I focused on the costumes, with some attention paid to the situation at hand. The leotard cut was a ‘never ever’. The full-body suit was problematic because of how it resembled Scion’s, and I didn’t want to go there. Those were two I could eliminate right away. I pulled the black trash bags down over them and set them aside.

Crystal explained, “People have been noting how fast we got back on our feet, and how we have something reasonably stable in currency and economy. We kind of got our answer.”

“Yeah,” I said, before guessing, “powers?”

“I guess powers, probably,” she said.

I turned to look at Crystal. She was arranging her damp hair over her eye, a curved swoop that her hairband held in place. “Only probably?”

“This isn’t about powers,” she said. “But I wouldn’t rule them out. They helped and they may be part of this. The key thing is that a lot of the building materials and resources we used to get started came from other worlds.”

“As in our people working in other worlds or—” I paused as Crystal shook her head. “Or other, alternate civilizations. Shit. You don’t get anything of that scale for free. What did we have to give them in exchange?”

“I have no idea,” Crystal said. “I don’t think many people do. There are two major groups heading the reconstruction that might have an idea but they haven’t shared. One of those groups was the one who put out the trading dollar a few months after Gold Morning, now our de-facto regular dollar. Same group that’s now looking at moving up into the greater political arena.”

“And those two groups are the ones butting heads?” I asked.

“No, the two construction groups are banding together, kind of. The workers who have been doing the actual construction work seem to think they were promised a significant discount and first opportunity to buy the houses they’ve been building. They’ve been living in a tent village, working long weeks, miserable conditions.”

“And if they think they have dibs on the houses, the work must have been a labor of love. They’ll have a strong community too. If they didn’t kill each other working that hard in conditions that bad, they must be close.”

“Yes,” Crystal said. “One second, be right back.”

I glanced over the remaining outfits. Three more options. V-neck, long-sleeved, short skirt. Not bad, but very reminiscent of ‘Glory Girl’.

Round neck, low enough to have a touch of cleavage, short sleeves, and shorts that cut straight across the upper thigh. If any length were taken from them at all, they wouldn’t qualify as shorts anymore. Hard to pull off. I’d need to accessorize it and I wasn’t sure I could afford the time to dig for boots, belt, or other stuff I’d need, and still get filled in.