"I'm not sure yet, but I do have a question — what's with the symbol?"

Ooh, she gets to explain things to her girlfriend. Fun.

She has a girlfriend. Very fun.

"So Rorch is kind of video game capitalism. A crucial step in owning and selling stuff is having a logo that you can magically apply to it. When you sell it, the logo changes automatically. We haven't seen anyone who's not wearing a logo of some sort, their own or someone else's—"

She trails off.

"We suddenly have concerns."

"Yeah. If logos confer ownership, and you can put your logo on anything that's unclaimed... does that mean that some rando could make me their property?"

"I don't know, and I don't like not knowing. You're," hers, "your own, not someone else's, and I don't want someone doing that to you."

"I mean. I wouldn't mind being yours. But I think we can do some experiments."

Eva goes over to the doorway out of the train — at the moment they're in drydock — and beckons Sable to follow her. 

"I want you to try and put your logo on one of the books from my library. It's my library, the books are mine, if it only works on things you own already then we should be safe."

She flushes briefly at the thought of Eva being hers.

Then nods firmly and heads to the library, grabbing a book.

She holds it in both hands and carefully attempts to apply her logo to it.

There's a sense of resistance, like pushing a stone wall, and the logo doesn't take. 

Eva exhales. "Whew. That's a relief if I've ever seen one."

She sighs and nods, smiling softly.

"That's good. That... is one concern handled."

"Although..."

She frowns again. "I can imagine entrapping situations, some problem or danger that you can't get out of without help, and the help on offer being from someone who wants to logo people."

"What we really have to worry about there is imprisonment, but I'd be pretty hard to hold prisoner given my magical girl form. Coercion only works so well on people who can just respawn, you know? And I updated my backup just recently."

She hums. "That helps somewhat, yeah. It's still memory loss, and we're probably going to be a little jumpy and protective for a bit, but it's certainly better than it could be."

"Yeah, this gets into continuity of conciousness bullshit. Suffice to say that I personally don't mind dying in a good cause so long as my backup gets loaded. It's a... personal philosophy thing, every me is me."

"We're similar on that, yeah. It's not so much the identity thing as just not wanting you to have to deal with it if we can avoid it."

"Yeah, that makes sense. But I mean, even on earth you'd have no guarantee of not getting mugged or hit by a car or what have you. Still doesn't mean it happens every day of your life."

"... Though I will say we've been having some suspiciously bad luck lately..." 

She frowns. "We have...

"Actually," she glances through the bookshelves for a moment until she finds Journeys of a Conduit, flipping through the pages, looking for something. "Aren't there ways that Bridge effects can follow a Conduit around?"

"You think it's supernatural?"

Eva frowns. 

"I dislike the hypothesis, it feels ugly, but I guess I can't rule it out. I have no idea how any of this actually works."

"Yeah, I'm not a fan, but I remember reading something about this."

Flip flip flip flip flip flip flip, where are the world descriptions, aha, okay, not Earth, not Bevin, not Prison, no, no, no, Academy.

She passes the book to Eva, open to the correct page. "Bridges that spread corruption, ill-fortune, and despair, but also help young love."

And then she's diving back into the bookshelves, looking for another conduit book.

"... That sure does sound like us, doesn't it..."

Eva looks at the page. "Gokigenyou Academy..."