"I could if I'd been paying more attention. If I see what your full mana level's like and remember it, then I can start talking in percentages."

"Well, hopefully you'll still be here tomorrow when it's back up to baseline," Bella says. "I'll try to avoid doing any but the most critical-to-supervise experiments till then. Much as I'd like to just draw a barrier around myself and go flying just for fun."

"Thanks!" She peers at her notebook. "Any tips on figuring out healing spells?"

"No idea," says Brilliance. "Never tried one."

"Okay, but generally, what could go wrong if I start groping around blindly there, am I going to wind up giving people I'm trying to help diseases or killing them or whatever or will it just not work if I don't have it right?"

"It might do something weird but it won't do something harmful unless you mean it to," he says. "I think."

"What does 'weird' mean here?"

"Weird," he says. "Unpredictable. Unexpected."

"I didn't -" She sighs, and stops, and says, "I would like examples, if you can think of some."

"I've never seen a healing spell go wrong and I have no idea what it would look like, I just know that if you're trying to heal, you're not going to accidentally blast somebody's head off or something."

"I'm sort of concerned about, like - cancer. If I want to grow an amputated hand back it seems like a related, but in fact harmful, effect, might be some kind of cancer."

"...I'm not sure," says Brilliance. "I don't really know how you biological people are put together."

"Badly," says Bella dryly. "The rest of you was shaped like a dude..." This isn't on her priority list, but Brilliance said he'd stay overnight; she can relax a little.

"Yeah," he says. "I have three forms; that's the one with the highest power output. But it's just shaped like a dude, it doesn't really work like one."

"How come we were able to beat it up if it's higher-power, was I just contributing that much mana or something?"

"The control program wasn't really meant to run all my functions by itself," he says. "Without me in there it was kind of stupid. I think it was having a hard time deciding between killing us first and blowing up the planet first, so it couldn't really manage either one."

"It was smart enough to possess my twin," mutters Bella.

"All that took was getting her to say the activation password. And I bet it wasn't even all that good at that."

"It did sound like she was arguing with it for a while until it told her it was a limited-time offer." Pause. "Can you possess people when you're all together, like it did Lexi?"

"...It's not really possessing," he says. "But yeah, I guess I see why you'd call it that. Sure I can. Nobody who's not my wielder, though, which means - just you."

"Uh, so is there a phrase I should learn to avoid ever, ever saying?"

"...No? Well, yes, but that's a separate issue, and anyway incantations don't work if you don't mean them, and you said you wouldn't torture me."

"...I'm not going to torture you," agrees Bella. "I don't know what that has to do with my question. And I don't think Lexi meant to get possessed, so obviously the meaning-it thing is a little flexible."