TLV: Inbox

[theweirdos]

There's no voicemail greeting. She might get around to it eventually, but for now, better hope you've typed that network ID in correctly.

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[theweirdos]

She scowls at him, pale grey eyes narrowing. "So, what, you're gonna keep me on the Admiral's leash until you decide I can use my magic the way you think I should? 'Cause I can tell you the exact limits of what I have right now. What do you think I've been doing the last six months?"

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Of course not, how would that help you get control over the big, powerful stuff?" Chase shakes his head. "I'm going to get you the rest of your magic back, obviously. I just wanted to ask you a couple things first. Like if you want me to put any limits on it, like I did on the gun, or if you want it just like normal. Or if you want it all at once or, I don't know, in stages." He shrugs. "It's totally up to you."

[theweirdos]

Nancy doesn't respond immediately, just continues to regard him narrow-eyed, looking for the catch.

"Why would I want it back in pieces?" she asks, sounding faintly disgusted.

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Honestly no idea," Chase shrugs. "I was just trying to come up with other options for not-the-whole-thing in case it wasn't something you thought about. Like I said, this is up to you. I just want to you be comfortable, here. If you kill somebody on accident, I'll manage it with the other wardens, it's not like it hasn't been done before, but I don't want it to mess you up."

[theweirdos]

Her gaze flicks away, and her jaw clenches, pride warring with the visceral memory of recoil shuddering down her wrist and the sight of spreading blood.

"Fuck," she says, and tosses back a slug of her drink, only just able to keep herself from coughing at the burn in the back of her throat. "Yeah, okay. No lethal shit unless my life's in danger. Or someone else's is, I guess. I don't wanna be held back if that demon asshole goes all psycho killer again."

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Deal." He's not sure if that's a win or not, but she did take a safety, so maybe it's a win. He sets his own barely touched drink down to get out his phone to contact the Admiral. "I'm going to leave an exception to that in me, though. I don't think you'll learn control if I seriously piss you off and you're expecting the Admiral will protect me, but I'm okay with the risk." He flashes her a grin over his phone. "I'm going to bet you'll manage to keep from blowing me up or throwing me off the ship."

[theweirdos]

Nancy snorts at that, rolling her eyes. "Your funeral, rich boy," she says. She isn't going to blow him off the ship - probably - but if he really is getting her magic back, she can play along with the joke.

[fifthofthecovenant]

"You say that like I haven't died here before, too," Chase counters, putting his phone away again until it buzzes with his answer. "Though the guy who offed me was a complete moron about it and gave me plenty of time to see who he was and throw him into a wall about it."

[theweirdos]

"Why'd he kill you?" she asks after a moment, and there's a hint of genuine bafflement there. Yeah, he's an asshole, but he's not that much of an asshole.

"Or was it another murder everyone in sight psycho rampage?"

[fifthofthecovenant]

"No, it was personal." Chase grimaces. "Sort of. It was because his temp warden who he'd gotten attached to got switched to me. Which was the dumbest reason to kill someone, that warden didn't even like me, he barely spoke to me despite us actually having some stuff in common, and they got permanently paired like two months later anyway. He apologized about it a few weeks later, in public and everything, and then we never spoke again."

[theweirdos]

"Jesus," Nancy mutters. And then, at a more normal volume, "What a dick."

It isn't entirely clear whether she's referring to his killer, or to the absentee warden who was apparently worth killing over. Maybe both.

[fifthofthecovenant]

"He's gone now. They both are, actually." Chase shrugs. "But yeah, they kind of were."

His phone buzzes, and he picks it up to check. Awesome, nice and quick. "Okay. Request granted. You should be able to use all your magic now, or at least really soon. Sometimes it takes a minute."

[theweirdos]

"Guess I won't curse their asses, then," Nancy says, and while she's mostly joking, there's a slight twist to her tone that suggests at least some part of her would have genuinely considered it.

She hesitates a moment, staring down at her hands, then runs them up over her face and her hair. "Did it work?"

Whatever 'it' is, the answer's no. Apparently it will take a minute.

[fifthofthecovenant]

Ironically, one of them is coming back later. Chase will only be mildly disgusted to see Edwin again.

"If you were trying to do a magic thing, no, not yet. Give it a minute or two more. I noticed it pretty quick when Wen Ning got mine back, but my magic's got different qualities than yours that make it a lot more obvious, I think." Hers isn't stupidly addictive and going to kill her, after all.

[theweirdos]

"Like the whole demon eye thing," Nancy says, and then gives him a thoughtful look. "What colour are they supposed to be, anyways? I don't think I've ever seen you with normal eyes."

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Blue," Chase says. He smirks a bit and admits, "One of the other things about my magic is, it's addictive. I didn't know that until after I found my birth dad and he told me about it, and of course by then it was way too late. I feel nasty if I stop using it for a couple hours, so it's easier to just keep a spider or three around all the time."

[theweirdos]

"Seriously?" She stares at him for a moment, like she's halfway certain he's fucking with her, then, "That's fucked up. Musta been pretty shitty being here as an inmate."

Given the whole missing or heavily restricted powers thing.

[fifthofthecovenant]

"It really was," Chase agrees. "Though I can also admit I've probably gotten worse, since then. It wasn't so bad before Wen Ning gave my powers back, I could get by with a lot less back then."

Yeah, he's self-aware enough now to know he's definitely not done anything about his addiction, and has in fact exacerbated it. A lot. He's probably SOL unless he does use his deal on his own magic, or trying to live in a purely human world is going to be miserably.

[theweirdos]

"So is it like - you keep needing more, until you burn yourself out?" she asks, and while it's blunt as a truck, there's a thread of actual concern there, too.

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Pretty much. It's going to kill me eventually if I don't use a deal to fix it," he shrugs. "I pretty much expected to kill myself with it bringing my parents back. It's really not fair, having magic on my version of Earth be so crappy, whenever every other magic I've read up on or run into here is so much cooler."

[theweirdos]

"Shit, so fix it," she says.

And looks down at her hand again, expression conflicted. "Is it just your magic? Or does it help if you - I don't know. Channel something from someone else?"

[fifthofthecovenant]

"Don't know. I mean, these little guys--" He holds out his hand, and a spider forms up on it out of ash. "--they're technically small demons. But they don't contain any power of their own. Anything they have comes from me. I can summon spirits, but not bigger demons, that I know of, but I can only assume they wouldn't be giving me power freely even if I could. And spirits take so damn much power, they're definitely not helping me any."

He dissolves the extra spider, unsummoning it, and settles back with his glass again. "I don't know if gods like yours exist in my universe. But I don't know a lot about my universe's magic that I didn't learn on my own or from my dad, so."

[theweirdos]

"Manon's a god, but he's also the world. Life, death, earth, sky, all of it. That's still gonna be there, even if it hasn't - formed any sort of awareness or personality." She shrugs a little. "If you can learn how to tap into that, maybe it'd give you some options. You know, in case this all gets fucked up and you aren't able to get a deal."

[fifthofthecovenant]

Chase shakes his head. "I'm pretty sure somebody would've figure it out by now, if it were possible on the world I come from. When I did find the other witches, they were legacies: had families who taught them everything, had records and stuff, and they were still freaked out about the addiction and life-sucking parts of it. I haven't even really managed to master any kind of power drawing or sharing on the ship or in ports, even though I've been trying."

He abandoned that line of research pretty quickly, honestly, when he failed so spectacularly at even sensing power that wasn't active magic tied to a cast spell, let alone use it.

"Maybe that'll change with a deal, maybe not," he finishes. "Maybe I'll have to specify exactly what I want the changes to my magic to be, if I go that route."

[theweirdos]

"How'd they get magic in the first place? Do they even know? It's gotta start somewhere - maybe the whole accelerated aging thing is a curse or something because one of your common ancestors was a giant dick."

She runs a hand over her face again. This time, when she drops it, the face that looks back at him is his own, though the eyes are a shade or two darker than his natural blue. She grins, the expression ever so slightly unhinged.