"Well then. If… that's the way you intend to play the game, my first bit of advice is to make sure you have a plan for keeping safe anything you can't afford to lose. Also, most of the things you can. You're likely to need it. I won't enquire too deeply as to that, but yes. A plan. Not a hope. A plan."
Makoto flexes her jaw, looking thoughtful. "What would your idea of a plan look like?"
"There are five kinds of security, broadly speaking: passive material, active material, immaterial, sapient, and obscurity. Ideally you want all five, and you are not truly secure if you only have one or two. Take for example the Egyptian pyramids. Every one built like an artificial mountain and sealed tight, stacked with precious treasures to bury a king who was honored like or even above some of their gods. Passive security; no one got in easily. Active- well, it was the Bronze Age- no cameras, electric eyes, nothing like that. The passages into the interior had traps, but no monitoring, not across the centuries, might as well be passive. Immaterial security- my predecessors found traces of some of the old wards and curses."
Rei's eyebrows climb. "The pyramids really were cursed?"
"Oh, they were terrible in their day. I wouldn't have crossed them back then if I were you, and I'd do a lot of things if I were you. Still, no consistent sapient security, either, in the long run, to maintain or notice if someone did something subtle to weaken the wards. And certainly no obscurity- you can't miss the things. The pyramids of Egypt were paragons of two kinds of security, and had none of three others. Two out of five isn't bad, you say? Tch. Every single one was broken into and looted at one time or another. Eventually."
You blink. "All of them? I hadn't heard that."
"Every one, thousands of years ago. Either the curses wore off, or someone figured out a way to bypass them or exhaust them, or something else happened. But they're all empty of treasure now. Because two lines of security are not enough. So instead, take for example my car!" Miss Carroll grins then. "I suppose it would be prideful to say it's got more kinds of security than the pyramids, but then, I'm more realistic about my expectations than the pharaohs." She starts ticking off her fingers. "Obscurity- I parked it by a disused abandoned factory in the middle of the night, a driver will pick it up before dawn, and I have reason to know emergency services won't be there any time soon to investigate the lights and rumbling of someone collapsing a building." Minako and Makoto blush slightly. "It's quite unlikely that anyone will happen by the vehicle. If they do, sapient. Our little contractor friends, the ones who gave you those flowers." She points to the sprig of lilac you still have tucked in one of your buns- you'd mostly forgotten it.
Miss Carroll takes a deep breath and lectures on. You try to keep focused on what she's saying. "Passive material and immaterial- mid-grade warding, steel, and bulletproof glass, sturdy enough to resist casual intrusion by mortal agency. One of you ladies could no doubt pry it open like a tin can, but if there were plenty like you in England, we'd live in a very different world. Thinking about more plausible risks, it might not stop a determined car thief forever, especially if they had any proper magic, but it'd give them a nasty surprise or two, and take a good while to get past. Certainly long enough that an unmotivated attacker would be chased off by what the pixies can do. A motivated attacker would at least be forced to slow down enough for the pixies to put a trace on him, over and above the tracker on the vehicle itself. Remember, sapient security doesn't always mean human, and there are real advantages to a good working relationship with people who aren't."
