and every hand shall wield the angels' swords of flame

[impetuous_force]

The lasers hit the market. The first ones are expensive; the USADI buys them all. The next batch is larger, mostly made in China, and cheaper thanks to economies of scale. They take triple-A's, and they're such a hot item that several battery companies compete for inclusion with the weapons.

Bella uses one of the ones that Sherlock gave her and pretends she bought it with the money her father gave her to pick one up. She can always use a little more untracked cash to buy magic things.

Her newt skeleton comes in.

She casts every part of the spell except the final act of will, which she can do any time, anywhere - the spell was effectively on her, to turn her into someone who can at whim destroy the Gem of Amara. She doesn't do it. Sherlock's harmless, and he still - apparently, given that he shows up at school - has the gem.

She can, sort of, trust him. Mint oil and divination lens, useful things.

She's not sure she can forgive him, but she doesn't have to forgive him to not want him to die.

Comments

[impetuous_force]

"I wouldn't think mine were either if I didn't go around with a metaphorical butterfly net over my head."

[eversomuchfun]

"Conversely, I'm not sure I could write them down if I tried. They don't come in the right format, by and large."

[impetuous_force]

"I occasionally make little doodles and invent words," shrugs Bella.

[eversomuchfun]

Sherlock also shrugs.

[impetuous_force]

"Maybe it's architectural, or idiosyncratic, or otherwise non-transferable. I don't know. It doesn't sound like you're interested, anyway."

[eversomuchfun]

"I am interested. Observe my interest," he says. "But I do think it's idiosyncratic in some way, because some part of the process is still lost on me."

[impetuous_force]

"It works very well for me. I've never tried adapting it for anyone else; maybe I'd have to know more about you."

[eversomuchfun]

"More such as what?"

[impetuous_force]

"Well, what format do you think in if it's not words?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Observed data, connections between same. Feelings. I do have some thoughts in words, they're just - unbelievably slow, compared to the rest."

[impetuous_force]

"I'm not immediately coming up with a faster encoding mechanism than writing," she says. "I mean, I guess typing could be faster if you had a decent typing speed."

[eversomuchfun]

"I do, but not nearly fast enough."

[impetuous_force]

"What I'd really like would just be directly perfect recall. But I can make paper work."

[eversomuchfun]

"Memory can be trained. Depending on what exactly you want to remember."

[impetuous_force]

"Trained how?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Mine is generally obedient. But I've heard of things like mind palaces, for storing a lot of information where you can get at it whenever you need to."

[impetuous_force]

"The advantage over notebooks being? Besides the obvious ones of portability and privacy."

[eversomuchfun]

"I don't know how it compares on storage speed, but retrieval speed has got to be orders of magnitude better."

[impetuous_force]

"Hmm. Maybe I'll look it up."

[eversomuchfun]

"Have fun."

[impetuous_force]

"I try to."

She smiles at him, just a little, and heads out of the shop.