Abu squeaked alarmingly. Iago looked sour, as usual. "Side effects is bad," he said.
"Define 'side effects'," Aladdin said.
"Weeeellll...," Genie hemmed. "You see, bth are very strong-willed. Their personalities might redivide, even though their bodies remain merged. Not to mention the residue left over from the magic! They -- er, she -- could start absorbing more people!"
"So, damned if we do and damned if we don't, huh?" Aladdin grimaced. "Any way of figuring out what the side effects will be beforehand?"
"Hmmmm," Genie mused. A plume of pink smoke obscured him for a moment, and he reappeared fressed as a gypsy fortune-teller complete with crystal ball. "The great Geninie sees all!"
"And knows nothing," Iago murmured to Abu, who snickered.
Genie peered into the crystal ball. "I see...."
"What?" Aladdin demanded. "What do you see?"
"I see....Sadira mixing the potion....adding the ingredients...."
"Wait," Aladdin snapped. "You mean this was another of her crazy plots?"
"'Fraid so. The good news is, there'll be no further mergins. To do that, she'd have to reingest the ingredients that made up the first and you simply do NOT run into a doble-yolked egg every day. Even if she DID, her target would have to do the same thing. No, the problem is that Jasira is unstable, at least physically. her body could change in reaction to unusual stimuli."
"You mean like the kind we run into ever day?" Iago said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
Genie nodded. "You got it, bird-man!"
"So what can we do?" Aladdin mused.
"Well...." Genie hazared. "We can try to get something to stabilize her; there's the tomb of Pep-Toh BisMal the Wizard that holds the Pink Potion of Horrible Taste, guarranteed to render any chaotic magic stable. We could try to find a way to un-merge them; there's a powerful book of spells in a faraway land that may have something, but that involves time travel."
"We could do the safe thing and just deal with it as it comes," Iago pleaded. "I mean, how bad could it be?"
Sun Apr 22 08:38:45 2001