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Neckrubs become a more regular part of Bella's life. And she does not tell him to stop until she is good and done. There is hugging. There is snuggling. There is kissing. There are some impressively sappy looks from his end, some fascinated mindreading from hers. The semester wraps up, Bella goes home for a week, and she comes back (now signed up for Utility Psionics 2, Intro to Mental Healing, Arcane Defense, Intro Cognition, and her survival credit, a lecture entitled "Wilderness Triage" (subtitled: Quick And Dirty Mechanisms For Identifying The Lesser Of Several Evils).
She missed Celo! She seeks him out at once. Hugs.
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subtly_artistic
lifes_sake
"We're not going to go randomly attack her, but if Celo can't get her to tell him what he thinks she knows - I mean, she won't necessarily recognize me as being your alt, right? Maybe it'd be safe for me to talk to her? Specially since I have a layer of wizard wards under all my wished stuff and you thought wizarding would go on working about like normal..."
"I don't know for sure that Callahan can get around whatever you've got on you, or that she'd even try. I mean, I'm a nymph, she'd have to go a ways out of her way to put me down and keep me there, and I don't just assume that she's gonna take a carriage into the city and burn me down if I ever piss her off. But if I pissed her off bad enough, she might. And let me tell you, if you'd taken any of her classes you'd know this already - you call her a 'schoolteacher' like that's a cute fluffy thing to do, but what she teaches us is how to kill people. You know, and how to stop them from killing you, but according to Callahan the best way to do that is to get there first. Are you starting to get the picture?"
dark_light
"What makes you so sure that we don't qualify as something big?"
subtly_artistic
"It sounds like, where you're from, you do. But it also sounds like where you're from is a wacky science fantasy where you can conduct experiments and attack gods and have no restraint on your hubris, and I don't want to bet your lives on that being true here!"
"What she said," Celo agrees.
subtly_artistic
"At least let Celo try talking to her first. And - and I'm going to be late for Arcane Defense. It's the first class of the semester, if you guys want to - can you be invisible?"
autokinetic
"Of course!" Pause. "Usually. Wished power. We use it all the time, though - safe to try?"
autokinetic
Aegis turns invisible, then turns visible again. "Okay, we can follow you to class. Won't do anything rash till we hear from Celo."
"Okay," says Celo. "I have class with her later, I'll see if I can catch her then. Meanwhile, I'm gonna be fucking Jellybean, so go away unless you wanna join in."
lifes_sake
Cam thinks about this, but then he kisses Jellybean goodbye instead. "Maybe later. We're gonna be here for a while." He turns invisible and follows the other Bells out of the room with Aether.
Celo and Jellybean have sex.
In much the same way that the Bells are following Aether to her classes, Jellybean follows Celo to his. This means he is present for Celo's conversation with Callahan.
They wait until they're back at the dorm and Celo has a batch of cookies in the oven before Jellybean brainphones the Bells to let them know the results. (Although Celo was added to the brainphone earlier, he doesn't see any reason to use it if he doesn't have to.)
[Callahan scares me,] Jellybean announces. [And she definitely knows something. Doesn't wanna cough it up, though.]
In much the same way that the Bells are following Aether to her classes, Jellybean follows Celo to his. This means he is present for Celo's conversation with Callahan.
They wait until they're back at the dorm and Celo has a batch of cookies in the oven before Jellybean brainphones the Bells to let them know the results. (Although Celo was added to the brainphone earlier, he doesn't see any reason to use it if he doesn't have to.)
[Callahan scares me,] Jellybean announces. [And she definitely knows something. Doesn't wanna cough it up, though.]
subtly_artistic
[Don't all go charging off to break down her door,] Aether tells the other Bells desperately, [please, I'm terrified of her.]
autokinetic
[We could spy on her invisibly, see if we can find anything?]
[Oh my fucking mother,] Celo agrees, [don't do that, really truly absolutely don't do that.]
[I'm with him,] says Jellybean.
[I'm with him,] says Jellybean.
dark_light
[We have to do something! We can't just stay here forever! The arcane defense was calmly talking about logical paradox like that's a thing!]
lifes_sake
[We could just - wait for a door,] says Cam. [Amariah, you visited Juliet for a while...]
dark_light
[Yeah, sure, but I'd gotten to Sunshine through Milliways on both ends, I knew to expect no time to pass back home - with Jane down and us having gotten here through a door only on the one end it could already have been years! I just got my afterlife sorted out. I have witch queens to talk to and subworlds to explore and trapped angels to visit once a week in case they decide to talk to me!]
[Tough shit,] says Celo. [Look, you're all more or less adults. If you want to go pester Callahan, I'm not gonna knock you down and sit on you until you think better of it. I'm just saying, you could die. You could seriously permanently no-takebacks die. Up to you if you like the risks.]
lifes_sake
[I haven't gotten to my afterlife yet. There's billions of people on Syntropy who are disappearing to some unknown fate. Don't think I don't understand the urgency of being able to go home. But, look, they find doors here. We can wait for a door. It could've been years, but it could've been less time than we've spent, too.]
[Anyways,] says Jellybean, [there's no indication that how long we spend here matters at all to how long it will have been back home, right? Once Jane's down, it's all up for grabs. She was out for three seconds from her end last time and some of the gaps in other worlds lasted years. ...I guess if it is proportional, that's a big problem.]