"Not here," she says, looking around.

"Where to? I have a lovely palace on Titan if you don't have a better idea," suggests Bella.

The Bat scowls.

"Look, if you don't want to make conversation, there is a currently unoccupied terraformed asteroid in this world, and I can be quite sure you won't assault - or murder - anyone from there. You gotta understand - you have both crimes on your record, you've got a history of making a particular nuisance of yourself to Bell staff, and now this world has a Bell, and it's me. I don't want my staff to have to work around a costume-clad nuisance. I would rather work something out with you that leaves everybody content. If all you can do is frown, I am somewhat limited in my ability to accomplish that goal."

"...I'm not in a good mood right now," she understates. "The Joker is dangerous. I don't know how you're not seeing that."

"Assorted Jokers have been mints for a total Joker-mint time of at least a couple years, spread out over nine Joker-mints," says Bella. "And the only person I know of who's ever directly killed someone with a wishcoin is you. Why do you think you're special?"

"I genuinely believed that man was about to kill me at the time," she snaps. "And I still didn't try to kill him. No, I don't think the fact that I'm willing to use potentially lethal force to defend myself puts me on a level with a man whose idea of a joke is torturing someone to death and then dangling their corpse from the roof of City Hall!"

"Okay... did you think Queenie was about to kill you, ten minutes ago?" asks Bella. "Or about to do... anything to you at all? Anything to anyone? For that matter, you know about alts. You didn't recognize Queenie specifically, did you? There's a couple Jokers who haven't killed anybody."

"He acted like he knew me," she says, looking away. "He acted like the Joker, not just a Joker."

"Except," says Bella, "that the city of Gotham has not been particularly terrorized lately, has it. As it happens, Queenie does have a history matching the local Joker's up to a point, presumably with her own Bat off in some other world. But then Queenie died and then Stella fetched her out of the afterlife when we took over managing the place and then I hired her and now she's on her best behavior. She was never going to bother you."

"She was always going to bother me," the Bat mutters.

"What's that mean?"

"He makes me sick just by existing," she says flatly. "He tore my city apart for fun."

"Okay, well, even if I liked you more than her and considered making people cease to exist an appropriate reaction, that's metaphysically implausible, people in this universe don't cease to exist. They go Downside, which is where I came from and also where Queenie came from. But what I meant is she wasn't going to resume her reign of terror or knock on your door or anything."

"I can deal with him as long as he's contained. I was fine with him in Arkham. I was fine with him on that asteroid. Walking around my city and taunting me when I stop him - no."

"So basically you'd like to psychologically torture her, not for anyone's safety, because safety's covered, but for your comfort?"

"How is safety covered," she says.

"My deal with her was checked out in advance by a precog, and if she decides to run amok unexpectedly anyway, I can move her out of the universe and address any damage. There is one Joker who couldn't be effectively socked away in another universe like that because he can universe-hop, but it's not Queenie."

"...fine," says the Bat, with deep reluctance.

"Now," says Bella, "I'm working with various heads of state to set up something systematic that will scale, but speaking of people the native Joker killed, I can jump them past the queue - if they have a place to go as opposed to just being liable to appear and be awkwardly legally dead. Any requests?"

"...What," says the Bat.

"...Okay, now I'm kind of offended, have you been paying that little attention? I'm dead. Got hit by a car. Queenie's dead, I never asked her how. Hell, the Joker who originally bothered you also managed to die a while ago even though he was all kinds of regenerative. But me and the other Bells have taken over the management of a shared afterlife and we can get people out of it."