"Things're okay. Roxbury says she'll make the engineers put the casing back on your flashlight."

He cringes a bit. "I'd rather just do it myself. I did give it to you to give to them, but it's somewhat upsetting. They know I'll need more stuff sooner or later, right? I can only get about halfway without, like, a dedicated warehouse space to turn into a factory. Most of this is tools to make tools to make tools to make useful things."

"I'll tell her you'd rather do the reassembly on your own. I'm not sure what specific results they're expecting from this shopping trip's worth of stuff."

"I am working under the assumption that the end goal is 'mass production of UV flashlights'. This is approximately step three of ten."

"Gotcha."

"What kinds of things can your magic do besides... Divination, fire, lie-detection, I think I heard a reference to curses..."

"It can summon certain kinds of demons, although this is almost invariably a bad idea. It can do teekay. Wards. Invisibility. Transformations. Something in particular you want magicked?"

"I could use some palladium and platinum to skip a few steps. Just few dozen milligrams would do."

"Transmutation's above my pay grade, but I can ask Roxbury. Might be easier to just buy it for you though."

"Oh, I'll need more than a few milligrams by the end of this, it'd just save time to have a little bit now if that were possible. I was thinking summoning again, a changer. They're fairly nice on average, though you want precautions as usual, and would probably accept an interesting book or a gadget from me at worst. They can't do electronics well."

"I think Roxbury's been arguing with some higher-ups about whether to go full speed ahead with that or not."

"Institutional paranoia works both ways. But, say, do you want anything I can help with? You're my summoner, not the USADI as a whole."

"What do you mean? Like what?"

"I don't know, that's why I asked. A gadget, maybe. I just think you're getting a bit of a raw deal for a good cause."

"It's not as bad as I thought it'd be and I was probably going to wind up joining anyway. Besides, assuming you don't turn out to be the vanguard of some kind of invasion it's a hell of a good cause."

"Pff, as if fairies could cooperate enough to organize an invasion."

"Can't they?"

"I'm sure you could get secret society types, a couple hundred fairies looking at a common goal, but I think I told you fairies mostly don't do government. Not a one of us is used to following laws, following orders, and not being able to just fly away when we don't like them."

"Anarchist fairies, gotcha."

He nods, sips tea, and starts eating dinner.

She hangs out and reads and takes notes on whatever she's reading.

"To you or to whoever casts them on you?"

"...Either. I had assumed only the former was possible."