A boy about the same age jumps. Frowns at them. Flees to behind the curtain and peeks out at them sucking his thumb. He has purple hair.

"...Well, this could have gone worse," she observes. They are somewhere not about to explode and not otherwise fatal!

 The little girl peers with interest at the little boy.

He hides behind the curtains again.

"I think we're technically home invaders, here, we should probably go."

"You're probably right," she sighs, and stands up and looks around for an obvious exit.

It looks like they're in kiddo's bedroom.

...someone else walks in. His hair is emerald green and he looks anxiously for the kid, who darts out from behind the curtains and into his arms.

Ah shit.

"I'm really sorry and this isn't what it looks like!"

He does not seem to speak the language!

...She tries the other languages she knows.

He doesn't seem to speak those either!

Welp time for telepathy.

Hi! I'm sorry, this isn't what it looks like.

"Blagh!" he says out loud. The kid clings.

Uh! Okay! Can you hear me!

Yeah. Sorry, we were--sort of fleeing a collapsing underground cavern and not aiming very well if at all, coming here in particular was a complete accident, we are not in your kid's room without your permission on purpose.

Are you aliens or just dressed like aliens for some reason.

...Aliens? How are we dressed like aliens?

He tugs on his hair. 

Ah. That's not dyed, is it.

- actually it is, long story, but brown isn't a color hair comes in naturally, here.

Where I'm from the hair colors people naturally have are black, brown, yellow, orange, and red. And you don't speak any of the languages I know. I guess we are probably aliens.

Hi, aliens. I should maybe call my brother and my father.

Your brother and father?

My father will want the languages and my brother will be able to figure out how to tell the government without - shrug. Things.

Things?

You know, governments. Maybe alien governments are better. 

I don't know what yours are like but I hope not.

Little bit of a smile. So. My brother will figure out how to make sure they aren't terrible. They'll want the - way of travelling between worlds - insanely badly, we don't have that.

Yeah we sort of don't either, it's complicated. The civilization that developed it died a long time ago and the thing itself was almost certainly destroyed in the crumbling cavern we escaped.

Oh. Damn. Well, that'll make them less pushy, I guess. He cuddles the kid.

And I'm pretty sure it was supposed to put us somewhere else on our planet, it was already damaged when we got to it.

...On the other hand...when you say people would want it insanely badly...I assume you don't have magical girls as of yet...

She asks the child in her arms something, and the kid replies.

Magical girls? We do not have magical girls. That does also sound like something the government would want real badly.

Magical girls are really convenient! And the only person who can create them is my brand-new-I-think-developmentally-three-ish daughter. It's been a long day.

Sounds it.

He transfers his son to one arm and types a message on his tablet.

Sorry, you don't need a random stranger unloading on you.

...Kinda curious what magic looks like here, though.

That's not the thing at all, I'm just - depending on the kinda magic it could be complicated for us to get it.

Oh?

Does your world have people who - it'd be bad for them, if everyone came up with a way to do without them?

...I'm not thinking of any examples off the top of my head but that's not stopping screaming alarm bells from going off in my head.

Well. Here there are some people who will die if people figure out how to do without them.

Fuck.

You can just not give them the magic, if it's gonna cause problems.

I'm definitely not telling her to give people magic if they're gonna turn around and murder people.

They're gross people. Reds, see. Inherently disgusting. That change it?

People used to feel that way about my people. Some still do. They starved and tortured and worked half to death my father's parents, among six million others, for being Jewish. Or Romani. Or disabled. Or gay. Never. Again.

Well. Looks like we got ourselves some all-right aliens.

I'm Telkam.

I'm Edie, and this is my sister Emily, and the sprog is like three hours old and doesn't have a name yet.

...she looks older than that.

She's an incredibly powerful magical AI. I sort of threw mind magic at her until she turned into a person and then decided to generate a biological body and declare me her mother.

...uh. I guess if you can afford the credit...

Credit?

...for making a magic kid?

...I have no idea what you're talking about.

Uh here you can't make kids by magic but to make them the normal way you have to buy a credit. 

That is not a thing where I'm from. And normally we don't make kids by magic either, this has been a very unusual day.

I guess if your magic can make enough space? Sounds nice.

Make enough space?

For all the people to live.

We haven't run out of planet yet.

Oh, I guess that'd work too. Ladah is wiggling. He sets him down, murmurs something. 

China's doing population controls, but nobody else is, yet.

In our world once a few places started then they got worried about their neighbors running out of space and overrunning them and there were preemptive wars and - lots of wars - and then eventually everyone agreed on treaties about growth rate and now they mostly all stick to it.

Yikes. No, that hasn't happened to us.

Probably will, though. Unless you just get it together with the treaty in the first place. He sits down heavily.

What was the population when this happened?

I think we started worrying around six billion? But we might have different land area. There are thirteen billion of us now.

We've got seven billion and I don't think anyone's seriously worrying...in fact, I think Japan's below replacement rate.

That's weird. 

Why?

Even the population that is horribly mistreated and that everyone's probably going to murder pretty soon has kids. I can't imagine any conditions that'd get us to have kids below replacement without population controls.

I guess it must be an alien thing.

I guess. We figured everyone'd be like that, because of evolution.

I think evolution didn't anticipate birth control.

I guess that'd work on species that don't actually want kids.

A lot of us do. I do. Just not all of us.

I think that then in a couple generations all of you will. But I could be wrong.

Maybe. Who knows? Anyway, if it gets too bad we'll figure out how to terraform Mars or something.

We're working on that. The magic'll probably help you there.

Probably, yeah.

Anyway, tell me more about the group that'll die if people can do without them.

Do you have a caste system? We have a caste system. Blues run things, greens invent things, yellows do technical and detail-intensive work, greys do sports and police and stuff, oranges do teaching and medicine and stuff, purples do retail and farming and stuff. Reds do sewage and garbage and the dead.

Ew, a caste system? Nobody does that anymore.

Sounds nice.

Enh, we have our own problems. So the reds are your untouchables?

Yeah. What happened to yours when you stopped having caste systems.

Oh, this wasn't my culture, this was India. And Japan, I think, and some other places...anyway, I'm not sure, exactly, but I'm pretty sure their descendants are still around.

Here they'll kill them.

Nope.

What kind of magic have you got?

I can read minds, communicate past any language barrier, kill someone without leaving any mark whatsoever on their body, make myself and others undetectable, project emotions empathically at various levels of gentleness or--not, and defend minds against other mind magic. My sister can manipulate metal telekinetically, make it behave like a fluid, kill all electronics within a wide radius, energize people, and throw nigh-arbitrary amounts of lightning. We can both heal, fly, and blow massive holes through a solid foot of steel. We can also temporarily fuse into a single composite individual who's even stronger.

And my daughter can give more people magic, although they won't start out this strong.

He sits down.

There's a country called Biyan.

Go on.

They didn't issue any red credits, a month ago. Planning to phase them out. The last place to phase them out killed them all. The reds panicked. Rioted, burned down a whole blue district, refused to teach their replacements how to do their jobs. Biyan took all their kids hostage. They're - letting them check up on the kids in exchange for training their replacements. 

Shit.

So. Once the government's here they'll explain why it'd be stupid to do anything and - it kind of would be - but -

But I am the granddaughter of fucking Holocaust survivors and I will. Not. Tolerate. This.

There's nowhere for them to go. Even if you grabbed them.

Okay, then I will fix that too.

I know. I'm just giving you a list of - things we've got to fix.

- he texts Aitim and his father to never mind.

--Yeah. Thanks, I appreciate it. I just--aaaauugh.

Uh huh. Nowhere in the world takes immigrants - any kind, not just red.

Yeah. Okay, so we'll have to make somewhere for people to go.

Biyan's not done training them, if we grab them all they'll have no one to do their plumbing and undertaking and they'll probably collapse.

Shoulda thought of that before they started kidnapping children and plotting genocide.

I mean, yeah, but they didn't all do that.

...Okay, true. Do you know what the kids' conditions are like, how stable the situation is? I want to know what kind of time pressure I'm working under; putting more planning in is good but an imperfect plan implemented in time is better than a perfect one implemented too late

I have no idea. If you can be invisible you could make a trip checking that?

How far is Biyan?

Long way. I can check - he does. Three thousand miles if you go in a straight line.

Inconvenient but not impossible.

"By the way," she says out loud, mostly to the kid in her arms but relaying to Telkam so he can understand, "I've decided on your name. You're Ruby."

The kid squirms around to turn and hug her.

Have ideas on where to put them? Can you make islands or something?

Mmmmaybe. I bet Emily could make ships big enough to be close enough, at least as a temporary measure--

At least if I'm on 'em, yeah, I don't know that I know enough about ships to do something indefinitely stable on the first try but fixing-on-the-fly is doable.

Can your magic do food and supplies or do we need to somehow figure those out?

Anything made of metal I can probably do. Anything not made of metal--well, we have really good healing?

We can buy stuff, probably.

Yeah.

"Maybe I should magic you first, so we know what you get," Ruby says in perfect Anitami.

Edie blinks at her in surprise.

" - uh, sure, makes sense - why do you speak my language -"

"I've been monitoring your TV," she shrugs.

"You can do that?" Edie asks.

"Mama, how do you think I found magical girl anime?"

"...Ah. So that wasn't a coincidence."

"Magical girl anime?"

"It is a genre of television show that my pre-sophontic self imprinted on, causing the aesthetics of previous recipients of my magic to be heavily stamped by it," Ruby explains. "That's why Mama and Aunt Emily are in pretty dresses." She cocks her head. "And if we did have population controls with credits I wouldn't let them take me away from Mama," she adds firmly.

"If you don't let them enforce their stupid laws they kill you."

"They can't kill me, I can just make a new body if they break this one."

"Well. Okay. Let's do the magic powers and then figure out how to defy the government without something horrible happening."

"Okay. You get a magic name and a magic transformation, what do you want?"

"- can I have examples of each, maybe -"

"Uh, all of the ones that exist are really really magical girl anime-themed, because I didn't used to be a person, but they don't have to be now. Mama and Aunt Emily's pretty dresses come from their transformations. You said you dye your hair, I can make it always that color when you're transformed," she offers.

"I dye it different things depending what I want. Pretty dresses would be a bit much. It could be grey when, uh, I am transformed."

"It wouldn't usually be a dress for boys anyway."

"Why don't you just pick something, I'm a little confused and I do not think we have the relevant - genre of reference material."

She tilts her head and considers him and says, "Okay."

And then there is a sort of indescribable presence, and he very clearly has a choice: to take power, or refuse it.

Yeah he's in.

There is a sensation of being filled to overflowing with magic, and there is an obvious mental action he can take to turn it on.

...and if he turns it on?

There is a brief flash of light, and his hair is a shining silver and he is wearing an attractively-tailored outfit based on a centuries-out-of-date military uniform. There is also another mental action he can take.

...he tries that one. Now his hair is brown. Now Edie's hair is red - now back to normal -

"Huh," she says, fingering her briefly-scarlet locks. "Pretty."

...giggle.

"Red hair is considered really attractive by a lot of people where I'm from!"

"I knew a girl with a pretty shade of pink." 

"Pink hair doesn't happen naturally in humans but it does sound very pretty. Is she okay?"

"Yeah."

"I'm glad. Anyway, I'm not sure how much that spell helps..."

"It is not super helpful. I can disguise reds so they can blend in, I guess, but that'll cause mass hysteria and they wouldn't have IDs, they'd get found out..."

"Might be useful for transit, but not in the long term, no."

" - we could lie flagrantly about how it works and claim it does more than that but we might get caught."

"More than that?"

"Like, if it changed enough things they might not be reds anymore."

"...Mm. What things would it have to change--if there was some effect to aim at, we could, oh, empower reds until one got it--"

" - if we do that everyone will panic. Like, launch-missiles-at-us panic. And people have to buy into it for it to work - and I have no idea what it'd have to change, it's not real in the first place..."

"We don't have to tell people we're doing it."

"And I can deflect missiles."

" - if they were checking whether it worked the obvious way to check would be to give people one of those radioactive tracer dyes and then if it got rid of that then it'd changed enough they were probably clean. But they might think of other tests along those lines - physically dipping people in dye would check the skin -"

"...Hm."

"I'm trying to think how else you might do it - I don't know much about the area..."

"If it's enough to physically replace all of the tissue...there's a lot we don't understand about magical girl transformations, but that might do it."

"But then don't you switch back?"

"Yes, that would be the kicker."

"- can your magic do anything like - getting us to other planets or terraforming them when we have them."

"Terraforming, definitely. Getting there--probably."

" - okay. Then we terraform the poles, right now, to have seasons. You can just buy the poles if you're rich enough, I'll get Makel to do it. We steal the reds from Biyan, make them magical girls, aggressively insist that the transformation process makes people clean, and maybe they go along with it because they don't want to offend the terraforming aliens."

"We might need to make them magical girls first, and warn them to want terraforming powers really, really hard--neither of us can do it, we just know people with relevant powers back home."

"Ah. Okay. Well, there are sixty-five million of them, one'll probably get it."

"Yeah. Maybe arrange a ship-island thing first, evacuate everyone there, get them all magicked up and then head for the poles."

"People'll try and grab the ship if only to figure out what's going on."

"Operative word being try."

"If having more firepower helps us and you're damn sure you can protect them afterwards we can magical-girl Anitami reds first, try to get some helpful powers."

"...I'd love to say I'm sure enough but in the absence of, uh, any information whatsoever about what I'm up against I don't think I can."

...nod. "Okay. ...we could see if any of Orvara's are still alive and magical-girl them before we go after Biyan."

"Good plan. Got a good idea for where to start looking for them?"

"I think there might've been a mention somewhere in some of the coverage  -" sigh. He starts looking. "I need a babysitter."

Edie looks down at the child in her own arms.

"You need me to come with you," Ruby points out helpfully. "I can magic people at a distance but it's harder to know who to magic and when. So I need to come."

"Yeah," Edie sighs, hugging her a little tighter. "I figured that one out."

"I'm not really gonna be in danger or anything," Ruby says, wiggling a little.

"Still. Call it maternal instincts."

"'Kay."

"Ladah would be in danger and should stay home. But if I call my parents they'll be curious about, uh, everything else, and if this goes badly I get killed."

"Yeah, I completely agree." Sigh. "What about the guy who you're asking to buy the poles?"

"Makel will ask questions but he won't try to get involved."

"Is he someone you could leave your kid with?"

" - yeah, I guess that'd work."

"Okay. How much do we want to tell him, if he's asking questions anyway should I just show up in all my alien glory carrying you and Ladah or something?"

"No, if the government gets mad and starts throwing treason charges around it's better if they demonstrably had no idea what was going on."

"Fair."

Hey Makel you're babysitting Ladah. Indefinitely. Also buy up some of the poles. As a wedding present, maybe?

      Telkam are you okay

       are you high

       I'll come pick him up

Thanks.

"What're you writing?"

He reads the messages out loud. "I'm insulted, I'd never be intoxicated around Ladah."

"Wedding present? Are you getting married?"

"No he is. To his girlfriend. Of the hair I mentioned a little while ago, though it's not that color anymore. It's a life-or-death secret so do treat it as one, but - he'll get why I want the poles."

"Ah, gotcha. Anyway, should we hide or just have you mess with our hair if he's coming here?"

Now they're both green. "You came so our kids could play together, obviously. - the language might be a problem. You can be very shy."

Ruby obligingly turns her hair green also.

"I'm not sure I can do shy," Edie admits.

"Well, 'foreign' won't fly, Makel doesn't know that many languages but he knows what they all sound like."

"What about 'mute'?"

"Sure. I even have a bit of sign language, from the war."

"Ooh, show me? I know sign language but yours'll be different from mine."

He will teach her Anitami military sign until Makel shows up!

This is definitely enough time that Makel won't wonder what the heck crazy foreign hand-flapping she's doing when she has to fake the gaps in her vocabulary!

Makel arrives! His hair is a lighter green, bright and attention-grabbing, and he looks confusedly around.

"Playdate for Ladah. This is Etie and this is Emilie."

She smiles and waves.

"That was a scary message."

"It's urgent. Take care of Ladah. I love you."

" - hey, Ladah, want to come play with Katin?"

"Okay."

Confused Makel frowns worriedly and then spirits Ladah off.

"Your kid's cute," she says when Makel's gone.

"Thank you. I can't find anything about the location of Orvara people except the ones we picked up last spring but we didn't get them all, there might still be some, worth a check."

"Right. Anything else we should determine before heading out?"

"Don't think so."

Edie says a phrase in her language and sprouts wings feathered in crystal, each one reflecting a tiny fragment of an image that doesn't match what it ought to be reflecting.

I like your magic system.

It's pretty great!

Emily says a different phrase, and sprouts wings feathered in shining steel.

Do I get some?

Eventually, I'm sure. They're a spell.

How do I get more spells?

Personal achievement.

Ah. Okay.

Based on your opinions of what counts, not some objective standard.

I really like your magic system.

"Thank you!" Ruby says brightly.

What've you guys accomplished for your spells-

"Defeated some villains and made progress on social justice work, mostly."

Some villains.

"What do you mean by that?"

It's just a weird - I'm not sure we have exactly the concept.

Magic fucks with peoples' heads sometimes. Not magical girl magic, but the other kinds--sorcery and artifact magic.

Ugh.

There is a reason I am not either of those.

Your kind seems much more convenient. Unless it has terrible drawbacks you haven't mentioned.

It is culturally coded as a bit silly.

That is not a drawback.

Some people find it to be so!

Here we might start a war but no one will find us silly.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Yeah. 

Ugh. People: why.

Uh huh. Let's do the boat first.

Yeah. Know anywhere we can get a fuckton of magnetically responsive metal without it being missed?

Not really - they're probably demolishing buildings somewhere but I don't offhand know where....

"Would it be on the internet?" Ruby asks.

"Where they are demolishing buildings? I wouldn't know where to look but maybe?"

She closes her eyes and frowns in concentration. After a few minutes she rattles off a handful of addresses.

" - okay. Cool. Uh, maybe instead of flying we should take the train, attract less attention."

"Even when we can be invisible?"

"Or you could be invisible, that works fine."

"Is there roof access?"

"If we pay for it, yeah."

"You have to pay to go on the roof?"

"Yeah? Otherwise it'd be really crowded, this building is a hundred thirty stories."

"...Huh. I don't think I've ever been in a building that tall before. D'you have the money for it, it's easier to take off from higher up."

"I can afford it. Are you carrying me or am I taking the train."

"I can carry you! ...If Emily takes Ruby. Or she could carry you."

"You have magic super strength?"

"Comes with the wings."

"Then you may sweep me away, Edie." And they go up to the gardens.

She grins and hands the smol to her sister and says, "Want to do something reckless and fun?"

"I would love to."

She puts the wings away and walks to the edge of the roof, pauses for a moment to say something that results in a smallish sphere appearing in her hand, tucks it into her dress, and holds out her hand to him.

He takes it.

"On the count of three we jump, okay?"

Nod.

"One...two...three!"

He jumps.

She jumps with him and whoops with glee. About halfway down she pulls him closer and hugs him tightly and pulls her wings out again and swoops out of the dive into a controlled horizontal flight, then spirals back up into the sky.

Flying is the best.

This is amazing.

I know! Wait'll you get wings of your own.

If we pull this off maybe.

It was several spells in for me, I'm not sure getting it for your second is feasible. But this would be big, so who knows?

There's a usual order?

Not order exactly, but the more spells you already have the more powerful spells you can get.

Huh. Cool. So you two'll have more, after this?

We'd better.

Nod.

Maybe we'll be lucky and get something for terraforming.

Oooooh.

I will work on my emotional attachment to the idea.

Is that what decides it?

It is one of several factors.

What're the other ones?

We don't know all of them, but theme factors into it, and combat stuff shows up disproportionately often.

Theme?

Magical girls often have themes. Mine is mind stuff, Emily's is magnetism.

Ah, okay.

Remember what Ruby said about names?

Yeah.

My magic name is Psychic Maiden Cerebella and Emily's is Iron Maiden Magnetar.

This magic system is so bizarre, it's like it was made for television or something.

I mean, the aesthetics were lifted from a genre of television show.

I suppose that'd do it.

And that's why it's silly!

I'll take silly if we can make them stop murdering reds.

Sigh.

Yeah. You'll get no argument at all from me.

This is - this is going to be really hard and my family'd get better at it but also if we involve them they'll be at risk -

Do you know if they would rather get involved anyway? My parents would if they were available.

I'm not sure. Makel has a family - Aitim thinks his job is important, though maybe my doing this fucks that up anyway...

Maybe it would be safer if I asked? 'I thought I was hallucinating the voice in my head asking me to do a crime' is pretty plausible, I would think.

Except they might, like, actually think they were hallucinating.

That's not better than not asking at all but is it worse?

...maybe not.

It seems worth a shot but it's up to you. ...Would be even if I had a way to find these people without you giving directions, of course.

Maybe we can talk to Aitim once we've got a boat.

Nod.

They reach some abandoned buildings slated for destruction and Emily divests them of their magnetically responsive metals,

Edie folds them into the imperceptibility.

This is very fun.

Okay, which way to the coast?

He points.

They fly in that direction, faster than their wings should probably be able to carry them.

Telkam thinks this is amazing.

It is pretty awesome.

And then: boat.

How do you do that without even knowing things about boats -

I know, like, not zero? I have ever seen boats. And I know some stuff about buoyancy physics. I don't expect this to work indefinitely without my attention.

Okay. Well, it's something. We can bug Aitim and then go see if Orvara has survivors.

Yeah. Which way to Aitim?

Back in Lina - the city we started in.

Gotcha. 

Back to Lina, then. 

Any last-minute advice?

Uh, don't be threatening? Not that I expect you would.

I will try not to be.

Hello, Aitim? I am a magical alien from a world without a caste system and I heard what's happening in Biyan. I'm planning to rescue the kidnapped children. If you have any advice on how to do that with fewer negative externalities I would be thrilled to hear it.

- could you repeat that.

I am a magical alien from a world without a caste system and I heard what's happening in Biyan. I'm planning to rescue the kidnapped children. If you have any advice on how to do that with fewer negative externalities I would be thrilled to hear it.

The kidnapped red children.

My culture doesn't have a caste system, she repeats. We have magic. We don't have untouchables. I wasn't raised to think that red children don't count. They're children. You cannot talk me out of this; I'm a descendant of victims of one of my world's most famous atrocities. You can advise me on harm reduction but that's all.

What are you planning to do once you have rescued them?

Magic the poles up nice and settle them there.

If you can terraform the poles you could do that first, get some credibility, establish what kinds of things you'll be expected to do, scare people less...

Sigh. I can't terraform the poles first. My magic increases with personal achievement. I strongly expect to be able to once I've got the reds out but I cannot technically at this time terraform anything.

What happens to the kids if you can't terraform the poles afterwards?

Then I keep them on a boat until I can figure something else out.

Please spray anything you have touched after touching the kids with red chalk. If you can, take a video camera and document the situation - there are rumors that Biyan is torturing the children, which will not make people supportive of the action you intend to take but it would, if proved, make them complain less fervently about it. Without the kids held hostage their parents will probably stop working, what's your plan at that point?

Rescue the parents and then start screening people to receive magic which hopefully should serve to fill in the gaps.

If you give reds magic people will panic and probably attack you.

One, I meant non-red people in Biyan, two, if I did give reds magic that wouldn't necessarily result in anyone else knowing about it, three, if people decide to panic and attack me that sounds a lot more like their problem than mine.

If your magic makes you and the red immune to missiles, and you're far from any collateral damage, then maybe it's not a concern. It'd still result in a dangerous mass panic and possibly violence against reds in other places.

Hm. Okay, that's bad.

Yes. Whatever you actually do, tell everyone that you're keeping the reds contained and not giving them magic.

Unless I have a shot at convincing people the magic de-reds them on the relevant level.

Well, does it?

In order to do magic, you have to transform into an alternate state that looks like you but doesn't actually share any of the same matter. Based on my understanding that ought to work but I've been here less than a day so I don't claim my understanding is perfect.

Permanent? Verifiable in any way?

Permanent no; repeatable and sustainable with practice. I know it's been verified back home but I don't know how, I was kind of not expecting to end up here and encounter this specific problem. Also it seems really likely that if I give them magic after explaining everything at least one of them will end up with a way to do it permanently separate from the transformation.

Thank you for letting me know. Do you have a plan to acquire some poles?

Yep. Not going to tell you how, though, unless you think it would actually be useful for damage control; there's an unwitting accomplice I don't want to get in trouble.

People might not presume your accomplices were unwilling.

My actually willing local co-conspirator seems to think we're not going to get him in a lot of trouble but we haven't discussed it thoroughly.

Telkam sometimes underestimates that kind of thing.

...

Who's Telkam?

An unreliable source on how much trouble you might get into.

...Uh, okay. Anyway, does it help if I say there is no reason whatsoever that given a sufficient population of magic users some of them shouldn't get FTL?

You'd have a lot of leverage. Just - are you thoroughly in control of the mechanisms for giving out magic -

In control is not the word I would use but the effects are equivalent. The mechanism for giving out magic is a person and she trusts my judgement completely.

Thank you for coming to me. I think if you're cautious enough this could work out very well for our world.

To the extent that caution trades off against things like rescuing kidnapped children it is not my highest priority but I would prefer to make my presence net positive for everyone.

Lots of people will suffer if Biyan loses all their sanitation workers.

I understand that. But I am not willing to set the precedent that kidnapping children is a functional way to get things you want.

Do you have stealth options? Such that it wouldn't be immediately obvious they'd been stolen?

Iiiiiii have stealth options but what they do is make people unable to perceive a thing, not make them perceive a thing that isn't there. If they're keeping them in a room and checking up on them every five hours I can keep them from finding out for five hours max.

I'm more concerned with - if Biyan lost the kids, Biyan lost the kids, that's their fault, they look stupid, maybe the other reds rescued them. Then you could take them somewhere still stealthily and we could come up with a plan for not causing an international uproar.

Without knowing what Biyan's doing to them or how or where they're keeping them I can't commit to pulling that off but it's definitely something I can try.

Thank you. If you do have to declare yourselves do try to clarify that you aren't going to be attacking anyone else. 

No one else unless they kidnap children, anyway, but yes. "Alien does not get castes, how would you feel if someone was kidnapping clean children?"

If you show capacity to do whatever you want, people will assume that they die if they annoy you, and that - well, it does sort of get you cooperation but at a very high price. Better to avoid the impression entirely if you can, and if you can't to keep in mind that that's the lens through which everything you say will be parsed.

I don't want to do that but I also don't want to give the impression people can get away with doing arbitrary terrible things to reds.

I understand. That's why it'd be best to leave it unclear what even happened in Biyan.

Yeah. That is Plan A.

Good luck.

Thanks.

And to Telkam: Okay, do you think we should go to Biyan first to check on the kids, then to Olvala once we have the information, or just go to Olvala first and do all the Biyan stuff in one trip?

I think once we see the kids we're gonna end up grabbing them.