[Yep,] he says. [Why, you want me to skip again?]

[Up to you, just curious. Suppose I could've just done this.] And she reads. [For some reason, it takes getting used to, all this having supernatural powers.]

[Don't turn invisible in front of anyone. Or in any location where someone could have a narrow range of possibilities for where you could've gone from there. Are you sticking around for art?]

[And that would be bad. What are you doing in art lately, anyway?]

[You don't even have art this period?] Bella asks, amused. [Heh.]

[That's fine. I was rather publicly hit by a car and she knows we're friends.]

[Gosh, that might explain why you tell me you love me about five times a day,] Bella says. [Don't assassinate Tyler. Maybe aggressively de-ice the parking lot.]

Bella laughs, opens up one of the songs, and hums along in her room.

It happens to be Queen—Alice likes Queen—but not one of the songs that he, ahem, likes. He feels the deeper read and grins at his paper; the loop of the y in shady twists into the shape of a heart.

Bella giggles. She decides not to bother him while he's arting, beyond the read alone.

[You're certainly having fun,] Bella comments.

[They're coming along okay. I think I need to take over the world in bits, check those bits over for nasty surprises, and then move on. And I don't mean geographical bits. I mean I'm seventeen and don't know everything about the world - and even a million pentagons won't help me navigate an area that I don't know I don't know. Handling this trial's probably a good place to start, since it grows out of a nearly unrelated goal - I want to look like a fairly natural player to any wishcoiners who notice I exist, like everything could have happened without magic.]

[Well, there'll be some geography in there, but like - once I know something about how the law works, I'll know where to push to get things I want. And I'll know what parts of it are difficult - maybe it turns out I need to pentagon myself rhetoric or encyclopedic legal knowledge or really good posture. One trial might not do it, but maybe there'll be a series of appeals, and I can lurk invisibly near the ceilings while others go on, and eventually I'll know enough about what to poke where that I'll be able to steer anything like that whichever way I want as needed. Poof, I have the ability to take over the world of law as practiced in the United States, if not necessarily the attention or the interest. And by then I'll have an idea of what's next, but the answer probably isn't "Australia", it's probably more like "finance".]

[And while I go I'll need to work on figuring out how to scale everything. I can't personally be everywhere, and self-duplication, while probably within hex range, is not something I wanna touch right now.]

[I haven't decided yet.]

[Okay. Urgh, it's complicated. I told your parents that generally I don't date, and that's true, and there would have been cultural scripts to follow if I'd gone to college and met someone there like my original not-necessarily-taking-over-the-world plan went, but cultural scripts so do not have ways to handle magical me and my pet masochist.]

[Fuck cultural scripts,] says Alice, predictably. [Do what you want.]

[Cultural scripts are useful. Usually when I decide to discard one I have a better idea than this of what exactly it is I'm trading away for what exactly else.]

[The hell are they useful for?]

[Predictability - which is important for saving cognitive work. Being on the same page with everyone else so you don't spend your entire life explaining what you're doing or confusing the people around you. Various psychological benefits of ritual and conformity - I bet I know what you'll have to say about those, but they exist, we're mammals even if you're a mutant one. Face-saving. Building narrative of self. Social lubrication. Seeking relevant role models.]

[You are a very useful and mostly tractable pet masochist and have happened upon me in a situation where I can really benefit from having a pet masochist. But of course there's a tradeoff. Practically everything everyone does is a tradeoff - of that use of time and attention against other possible uses of time and attention, if nothing else. Being more-than-just-friends with you - in secret or openly - would be a costlier tradeoff than just being your friend, so I have to think about it, even though as you can probably guess from the fact that I hang out with you and allow myself to be known to hang out with you, being just-friends is plenty worth it.]

[As an example? Charlie would want to know if I were dating someone, by his or my definition of that. If he found out that I was dating someone without telling him, he'd be hurt. He'd also assume I was ashamed of the relationship or that I'd expect him to disapprove, and so he'd have a higher than usual expectation that it might be with someone who was smacking me around or something. Even if he didn't find out, I'd be going behind his back, which I don't like. And telling him upfront has other results - he keeps a closer eye on you, he feels the need to go over the birds and the bees with me even though Renée already did that when I was ten, maybe he wants to know details about our secretive magical doings because he's suddenly concerned I'm involved in something way over my head and knows it's got something to do with you and you suddenly have new significance in his mind.]

[Well, whatever,] he says, cheerfully. Neither hypothetical pain nor hypothetical murder is something he feels that he needs. He has no problem waiting for Bella to figure out what she wants and then abiding by that decision, whatever it happens to be.

[You're very convenient,] Bella says fondly.

[And you've got a perfect memory and you can make yourself good at whatever you want, so it's not like school's ever gonna be hard,] he points out.

[Yeah. I think I want a basically unremarkable public face until further notice, so I don't want to overdo that sort of thing, but yeah.]

...Bella being unremarkable? Yeah, that's gonna take magic.

[You realize not everyone looks upon me as the most interesting thing to happen in their life. Even if they meet me. You'll notice I am not in ongoing contact with any friends from Phoenix and that I do not routinely have to fend off reporters who want to talk about my fantastic accomplishments - mostly because there aren't any to speak of,] says Bella, amused. [I've been living a pretty low-key life.]

[Well, you're pretty fucking remarkable to me,] he says. [But yeah, I getcha.]

[I always figured I'd wait until I was older before really doing anything, because there are so many obstacles in the way of a teenager trying to really do things that it didn't seem like the most productive thing I could be doing - better to get ready to handle what I'll have to work with as an adult, right? - but now I have lots to work with, lots and lots, so here goes,] Bella says.

[I'm planning to quit aging when I'm somewhere in my early twenties, maybe later if I don't think I can slip that under some relevant radar,] Bella says. [I don't plan on dying ever, and would be rather obliged if you didn't either.]

[It's different now,] says Alice. [I've got more to stick around for,] like Bella, and underground lairs, and blood-soaked showers, and rains of jellybeans, and Bella, [and I can just not die if I feel like it.]

[Don't just directly wish for immortality,] Bella warns. [Mythology is full of ways that can go wrong if handled naively. I'm working on it.]

[Does your regen handle diseases?] Bella asks. [Most of those aren't really fast, but there's probably some I haven't heard of.]

Given who he was thinking of when he wished it: [It should!]

[Good, good. By default mine works fast enough that I think it'll handle even very sudden injuries - like, I dunno, guillotine wounds, or getting hit directly in the head with a van. Also mine doesn't hurt like yours does, actually comes with a little anesthetic, but that's probably just - personal taste.]

Bella rolls her eyes. She walked into that. [Designing powers is fun and complicated and just the right amount of challenging. I don't think college'll let me major in that, though.]

[And you're awesome at it,] he says, not bothering to verbalize his opinion of college. (Total indifference, for the record.)

[The point of college, at this point, is not to learn things, anyway. Pentagons can learn me things. The point of college now is networking for assistance in taking over various portions of the world, which means I have to aim for Ivy League or similar,] Bella says.

[It might actually take some doing to get into the Ivy League. I have lots of A's and some extracurriculars and I used to volunteer at a food pantry because Renée was doing it, but the Ivy Leagues care about sports and I don't have a chance to accumulate more than a little sports experience even if I get a doctor here to prescribe me an inner ear med and then have it 'miraculously cure' my balance issues and then I pentagon myself Olympic skill at whatever games are even played here.] Pause. [Although that could make a good, inspiring personal essay. And they care about legacy candidates - Charlie didn't go to college at all, Renée got her associate's degree by correspondence and hasn't done any school since.]

[What in the fuck is a legacy candidate?] he asks, while idly cooking up semi-legitimate medical explanations for a sudden cessation of balance problems.

[Someone whose parents went to the school. If you can get a few generations of a family to go to your school, they tend to feel affiliated with it and give the school money.] She opens up his thoughts about balance issues, looking for something she could tell a doctor with an actual medical degree to have the miracle cure properly on-record.

Alice obligingly speculates in greater depth! The fact that there is no need to figure out what's actually wrong with her opens up the possibilities a little.

[I do have to be able to convince a doctor to diagnose me with something and prescribe me with something for it to look right.]

[Yeah, but you have magic acting skills and can lie about your symptoms,] he says cheerfully.

[Enh - I can lie about my symptoms if they don't want to talk to my parents, such as because they don't believe that I can remember how I was presenting at age three,] Bella says. [Which I honestly couldn't have done till recently.]

[Okay, yeah,] he acknowledges. [Still. Fake cures are easier to find than real ones, y'know?]

[Right. Hmm. Some of these vestibular disorders can be caused by head trauma. I wonder if I could sell 'oh, the van knocked my ears back how they're supposed to be, and apparently I hit my head on something when I was really little'? And not have to go to a doctor at all.]

[And I'll have to resist the temptation to fly,] Bella adds. [Yeah, that works. And then I have admissions-office bait that lets me tell them I want to be a medical researcher to learn more about how such amazing things could occur so that we can harness these principles for the benefit of everyone, and also how much I value Sport Of Choice and by the way look how talented I proved to be at it once I could finally play.]

[That is some quality bullshit you are spinning there,] he says fondly.

[I'm going to have very stiff bullshit competition. I'm trying to think of another in - something unusual, everyone has test scores and grades and the requisite handful of clubs and a personal essay. But for now I might as well wish myself some grace.] This takes a pentagon. She gets up and dances, experimentally.

[How's it going?] he asks after a short pause, because he is so not the person to talk to about unique getting-into-school assets.

[Unfortunately, the kinds of things I can think of are mostly the kinds of things that would get me attention I don't want, or they involve brainwashing. I'm pretty sure they don't interview everyone who applies. I'm going to see what the Internet has to say, for inspiration.]

[The internet,] Bella says, [thinks I should definitely pick up a sport, and possibly also do something volunteerish outside of the country. Maybe graduating early isn't a good plan after all; I need time to fit all this in before applications are due! Man, if only I had known I was going to obtain magic powers back when I was fourteen. I suppose I could leave high school early, go to a decent state school and be impressive, and then transfer.]

[Not my area of expertise,] Alice understates.

[I'm just thinking, um, out loud. So to speak.] Bella decides to go for a flight; if she's invisible, she can go out the open kitchen window, and the curtains will just look like they're being disturbed by a breeze. [Hm, avenues of impressiveness beyond just getting good grades in everything... Academic contests, being ridiculously good at sport-of-choice but not so much that I get irksome attention and that's probably not the best angle to concentrate on anyway since no one cares about women's sports, getting into the arts in some capacity, clubs, activism, starting a small business... can you think of anything?]

[Write a book,] he suggests.

[Enh, there's writing for a weird niche, and then there's writing sociology or something about a weird niche - and the latter is bound to have a smaller audience and more academic prestige.]

In that case, why not write a book about, oh, masochism?

Bella laughs. [It's still not necessarily the best book topic - especially if I'm going to bill myself as a Future Scientist and not a Future Anthropologist - but I'll put it on the mental list and see how saturated the field already is.]

How saturated is the field? Alice has no idea. He hasn't read anything in that area more recent than Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, who by the way was a fucked-up son of a bitch.

[Is that his full name? Is it something about having four names?] Bella asks. [Now that would be an attention-getting thesis statement.]

[What, that it makes you kinky? Okay, that would be fucking hilarious.]

[Rather,] Bella agrees. [I think I might go with something in, like, the history of medicine - it's related to my admissions bait and doesn't require me to have unrealistic access to testing facilities.]

[Sounds like fun,] he says, fondly amused.

[Meh. I'll probably pentagon through most of it - acquire some skills, magic the information into an order that supports some interesting conclusion and then magic it into a file instead of bothering typing it up. I don't actually want to write books as any kind of significant pursuit in my life.]

[You are super-useful,] Bella acknowledges happily.

Bella hovers, and opens that up, and basks. She can afford to kill a few minutes in a feedback loop.

There's less feedback when he can't see her liking it - but he can feel her paying attention, and imagine her liking it. And it gives him many happy feelings.

It turns out that while that's pleasant, it does eventually get dull. [So. Wanna participate in an experiment?]

[Sure! What kind?]

[There's generally a different quality to opening up your thoughts to look at them in detail than there is to having similar thoughts of my own, but I don't know how different in all cases - in particular I haven't opened up any nocioception symbols. Make a triangle and I'll see how that is? And then if that actually-hurts instead of just informing me about the hurt I can pentagon a modification into the power.]

[Worth one low-stakes try to find out. Knowing what I can do and how unpleasant it has to be is pretty important.]

Shrugging, he bites his lip again—for a square this time, because the idea is for him to actually like it instead of barely noticing.

[There are clear advantages,] Bella concedes. [Still not a permanent edit I want to make to myself. ...Although I do wonder why more coinmakers didn't. I'd probably eventually go ahead with it if I were working alone.]

Curiously: [Why don't you?]

[I like my brain how it is. I don't have a good way to predict all the consequences of changing something that... fundamental. It's a native part of you, but it's not of me; I developed for seventeen years with typical reactions to pain. And I don't have to, 'cause I have a pet masochist.]

...okay, that last part makes him aww.

Alice decides he is gonna go make some pentagons.