"They didn't. Well, maybe they did, but it isn't this place," says a girl sitting at the bar.

"True enough. No brand logo plastered everywhere. So what is it, is the question."

"Interdimensional bar!"

"Fascinating. Hopefully not the kind of interdimensionality I'm used to." He walks up to the bar. "I'm Terence."

"Thank you." He takes a sip and nods approvingly. "It certainly seems like it. I'm just glad that this one, if I have to fix it, the problem will most likely not be the results of someone's lack of common sense."

"I don't think you have to fix this place. It seems to be working as planned, although who plans a thing to work this way I couldn't tell you."

He shrugs. "Multiversal bar is a lot more sensible than some of the things the TLAs come up with."

"TLAs?"

"Ah, three letter acronyms. CEO, CTO, EOF, TRO, top level corporate kinds of guys."

"Gotcha. What kinda corporation has dimensionality problems when someone moves offices?"

"A magic corporation, of course. Mutliversal Thaumics Unlimited, senior tech support staff, at your service. I'd rather not talk about work too much if you don't mind, though."

"I'll tell you about my job as a vampire slayer if you tell me about yours as a multiversal magic tech support guy."

Eyebrow-raise, and he does something with his glasses. "Which kind of vampires? No, nevermind, likely I've not heard of them. Sure. I don't know where to start explaining my job beyond 'fix things' though."

"Bitey snarly sunshine-allergic vampires. I don't know if the species has a name other than 'vampire' to distinguish them from alternate universe peers. How many multiverses do you serve? Supporting what products? How do they get ahold of you, do you have interdimensional phones?"

"The interdimensional phones are what I spent most of today fixing. MTU sells a little bit of everything, or supports subsidiaries who do it for us, but the core products are communication, teleportation, divination, transmutation, and protection. I mostly work with communication and teleportation divisions. I'd need to look at my files to find the exact number, but suffice to say it's at least 'lots'. Are your vampires obligate anivores? That is, they must live off sentient beings to survive."

"No, they can live off animal blood, it's just that turning into a vampire removes the soul and with it all impulses to consider that preferable in any way to hunting down human snacks. Lots like hundreds or lots like tens of millions or what? Do you work in a fiat currency, that sounds like it'd be hard if you're that spread out."

"Then your vampires aren't of a kind I know. I wouldn't call Multiverse Trade Units fiat, they're backed up by magic. The number's somewhere in the middle. Hundreds of thousands."

"How do you back a currency by magic?"

"There are alternate currencies that MTU can be traded for, which are generated via sacrificing something, and magically grant the thing sacrificed upon redeeming. My favorite is Clarity. It's like two coffees on top of a wit-sharpening potion."

"Huh. How do you generally go about onboarding a new universe?"

"I'm not all that familiar with the process, I'm tech support. I do know the suits divine for a risk assessment first. Frankly, I don't have a good feeling about that, given what you've told me so far."

"...Yeah, safe my universe isn't, but that's why all those things you mention sound so useful to have. Do you guys just sell comforts to the comfortable?"

"It's more about risk versus reward. The suits don't want to put their employees in supernaturally dangerous places, that way lies huge lawsuit payouts. I might be able to swing you a link crystal, arrange for deliveries, but a branch office is right out."

"How do link crystals work and what kind of sacrifices am I looking at to have a nest egg that will buy me substantial oomph?"

"That depends a lot on what you have available. VIT is a three-to-five day loss or gain in general physical capability. CLA is the same but slightly longer period, and general mental ability. MNA is, magical fuel, if you have access to magic and it runs on a thing you can sell some. AP is the same but represents your permanent magical power. It runs much, much higher. EMO is the ability to feel emotions. Temporary, not removed entirely for the duration. LUK is luck, limited to minor and moderate things because interfacing directly with fate is usually a terrible idea. DIV is divine intervention. I'd know already if you qualified to sell that. And here I thought I was done with work."

"I can't get local magic to work for me, I've tried. I have technically had contact with divine things but they kinda suck so I don't know if they'd be interested."

"I can scan you anyway if you like, to see if you can mint MNA. Oh, link crystals. I can't sign you up to the official network without a lot of paperwork, but I run a private one. Off the books. I'd hook you into that. From your perspective, you would want to send a message and talk at it, or when it changes color want to hear what it has to say. If we're both on at the same time it'll hold a conversation, but that's about it. Very cheap model."

"Very cheap model, he says, about his interdimensional telephone with a will-based interface. Yeah, scan me for mana minting, it's not like any mana I have is doing me any good."

"Not at all. So, there is magic, and there are vampires, and there's an absolutely unfair quantity of demons who are even less humanlike than vampires, and there is me, she who stands against the darkness blah de blah until one day I bleed out against the darkness and am replaced with a different randomly selected non-consenting teenage girl in the mystic destiny. The powers with which I am to attempt to survive my late teens and early twenties and, if I'm really good, possibly even mid-twenties, are super strength and speed and agility, good combat instincts, and prophetic dreams and vampire-detecting powers that alas do not have their own tech support line because mine don't work. Witches are a thing but I can't seem to be one, possibly for the same reason I can't seem to be a prophetic dreamer, which is a terrible pity because it would be way more my style than hitting things. Not that hitting things is not great fun with enough practice."

"...You want a resurrection insurance contract. Those are far above my head to arrange on my own recognizance but I will definitely be submitting your world for branch candidacy, risk or no risk, it sort of needs it. You have at least three different thaumic signatures on you, by the way."

"Three? Can you tell what they - are?"

"Not with any precision yet. Two are similar to each other. The third is probably your strength and combat instincts, it has large VIT potential. I'll figure it soon enough, I enjoy tricky magic."

"Speaking of VIT, is there any reason I couldn't mint one, hang on to it, spend it again if I need to be at full to stab something, and if nothing like that comes up in the three-to-five-day period mint another one and just sort of perpetually have one on hand so I'm never weak when I need not to be?"

"They show up to magic detection unless in an antiscry, and they can be stolen, and there is a 0.5% minting fee unless you purchase the minting device instead of leasing it. Other than that no... VIT scan says you can mint about twenty at a time before being dangerously weak, or sixteen or so before reaching baseline human... One of your mystery magics is very weak, leftover or byproduct or blocked or something. I think the other's a ward of some kind." He changes out his device for a different one. "Ward resonance imager."

"I like how you just have all this on your person. How pricey are devices?"

He smirks. "You can tell a good support technician by his tools. Price depends heavily on the device. A generic thaumoscope is about twenty VIT. A good thaumoscope is closer to a hundred. The cheap link crystals are mass produced, ten VIT."

"And the minty thing?"

"We usually sell them at a loss, standard of a hundred of whatever they're minting, because it encourages future purchases."

"Highway robbery. Some of us sometimes unexpectedly need to suplex six-ton demons on a moment's notice, have a care."

"You'll probably be able to mint MNA or AP to make up for it." His device dings. "Hm... Does the local magic depend on intentionality? Here, hold the link crystal, want to send something."

"I haven't looked into it in extensive detail -" She holds the link crystal and tries wanting to send something.

The crystal does not react. "It should've changed color. This confirms my readings - you have an extremely powerful, very strict magical mental barrier."

"...Well, that explains some things."

"Like your other powerset not working as it ought to?"

"Yup."

"...Wonder if I could fix that. I see where it's sending the information. Install a filter so your barrier no longer sees it as a threat?"

"I really wouldn't know. I don't even know my local magic that well because having determined it doesn't work for me I had more practical uses of my time."

She hands it back.

"What's it going to cost me?"

"I'll spend an hour on it pro bono. Interesting problems are their own reward, to a point. If it takes longer I'll either put your slayerness back to how it was before or we negotiate then."

"Do you have any idea why the mental shield thing is hedging it out to begin with? It let the combat instincts in, those work great."

Scanscanscan. "...The extra sense seems to have strong emotional affect. I don't imagine the vampire slayer feels good about having vampires nearby."

"Oh, well, then that won't do, my boyfriend's a weird outlier of a vampire. But thank you very much for the offer."

"My first idea is to remove the emotional affect through a filter or converter, whichever takes better, and hope that the shield lets it through then, would that be a good result?"

"If that's the kind of thing you can do, yes."

"I'll try that and if it doesn't work not attempt anything else, then? It will mostly involve more analysis then occasionally waving a wand in your direction."

"Go for it."

"How short a burst can I do that in? I don't need it when I'm just reading or something but I kind of need it to walk."

"Mental math, please wait...... I could get it down to intervals of one to two seconds. Approximately forty mana to one VIT, by the way."

"Can I set up a thing to mint mana off my powerset while I'm asleep and stop doing it as soon as I wake up?"

"Not with that mind shield. They come with a timer, though."

"...How about when my eyes are closed for longer than a couple seconds?"

"Yeah, that's fine, I'm figuring I'll amass a princely sum and then look at a catalog so I don't drool over things I can't afford immediately. Do I need to have this on my person for it to work or what?"

"Yes, on your person or at least nearby. It's fairly durable if that's why you ask, it'll take a bullet or a long fall, can't guarantee more than that."

"In a bag?" she asks. "Can I insure it or get a replacement if a demon melts it or whatever? I have a hazardous lifestyle."

"...I'd better give you five link crystals. You can buy a replacement. Insurance is not worth the hassle for these, trust me there."

"Okay, extra link crystals, I can stash them hither and yon. Are they similarly durable to the minter?"

"Not really. They're still rocks, there's a lower limit on rock durability, but they're really really cheap rocks."

"Okay. Well, I've had a decent record with cell phones, maybe I'll keep all these things alive and kicking, who knows."

"We can always hope. Bar, I'd like a smoothie, can you take MTU?"

Of course I can. Would you like a particular flavor or prefer to be surprised?

"Surprise me."

A red-and-yellow swirled smoothie with a little umbrella appears. Enjoy. .18 MTU.

"I don't mean to slight your cocktails by the by, I simply ought to keep to one while I'm still working on something." He puts down two triangular coins marked '10\' and takes a sip.

No offense taken. She supplies change.

"Do you have any other advice for stuff I should obtain or wands I should have waved before I go home and start converting downtime into currency? Also, where will my exotic coinage go, am I meant to keep it in the mattress or does it hang out in the minter and I should regularly deposit into some kind of magic bank or what?"

"Minter stores up to a hundred at a time and can produce glowy blue spheres in intervals of ten. A hundred is about the size of-" he makes a circle with his thumb and forefinger, "-down to hundredths that are like half-marbles. I could give you an emergency medevac veil? There will be a lot of awkward questions for both of us if you actually trigger it, but it's in the better-to-have-and-not-need category. I'm giving you all this stuff out of pocket but will want them paid back sooner or later, by the way. Do you also want a VIT minter?"

"How much does it cost to lease the minters? What's the veil thing do? And I sleep eight hours a night, will it automatically do the spheres thing if it's mana-minting overnight and exceeds capacity? What kind of debt am I incurring here?"

"In order: Ten of their respective currency, with the remaining cost taken as a small percentage out of minting proceeds over time. If you are badly injured in such a way as to be in imminent danger of death, teleports you to a time-frozen space where you will then be worked on by expert healers of the highest caliber. And charged for it. Yes, it'll automatically mint a sphere when full by default. Let's call it six hundred mana all told, eight hundred with the VIT minter."

"Is it a lease-to-own thing where after I've made enough to cover the cost it's mine free and clear? And yes that absolutely sounds like a have-and-not-need situation. What do I do with spheres besides hide them in my mattress? How do I perform any transactions besides minting stuff?"

"Yes. You could use them to increase your magical power if you had any. I suspect redeeming them won't double your slayerly power even temporarily, unfortunately. You call me and I connect you to a sales interface program and-slash-or officially register you to MTU."

"And then the sales interface slurps the spheres away, what, via link crystal?"

"The link crystal gives it your location, equipment on our end takes payment and makes deliveries. And I'm about ready to try the first sense-improving method. Ready?" He draws a mostly green wand from the case.

"Sure."

Energetic wave swish flick flick swoopy motion flick. Pause. Flick swish. Then the ward imager comes out again. "...I am mostly sure that worked but cannot be certain without exposing you to a vampire."

"Oh, there's some outside my door. I'll go check on them, shall I?"

"I'd give you a LUK but I don't think you need it."

Yup, there is definitely an extra sense. It's glaringly obvious that that there are some vampires over there-ish. She doesn't get a compass heading and distance or anything, or even a headcount, though.

"I can detect the presence of vampires. I don't have quantity or distance or anything, but it's not unpleasant."

"Excellent. You'll never need to use filters, it's a waste of time, they told me in college. Well, I'm still proving them wrong."

Bella giggles and shuts her door. "You can go to college for that stuff?"

"On worlds where magic is well-entrenched, yes. It's a lot like college for other things though - there are a lot of mediocre magic schools that will train you up to be a basic leycaster or vegamancer, and a few great magic schools who can teach proper thaumaturgy."

"What are those things?"

"Leycaster - think of magic power grids. Vegamancers manage divination systems. Thaumaturgy is a catchall term for high magic, meta-magic, whatever you want to call it. It's sort of like learning electrical engineering as opposed to learning to be an electrician."

"Why does magic require a power grid? What is a 'divination system'?"

"Some applications need continuous input to keep working. City wards, magic ovens, that kind of thing. Anything that does divinations in a relatively automated way is a divination system. From a crystal ball that shows your front doorstop to the giant meteorological precog circles."

"Where does the input come from? Various mana all translated into universal format?"

"Not really... Generic mana can be inefficient over long distances. It's actually really complicated and I don't get called in on industrial type stuff much. As to the original source, either people generating mana from their own systems, some worlds have naturally occurring sources of magical power, I think some kinds of dragons produce a near-endless stream of the stuff and get paid handsomely for it."

"Good for those dragons. Man, I live in some kind of third-world world, don't I."

"Hm, maybe not as much as you'd expect. Technology can make up for a lot of missing magic. You're wearing mechanically woven clothes and understood my reference to electricity, for example."

"Yeah, we have those things most places. Magic's not even common knowledge, though. And while I'm not sure anyone's tried to industrialize it, it kind of sounds designed to punish attempts."

"I wouldn't know about local magic beyond what I saw on you, but it does seem rather... Harsh. Compared to the kinds I know."

"Are there any kinds I can just... learn and take home?"

"I am tech support, not a tutor. And most of them require an activation, drinking a certain potion or the like, and I don't have access to any of those without losing the door to here."

"I don't mean learn from you, necessarily, I could self-teach out of a book or something... most of them?"

"Off the top of my head, there is a brand of chanting and dancing that has impractically small effects for the effort involved, a discipline of mind arts that people can sometimes go from no measurable potential to a small amount of potential, and a variety of potionmaking that relies on ingredients you are not likely to have access to."

"Damn. Can I buy an activation potion for something later when I have a mattressful of spheres?"

"Yes, those are definitely for sale. You'll want a test kit to see your potential for them first. They're usually pretty cheap. I'll arrange to deliver a big old catalog to you in the next few weeks."

"Awesome."

He hands her a little red bundle. "This is the medevac veil. I've slipped it into the system under a nonkeyed ghost registration. You'll need to, ah, strip down and then put it on as snug as you can manage and it'll disappear and you can do whatever after that, it'll stay."

"Put it on in what manner?" she asks, tucking it into her bag.

"It's basically a half-ghost jumpsuit with the teleport trigger woven in. So, the normal way for clothes."

"What does it mean for a garment to be 'half ghost'?"

"It has ghost-like properties such as selective intangibility and entity-binding."

"Not particularly. It's a... Soft binding, closer to the way a key is made to fit a lock and not the other way around? I'm struggling to come up with a good metaphor."

"Okay. Is there anything else I ought to prevail upon your generosity for here?"

"I really can't think of anything else until you have a sizable amount of mana stored up. And I don't care about my money nearly as much as some people, an interesting conversation, an interesting problem, and helping someone who, to hear the story, sorely needs it is worth loaning out a few hundred mana."

"Since it's so safe here I'm considering just crashing on one of the couches over there for the 'night', and according to Bar the time in here doesn't all sync up with itself, so if you don't look directly at me I might have a stockpile in the next five-subjective-minutes-modulo-you."

"That would be amusing. I think I'll hang around too if that's the case, see if I can't find some more interesting magic."

"See you later." Bella accounts for five crystals, her medevac veil, and her minter, and goes to snuggle up to the bagful of objects on the couch by the fire.