[Thanks, everybody,] says Bella, later, to the local Jokers. [That was the best date venue ever.]
[Yeah, I guess they'll have to work something out, but I'm not planning to apply any form of agony beam to Brilliance so I suppose my own upgrade possibilities are immaterial.]
[I dunno, this thing doesn't come with - convenient integer settings - what do you want me to do with it?]
He can tell when she points it at him; he bites his lip, which shows as a pretty little flare in the nerve map and an uptick to a total of 1 1/2. When the total clears 1, there starts to be a feeling of triangleness about it.
"- Huh, not integer settings but numerical... results."
"Yeah," he says, "I think that's what I've been getting at." He kisses her. "Play around a bit."
"That's - okay, but at least give me a numerical range, guidelines, I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like," she says. "...Huh, there are all kinds of things in here."
"Yep," says Ripper. "I told you, not just pain. Although on that front, anything up to about a hundred and fifty is fun most of the time; after that it gets dicey."
Well, scratched up was a good look on him. She drags a trio of 'scratches' across his chest, slowly, keeping an eye on his body language. And then, parallel, interleaved, the negative image of those scratches - lines of nice.
Bella smiles and traces the invisible lines. She deepens the scratches, and their neighbors, and repeats, watching the numbers go up.
Those will keep for now. Maybe there should be more scratches and unscratches elsewhere. Like from his shoulder down to his elbow.
[D'you think I should mint you?]
You know who else is nibbleable, Bella is nibbleable, he is going to nibble her some.
[Not going to get up to any awful mischief with your own coin supply, are you?]