i'm just that fascinating i guess

[self_composed]

The first day Bella spends out and about with her new who's-watching-me powers, she is rather alarmed.

Maybe she's just mistaken about how much time people spend looking at reasonably pretty eighteen-year-old girls. She kills a pentagon to try it on a nearby control - who's looking at that girl over there?

Fewer people. Fewer people are looking at that random girl, and less intently. They're looking at her familiarly - they know her - or casually - they're checking her out.

[I have a spy problem,] Bella says. She makes a faintly exaggerated show of snapping her fingers in frustration and turning around. She's going back to her room to get a mirror and bobby pins and barettes, so she can spy back on the pretense of checking her hair, without making it overwhelmingly obvious that she knows what's going on.

Comments

[nonbird]

[I'll save that one for later.]

[self_composed]

[All right. Kolya, you are not fully up to speed and may as well become so - questions?]

[nonbird]

[Who are you?] he asks plaintively.

[self_composed]

[Bella. I'm a mint with a pet masochist and I'm going to take over the world.]

[nonbird]

[Yikes,] says Kolya.

[Don't worry, she's a nice world conqueror,] says Lazarus.

[self_composed]

[I am so nice,] Bella says. [I'm playing take-over-the-world on hard mode where you don't do unethical things. It interferes with doing a speedrun, unfortunately.]

[nonbird]

Both of them crack up.

[self_composed]

Bella smiles to herself. [Any interesting crate contents?] she asks Lazarus.

[nonbird]

[First I have to solve the problem of how to open them. I haven't spotted any convenient crowbars.]

[self_composed]

[Did you use up the square on color-changing or did a triangle manage it? Square will get you a crowbar. I don't know how careful an inventory they keep of the place, though, so perhaps not a first resort.]

[nonbird]

[The square went to colour-changing. What sorts of things do triangles do?]

[self_composed]

[Little things. Not necessarily useless things. Flick a switch you can't reach. Distract somebody with an itch someplace they can't reach. You could probably pry a nail out of a crate with one. You could set a very small fire - which you'd want to make sure wouldn't turn into a not very small fire, since you can't escape at the moment. Anything you could do by yourself in five to ten minutes without magic, you can probably do it with a triangle instantaneously - with exceptions, like, I don't think triangles can talk. They'll heal little bruises and scratches.]

[nonbird]

[Hmm,] says Lazarus. [I think I'll save them for now.]

[self_composed]

[All right. Kolya, further questions?]

[nonbird]

[Why are you taking over the world?]

[self_composed]

[It is in need of new management. My go-to example here is that malaria needs to go away, but there are many other things that also need to go away.]

[nonbird]

[I guess you are a nice world conqueror,] Kolya muses.

[self_composed]

[Yes. But I can't just hex up a designer cure for malaria or casually render mosquitoes extinct, because I don't know who else has magic, or what they want, or what they'll do if I get in their way.]

[nonbird]

[Chris the creepy witch lady has magic,] says Kolya.

[I don't know why you keep calling her that,] says Lazarus.

[Because she's creepy and witchy.]

[self_composed]

[Yes. I know she does. I'm also curious about who she's protecting,] Bella says.

[nonbird]

[She's creepy enough all by herself,] Kolya says stubbornly.

[self_composed]

[All right, but is she a mint? Does she have power over mints? A protective power will not get her far by itself, if she's by herself.]

[nonbird]

[She wasn't a mint last I checked,] says Lazarus.

[self_composed]

[Exactly. She's protecting one, or she knows some, or her protectee knows some - or she isn't involved in the yoinking. The yoinking has mint written all over it.]

[nonbird]

[I've never gotten the impression that her protectee was anything special except by virtue of being protected by an admittedly somewhat scary woman,] says Lazarus.