The magic trap triggers, and the world wavers around her, and when it resolves she's somewhere else. 

The room she finds herself in is medium sized, cubical, and brightly lit by some sort of magical glowing tiles set into the ceiling. The floor is made of extremely well-crafted planks of wood in a smooth surface, running up against the cream-colored walls. Several chairs sit up the walls of the room, unusually shaped and made of metal and some kind of black fabric. The walls are dotted with colorful paintings of magical-looking locations, except one wall which instead has a couple of windows spaced evenly, the windows covered with white curtains. At each end of the room is a door made of wood and white glass, both of which are shut. One wall of the room has a set of tall bookshelves, lined neatly with books of various colors and sizes. 

And at one side of the room is a desk, with a couple of magical devices on it, which the woman sitting at the desk seems to be staring at intently. She's wearing some kind of white outfit, perfectly clean and smooth, which does very little to hide the shape of her unusually large breasts, and her dark hair is pulled behind her head revealing a surprisingly beautiful face. 

The woman looks up from her device, and jumps with a start. "Oh!" She says, surprised, and starting to stand. "Sorry, ma'am, I didn't hear you come in!" She pauses, staring at her, confused for a moment, and then stands up and heads towards one the doors in the room. "Excuse me, ma'am, let me go get the doctor for a moment, please, he'll be right with you." 

Well she has no idea what this woman is saying. 

"Beg pardon, I don't speak that language," she says in Easternish, then, if the woman doesn't understand her, tries a handful more languages popular in swathes of cosmopolitan areas. 

Maria doesn't know any of these languages. Or even recognize them. Admittedly it could be something she doesn't know, but all of them sound like nothing she's ever heard before. The doctor told her to fetch him if anything strange happens, and pretty clearly fits the bill. She knocks on the door, and opens it a crack. "Excuse me, doctor?" She says. "There's a strange girl here, and I'm not sure how she got here and I don't understand anything she's saying." 

Elodea attempts to leave. Her legs give out from under her. She sighs and gets up and sits in one of the chairs, arms crossed and one knee over the other, looking cranky. 

...She gives the woman a considering look. 

A well-groomed man, in a pair of blank pants and a white collared shirt with black buttons down the front opens the door the rest of the way, and looks outside, his eyes widening in surprise and confusion and interest. And if Elodea is paying enough attention, a tiny, well hidden hint of lascivious appraisal. He steps out of the room, and motions with his hands. "Why don't you come in, ma'am," he tells her, smiling helpfully at her. 

She considers this. 

She looks at the woman again. 

She unslings her bag from her shoulder, and pulls out a stick. After a moment it begins emitting a laser pointer-like beam of white light. She sweeps the beam over to the man; it turns red and rhombus shaped while it's pointed at him. She purses her lips and sweeps it over the woman. It fails to react to being swept over her at all. She purses her lips and narrows her eyes and stands up and strides to the woman and lays a hand on her face and casts. 

"Protection from evil." 

James looks at her, extremely calculatingly. He's not sure what exactly what powers she has but she seems to be doing something, and it could be dangerous. All the more reason to get her in the room as soon as possible. Now even, before she can do anything else. He turns to Maria. "Be careful, I'm not sure what she can do, but grab her and help me get her in the room." 

James walks towards the strange woman, to grab one of her arms. Maria stands there, and doesn't move. 

"Maria, what are you waiting for, grab her!" 

Maria stands there, face twisting as the fog lifts from her mind. Whatever the woman did to her, she's herself again. And everything she's done, everything that's happened to her, all her memories wash over her in a torrent, and it's all she can do to keep standing. The things he did to her. The things he made her do. The things he had her do for others, the way the women came out of his room again and again and the way the men treated her and she was all smiles and then she went into the room and the doctor, no, the man would change her again and... it was too much. It was all too much. But she was free. Free and she could escape. Escape and get this man, this asshole, this monster arrested. 

"You horrible horrible monster," Maria says, running as best she could in her twisted and misshapen body. Fuck him. She reaches the door before the asshole has a chance to react, and opens it. "You stupid fucker, you're going down." And she runs through the door, to get away, away from him and his horrible powers and to find the police and to get the fuck away from him, forever. 

"Shit," says James. "What the hell did you do." This is going to be a rather large problem. He reaches out and grabs the woman by the arm, pulling her up and clamping his other hand over her mouth, knocking her bag away with an elbow. Whatever she did took something from her bag and speech. With any luck whatever the woman did could be reversed once she was his and if not he had his safe room in his house and could run away with a new magical slave who would hopefully be able to protect him until he could make another room. James begins to drag her, regretting not making himself stronger when he had the chance, towards his room. 

She goes completely limp in his arms. 

Well that's really annoying but much better than some magical effect keeping him from dragging her into the room. It takes a bit of effort, and he's out of breath by the time he's in there, but he manages it.

And the very first thing he does after catching his breath for a moment is change her. Nothing too major at the moment but enough to make her look and act appropriately in case they have to run, which there is a very good chance they might have to do. His eyes glow pink-red, and she lifts into the air, and a light of the same color passes over her body, starting from her extremities and moving inward, changing her. Her clothing transforms into something that doesn't look like it came out of a fantasy novel, nothing too racy but still appealing -- a knee-length pleated skirt and a low-cut (but not too low!) top that showed off her newly enlarged breasts. But her mind is the most important part, here, and he doesn't have a lot of time to work with, so he makes sure she gets the most essential parts. She won't want to cause him harm, and she will obey every order he gives, and she wants to please and serve and protect him. He almost forgets the language, but remembers at the last second that Maria had told him she couldn't understand her, and makes sure she knows English. 

And then for good measure, he changes himself into one of the people in his fake ids, giving himself a little extra strength and stamina, and leaving himself feeling much less out of breath than a moment ago. 

And then he turns to her and asks, doing his best to keep his frustration and anger out of his voice, "What exactly did you do to Maria? Can you reverse it? Quickly, please." 

Hmm. She wants to please and serve and protect him...but she probably shouldn't. And she wants that because he just mind-controlled her, so want definitely doesn't overpower should. 

But...he doesn't have to know that. 

And he didn't order her not to lie to him. 

"I'm sorry, Master," she says, putting a thousand years of dealing with assholes to work. "I didn't understand what was going on, so I set her free. Nobody can touch her without her wanting it for a year and a day," the spell will in fact wear off in seventeen minutes but she'll still be better off if this guy isn't after her, "I think we might have to run." She droops just this side of theatrically. "I didn't know, I'm so sorry..." 

James is not currently in the mood to particularly care about her theatrics at the moment, or really notice if they are or aren't theatrics. "Shit. Well, hopefully she won't be able to convince the police of anything before we get to the changing room at my house. I can do some more fine detail work there and get the fake ids and we can go somewhere else. The money should be secure enough, they won't be able to get to that, but it'll take three days to set up another room. Damnit." He starts walking quickly towards the door. "Follow me, and do your best not to draw or attract attention." He pauses in the doorway. "Actually, wait, do you have some way to get us there faster? Tell me, quickly, what do you do? What kind of magic do you have?" 

She considers this. "I'm a wizard," she says after a brief moment. "I have a spellbook, and I can prepare a certain number of spells per day. I have spells that will get people places faster, but I don't have Flight prepared today and I can't use Teleport to get somewhere I don't have a good mental image of. Not...reliably, anyway." 

Strange and peculiar magic, but James supposes he isn't one to talk. And the only magic he's seen so far besides his own was the strange man who gave him his powers in the first place. "Alright then, then follow me, quickly and quietly and without drawing attention." He starts walking, quickly, towards the door.

"Shouldn't take much longer than ten minutes to get there by car," he says, speaking his thoughts out loud, "especially in the middle of the day. She might remember where my house is though but I expect the police will take a while to convince and they'll probably come here first anyways. I should have some time to change us both properly when I get there. Shit. Going to have to find a different city and make another room. Shit." He gets to the elevator and presses the bottom and waits and thinks. At least he has more magic than he had before, and he has her now. And she could be useful. Hm. "What do you have, prepared, was it? What do you have prepared anyways? And for that matter, what's your name?"

"My name is Elodea," no point in lying about that, "and I mostly had miscellaneous wilderness survival and monster-defense spells today." 

Miscellaneous... And her outfit... "Where are you from? How did you end up in my office, anyways?"

"I'm not really personally from anywhere, my people are nomads, but I was in the Ikrthar Wastes when a plane shift trap caught me." 

The place doesn't sound like anywhere that James has heard of. And he's not entirely sure what plane shift means, but given everything he's seen and heard from Elodea, he can guess. "You're not from around here, are you," he says, stepping into the elevator and motioning her to follow. "How common is magic like yours where you're from?"

"I don't know where I am to guess," she replies. "It's not very common, the stuff that lets you become a wizard is a scarce resource."

"I bet it's even more scarce here, since I've never heard of it, and I doubt anyone else has either. Well, lucky for me, I suppose, even if you have caused me quite a bit of hassle."

 The door of the elevator opens into the lobby, high-ceilinged with tall marble columns and artsy paintings on the walls. James always thought it gave his business an air of legitimacy, though that was hardly on his mind at the moment. 

"Is everything all right, doctor?" The security guard asked as he hurried by. "Maria just ran past looking like something horrible had happened to her. Is there anything I can-"

"Don't worry about it," James said, cutting him off, and pushing open the glass doors to head for his car. He needed to get home, change himself and the girl with a much finer eye to detail, what with the hack job he'd done on her, and then get the hell out of town with her. And only then could he relax. At least his new acquisition was hot, and would certainly help him relax once they had a moment  

Certainly! After all, she does want to help and please him, and...helping him relax...won't get anyone else hurt, and even once she's not mind-controlled anymore she's not going to be more upset about this than about a normal iteration of getting got by the curse. 

"Should I ask questions as I have them, or speak only when spoken to, Master?" she asks deferentially once they're in the car and nobody else can hear her. 

James would be happy to hear that, but he's going to more than make sure of that anyways. Very sure of that, given that she has strange magic that can apparently break his control like that. Extra especially sure of it. 

James isn't used to the people he changes having all that much initiative, and turns around back in surprise when she speaks. Still, he's hardly had time to do much of anything to her yet. "Feel free to ask," he tells her. It might help him figure out a little more about her, and right now he's a little too panicked to ask questions of his own, and it'll give them something to do for the ride. And once he changes her properly it won't matter what she knows, and he'll feel calm enough to find out everything she knows, properly. 

"What is this that we're riding in? What's the local magic like? Wizardry can do some interesting things with Celestials, so I might be able to help you better if I understand this plane's magic." 

James laughs. "As far as I know, there is no local magic. Or at least if there is, I don't know anything about it. As far as I know, and I've looked, the only people I know with magic are myself, the strange man who gave me magic, and now you. You're a truly excellent find. I don't know how I lucked out such that you landed right on top of me, maybe you were drawn to magic? But even if you're making my life a bit more difficult at the moment, I expect you'll be doing a lot more good for me in the future. Depending on what you can do, I could certainly expand my little operation quite a bit." 

"Hm. Maybe. I don't know. Just be careful when you're rearranging my head, if you're not careful enough I could lose my magic." 

James mouth twists with annoyance and frustration. "Shit. Is there any danger of that? I don't get as much feedback from the use of my powers as I might like. What would make you lose your magic?" 

"Magic exists in structures in the brain. Anything that makes me less intelligent or creative or anything like that could fuck up the structures until they can't hold magic any more." 

James breathes a sigh of relief. That should be work-aroundable. Normally the people he transforms end up a little more simple, but instead she just needs to be intelligent and creative for him. Still, he should make sure he hasn't messed any of that up, otherwise this would have been a very annoying interruption and all for nothing. "Have I affected your magic at all, yet? As long as you can tell without using your magic. Actually, don't use your magic without my permission unless I say otherwise." She was supposed to please him, and she clearly wanted to, and was already calling her Master, but he still had not reason not to be extra cautious. If he needed her power to defend himself he should have enough time to tell her so. He could always release this stricture once he was very sure of her loyalty and service. 

"I don't think it would have, but I can't tell without trying to use magic." 

"Alright, what's something small you can do?" James turns the corner. There's no traffic at all. Thank goodness. He's not sure how much time they're racing against, but the more time they have the better. 

"I can...hm. I dunno. I can do lots of stuff, but I don't know enough about this plane to know what's safe." 

"Is this plane that different from where you're from? Make a reasonable guess." 

"Hmm, something small...I could do a divination, those are generally safe. But a null result wouldn't be conclusive, those can fail for other reasons."

Her magic seems like it could be very interesting. Clearly complicated, but interesting. He considers asking her what kinds of things she could divinate for, but honestly he can ask that later more at his leisure and right now a result would be better than not a result. "Let's try something a little more conclusive then. Can you, say, levitate something? Or change something into something else? Something so we can be sure." 

"...The levitation I have would not be safe at this speed."

"Hm, I suppose it can wait until we get there, then." There's so much to ask and they have to run first and this is going to make things rather difficult. And clearly her purported intelligence and cleverness are hardly being pointed in his direction at the moment, and he should easily be able to fix that. But first things first. "Is there anything else you wanted to ask, then?" He turns another corner. They should be there soon. 

"If this thing isn't magic then...what is it?"

James grins, smug and superior. "Technology. Lots and lots of technology. Maybe where you're from, you use magic to make up the difference, or something, but here we just have technology, and lots of it. I don't know how it all works, necessarily, but it, and many other things, are purchasable." More or less as he expected from her primitive and strange manner of dress, but wherever she's from is clearly not as advanced as here is. 

She considers possible responses, and settles on an impressed little "Oh!" and sitting back in her seat, apparently satisfied. 

James had been expecting a little bit more of her being impressed. But, that doesn't matter at the moment. And if she has nothing more to ask, they'll arrive and pull into his driveway after another couple minutes. 

She figures out how to operate the door and gets out and waits for further instruction. 

He motions her to follow inside, and pulls a coin out of his pocket and hands it to her. "Let's just make sure your magic still works," he tells her. "Levitate that for me, if you can." 

Okay. She casts Levitate on the coin. It levitates. 

"Incredible. Perfect." And something he can't even do, besides. He's not entirely sure what else she can do but he's going to find out ever so soon. She'll be tripping over herself to tell him, even. "Let's get us both changed, you first, since we're not going to have access to a changing room until I can make another one somewhere. Something to make sure you're more than just obedient, and we'll keep all of your intelligence and creativity intact to make sure the magic still works" He heads down into the basement to get to his safe and secret changing room, making sure Elodea is trailing behind, already thinking through what he's going to do to her in his mind.

"Of course, sir," she says, following behind. "--But you seem stressed, and in my experience artists do their best work when they're...relaxed." She comes up behind him and places her hands on his shoulders, kneading in a way that would be a simple massage and not erotic at all, except that she is a thousand years old and can play the human body like a delicately-tuned piano. 

James opens his mouth to protest about how they might not have enough time, and then closes it when her touch feels so incredibly good. And hot. "Maybe just five minutes," he says, leaning into her hands to let her do her work, relaxing and feeling his cock get harder. He hasn't planned on fucking her so quickly, but maybe a quickie wouldn't hurt. They should have a little bit of time, he's pretty sure. Her hands feel amazing. 

She presses a few exquisite nibbles to the side of his neck, before smoothly sliding around front and removing his shirt with more improbably delightful finger-strokes. 

James is very used to having girls do such things to him, concentrating on his pleasure, allowing him to relax and enjoy them fully and properly. Still, none have anywhere near the skill Elodea has, to arouse and delight him this much without having even touched his cock yet, which is already starting to strain against his pants. If he were able to think particularly well at the moment he would be wondering in amazement about what they teach girls where she's from, and how she came to have so very much skill. Instead, his thoughts are instead much closer to "fuck this is amazing" and "holy shit how did I get so lucky with my new slave", in various minor variations. More than used to this kind of personalized attention, primed to fully expect her to take care of his every need, he almost thoughtlessly lifts his arms, letting her pull off his shirt, relaxing into and sighing gently at her touches.

Convenient. 

Hmmm where are the most erogenous spots on his upper torso, time to find out. 

James's generally not had much opportunity to explore such things, since most of his experience with women once he obtained his power has been, well, rather focused in certain areas that are below the waist, rather than above. Still, Elodea (and James, if he was paying enough attention to notice, or was capable of much in the way of that kind of reasoning at the moment) will find that the back of his neck is particularly sensitive, as well as the small of his back and the area around his belly button. The area under his shoulder blades also should work particularly well, if she can get the knots out. Which she almost certainly can.

James is a bit unused to this kind of treatment, or more accurately this kind of treatment in this particular area of his body, but every time he starts to move a hand or arm to direct Elodea, or open his mouth to do so, he finds himself distracted and delighted by yet another touch. It takes very few repetitions of this for him to forget about that at all; to simply let her do what she clearly does best, her spectacular, delightfully arousing and sensual work. Work that he's going to be able to get every single day from now on.

Well, no. But he can enjoy it while it lasts. 

She starts investigating the general area of his chin and ears and so on with her lips while her hands make sure that even if she doesn't find anything up there his distraction level isn't going to go down very much. 

She finds plenty up there. Ears especially. More than plenty for him to be almost entirely out of it, distracted and delirious beyond reason at her expert ministrations, moaning softly as she kisses his ears and feels her fingers pressing into him elsewhere. 

Almost entirely out of it enough to be confused for a couple of seconds when his phone starts ringing.

"Shit!" he says, thoroughly annoyed and furious at whoever is fucking interrupting some of the most amazing sex in his life, which is only promising to get even more amazing, and he's had far more than his fair share of really good sex. Or at least, what he thinks is really good sex, given his usual focus and predilections. He feels around with a hand to find his pocket, trying to fish out his phone so he can find out who the hell is interrupting him and get rid of them as fast as possible, or more likely just hang up on them and turn off his phone so he can go back to properly enjoying Elodea's touches and care and everything else. Fuck, he clearly underestimated just how much he made her want to please him. Not that he's complaining.

Oh good. 

Eventually she moves lower, taking hold of his thighs and applying her talents in a more traditional location. 

She's even better at this. Good enough to keep him from--quite--going over the edge as loooooong as she likes. 

James pulls out the phone and realizes it's Maria and he's suddenly worried that she's made it to the police already. Shit. Shit. He's going to have to work faster here and they might be tracking his location through his phone and... and shit. Holy shit. Her mouth is on his cock and fuck they don't have time for this and... shit. Shit that's amazing. 

James barely manages to turn the phone off before putting it down and closing his eyes and relaxing, his worries about time and desire to smash his phone to make sure that they can't be tracked fading as his focus narrows entirely onto sensation of his new slave's mouth on his cock. It's actually somewhat difficult to think of much else, and even though there's some background worry in the back of his head it's very easy to be distracted from it. Very very easy. He sighs softly and moans and lets Elodea serve him, enjoying every second of it, the feeling of her lips and tongue and mouth and all of her. Fuck, how did he get so lucky. Holy shit, her mouth feels incredible. 

She's gripping his thighs as she does this. Pretty tightly. He'll be much too distracted to object, but this is probably leaves-bruises levels of tight. 

She has a very, very good grasp of human anatomy. 

She lets him come just a moment before blacking out from the pressure she's got on his femoral artery. 

He is in fact distracted far too much to notice. James has his eyes closed, to better enjoy the every sensation, and what little he does notice of how woozy he's getting he attributes to her skill and fuck she's so hot and holy shit this feels amazing and... wait a second.

James comes in her mouth, a moment of pleasure and delight and sudden worried clarity -- and slumps backwards as he passes out. 

Perfect. 

She removes these weird clothes he put her in and uses them to do a cursory bind on his wrists and ankles while she sees what she can find to do a more thorough job with. 

There's not a lot down here in the basement, it's well-lit room, perfect for inspecting your handiwork if you're changing something into something else, but there's very little down there. 

Back up the stairs is a small room with wooden floors, perfectly cut, covered in something shiny and smooth, lacquer of some kind.. In the middle of the room is a small wooden table with two chairs pulled up to it, also wooden, and a couple of chairs, still wood, all of it lacquered. a large white box, softly humming, with a handle to a cabinet up top and a handle to a cabinet below. One wall has metal tub, complete with a long thin thing of metal curved over it, underneath which are some cabinets. Next that is a counter, white and shiny, and a little ways down the counter the counter changes to a metal grating with something underneath, with some dials and switches and a large cabinet underneath. The room has various other cabinets and drawers, above and below. There's a doorway on one side to the rest of the house. 

She opens all of the cabinets and drawers. 

There's a lot of things in all of them! Under the metal tub are a lot of clear containers with writing on them and full of variously colored liquids. Inside the humming box is cool and cold, respectively, as well as various food items -- mostly in containers, but some in further drawers are some soft fruit and wilting vegetables. In the cold there are only containers. 

In some drawers are further boxes and cans and containers of food items, likely mostly ones she won't recognize but some she might, like flour and rice. Others have pots and pans and others have sharp knives and forks and silverware. 

One of the drawers contains a pair of sharp bits of metal connected to each other with a hinge and ending in handles made of an orange substance, various long thin objects of various colors, a packet of papers, and a large round cylinder with a hole, made of some kind of shiny silvery substance. The substance is clearly wrapped around and around and around and around, and there's plenty of it.  

She cautiously sniffs the colored liquids, then closes their containers and puts them back. 

She takes a piece of fruit and munches on it as she continues inspecting things. 

She opens some of the boxes of unrecognizable food items. 

She's familiar with the phenomenon of scissors. The orange stuff is weird but not urgently so and there is a lot of weird going around. 

She picks up the cylinder and examines it more closely. 

The fruit is sweet and pleasant to eat, juicy and delicious. 

There's a seam where the wrapped stuff ends, and a couple of short strings hanging off the seam. There's some sort of brown tube inside that everything is wrapped around, and there's a lot of layers of wrapping. 

She unpeels the thing at the seam. 

It makes a noise, and peels in fits and starts, but peels rather readily. The non-shiny side of it is very sticky. 

...Oooh. She thinks she sees how this works. 

She goes back down to the basement, removes her makeshift clothes bindings, uses the sticky stuff to gag him and bind his wrists and ankles, then drags him up the stairs and out the back door.

The substance works quite well for bindings! She might ruin some of it, getting it stuck to itself as she learns how to tear it apart from the rest, but there's more than plenty of it. 

James makes some noises and stirs as he's dragged up the stairs, but he's still far too out of it to actually fully wake, woozy and still mostly unconscious. 

The door to the back leads to a small area, a small space of green plants, covered in fallen leaves from the two trees scattered in the yard, and surrounded by a white fence. There are similar and more well-kept yards to either side, with many fewer leaves, and where the grass is actually all the same length and also the only plant growing in them as opposed to the riot of different plants spread through the yard. 

Once she's got him outside she binds him more thoroughly, lacing his fingers together and wrapping his intwined hands in the sticky stuff, then joining his forearms and calves. 

If he hasn't woken up by the time she's finished with that she'll go back into the house for a bit. 

The jostle up the stairs has caused him to start to stir, and once he gets enough presence of mind to try to move, and realize he's being bound, he starts to wake up much more quickly. He struggles against the tape, which is holding him rather fast. He's not entirely sure how he got here or what's going on, but something has gone very wrong and he feels woozy and disoriented and confused. "Hey, what the hell!" he shouts, in confusion, trying to get whoever it is to stop. Or tries to shout, but it comes muffled and indistinguishable through the gag. Even more worried, he tries to scream and shout, but to very little avail. He struggles some more, trying to pull away from the woman and try to free himself.

She considers this, and binds his wrists to his ankles so there'll be a smaller chance of him managing to wriggle away. This may involve sitting on him to make him sit still enough. 

James struggles, and comes more to, realizing with a start that this is the strange girl with magic who ended up in his office and who should be his slave. Shit. Did he screw up changing her somehow? She should be trying to please him and obeying him and keep him safe, which this very much is not. He left her too much of her initiative, he was in too much of a rush. Shit. The girl who should be his slave doesn't seem to be stopping from binding him, and he can't give her any orders when bound like this. He struggles, frantically, trying to figure out how to get out of this and when she sits on him he turns over and rubs his face on the grass. And then desperately rubs his face more on the grass to try and get the tape off. She should obey orders still, he hopes. Shit shit shit shit. And if he can just talk he can fix all this. And everything will be good. And if he has to wipe her mind so she loses her magic, so be it. 

Grass is not very good at getting duct tape off of one's face. 

She sees what he's trying. Once she's got his wrists and ankles dealt with she adds more tape to his face. 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit. Maria is free and the police are after him and his new powerful magical slave is tying him up with duct tape in his backyard. 

For lack of a better thing to do, James tries to scream. It's hard, through the tape, but at the very least if he can get free he can make a new room somewhere, anywhere if he has enough time, and then he can start over. Starting over would be annoying, more than annoying really, but if he's done it once he can do it again.

"I advise you to stop that," she says lightly. "You probably wouldn't like what I'd have to do if someone noticed what was going on." 

That is extremely nonspecific and he has no particularly good reason to trust or believe her (wait, shit. She could have been lying to him the whole time couldn't she have been. Fucking hell, the manipulative witch, she's been faking the whole time and he has no idea what's been going on) but she has magic and who knows what she's capable of. Shit. He quiets down and glares at her, angrily, not sure what else to do. 

She smiles at him sunnily, then goes back into the house and drags out a table to put over him so he's harder for the neighbors to see. 

Well this is extremely undignified. He does his best to inch his body out while she goes back in the house, but he's not used to moving like this and he's bound rather well. He glares up at her, waiting for the manipulative annoying girl who should by all rights be his slave to take the gag off so he can fix this.

She does not do that. She goes inside and--their nonmagical technology is incredibly advanced, they've got indoor plumbing, right? 

They do! There's a small room near the kitchen with a tile floor, blue and white, with cream-colored walls. Inside is a porcelain washbasin with faucets, as well as another porcelain device, clearly meant to be sat on, half-full of water in one basin and full of water in another -- complete with some interesting levers and pipes and such. 

If that's not quite what she's looking for, she might find a similar, more expansive room upstairs. 

She wants one with a bathtub. 

Well, there's one of those upstairs! Next to the room with the large bed. Similar tile, similar walls, similar porcelain objects, but it also contains a pair of mottled glass sliding doors with metal rails running all the way down the length of the door. The doors open directly onto a light-blue bathtub, with a faucet. The faucet has a pullable thing on top of it, and above it is a large dial with a single lever, and above that is another wider faucet with many small holes. On the walls are metal racks, with large blue and white towels. 

Cool cool. 

She throws everything that could maybe potentially catch on fire out of the room, draws some flasks of oil and her flint and steel out of her bag of holding, puts that out of the room, then stands in the bathtub, closes the drain, pours the oil all over herself and sets herself on fire. 

It hurts like fuck, but she's had a long time to get used to pain. She lies down so when the fire cooks her brain she won't topple out of the tub and set the house on fire. 

She burns! Nothing else catches on fire or anything strange happens, and the oil burns and lets off smoke and she burns and lets off smoke, at least until whatever reason she has for being on fire is done. The smoke stains the ceiling a little bit otherwise floats as a thin cloud at the top of the small room. 

And then she runs the water enough to rinse off the soot and charred flesh and remains of the oil, and steps out of the tub, checks to make sure healing her brain fixed the compulsions he placed--nope, no wistfulness about having to thwart him, excellent--exits the bathroom, considers clothing options and decides to raid his closet, and heads off to investigate that. 

His bedroom consists of a single large bed, a small table near his bed with some devices on it, a large wooden chest of drawers, and a closet. The closet is rather shallow, and consists of a single long rack of shirts, all solid color button-downs. Reds and whites and blues and greens and even a purple. 

About a minute after she opens the bathroom door, something outside the room starts making a very high-pitched, modulated shrieking noise. It's rather loud and incessant and is very very difficult to ignore. 

...

She pinches her nose in exasperation and goes off to investigate the noise. 

The way it's making noise makes it a little bit difficult to figure out where it's coming from, but it isn't that hard to figure out. There's a small round white device set into the ceiling in the middle of the hallway. The noise it makes is really loud and obnoxious and almost a little painful. And there's no obvious indication as to why it's making noise. 

Will it stop if she smashes it. 

It may take a couple of hits to do so, as cracking the outer shell won't do anything, but the material it's made of isn't that sturdy and further hits will get to the actual working components inside. Various shards of metal and other substances rain down, and the device makes a tinny wailing noise and goes silent. 

Awesome. Fun. Lovely. 

She stalks back to the bedroom and investigates the drawers. 

One of the drawers contains socks, white and black, folded neatly together. 

The next contains boxers, soft delicate fabric in various colors, red and black and white feature prominently, but there's some green and blue ones in their as well. 

The next contains several pairs of folded black pants. 

The next few contain various other clothing items, more or less crammed together in them, some shorts and some less fancy shirts and some less fancy pants, as well as several sweaters. They're all wrinkled from being stuffed in a drawer like this for far too long. 

She puts on a pair of pants and the hooded sweater from the cram drawer, pulling the hood forward and down so it obscures as much of her face as possible and tucking her hands in the pocket in front. 

Then she goes back out to the backyard. 

James has not managed to wriggle free from the table. Or get any of the tape off of his mouth. Or get any of the tape off of him at all. And his phone is off and still inside and Maria could be bringing the police down on them at any moment, shit, and the fire alarm in his house went off and he has no idea why, shit, but at the very least the annoying manipulative magical girl should still obey him when she finally decides to take the tape off. And she has to decide to do that, she's clearly keeping him around for something. She's gagged him to keep him quiet, not because he can give orders, obviously, and she's going to ungag him and ask him questions and that will be her undoing. Still, that doesn't keep him from being incredibly worried. Fucking hell what a nightmare got dropped on him. But if he can enslave her, properly, it'll all be worth it. 

James glares at her when she returns, wearing his college sweatshirt for some reason, and wills her to take the gag off of his mouth, making sure to review exactly what he's decided to say to her. He's had plenty of time to think. 

She sits down next to him under the table. He may or may not be able to see what color her skin is, and he may or may not be paying enough attention to notice how much the sweatshirt isn't tented forwards. 

She takes the gag off. 

He's a bit too distracted with something much more important to notice anything like that. He has to give her orders as fast as possible, and it has to be perfect, and then everything will be fine. 

Holy shit that hurts. But it worked. James ignores and fights through the pain and follows through with his plan. "Stop," he orders her, a slow victorious smile spreading across his face. "Don't do anything unless I tell you to." Thank fuck, he did it. James takes a breath, steadying himself, feeling relieved, before getting read to give her her next set of orders. 

"Sorry, fixed that," she says cheerfully. "--No, wait. Not sorry." 

Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit. She clearly wants him for something but did she use her magic to get out from under his power? She must have. Why didn't she do it in the first place? How does she work? He's probably never going to know now. There's a small small sliver of hope that he can trick her. He hopes. If he can get her downstairs to show her the room everything will be fine. Or, maybe she'll just get what she needs from him and let him rebuild. That would be fine too. 

"Shit," he says out loud, scowling. "Fine. You got me. What do you want, then?" 

"I want to know exactly how your power works and how I can prevent you from hurting anyone else, ideally without killing you." 

"Alright, take me back downstairs to the basement and I'll show you." Unlikely to work but you never know. She probably wouldn't be foolish enough to go into the room but if he can get in the room, well. He can change himself to something useful. 

The "without killing" is both reassuring and slightly terrifying. She's considering killing him, but she would prefer not to. The fact that dying is suddenly on the table again is scary, but the fact that she doesn't want to... well, maybe he can get out of this ok. Shit. 

"Mmmmmmnope. Use your words, please." 

Yeah that worked about as well as could be expected. Shiiit. 

Well. She had no way to tell if he was telling the truth, which means he could make up any lie he chose, including some way to disable his magic which is what she seems to want. Unfortunately... he's been blabbing about so many details about things and he's not even sure what he's told her, because he thought she was his. How did he screw up so badly? James desperately searches his mind for a convincing lie. 

"I... make changing rooms," he tells her. Well, so much for lying. "It takes a little while but I can turn rooms into places where I can change people. And then I can change their minds however I want. And he has no need to mention bodies, he's pretty sure, and wait speaking of bodies what the heck is up with her skin? James startles when he realizes it, but bites his tongue. There's no reason to point it out. Or is there? Maybe that's an idea. "And bodies, too -- I can change you to pass more easily here, if you'll just let me go." 

"If I were going to let you change me at all I'd put you under a geas first so you couldn't make any unapproved changes." 

James has no idea what she means by that but he's just going to scowl and nod, agreeable but not happy about it. He hasn't mentioned changing himself, and depending on how whatever she's talking about works he could use the changing room to remove, just like how she removed his control from herself. Which how the hell did she manage that? He's not used to having to think this fast on his feet though and holy fucking hell is it annoying.

"Whatever you need to do make sure of it," he tells her. "I'll change you however you want if you just let me go, please!" Worst case if it didn't work he could still get free. Best case he could get this annoying tricky girl back, unsuspectingly, since she has no idea what he can do. 

"I don't," she explains patiently, "just care what you do to me." 

Does she know he can change himself? Has she figured out his ploy already? "I'm... not sure what you mean," he says slowly, making sure not to give away that she could very well mean changing himself also and thereby ridding himself of whatever magic she wanted to do to him. In case that's not what she meant, but he's not sure what else she could mean. 

"I mean I'm not going to just let you go back to doing what you did to that poor woman to other people." 

Oh of course! And what a perfect easy straightforward trick. "Other people" did not include himself. Still, he shouldn't give in that easily, right? Right. "And what's my alternative, if I say no?" James asks through gritted teeth. 

"Well, you see, I can't exactly just trust you. So I'll be taking measures to ensure your cooperation anyway. But the more cooperation you willingly volunteer, the more goodwill you'll garner, and trust me, you'll need it." 

Cooperation? Fine. As long as he can keep his powers and get himself back into a room and take off whatever changes she thinks she's going to be able to make to him, he can cooperate. He can still turn this around. Hopefully. And, if he plays his cards perfectly right, get this annoying girl in the bargain. Annoying girl who gives really good blowjobs, shit. 

"What kind of cooperation are you looking for, then?" He asks. "What do you need? I guess I don't have much choice. As long as you let me free, anyways." 

"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." 

James frowns a little as he hears this, trying to follow. He more or less understands what she's saying, but it's gone back to sounding like something out of a fantasy. Still, she's clearly talking like she knows what she's talking about but no one in his world has said anything like this. But what if it's real, though? Shit. How the literal hell (shit) can he know any of this for certain? Maybe it's how it works for her and not here? And for that matter, this doesn't answer his main question.

"How... do you know which afterlife you're going to go to?" he asks, tentatively, still worried. "What do you need to do to change it? And for that matter, how sure are you that things work that way, here?"

"Well, there are spells and magic items and so on that detect alignment, and you can change your alignment by performing acts that correspond to the alignment you want to be. I...guess you guys could be oddly human-looking nonhumans? But I saw what looked like old people out the car window and if there exists a species that dies of old age and doesn't funnel into this afterlife system I don't know it." 

"And I came out as evil," he says, slowly, understanding the implications.

It was quite possible that nothing here worked the way she implied, it seemed strange for her to be so very certain of something and for it to be complete news to him. But it was also quite possible that she was right. As long as he managed to use the changing room to make sure he lives forever, none of this would be a problem. But for now, he might as well be careful, and co-operate, and think about doing good deeds once he was free of all this.

"Alright, well, that's something to think about. In any case -- what do you need from me?" His look is less sullen, and more cooperative. He really wants to deal with this and get it over with, at this point. If he can capture her, so much the better, but that's becoming more and more unlikely, and all he really wants to do right now is get rid of her and go back to his life. He doesn't even need to worry about the police, at this point. Not unless he makes a scene himself.

"First off I want to know how your power works, and how to summon that young woman here." 

James does his best not to roll his eyes in frustration. Both because he's more or less explained what he already knows, and even worse because it's looking unlikely that he's going to manage to keep Maria. Which, shit. He can always manage to find someone else, eventually, once he figures out a little bit more about this whole "hell" thing, or at least how to avoid dying. And not having a slave around to serve him for a few days is not going to be fun. But right now it really is better to do what the annoying witch says. He supposes.

"I'm not sure what else to tell you about how my power works that I haven't told you already," he says. If I find a room and am able to occupy it and do some mental gymnastics in it for a while, it eventually becomes a changing room. And when people are in changing rooms I can change them however I want, though I do have to put some effort in to do detail work, especially with minds." And, finally, Maria. Shit. She's so very well trained and so very useful and he doesn't want to give up his slave, but he's probably screwed if he doesn't. Really really screwed. He considers lying but really he should probably cooperate here. He can always get another.

Still he pauses for a moment before finally talking. "The device inside, from before is called a phone. She tried to call me earlier, I guess once your magic wore off. She's probably tried to call me a number of times since. If you let me use the device I should be able to turn it back on and answer and tell her where we are and how to get here." And for that matter he might have one or two commands that he could give his slave that could get her to try to overpower Elodea. But she doesn't really have much in the way of initiative anymore (shit, shit shit, next time he's going to think this through a little more) and there's far too many things that can go wrong. Whatever, he'll have time to think about it when she's fetching his phone.

"No tricks or loopholes you're hiding? Alright." She fishes out the phone and pokes it until it does something.