"I appreciate that. What does the other kind of unison do? Kinds? When might I want it?"

"Unison has the highest possible power output," says Brilliance. "There's pretty much two kinds. One way is like you saw, and the other way it's the wielder whose face is showing and the device is just... backgrounded. If you wanted to do really big magic - especially if you wanted to fight against somebody who was actually hitting back - unison would be a good idea."

"Noted. Not that I should be predicating any plans on you sticking around, I think you've made it pretty clear you're not looking for a permanent arrangement and I only got spoken to at all because the world was going to end. Is there going to have to be some kind of complicated wielderhood-dissolution incantation to get you disentangled or is is that optional?"

"...I don't know," he says uncomfortably.

"Are you hooked up to Lexi at all still since she was unisoned with the control program part?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"That went away when I ripped out the control program."

"Fair enough. Is it going to be a problem that you don't know how to unwielderify me? Like, it would suck if that turns out to be fatal, or something, I would really rather live forever. Speaking of which if you happen to have tips on designing a spell for that I would be much obliged."

"Uh," he says. "I don't think being my wielder would be fatal. Why the hell would that be fatal?"

"I mean ceasing to be your wielder, since if I understand right you don't exactly have any way to know either way given how your last relationship in that category ended," Bella says. "If we try to hack together something to detach you from me so you can go off doing whatever, the detachment sounds like it might in theory not be great for my health, although I am pretty much just making paranoid guesses - actually, I'm not clear on what me being your wielder does besides give me some ethically dubious access privileges and a Barrier Jacket?"

"...Access privileges in both directions is pretty much it," he says. "And the Barrier Jacket. And the stuff we can do with those access privileges, like unison."

"I would really like to know what access privileges those are, especially anything you can do to me and anything I could conceivably do to you by accident."

"I can engage unison, put your Barrier Jacket on, put your Barrier Jacket away, and if I'm in staff form or unison I can draw on your mana to cast spells," he says. "I don't think there's anything you could do to me by accident. You could torture me but you'd have to be trying."

"Trying as in really, sincerely trying trying or do I need to be very careful about managing fits of pique?"

"I don't know," he says, "do your fits of pique usually involve wanting people to suffer? I mean really wanting it, wanting it the way you have to want to fly in order to fly, specifically."

"Fleeting moments of it. Nothing deliberate, nothing I ever let go anywhere, but going anywhere usually means, you know, moving, speaking, not just wanting a certain amount. I think you're safe if it's like wanting to fly. I'll be careful."

"There's an incantation too," he says. "But I don't really wanna tell you what it is."

"Not something I'm likely to say in casual conversation and spook you into wrecking the planet?"

"I don't spook that easy," he says. "And it's not a hugely common word or anything, it's not, like, 'pants'."

Bella giggles. "Okay."

Brilliance laughs, too.

"It would be weird if it were pants. Although for that matter, why would any of your original spells be incanted in English? You've only been here like a hundred years, you said."

"They're not," he says. "But I pick up languages by magic, and part of getting a language is knowing what all my incantations translate to."

"Whoa, can I learn to do the languages thing too or is that strictly a Device thing?"