighbors, about 4.5 light years away. The government is working on constructing a long-range, low-frequency radio transmitter to talk to them, but the project won't be completed until 2014.

Superman has put up a site about Kryptonian art and culture, although it's not very popular. Mostly because Kryptonian ideas of beauty seem to have revolved around the very precise arrangement of otherwise quite plain crystals.

There don't seem to be any actual rules against sharing alien technology, but it is still in extremely limited circulation. Kryptonian technology apparently relies on an industrial base that Earth can't yet support, Martian technology is almost all alive (and only usable if you're psychic, because they haven't developed the concept of a 'user interface'), and Appelexian technology explodes on contact with non-Appelexians (and you should report possible sightings to the League here for responsible disposal).

Zeta-beam teleporters are reproduced alien technology, actually: scientists caught the backscatter of an interstellar zeta-beam transfer and rederived the corresponding principles. Those aren't in wide use for the reasons Batman discussed. Ditto a thing called a "Cosmic Energy Generator", which was recovered from a crashed spaceship and might offer unlimited free energy, but nobody is quite sure how it works and whether it has any side effects, so its use is banned other than in research.

There are persistent rumors that China and Russia are both working to weaponize captured alien technology, but there's no actual evidence of that, especially not in the form of actually available alien technology.