[Hi.] Pause. [There was a risk that he wouldn't come back, but as it stands you aren't any less likely to encounter him again. He can still appear in Milliways, you'd still need to meet someone from his world to get there but once there you can teleport to the asteroid.] Pause. [There are a lot of asteroids with a lot of names. The one he's on is called Alice.]

[Yeah.] Bella sighs, too, but Alice doesn't know that. [If I meet any more of them - or anyone else you like - that I find it necessary to strand, and you're around or I'll have the chance again even if I run home and fetch you, there will be an opportunity for goodbyes first.]

[That would be the weirdest goodbye ever, though. 'My girlfriend might be about to kill you. That's sad. Oh well.']

[We'd deal,] he says, laughing. [We're weird people.]

[Yes, yes you are,] she laughs. [Anything else you wanted to talk about?]

[I understood he was fucking with me, I just didn't know where the fuckery was located, and I didn't share your confidence that it wasn't aimed at your head,] Bella says.

[Well, now you know better, right?]

[I would not claim to know that. But I do know how you want to handle situations like that one.]

He'll take that. It's not really worth having another fight over.

[I can think of reasons a me might take up terrorism,] Bella says after a silence.

[...Really?]

[Really. It's a big multiverse. According to a sample size of two, I don't take over so much as a hamlet without magic - I could see doing the same thing with a tech advantage, just the same way. And I know that if I have no particular advantages and I'm reasonably comfortable, I occupy a holding pattern at least until my late teens, because that's what me and Golden Bella did until we located our respective magical edges. If I started out at a resource disadvantage, and was not reasonably comfortable, and there was a big, obvious target painted on some class of people permitting that? I don't think I'd be a particularly ruthless terrorist, but I might blow shit up.]

[It might depend on how I evaluated her object of explosives. I'm kind of selfish, when I don't have infinite everything to throw around; I'd imagine one of me who grew up with less would be more so, and might overweight her own comfort or ascribe too much motive to whoever she perceived as being responsible.]

[She'd try to get coins out of you,] predicts Bella. [Heck, I might not even mind, I think it's pretty clear that I am a nicer and more generous person when I have more stuff. I think I turned out nicer than Goldeneyes.]

[She can get coins out of me if she wants,] he says, deliberately construing the phrase to mean generating them rather than asking him to hand over some of the existing surplus.

[Yeah, if she's desperate that'll overcome some amount of squeamish, however much squeamish she has if and when we find her,] Bella supposes.

[And I like it, that counts for something, right?]

[Not necessarily. We're postulating that she's a terrorist. I doubt any of me are far gone enough to stoop to non-consensual torture, but, you know. Big multiverse,] shrugs Bella. [For whatever it's worth, anyone that far gone also goes on an asteroid or equivalent.]

[If we meet a you who'd hurt me even if I didn't like it, she still gets to hurt me. But I'm keeping the coins.]

[I find it unlikely that any of me would do that purely recreationally,] muses Bella. [Even if they'd do it for other reasons.]

He laughs. [Okay, so much for that.]

[Indeed. Anyway, I could be wrong, we could never find a me like that, we could find one who fell into terrorism through unrelated means, whatever.]