"Sparring," Juliet clarifies for Shell Bell before she can ask. "I'm not dismembering him or anything, and I get hit too, although - Sherlock, are you still pulling punches for me? If you are maybe I don't have an accurate picture of how physically uncomfortable it is on your end."

"When I can get away with it, yes," he says. "Which is increasingly rare."

"So yeah. If you can't make a pentagon then I don't think either of us is getting into pentagon territory that way. ...Unless pain tolerance is a Slayer thing, which I suppose it might be?"

"Well, I don't know, but if you want a comparison, I don't have big coins but I do have an agony beam," says Shell Bell dubiously.

"Ooh, that sounds like fun," says Sherlock.

"The units it works in are called triangles. One to nine of those makes a triangle - for a mint, anyway - and ten to ninety-nine is a square, and so on," says Shell Bell. "And it comes in flavors because the original design is for Alice and that's just what he's like. If you want to try it..." She shrugs.

"Hit me with... like... fifty, for a second, to compare against getting thrown into a wall?" says Juliet after a moment's thought. "...Is 'thrown into a wall' a flavor? 'Cause I'm used to that at this point."

"Well, 'blunt trauma', says Shell Bell. "Some of them get weirdly specific but I don't have getting thrown into a wall particularly on the menu. Here goes."

"Hm," says Juliet consideringly. "Yeah, I think I am forced to conclude that pain tolerance is a Slayer thing, although I'm sure I'd make an awful face if you, like, quadrupled that at me."

"In the name of scientific inquiry," says Sherlock, "can I have a hundred in blunt-trauma flavour?"

Yes he can.

"Invigorating?" asks Juliet. "Really?"

"Why, would you prefer a different word?"

"I don't know. I can't read your mind to see if that one makes the least bit of sense."

"I can read my Sherlock's mind," volunteers Shell Bell. "It's nice. Oh - we were thinking that Sherlocks should have nicknames too, since you tend not to have themes the way we often do, and you have name consistency where the Whistles don't. Do you have any ideas on that?" she asks Sherlock.

"This is some kind of reference I don't get, isn't it," says Shell Bell.

"Yes. Yes it is," snorts Juliet. "Romeo here has named us after the romantic leads in a famous play."

He grins unrepentantly.

"At the end of which both characters are dead. But I should've objected back when I first allowed my nickname to go unchallenged, I suppose, if I consider that problematic," she snorts.

"And since I am arguably dead already, I'm not sure it's quite the same. But I can choose another if you prefer."

"How do you mean, you're dead?" Shell Bell asks. "You walk around, don't you?"

"I don't really mind," Juliet tells Sheromeo. "And whether vampires are dead is a pointless matter of technical quibbling. They walk, they eat, they think - some of them - but they don't properly respirate and their hearts don't beat so some people apparently consider it meaningful to declare them 'not alive'. Probably contributes that for most of them the transformation involves a period of inactivity followed by personality change."

"Also that for all biological purposes I am an unusually lively corpse," Sherlock points out.