Minor Mischief.

[singindemonhq]

I've been checking out the dimensional portals for a few weeks now, because it looks as though I'm going to have to bring the computer into Sunnydale to get it fixed. There's no way to smoke that over so I'd either have to use a portal or some kind of shipping. Given what I've been hearing about computers and portals the best way might be to take it in that way, but then ship it out if I had to.

The portal that Yuffie was probably taking if he was landing in Guam actually looks pretty stable - from what I hear it only re-routes to there during thunderstorms, and it hasn't been known to re-route to anywhere too nasty -not lately, anyway. There's a US network that will take you all over the place and I'd stopped off just outside LA for lunch.

/firewalled against Cole Turner.

This time, someone used the live talisman with the amber charm - that's about like a ringing cellphone. That almost had to be Astraeia, (I'd shown her how to use the two charms in combination a couple of days after I found out that the talisman is live - I'd hoped that any talismans that were around had been turned off from base, or at least separated from the invocation. The whole lore set-up means that I can't just collect any I can find and lock them up.) Anyway, the call came from just down the road from the cafe and I was quite curious about what she was doing in the LA area - if it was another rescue she was likely to need help fast, so I smoked straight over.

When I got there I found Astraeia and the Morrigan together. The only thing I could think of was that there might be more trouble with the Starlady's psycho-double, but it turned out that they meant to cause some mischief at Wolfram and Hart and needed to make sure that Cole wouldn't recognise Astraeia.

That was easy enough, Morrigan had a picture of her sister Maeve on the desk and casting a glamour to make Astraeia look very like her was a two-second job. I hyped it up to increase the likeness to Morrigan, too - Turner's quite fond of her and that likeness should have given him a helluva inhibition against harming her "sister". Magic always has a price, but this was minor stuff, and I warded off any bad vibes by telling Astraeia she'd be paying in free drinks. It's not often that they charge me for anything in Willy's anyway. It's one of the things that I like about the place - it's not a matter of the money, it's the implication that I'm welcome.

I wasn't sure what they'd be doing so it wasn't just a surface veneer; I put the makeover quite firmly in place. Apparently Astraeia hadn't asked Joan about her hair, because she suddenly seemed to realise that she didn't know how long her new look was going to last. Of course, I'm not sure either - not in this dimension, anyway. Usually all the glamours and illusions are still running when I leave - I've got no way to know how long they last after that. It might have been interesting to find out, but it the end we arranged that she'd activate the charms again when she wanted the look removed.

I smoked out quite soon after that - their idea of mischief wasn't likely to be my idea of entertainment and I've been restless for the last couple of days. Maybe I missed something, though, the nudge to remove the glamour came much later than I expected - or maybe she'd just decided to surprise Willy. I was in a different time-zone by then, anyway, and I didn't bother to work out how long it'd actually been.