"You always were the heart and soul," she chirps.

"It's weird that I can understand that," Ethan says. "It's really cute, too."

Arielle punches his arm.

They pull up in front of her building, one of those rare, modern apartment buildings that are going up now. Honestly, they're cleaner and brighter than the old apartment complexes, but the city prevents a lot of the construction in the name of preserving the city's character - which makes rent sky high.

Truthfully, they probably don't have too much to worry about. She looked like a Forces/Matter expert, not a Space expert. Valerie clued her into the existence of Space magic, but she's not going to learn Co-Location anytime soon. Worst case, even if she hauls ass to the East Coast, she has a couple days.

Unless she can build a jet - but that seems unlikely with her rig.

By the time they get up, Ethan and Valerie are pretty much spent. Ethan collapses onto the couch, leaving Val with the option of waiting for Ari to get the guest bed ready, squeezing in with Ethan, or snuggling in with Valerie in her Queen like old times.


As she uses the bathroom - which, of course, has rails installed for her, because Ari wanted her to feel welcome - an email comes in through a proxy account.

I'm scared. I took everything out and blew the mine shaft. I'm huddled up alone in the back of my truck and I don't know what to do.

Somehow, she's managed to form some sort of connection to the lost soul. It's better than being afraid of her showing up with an army of suicide bomber drones loaded with Matter-made bombs or whatever.

It was kid stuff, nothing big. My uncle got my brother a few kits and I took them because he didn't care for them and started making little solar cells and engines and stuff. Girls aren't supposed to play with that kinda thing around here, though, so my mom got mad. I made a little arduino with a wifi connection and a screen I pulled from someone's broken laptop to watch your videos, because you inspired me. I'd sit outside the Starbucks and watch you all day long.


You just looked so happy and sure of yourself. I wanted to feel like that too.


I got the idea for the robot in a dream. I don't know why. I felt crazy. It felt crazy. I couldn't stop thinking about it. I stopped paying attention to homework or anything, trying to figure out how to build her.

It's nearly an hour before Valerie realizes she's lost her again.

Ideally, she's just gone to sleep. It's impossible to tell, though.

"Sis, you okay in there?"

Arielle offers her a smile.

"I believe you, sis. I think you can reach her. It's like, 4am, so better get your ass to bed though~"

Having telekinesis to haul her comatose boyfriend around is fun!

He almost automatically snuggles around her, a cuddly cat pillow/blanket. She sees Arielle watching them, her face unreadable, before she chirps a good night and turns out the lights.

The following morning has Valerie and Ethan dropped off by Arielle at the Assembly building. She'd join them - the meetings aren't private - but her master is going to kick her ass and she can't be late.

"It's so shiny and modern," Bagheera says brightly as he walks alongside her on the handicap ramp.

The Sleepwalkers who keep the place running are helpful, though they're able to find it well enough, following little trickles of strange people and occasionally their Banner-Wardens down a ramp and into the big conference room she saw before. It's like it's own little sci-fi UN, particularly once she sees the big hologram of the city in the center of the room. Her spot by Ikenga is marked Wire, and Bagheera's chair sits next to it. Ikenga welcomes her with a smile and presses a button, making Wire's chair sink into the floor so she can roll right up. A few people take advantage of this to have standing desks.

"Handicap accessible, nice," Bagheera says brightly.

It's also, like, eleven a.m., because mages get to sleep in.

"Hey, hon. Everything go okay last night?"

"I think we'll avoid the B-word in that case. It's possible, even likely, that it's just psychological. Still, if she approaches, be careful - though I don't think I could stop you from helping her if I wanted to. No one's found her, yet - there's a lot of old mine shafts in that part of the country. What they'll probably do is go to her house and pick up something with a connection, since it's unlikely she knows how to clear sympathy. They're keeping it quiet so they don't out her real name until they find out more."

She laughs. "Yes. I'll say this for us, we are one of the engines of the magical economy."

There's the banging of a gavel to get the attention of the Assembly, settling the room down. The first order of business is sharing news. There's a real air of a town hall here, or, perhaps, the Occupy movement.

The items don't have a lot of relevance to her, at least, not yet. New discoveries disseminated through the Free Council, new member announcements - Bagheera included, apparently they covered her last week. Warnings about potential Seer movements and monsters, including the mysterious shark girl she witnessed.

While the news goes through, Ikenga and others open up tablets built into the desks.

"The Assemblies have a lot of rules to make sure requests are handled fairly," she explains. "I submitted my agenda requests last night, which is considered late, though not as late as raising an issue same day. Normally, it's best to submit items ahead of time to the appropriate committee, but any item can be brought up at the main meeting, in case the item is late or the committee is compromised. All last minute items are entered before discussion begins - here, we do it electronically, but elsewhere it's just shouting~. We take a quick interest vote on which items will be discussed and the rest are tabled to committee to make sure they get a fair hearing and maybe a vote next meeting."

She taps the agenda displayed on the side. "Your items are coming up at twelve fifteen, so we've got some time. You could have popped in then, but I wanted you to see the whole process at least once. The Chairwoman took immediate action on your Moros friend already with the consent of the committee heads last night, so it's not considered critical, but it'll still be discussed with the whole Assembly and you can make your case then. Since your request for your Irish friend is just a line item, you get to have a couple minutes to make your request."