"What exactly do you advise people about?"

"Taking over the world, usually. One person was only interested in a town. On several occasions I've adapted to fit my advice to fit things like taking over corporations instead, handling uninhabited islands that can be colonized from scratch without any native competition, keeping one's own mindscape orderly, and a world takeover plan that would be suitable for novelization."

"Fascinating," says the stranger. "Was that a metaphorical or metaphysical mindscape?"

"I'm not entirely sure. I wasn't invited to visit it. But my guess is on the latter, since anyone so keenly interested in the advice is probably not dealing with metaphor."

"How about criminal organizations," she says. "Any of those?"

"Not so far, but I'm happy to try," says Shell Bell.

"Shell Bell," says Bell. "My alts usually go by Bella and wind up as magical space empresses of one sort or another."

"Impressive resume," says Elizabeth. "But no magical space empire of your own?"

"Not yet. I'm working on it. No magic native to my world, you see, I have to get it here - that's the sort of thing I trade advice for."

"What other sorts of things do you trade advice for?"

"Interesting technological devices - interesting relative to what I can get at home, not relative to what the customer has. Sometimes money, when the aforementioned are unavailable. Right now we could also use suitably qualified allies or advice, as we're in the process of attempting to take over my world at a resource disadvantage."

"You name it," says Bell darkly. "Let me put it this way: the government we're planning to overthrow hasn't encountered a hiccup of significant-scale resistance from the parts of the country where we live in the last seventy-two years despite routinely kidnapping kids our age and younger and killing most of them for the entertainment of the viewers back home."

"Harsh," says Elizabeth.

"Yes. Rather. And of course there are the other effects of malicious totalitarianism - the only reason I'm reasonably confident about the lack of rebellion is that Bar will loan me archives of Capitol newspapers, not just the District Four Gazette, and there aren't any prolonged, suspicious 'resource shortages' that I'd expect the media to cover for unrest with even there. You can see why we'd like the Capitol in question to go away."

"Completely," she agrees.

"Do you," Bell says, all smiles, "need advice about a criminal organization?"

"Probably not," she admits. "But I might want to get your perspective anyway, just for fun."

"What's fun worth to you?"

"Highly variable."

"Can I get a range of examples, maybe?"

"Well, let me put it this way," she says. "If I want to give you whatever has the most value to you at the least cost to me, I need to know more about the kinds of things you take in trade."

"In the past, when it's not just straight-up money? Magic wand," says Bell. "Audio recording device and instructions on how to use it. I took water purification tablets once but I wouldn't find more of those specifically useful. A nifty little bag that I'm not sure if it's magical or just high-tech. I've been optimizing for objects that are small, because I've needed to hide them, but that will be less important going forward."

"And let's see... what would constitute a suitably qualified ally?"