"I've tried non-circles. I didn't vary too far afield, but I did triangles and squares and asterisky things and stars with various numbers of points."

"And circles were the best?"

"At least while holding the rest of my outfit constant and the way I happened to implement them, yes."

"Still, worth experimenting with," she says, noting this down.

"Mm-hm! Since I'm not cut out for swarm-fighting I don't worry about it that much, though."

"Swarm fighting is a valuable and necessary public service but it still feels like a waste of time to try to do personally."

"Yes, but you have other reasons to want high performance. I can stop a car and I'm not going to be in a position to stop a kaiju, so I don't need to squeeze every iota of pretty out."

"That's true. I suspect I would be in your position, but more for research purposes than out of a desire for greater specific functionality."

"It's still really interesting what things are objectively magic-pretty and what things aren't! I take laborious data on circle arrangements! It's just not a matter of practical urgency for me."

"True. I'm very glad I got what I did."

"It's a very good power theme."

"It is!!! --It's possible your power will combine interestingly with something--if combinations work--and you might want to optimize harder then, if it happens."

"Yup, I'm open to doing that if it comes up."

"I don't have nearly enough information to informedly speculate but I have plenty enough to wildly fantasize!"

"Do tell!"

"Synergize with a healer and stop aging, synergize with someone who does something permanent, if those exist, to stop things and make them stay stopped--I'm thinking less 'permanently anchor an object in place' and more 'and now this object is no longer radioactive'--actually, that's a thought, can you stop radioactivity at all right now, even temporarily, that seems like the kind of thing that would make sense to let the Red Cross know is on the table just in case..."

"I haven't tried that, and my range is okay but I don't know if it's good enough. I probably cannot do it in a radiation suit, see."

"Yes, that makes sense--well, at least some radiation is just electromagnetic waves, like light but much higher-energy, so we could try it with a light?"

"I can in fact turn lights off, I thought of trying that! But I don't know if I'm stopping them at a different point in the process, like stopping electricity going to them."

"We could try a glowstick?"

"Ooh, good idea, I haven't tried that!"

"I don't have any right now but they can't be hard to acquire! I suspect there are stores that sell them in this mall, it's much more probable than a stylist."

"Yeah, we can probably find some. Let's get the check and go look -" She waves down a waiter.

Katarzyna pays for the meal and then, on a whim, offers Isabella her arm. 

Isabella links elbows and laces fingers with her.