and the property values just keep going up

[cross_and_bow]

Time passes. Juliet practices, Shell Bell makes squares - increasingly irritable about it, she really doesn't like the perpetual discomfort, but she bites down on that as best she can and churns them out - and Tony installs things.

Finally he has installed enough things.

Comments

[eversomuchfun]

"Brilliant."

[cross_and_bow]

"Why thank you." A peck right on the end of his nose, and then she stands ready and says, "Surprise me."

This all goes on for the customary amount of time. Bella pretty much ignores Giles in favor of her sparring partners. He's a Watcher, he's Watching, all's well.

[pythbox]

Giles is watching.

And feeling more than a little redundant.

[cross_and_bow]

She tires out, after a few hours. "How'm I doing, Giles?" she asks, flexing worn-out arms. "Is it okay if I drop the 'mister'? I don't usually call my friends Mister anything and it'd be weird to call you by your first name."

[pythbox]

"Yes," he says, "Giles is fine. And honestly, I have never heard of a Slayer who became this good this fast."

[cross_and_bow]

"Ooh, cool, I'm ahead of the curve," says Juliet merrily, "even spending half time on the fire wand. I'll be a terror if I pick up any witchcraft."

[poeticterms]

"Witchcraft, you say?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Yeah? Apparently it has many drawbacks, but if I don't get minted I don't think there's going to be any other way to accomplish anything big efficiently. However good I am at hitting stuff, I only have two arms and two legs."

[poeticterms]

"I have some databases that could be of use."

[cross_and_bow]

"Ooh? Do tell. Your magic similar enough to the resident flavor?"

[poeticterms]

"As far as I can tell, with limited local information, yes."

[cross_and_bow]

"Do you do magic or just have info stored?"

[poeticterms]

"Mostly the latter."

[cross_and_bow]

"Mostly," she says, intrigued.

[poeticterms]

"Mostly," he repeats.

[cross_and_bow]

"I've been informed that actually doing magic is highly dangerous - attracts bad attention, sometimes causes less than benign entities to make shit up instead of doing the requested spell, may eat one's brain - how do you mitigate those risks, or do you just live with them and use magic sparingly?"

[poeticterms]

"I don't do invocations," he says. "And as far as I know, in my world there is no general risk of brain-eating. Unless I misunderstand you somehow."

[cross_and_bow]

"Magic addiction," says Bella. "Sorry, I sometimes adopt turns of phrase and then forget who knows them. I can't do invocations myself, it's a brain opacity thing, the deities-and-or-demonic-entities don't seem to be able to tell when I invoke them."

[poeticterms]

"Aha," says Jarvis. "Lucky you."

[cross_and_bow]

"Are you even, like, constitutionally subject to addiction-in-general? Or is that not a problem on your neighbor-world? We should name it. Jarvis, you wanna name where you came from?"

[poeticterms]

"As far as I'm aware, I am not subject to addiction in the first place, and if necessary I could modify my processes to counteract the effect," says Jarvis. "Is there a naming convention in place?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Bells have been naming our worlds pretty much according to whim or, where applicable, imperial theme. I called this one Sunshine in spite of Minus's charming suggestion of Hell-Orifice. Shell Bell's from Atlantis, Golden from Aurum, Angela from Samaria, Amariah from Alethia, Stella from Eos, and we don't have a name for the world that has the one of us who's ten and was written in by her Whistle yet."

[poeticterms]

"May as well call mine Sunshine-Two," says Jarvis.

[cross_and_bow]

"Oh, don't let's number them. If they're similar enough to warrant group naming it could be Solar or Sunlight or Helios or something."

[poeticterms]

"I can't help thinking that after a few of those, it will be hard to keep them all straight."