counterfeit

[onceandforall]

This. This is a good bar.

She does not mind taking counterfeit currency and she sells everything.

Bella is going to exploit the fuck out of that but first she is eating really, really good pad thai and finally talking to a person who is a) interesting b) not someone she has already talked to a lot in the last... several years. Lovely friendly bar who makes a lovely delicious pad thai! Bella will have to try opening that door at that moment again in the past.

Comments

[iamnotpolaris]

"I'm holding the fluff," she points out, but comes over so Edie can put a silvery dot on her forehead.

[onceandforall]

"I can hold the fluff, if you bring it over."

[iamnotpolaris]

Emily hands her the fluff.

[whatamithinking]

And Edie creates something that looks an awful lot like the Mind Mirror, but instead of a mirror it's an ornate marble doorway.

[alicornucopia]

The fluff sits unprotesting in the crook of Bella's arm.

[iamnotpolaris]

And Emily goes through the doorway.

[whatamithinking]

"If my sister or I wished to be able to make doors to this place whenever we wanted, would that be a valid wish?"

[alicornucopia]

I'm not sure! Some things about wishes are mysterious even to me, says the fluff. I can't guarantee that it would work.

[whatamithinking]

"What happens if I try it and it doesn't work?"

[alicornucopia]

Then you will need to make a different wish and you will not have very long to decide.

[whatamithinking]

"So if I try to make a wish and it doesn't work I'm still stuck making a wish and a contract."

[alicornucopia]

Usually I can tell whether you could succeed at a wish or not. If you want to try the one you just said, you should have a backup wish just in case.

[whatamithinking]

"I'm not sure I want to make a wish if neither my sister or I can get that one. We don't have witches where I'm from and I don't want to be stuck away from home."

[onceandforall]

"I'd offer to send you home with a full grief seed to hatch, but hatched witches do not grow enough to restock you unless they have people to gobble up, probably a bad tradeoff - and also now that I think of it it's possible that your existing magic will interact badly with you being a soul gem operating your body indirectly."

[whatamithinking]

"If I could make sure they only fed on people like the Golden Diamond General I think it would be a pretty great tradeoff, but I don't think that's workable. And I have no idea how the magics would interact, yeah. So maybe not the best idea, but if there was some way of guaranteeing it would work out..."

[onceandforall]

"It's not exactly a humane death, I'm not sure how well witches do in captivity in general, and they need several people per grief seed and one seed will only keep you going for a few days of normal amounts of magic use."

[whatamithinking]

"That seems like a really inefficient system. I wonder if it would be possible to make you into one of my kind of magical girl...if they interact destructively then it should just not work."

[onceandforall]

"How confident are you in that 'should'? Because if it sticks..."

[whatamithinking]

"I mean, even if it turned out that you had to fuel my kind of magic with your soul gem thing too, it's perfectly possible to just not use any magic at all."

[onceandforall]

"Yeah, but I mean, what if it breaks my soul gem, or it turns out that it does take soul gem magic and it insta-drains me down to witching levels the first time I try anything, or the costumes annihilate each other and transforming means an antimatter explosion the size of the sun, or... You know what I mean? I would like to proceed only with strong theoretical models predicting no disaster."

[whatamithinking]

"I'm having a hard time imagining why it would do any of those things, but it's your decision."

[onceandforall]

"I basically just need to know a whole lot more about how it works."

[whatamithinking]

"Oh...well, basically if you want power hard enough for a good enough reason, and you have enough 'potential', then you have a subjectively variable objectively instantaneous hallucination where you get evaluated and asked about the consequences of power and whatnot and then at the end it gives you the option to become a magical girl--or boy, sometimes, but that's less common--or not."

[onceandforall]

"Does whatever system is doing the asking seem to be intelligent?"

[whatamithinking]

"Intelligent..ish? Like, it's computer system intelligent, it can find these people in the first place, but it has no compunctions empowering people who want to do diametrically opposing 'good things' with their powers, like, I know of more than one fundie magical girl who got power on the basis of her faith but also more than one militant atheist."