"Quite. Stella and hers didn't make such great first impressions on each other, for a while it looked like they were going to be nemeses, but then her Libby met Golden's daughter Elspeth in Milliways and Elspeth sold her on Bells being awesome."

"It's getting a little hard to keep all these people straight."

"This is one of the many reasons I enjoy having perfect recall! Would you like some?"

"My memory is good enough for most purposes already."

"Okay," shrugs Bella, who doesn't really understand turning down superpowers but isn't in the mood to argue about it.

"I'm gonna go outside and set up a barrier and play with Persica's nifty special effects," says Lexi, hopping to her feet and waving at Matilda. "Thanks!"

"You're welcome! Have fun!"

"We will!" And off she goes.

"There's a standard suite of Bell superpowers - periodically updated when somebody comes up with something good or modifies something already in circulation - but perfect recall might be my favorite. It has some really stiff competition, too."

"Such as?"

"Teleporting, the defense wishes - one of those pirates shot at me a hell of a lot before Brilliance told me to let him go and deal with the cause instead of the symptom; I didn't feel a thing - the brainphone, flying. Plus torching, but that's not so much a suite thing as its own checklist item."

"Well, I can already both fly and teleport," Matilda observes. "The brainphone is awfully handy. I wouldn't want to casually wish myself perfect recall because I have no guarantee that it would be enough of an improvement on the status quo to be worth the change."

"If 'whatever the Bells are doing' doesn't suffice you could design your own, it's a hex either way," shrugs Bella.

"I might just do that."

"Lemme know when you have something."

"Will do."

"What's the structure of the TSAB like? How big is it?"

"...Which you're asking because...?"

"Curiosity. If you don't wanna tell me you don't have to."

"I have a lot of discretion but not quite that much."

Bella laughs. "Can you tell me what your co-workers have been told about me?"

"Well, I took responsibility for the fact that your partner is an immensely powerful weapon. No one was really that interested in you."

"Took responsibility for the fact that he's a powerful weapon meaning?"