many people move here to start families

[cross_and_bow]

Bella is hanging out in a Jarvis - the familiar one - handwriting a nonaggression proposal-slash-bribe. Has to be handwritten. Damn fussy demons. At least it's okay for her to conjure rather than personally harvesting the weird ink she's supposed to use.

Comments

[cross_and_bow]

"...Okay, what would you like me to do about that?"

[pythbox]

"I don't know," he says. "It's a problem."

[cross_and_bow]

"So it would seem, yes. I don't suppose it helps any that I clearly could do something awful - to you, to anybody - and instead I'm spending my time poking around powerful hellgods because they've been making mental patients of innocent people? This doesn't suffice to demonstrate that I have benign motives?"

[pythbox]

"I wish it did," he says. "But no."

[cross_and_bow]

"I don't suppose I can solve this problem with bribery?"

[pythbox]

He looks tempted.

"...No."

[cross_and_bow]

"You're sure?"

[pythbox]

He sighs. And nods.

[cross_and_bow]

[Sherlock, how often does she brainsuck folks?]

[eversomuchfun]

[She's been doing it a few times a month for several years.]

[cross_and_bow]

"Glory brain-sucks people a few times a month," says Bella. "I don't have very long to gain your trust the old-fashioned way by hanging around and not doing anything evil, and she will definitely notice me if I teleport her next victim away, and I don't currently know how entangled she is with you, so I don't know if my first idea for dealing with her in a crisis situation will hurt you or not. Resurrecting the dead is more inconvenient and time-consuming right now than usual, and even the victims who don't wind up dead are a hassle to fix and don't look like they have a pleasant time on the way there or subsequently, so allowing her to go about her business is not on the table. If you really want rid of her, you want to talk to me."

[pythbox]

"...Look, why don't you just split us, then," he says, throwing up his hands. "And put her somewhere far, far away where you can deal with her and I don't have to."

[cross_and_bow]

"Look. Ben. I'm sure having her intermittently possess you is very annoying and you just want it over with without having to endure any further hassle. But I don't think you would want me to just teleport you to Mercury and attempt to pull her out of you there if you thought about it. I don't know what will happen if I do that. For all I know, you will die as soon as I do it because of some kind of dependence between you and then I have to go haul you back which could take me a while, or she'll triple in power and be strong enough to give me a difficult afternoon once you aren't attached to her, or she'll go terrorize her original subworld and then I have a difficult rebellion project on my hands, or something. Some of those outcomes are not great for you."

[pythbox]

"She can't get back to her original hell dimension," he says. "And I thought you said your magic could split us. Either you can do the impossible or you can't. How am I supposed to know exactly what impossible things you're claiming you can do when you won't tell me what they are or how you're going to do them? If you don't even know that I can live through it, why are you suggesting it at all, and especially why did you suggest it without mentioning that up front? This is not helping with the trust thing!"

[cross_and_bow]

"Dude," says Bella, pinching the bridge of her nose, "I told you, multiple times, I don't know if I can do it till I try it. I can do all kinds of wild things, but neither I nor my friends have encountered the specific scenario of 'hell god possessing human' before. And I'm trying to find out whether you can live through it, so that if the answer is 'no', I can find another solution. You aren't helping with the 'find out' project, so I'm trying to explain why it is important and you should wish to be helpful. That doesn't mean that I'm going to charge blindly forward in the absence of the relevant information."

[pythbox]

"How am I supposed to know if I can live through something that's still, as far as I've ever known, completely impossible? And if you're so keen on sharing information how come you're not telling me a damn thing about how you plan to accomplish any of this?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Offworld magic," sighs Bella, looking skyward. "There are lots of worlds, you know that already 'cause Glory's from one, but Glory's from one in the same collection as this one we're standing in. I got some magic from some friends who are from other world-collections. What else do you want to know about it?"

[pythbox]

"...How it works?" he suggests. "For example?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Wishes. I have some wishes on my person, of various sizes, and I can spend them at will."

[pythbox]

"And you couldn't, for example, wish to unstick me from Glory and put her on Mercury and leave me the hell alone...?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Think of the wishes as magical computer programs," Bella says. "If I wish 'unstick Glory from Ben, put Glory on Mercury', then this will either work or not, but if it works, something I haven't thought of could cause something I don't expect, just like computers don't always behave even though no one expressly programmed in any bugs. That's why I have to think of all the things that might go wrong first. What will Glory be able to do when she's unstuck? How fast will she be able to do it - faster than I can stop her? Are you, in some way you have not chosen to tell me about, attached to her in such a way that you will come to harm in her absence if I don't specifically wish around it? I know some people whose lives are dependent on external souls that are shaped like animals, it would not be the weirdest thing I've heard if your life is in some way dependent on Glory's occupancy and I can probably work around it but I have to know how to be sure."

[pythbox]

"I'm telling you," he says, frustrated, "I don't know anything about what could possibly happen if you managed to yank her out of me somehow."

[cross_and_bow]

"And I'm telling you, I can potentially use anything you know about her at all in order to find out. I have other sources of information too, I just need to know what to look for."

[pythbox]

"What sources? Look how?"

[cross_and_bow]

"I have a research guy who's investigating assorted books. I can spy on the past, if I know when and where I want to look. I have a crystal ball, but I have to interpret what it shows me in light of whatever I already know. I can wish up other information-gathering abilities if I know what sorts of things I need to find out."