They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
They appear in midair, visible out of a few thirtieth-floor apartments.
One starts to fall. The other catches her by the arm, flings out - wing-shapes of light - and slows her, spiraling down until they're at street level.
She will consult on Shadow-finding, she can't really be personnel manager for every country on the planet.
Eventually Calado has a planet with four competing arcologies. Two of them attack each other with no survivors.
The northern hemisphere has a crop of mage babies. Chemists figure out what exactly the bioactive compound is and get it in pill form.
They are doing well, aided by their elemental caretaker/assistants! The one with neglectful parents now lives with Grandma, who won her custody case. The Calador expat has lots of friends and really likes Anitami food. Some families did muster the money to send their children to the blue one's estate, and she gets along splendidly with her new yellow and green friend and their accompanying elementals.
Uh, not totally committed but all the kids were told to learn Anitami and she's been pleased with her accommodations here. Why?
Because having the magic school sounds advantageous and they could maybe offer even better accommodations?
She'd be so impressed if some country managed to get all the way to not being horribly shitty to its reds! SO impressed.
This place has red jails. This place lets reds report crimes. This place did the thing with replacing social workers with cameras. This place had a riot and didn't kill all the rioters.
That is indeed less shitty. It isn't not shitty, and moving from Anitam would be hard (she'd have to learn the language to get along unaccompanied, she'd have to learn local regulations, she'd have to adjust her curriculum, it'd impose costs on all the kids who have studied Anitami and aren't language geniuses).
She asks Aitim what nice, easy to understand, concrete terms for "you know, NOT SHITTY" might look like.
"Rates of extrajudicial violence comparable to those experienced in communities with a comparable crime rate, adequate prenatal nutrition and access to the resources to train their own doctors and provide their own medical care, reflected in childbirth and infant mortality rates comparable to impoverished clean people, enforcement of contract law so that people have to pay them for their work, answers to the questions 'what do our reds want from their government' and 'how are we responsibly incentivizing good behavior among our reds'."
"Any country which doesn't have a record of all police complaints and what resulted from them isn't going to impress you otherwise. Most places do. The crimes will include stuff like 'making noise' and 'touching things', of course."
Maurabel publishes this list. She's not making any promises - after all, it is possible that multiple countries would suddenly do all these things at once, and there is only one of her! - but they would be So Impressive and would definitely at least get you lots of Shadow-finding help and free air artifacts even if she cannot put her school in you.