"Well, I don't know for sure," he says. "But she's got two good reasons not to. One iiiiis, she doesn't like to kill people. Thinks it's wrong, or something. And the otherrr," he smiles, "is that if she kills me, I win. But I don't know if she knows that. She might."

"If she cares more about not liking to kill people - let alone about you winning - than about people dying, I'm not terribly impressed with her," Bella says. "It's not like you happen to be innocently radioactive, that would be an actual moral dilemma."

"If I didn't know better," the Joker says amicably, "I'd think you were flirting."

"I like the one I have already better," says Bella.

"I know."

"And how is telling you I don't think much of your crush's ethics flirtatious, even by your standards?"

"You're telling me that you'd kill me if I made you have to," he says. "To me that's pretty much like offering to blow me under the table. But I bet you didn't mean it that way."

"Indeed not."

"But if you think she should kill me, why haven't you?"

"You're not my problem. I have an empire to run, I'm not an interdimensional vigilante. Besides, several of my goals for that empire would be easier to achieve if I retained routine access to Milliways, and I don't think the bar likes it when her customers try to kill each other - as you've noticed. And, you're asleep. Most people, when they die in their dreams? Don't die in real life. I doubt magical solutions would hold, for the same reason - and I have no way to check, either way."

"Not your problem," he hums. "Oh, sweetie, you disappoint me."

"There are probably dozens of you," Bella says. "And dozens more people who aren't you whose worlds could also benefit from their deaths. That's simply not my career choice, and even if it were, it wouldn't be consistent of me to attack one target of opportunity that I can't check up on, and likely lose any chance to perform equally or more useful assassinations under better conditions. Given that I've chosen to do something else with my life, it would be stupid to attack you and torpedo my ability to use Milliways to do what I originally planned to do, which is start up trade with alternate Empress Bellas and similarly congenial folks to improve quality of life for all our empires."

"Well you sure are a cold customer."

"When called for, I can be."

"I like it," he confides.

"Good for you."

He giggles.

Bella peers over in the corner of the room where Alice is talking to the girl. She's also reading his mind and knows they're still chatting, but the visual perspective is more useful for some purposes than filtering through the mindreading.

Alice and the girl are giggling together about the logistical intricacies of raining jelly beans. She is supporting her point with scribbled equations, while he prefers to wave his hands around and cackle a lot.

She smiles fondly and turns back to her interlocutor. She doesn't have much else to say at the moment.

"I'm playing 'take over the world'," Bella says. "On hard mode, where I don't do unethical things in the process. But with all my cheat codes." She tilts her head. "That's probably not what you meant."

"It's a good answer," he says. "I like that answer. But yeah, wrong question."

"Then you might need to be more specific."

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of games I could play with you, but most of 'em wouldn't be fun for you. And some of 'em wouldn't be fun for me either, at least - heh - not for very long."