if i were yours

[floofcoaster]

Behold the wolf in his unnatural habitat, eating the foods of his people in traditional quantities, his typical companion away in the distant land of The Bathroom.

That is to say, Zeus is in Milliways with one and a half heavily topped pizzas, waiting for Harley and Andrea to come back.

Comments

[aeskhyne]

They are on an asteroid. The asteroid has Earth-standard gravity and is carpeted in soft green grass, but above and around them is a black sky speckled with stars. There are cozy armchairs and couches arranged in a loose circle; Trouble is sitting in an armchair.

"And now I call 'em," he says.

He tells the link that there is a Bell in his world who wants to meet the rest of her.

Celo, being the one currently in Chronicle, brainphones Glass.

[Hey, turns out Ophelia's got a Bell, she wants to meet you all, somebody'll get a Janegem to her in a sec—] Harley appears on the asteroid. [—there, somebody did. Reading between the lines, something's going on in their world that makes Ophelia intensely fucking paranoid about telling anybody anything about them, and if it's enough to make a Joker paranoid, I can only imagine what the Bell's gonna be like.]

Harley plops himself into Trouble's lap. (It is not at all difficult to figure out which one of these people is Ophelia.)

[thaumobabble]

[Thank you.]

Glass appears.

"Hello again, Ophelia. Hi, new Bell, pick a nickname."

[instar]

"Butterfly."

[thaumobabble]

"Butterfly it is. I'm Glass. You look kind of... uh... shellshocked."

[instar]

"You look like me. How do I know that you don't just look like me?"

[thaumobabble]

"...I'm not sure if we've actually had this problem before. We know you're us because I can tell by looking - before that Bar did the same thing - uh, you can tell we're you because we're about to hand you lots and lots of magical power and assume you'll do good Bell things with it?"

[aeskhyne]

"Here's your shot at the genie," Trouble puts in.

[instar]

"What do I have to do?" Butterfly asks Glass.

[thaumobabble]

"This... isn't a trade. This is, you are us, therefore if we just free and clear give you stuff, stuff that we would approve of will follow straightforwardly. ...Uh. Possibly I should mention that one of us is in school to be a therapist. What in the fuck is wrong with your world?"

[aeskhyne]

"So much," says Trouble.

[instar]

"The worst thing."

[thaumobabble]

"That's n- one of us grew up on a planet where literally every human being was brainwashed on a daily basis to adore the brainwasher and the monarch who employed her. She's not shellshocked. Butterfly, what's...?"

[instar]

"Why didn't the brainwasher get her?"

[thaumobabble]

"Except her, yes, I neglected to say; some of us have a template immunity to mental magic - what happened to you?"

[instar]

"Nothing yet. Nothing yet. To me."

[thaumobabble]

Glass takes a moment to process the implications of this.

"Okay - time dilation is already in place, so, good, everything will be okay, Butterfly, do you want to come camp out in the Belltower and learn about magic and relax and so on, the world will wait, it's waiting very patiently, you can come meet all your alts and make plans and we can grab anybody you want to have visiting and explain it to them too, usually we have a party when we find a new one but you don't seem to be in the mood - it'll be okay, there's no native magic here, we will handle it all for you if you need us to, okay?"

[aeskhyne]

[instar]

"Do I have to actually do anything or can you just take me whenever you want and you're being polite?"

[thaumobabble]

"...Second thing. If you would rather just sit there silently rather than risk inviting a metaphorical vampire into your metaphorical house I'll whisk you away in, say, five minutes."

[aeskhyne]

"And hey," says Trouble, "whatever else is going on, I still have arbitrary magic."

[instar]

[thaumobabble]

"Whoa. I've never gotten to watch that happen in real time before," Glass says, blinking at Trouble.

[aeskhyne]

"Watch what?"

The transition is nearly done; he has skipped straight past the wandering phase and gone into - something else, something that comes between 'wandering' and 'retiree'.

[thaumobabble]

"You just changed phases. Sublimated them, practically, you skipped one."

[aeskhyne]

"Oh, is that what that was. Huh."