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 wonder why the change in shape,] Lazarus says musingly. [An exponential scale? Really? How do you measure...? Or do I even want to know?]

[self_composed]

[I dunno, do you?] Bella asks, sincerely curious.

[nonbird]

[I don't know,] he says helplessly, shaking his head. [No, curiosity wins over squeamishness, it generally does.]

[self_composed]

[This part involves the biggest secret to my success, so to speak,] Bella says seriously. [I also don't know how closely you're being supervised - I don't know why the folks spying on me aren't using your valuable powers, but if they have a fraction of a brain they are paying attention to you. You can't do anything weird. You can't tell anyone, even Kolya, till I've had a chance to evaluate him myself. Capisce?]

[nonbird]

He sighs. That comes across, too.

[Okay.]

[self_composed]

[My boyfriend is the most masochistic masochist ever,] Bella says. [I've only ever made one hex. It made him a mint. He can make even stars all by himself - you know, recreationally - but I also hexed up a power that lets me help him out, and it comes with the units, where one unit is the bare minimum of pain to make a triangle.] Pause. [He has expressed an interest in having sinister experiments performed on him, by the way. I don't know if that would be discomfiting more than it would be curiosity-satisfying.]

[nonbird]

[Recreationally,] Lazarus repeats. [Oh my. What kind of sinister experiments, or does he just like the phrase?]

[self_composed]

[That was my phrase, actually. Whatever kind of sinister experiments would be informative for your magic-sense. Information is useful. I do not understand why you have not been eaten by a shadowy magical conspiracy already. Wanna be in mine? I'm nice, I promise.] Pause. [We could also make this a conference call if you'd like to talk to him directly.]

[nonbird]

[Not yet,] he decides. [What exactly are you shadowy-ily magically conspiring to do?]

[self_composed]

[I want to take over the world,] Bella says. [And make it behave itself. For example, at some point, when I can either do it inconspicuously or no longer need to be discreet, I intend to eradicate malaria. I'm lying low for the time being specifically because I don't know where all the world's mints and natively magic people are or what they are doing, but whatever they are doing does not meet my exacting standards.]

[nonbird]

[...That is a good conspiracy,] says Lazarus. [I like that conspiracy. I am on board with that conspiracy.]

[self_composed]

[I'm so glad,] says Bella merrily.

[nonbird]

[My sinister experiments are probably just going to amount so sitting still in the same room with both of you for a while,] he says. [I'm really not a very exciting person. Well, and I might want to watch someone make a coin, but not, ah... recreationally.]

[self_composed]

[He doesn't really have a non-recreational setting. I can make small ones non-recreationally if that would be more comfortable for you, though. What does your current boring job involve? I can help you with a cover story so Kolya doesn't wonder what you're up to - you can "apply for a job" that requires you to "sign a lot of confidentiality agreements". And then if you'd rather hang out with my conspiracy than do what you're doing, the "job" can hire you and require relocation.] Quotation marks appear in the text channel where appropriate.

[nonbird]

[Well, I wouldn't want to get too far from Kolya. Is this yours?] he wonders. [Did you invent multimedia communicative telepathy?]

[self_composed]

[Yes! Yes I did. Designing powers is fun,] Bella says. [Bring him with you if you like and can explain why and he wants to come, we have access to money to provide from your fictitious job with a secretive wee startup and it's not like it would be hard to get more.]

[nonbird]

[I also kind of like my current city. How many powers have you designed?] he wonders. [How many do you have?]

[self_composed]

[Uh, pardon, let me count,] Bella says. She counts. [Are we counting magical permanent hexagon-level powers, or also mundane things that I pentagoned myself good at for various reasons? And the two-layered one that I doubled up 'cause I was paranoid?]

[nonbird]

After a moment of stunned silence,

[Yes.]

[self_composed]

[Minting, plus 17 other magic superpowers if you count the doubled one as two things, and one dozen non-language persistent uses of pentagons, variously frivolous, and twenty-one languages.]

[nonbird]

[I really want to look at you,] says Lazarus. ['Look', I mean. I can't even imagine what a stack of powers like that would look like. I've never seen one before.]

[self_composed]

[You shall just have to come visit me, then. How much do you like your current city? Because transit can be magicked, I'm just a little worried that Kolya will follow you to work one day and you won't notice.]

[nonbird]

[Well, if I really seriously join your magical conspiracy, I'm going to have to tell Kolya,] he says. [No two ways about that.]

[self_composed]

[That's probably fine eventually, I just have to be comfortable with telling him too before he gets all up in my secrets,] Bella says. [I would also really not like him to be able to unobtrusiveness at me, so I would want your help designing a workaround.]

[nonbird]

[No,] says Lazarus. [Several kinds of no. Native powers always beat nonnative ones, for one thing, so it would be impossible, and he'd rather never be in the same room with you than not be able to escape your attention, so: no.]