+Hey, Brilliance, I accidentally told the Emperor of Japan's niece that I'm 'yes, sort of like a mahou shoujo', so the next time I'm there it might be politic to show up jacketed, fair warning if you were going to be doing anything distracting next Tuesday.+

Brilliance doesn't answer.

+Brilliance?+

Nothing.

[Brilliance?] Maybe the magephone is glitching.

Still nothing.

Brilliance is lying on the floor of a room that looks like a futuristic cargo bay, half curled up with his arms over his head, screaming. There is no one else in the room.

"Brilliance -" Bella drops to her knees, reaches out for him. "Brilliance, what's going on -" A plain wish for whatever's going on to stop won't help. She tries it anyway. It doesn't help.

He doesn't seem to notice she's there at all.

Someone else has been fingerpainting on Brilliance's nervous system. He is covered in indiscriminate high-intensity sensation, as though someone took the whole map and dunked it in a vat of pain.

She has a lot of brain capacity. She can - only just - keep it up everywhere. She bites down on her lip; her arms go around Brilliance on sheer autopilot; she concentrates.

"Who are you," she snaps back, and she loses a bit of one of his hands, snatches it back with act of will, hugs Brilliance tighter.

Bella manages to look over her shoulder without losing her focus on Brilliance's pain map.

An unfamiliar person is taking aim with an unfamiliar staff.

The stranger walks up to Brilliance and grabs him by a fistful of his shirt, then starts dragging him out of the room. He struggles weakly.

"Sunshine," she murmurs, and she lets slip just enough that she can evaluate the idea, and it's the only idea, and she lets him go, and she gets up.

He has enough time to show her that he loves her before he starts screaming again.

The first order of business is to take this asshole's staff. She squares it out of his hands, and out of the way; it might be loyal and explode or something if she tries to handle it herself. "Restore." For the damage already done; it's not much but it's something and it takes two syllables. "Who's hurting him?" she asks, pouring aura out; the threat sensor should help find the answer if this creep won't. This creep doesn't likely have her attentional capacity and she was losing it at the end; someone else has to be doing it.

"Are you even armed?"

She flares aura, brightbrightbright, a powerful sorceress wants your entrails for decorations. "I don't have to be fucking armed! Do I have to magic your head from your shoulders to threaten the next asshole with? Who is hurting him?"

"Calm down," the stranger says irritably, looking around for their vanished staff. "What's your stake in this? The noise is annoying, but you didn't have to come here and listen to it, now did you?"

"Who," she says distinctly, "is hurting my Device, and how many of you do I have to murder before it stops?"

"How did you get his access codes?" Bella asks, threading her fingers through Brilliance's hair.

+Sunshine, are the access codes something I can change for you? Boot them from the system...?+ "The original project should have all died."

"I don't like your tone," Bella tells Gem. "My conscience is currently the only thing keeping you in one human-shaped piece, bear in mind, and you wear it very thin." Her aura's wrapped protectively around Brilliance, hissing and fizzing at Gem and the others. "What did you want with him?"

"...It's a planet-destroying weapon, what are you using it for?" Gem says incredulously. "With that kind of firepower, we'd never have to worry about the TSAB again!"

"Of the two of us, one of us kidnapped the other's Device, and it's you. My activities are none of your business. I wasn't bothering you. What is the TSAB, and why would being able to destroy planets mean you didn't have to worry about them again?"

Gem looks at her like she is the most incomprehensible thing they have ever seen.

"Talk," advises Bella darkly.

"Make sense," says Gem. "What do you mean, 'what is the TSAB'? Are you trying to tell me you don't already know?"

"Okay, seriously, do I have to kill one of you to get the rest of you to just answer my questions without being obnoxious? I'll do it, I started worrying way less about death a few months ago. I don't know what the TSAB is and you're going to tell me."

"Before you do that, do you want to tell me why my Device's power level isn't pinging my sensors?" Bella says. "Did you do something else to him?" +Sunshine?+

+i'm - lockdown,+ says Brilliance.

A sky-blue magical diagram of counter-rotating concentric squares and circles, with runic inscriptions around the border, unfolds beneath Gem. A moment later, both of them disappear.

+Can I fix that?+ Bella asks.

+yeah - don't know how,+ he says.

She holds him tight. She tries just wanting - tries making up incantations, murmurs them into his hair, "freedom", "release", "unlock".

The same spell diagram snatches away Gem's six friends in quick succession.

[Just a moment, please, I'm busy,] she says politely.

"Okay. If you find anything else they did - tell me - I'll fix it." She kisses his scalp.

He shivers.

Pet pet pet.

Snuggle.

[There, that's better. This is an interesting communication system,] says Agent Honey. [Where did you find it?]

[Offworld. I found a lot of cool things offworld, including two copies of you and twelve of me. Hi. I'm Bella Swan and those assholes kidnapped Brilliance, thank you for arresting them.]

[...I think I would like it very much if you would explain from the beginning,] says Agent Honey.

[I have plenty of time to listen.]

+...I don't know,+ says Brilliance.

Brilliance snuggles her.

[You're from Earth, aren't you? I was born there,] she says. [If you'll give me just a moment, I can follow you wherever you'd like to go.]

[I'm from Earth, yeah, but by 'my planet' I mean the invisible one with the rainbow sand a few orbitals out with the enchanted village-thing on it.] She teleports thereto.

About thirty seconds later, Matilda appears by sorcerous transport. She's wearing a Barrier Jacket that superficially resembles Tilly's usual outfits - pleated skirt, lots of blue, red ribbons, sensible shoes - and carrying a large book with a blank blue cover, and Bella's threat sensor wouldn't be willing to bet that she couldn't defeat Brilliance in purely mana-based magical combat.

"Hi. Wow, you're really something. So, I know two of you - when they're both around one goes by Tilly, but as a rule they don't like nicknames - did you already know about alternate universes, I mean entire universes with different rules of magic and so on not just dimensions?"

"Only in a very theoretical sense," she says.

"Well," says Bella, "they exist - I'd bring in some proof, but the interworld computer-person that does our on-demand worldhopping is down right now. But there are thirteen of me that we know of so far, plus however many more that haven't joined us yet, and also a bunch of him," she gestures at Brilliance, who she's still holding, "and also a couple of you. And mes, when we get together, spread particularly useful powers around, so, I'm a local magic-person and Brilliance here is a local Device, but I also have some other stuff."

"The popular non-specialized term for a local magic user in English is 'mage'," says Matilda. "What sort of other stuff?"

"You can probably notice my aura." It's still wrapped up around Brilliance protectively, although she doesn't currently expect Matilda to attack him. "That's an enchantress thing - so is this village, I made it via enchanting pretty much expressly to get the aura. And I'm a thing called a mint, and I can do something called torching, and usually I can also get the aforementioned computer-person - her name is Jane - to resurrect the dead and relay messages to or move me to other connected worlds, but she's down, her host got into some kind of pickle trying to welcome another one of us to the peal."

"I have noticed your aura, yes," she says. "It's very noticeable."

"Brilliance has one too but his is tucked away. They vary person-to-person; I'd put mine away but it has a threat-sensing feature that I want out because I'm a little paranoid right now, seeing as someone just kidnapped and tortured him." (Pet, pet.)

(Snuggle, snuggle.)

"I'm very sorry about that," says Matilda. "If I'd found them sooner, I would have stopped them."

"I believe you," says Bella.

"Stealing and coercing devices is part of their usual operating procedure," she says. "I've been after them for a few months now over a series of similar incidents."

"Yikes. What are you going to do with the other Devices? Do they have nice people to go home to?"

"Not all of them, unfortunately."

"Maybe I should set up, like, a Wielderless Device Shelter or something, I have room." She nibbles her lip. "I don't suppose any of them want to work with my sister?"

"I don't believe any of them have met your sister," says Matilda. "Nor have I, for that matter."

"I mean theoretically would they like to meet her and see if they'd get along."

"I'll ask."

"Cool. Brilliance has ethical qualms about making Devices smarter than amoebas." (Pet pet.)

"I can imagine why you might," she says.

"So. What's the TSAB exactly besides a body that can arrest pirates?"

"It's an interdimensional peacekeeping and administrative agency that claims jurisdiction over all mages."

"Okay, can I get, like, a list of things that the TSAB might inconvenience me about if I chose to do them?"

"If you're not hurting anyone or damaging the fabric of space-time, we'll usually leave you alone," she says. "Especially on a planet like Earth. There are a lot more regulations in places where magic is more common."

"Cool, I do not plan to hurt anyone - I was throwing around threats when Brilliance was being hurt but they started it, if anything like it happens again maybe I can just teleport them all to you and you can make them stop - and I'm starting with Earth and it'll probably take me a while - what constitutes damage to space-time? Does space-folding and so on count? This village doesn't do it, but that's a thing that minting and enchantments can do."

"No, deliberate local space-folding and so on don't count. Handling large amounts of mana improperly can cause local disturbances in the dimensional fabric," she explains. "The usual case is a couple of careless high-powered mages getting in a fight. It's a pain to clean up, and if the disturbance gets big enough before we catch it, there can be lingering temporospatial distortions that make life unpleasant for anyone nearby."

"Okay. I mostly use my other types of magic instead of fussing with mana and incantations, especially for big stuff. I'll warn my sister. Dimensional fabric disturbances don't sound like anyone's friend." Pause. "Do you believe me about having met others of you and so on or is the fact that Jane's down really hurting my credibility? I could tell you more stuff about the other yous if that'd help."

"I don't think it's very likely, but I'm not ruling it out, either. What sorts of things can you tell me about the other mes?"

Bella conjures up illusions of the two of them, complete with party nametags and (in one case) magical girl outfit. "Tilly's a wizard from a world called Syntropy. There's a Bell there - that's what my template is called, Bells - and a Joker, which is what Brilliance's template is called. The Bell is Cam and the Joker is Jellybean. Also wizards." They appear too, also nametagged. "The other one without a nickname doesn't have any templates we know about in her world - she named it Wellspring - except the ones that are attached to you, which are: horrible parents, horrible school principal called 'the Trunchbull', and a Jenny Honey who is the niece of the horrible school principal. Wellspring's magic system isn't like Syntropy's and Matilda unlike Tilly was working alone - Jellybean went to Syntropy Crunchem Hall, he met Tilly there - but in both cases, prodigy-early magic starting with telekinesis, showdown involving same with the evil principal, biological parents signed them over to their respective Jennies. I don't have a clear picture of what Matilda did after that, although she did get Shell Bell to bring her Jenny's parents back to life - Tilly couldn't do that, Syntropy doesn't interact correctly with the afterlife we've got access to - but Jellybean and Tilly went around touring the universe getting into trouble, introducing themselves to stars and trees and aliens, occasionally saving the lives of new wizards who were about to get killed by a sort of malevolent deitylike thing Syntropy has. That's how they met Cam, they saved him when he was fourteen - they're a little older than he is."

"Yeah. I didn't talk extensively to either one of them, we just met briefly at a party, so this is mostly secondhand from Cam and some from Jane."

"I am increasingly convinced that you've met a couple of my alternate universe duplicates."

"Spiffy. Yeah, I would otherwise be way more concerned about you, but unless you're way off-model I expect us to get along fine."

"Concerned about me?"

"Threat sensor doesn't think you're hostile, but it does think you're a big deal, so if you were an unknown quantity I would be on my guard in spite of the admirable pirate-arresting."

"I am a big deal," Matilda says serenely. "If I wasn't a big deal, I would be kind of concerned about you."

"If you knew the other twelve of me you would not be concerned. We are nice," says Bella merrily.

"Most people are, once you get to know them."

"So there aren't a lot of regulations about handling Earth? That is good because I have been up to things on Earth."

"What kind of things?"

"Uh, eliminated a number of common diseases, reversed some desertification in Africa, fixed some failing Pacific fisheries, cleared Southeast Asia of land mines, for my mom's birthday I hid a lot of extra panda bears in various parts of China and they'll be found any day now, that sort of thing, and I'm in talks with assorted world leaders to reveal my existence and explain all of these phenomena and allow people to start colonizing this planet we're on now."

"Speaking of which, where did this place come from?"

"It's a copy of a planet in another dimension that I liked. One of Brilliance's alts was visiting and thought it'd be funny to give me one closer to home," says Bella.

"And which kind of offworld magic does casual conjuring of planets?"

"Minting. It might be possible to do it with enchanting... hmmm. Yeah, I could enchant a little one, if I really wanted to for some reason. More efficient to do it with minting though."

"Good to know," says Matilda.

"This one was made with minting, anyway, I would've noticed if he'd enchanted it."

"Oh?"

"Minting is amenable to magic storage and enchanting isn't," explains Bella. "And I was looking right at him when he did it."

"Aha. How do these things work, exactly?"

"If you tell me that your magic is powered by the souls of the damned, or something similarly unpleasant, I might have to pass it on," she says. "But if the information isn't concealing harm, I don't see why it has to go any farther than me and my partner." She pats the cover of the book, which is still tucked under her arm.

"No souls of the damned. Overwhelming net benefit to damned souls. People vary on how unpleasant they find the idea, though."

"What did the other Matildas think of it?"

"I haven't spoken to them personally, but I don't think Tilly and Cam have had a falling-out and they show up to the parties and stuff."

"Then I think it'll be fine. Go on."

"Okay. Enchantment hurts as a byproduct of the spellcasting. Since it's a bad idea to lose control of an enchantment while you're doing it, we channel through helpers - consenting helpers. Although Sarion can do it by herself because she learned an elf meditation thing, but that's beside the point. And minting also hurts - that's how you make minting-type magic, is you take pain and turn it into a sort of a coin, like -" She nibbles her lip, makes a triangle, holds it up. "The more points, the more pain was invested in it, and the more it can do. Again, this is all consensual." (She pets Brilliance.) "Stella and Golden and Pattern have staff who do it, and the rest of us - including Stella - have significant others who do it."

Matilda shrugs. "That all seems fine to me."

"Okay. Some people are kinda weirded out. I was kinda weirded out, at first." She puts her coin away in her sorting wish.

"How exactly do you get these unnerving otherworldly powers?"

"Minting is self-perpetuating - a six pointed coin, a hex, will turn somebody into a mint. Enchanting is from Rose's world Rêverie, and people are born with the power there, but it can be hexed on too."

"I see."

"And before Jane is installed in a world - or when she's not working - the way to get there is via an interworld bar called Milliways, so if a door ever leads to a bar instead of where you thought it was going, that's where you are."

"Good to know."

"Also if that ever happens to you I'd like to be informed so I can go check on the Belltower."

"I'll let you know," she promises. "What's the range on that communication system of yours?"

"The current version will work anywhere within the worldsheaf - uh, that means all the dimensions that are part of this world. Used to be it wouldn't work between subworlds but Amariah fixed it and upgrades to the brainphone propagate virally."

"I might have to ask you for a list of all your alternates," she says, amused.

"I go by Aurora when there are lots of me in the room. The others are Stella, Shell Bell, Amariah, Golden, Angela, Juliet, Aegis, Pattern, Rose, Cam, Sarion, and Glass. A few of us went to visit a new one who made her way to the Belltower, but then they got cut off - something in that world apparently affected Aegis in a way that broke Jane. Jane is mostly a computer network but she kind of lives in Aegis."

"Got it," says Matilda.

"Stella's the one from the world with minting, Shell Bell's from a nonmagical dystopia who started finding Milliways when she was six, Amariah is a witch from a world where that's a species and everybody's soul is a talking animal except there are talking polar bears who don't have those, Golden's a vampire, Angela's an angel - a biological angel, not a spiritual angel, although the lines are a little culturally blurred - Juliet is a vampire slayer but her vampires aren't Golden's kind, Aegis is a space admiral, Pattern has no distinguishing characteristics except for her aura, Rose is the native enchantress, Cam is the wizard and also the only boy so far, Sarion's an elf and has special elf magic, and Glass is a magician and also got the coolest aura features, she can see magic and also stuff about templates."

"Does your Device do that? Like Cam's notebook?"

"Yes, she's very handy that way."

"Notetaking is a Bell thing until we get perfect recall, but before Cam met the peal he had already wizarded up all his past notebooks into one, and on Syntropy, things that don't talk, talk. So he was pretty attached to her and routed his version of perfect recall through her. Also since then he went to Amariah's world and got her turned into one of the external-animal-souls and now she can be a hawk, although she's still usually a notebook."

"Our history is not nearly so complicated," laughs Matilda. "We found each other when I was just about seven and we've been together ever since."

"Are you going to introduce me?" asks Bella.

"Her name is Adularia, but she doesn't like talking to most people."

"Neither does Cam's book-bird. Her name's Grace, but I've never spoken directly to her."

"I'm sensing some similarities."

"Apparently it's a thing with a lot of daemons - that's the name for external animal souls, which she is now - that they only talk to other daemons and their people. Although Amariah's owl Pathalan is perfectly talkative when he has something to say. I don't know enough about Shell Bell's smew Neptune to say. And the Joker daemons, where applicable, are all very friendly."

"Well, as much as I'd love to keep chatting about your alternate universe adventures, I have pirates to deal with," says Matilda. "I'll drop by next time I'm in the neighbourhood."

"Sure. Brainphone me anytime, I don't sleep."

Bella devotes all of her attention to snuggling Brilliance.

Brilliance snuggles her right back.

"Do you need anything, sunshine?" she murmurs. "Besides all of the snuggling."

"Do you want me to try wishing them gone?"

"I want to do it."

Love, love.