yay i'm smart

see i keep thinking "i should get into a hospital somehow, there's plenty of people in pain there" but i don't have any great ideas for actually getting close enough to the people in horrible pain. plus it feels kinda bad to profit from their horrible pain and not do anything to help, but i don't know if it's safe to do that cause it would totally attract attention

maybe if we can do invisibility with something we've already got? idk

i'd bet the four can do a ring of gyges?

but i feel like we'd want to think about it and what could go wrong for a bit

maybe at the starbucks, i've got homework i should probably do

well have fun with the homework

After a quick Google search:

i agree about the ring, i think. except we wouldn't be using it to be assholes :P

i'll try and write down all my ideas so i don't just forget them

good man

and homework exists to be moaned about but i'll see about having fun anyway

oh no does Edmund think he was calling him a nerd Probably not and it doesn't really matter anyway! The important thing is:

haha moan

Carefully selected faux-moji of a middle finger, stuck-out tongue.

That just means he's winning!!

:P

Okay he should let Edmund do his homework now, probably.

Edmund is at Starbucks! He's doing homework; for all that it seems silly now, it's still his responsibility.

Seiji's self-concept would say fuck responsibility, I have magic powers now. Seiji in reality has been going to work as normal, because… well, he doesn't really have anything else in specific to do yet. Plus, it would probably lead to questions that he doesn't know how he wants to answer.

Well, those are both things that can be brainstormed together. After ordering, he sits down across from Edmund.

"Hi again!"

"Hullo!"

(Edmund has one of those ridiculously large drinks America is so famous for. It claims to be chai, and convincingly contains at least some of the ingredients thereof under all the sugar. He is, unfortunately, enjoying it immensely.)

Seiji, being unfamiliar with the words of Sun Tzu, has a peppermint mocha. Like a fish in water, he doesn't perceive it as being particularly large.

"How'd your homework go? And the, uh, extracurricular…"

He shakes his head.

"Okay, rewinding that. Do you have any good magic ideas? Or think we should keep trying to do the code talking shit whenever we're in public, because actually I want to be able to just say things when I think of them."

"I don't think we need to spy-speak, unless we have someone around who knows enough to be suspicious if I told them excitedly about our tabletop campaign. My extracurricular magic goes fine. Speaking of:"

He drops four three-pointers onto the lid of Seiji's drink. "Since you inspired me for these. I made a good handful more threes but I've been shy about anything that might go further."

"Okay, cool, I am so on board with not spy-speaking. And thanks!"

He takes his coin storage box from his backpack, partly to put away the extra three-pointers but mostly to show off the box.

"Unfortunately I can't really return the favor right now, since I didn't do anything extra to get more coins. Mostly just tried to keep thinking of ideas for how to make bigger ones in non-horrible ways and things we should do with them. And also what the hell I should tell my mom. Like, I technically could move out, but that would need almost as much explaining as if she found out about the magic experiments."

"If I gave you four coins and you gave me four coins back the gesture would be completely meaningless. I can't tell you what to tell your mum, but... if you got that hospital job we were talking about, maybe that'd be a reason to move out, if you made enough? And I think you probably could get a hospital job, with coins giving you the knowledge."

Seiji leans his chin on one hand.

"Yeah? Would you be in, like, meaning debt if I gave you five coins?"

Headshake.

"But yeah, getting a better job would be good anyway… d'you think the coins can give me fake credentials? I mean, it might be a bad idea to get a fake medical degree from a real place, but maybe a diploma mill would work."

"If you gave me five coins I would immediately declare meaning bankruptcy, as I am currently doing. I... don't know about fake credentials, that's a fair point. Maybe you could take a nursing certification, instead of getting a full degree? I think there's... levels of it?" Edmund fiddles with his phone for a bit. "Yeah, it's a hundred hour class to become a nursing assistant, that's... what would it be... three to twelve weeks, maybe, depending on how many hours a week?"

"Oh, that's a good idea. Get in actual certification and have the career change seem a lot less sudden."

He chews his lip thoughtfully and starts toying with the resulting one-pointer.

"… I think I've already said something like this, but I wonder where the line is between making yourself good at something and fucking up your brain. Like, I don't think I'm super squeamish, but maybe giving myself CNA skill would make me less squeamish than that, right? Which probably won't, I dunno, turn me into a sociopath, but…"

"I mean, I've given myself some skills, and haven't noticed any knock-on effects... but I don't know that equestrianism and Latin would have that kind of auxiliary effect." He considers. "Actually, now I think about it, I was able to clean up after horses without the trouble I might've expected. So that's a point for decreased squeamishness."

"And for it not driving you insane! Probably."

"I have it on excellent authority that I haven't gone mad recently."