Diana just stared back at the weirdo while she spoke. She knew that look. Vaguely curious, almost mystified, that was the look of someone tried to figure something out. Plus, she kept saying all this weird stuff that was simultaneously obvious and didn't make much sense. Yes, she was a scientist, she just said she was a scientist, why did this weird feel the need to say it out loud herself? Did she just like listening to the sound of her own voice? But even that didn't seem right because she knew people that liked to talk too much. Hell, even Vieri was on the lower end of that scale and he wasn't prone to doing something like this. It was more like she was talking to herself and Diana just happened to be in the general area.

She continued staring blankly at the description of Mexico. Okay, it was a country that apparently made food with lots of cheese and had structures called stepped pyramids. Sure. Saying it was south of here told her nothing because the world was basically an amorphous blob of landmasses as far as she was concerned. She had no idea where America even was on a map let alone what might be south of it, but she didn't really care. It wasn't that important, and if mages willed it, there probably wouldn't even be a Mexico or America for much longer anyway. She could figure it all out then.

"The hell's a stepped pyramid?"

It wasn't a term she was familiar with. Having spent her entire life up until a few years ago in the same few rooms meant she didn't know much about the world still. Her knowledge was extremely specialized, it just happened to be specialized the only things about the world that really mattered in her opinion.

"Depends on what you mean by 'study' I guess. I was in a weird position when I got my magic because it was the first time in my life I could open doors and walk outside on my own. I never really talked to anyone, so it was the first time I could actually see them. Most people don't remember seeing a tree for the first time, but for me that was about three years ago. I had a lot to learn about the world and that took time.

"Then it was magic. The limits of what I could do, the limits of what my little brother could do, figuring out what it was and where it came from, that kind of thing. Some of it was successful, I know what I can get away with because of my magic, but as you might imagine, I don't know anymore than the academy on where it came from or why some people have it. Seems random, I haven't been able to find any kind of correlation between magic and anything else.

"Then the academy happened and I was able to get into the Information Age for the first time. There was a lot to learn there, and not just the new technology. Several hundred years of history meant people had time to figure out how the world worked. Given I grew up studying how to balance the four humors, you can imagine how unbelievable modern medicine sounded. So I spent a bunch of time replicating experiments and proving what I was reading in those books until I could trust that this stuff was actually right and what I thought I knew was actually pretty hilariously stupid in hindsight. Now it's just expanding on that. Figuring out what was wrong with me might be nice to do someday, if only to satisfy my curiosity, but it's not really a priority. It's not a problem anymore. Instead, I'm looking into the kinds of things I don't know how to make my magic fix yet. Those disorders where the body attacks itself. The way I use my magic now only increases the body's natural abilities. Doing that when the body is the thing causing the problem is just a bad idea, right?

"So what are you looking for lady? You can keep playing 20 questions with me, but you got this look on your face like you're expecting something."