More or less what she expected. Unfortunate. She frowns a little. Hopefully she'll run into something else that can help her get her memory back. Well, she does have other questions. It might be better to not try to convince him of things, for the moment. She'll probably get to know him well enough to understand how to do that soon enough, and her recent mistakes have shown she doesn't presently have the skills she needs at the moment. 

"Alright. So this power he's given you," she says, turning the notebook over to a new page. Can you give me more details about how it works? How much of an explanation did you get? What have you figured out so far?" The better she can understand his power, the better he understands it, well, the more likely they'll be able to figure out a way to fix her. Even if she might be helping empower a monster. 

"I can mess with space inside my car—I wanna figure out if I can do more than you saw, but I've only got the one car and I don't wanna turn it inside out or make it explode. I can mind-control people in my power, or read their minds, or change their bodies around however I want. I can change my body around however I want, I used to be shorter than this. Haven't tried mind-controlling myself, that seems like it could go pretty badly wrong pretty easily. He told me almost nothing useful, most of the stuff I know I figured out by experimenting."

"And it's just your car that you control because you own it, and you don't own this apartment? Have you tried controlling the apartment? I guess you haven't had the powers long enough to really make plans to get other areas to make sure you can control them, and I suppose you've been busy with college. Do you have any plans though? Can you make things? I guess you made the couch in that space yesterday; can you take objects out of your spaces?" 

"There aren't any other spaces I own." He pauses briefly. "Yeah, controlling the apartment doesn't work. Actually—" His eyes flash gold as he wills himself to be able to see where his car is and what it's doing, and again for a couple of seconds as he installs and then uninstalls the torture closet, and one more time as he gives up the awareness. "Okay, so I can do stuff to my car even when I'm not in it, so in theory if there's any other places I own I should be able to do stuff to them the same way, but there aren't. I really want a house. I think everything would be a lot better if I lived somewhere that was mine and that was - big enough to really play with."

He hasn't really been experimenting enough. Or at least not as much as Dani wants him to, given that him having a better understanding of his power is the only way she might in theory get her memory back. In theory this makes him much less strong, but in practice that makes him much more unpredictable. Which was still fine. Because he wasn't going to hurt her. Probably. 

"I understand that, and completely agree. We should probably do some experiments to figure out if there's an easy way to leverage your abilities to make money off of it, by making objects or something similar." She should probably not be helping him become too much more powerful! But still, if she had to work with him, and she still didn't have any better options at the moment, well. "I can write up some ideas later."

She pauses for a moment, going on to the next topic. "So, how exactly does claiming people... work? What are the mechanics," She pauses and shudders a little, remembering the cock in her mouth, "the mechanics that you've worked out. What let you, well, claim Valerie? And why couldn't you do the same to the other girl? Why couldn't you just, make her say whatever you wanted?" 

"I tried mind-controlling her into it, and it didn't work. And I couldn't figure out how to get her to agree of her own will. I didn't—it wasn't like with Valerie. Valerie I was willing to just hurt until she did what I wanted, because the entire way that she is as a person pissed me off a lot. But when I want to keep someone because I like them—I might hurt them some but I'm not going to just keep pushing until they crack."

Interesting. Can't get them to agree with mind control, has to be of their own free will. Maybe. Or at least there are other parameters that might require testing. Good to know. She was his already, of course -- unless she could figure a way out of it, which seemed unlikely at present given the tattoo on her. But it was certainly possible, and it was good to understand how his power worked at all in the first place. 

But of course, some of the other things he'd said, well, they needed more investigation. "Willing to hurt her how?" she asks. "And, for that matter -- this probably isn't so relevant, but what exactly is it about her that pisses you off?" 

"She's—well, she was, it's less of a thing now—incredibly fake. Just, constantly lying and manipulating and pretending to like people but really looking down on them. It's really annoying to interact with. And what do you mean, how?"

Dani could see why, given how much he seems to value honestly, he might be annoyed by someone like that. Still not a good enough reason to turn them into a slave for him. But understandable. 

"How exactly did you hurt her? What did you do to get her to agree, since it wasn't mind control?" 

"Oh. I set her on fire."

Ow. "I see." She pauses for a moment. She wants to ask him about pain he might cause to others, or possibly had caused to others, since he said that he'd be willing to do that, even if not to the same extent. But it didn't seem like the most tactful question at the moment. "And she didn't die because you were sustaining her somehow, I suppose? Or she just gave in very very quickly?"

"Yeah—one of the things I can do with people in my power is heal them."

"That makes sense." She sighs. There isn't anything obvious to ask about left. Even if Dani is worried about the girl he's going to go on a date with, there isn't anything in particular she can do.

She clicks her pen a bunch of times. She might as well ask. "Is there anything you can think of that would help me get my memory back? Or get my life back, in any fashion? Find out where I came from, how I got there?" 

"...I don't know," he says. "I don't..."

He tries willing her memory back into place; he tries willing himself to know who she is and where she came from; his eyes don't flare, and nothing happens. He sighs.

"You could try looking around the place where I found you, but... I still have no idea who did that to you or what their power was, and it can't have been the same as mine because you were walking around on a public street still fucked up, and I'm pretty sure you didn't belong to anybody at that point—no magic tattoos, no magic slave feelings, and it's possible to hide both those things but there wouldn't really be a good reason to, especially the second one. So somebody did that to you and we don't know where they are or how they did it. Seems to me we should be really, really careful about looking for them."

Shit. Well, it was worth a shot. Oh well. Ugh. 

"I would agree that going and looking for him without quite a bit of preparation and careful research beforehand would be foolhardy, to say the least." Dani shudders, remembering how she'd felt. How he'd made her feel. She was so certain she'd done something horrible and was being rightfully punished. She had no desire to ever go back to anything like that again. But... "That said, I... would appreciate if we managed to figure out if he's doing this to other people. Or what he is doing, and if he needs to be stopped. I suppose it would help me figure out where I came from, as well. But if he's doing what he did to me to others, regularly... he needs to be stopped." 

"I'm not gonna argue," he says. "I mean, not that I'm in a position to judge anybody, but—what he did to you is really fucking upsetting and if I see somebody else like that I'm saving them too."

"Thank you," she says. "I realize you're not doing it out of gratitude. But thank you nonetheless." She pauses. "I'd... like to do my own research, to be honest. In case I can find out something about myself, in case there's a missing person's report that reminds me of... something. Or just general research on magic in general. Do you think we could figure out how to get me a laptop, or a prepaid phone, or both? And then you can get back to, well, college, I assume. Actually, that's a good point. What are you up to in college?" It did seem a bit odd to Dani to get magic powers like this and to then keep going to college, but if you wanted to pretend some semblance of normal life, well... it could make sense. But she still wanted to ask. "For that matter, why are you still doing college, given that you have magic now?" 

"I'm studying architecture. And meeting cute girls. I figure the architecture is going to be a big help when I have my own real territory, so I can build houses on it that won't collapse under their own weight."

"That makes sense," she says. She does wonder if he could build things that would violate physics in some way. Something to investigate later. She makes a couple more notes, then she sighs and puts the notebook down and stands up. "Alright. Do you think we could get me a laptop and a phone or both, as I asked before? And then I don't want to keep you any longer, in case there are things you have to do for school." Or for meeting up with other girls and hurting them, she doesn't say. Even if she does want to keep him from doing that. 

"Yeah, I'll figure something out," he says. "I can order you a computer online or something." He checks the time on his phone. "And yeah I should be heading out to do school stuff, like, now. I'll get you a computer when I have a minute. Here's your emergency cash."

"Thanks!" she says, smiling, and slightly awed at the size of it. She was hoping they'd be able to go out and find a store and get one. But that is a lot of money. And as long as she's careful, she can probably go out and find a burner prepaid phone store or something, and get online that way, off of some coffeeshop wifi or something, so she doesn't get too stir-crazy hanging out here doing nothing. Well no. First she needs to organize her notes some, and leave some of them hidden in a few places in the apartment. Just in case. Then she can go looking for a phone store to get a shitty couple-hundred-dollar phone with this admittedly giant stack of cash. "I've... got a lot to think about. I'll see if I can come up with some things for you to test when you come back next. Do you have any idea when that would be?" 

"I don't know. Might be tomorrow morning, might not be for a while. You can call me if you need something, and I'll check in on you once in a while with magic even if I'm too busy to come talk to you in person."

That would make it relatively difficult for her to know when he's planning to come back, and not be at a coffee shop at the time. Well, worst case she can always text him from her new phone. It's not like she needs to keep that a secret. Except...

"Check on me, how, exactly?" She really hopes he doesn't mean randomly reading her mind without her knowing. She expects that's probably what that means, but she really hopes it isn't. 

"Like, find out where you are and how you're doing. —I might read your mind but, like, I'm mostly gonna try not to, just, I've given you a lot of really good reasons to be secretly plotting against me and I don't wanna die or go to jail."

"Can you do that remotely without reading my mind?" she asks. "I do promise I'm not planning to kill you or send you to jail. I don't think jail could hold you anyways, given that you can change yourself." She hadn't really even thought of killing him, to be honest. But it would be a way to get rid of him. But she just said she wasn't planning to kill him, she should probably drop this line of thought regardless, even if it was true when she said it. "Or at least let me know when you do it?" Actually, that was in keeping with his odd sense of honor. "It would probably be a lot less like lying to me, if you did let me know when you were checking up on me and reading my mind." Clumsy again, damnit. But maybe it would work?