self_composed | i believe i can fly

Alice eventually goes home for the evening.

Bella goes up and sits in her room.

She has five hexes.

Five.

That's rather a lot of hexes.

She gets out her notebook, with the lists, and she makes some wishes.

And then she goes to bed, grinning.

In the morning it will be time to make plans.

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From:

edgeofyourseat

After Alice goes home, he conjures a knife in the shower and has some fun.

The next morning, Theo drives him to school as usual. As usual, he doesn't go to his first class.

As is sometimes usual, he heads out into town instead.

And for the first time, he has a very specific destination in mind.

When he rings Bella's doorbell, his necklace contains two hexes, nine pentagons, and a lot of squares and triangles, of which four triangles and a square are still Elias Frobisher's opal-hematite and the rest are Alice's obsidian.

From:

self_composed

Bella answers the door.

But from Alice's point of view, it just swings open of its own accord.

She even manages to stifle the giggling.

From:

edgeofyourseat

He looks puzzled for a moment.

Then he cracks up.

From:

self_composed

"I'm invisible!" exclaims Bella in a stage whisper. "Come on in."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"You're awesome," he says, stepping inside.

From:

self_composed

"I can also fly!" Bella says. She shuts the door and turns visible again; no one will be able to see her through the curtains.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Ooh, that sounds fun," he says. "I want that one."

From:

self_composed

"Permission granted," says Bella lightly. "And I got the regeneration power too, but haven't tested it on anything more than a scratch yet - it's just in case I get hit by another freaking car."

From:

edgeofyourseat

One of his hexes disappears. He grins at her.

"You wanna figure out the mind-reading thing now?"

From:

self_composed

"Sure, but that one requires thought beforehand," Bella says with a deliberately pompous wag of her finger. "I could probably get the ability to read minds in full generality with one hex, and I have to figure out if I want to be able to do that." Pause. "In one step instead of two, anyway. Wow, I had better be careful I don't become corrupt. If I do I'll be lousy at ruling the world."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"I will still love you if you become an evil dictator," Alice offers.

From:

self_composed

"Yes, yes, but that is precisely why I can't use your approval as a barometer here," laughs Bella.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Okay, so use yours."

From:

self_composed

"Hence the guarding against corruption thing. I don't want the set-of-things-I-approve-of to change a lot over time."

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Okay," he repeats cheerfully.

From:

self_composed

"Pancakes?" Bella says. "I made a bunch and some are keeping warm in the oven." She gestures, and sits herself down at the kitchen table. "I already ate. Hmmm. Mindreading on arbitrary targets. Kinda sketchy. I can do it in two steps anyway at any time as long as I have a hex on me. But it will feel more available if it's a power I already have and I don't have to spend any coins to do it." She's just narrating as she writes.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Pancakes!"

He fetches himself some and sits down next to her.

"Seems to me if you're worried about using it when you don't wanna, it's easier not to if you can't yet," he comments. "And hexes just got a lot cheaper."

From:

self_composed

"Mm-hm. So you, my font of hexes, clearly have no objection to me spending one just to be able to read your mind. I guess that settles it." She turns to a new page of the notebook. "Now I have to determine exactly how I want this power to work." She flips a couple pages back, to where she did exactly that sort of reasoning about the invisibility, flight, and regeneration, and scans them for a template.

From:

edgeofyourseat

Font of hexes. Her font of hexes. Alice grins.

"I think I'd like it if I could tell when you were," he offers as relevant data.

From:

self_composed

Bella writes that down. "Fair enough. In the form of a pleasant mental chime when I start and some corresponding alert when I stop, or just some kind of general sensation when it's happening?"

From:

edgeofyourseat

He laughs.

"Second one's more like it."

From:

self_composed

"Preferences on manner of sensation?" Bella inquires. She's meanwhile writing down possible forms she could receive thoughts in.

From:

edgeofyourseat

"Dunno," he says, shrugging. "Not something too distracting, but something I can't mistake for anything else. So I'll know, you know?"

From:

self_composed

Bella shrugs and writes down various existing senses plus "novel input?" on that list. "The advantage of this, I suppose, is that if I ever want general mindreading powers, I can arrange for them to work differently, without notifying anybody. So it makes sense to do this separately even if I do later decide I want to be able to spy on everybody."