"Not as bad as it could be. Of course, schisming the organization could have problematic knock-on effects if the big chunk doesn't want to disband and go home."

"Right. The problem is that that chunk is full of people who are very attached to the power they have and very set in their ways, and the chunk of useful people includes a lot of people who aren't keen on confrontation and are easily intimidated by the hostile chunk. I don't think the hostile chunk disbanding is a likely prospect."

"And they're oriented around having power over the office I hold and their suspected favorite method of having it held by someone they like better involves no diplomacy and lots of premature death. Caution is the order of the day, please."

"Strongly agreed. Let's avoid premature death."

"Assuming killing them's off the table, the endgame has to look like 'they acknowledge that they should go home and drink tea' or 'they are pried off their efficacious powers so that we can literally ignore everything they do'. The first one's sounding unlikely, so what are their efficacious powers? Magic, some money, a network that isn't all Council members, information for distribution or withholding, am I missing anything?"

"Let's keep killing them off the table, shall we? Other than that, they have a small special operations team that they use to track down and rein in rogue Slayers. The members are reportedly quite good at what they do. I doubt they're likely to use magic as anything other than a last resort. Other than that, I can't think of anything."

"How often does 'rein in' mean 'kill', and if it ever doesn't, what else does it mean sometimes?"

"I've been told it generally means 'kidnap and rehabilitate', but at this point I wouldn't be surprised if it meant 'kill' more often than they let on. As to what 'rehabilitate' entails, it varies based on the Slayer, but they'll use whatever they need to as leverage."

"...Oh, also, about that thing where they want to drug me and shut me up with a vampire. What do those drugs do to people who aren't the Slayer, if you know?"

"They're a mixture of muscle reactants and adrenaline suppressors powerful enough to take out the Slayer, so I'd assume they'd render an ordinary human ineffective and possibly immobile."

"Well, there goes my cunning idea for if they only worked on Slayers."

"Oh thanks ever so."

"I'm not sure how that would work, if they could only be used on Slayers. Probably something magical. Anyway, I thought you meant that we should steal them and use them on dangerous Council members, although that plan has some flaws."

"No, I meant that Rune could pass for me and has powers that don't depend on being able to hit things. Oh well."

"Yes, that would've solved that problem neatly, if Rune had had no objections. Which I suppose is not necessarily a safe assumption."

"It's a good idea, I just felt snarky about it."

"Understood. Destiny, do we want to usurp anything else tonight or should I start dinner?"

"Go ahead and start dinner. I'll get out of your hair."

"Bye."

"All right, Rune, any food preferences you'd like to make known?"

"Bet I eat what she eats. I'm not really picky, generally."

"Not necessarily. It may be that in order to get a witch Bella you have to go through all the rigmarole associated with my world - the ended Slayer line, whatever explains my lack of magical immunity. That otherwise you just get a Slayer Bella, or at any rate a magically incapable one."

"That could be true. It still seems like it would be easier to create a timeline where, I don't know, innate mental defenses didn't exist and you stumbled upon magic by more conventional means."

"Then you'd get a witch-Slayer, maybe, which wouldn't have been much in the spirit of replacing her."