plotting to unnerve her

[self_composed]

Bella finds Milliways in the moon palace instead of one of her balconies.

"Huh," she says aloud.

Then, to Alice, Libby, Elena, and Mary, and Lazarus except he autoreplies with a busy message, [Hey folks, Moonstone Palace grew a bar that I don't remember putting in, come check it out.]

Comments

[edgeofyourseat]

[No problem,] says Alice.

[nonbird]

[Yes?]

[self_composed]

[Can me and Alice come visit? His ingot power is almost certainly not just a "touch-don't-change" mental defense, which we learned for reasons I would rather not explain right now. And I would like to know exactly what it is.]

There is, after all, a chance that ingots (like witches) may enhance their powers after turning.

[nonbird]

[...Sure,] he says.

[self_composed]

Alice's outfit is in a state; liquid nitrogen will do that. "You wanna not scandalize Lazarus?" she murmurs.

[edgeofyourseat]

He shrugs and squares some real clothes.

[self_composed]

Bella stands them up and teleports them to Lazarus's apartment on Mars. "Hullo," she says.

[nonbird]

"Hi," says Lazarus.

[ignorable]

Kolya is curled up on the couch with a book. He looks up when Bella and company teleport in.

If she has given herself the appropriate capacity, she will notice that his power is on.

[self_composed]

Bella gives him the briefest of looks, but she did in fact expand her illusion-seeing power to cover him, and politely neglects his presence. She checks Alice to see if he can see him, because that hasn't been discussed yet.

"Already got all your furniture up here, nice," Bella says.

[nonbird]

"Yeah, Kolya helped," he says, entirely ignorant of the named party's presence. "It was only slightly inconvenient to drag it all through the Moon."

[edgeofyourseat]

Alice does not, in fact, see Kolya.

[self_composed]

How interesting.

"So what're we looking at here?" Bella says, patting Alice's shoulder.

[nonbird]

"I'm not sure... what you want me to be looking at, exactly," he admits. "I mean, his power's the same it's always been. What extra things did it do?"

[self_composed]

"I tried to teleport him somewhere. He didn't go anywhere. The ingot power isn't literally the only candidate effect that could've done that, but it's by far the most likely."

[nonbird]

"...That's... puzzling," says Lazarus, frowning slightly in concentration. "I guess there's no reason it couldn't have done that, I just don't understand why it would. It doesn't have a little tag on it saying 'defends against mental tampering', you understand; that's just shorthand. It isn't limited to defending against magic that is targeted at his mind. But I can't imagine how teleporting him somewhere could change his..."

He searches for words.

"Identity? Personality? Self? What Alice's power does is make him continue being Alice against all outside influence."

[self_composed]

"That's interesting," Bella says, chewing on her lip. "Er, what is its definition of 'Alice'? Can you tell?"

[nonbird]

"Alice," says Lazarus. "Alice is the definition of Alice."

Even though it doesn't strictly help, he does actually peer at Alice at this point.

"It seems, um... happier than last time I met it," he offers.

[edgeofyourseat]

"Why, was it not happy before?"

[nonbird]

"No, it was!" he says. "But now it's extra happy."

[self_composed]

"It's happier?" Bella says incredulously. "Powers can be amounts of happy?"

[nonbird]

"I wouldn't go around describing everyone's power as having levels of joy," he says. "I'm not sure I would even have described this one this way if I hadn't noticed the difference. That's just the first word that came to mind; I could also say it's, um, more settled. Like before it had a little bit of wavering around the edges, and now it's more solidly in one place."

[self_composed]

Bella isn't thrilled about what this implies.

"What else can you tell us?" she asks.

[nonbird]

"I don't know," he says. "Where were you trying to teleport him to?"

[self_composed]

"I was mostly trying to teleport him away."