This post's authors have general content warnings that might apply to the current post.
View Flat HTML
View Metadata
Search Post
Bella goes on TV with Pat. It goes pretty well. She doesn't have a PR person yet, but running at 5x and thinking carefully means she doesn't trip over herself when called on to talk enough that most people would notice. She takes questions-slash-requests from the crowd, and winds up healing an amputee, showing off a pretty illusion of terraformed Mars over the crowd, and flying around. She gets to talk about the nice features of Mars, including the fact that any further amputees could just make their way there and sit in one of the medical devices for a moment to clear that right up. Pat gets to look like she "discovered" Bella. It's a decent arrangement.
Then the time designated for the spot is up, and Bella bids everyone goodbye and teleports away over the shouts of investigative reporters, and it's not currently baseball season so she goes ahead and extends her protection-from-media over Renée and Phil in case someone figures out who she is despite having only her first name to work with.
She goes to Moonstone Palace. She has nothing in particular to do. She decides to read Alice.
self_composed
self_composed
[Really. It's a big multiverse. According to a sample size of two, I don't take over so much as a hamlet without magic - I could see doing the same thing with a tech advantage, just the same way. And I know that if I have no particular advantages and I'm reasonably comfortable, I occupy a holding pattern at least until my late teens, because that's what me and Golden Bella did until we located our respective magical edges. If I started out at a resource disadvantage, and was not reasonably comfortable, and there was a big, obvious target painted on some class of people permitting that? I don't think I'd be a particularly ruthless terrorist, but I might blow shit up.]
self_composed
[It might depend on how I evaluated her object of explosives. I'm kind of selfish, when I don't have infinite everything to throw around; I'd imagine one of me who grew up with less would be more so, and might overweight her own comfort or ascribe too much motive to whoever she perceived as being responsible.]
edgeofyourseat
[Huh,] Alice repeats.
Bella is still his favourite Bella, but a blowing-shit-up Bella might be fun to meet.
Bella is still his favourite Bella, but a blowing-shit-up Bella might be fun to meet.
self_composed
[She'd try to get coins out of you,] predicts Bella. [Heck, I might not even mind, I think it's pretty clear that I am a nicer and more generous person when I have more stuff. I think I turned out nicer than Goldeneyes.]
edgeofyourseat
[She can get coins out of me if she wants,] he says, deliberately construing the phrase to mean generating them rather than asking him to hand over some of the existing surplus.
self_composed
[Yeah, if she's desperate that'll overcome some amount of squeamish, however much squeamish she has if and when we find her,] Bella supposes.
self_composed
[Not necessarily. We're postulating that she's a terrorist. I doubt any of me are far gone enough to stoop to non-consensual torture, but, you know. Big multiverse,] shrugs Bella. [For whatever it's worth, anyone that far gone also goes on an asteroid or equivalent.]
edgeofyourseat
[If we meet a you who'd hurt me even if I didn't like it, she still gets to hurt me. But I'm keeping the coins.]
self_composed
[I find it unlikely that any of me would do that purely recreationally,] muses Bella. [Even if they'd do it for other reasons.]
self_composed
[Indeed. Anyway, I could be wrong, we could never find a me like that, we could find one who fell into terrorism through unrelated means, whatever.]
Here Ends This Thread