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Bella gives James a lift back to her home after they bid their alts in Milliways goodbye.
"Tell me about your best friend. Does everybody call her Virgo?"
cross_and_bow
neverbeatme
"Everybody doesn't! She's Virginia to most people. But I've known her since third grade, so we have silly nicknames for each other."
cross_and_bow
"Cute," laughs Bella. "You think she'll want to be in on my administration?"
cross_and_bow
"All right. What time zone is she in? I figured warning you was important enough to wake you up even if it was the middle of the night for you, but she can probably wait till morning if it is not daytime where she lives."
neverbeatme
"She is also in New York! I will tell her all about your burgeoning empire tomorrow."
neverbeatme
"Not urgently. I don't know who you need to meet until I know what you need, you know?"
cross_and_bow
"Staff size among Bells varies. Golden has the most, which I think is some combination of nepotism and the fact having a lot of employees was the only way to have access to a lot of magic before she imported her mint. I'm probably going to want ambassador-types? There's a lot of demons to deal with; pentagons will do languages but I'm not necessarily a very diplomatic person."
cross_and_bow
"Have any wishes you don't want to make the coins for yourself that shouldn't wait till the next time I have a new batch?"
cross_and_bow
"Okay. I'm going to go confront my murderer. Brainphone me whenever."
cross_and_bow
Invisible-and-port.
"Hello, Arthur."
Arthur is sitting in lockup, looking confused about how this could possibly have happened to his life. Nothing about his situation improves when he hears Bella's voice. (She is still invisible.)
"I'm not a ghost," says Bella conversationally. "I know one - friendly girl, also murdered, but not my sort of dead. I am technically dead. The fact that this has been overall to my advantage in terms of how much I can do notwithstanding, you murdered me. I don't care if you didn't know what the square could do. You wished for me to be mortally injured. You assaulted me with crippling drugs and you locked me in a house with a vampire, who you did know what he could do. I talked my way past him and decided not to mark you for death in reply, and for my restraint I got my throat ripped out. That hurt, by the way. Because of what you did I underwent quite a lot of pain and fear and something unspeakably terrible happened to someone I love. I haven't decided what to do with you yet."
"I - I was under orders -"
"Yes, well, I haven't decided what to do with the rest of the Watchers, yet, either, besides protect the new Slayer from you. They won't find her unless they got it in quick before I came back from the dead. Have you spoken to them since murdering me?"
"I - yes."
"Liar," murmurs Bella. Oh yes, she's had that on.
"I did, I got my - my one phone call -"
"Liar," repeats Bella.
"They found her and -"
"And you're still lying to me and if they had found her it wouldn't matter, she's smart and she'd have listened to me even if I were the second person to show up instead of the first. Well, this has been unproductive. I think I'll leave you here at the mercies of a criminal justice system that heavily features a father who watched you murder his daughter in cold blood, shall I? But you see I'm going to be legally alive, if not yet then soon, and I'll be able to testify regarding the kidnapping, albeit it would be peculiar for me to tell a jury that you killed me. I do wonder if the Watchers have enough international political pull to put me slightly out of my way in making their communiqués disappear to circumvent any attempts at skirting the consequences. That seems like the kind of self-serving bullshit they'd spend their resources on, is fake diplomatic immunity."
"I-I-"
Bella's not there anymore.
She teleports back to Jarvis's living room.
"Hello, Arthur."
Arthur is sitting in lockup, looking confused about how this could possibly have happened to his life. Nothing about his situation improves when he hears Bella's voice. (She is still invisible.)
"I'm not a ghost," says Bella conversationally. "I know one - friendly girl, also murdered, but not my sort of dead. I am technically dead. The fact that this has been overall to my advantage in terms of how much I can do notwithstanding, you murdered me. I don't care if you didn't know what the square could do. You wished for me to be mortally injured. You assaulted me with crippling drugs and you locked me in a house with a vampire, who you did know what he could do. I talked my way past him and decided not to mark you for death in reply, and for my restraint I got my throat ripped out. That hurt, by the way. Because of what you did I underwent quite a lot of pain and fear and something unspeakably terrible happened to someone I love. I haven't decided what to do with you yet."
"I - I was under orders -"
"Yes, well, I haven't decided what to do with the rest of the Watchers, yet, either, besides protect the new Slayer from you. They won't find her unless they got it in quick before I came back from the dead. Have you spoken to them since murdering me?"
"I - yes."
"Liar," murmurs Bella. Oh yes, she's had that on.
"I did, I got my - my one phone call -"
"Liar," repeats Bella.
"They found her and -"
"And you're still lying to me and if they had found her it wouldn't matter, she's smart and she'd have listened to me even if I were the second person to show up instead of the first. Well, this has been unproductive. I think I'll leave you here at the mercies of a criminal justice system that heavily features a father who watched you murder his daughter in cold blood, shall I? But you see I'm going to be legally alive, if not yet then soon, and I'll be able to testify regarding the kidnapping, albeit it would be peculiar for me to tell a jury that you killed me. I do wonder if the Watchers have enough international political pull to put me slightly out of my way in making their communiqués disappear to circumvent any attempts at skirting the consequences. That seems like the kind of self-serving bullshit they'd spend their resources on, is fake diplomatic immunity."
"I-I-"
Bella's not there anymore.
She teleports back to Jarvis's living room.
cross_and_bow
She flops onto the couch, and onto him. "Hi," she murmurs.
eversomuchfun
He wraps her up in a hug and kisses the top of her head. "Hello, love."
cross_and_bow
"It turns out the new Slayer is very bright and also an alt of Stella's personnel officer. So I'm apparently going to wind up with a similar hiring arrangement and tomorrow morning I'm going to meet her best friend. The Watchers aren't going to find her. I talked to Arthur, too. He didn't have a lot to say."
cross_and_bow
"Turning is a - subtractive process, right? Psychologically speaking. Traits are removed, not - added."
eversomuchfun
"It varies. Ethical inhibitions are removed; everything else... shifts, sometimes."
cross_and_bow
"I didn't think it was just my ethical inhibitions that kept me from - what happened. It isn't appealing the way that - that breaking Arthur Mallory's jaw just because he hurt me and I could, is. Or I thought so but she came from somewhere and until I know where I can't dig her out of my brain and set her on metaphorical fire."
eversomuchfun
"Some theories have it that one's soul is actually replaced by a demon during the transformation, in which case it might have come from somewhere other than you."
cross_and_bow
"Maybe. I don't know. I feel awful. And I'm doing that thing where I make it about me feeling awful, again. Are you okay, is there anything I can do, can I help you...?"
