"I won't lie to you: I'm not gonna let you out of those bindings until tomorrow morning at the soonest. But what else happens is up in the air. First off, what did you do to that poor woman? She didn't even register as having an alignment." 

Well, that's probably not a question that he can answer that makes him look very good. Shit. Also she's not going to let him go until tomorrow which is really going to be a problem especially when the police show up soon after Maria gets them. Shit shit shit.

"I'm not sure we have until tomorrow," he tells her, trying to figure out what the hell to say in response and doing his best to buy time in addition to warning her about an actual problem here, "Maria probably went to go and get the police, and I'm not sure you want to be around when they show up either, especially looking like that."

"Oh, I lied about the spell's duration, it only lasted seventeen minutes." 

James bit his tongue angrily. That meant that the phone call was genuine and that meant that if the manipulating obnoxious annoying tricky bitch hadn't been distracting him and he'd answered it everything would be fine. He felt rage boil underneath his skin, but there was nothing he could do, and that didn't help the rage at all. He boiled and seethed as he lay there, wrapped in tape by the annoying witch.

The fact that he could do nothing did help stay his tongue though. Barely. "I see," he finally managed. Too full of rage to delay or think of anything sensible, he spat out the truth. "Well, I changed her. I tricked her into a changing room and changed her body and changed her mind. I could go into more specific details, I suppose, if you want to know, but that's the gist of it."

"That much was obvious. I want to know what you did to her mind such that she doesn't register an alignment." 

James bites his tongue some more, shouting at her is not going to help. Even if he'd very much like to. Shit, he's so fucked. "I have no idea what an alignment is," he tells her, all the while doing the best to remember in the back of her mind what exactly was done to her and how to frame it in the best possible light. Though the situation is looking rather dire. No police, at least, which means with any luck as long as he can get out of this he can pick up back where he left off. Still, he has no idea what this girl can do, and it has him worried. And annoyed.

"Good versus evil? Law versus chaos? I'm neutral good, myself, though I've tipped over into chaotic good a few times; you registered as neutral evil. She did not even register as true neutral, as though she had a lead plate between her and the wand."

The way she's talking about this meant that she clearly expected him to know all this already, which was infuriating, but also funny. She clearly isn't from around here. "Those are all... concepts," he says, slowly, "but I think they might have a more specific meaning to you than they do to me. We don't have any way to detect anything like that here, though people certainly call people good or evil all the time, true or not, and I've never heard of anyone being called "law" or "chaos" before."

"It's lawful or chaotic, in adjectival form; you should know that, this is your language." 

"How am I supposed to know, I was just using the words you said." James supposes he could have figured it out but he's far too annoyed at this scheming and sneaky girl who has him tied up like this. Shit, how the fuck is he going to get out of this. "Lawful and chaotic could be ways to describe people, I guess, though they're hardly used the same way good and evil are. Regardless, I have no idea what it means that she didn't have an alignment." He honestly isn't sure, though he could make some educated guesses. But he doesn't have any reason not to play for time here. Or something. Shit. 

"It means she didn't have enough brain left to be a moral agent." 

James is getting a little frustrated talking to this girl but there really isn't very fun but there's nothing at all he can do about it and the fact that she so thoroughly tricked him is really starting to piss him off. Shit.

"I made her obey me, entirely," James tells him, doing his best not to sound too cross because making her angrier is a bad idea. It's really hard. "I can try and go into detail about what exactly I did, if you want to know, but I made her only focus to be serving and pleasing and obeying me." James manages to stop himself before telling her that it's a much stronger form of what was done to her, reminding her of that would probably not be very useful at the moment. He wants to, though, he wants to throw it in her face, he wants her to put him in the room or let her go so he can fix all this and maybe make her into his simpering empty-headed slave forever, even if it loses her her magic. Which might have been a lie too, for that matter. "I'm not sure if that makes her not a moral agent or not, whatever that means, but it's probably something like the answer you're looking for."

"Hm. Might be. Is that what you were going to do to me?"

"Something like that, yes." And now he plans to do even worse to her. Not that he's going to say anything like that out loud at the moment. But from now on he's going to be extra sure that this annoying witch is going to be entirely loyal and obedient and subservient. Forever.

If he gets the chance, that is, which is looking less and less likely by the second. Fucking hell, he's so screwed.

"Then where in the pustule-ridden depths of the three hells do you find the nerve to act like you're the wronged party here." 

Acting like... "You're the one who's tied me up here!" James spits out in fury. And then pauses to take a calmer breath, shit, he's so fucked. "Fine, so you managed to turn the tables on me, well done, and if you want to take my magic away using whatever means you have at your disposal, I can't really stop you. That doesn't mean it's something I'm particularly looking forward to, here. You haven't given me much reason to do anything else." He pauses to take a further breath, slowly realizing that he may have screwed himself even worse. Shit. "Look, you told me you want my goodwill but all you've done with it is tell me you're going to take away everything anyways. If you give me something to work for, something I get to actually keep, then maybe I'll have a reason to give you any, but so far all I've gotten are confusing questions that I don't know how to answer, through no fault of my own." Shit, shit, shit, shit, he has no idea how he's going to get out of this. Shiiiiit.

"...Take away your magic? I don't even know how I would do that. I just plan to use my magic to to prevent you from running off and destroying more people's minds with it." 

James pauses. That's what he's worried about doing her doing, with whatever that strange word she used before, but maybe that isn't what she means. Maybe this isn't as bad as it looks. And as long as he goes back to the plan of not telling her he can change herself, and removing whatever she does to him in a room, he should be fine. He takes another breath and shoves his anger down nice and far and puts on his best friendly face. If that's all she thinks she's going to do to him, then maybe everything will be fine.

"That isn't what it felt like," he says after a couple of further breaths. "It sounded like you were going to do something to me keep me from doing anything you didn't want me to do, to make sure I only ever did what you wanted. And being tied up like this," he gives a short and very futile struggle to demonstrate, "isn't making it any easier to believe you have anything so remotely benign in mind."

"I have you tied up because you're empirically the kind of guy who if given his own way will turn people into oversexed automata. And I don't know how benign I'm going to be able to be, because you have powers I don't understand, and the more hostile you are the harder it will be to be sure you're not going to hurt people without doing things to you that you don't want me to. 

I do promise, though, that I won't send you to Hell. If worst comes to worst and I have to kill you I'll bind your soul to prevent it." 

James begrudgingly agrees with what she's saying, he supposes. He doesn't have much power over her without shoving her into the room somehow, but he supposes she has no reason to believe that. He takes a bit of offense to "oversexed automata", though -- Maria is far more than just for sex. Even if she's very very good at it. Heck, if he plays his cards right, he can get to keep her, this foolish unknowing girl none the wiser.

And then she says some other things that are very worrying. Hell?? Binding his soul?? Shit, what the fuck is she talking about?

"Sorry, souls? Hell? You're going to bind my soul?" James is confused whether or not he's more terrified by the prospect that hell is real or that she can take his soul or... well maybe he can keep himself younger in the changing room and never have to end up there if he's careful. And wait how does this strange backwards woman from elsewhere even know that hell is real. Is hell real? Shit, where does this lady even come from?

"...Yes? I don't, like, actually agree with the policy of torturing evil people forever." 

James pales a little. Maybe this woman doesn't know anything about what she's talking about, since a lot of things she seems to think are normal or should be understood are simply not the case here. Maybe whatever religion she has wherever she's from talks about hell and she believes in it and it isn't real. Or, maybe.... James swallows and speaks slowly. "How sure are you..." he pauses and tries again. He doesn't want to offend her religion. Or offend her in general. Shit. "Hell is the stuff of religion here," he says, trying to figure out how to explain and not be offensive and make sure that whatever he's worried about isn't true. "Religions which... tend to be wrong about a number of things. Most intelligent people here consider all of our religions to be... fake. Just made up myths and stories." Which James did as well, up until a few minutes ago. "Do you have... any special insight that they might lack?" That should do the best for asking the question without offending her. If it was her religion she'd go talk about it for a while and maybe try to convert him and James could breathe a sigh of relief, if it was real... shit he was so screwed.

"--Ooh, wow, uh, I'm...sorry to hear about that...I have, uh, met. Devils and demons and so on." 

James pales a little more. That's not a ton of proof but it's certainly more than he'd be expecting from someone from his world. Unless, of course, they'd been deluded by someone else. Which is a possibility. Still, more detail would be useful here. And might make it easier to find out if she's parroting back stories, or if it's really real.

"That's... interesting," he says. "Can you explain how this works in more detail? Because honestly, this is all news to me. And everyone else here, I expect. I'm not sure anyone here knows, well, anything about what you know."

"Okay. There are nine planar afterlives, each one corresponding to one of the nine alignments; when you die, you go to whichever afterlife matches the alignment you were at time of death. It's generally agreed that the Good afterlives are decent, the Neutral afterlives are usually the kind of thing you can at least cope with, and the Evil afterlives are no fun at all. The planar afterlives are distinct from but closely associated with the alignment-associated planes that alignment-associated outsiders are from, and like some alignment-associated outsiders do like move there and stuff, and the evil ones seem to really like having a steady supply of hapless victims. I mean lots of this is hearsay, I've never been dead--well I guess I sorta was one time but it got fixed before I could wake up in an afterlife and anyway I dunno what I pinged exactly back then but it's not like I was doing anything wrong--I mean I did some dumb stuff but nothing that would risk landing me somewhere super nasty, it was like self-destructive dumb not hurting other people dumb. Anyway that was a very very long time ago."