A Supermagnet, A Doctor, and A Twin Walk Into A Bar

[iamnotpolaris]

Milliways. Oh, bless.
Dr. Xavier could have finished her shift, made it home, and buried her head in a pillow if she had to. But this is much easier.
"Hi, Bar, can I have a stimulant that won't interfere with my judgement or dexterity or anything like that?"

Comments

[roc_on]

"I'm just not the making things up type when I can avoid it."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Aversion to lying, or lack of creativity?"

[roc_on]

"First thing. I'm not exactly a bad liar, I'd just rather avoid it."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Fair enough. I'm not too fond of it either."

[roc_on]

Beila finishes her slush. "So what does one do in here besides meet extradimensional doctors?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Drink interesting beverages, consume interesting foods, flee despotic governments although I doubt that one applies to you, purchase nifty objects, purchase nifty technology close enough to your current level to be reverse-engineerable while advanced enough to be worth reverse-engineering..."

[roc_on]

"My government is not despotic and if it were I would consider it entirely my job to fix that, not to run away. Technology sounds interesting; do you have tips on getting the right stuff?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Ask Bar."

[roc_on]

"Bar?"

Your technology differs stylistically from that of most other worlds and you will have intercompatibility issues with many things I could provide, but you will probably be able to make particularly good use of more advanced batteries, certain materials engineering instructions, and possibly some insights into genetics. You will need to copy out any written materials from other worlds, as they will not stay translated once you leave.

"Good thing I brought my screen with me, then."

[iamnotpolaris]

"It helped in my case that my father's genius friend was nearby, so I could drag him in here, and he was going to be the person doing the reverse-engineering anyway."

[roc_on]

"Useful. I don't have anyone like that convenient at the moment."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm sure you can leverage your unChosen One powers to find someone appropriate."

[roc_on]

"Yes, but unfortunately it's late enough that I don't think the nuns who help me find people to do Avatar-related stuff are checking their screen messages."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Nuns?"

[roc_on]

"Nuns. From the Reconstructed Air Temple. I'm an Air Avatar - all the avatars learn all the elements, but in a different order, and we're born to families that would normally have produced different kinds of benders; my parents are different kinds, but the last avatar was a Fire Avatar so we're sure that I would have been an airbender, not an earthbender, if I weren't the avatar. And I'm a girl - that alternates except when it's a fire to air transition. And therefore my support system is nuns."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Ah, that makes sense."

[roc_on]

"Yup. Although I haven't always taken their advice. My earthbending teacher picked out my firebending teacher, for instance, well before the nuns thought I was ready to move on."

[iamnotpolaris]

"Well, of course. A group of adults chosen by a process other than 'these are the people I trust' are never going to have invariably good advice."

[roc_on]

"I do find them handy. Although possibly more handy is the fact that my dad is the chief of police in my city."

[iamnotpolaris]

"That does sound useful."

[roc_on]

"Mostly comes in handy when I need reporters to leave me alone."

[iamnotpolaris]

"...Definitely useful."

[roc_on]

"This doesn't happen that often. I give plenty of interviews under more controlled conditions. It's just the one organization that had a photographer in a tree outside my room that I had to blacklist. Do you have this problem too?"

[iamnotpolaris]

"Not usually, but sometimes. And our reporters are really obnoxious."

[roc_on]

"One time one of them found my boyfriend before we were even dating, but he got the guy to go away by unhelpfully uttering random facts about panda carp."