"Is it true?"

"I think so. I haven't met any others of me. But I've met people who've met some. And two people have erred on the side of calling me Your Majesty rather than trying to figure out if I was a majesty first."

"An interesting sort of horizontal legacy. The majority of my alternates seem to be male," she says with a hint of distaste, "and renowned for their genius at reasoning from observed facts."

"Bells - well - most of them are called Bella - seem to need magic to take over anything," Shell Bell volunteers. "So I probably won't. Take over anything. Please don't kill me."

"I am not going to kill you," says Sherlock. "Unless you present a threat to my brother, but that seems unlikely. What sorts of advice do you tend to give?"

"People explain their magic systems. Or sometimes their fancy technology. And I ask them questions, and I tell them what I'd try to find out the answers to the questions they can't answer. And then I tell them what I'd do with what they have to get - whatever they want. They have to specify or I don't know what to do with them."

Shell Bell nods.

"What do you have?" Bella asks instantly. "Anything special?"

"Yes, but anything I don't know about," Shell Bell says. "Has he got anything cool hidden in his basement? Do you have infiltration abilities that would make you a useful assassin even now that everyone knows you can kill them? Have either of you brought any magic home from Milliways?"

"There is no scarcity on the level of basic needs," she says. "Food and clothing and so forth are abundant. At feasts it is a common practice to induce vomiting periodically in order to make room for the foods one has not yet tried. The scale of wealth therefore measures differently. Money is power."

"There is no scarcity as in it is free or as in everyone makes enough to buy as much of it as they want?"

"The latter," she says. "But the former is the effect their social habits try to portray. It's considered somewhat vulgar to speak of prices in direct, specific terms. And in fact things considered to be of negligible value are often given away as a display of status—to remind the recipient and observers that the giver need not consider the loss."

"So someone with - say - a gambling addiction could go from Capitol to poverty. Could be a malcontent, and still have enough resources to move around, go places, hear things," Bella says.

"In theory, yes," says Sherlock. "I have not witnessed any obvious examples, but my view of Capitol life is not unrestricted."

"What would be the problem after you assassinated one person? Would you be caught? Just suspected? Ushered home for your own safety?" Bell asks, changing tacks abruptly.

"I cannot depend on any expected answer to that question," says Sherlock.

"Right. And you haven't brought home any magic." She chews her lip. "Have you got friends here who might help? I really am best when there's magic involved."

"Unfortunately, no," she says, with another of her barely-perceptible smiles. "People seem to find me off-putting."

"I don't know," she says. "Regardless of my preferences I am a walking threat of violence and it is difficult to establish genuine personal relationships under those circumstances. My brother might have better luck."

"He can convince me to trust him, or trust you? It seems like I'd be working with both of you."

"To trust him, and thereby to trust me. The two things are not separable."

"I have not," she says. "Do you think it is a good idea?"

"Not everybody wants my advice. Most people want money, and some of them have magical trinkets they'll part with. And you've got your victor's village house, you can probably hide more stuff than I can."

"Guess," says Bell.

"You also desire to overthrow the Capitol. If we were to combine our efforts we could each access resources otherwise closed to us. For example, I believe I access Milliways more frequently than you do, although I have not been doing it for as long. I also have the means to visit the Capitol, which you do not. On the other hand, you have evidently learned to make much better use of Milliways than I. You have a room here, you trade seashells for sustenance. And you are wearing a magical weapon as a hair ornament."

"Then I will," she says. "Please do not bankrupt us."

"What would do that?" Bell asks. "...I mean, I wouldn't actually put it past myself to live here for half a year. I love my parents but I don't miss them, not really. I just don't know if they'd have enough to eat if I weren't around."

"That, then, would depend on how much time your half year spanned for us. If our timelines are closely linked, and you live on the Bar's idea of unexceptional meals, I don't anticipate a problem. If you live here at six months to my two weeks, or make frequent extravagant purchases, there may be trouble eventually."

"I usually get potatoes. With butter on them they're nutritionally complete, and at least they aren't clams," says Shell Bell. "And they're cheap. But that's when I'm trying to stretch one bag of clamshells as long as I can. And rationing my others to buy nonperishables to bring home and 'find on the beach, it must have fallen off a cruise ship, Mom' at... key moments."

"It is no longer necessary for you to live on buttered potatoes," says Sherlock.

Bell looks nostalgic. "First time I came here I was six and didn't know shells could be money. I asked the bar for 'food I could afford'. I have dreams about what she gave me sometimes."

"Evidence suggests that the bar enjoys providing people with food they will find both pleasant and nourishing."

"She managed it." Bell sighs. "If your dad invented a third of the tech District Three has your family probably captured some of the proceeds, right? I never pay attention during the backstory spots during the Games, but. I suppose I sound like a hick."

"He spent it all," says Sherlock. "Tony has begun to make some of it back."

"Me."

"Were you... sick?" guesses Shell Bell.

"In a manner of speaking. I was born Tony's identical twin," she explains. "That did not suit me. The kind of relatively subtle modification necessary to correct the dissonance is an unremarkable thing to achieve, in the Capitol. Our father had a friend from the Capitol who arranged the appropriate access, for a fee, of course. An increasingly exorbitant one. When he was finished with us, I was as you see me and the family fortune was largely his. We no longer consider him a friend."

"Oh," says Shell Bell. "Well. They did a very good job. I'm sorry your ex-friend is terrible."

"They did indeed do a very good job," she agrees. "I am probably the only girl outside the Capitol who can truthfully say her breasts were designed by an artist."

"Speaking of outside the Capitol. I've never seen anyone else from Panem here, and I do my very best to talk to everyone," says Shell Bell. "Even scary people who want to spend the entire conversation talking about how if we weren't in Milliways they'd like to drink my spinal fluid. Have you seen anyone else, besides Tony and me?"

"I have not," she says. "Was that an example from practical experience?"

"Yeah. I was nine. Creepy, ugly kraken, that guy. He didn't actually get any spinal fluid. Or any other fluid."

"Why spinal fluid," Sherlock muses. "Personal preference, or dietary requirement? Around here it can be difficult to tell."

"I think he was a human. Although plenty of folks just pass for it and aren't. I haven't had any luck getting superpowered aliens to come home with me. At least not yet."

"Have you met many superpowered aliens?" she inquires.

"A few. A surprising percentage of them speak English. A couple of the ones who didn't were telepathic, that was interesting."

"Yes, I imagine so."

"I hear that when me's are born where there's magic, we tend to have some. Not the world takeover kind. Just a defense. People are sometimes surprised when I tell them I can talk to telepaths."

"As far as I am aware, my alternates do not ordinarily possess magical powers. Although I believe at least one of them is a vampire."

"I heard of one of me being a vampire too. But it was third- or fourth-hand."

"I find it curious that we are both so oversupplied with other selves, when generally the people I meet here have few or none of their own."

"Maybe we're easy to produce. Or very likely to wind up interesting enough for Milliways. Or it entertains someone to put us together in a way it doesn't with most other collections of variants on a template," shrugs Bell.

"I have frequently suspected that whoever arranges the movements of the front door does so at least partly for entertainment."

Bell looks like she'd dearly like to say something snide but doesn't quite dare.

"Yes?"

"I wonder if me's keep running things where they're from, not because we're power-hungry, but because we're just easily annoyed by how things are run and have - well, not counting me - decent luck."

"It occurs to me that your luck may have just improved."

"Because you can get me to the capital and I can point my stick at stuff?" Bell asks. "I don't think that alone will help. I need to know more, have a look at stuff, maybe talk to your brother about building some things."

"Naturally," says Sherlock. "Would you like to meet him?"

"Yeah, but we don't know how the timelines work. And I can't really saunter into District Three. So unless he gets a lot of time off to visit shell-collecting clamdiggers on his Victory Tour..."

"I was thinking that I would leave you holding the door while I go and find him," she says. "It would not be long. Both the door and Tony are in our house."

"Oh, is that how that works? I suppose it must," muses Bell. "Okay."

Sherlock stands up.

Bell goes with her to the door, and holds it.

She steps out.

"Shell Bell," replies - Shell Bell, letting the door go.

"That's cute," he says, grinning. "So what's the deal?"

"Bell has expressed a tentative interest in helping me overthrow the Capitol," says Sherlock.

"Gotcha," says Tony. His friendliness doesn't exactly vanish, but it is definitely serious time now.

"But there's not enough to work with yet. I have a stick, and I don't think it's Capitol-overthrowing material, although it could be part of a plan to accomplish same," says Bella, leading them back over to her booth and sitting them down. She flattens her sign to the table so it won't be visible from across the room. "We need more stuff. Tech they don't have, magic nobody has."

"We can have all the tech we want if I can figure out somewhere to put it," says Tony. "Our house doesn't have the tools to manufacture anything big, and the places that do are watched closely enough that even if they couldn't catch me lifting the merchandise, they could catch me covering my tracks. Plus transport is a problem. Less of one now that we've got the bar, but still, problem."

"What about little things?" Bell asks. "How are you at miniaturization?"

"Pretty fucking good."

"I don't think there's a reason to prefer big stuff. Does your house get searched regularly or anything?"

"Nope," he says with great confidence. "And I'd know."

"There you go. Build tiny things in the basement." Bell closes her eyes. "I know - very little about how technology works. I've learned a lot here, but it's all scattered from a thousand universes. I don't know what the state of the art actually is in Panem. Because they don't tell us. Because we don't need to know it to operate boats. What kinds of tiny things could you make in the basement?"

"...Limited kinds," he admits. "Like I said, I don't have the tools. I can make tiny things that will blow up much bigger things. I can make tiny communication devices. I can make... I don't know, what do we need me to make?"

"Communication devices and blowing-up things are good," Bell says. "We can start there. Can you make blowing-up things that can put themselves where they're told?" Pause. "Especially if free of the engineering constraint of having to make them blow themselves up without an outside source of ignition, because... I have a stick. And what kinds of tools do you need? If you're serious about this you should both set up consultancies in the bar like mine and see what you can trade for or buy."

"Nice stick," says Tony.

"I like my stick. You can't have it. It took practice to make it do what I want and I'm lucky I live near the ocean."

"Hey, you can keep your stick," he says, raising his hands placatingly. "I wouldn't dream of touching your stick."

Sherlock snorts.

The flame goes away. Shell Bell puts her hair up with it once more. "If it were easier to use, it might make sense to a certain sort of mind to put it in the hands of someone with more freedom of movement than I have," she says. "But it's not. Anyway. Self-deploying explodey things? Yes or no?"

"Easily if I had the right stuff," he says. "Not a chance if I don't. Right now I don't."

"What stuff?" Bell asks, predictably.

"Depends what kind of self-deploying I want," he says. "Do we want flying or scuttling? Scuttling's easier, I could probably scrape that together without worrying anybody, but it's more limited. Flying means propulsion systems, which usually means some kind of fuel, which means controlled substances that I can't actually get from Bar and I know this because I've tried."

"You can't use, I dunno, booze as fuel? Because she does booze," Bell says. "Flying's better because it won't leave tracks but scuttling could work."

"Flying can leave tracks, too, and sometimes they're a lot clearer," says Tony. "No way alcohol is an efficient enough fuel. I could probably... hmm, there are options. What do we blow up, anyway?"

"I don't know yet. A map would help. Knowing more about the Capitol's inner workings would help. It's possible directly burning things down is a better idea anyway."

"I can get you a map," Tony says easily.

"A good map? Not a pointless little tourist map or something out of a kids' book. Actually, I wonder if the bar has them." Bell gets up to ask.

"She probably does," he says.

"Now that is something I can do," he says.

"Can you? Good."

"Most of them are ignorant patsies," he says. "Like, upwards of ninety percent. And then you have the ones who are pulling crap, which is most of the rest."

"Nearly nobody being decent?" sighs Bell. "Well. I guess that makes logistics easier, if there's just about no one it's a massive priority to avoid." Pause. "Are we on roughly the same page with casualties, here?"

"What page are you on?" he asks.

"I expect people are going to die," Bell says flatly. "I expect not all of them are gonna be personally responsible for the Games, or for policies related to public flogging, or for people in the Districts not having the vote. I expect that, since as of this time we are all humans with extremely limited resources compared to the bad guys, we will be off our game one day and somebody who really oughtn't be dead will die - somebody we like or somebody who happens to be twelve or somebody who would've gone on to cure salt fever. And I expect we ought to do what we can do anyway, because if we wait for someone else to do it, that amounts to betting that the next revolution will not only succeed, and will not only be less bloody than ours would, but that it will come quick enough for this difference in death toll to make up for every person in every District who'll die in the interim of the Games or of starvation or of terrible medical care or of casual execution."

"So," says Bell. "Pages, similar, yes. Okay." She turns her attention to the map.

"I mean, not that I wouldn't love to do this without killing anybody we don't wanna kill. But unless we have seriously superior force, the real world doesn't work that way."

"But," Shell Bell says, "the more superior the force, the faster and more surgically we can work. So I think you guys probably want to set up signs for assassinations and custom engineering projects. And acquire stick-equivalents of your own if you can."

"The kind of custom engineering I do best, if I sell it to the wrong people it could actually give us worse collateral than trying to run our revolution on a shoestring budget," says Tony. "So: yes, but very carefully."

"Right. You both wanna pick customers carefully. I'm not so picky. I think talking to me usually cuts casualties in the worlds of whoever I'm consulting. Even if they aren't nice people, the ones whose priority is being not-nice don't want my help in the first place. We can coordinate, maybe, if I get people who could be running things cleaner with some precision stabbing or explodey trinkets."

"Now that sounds like a plan," says Tony.

The phrase 'precision stabbing' actually causes Sherlock to smile slightly.

"And," Bella says, "comm devices could come in handy here. I'm happy to just live in Milliways for months now I'm not running down a supply of shells that I could get away with leaving by whichever door and the ones I can carry on my person. If I find somebody, I can stick my head out the door and call you, if we have those. And then you can try for a door-summoning, yeah? If the timeline works out. I'm not so sure how that works. I hear all kinds of stories but I've never found anyone else from Panem here before. So I haven't been able to compare."

"The most obvious question is, when are you?"

"July ninth, year 72," says Shell Bell. "It was early morning, if that matters. I found this instead of the hall when I opened my bedroom door. Tony's supposed to start his Victory Tour next week."

"Sounds about right," says Tony.

"Yes," Sherlock confirms. "This time at least, we are within a few hours of one another."

"Are our districts even in the same time zone? Actually - forget districts - Four spans two all by itself. I'm in the earlier one. And... what does this imply about us being able to contact each other again? If you leave and I stay here, even for a solid six months - when I come out it'll still be July ninth, early morning. You won't have time to find the place again. Unless you will. I've seen people enter and leave several times, when they come often enough and it's one of my longer stints, but me being here doesn't do anything to time passing in their worlds. For that matter, I'm not clear on how Sherlock appeared here when I've already been on the premises for two days. Ugh. I've been coming here for twelve years. Actually, I spend so long here that it might add up to more like thirteen by now. And I still don't get this sort of thing."

"I am not sure anyone does," says Sherlock.

"I'll be right back," says Tony, and he gets up and heads over to the bar.

"Well," says Shell Bell. "We can experiment and make tentative conclusions, provided we don't expect them to hold every time. But it would be really convenient if we had a way to communicate in Panem, too. Especially since it's otherwise going to be hard to coordinate service sales. In theory I can take down room numbers and Tony can leave whatever he makes as an inter-room package for the next time the customer reappears. I don't think assassinations can be made to work the same way. Do you do anything else?" Bell asks Sherlock. "Anything... portable."

"Solve difficult mysteries," she says. "Although I am not sure that is especially portable, either."

"It could be, if at least one of us manages to meet the person more than once and collect lots of portable evidence the second time - photos of places? Articles by unreliable reporters? What can you do with that sort of thing gathered by not-you?"

"I have never tried. It is a habit of mine to find out more than I'm meant to from whatever information is left in my path."

"Okay. Well. We can try it, advertising results-not-guaranteed and all. You're comfortable enough with the assassinations idea in the first place that I gather you aren't scared to go to other worlds."

"I am not, no. Should I be?"

"I am," says Bell. "I never have. I don't know how long it would take me to get back or what I'd do in the meantime."

"I see what you mean," Sherlock acknowledges.

"Yes. But I suppose it also matters why one might be visiting another world in the first place, and the trustworthiness of one's escort."

"Yeah. I haven't found anyone who I trusted that much yet. To also let me go back, anyway. It would probably have been easy to find an acceptable person to outright adopt me when I was little and cute. And they'd have tried to make sure I never went back to my parents, for my own good. Because Panem's no place to live." She shrugs. "It's even possible they would've been right, but I avoided going anywhere else from visit one."

"Wise."

"Maybe. What's Tony off getting?"

"Parts," says Sherlock. "It seems our conversation has inspired him somehow."

"Ooh," says Bella.

"Expect something useful to come out of it."

"I will. I'll be terribly disappointed if he just makes us celebratory hats."

—She laughs.

"Unless they're useful celebratory hats," acknowledges Bell.

"Unlikely. But possible."

"They could be hats of invisibility," suggests Bell. "That would be very useful indeed."

"Unfortunately, I don't believe he has the means."

"Should we list the other services, I wonder?"

"I don't think so. If clients have strong opinions about how they want to conduct their world takeovers or whatever, they might start lying to me to get me to call you or Tony in. Then I can't evaluate cost-benefit correctly or even give the best advice. Most of my business isn't directly from word of mouth but it's not negligible."

"A valid point," says Sherlock.

"Besides. I haven't met any others of me personally, but I've met folks who live under their empires. I think they're mostly... not the sort to call in assassins. Not as an advertised service, anyway. It can't help if my parallelism is doubted."

"I see."

"They build pretty utopias and style themselves Empress. Sometimes there are Emperors too. There is at least one Princess. Which is weird to me. At this time I'd consider accepting any risk of having children unconscionable. I guess it might be different if I lived in a pretty utopia."

"Most things are."

Bell chuckles.

Sherlock smiles.

"I wonder why I've never met one of me. I bet if I met one, she'd help."

"Perhaps that is why."

"You think Milliways or whoever... pilots it... disapproves of overthrowing the Capitol?"

"They might. Or they might find it less entertaining if you had imperial help."

Shell Bell makes a disgruntled noise.

Sherlock shrugs.

"What is it like?" Bell asks, folding her arms on the table and putting her chin on them. "Having money, I mean, and enough food that isn't clams for every meal forever and salmon most Tuesdays and Fridays."

"Relaxing," she says after a moment. "Fewer things to worry about."

"It sounds it. I haven't been exactly worried since I built up my stash of nonperishables. Even after I started bringing them to Lynnis's family occasionally too. I'm not likely to run out. But I still have to spend so much time on the clam boat and poaching to get a reasonable baseline of calories on the table."

"My parents would wonder where I'd gone," she said. "If I just never came back. I don't think Panem would pause in eternal stasis if I just never came back. They would worry. They love me. And they eat the clams too. I'm a net positive calorie source."

"I was wondering if the cause might not be better served by your coming to live with us," she explains.

"Certainly something of a logistical problem."

"Rather. Is there a way to stow me on the train when the Victory Tour comes by? He'll skip Three until the end, so it won't be the next stop, but..."

"Perhaps that can be arranged."

"What a fascinating notion," she murmurs.

"It might be necessary for me to steal someone's canoe," Bell muses. "And push that out so it can drift back in later, empty of Shell Bells." She sighs. "This is not going to make Ranae and Shark happy, not in the least, but I can un-die when we're all done, if everything goes all right - and if everything goes pear-shaped I can slip away to the multiverse at the next opportunity without worrying further about them."

"I believe that is a solid plan."

"Okay. So a day before Tony's due to arrive, I leave a note, swipe a canoe - that'll be easy, I can melt the lock off the shed and bury it - push it off, make for the train stop, and - what is the plan for getting me onto the train? Are you allowed to travel with him? Will he and I have to figure it out ourselves? How obnoxious is his prep team and escort and mentor and so on? Were you his mentor?"

"I was his mentor," she says, which answers multiple questions at once. "His prep team and escort love him and fear me. I will find you if you are there to be found, and convey you to our compartment."

"Okay. I'll leave that end of it in your hands. I would like to know what happens if I'm caught, though, so I know how quickly to start setting things on fire."

"I will try intimidation first," Sherlock says dryly. "I am very good at it."

"Good enough that they won't promise compliance and then go home and tell their spouses, or their friends, or Caesar Flickerman's friends...?"

"Not if you are caught by someone who expects to ever see me again."

"And that is everyone on the train."

"It is likely to be."

"A splendid idea."

The sign is sitting there so enticingly, after all. "How long are you and Tony likely to stick around?"

"At least until Tony is finished... whatever it is Tony is doing," she says, glancing around to see if he can be located from here. He cannot.

"How long does he usually take to make... stuff? Of the sort that he will suddenly decide to make at the bar."

"Variable. It shouldn't be more than a day, unless he is somehow distracted."

"Cool," Bell says admiringly. "If you don't mind - I think everyone who's looking has had a chance to see this sign now, so I'm gonna put it down and prowl around talking to recent arrivals." She pauses. "Actually - do you want to mind it for me? I can put up a back soon note on a bit of card and you can call me over if anyone looks interested."

"I would be happy to."

"Thanks!" Bell obtains a bit of card, writes Up and about - back soon - consult my colleague with requests, puts the sign back up and props the note on a blank part of it, and goes a-wandering.

"Oh, have you met one of me?"

"Called herself Bella," he says. "Empress of something-or-other. Cute boyfriend. Didn't like it much when I fucked him."

Bell blinks. "I - do most people? Like it when you do that?"

"What, fuck their boyfriends? I don't do it that often."

"Okay. You don't remember what she was Empress of?"

"Mmm... some kinda magic empire?" he hazards.

"I think most of me are empresses of some kind of magic empire."

"Well, this one's the one who's dating a younger, prettier me. That narrow it down any?"

"So what're you empress of?"

"Atta girl."

Bell laughs. "You still haven't told me who you are."

"If you tell people you met the Joker," he says, "they'll know who you mean."

"Okay," says Shell Bell, "so is that you telling me that if I want to know about you, I should stop talking to you and go ask someone else?"

"Nah, not at all. Want a jelly bean?" he offers.

Bell has never had a jelly bean before. They don't... exactly... look like food. An hour ago she wouldn't have turned down anything that might be food. At this moment, she says, "What are they made of?"

"Mostly?"

"They taste like all different stuff. Some good, some bad, some just weird."

He's probably not going to poison her. Milliways frowns on that sort of thing. "I'll try one if you're offering," she says.

He gestures invitingly to the selection.

The Joker grins at her. It's quite friendly, considering.

"Thank you," she adds.

"Y'welcome," he says affably.

"So my template is famous for becoming Empress of assorted magical empires," Bell says. "If I ask people about the Joker will they know I mean you specifically, or are there lots of you by that name who've got a reputation for something?"

"I've only met the one of me, and he went by Alice. Haven't heard of any others. Could be, though."

"So why will they know who I'm talking about? Are you just here a lot?"

"If they've heard of me, they'll know, and if they haven't they won't," he says reasonably.

Bell's becoming less interested in this conversation now. If she were still nine, she'd be hanging around and keeping him talking and throwing manipulative looks at the jelly beans. That was years ago. "Well, yes. I think that's how that works."

"I usedta be famous," he adds, taking another jelly bean and repeating the inviting gesture. "Back home. You meet somebody from Gotham, two thousand eightish, they'll tell you all about me."

"Mmm. Well, there's a lotta ways I could tell that story," he says. "You the squeamish type? Bet you're not."

"I'm not," Bell agrees. She's pretty sure no one from Panem who doesn't actually faint during the Games broadcasts is "squeamish" by normal standards. She gets woozy around blood, but only in person - it's the smell, not the sight of it.

"There was this girl, y'see," he says. "And I guess she thought there were too many criminals in Gotham—mind you, she mighta been right—and she decided what they really needed was the hell scared out of 'em. Worked out fine as far as that goes. After the first coupla times she swooped in on a drug deal and beat everybody half to death, they were sure as fuck scared, lemme tell ya. But some of 'em were mad, too."

"Okay," Bell says, trying to figure out if she's supposed to imagine a rogue Peacekeeper or maybe a member of the fictional United Panem Defenders.

"It sounds like... an adventure," says Shell Bell diplomatically.

"Oh." Well - he's not an Avox. He looks like he could've been flogged, maybe more than flogged, but he doesn't sound like that would stop him. What is it other worlds usually do? "And your prison has enough doors in it that you can come here sometimes?"

"Nope," he says. "I started coming here in my dreams, the night she caught me."

"I've never heard that one before."

"Her majesty hadn't either. Guess I'm just special."

"I guess. So you're technically there now?"

"Nope," he says again. "Her majesty didn't like my style, so she found somebody to take her to my world for a bit and she put me on a little asteroid all by myself."

"Well, I was gonna get out first."

"That's good, then," says Bell.

"So," he says, "how do people get famous where you're from?"

"They go on television and outlast twenty-three other teenagers in a deadly arena, usually by killing at least some of them," says Bell. "There are other ways that I guess are more common world to world - other television, some books, some music. But most celebrities do that first."

"Sounds like my kind of game," he says.

"You see any of me the right age, you make an offer. They'll love you for it."

"I will," says Bell earnestly.

"Thanks." He smiles. "You're a sweetheart."

"Well, it helps that if I bring a terrorist home, there's some people I'd be willing to aim one at," Bell says, shrugging. "I have to overthrow a government."

"Sounds like fun," he says cheerfully. "I didn't get into that much when I was younger, though. Teenage me mostly whored around and stole stuff."

"Mm, not unless a shotgun's big news to you," he says, shaking his head.

"Not special to me. Probably special to you."

"Tell you what," he says musingly. "Why don't you come upstairs and see what I've got?"

"You said you've got a shotgun," says Bell. "Is there also lots of other stuff?"

"Some guns, some knives," he says. "I don't have much use for 'em these days, I just collected them because I could."

"Can you at least give me a ballpark of what you'll want to trade? I don't have a standard complement of resources and a number of people have things they're willing to part with but don't want anything I can give them."

"I haven't," he says with a slow smile, "decided yet."

"Oookay," Bell says. "Usually I dispense advice on taking over the world, but I get the impression that the object you live on is already all yours." She gets up, prepared to follow him.

"Yep!" he says, scoots out of his booth, and leads her toward the stairs.

Up she goes. She hopes he's not going to proposition her. That happens sometimes and it's always awkward.

"Mhm," he says, and perches on the one small part of the edge of his bed not covered by an enormous tangled blanket monster (this being the only place in the entire room to sit down), and regards her thoughtfully.

Well, if he's not going to answer her question about exchange rates yet, she'll carry on beholding scattered objects.

"You don't scare easy," he observes. "Do ya."

"You told me you had guns," Bell points out. "If I came up to your room and there weren't any guns I would be thrown into sudden uncertainty about your motives. Why would there being guns that you told me about that I voluntarily came to shop for scare me?"

"Maybe I'm losing my touch."

Bell spreads her hands. "Maybe. Have you decided what you want for 'em yet?"

"She doesn't mind as long as everything's consensual," he says. "But suit yourself."

"Nope."

There is no response. Even the giggling stopped a while ago.

"No takers so far," says Sherlock. "Who did you kill while you were gone?"

"He said he was called 'the Joker' and he seemed enthusiastic about his proposed deal of me shooting him and taking his stuff. He's weird. You think he's dead? He could've just passed out from what I saw."

"I'm not sure of it," she says. "But you smell like a lot of blood and don't have very much on you. That suggests someone was doing a great deal of bleeding close by."

"Well, I have seven guns and accessories for Tony to take apart and cannibalize or improve, now. And some knives. And a pretty bolt of fabric that let me get it all down the stairs in one trip. And I guess now I know I can maybe-kill a guy, at least if he literally hands me a shotgun and asks nicely."

"A good start, all in all," says Sherlock.

"Yeah. For certain values of 'good', I guess. Tony's still working?"

"So I assume."

"Okay. Unless you're bored and wanna switch places I'll make another excursion, then."

"I am not bored."

"Good," says Bell cheerily, and off she goes in search of someone else she hasn't talked to yet. Who's shown up in the past hour?

Well, there's that girl sitting at the bar who's a little older than Bell, bears a passing resemblance to her actually, and has an impressive and incongruous war hammer hanging from a braided leather belt around her waist. The rest of her outfit is pure twenty-first-century Earth, but those two things look like they came out of a century rather earlier than that one.

Shell Bell squints at her. She doesn't think this is an alternate, but maybe they're related or something - she's never met anyone who claimed to be related to one of her, either. No, probably this is just someone who happens to be pale and brunette. "Hi," she says, sitting next to her. "I'm Shell Bell. Panem, Earth, year 72 by our count, something else by everyone else's. Who're you?"

"Darcy," she says, with a friendly smile. "New Mexico, Earth, 2011. What's up?"

"Nice to meet you, Darcy! My life back home is actually pretty dull" (so far; and Bell doesn't like to bring up 'please give me stuff' this early) "so I just talk to everyone when I get here to compensate. Your hammer is nifty. Doesn't look like the sort you build houses with."

"My hammer is the niftiest," she says, patting it fondly. "It's magic, and from space."

"It flies and shoots lightning," Darcy says smugly. "And it has a cool name I totally can't pronounce, but it doesn't mind if I call it Mewtwo."

This reference does not register at all with Shell Bell. "It flies around? By itself? It can mind things?"

"Technically not by itself," she says. "But yeah, there's like... a very, very small number of people who can pick it up. And giving it a dumb nickname didn't take me off the list, so I think I'm good."

"Do you let people try to pick it up if they ask nicely?" Bell asks.

"All the time," she says, grinning. "But not off Bar, 'cause that would be mean."

"Is it staggeringly heavy to everyone else, including Bar, or something?"

"She says it's uncomfortable," Darcy says with a shrug. "And if I put it down on her and something happened to me, it'd be stuck there until another hero came along."

"That's fair," says Bell. "Heroes? That's the criterion?"

"Kiiiind of?" says Darcy. "To be totally honest, I'm still not sure exactly how it works. Like, there's plenty of heroes who can't pick it up. But if somebody can pick it up, they're definitely a hero."

"I'm kind of a trainee hero?" she says. "It's complicated. There was this huge fire-breathing robot, and my buddy's" (she pats the hammer) "old wielder couldn't lift it anymore, and I could, so I kicked the robot's ass, because what else do you do, right? But I'm not actually a trained warrior" (the word seems a little uncomfortable on her, like she can't figure out how it's supposed to fit) "or anything. So if something comes up that seriously needs a bolt of lightning to the ass, I'll get it done, but I'm not gonna go looking for trouble until I'm sure I can handle it. You know?"

"Oh," says Bell. "You're sure about that? I... live in a pretty shitty world."

"The part that gets most people's attention is the fact that, annually, two dozen disadvantaged teenagers are forced into an arena with some combination of environmental hazards, genetically engineered animals, and other variously lethal props to fight to the death on national television," says Bell. "But more people - including more kids - tend to die of various other problems related to economic inequality and the side effects of totalitarianism. The only reason I look reasonably well-nourished is because I have been coming to Milliways since I was six and trading byproducts from the job I've been working since age eight for nonperishables to bring home with me. The only reason I didn't have to try my luck on the TV show is because my District has a system to train selected kids for the games and arranges for them to volunteer and spare whoever gets picked in the lottery."

"I'm currently planning to overthrow it in a guerrilla warfare slash terrorism campaign with two people who won their Games and whatever magical or technological trinkets we can beg, borrow, barter, or buy here."

"How much range and how much lightning are we talking about? And what counts as terrorism to Mewtwo?"

"I haven't actually tested the range on the lightning yet," she says. "I'm gonna, though; my boss has her eye on a nice empty patch of desert. And, uh, when I asked Thor how much lightning I could summon if I had to, he said 'Enough'. Haven't proved him wrong so far."

Bell takes it that Darcy doesn't know what counts as terrorism. "We don't have a plan yet, and unless your range is more than a couple blocks I think we may have a comparable item already acquired - different stuff, similar effect - but if I think of a place you'd be useful and I see you again, I will let you know. I don't like to sound like I'm begging, but I am: have you got anything on you other than the hammer that you'd part with that a group of Panem teenagers are likely to have trouble finding? We're selling advice on taking over the world, because my alts tend do to that and I seem to be heading that way myself, and also custom engineering projects from Tony." She doesn't mention the assassinations. Mewtwo probably wouldn't like assassinations.

"Nuh-uh," she says regretfully. "The hammer's pretty much it as far as my fancy shit collection."

"Might not be fancy to you. I have a little audio recorder that I think probably cost pennies where it came from. I'm not kidding about the economic equality. I mean, I have seen Tony Stark engineer things on TV, that's how he won, but it cannot hurt to give him things to take apart and figure out and soup up."

"...Yes? Why, do you have an alt of him? He and his twin sister were consecutive winners, her first. What's his alt do? Does he ever come here?" Bell asks, leaning forward intently.

"His alt is uh, kind of a massive dick? Also an only child, like, as far as I know. And kind of a superhero. Well, he made this big famous speech on national TV about how he's totally not a superhero at all, but he flies around in a robot suit defending the nation, so. Walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, as far as I'm concerned. Which I'm pretty sure is where he was going with that, because the guy has an ego the size of Texas."

"Oh. Mine seems very friendly, not at all dickish. He's about my age, though, how old's yours? And did yours build his own robot suit? Because if so, that does sound like an alt, not a name collision."

"He's... I think in his thirties? Definitely built the suit, yeah."

"I'll tell Sherlock to warn her brother to not become a dick in his thirties," says Bell. "You don't know if he comes here? Actually, how many 'superheroes', or technically-not-superheroes, do you have flying around saving people from things? Some of them have to have finished lady warrior school or the equivalent, yes?"