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

[self_composed]

"How do you know these people if you're not in the market, then?"

So they're not actually selling the ability to make wishcoins. As far as Chris is letting on to a stranger who doesn't admit to knowing wishcoins are a thing.

[queensidecastle]

"The usual way. You meet someone, you become friends, you learn about their career... then you learn about their other career."

[self_composed]

"You're making it sound like a drugmarket underworld or something."

[queensidecastle]

"I won't deny that there are parallels. But I'm happy to report that as far as I know, none of my friends are in the drug trade."

[self_composed]

"That's probably for the best. So if you've never bought any... you were just born with your power? Or something? What makes that happen?"

[queensidecastle]

"It came in when I was about six," she recalls. "I had a younger sister who ran into things a lot, and I worried about her, and then one day I could just tell she was okay. And the next time she got overexcited and had an unfortunate encounter with a door, I could tell she wasn't hurt. As for why it happens, your guess is probably only slightly worse than mine. They're rare enough that it's hard to see any kind of pattern."

[self_composed]

"Do you know anyone else apart from Bridget with a 'native' power?"

[queensidecastle]

"A few. One, interestingly, who can detect and analyze other people's powers. He sat down at my table in a coffee shop one day and asked if I believe in magic, and has remained rude yet fascinating ever since."

[self_composed]

"Ooh. I bet he's useful to your weird magic-market friends. Is he? I'm not sure how these things are supposed to interact. Who else?"

[queensidecastle]

"One who has a limited ability to see the future—she makes a decent living as a stockbroker and tends to answer phone calls and emails very promptly. And one who is magically unobtrusive. He's friends with the magic detector."

[self_composed]

"Unobtrusive how?" Bella asks.

[queensidecastle]

"Unobtrusive. Hard to notice. You wouldn't tend to pick him out of a crowd, and if he's feeling especially shy he could be sitting on your couch in a red-and-white striped top hat playing the accordion and you'd walk right past him."

[self_composed]

"So he can make the accordion and his hat unobtrusive too. How far does that go?"

[queensidecastle]

"Well, you know that favourite college pastime of drawing on your sleeping friends with Sharpie? According to rumour, he can skip the sleeping part."

[self_composed]

"That's... interesting, but not exactly what I was asking. If he can play the accordion and no one notices, can he also turn on iTunes and have no one notice even though the computer is playing the music? What happens if he releases a cageful of excited hummingbirds into a room, do people start noticing them when they get a certain distance away or after a certain length of time or what? Can he steal objects - big obvious objects - without anyone paying attention? What if you're concentrating on the object at the time, what exactly happens to your attention or your cognition around it?"

[queensidecastle]

"Why do you imagine I will know the answers to all these questions?" she wonders. "Just from knowing the guy, the rule of thumb seems to be that you notice whatever still makes sense without him in the picture. So, floating Sharpie drawing on your face: doesn't make sense. Accordion in a top hat on your couch playing itself: doesn't make sense. Sudden explosion of hummingbirds: granted, doesn't make much sense either, but once they're out of the cage they make just as much sense without him, so I bet you'd start noticing them at that point. And from experience, I can tell you that things don't appear out of thin air when he puts them down; it's like they were there all along and you only started paying attention a second ago. How that would interact with the hummingbirds is anyone's guess."

[self_composed]

"I don't know how well you know him," Bella points out. "I know a heck of a lot about what Bridget's does; for all I knew you'd have comparable information about this guy. How does the precog work, what do you know about her?"

[queensidecastle]

"If you grilled her like this, I'll bet you know a lot about what Bridget's does," Chris says amiably. "The precog doesn't like to have long conversations about her power. I gather she doesn't necessarily see the future, and her predictions sometimes change even without her doing anything about them."

[self_composed]

"Er, I don't want to be rude, but how do you know she's a precog and not just a lucky investor who keeps on top of her inbox?"

[queensidecastle]

"Because once in a while I get a perfectly coherent reply to an email I haven't actually sent yet."

[self_composed]

"I guess that would be convincing, especially if you aren't predictable in what emails you send," Bella muses. "Can I talk to her, too? What about the unobtrusive guy?" She ramps up to 3x so she can think about how to phrase her next question without pausing: "And, hey, can the power-checking guy work over the phone or whatever? Even if he can't I wanna talk to him too, anyone with powers who'll let me."

[queensidecastle]

"The unobtrusive guy has the power of ultimate shyness for a reason. I don't think you'd get along. And the precog, like I said, doesn't like to talk about it. Lazarus is always ready to talk your ear off about magic, though. Why, did you want him to check you for latent superpowers?"

[self_composed]

"I imagine they'd be really latent. Everything you've mentioned seems to be the kind of thing you'd notice, right? So I doubt there'd be much point, but if he likes talking people's ears off about magic, I have a redundant ear handy. Can you give out his number or do you have to ask first?"

[queensidecastle]

"How about I give him yours?" she suggests.

[self_composed]

"Does his power work over the phone? I have this mental image of picking up while my roommate's around, and then flailing around and having to explain it if he says I have something," says Bella, chuckling softly. She's backed into a bit of a corner, but there's no way the personality she was revealing would pass up a chance to talk to any magic person at this point. Sigh.