There's lots of people here. Most of them look Vaguely Official. Cops, or bureaucrats or scientists in obvious white-collar clothes. She was a waitress even before she turned into a MOUSE. So she's doubly uncomfortable here.

The food is... Cafeteria food. It's not bad. And it gives her something nice to smell with this slightly overwhelming nose. She recognizes that coffee smell, someone needs to clean the machine, though.

After her escort tells her it's free she gets a bunch of bread items and a bunch of fruit and a glass of water and...

Goes to sit nearby the one nonhuman with odd ears in here. The one person who doesn't look like part of the system. (Her escort settles in at a spot three tables down, and the cafeteria's pretty empty at the moment.

"...Hey."

...She's suddenly not sure what to say. Wow, you're obviously magic, like me? Of course she's magic. She's .... Cel shaded?

She bites a strawberry. Her ears twitch slightly at the sharp taste.

She takes takes a sip of her coffee, pen still sitting in the cup, and makes a face.

"Cops can't be bothered to spend money on better pens. What's a girl gotta do to get something better than dimestore ink?"

Then she processes that a mousegirl is sitting next to her now. "Oh! Hi!"

"Hi..." Headshake. She tries again, more enthusiastically. "Hi. Neat diet. Ask 'em for money, order from Amazon? -Alphazon? They're gonna pay me something, apparently, because I got awakened by this bitch who turns out was mind controlling me or something. And then a cop made of fire shot me. And I can't go home because of the masquerade." Gesture at ears. "Everything's so loud now."

"I would have, if I could've just gotten through 'til payday. Just got awakened... yesterday? The day before? Just got awakened within the past forty-eight by someone who forgot to mention weird cravings and I'm broke until I finish this writing commission. At least she explained some of the basics, though, and didn't whammy me. That sucks." She shakes her head in sympathy.

"So she explained basic Witchery before she left, and when the sudden craving for ink hit and I didn't have any in the house, I stretched my Hat out to cover my ears," she conjures her Hat demonstratively, "and reshaped my Garment," tugs her dress now, "to add a big overcoat to hide my tails, and slipped down to the store and shoplifted a little bottle of ink. With a bit of magical help."

She winces at the memory. "Masquerade headache hits like a baseball bat, right on top of the ink deficit headache. So I rub my forehead in pain, and accidentally knock my Hat off, and make the masquerade breach worse. At this point I've got a three-for-one deal on headaches, and just argue my way out of the store. And then, because I was Just Done with all this, I magicked my way up to a nearby roof, on my broomstick."

She facepalms now. "Little did I know that this would be a blatant alarm to the O-R-C here, on top of the fourth level of headachy goodness. So I dismissed my broom and hat, opened the bottle, and was about to take a sip, when suddenly I hear a field agent shout FREEZE behind me."

"And in my shock, I dropped the bottle. And watching all that pretty cerulean treat shatter on the ground just pushed me over the edge. I whirled around and started shouting at the Kekubi field agent, and she shot me."

"And then I woke up in a cell here."

"Oh, geez. That's cops for you. Always making trouble for people who have enough already. I don't know any magic. Except for flinging rocks. Kinda scared to try in here, with-" She gestures over at the sunglasses and small horn-bearing cop who escorted her in and is now chewing through a stack of pancakes with gusto. "Are you getting used to the - tails and stuff? It's fuckin' weird for me. I'm tiny."

"Ooh, yeah, that's such a big adjustment! I was most of the way to six feet tall before, and now I'm barely over four! And the ears are so sensitive, and I've got three tails, and I'm toonshaded! Like what the fuck!"

She holds up her hand, which looks like she escaped from a high-budget anime.

"And then there's the constant need for headpats. And I tried to give myself a headpat, and that just made me cry!"

She shakes her head. "Yeah, there's a lot to adjust to."

"Uuuu. Why do headpats sound nice." Head, meet hands. "Why me even. I mean, magic. I wouldn't go back to being a waitress. But! It could have been a little better paced! I could have been made of fire, or turned into a dragon or something instead of a mouse. How many witches are weird like this, do you think?"

"I mean, the cop that shot me was literally made of smoke and ash and shadow, and the cop that brought you here and hooked me up with these cheap-ass Bic knock-offs has horns? I think normal fell off the back of the bus, and we forgot to get off and rescue it."

"Are most of these people just ... Human you think? Not witches?"

Her tail, moving around of its own accord, thumps hard against a table edge. "Ow!"

"Oof. That looked like it hurt. I did that a few times at home before my ill-fated shoplifting."

Why does she have the urge to pet the fuzzy tail? She is not going to pet the fuzzy tail. She's not even going to offer to pet the fuzzy tail.

"Hm. As for the people here, I think so? What little I remember learning about ORC," she pronounces it this time, rather than spelling it out, "suggested that it was pretty human-run and human-focused."

"Someone probably needs to do it if there's Chaos corruption or something around. There's a lot of humans! And the cults and probably werewolves and vampires and goblins can hurt people. But they're..." Vague wave. "Cops. In charge here and make sure you know it. Even if they're nice, they're cops and I'm kind of prejudiced at this point."

"No argument here. Y'know the old rule, right? If you see someone shoplifting food—"

"Huh? No I didn't. 'Sides, it was probably spoiled."

"Damn right."

She sips her coffee some more. "Sable," she adds, by way of introduction.

"Lenora." She nods firmly. "Was a waitress yesterday. I don't suppose you can show me the - whatever basic magic you've heard of already?"

"Sure. I am not remotely a teacher, I'm just a ghostwriter who was still trying to get enough money together to start transitioning last week, and now I'm a pint-sized foxgirl who barely knows what she's doing, but sure."

"-Huh ooh. Is that maybe a bright side, sort of? You're pretty girly now. Even if kind of... Anime. Not that I can say anything." She tugs gently on an ear and winces slightly.

She grins and blushes. "Heh, yeah, I am, aren't I?"

Then she notices the wince. "Not a fan of your sudden cuteness?"

"No, that just - Well, yes, but also that just kind of hurt."

"Awww, sorry. On the bright side, though, we can figure out all the ways you can be dangerous, and then you can wreck people who disrespect you for being cute, and it'll take the assholes by surprise."

"Hmm. That does sound appealing. Tiny titan. You know, I'm not sure whether to like, expect story stuff? Am I in a fantasy novel now, and I should expect to find a legendary sword or have to find the girl who awakened me and fight her? Or is it just life, with magic."

"I think it's mostly just life, with magic. Can't really rule story out though, because I'm apparently a literal storybook character now. Inkborn, which is what I am other than Mimi, awaken into narrative archetypes and charge from storytelling."

"That sounds... Inconvenient. Not that I really know."

"I like it well enough so far. I think it helps that we usually get archetypes that resonate well for us. There isn't really a lot of data, though, given that there are so few of us. Actually, on that note..."

She takes off her hat — wide-brimmed, purple, holes for her ears, with a long point that flops over — and tosses it at the cute, surprisingly helpful cop.

And then, while everyone's eyes are on the improvised frisbee, she conjures another and sets it on her seat, upside down, then sits on it.

She adroitly catches the hat and sticks it on her head in one smooth motion. Kind of looks like she's expecting something, but not in a hostile way, just a little sardonic half-smile.

And with a careful bit of teekay, the hat floats back off her head for a moment, over her lap, and then Sable suddenly falls into the hat she's sitting on, out the one over the cop's lap, and suddenly lapful of foxgirl!

"Hi!"

She puts one arm on Sable's back to balance her. "Yo. Sable, right? Heard you had some bad luck and ol' Kemmie brought you in for a lecture."

"Mhm, and the mediator who helped with my awakening didn't even really know anything about Inkborn at all, just that we charge off storytelling, and now all my stuff is stuck at home and I'll probably be risking headaches daily if I try to go back, and so will Lenora, and I didn't even really have much but it's mine, y'know?"

"Yeah, it can be really hard for newbies who have a lot of links to the mundane world. Especially with radical transformations or odd needs. Tell ya hwhat," she drawls out the word with an odd pronunciation, "They mostly keep me around for my firepower anyway. I don't get to play much and if I do, it ain't fun. So I can give y'all a lift places for a bit, long as I don't have reports to write or nothin'. I don't think your friend likes me much though."

"Awesome, that'd be a big help! Can you get someone to look up anything y'all have on Inkborn, while you're at it? And I can't really blame her, honestly. You're a cop! Neither of us have had good experiences with cops, I bet. I'm just really good at being loving and lovable in spite of that."

"A quick archive pull's not that big a deal either. I can introduce ya on the way to the Abyssal check for Lenora."

"Great, thanks!"

And then she pulls her hat down about herself, vanishing beneath it and reappearing in her seat next to Lenora. The now-abandoned hat loses its color, then its substance at all, until it's just an outline, which then vanishes.

Lenora snickers. "Nice trick. And a good sport to play it on. I kinda get the vibe of someone who's been around since the sixties and nobody can fire from her."

She giggles and nods. "Yeah, that's the impression I get too. So, were we gonna teach you a bit of magic?"

"-Hmm, yeah. Might distract me from wondering what the hell I'm going to do next, since I can't exactly go back to freaking Roger's Hawaiian Bar and Grill two feet shorter. We're in Michigan. Not Hawaii. And the owner's name is Gary. Hmph. I - can move rocks around, I think? I'm feeling the rocks and dirt around us, though concrete's icky and horrible and doesn't work."

"Yeah, I bet it feels icky. We can come back to where we're going instead of our old lives in a minute. Coplady over there probably can fill in the blanks on what I learned about the factions while she's giving us a ride, and we can make our decision then."

She grins. "For now, let's pick one of the two absolute easiest things to start with. D'you wanna find your familiar, or your Rod and Garment and Hat?"

"Hm. Hats seem pretty mandatorily witchy."

She nods and smiles. "Solid choice. So now we're gonna find your Hat. Close your eyes."

She takes a breath, and smiles, her voice getting a bit dreamlike. "This is your Hat, and it's sitting inside your soul. It's sitting in a place that's all yours, and only yours. Right now your Hat is very plain, but after you summon it we'll make it suit you. For now, just hold up your hand as though you're adjusting it. It's already sitting on your head, you just don't know it yet. It's a plain, pointed, wide-brimmed, black Hat, and it's all yours."

Her voice turns firm. "Now grab it."

Focus.

Focus.

You're magic, you can feel it, just-

"-HAT!" And she's holding one.

"Got it! Great! Now change it. What's your favorite color?"

This hat shall be... RED!

No, not that red! It doesn't work on a hat. A deeper, velvety sort of red!

"How come we can do this? Are hats just innately witchy?"

"Nice color! And hm. So, what I read was that an absurdly long time ago, one of the ancestors of all witches did a spell to give all her descendants a few basic tools: a Hat, a Garment, and a Rod. And because her clan mostly won out, and the others married in, she wound up as an ancestor to all of us. And now these things are called mothergifts. As you attune yourself better to yours, you can make 'em do more stuff, or better, or faster. Judging by how quick you were able to summon your Hat, you're at least rank one. Judging by how quick you could change it, rank two. Most important is your Rod, because it's both a casting aid and a travel device."

"...Broomsticks? Broomsticks?! Eh?"

Sable smirks, then holds out her hand. An outline sketches quickly through the air, drawing the shape of a wand, then filling in color and substance to be spiral-carved ebony with an amethyst on the base and a metal tip reminiscent of the nib of a fountain pen.

And then, with a wink, she holds it out to her side, and it stretches out into a broomstick.

"Yes. Broomsticks.~"

She wants a BROOMSTICK! And a wand.

It comes out as a plain wand, flicked into existence from nowhere with a grin. It is her wand. It feels natural in her hand. She focuses on it and - slowly, this is taking something out of her and it's taking focus but she can do it - changes the wood to cherry, and adds a ruby at the base.

Then she expands it. The cherry wood remains, the ruby sits near the smooth, oiled-looking bundle of bristles. It still looks a bit plain.

"Heeeee. Oh man, I can't fly in here, can I."

"We got practice ranges if ya want!" Is shouted from a neighboring table.

"To the practice ranges! And tell us about factions on the way!"

She shoves the last of her meal into her mouth, chugs the last of her coffee, sticks the broken end of the pen in her mouth to suck on, hops sidesaddle onto her broom, and hovers cutely next to Lenora.

Luckily, scarfing down food in a matter of seconds is a crucial waitstaff skill. Nomnomnomnom "Okay let's go."

J. Justice can totally rattle off the standard spiel.

"Right," Sable says, floating alongside as the group heads toward the ranges, "I was mostly considering Arcadia or Hawthorne. Hawthorne is supposedly really impressive, but I would kinda like a bit of chill in my life too, so I was leaning Arcadia."

"Dropping out doesn't actually make you less of a person, if it's too much... It totally sounds like too much, though."

"Right, and there's a convenient free witch college with room and board that isn't too much. Thus my lean toward Arcadia."

She zips closer, her eyes going chibi-like and outright sparkling. "You certainly don't have to come with me, but wouldn't it be great to already have a friend when you show up at witch school?"

"Wat- You're - you're stylized even more. Also I mean, we barely know each other yet but - I guess we can be friends?"

J. Snickers and leads them into the practice area.

It's a little demiplane, a few thousand feet across and styled, right now, like a curiously low-def version of suburbia. The houses definitely exist, and have features and qualities, but it's all sort of mashed together quickly. There's an empty grass field and a drainage culvert and a lit campfire. A few of the houses have various amounts of damage done to them.

"They had some new recruits doing house-clearing drills in here earlier, hasn't been reset yet. Go nuts."

"Weaponized. Cuteness." She returns to her normal level of anime cuteness and zips away toward Fake Suburbia, starting out at a sedate ten miles an hour, but rapidly picking up to highway speed as she gets comfortable, darting back and forth across the micro-neighborhood.

Sable's kind of a cute kid.

...Is she a kid? When did Lenora stop thinking of herself as a kid?

Probably about the time she'd been doing minimum wage jobs for a year.

She sighs.

No use dwelling on it. How does this 'flying' thing work? She will find out! Possibly with some falling off or running into things!

Sable's a little too wide on her next turn, and she crashes through a window. "Eeep!" Smash!

"I'm okay!"

And then she zips back out.

Lenora follows her around at a more sedate pace, rather afraid of crashing, to be honest. It's like riding a motorcycle, that flies. Sure it's thrilling, but it also feels incredibly dangerous!

"Hey! You're tougher than you look, do you think I am, is that a thing?"

On closer inspection, Sable looks like she's a bit cut up, but gradually knitting back together. Her blood appears to be black. "So I think being a cartoon character means I bounce back pretty easily, since my body's just a construct made of ink. You, though... Probably Mimi or Oread? Or both? In either case, you've got a decent resurrection option, but you're not enormously more resilient than a standard squishy human? Not sure, though. I'd defer to Miss Probable-Expert over there for specifics."

Was she right next to them before? She is now.

"Lenora, you're indeed a mimi-oread, but with mimi affinities. You're sorceress type like me - You've got fire, wind, and earth down already meaning those elements won't hurt you as much - and you can grow these things over time. But no water or metal. Crashing into a wall would hurt. I advise not doing that. You can get safeties cast on you or your mothergifts, runes tend to be most reliable. You also have some potential with the mothergifts and for familiars, but no rush. Oh, and you have this neat innate talent that's less like a whole discipline and more like a single talent, like Sable's hat trick or Mischief's suggestion, called 'maid hand'. Basically makes insubstantial little chore-doer constructs. ...I've been around long enough to dip my toes in everything including divination, 's why I can tell."

"Oh, uh, good to know."

She jumped in surprise when the cop showed up again. Ugh. She kind of wants to hide from everything now. She kicks her feet at the dirt absentmindedly, thinking.

........Why is she in the ground???

She pops her head out. "This is weirdly comfy. What am I doing, is it safe?"

"Yep! That's an Oread thing, magic digging. It'll heal you, too."

Sable is just as surprised as Lenora when the cop shows up. "Eeep!"

But when she recovers, "Ooooh! I've got Maid Hand too, and I've got some Runes so I can probably figure out protective enchantments eventually. But ooh! That! You can burrow! That's so cool!"

It may be increasingly obvious that whatever Sable's archetype is, it involves some degree of mania.

It's most of what's making Lenora parse her as a kid, to be honest.

"I do think it's cool. Even if all this is... Kind of a lot.

...Let's fly around for a little longer."

She nods, and with a cheerful smile on her face, she resumes zipping around.

Flying is pretty fun. Even when you stick to bike speeds. She floats lazily up over houses, swings around trees, feels the wind in her hair. Gets used to commanding the broom.

Something does feel - tired? More empty? inside her. Not physical. That must be her mana.

She'll deal with that later. "I think it's about time for that medical check so we can get outta here," she tells Sable and then their escort, who's lying in a hammock reading a book by now.

"Works for me."

She slips off of her broom while it's still in the air, catches it with her hand, and hangs underneath it, slowly descending to the ground by Lenora and Ms Nice Cop. Once she touches down, it dissolves into a wireframe and then vanishes.

"That was fun."

Lenora lands more sedately. 

The trip down to medical is nothing particularly interesting, and she's feeling quiet, though some chatterboxing from Sable would be welcome.

She's bouncing along cheerfully. "It's pretty neat that you've got some elemental specialties already. I'm pretty heavily specialized in slow stuff and travel, and that's cool, but throwing fire around just sounds fun. Terrifying, but fun. I'm probably going to pick up Waterworking eventually, Inkborn have a water affinity and I really wanna get something direct and blasty at some point, but I can make more money off of Alchemy and Runes and Portals, once I get 'em figured out a little further. Also, one more rank of Witchery and we get hammerspace."

"You know lots more about this stuff than me. I'm a pretty direct blasty sort of person. Don't like overthinking. Probably I can keep myself maid handing for people, or doing deliveries or something."

"Oh no! You've found my secret! When I'm not being bouncy and cheerful at people, I'm a nerd! I get obsessed with things and get lost down a wikihole with ease!"

"Direct blastiness is fun though! I'm a little envious. And I'm probably going to be doing the same sorts of jobs at least to start out, 'cause there probably are a lot of people who can enchant with rank one Runes."

"Someone's gotta keep the drinks full and the breadsticks coming, and someone has to make, uh, rank one Runes. We're someones."

"Yay, we're someones!"

"Seriously though, even witchy scut-work is gonna be more interesting than putting my English major to use writing nearly the same marketing copy for five different companies and editing poorly-written technical documentation."

"I never really thought much about office work but it's probably just as awful in its own colorful way.

Delivery driver? Lame. Being the girl from that old anime movie, delivery flyer? Game."

"Yeah! And maybe a luck enchantment on your broom would help with safety? I just need to figure out what the trick is for enchanting mothergifts."

"I hear colleges tend to have libraries. And textbooks."

"Yo, your turn's here, Lenora. Lemme go introduce you, and then I'll be right back, Archive's up ahead."

"Libraries! Also known as one of the things I'm most looking forward to about Arcadia!"

She waves at Lenora, then bounces on her heels while she waits for Ms. Only Nice Cop Ever to return.

She takes Sable to the archive and laughs off the archivist/receptionist's annoyed-but-not-hostile remark that it's a valuable O-R-C resource and eventually allows for a 'Level 1' lookup.

"You probably want me to build the search query," the librarian says. "What are you looking for?"

"Let's start with what the hell am I and how do I work?"

The librarian has a modern computer, but she doesn't use it for this. Instead, there's a big wall-sized tape deck sort of machine with thick bundles of copper wire trailing around and through in neat rows, cables trailing off it to more machinery in the aisles behind and to a softly glowing arrangement of crystals. She sets three dials - "SPECIES (WITCH)" "GENERAL INFO" and "LEVEL 1". Then types at an old box of a monitor for a good ten seconds. The tape reels spin and something chunk-chunk-chunks in the background and the crystals light up with a subtle flair of mana.

"The system's pretty old. It has, you know, quirks, like big old stuff tends to get. But it's magic all the way through, has lots of features we can't give up. Especially secure storage and security compartmentalization. Keeps the infohazards nice and need-to-know, and hardly anybody really needs to know."

She nods. "That makes sense. Modern upgrades are nice, but not at the cost of important features. Sounds like it'd be a bitch to replace."

Momentarily, the chunk-chunk-chunk stops and a concise printout emerges from a slot in the machine.

Sable reads through it quickly once the librarian passes it to her. "Huh. Y'all sure do take your containment seriously. I definitely learned a bit from this, though."

She pauses to think about her next question.

"That's just how this place is, ya know. Gotta have an answer ready even if it never gets used. They have an answer to me goin' off the deep end somewhere."

"Makes sense." Her right ear twitches to the side a bit. "Got any further details about how that resurrection works, or contact with other Inkborn who could tell me more?"

J makes encouraging motions at the librarian. 

Who rolls her eyes and starts working.

After a short time, a second printout noisily emerges.

Sable reads the abstract, carefully, taking it in with interest.

And then the knowledge suddenly slots into place, feeling viscerally right in a way she hadn't expected, like the fulfillment of three Chekov's Guns she hadn't previously noticed.

"Wow, that makes so much sense. I can kinda feel how it might work, now that I'm looking for it."

"Kinda weird that there are only two Inkborn y'all have contact with, though."

"We're not showing you all of them, this is public contact info, something you could find on HexVPN with the right searches." The librarian says. "Maybe not the Godmother's direct. I don't recommend using it, by the way."

"Yeah, somehow I don't think directly poking an archtypal mafia matriarch when you haven't been invited to do so contributes positively to your life expectancy. I'll email Loretta instead. Thanks for these!"

"No problem! Glad we can try to make up for how ya got here, at least. Want to head to medical? She's probably done, the scans don't take that long."

"Sounds like a plan!" She falls into step alongside J.

"Hey," Lenora tells them where she's sitting on the benches outside. "I have been officially approved as not a horrible tentacle monster that wants to end reality, and have a stamp to prove it. Also, even if that scare talk was exaggeration, yikes. You find anything good, Sable?"

"Hooray for not being an omnicidal abomination! I'm so glad I didn't accidentally start befriending an omnicidal abomination. That would be such a challenge!"

She giggles, then holds up her two printouts. "Yeah, I did. Got some details on how my resurrection works, and that I'm apparently going to be very difficult to deprive of mana once I do some initial setup. Also got contact details for two other Inkborn."

"Nice. I don't think I'll have too much trouble either, though... Headpats are kiiiind of embarassing." Blush. "Anyway, - thank you officer," she says with barely a falter in her expression, "I'd like some help packing up my apartment and dealing with my car - it's honestly barely worth the salvage value."

"We need deniable vehicles and fucking with the DMV isn't exactly hard for us but it's better not to. We'll buy it off you at a generous price, if ya want?"

"That'd be nice. And my apartment's a month-to-month so I can just tell the company I'm leaving.

...Feels weird to just cut it all off like that. I can still call my friends and family, I guess."

Oh no, she's dangerously cute when she blushes. Don't get distracted, Sable.

"Yeah, from what I hear, phones and internet all still work. I'll need help picking my stuff up too, officer, although I don't have a car to sell you."

"Oh! Are there masquerade exceptions for close family or anything like that?"

"Close friends and family, yes. Anyone you could ask for a favor from and expect them to agree without fuss, is my rule of thumb. It's only big breaches or showing strangers that really hit you hard - or like, having something obviously inhuman doing chores for you in a mundane shop, or selling magic to ordinary people. You don't want to push it, if you try to get creative and the Veil decides against you it gets... Snappy. Anybody you tell gets hit with the Masquerade themselves if they try to spread it further, though. Most of the world has to remain ignorant of magic - it's important in ways that are at least slightly classified."

"Say, can you..... Make someone else a witch?"

"It has ever been done. But it's not easy, we're talking super rare and expensive artifacts, or power beyond rank five. Think about it later."

Sable makes a mental note of all of that.

"Well, sounds like it's about time to go pack. I'm making a stop in Chicago. Where are we stopping for you, Lenora?"

"Champaign, Urbana-Champaign - home of U-I-U-C if you haven't heard of it, big important school." Sigh.

"We got portals, it won't take twenty minutes to get from one to the other I bet."

Sable steps close to Lenora as they walk toward the portals, nudges her gently, and asks softly, "What's bothering you, if y'don't mind my asking?"

"Aside from all the magic shock and being a mouse? ...Huh, I'm getting more used to walking like this, though. I'm just worried I'll be awful at being a witch too. Athletic, but not enough for sports. Got into college, wasn't great at it, left to stop wasting money. Tried, like, art. And doing Youtube videos. Tried dating and it was - weird. I was weird." Shrug. "I'm not that good at things."

"Doubt it. First of all, that's not the vibe I get from you. There's more to you than that. I've always had a little bit of a sense for when people can do something exceptional if they find their niche, and something of a sense for where the niche is, and ain't been wrong yet in twenty-three years.

"Second, you're already approaching what's generally considered the standard of 'pretty capable'. Hitting Rank Three in one or two specialties — after years of study — is considered a capable witch. You have at least your Witchery, and probably one or more of your elemental magics given that you're a sorceress, already to rank two, without even training yet.

"Third," she pauses and grabs another cheap pen from her purse, bites the tip off, spits it out into a passing trash can, and sucks on the pen for a moment before continuing. "You grew up in a mortal world that has been ruthlessly optimized, over decades, to crush people's spirits and leave them trapped in a cycle of wage slavery and consumerist copium. You have every right to feel demoralized by that life history. That world takes people with interesting potential and grinds us down to fit into simple little boxes.

"You couldn't possibly reach your full potential under that. No one can, not truly. You deserve better than that. And now you'll have it."

She blushes and pauses and tries to think of a response to that.

"-I wanna argue about the non-magic world. Modern medicine is pretty nice, and grocery stores, and the internet. I guess none of those things are, like, the government... So I can't really. Is that really the scale? Most witches aren't..." She waves vaguely. "...How do you tell that about people?"

("We're all three powerhouses here, babe," she wants to say. But actually she stays quiet, because this is cute. Staying quiet it is~)

"Yes. Most witches do not excel, you have already outdone what many do without even trying yet. And it's not even mostly the government. It's more like capitalism, and corporate greed, and marketing, and countless other things all colliding. It's a mess, and I'm not in a mood to do a detailed breakdown of all the hows and whys again, those take hours, and we have better things to do.

"As for how I can tell," she says, before trailing off for a moment, sucking on her pen again.

Because I love people immediately, and want the best for them, and have an intuition for where to find it, she doesn't say.

Because I'm the story of sparking that potential in someone, and I always have been, even before I Awoke, she doesn't say.

"I don't fully know how that intuition works. I've always had it. Maybe it's connected to my archetype. All I can say for sure is it's loud as fuck about you. It's like someone painted your character in color in a world of black and white. Everyone has the colors if they try, and I can always see them, even when they're too ground down, but for most people they're muted, muffled under years of the world's garbage."

She sighs, shakes her head.

"You, though. Even after everything that's tried to crush you, you're still practically neon. You feel to me like you're just waiting to be more, like your whole life's been the backstory of a heroine the readers are gonna fall in love with."

"I do want to be more. Do more. It's just - lots of people, I think, want to do more, and then don't, I'm not like - Buzz Aldrin or someone- And the idea of magic, something more to the world, is so amazing and there's so much to explore there, cool things that we haven't looked at, that could change the world if not for the masquerade- Wouldn't anyone react like that? ...Is what I would have said before thinking about it. My manager would probably just want to be rich and lazy. For example."

Her tail is lashing behind her.

"Exactly." Her tails are lashing as well. "Most people give up, and even when the world doesn't grind them down and make them give up, they want a simple way to contribute. They want to participate, not fight to explore and fix everything."

Their tails are wagging, she wants to be eating popcorn.

"And who wouldn't? There are too many injustices in the world to just stand and do nothing, even if it's the safe choice. Even if it's the expected thing, and you're a weirdo for protesting or volunteering! I don't want to be an average person when instead I can be nice. That's the one thing I could actually be proud of, thinking of myself as a good person - and not just thinking it but actually trying. Though, it's really hard."

She grins, fire and determination and delight all at once. "Well, I, for one, would be honored to go to war against everything stupid in the world at your side. They'll underestimate us 'cause we're adorable, and then we'll kick their asses for enforcing all the fuckitude."

"I'm NOT cute! But other than that, sounds great. Starting at Arcadia, because I don't think I'd do well with Hawthorn's - Thorns."

"Yeah, same. The pressured environment just sounds unpleasant."

She smirks, then, simultaneously teasing and deadly serious. "And you're right, you're not cute. You're gorgeous."

"Don't just say that! I know you're trying to cheer me up, but that's embarrassing... I was a little pretty before and it wasn't... I mean... I dunno."

"I meant what I said, and I suspect 'a little pretty' is probably an understatement. But we have packing to do."

And with that they're through the portal, packing things away, through another portal, more packing, and then they're waving goodbye to the cop, having just walked through the portal to Arcadia.

"Thanks for all your help, officer."

She hands over two business cards that say "J. Justice, ORC Serious Threat Response, personal_jjustice@orc.hex". As well as two small clinking pouches.

"Givin' you what I can get away with, it's not really that much to me but I can't go giving cash to every witch who ends up in a bad spot, ya know. So feel lucky. And remember the ORC if you meet something that wants to break reality, we are here to keep the world turning."

"Thank you. And will do... Have a nice day. That's the entrance to the College at Arcadia right there, correct?" J. nods, then waves as she turns away.

Lenora mostly sounds tired, and she's holding one end of her broomstick where one large bag and a backpack are draped on it. She brought some of her clothes - they can be resized, apparently, but it might be better just to get new ones.

Then she turns to Sable and - holds her hand, and takes a deep breath and steps through the portal.

This entrance to the College at Arcadia lets out into a wide brick-paved square with a large fountain in the middle. There's the distant sound of chatter and the rustle of wind in the trees lining the square. A few people are walking across the square, but not very many at the moment. The light is red and the sun low, and it's cool with a pleasant breeze. Immediately ahead of them is a tall, square metal construction. A sign says 'Ask where you need to go! A free project of Alt Divination Arcadia'. A bit behind it is a bulletin board with all sorts of ads and notices posted on it - the most noticeable of which appears to be a large graphic of a witch wearing nothing but her greatly oversized pointy hat, which is strategically covering up her middle areas.

She waves gratefully at J, takes Lenora's hand with a grin and a blush, and steps through.

They've reached Arcadia! Yay!

Oh. Um. That ad is rather more than she was expecting. Um.

Then she grins. "That was a surprise. But I think I'm going to like it here, once I get adjusted."

"What was a surprise, the- Oh. It says... Mothergift alterations? Huh."

"...I think you're right, though! Let's ask this thing. Where do we need to go?"

The arcing metal bars and wires twist and shift in near silence, clicking into place. Over about ten seconds, a rough map in wrought iron appears. With bright copper wire tracing out a path and the label 'Student Housing Board'.

"Oh that's so cool!" She bounces and wags, memorizing the route quickly.

She tilts her head in the appropriate direction. "Shall we?"

She seems to have forgotten to let go of Lenora's hand.

"It is! We shall!"