[Behold! Also does text channel, busy messages according to whatever algorithm you like, and conference calls.]

[Awesome!]

"Shall I just add your brother now or should I ask him separately, do you think?"

"Ask him separately."

"Do you suppose he's still talking to your mom about me?"

"No idea. He might've got distracted."

"You want to go ask him? Seems impolite of me to go wandering through your house."

"Your brainphone thing isn't, like, contagious, I can't just give it to him myself?"

"Upgrades to how it works propagate that way, this is version two. Permission to add people to the network is separate and since I don't know you that well and haven't even met anybody else of your template I'm not quite there yet."

"...Template?"

"Oh, yeah. So, there's lots of universes, and some people pop up in more than one of them. I'm one of those people. There's ten of me known to, well, us, probably more we haven't found yet, and a lot of our friends and some of our enemies crop up more than once too. If you recur, I don't know about it, whereas if you were a copy of somebody another one of me had already vetted I'd be likely to skip some of the getting-to-know-you that I currently require before handing out magic."

"Gotcha," says Val. "Cool."

"If I do run into another of you I'll see about setting up an introduction, that's always fun. Us Bells have started throwing a party whenever we find a new one."

"Awesome! If I meet a me I am totally throwing a me party."

"If you wind up escorting me through Siathe that'll probably qualify you for an invite to a Bell party and we can see if anybody recognizes you. Although that's not perfectly reliable. One of me is a boy, for instance. One of my boyfriend is a girl."

"Well, I might be easier to spot 'cause I come with a twin," she muses.

"Yes, that's one way to figure it out. Although sibling configurations aren't perfectly consistent within all templates."

"...A me without an Ike would just be weird."

"Us Bells are all only children," shrugs Bella. "So far, anyway, although now that we know that we come in boy I don't know how long to expect that to hold. And he kept asking why he was girls, even though we're overwhelmingly girls, so if there's a dozen Ikeless Vals, they will probably think you're the weird one."

"But who would I punch if I didn't have a brother to get picked on by the assholes who are too scared of me to act like dicks when I'm looking?"

"I do not know. The worlds vary considerably. I have personally done a strikingly above average amount of punching for a Bell."

"I like you already!"

"Well, I mean, I was the Slayer. I didn't start out with the phenomenal cosmic power I have now. For a while I was just the Slayer. I had a crossbow, and sometimes I missed and then I hit things."

"I approve of hitting things," says Val. "If it's, you know, reasonably justified."

"Nasty bitey things all," Bella says. "Although once I miscalculated. My boyfriend and I had our first meeting separated by a lot of flying crossbow bolts. He is, mercifully, good at dodging."