"Do you need anything or to be anywhere else to try it?" Montoya asks. "If it doesn't work and you'll be here a while, then we should talk about your options and what you'd like to do in more detail."

"No, it's just the same thing again with a different target, and then if that doesn't work another ten minutes trying to contact my party and tell them I'm stuck."

The second Plane Shift, it transpires, doesn't go off either, this time in the manner of someone trying to go to the plane they're already on. And the Sending fails again.

"Hmmm," Montoya says. "Well, then. I'm assuming that means this is going to be even more complicated?"

"I'm afraid so. Though possibly for someone else or not for very long; in the medium term I'd like to buy passage to somewhere magic is more welcome."

"I can imagine," Montoya says. "I may need to spend some time today with our legal advisors reviewing what help we can offer, and what your options might be if you don't want our help and just want to...go about your own business or travel. You have no legal identity in our systems, and your status as either Mundane or Mage under our laws is unclear. Em. Forrester tells me you can't read our language without magical assistance like you are hearing me through now, and even then currently only for short periods of time, and that you've never used a computer"

"All of those matters and inexperience with our general society would put you at a risk that means I want to offer you protection and support on general principles, but lack specific existing directions that dictate how I should. If you were one of our Mages, I would know how to help you find work at going rates or to provide you the stipends for unemployed Mages between employment or to help a newly identified Mage by Right leave the system for training and work with their family on making any decisions involved in that...but if I were to identify you as such, you would also be bound by laws which you have not been educated about. Somebody could program a wrist-comp for your language and teach you how to use it, so you could navigate this station or other planets, but it would take some time and thus money."

"Em. Forrester tells me you are skilled in healing magic which sounds like it may far, far outstrip our own. I can imagine the hospital in the next ring or any one like it in another system could use every spell you have as long as you were willing to offer it, but negotiating rates would be a question since no comparable services exist, and similarly your combat abilities might make you able to offer skills as a bodyguard, bouncer, or even Sanctioned Hunter, but in many of those cases your status as a Mage or not might be brought to the forefront over questions of magical self-defense or use of magic in pursuit of sanctioned law enforcement. I know I would like to start by offering to pay you for use of your Sending spell tomorrow, if it works within our worlds, since being able to directly discuss this with some superiors would let me unlock resources I don't have here to hand or am uncertain I can authorize without clarifying your status."

He claps his hands together. "I definitely need to review today's schedule, arrange to speak to legal, and figure out what we can offer to do for you or to get you on your way alone. I can, for the moment, at least compensate any meals you would like, within reason, or anything at our canteen, and offer you a room to stay in and a guide anywhere on station. I can be certain my government would expect us here to offer nothing less than that. You've been up all night, Samora, as has Em. Forrester from their shift, do you need to sleep? I think I will have better answers in another few hours."

She is grateful to Abadar that she finds herself among honorable people interested in trade, and to Montoya for being so thoughtful about it. 

"If you take a census of everyone and want to include me in it, or if I need travel documents, assistance with that would be much appreciated. So would a copy of your laws, which I'd want to be much more educated about before taking any work that might involve combat. I very much want to sell healing if the hospital can be convinced to take an interest in it, though I should get a better sense of the local currency at some point. I'd be happy to sell you Sendings--does half price if it doesn't go off sound alright? I don't sleep and only eat recreationally, but I'd be excited to try the local food if there's plenty to go around." Especially if it means meeting more local people in the canteen and giving Montoya somewhere convenient to stash her while he does all the extra work she's making for him.

"Food is...very much not in short supply," Montoya said. "I think an introduction to our economy might also be on that list of things to do, but also an introduction for us to yours, with magic being common I suspect a lot of what I might assume about the details of Lastwall's economy may be wrong, and bias how we expect you to think in ways that are wrong. Things that can be produced by machines are abundant and incredibly cheap, unless very complicated. Food, clothing, clear air and water at least on planets. Things that require human labor are more expensive, like live music or hand-sewn clothing. Even here, which is...quite far from the center of the Protectorate's good side and which must import many things a planet might grow or another station could more easily import from the local planet, I'm not aware of any true famine in any time I know of, back decades."

"I would say on an individual level, you personally would almost never find yourself in a situation where you couldn't find food to buy, and that the cost of basic nutrition that's...probably a tiny fraction of an hour. Spices are also pretty cheap, so things like spiced curries, fancier cuts of meat, all that is available still for less than an hour or two's typical labor per day. And...as a Mage, or at least somebody with magic, your economic value is much higher than typical labor, Samora. Similarly, if you wanted to change clothes, I could issue you something from our Marine's store of exercise clothing, or Em. Forrester or somebody could take you to clothing shops on the station's markets where for...probably less than a day or two's wages, certainly less than I'm probably going to propose to pay you for your Sending, you could buy a week's worth of clothing and an automatic suitcase to carry them."

"I know what we would be allocated to pay by the minute for live broadcast to another world at a Mage Testing station in a system with a Runic Transceiver Array, and I'm thinking I can within my instructions base what I offer you on that, plus some multiple for being here and not in a system with an RTA. A ticket on a Jump ship for you is more expensive, but not impossibly so. I'll need some time to put that together, and for our legal advisors to suggest me better options than I can think of off the top of my head. If you don't need to sleep....Em Forrester?"

"Yes?" they say.

"You look like you're going to hang around whether I point out your normal shift is over either way, yes?" Montoya asks the younger clerk.

"...Probably," they admit.

"Would you be willing to play tour guide a bit? For a breakfast without too many surprises, the canteen food is solid and plentiful, or my favorite off-ring diner is Frank's, up by the docks, and you can maybe show Mage Samora the docks a bit. You can discuss what of our food sounds familiar to her and what she might like to sample 'recreationally', maybe show her the gym and recreational facilities? I can see about reaching out to the hospital, anything will seem more formal coming through our office." Montoya says. The Marine Corporal still lurking in the corner very carefully adjusts his posture with a minor click of armor panels against one another. "Ah, and I would like to ask you both to take a Marine escort if you leave this ring, for my piece of mind. Better to avoid getting too caught up in any local trouble until we've sorted out self-defense rights and everything. A few hours will give me time to sort out some more solid options for plans."

"...Sure, Mage Samora, if you're interested?" Forrester says, and then they chuckle. " 'Recreational' eating, I feel like I'm going to be asked to offer you special brownies." Montoya glares disapprovingly.

"Wow, I think your society is a lot wealthier than mine. And that sounds good to me! Dare I ask what is a brownie and what would make one special?"

Montoya looks at Forrester with a sense of, "You brought it up, now you get to explain it" and Forrester bashfully explains. "A brownie is like a really dense chocolate cake...I don't know if you have chocolate? They're good. Anyway, they have a tradition of being used for making baked goods containing a mild recreational drug, and then those are 'special' brownies. Umm...not a thing for today."

"Quite," Montoya says. "How about for the moment we keep to the quite mundane, and you two stick to the canteen for breakfast. I'll arrange a guard with Captain Harris if you want to go out for any necessities later, and we can discuss more this afternoon."

Forrester leads Samora through the door and deeper into the complex. The ring is brighter than Diego's Ring, with more plants, art displays, and wood inlays. As they walk, Forrester offers, "This whole setup is a little oversized for the permanent office, we have all the space and logistical support for the annual Tester surge down to Flytrap, and all the diplomatic headaches that always brings, but most of it is closed off now." They gesture down on direction along the curve of the ring. "That whole area is more quarters and duplicate recreation and canteen spaces, and other than the Marine gym and shooting range, most of the fourth floor is just totally closed off. Ah, canteen's just through here." As they lead through a set of open double-doors into a 100-seater cafeteria space with a serving line and refrigerators of chilled grab-and-go food and drinks, they look at Samora's sword and armor again. "I bet the Marines would love to try sparring with you, actually, and have you ever seen a gun fired? They might have some armor better suited for protecting against that, if that's just metal and not...enchanted somehow?"

"Sparring is great! What's a gun, other than some kind of weapon?"

"OK, so...you have arrows or crossbows, right?" Getting a nod, Forrester continues. "So instead of using a spring to fire an arrow at a slow speed, a gun uses a little charge of chemical explosives to make a lot of hot gas and push a really light but dense bullet out of a tube. It's way more energy, and because it's smaller, aerodynamic, and spinning, it can be accurate out to hundreds of [yards], more like [half mile or so]s for specialized rifles or the big artillery. And the explosive is part of the round, and you have a bunch of rounds in a magazine in a pistol or rifle, so you can keep firing as fast as you pull the trigger...or faster, really, with some."

"Oh wow, I absolutely want to see that! Could the bullets be made of cold iron, or of silver? Can they be reused like arrows, or does the exploding part only work once?"

"I don't...know what cold iron means for you," Forrester says. "I know that silver bullets are a thing in myths and fiction, at least, I don't know why you'd use one unless you're like...is killing werewolves is a thing that's nonfictional in your world? They're usually like lead or something for the bullet, so silver...probably could work for real? The exploding part only works once, though, and the speed they hit means the bullet itself tends to get all beat out of shape, but they're...pretty cheap. There's some systems that use magnetic accelerators and stuff, but those aren't really portable. I could see if there's time on the Marines' range, they'd probably be willing to let you try some. They're always on us to get checked out on pistols, because this is a 'potentially hazardous' posting."

"Werewolves are real and are vulnerable to silver, but I was asking because devils and demons are vulnerable to silver and cold iron respectively. Cold iron is . . . I'm not an alchemist but it's a kind of iron that's mined in some of the same places as regular iron. But if the bullets are single use it's probably not worth it to make special ones. I'd love to try a gun, and if I do find a way home later it would be great if I could bring a gun with me so my government could study it. They sound useful for fighting demons."

"So, I don't know ammunition production, but my interplanetary relations classes went a lot into mining and refining and stuff. A special iron variant isn't that hard, there's special alloys of steel they use for starship hulls or springs or buildings or whatever. Is it that you don't think you'd need enough to be worth it, or that you're worried about too much? Because...like...this whole station is metal, and it's twenty [about a half mile]s long, and this isn't even a place most people care that much about."

"More that even if I can get myself home, I don't see how I could get enough cold iron home to change the math on whether it's worth making bullets out of. Maybe if I found a reliable way to get back and forth repeatedly."

"Ah, yeah. You can't just, like, load up a Navy ship with cold iron and rifles and Plane Shift back, probably. So, have you ever had coffee, or like...potatoes? I'm assuming you have, like, chickens or things that lay eggs? Milk and cheese and all that?"

"Couldn't even if one wanted to, yeah--it's up to eight people and everything they're carrying. We have chickens and eggs and milk and cheese but the potatoes are new." She scoops herself a plate of breakfast potatoes and examines the red plastic squirt bottle next to them. "What's in this?"

"Ketchup," Forrester says. "Tomatoes and vinegar and sugar and some stuff like that. It's good, a lot of people eat it on everything. I mean, like, I don't know if your magic could work with one of our amplifiers...a Jump Mage can only personally teleport like themself and a person or two without a matrix, but with a Jump Matrix or a Navy Amplifier they can move a whole freighter or battleship or passenger liner, and further than they could alone. I don't know much about how, though. Mage-Liaison Montoya's a Rune Scribe, he might be able to say more?"

She squirts some ketchup onto her plate next to the potatoes. What an interesting substance this bottle is made of. 

"I have no idea if I could use your amplifiers! At a guess I'd say no, but it would be fascinating if I could. Definitely worth talking to an expert--about both the possibility and the risks, some magic interactions are explosive."

"Not sure," Forrester says. "Some of ours can be too, but it's usually just the mage themself, I think. Have you ever had a waffle?"

"I've heard of an archmage blowing up a building trying to invent a new spell, but it's far from common. It looks like a pancake but pancakes don't have the squares."

"Basically," Forrester says. "Pretty similar batter, but you form it with an iron to get the shape and make it a little crispy, and the ridges hold syrup and stuff well."

"Neat." She'll try a waffle and a few pieces off the sampler of exotic fruit chunks. "Are all amplifiers built into ships? I'm a bit worried that even if it turns out I can get home with one I won't be able to get back here. So I wouldn't want to try it with anything borrowed."