[Author's Note: When the characters are not speaking English within a context where English conversations are also happening, I will italicize it, to make it clear who can be understood by whom. If more than one language difference exists, I will be explicit and name the language.]
PRT ENE HQ, Reception Area, March 15 2008; 8:30 AM
Kotoro entered the lobby and approached the security desk.
"What might you want little fella?" Said the affable man at the desk.
After listening to Epistēmē's translation of the question via his hidden earpiece, and listening to Epistēmē's supplied response, Kotoro parroted the message, poorly, saying "I powers, cape, join wards, need testing, yes?".
Hearing this and making some semblance of sense of it, the man at the desk pushed a button to the side of his terminal and handed Kotoro a Domino mask, saying "someone will be out to see you. Its been a slow day, so it shouldn't be long, but I can't guarantee exactly how long it will be. There is a waiting room down the hall to the left, bathrooms further in around the corner."
Immediately, Kotoro put on the mask, and playing the translation and parrot game again, Kotoro responded with "Thank. Will wait." He then walked to the door of the lobby, tapped on his communicator and said "hey, Epistēmē, pilot one of the smaller spy bots with speakers in here, I think this will work better if they know I've got a translator intermediary, though i'll have to introduce you. I'll meet it at the door. Please have it uncloak so they don't respond poorly to me having tried to sneak unknown tech into the building."
Epistēmē responded "I've got several in the area already, one should meet you at the door in about 4 minutes". The man at the desk gave Kotoro a look when the small robot drifted through the door alongside an raised his eyebrow. "is friendly; no hurt", he said to the guard, who shrugged and looked back at his computer screen. Then he led the bot to the waiting room and sat down. Seeing a pile of magazines, he picked up one featuring what looked like tools and engineering parts, and had Epistēmē assist him in trying to learn some English words while he waited.
PRT ENE HQ, Reception Area Waiting Room, March 15 2008; 9:00 AM
An officer wearing a PRT-issue uniform stopped at the doorway to the waiting room and gestured to Kotoro "I believe you had told our security officer that you were interested in powers testing and joining up with the Wards program?".
Kotoro nodded.
"My name is Officer O'Grady. We've scheduled a meeting with the member of the Protectorate that acts as a supervisor to the Wards. I will lead you to the meeting room.", the man said, with a lilting accent to his English.
He pointed at the hovering drone. "What is that thing?" The officer asked.
"Can translate. Help understand. Help speak." Kotoro said.
"Is it tinkertech? We've rules about allowing unregistered tinker-tech into the facility." The officer asked.
This time Epistēmē answered for itself "No. If you would like I can submit the blueprints for the device, but it is entirely mundane technology, from our point of reference at least. There may be aspects to its design that are beyond your own current engineering abilities, but its maintenance and construction do not require powers. As to what I am, I think we can discuss that further in the interview, but I am the closest thing this young man has to an adult guardian at the moment."
"I see. Please submit the blueprints at your earliest convenience. Send them here in some kind of standard format. The review teams here can figure out the rest." O'Grady said, flashing a hastily written down email at the drone's camera.
"If you'll follow me, I'll have to that conference room in a jiff." O'Grady added as he turned toward the open hallway and began walking. They ventured deeper into the building and rode an elevator to a higher floor, and eventually came to a small conference room where a man in armor, armed with a high-tech looking poleaxe was seated, seemingly staring into space, as text streamed into his visor.
O'Grady cleared his throat politely and the man suddenly noticed them, giving a slight start, standing and offering his hand "My apologies. I am Armsmaster. What do you call yourself?"
Kotoro accepted the handshake and spoke. "No secret name yet. Working on. not do hero things outside."
"We've a lot to discuss, which should help explain a great many things about our current situation." Epistēmē added.
"It was nice meeting you young man. I'll be on my way to resume my duties. When you're done with all of your activities for the day either I or the person taking over in the next shift will come back to escort you to the lobby. Good luck." O'Grady said as he exited the room and shut the door behind himself.
"I'm told you're interested in the Wards program. You seem quite young. Always tragic to see young capes, considering what people go through to obtain their powers. Do your parents know?" Armsmaster said stiffly, apparently following a script of some kind that he memorized.
Kotoro pointed at the drone and said "help translate. english bad" before proceeding to say in his native tongue "Both of my parents are well aware of my abilities. I inherited a different portion of my various traits and abilities from each of them. I'll get to that later. The most important thing to explain, I think, is that to the best of our knowledge, we are not from this universe. Additionally, we are not from our own universe's Earth. We were attempting to reach that Earth with a new faster-than-light space travel prototype that had passed all of its field tests with flying colors, but something went wrong with the longer-distance between our origin and destination, and some kind of distortion around our earth caused a severe warping of our intended path, causing us to land in approximately the same location we were targeting, but in this universe instead of our own. Due to the complications of what may have led to the mishap, we do not currently know a safe way to map our path back, and using the technology again is too unsafe to attempt without a better understanding of what went wrong the first time."
Armsmaster's face contorted through several different expressions of surprise and skepticism as he listened to Epistēmē parroting his English translation. "I hope you don't take this as a sign of disrespect, but you must understand, while we have had cases of humans from alternate universes, you'd be the first case of a bonafide alien that our civilization has ever come across, and yet you appear so... human. I'm open to being provided with supporting evidence, but at the moment its hard to accept. However, I have been reviewing the designs for the drone that you submitted, and I'm seeing aspects of its functionality that are not covered by anything registered in any patents, and several things which I would have thought couldn't be done without tinker powers, so I'm tentatively accepting your explanation, but with a large helping of skepticism. I'm going to be expecting further evidence."
"Completely understandable sir. We were actually discussing this the other day. The physical appearance and genetics of 2 populations of humanoids from our universe are not only mutually highly similar to the point of being reproductively compatible, which should NOT be possible given the science known to either race, but both are ALSO remarkably similar to humans from this planet. We presume that such would also be the case for the Earth from our universe, but as we've not visited, you're the first humans we've had occasion to analyze. It is a mystery to us as well, as no other species within our universe is anything like us. We've speculations as to how this came about, but no hard evidence to support any specific explanation save one thing. Neither of those populations shares apparent common ancestry with the majority of the organisms living on their home-worlds. Your own scientific literature indicates that humans have been building a strong case for universal common descent of organisms on this world. Whatever the explanation, humans or an offshoot thereof probably became the seed population for each of those populations. We haven't the slightest idea how this came about, however. I will share with the PRT and protectorate as much of our database about our known universe as we can once negotiations are concluded." Epistēmē explained.
Kotoro resumed speaking "Despite my abilities, you will find that I do not have a brain structure corresponding to the ones found in parahumans. I assure you that I have abilities that resemble powers and will demonstrate them, but i'm not sure how that affects eligibility for the Wards program."
"Most of the regulations and rules and laws put into effect were done with regard to the impact that people with abilities could have on society, and so it ought to be easy enough to integrate you into the system even if you don't scan as a parahuman. May I inquire as to why you were trying to reach your Earth? Is that a common thing in your universe?"
"From the perspective of where I was raised, Earth was considered a backwater planet of low value, unworthy of much attention. My father's civilization was hardly something you could call a good neighbor to the nearby worlds, and as a result of long term misbehavior, we attracted the attention of and recently were annexed by an extremely evil empire, seeking to use us as a supplement to their Armies. They had announced the development and release of technology that could scan people's battle power. Due to the influence of traits I inherited from my mother's side, I have an unusually high battle power for a person of my age and experience. Its actually been quite a problem, because I have trouble controlling my strength. I've been successful in keeping the truth hidden from most, but with the arrival of that scanner technology, the deception would have been discovered readily, and I did NOT want the attention it would bring."
"I was hoping to hide away on Earth and work to get stronger, eventually returning to deal with the problem in the future. Along the way, we came across a species that had developed intriguing techniques that appeared to be able to warp space-time and other physical dimensions. Epistēmē combined knowledge of FTL technologies from our 2 populations, as well as some concepts gleaned from designs stolen from the Empire in question into a machine that was intended to act as an instantaneous jump drive. It achieved what it was able to do by applying what we had learned about the techniques used by this species, but in a different way, as their method only appears to work for organisms with battle power. Our method appeared to be successful, up until the point of failure that brought us here."
"Why the interest in the Wards program?" Armsmaster asked.
"My primary problems right now are that I don't have a legal identity, that I am too young to manage my own care according to your legal system, and that I am almost completely lacking in the ability to communicate without help from my friend here, as clearly I don't speak your language well and I can't read it at all. I don't have a very good understanding of the culture and history of your world either. If I were to attempt to survive on my own, I'd eventually have to commit crimes of some kind just to survive, even if it were only poaching wildlife and taking greens from public lands without permission. I would prefer a life where I am not constantly getting in trouble just for existing. Also, given the presence of Tinkers on this world, i'm hoping that one of them might be able to help us understand what went wrong with our jump drive, but that is a longer-term issue."
"I'll have to go over these things with the director of the PRT eventually. Can you submit as much information as you can share to the same address you used before... actually it probably won't fit in an email will it. here" he wrote down a series of numbers with dots between them and wrote down a username/password combination with it. "upload as much to this FTP server as you can. I and several Thinkers and other Tinkers will look through the material. You mentioned a ship several times, and yet we've not detected it. Where is it? is there any danger of it being broken into or exposed in some way?"
"It was originally developed as a science vessel intended to operate in and around areas of conflict that might erupt into battles or war at any time. It isn't a combat vessel in any respect, but it IS outfitted with the most advanced technology for the purposes of cloaking, hiding, and minimizing its EM signature as could be obtained or designed at the time. I've ensured it will remain undisturbed, and even if parahuman villains were to find it, precious few of them would be able to make a dent in it let alone break in. I'll eventually move it when things are more settled and the required authorities have been informed to expect it. My entire purpose in remaining hidden was to not cause a panic. I didn't intend to remain hidden forever, but dealing with a terrified population would cause complications that nobody wants."
"Would you like a tour of the facility and to meet the current wards?"
"Sure, I won't be able to talk to them very much at first, but if I am to work with them, meeting them is a good idea".
"We'll be scheduling you for preliminary power testing later today at about 1:30 PM. Pending results of that, we'll be writing up a provisional contract and NDA forms. I'll need to get approval from the director of the PRT after writing up a report on our meeting. She has final say of what we can do about your situation. You will be meeting with her later on this evening as your last stop before you leave".
"I have some more questions, more for my personal curiosity than anything official" Armsmaster said.
Kotoro nodded.
"Who designed that drone? how did it get built. Are there many of them?"
Kotoro motioned at Epistēmē and told him "I think you should answer that yourself".
Epistēmē explained "I did, pulling from some of the features of the ship and some other things I've picked up from various sources. We have a lab of sorts on the ship with several different production machines and fabrication technologies. We're running a bit low on supplies. I'm sorry, I just realized I haven't introduced myself yet. I am Epistēmē. I am the AI and owner/operator of the ship that brought this young man here. I have collaborated with his mother for a little over 20 years, and stayed behind to guide and monitor the boy in her absence when she was called back home to issue a report. She was unable to return due to the events that caused us to flee the situation. Before we began our field tests, I made sure a message detailing everything we were about to do would reach her where she is, but it will take several years for it to reach its destination, as I sent it in a way that ought to make it undetectable by unwanted eyes and that method takes a longer time as it couldn't take advantage of our more modern, but less secure transmissions protocols. I used a very low power FTL rocket with a simplistic guidance system. Its essentially a message in a bottle, with such a low signature that it shouldn't be noticed by anybody of import before it reaches her. She ought to be able to assemble an improved prototype, but I do not know if she could re-create the circumstances that brought us here or not. I advised that in the event we failed to reach our destination, they should put the designs in the hands of the astrophysicist and multi-dimensional physics experts on their world, and see what they could figure out before attempting another test run. They have the coordinates of the world we departed from, in case that becomes relevant."
Armsmaster was obviously intrigued. "an AI with enough agency and sufficient creative intelligence to create designs. Fascinating. It communicates so fluidly and easily. You're well beyond anything produced on this world without the aid of tinker powers. The secrets of your software design alone would be worth billions."
"This 'it' happens to identify as male and has a name. We will of course be willing to share such blueprints and design specifications when we have built a relationship of trust. I will have to consent, but I will be relying on this young man for his assessment of your trustworthiness as well." Epistēmē said.
"and now you're offended, absolutely fascinating. Oh... i'm sorry, I meant no offense." He said, turning back to face Kotoro.
"As for you young man, as you have not selected a cape name, are you comfortable sharing your given name? We'll be needing something for the legal forms so you'll probably be sharing that with us anyway. We'll keep it in confidence. We take the secrecy of identities very seriously." Armsmaster said.
"My given name is Kotoro. My mother picked it, or i'd likely be named after an anagram of the word for some kind of vegetable. We do not have a custom of middle names in either my father's or mother's culture. As for a surname, in my father's culture most do not have family names. Sometimes a clan is granted a title that they use as a surname, and the royal family collectively refers to themselves using the given name of the first king, which has also been the given name of each generation's first born. My mother's family name is Shinoto. I will use that."
"A piece of advice. If you don't pick a cape name soon, the public relations department will probably choose one for you, either based on some thematic costume designs they cook up , or your abilities. Their sensibilities often leave much to be desired. I urge you to come up with something you like, because if they pick it, you'll be stuck with it until you can join the protectorate as an adult."
"My father had wanted to name me Negitama, and sometimes called me that as a nickname. Maybe I could use that as a cape name." Kotoro said.
"It lacks the impact that a cape name constructed from English terms can have, but i'll put it down as a tentative name, in case you come up blank, to save you from having something decided on your behalf. Lets go have you tour the facility and meet the wards" Armsmaster said, rising from his chair. "follow me."
[Authors note: I am not yet decided on what the character will use as a cape name. Feel free to issue suggestions. If I see anything I like i'll let you know!]