"I have no idea how plain speak works, either," he shrugs. "Mortal languages string sounds together to form words, which have particular meanings. And some languages have single, short words for meanings that other languages need multiple words for. For instance, I wouldn't be surprised if there was some language out there that had a single, short word for the concept of 'lying convincingly' or something like that. And same thing for 'say your name' which in English is three words."

"I mean, I'm sure you could just hire someone who talks fast, that would have the same effect."

"Not the literal same effect, 'sayyournameandstop' takes a minimum amount of time to be comprehensibly said."

"...By all means find the mortal who can say that the fastest, however they go about doing it. And you can drop the 'and'."

"Wouldn't that allow him to stop before he said his name?"

"- I was imagining cutting in with 'stop' right when he finished saying his name but I guess you wouldn't know exactly when it ended automatically, let alone whoever you hire. 'And' is probably better though. Or 'then'."

"Yeah, 'sayyournamethenstop' is probably best. I wonder what he'd do if he got a stop order and then whatever precautions he has kicked in, if he doesn't have anyone to unorder him. That'd probably be pretty unpleasant."

"Not sure. He might have a backup and just do a really good job of seeming like he doesn't."

"What would happen to his court if he really didn't, though? If he were completely removed from the picture like that?"

"I'd expect it to fragment; Blossom could take substantial parts of it but not necessarily all of it before others made off with the rest. This assumes they're not well-ordered to fetch him back and reinstall him, though, which they probably are."

"No, I mean, if he were ordered to stop and then could hear no further orders. Presumably if we succeed we won't just remove him, his vassals would probably be only marginally better and the point is to eliminate horrible torture not just decentralise it."

"If he were just sort of stopped indefinitely I think Blossom would try to get him to safety and run the court for him until she could get a berrybush besides Sugar, or a mortal besides you or your mother. More likely the latter."

"...yyyeah I think the stop order should come after getting his name."

"It's possible we won't be able to hear his reply if he triggers something to make it hard to transmit orders."

"If you hear it you'll automatically know it's his name, right?"

"Yes. But only if I hear it. And for a fairy you need the whole thing, not just a syllable like can work for mortals."

"That's kinda ridiculously unfair," he comments. "But anyway, if we set up good microphones around the trap, there's software that can filter noise. More than one microphone, placed in different locations, will help with that, so even if we can't hear it then, we might be able to get it from a processed recording afterwards."

"I didn't invent the system," says Promise. "How does it filter noise?"

"Not totally sure, but I think the idea involves rejecting sound frequency bands, and finding certain patterns that correspond to speech, and matching them between the different sound sources."

"...well, theoretically the same thing works for all human languages and they vary a lot, but hmm, good point, we should test this. And actually if it sounds nothing at all like human speech that might make it easier to pick out, depending on how it goes."

"I don't know what it would sound like to a device, which presumably is neither a plain speaker nor a speaker of a mortal language in the right sense."

"No, it's not. And for that matter, it's kinda weird that it even works when recorded, I mean, did your magic speech also enchant my phone?"

"...I doubt it?"

"So how come I still understood what you said when I was playing it back there? Shouldn't I have heard whatever gibberish you're actually saying?"