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

[onceandforall]

Bella steps through.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

It takes a minute for something to happen.

But something definitely happens.

To start, it feels less like an something beginning and more like noticing something that was already there. The walls have colors that weren't there before, and are a different shape, and by the time she realizes how that this is the hallucination Edie was talking about she is in a void spangled with distant stars in every color imaginable.

Immediately in front of her are two globes. One feels, along a sensory axis she doesn't know how to describe, like the lights surrounding her. The other one feels like herself. Each one is dotted by...nothing visible, but points clearly defined to this new sense. Magical Girls, a nonvoice whispers from nowhere.

The globes fade from sight. A scene appears of a Kyubey saying something to a rapt young girl. The exact words that are exchanged are indistinguishable, but she is clearly going to make a wish. The whole scene is clearly labeled, somehow, as wrong.

That scene, too, fades, only to be replaced by a handful of jagged superimposed images that are all too familiar--the end of the world. The nonvoice whispers, No.

A series of impressions are presented to her--this thing does not understand witches. It understands her, or her magic anyway, because she is right there to be understood. But it has never seen a witch. It does not know if the one that will kill everything can be stopped. It does not know what weapons it can give her that will let her prevail. But her motives are just and her need is great. She can have power, if she wants it.

Does she want it?

[onceandforall]

Well, it doesn't seem to think this is going to kill her.

So hell yes she wants power.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Something like a great deal of the other kind of magic this new sense is identifying rushes through and into her. If she looks at her hands, she may see that they glow with the same light that covered Edie when she was transforming.

She is power. She is magic. Her limbs want to twist, her tongue wants to speak, to transform for the first time, fully realizing this power in the world for the first time.

[onceandforall]

Okay. Let's see how fucked up a transformation phrase she gets.

Bella balances on the toes of one foot, kicks the other one up behind her with maximally bent knee, and taps the shield in its wristwatch position on her left arm with her right index finger. "Eternal Determination for a Perfect Future, the moment is now! I'll go through and around anything that stands in my way!" She glows. She does a backflip. Her costume stays mostly the same, mercifully; the gray goes brightly silver and the purple intensifies, that's all. "With all the time in the world, I am forever the one and only Salvation Jewel Princess!"

[maggie_of_the_owls]

Her brand new magic sense informs her that she has a spell available. It feels...cleansing, somehow. Does she want to cast it?

[onceandforall]

First she wants to shuffle back into Milliways.

Then: yes, let's give it a whirl.

[maggie_of_the_owls]

When she nudges the spell with her mind, the incantation bubbles to her lips as naturally and irresistibly as the transformation phrase had.

[onceandforall]

"Shining Jewel Purification!"

...

"Wow. I am so glad I met you. I wonder if I can do this for other people. Short-circuit the entire ecology."

[iamnotpolaris]

"I have no idea what that did! But congratulations, I guess. Nifty outfit, at any rate."

[whatamithinking]

"Also, hi, I'm back, time apparently flows at different rates in different parts of Milliways."

[onceandforall]

"Welcome back. I am apparently Salvation Jewel Princess, which could have been worse, and it makes my costume look like glossy wrapping paper but doesn't do anything unfortunate to my modesty, and I can clear my soul gem with a spell, holy fuck."

[whatamithinking]

"...And this restores your magic like the evil seed things do?"

[onceandforall]

"Yes. And the evil seed things are why we can't just wipe out all the witches. I mean, this is still going to be stupidly hard to do, aforementioned world-ending witch, etcetera, but a lot of puella magi actively let witches grow and bud because that is how we get the evil seed things is killing witches after, and only after, they are big enough. If I can learn to do this for other people, if I can do it enough times a day and spend most of my life on airplanes making sure everybody gets a turn - we don't need witches which means we don't need random human witch fertilizer committing suicide and murder and arson and industrial sabotage which means girls who are currently puella magi and not witches yet can just stay that way. ...I may not have actually mentioned that if we run totally out of charge this provokes the turning into a witch thing? I can completely bypass the intended life-cycle. Stick it to those evil fucking furballs."

[whatamithinking]

"That is fantastic."

[onceandforall]

"Yes!"

[whatamithinking]

"You know...if you really, really want a particular kind of spell, and you think about it a lot, and especially if you manage to have one of your milestones be related to it, you can get spells that are particularly useful instead of just thematically appropriate. So you could maybe learn to teleport."

[onceandforall]

"Well, that'd save me a lot in airline miles, now, wouldn't it. How about magical translation, is that on the menu?"

[whatamithinking]

"I don't see why not. I haven't heard of anyone doing that in particular off the top of my head but there are spells that give you information about things."

[onceandforall]

"...Magical translation seems readily possible and nobody's picked it up? Really?"

[whatamithinking]

"I'm not saying no one has, I'm saying I haven't met anyone who mentioned having it. Not quite the same thing."

[onceandforall]

"Yeah, I guess it wouldn't necessarily stand out enough that you'd have heard of, it's not flashy. Any tips on spell aiming?"

[whatamithinking]

"Want it. Attach an emotional significance to it, that is, not just objectively prefer it. Spend a little time every now and then thinking about how it would fit into whatever themes your magic seems to have. Consistently getting into situations where it would have been useful to have it helps but I can't particularly recommend it even so. I heard of a girl in Thule or Sweden or something, somewhere Scandinavianish anyway, who managed to attach enough emotional significance to a chain of spells that getting each one supplied the necessary personal achievement to get the next, but no one's been able to replicate it since."

[onceandforall]

"I mean, if I want translation there are all kinds of situations where it would be really useful but I can get by without if I have to. And I can work up a good mad about having to be on an airplane easy."

[whatamithinking]

"Sounds like working on teleporting's your best bet, then, at least until you get it.

"...You know, maybe once you've got a stable system set up, you could try and work on getting introspection spells."