"I do not want to be matchmade with a demon."

"So you know perfectly well I wouldn't do it. I actually don't know what on Earth I'd need more than three demons for - maybe once we find a way to other worlds - and I doubt Ister's the only one who'd be into the Imperius, so I have no more matchmaking planned. I didn't even set up Michael so I'd have more arbitrary material object access, you know, I just wanted him to be happy."

"Then I won't comb my notes for more of them who might work out."

"If you happen to have some ready to go by all means introduce me, but keep in mind that the rest of my brothers are in fact still kids-"

"You could find yourself a demon girlfriend."

"Apparently I am terrible at relationships so I am not going to attempt them until I have a lot more information about why."

"I would not have predicted that."

"Yeah, me neither, I'm completely baffled. But it's not something I am okay with doing wrong, so I will wait on an explanation."

"Is that topping the list of things we're requesting from Endorë?"

"...it doesn't seem nearly as urgent as genetically modified crops and qualified doctors who'll work for free and interworld portals and a way to end aging if humans don't daevafy, even my grandfather doesn't expect me to get married yet. Or are you worried it's related to some other kind of failure mode I haven't noticed and should correct for before I take over the world?"

"I was actually just thinking it probably doesn't matter what order the list is in apart from for emphasis, but if there is a gap in your supernatural people skills that does actually seem important."

"Reading his notes and trying to guess, I think the gap in my people skills is 'the world hadn't invented murder and then the two of them had to kill twenty thousand people and had no idea how to cope with that and couldn't take a day off to develop one - couldn't, best as I can tell, take ten minutes off to develop one - because hundreds of millions of people were being tortured and many more dying every day and he does not appear to have spent a waking moment having fewer than twenty simultaneous strategically essential conversations for a year and a half straight.'

So it might just be that I should avoid that situation. But I'm going to ask."

"...Okay."

"...is there part that should be clarified there..."

"I just hadn't actually thought of 'did not budget time to cope' as a guess."

"Still seems like a stupid mistake but maybe there're considerations not in the notes. Anyway, that's not absolving, if that's the answer, there's a multiverse and the stakes are going to be arbitrarily high indefinitely and skills I don't have access to under arbitrary pressure are skills I don't have."

Nod.

"Just being alone forever sounds like a bad solution, though."

"Not pursuing romantic relationships and being alone forever are not the same things. As far as I know the rest of my alt's relationships did not buckle under pressure - if they had I'd be prioritizing that a lot harder -"

"That's kind of weird in itself, though -"

" - this is about all the discussion of this topic I'm in the mood for. Cam, what would be the best way to publicize the Imperius thing in Hell, in case we do need access to a lot of demons for some reason -"

"- no one but you can cast it, do you think you can keep several people doing different tasks at once -"

"Not yet, but with practice and maybe with the twenty-conversations-at-once chip thingy if it can be made to work for humans, I want the twenty-conversations-at-once chip thingy."

"Ister will probably have some kind of shared interest group he could put you in touch with. You want the chip even with the obvious other consequences of having one? Also I still can't test brain surgery safely for wizard patients, haven't even checked Elf chips in human basement dwellers."

"I think I'd be strictly less fun to make than an Elf, for the sort of demon who might learn how to do it and use it maliciously. And we're going to need handling - you can conjure for chips made in Hell, right, so you'd know if anyone'd figured it out -"