we are invariably pleased to welcome tourism

[cross_and_bow]

Sherlock is usually very puncutal. He's only one minute late, but that's still not quite as punctual as usual. Bella peers out the window, not yet allowing herself outright concern.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"...good question," says Juliet. "But I heard you invoking all sorts of goddesses."

[dark_light]

"I've got mental opacity, but it comes from a birth blessing from a witch goddess," says Amariah. "I don't think they locked themselves out when they gave it to me. And my spells are more descriptive than 'behold my will', anyway."

[eversomuchfun]

"Well, that's hilarious," says Sherlock.

[cross_and_bow]

"It's annoying," exclaims Juliet. "Now I have to find a completely unrelated school of magic. I think they must exist - some of the nasty curses don't open with anything inviting deities to behold my will so obviously I didn't try those - but wow. Wow."

[eversomuchfun]

"It's hilariously annoying," he maintains.

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay, fine. So yours is a birth blessing - I wonder where mine comes from?"

[dark_light]

"Stella and Golden's worlds both just have people with innate powers crop up sometimes, so Stella's an 'ingot' and Golden's a - well, they call them 'witches' apparently, but it's not the same thing as me. Angela doesn't think she has it at all, and Shell Bell knows she didn't before she met Stella and got magic loot. I don't know about you."

[eversomuchfun]

"Do you know exactly which parts of the Slayer package you're missing?" he inquires.

[cross_and_bow]

"I have no supernatural senses, and a Power That Is had to visit me in person to wonder why I wasn't slaying anything yet and wanted to know why I hadn't gotten its dreams," reports Juliet. "If there's more, I don't know enough to know it's missing."

[eversomuchfun]

"You clearly do have all the physical upgrades, and the battle instincts. That part is interesting. Why that and not the senses, I wonder?"

[dark_light]

"Stella wrote that Golden's 'witchcraft' let her daughter communicate with her until her daughter tried to send useful information in a quantity that would have been incapacitating for a while," volunteers Amariah. "Stella was briefly worried that when her Whistle got a brain upgrade, her mindreading would stop working if she didn't boost herself to match because it would've been overwhelming. Are the senses or the dreams - unpleasant? Do they interfere with other stuff? I bet the battle instincts only come up when you're in a fight and then they'd be a strict improvement over whatever you started with."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't know if they're unpleasant, I never had them," Juliet points out. "I imagine they could be. The Slayer package wasn't really designed for my well-being."

[eversomuchfun]

"The official Watcherly term for a Slayer's supernaturally acquired dreams is 'the nightmares'," says Sherlock. "So there's that."

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh. Yes, I do imagine I'd find that unpleasant."

[dark_light]

"And if the idea is for you to kill vampires and such I don't imagine supernaturally sensing them would be a gentle breezy sensation or patterns of dots on a magic heads-up display," comments Amariah.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock snorts.

[cross_and_bow]

"Okay, this is if nothing else a reasonable working hypothesis for why I can't cast spells I've tried and why half the Slayer properties didn't stick to me, but I still don't know where the original opacity came from," says Juliet. "Sherlock, do you know anything about - random magical powers people sometimes have? Is that a thing?"

[eversomuchfun]

He shrugs. "It's a vague rumour, at any rate. Doesn't seem to happen very frequently."

[cross_and_bow]

"But you've heard of it - what can other people do?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Visions of the future. Telekinesis."

[cross_and_bow]

"Those are cool," says Juliet. "On balance I think I'll stick with mine, though, I don't want nightmares or for magic to eat my brain or anything."

[eversomuchfun]

"Yes, magic eating your brain would be a tragic loss."

[cross_and_bow]

"I'd really object," says Juliet, nodding. "Maybe Mr. Giles will be able to help me find something that does work. He did pretty much agree to teach me in between all the dire warnings."

[eversomuchfun]

"Let us hope," agrees Sherlock.

[cross_and_bow]

"Anyway. Lemme put my new magic through its paces, huh?" says Juliet, rolling her shoulders and reaching behind herself to poke at the hidden tattoos. "Just Sherlock to start, and when I'm used to the boosts I can practice trying not to give Amariah an opening into which she might insert something sharp."

Training ensues. Amariah doesn't prove particularly useful as a stabby prop, but the blessings she cast are definitely helping. Juliet is less tired, less bruised, barely scratched, more alert, and surer on her feet than before, and it adds up to a definite edge above and beyond the revisions she's been making to her "autopilot".

Sherlock violently encounters the wall on more than one occasion.