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."

"Mm." She peers up to the ceiling. "I'm not coming up with anything. At least nothing that would compare particularly favorably with my default activity, which, I remind you, involves ruling a space empire."

"I'm sure it's a very nice space empire," he says. "Can I come visit?"

"I might just barely be willing to put you on Mars somewhere for a visit. It's got lots of safety features. But all things considered I think not."

"If you put me somewhere with safety features, I'm gonna try'n break 'em," he agrees. "But I'll try'n break 'em nicely, 'cause I like you."

"And yet, funnily enough, I put the safety features in because I wanted them as they are," Bella says mildly. "And so I would not much care for even the nicest of breakage."

"Suit yourself."

"Always."

"I'm getting that impression."

"Aren't you observant."

"I sure am!"

"So your bat-costume-clad crush," Bella says, "do you not even know her name? Or is her name actually Bat or Bats or something?"

"Oh, it's a big secret," he says. "I tried to get it out of her once, at the beginning, but I don't really care. I already know who she really is. I don't need to know who she pretends to be when the sun's up."

"Is this dressing up as a terrifying expensive non-festive small mammal and then going out at night and getting into fights with the criminally insane a thing in your world?"

"Not until her, it wasn't."

"Has she," Bella asks innocently, "inspired copybats?"