"House caught fire all by itself; I'm keeping the damage confined in case there's anybody in there. Good or bad idea to snake it down the trellis and across the grass and torch the train station? Capitol, not District, pays to rebuild those, and I don't have any practical experience on targets yet." She keeps her eyes focused fixedly on the fire. "I think I can make it look natural."

Bell licks her lips and wipes a thin sheen of sweat from her forehead. "Thanks," she says, breathing a little hard herself. Using the wand isn't directly tiring, but concentration is, and she has to concentrate to keep any significant amount of fire hers. "Okay. So now I know I'm as good with this thing as I think I am." She twists her hair up and sticks her stick through it. "That's good."

Bell looks at her. "...Because of the fire?" Beat. "Um, do you want me to do anything about that? I..." She hesitates awkwardly. "Probably could now, I think, if I tried. Because darts. Supplied an example. Of how to arrange my brain in the relevant way."

"I believe the relevant question is, do you want to do anything about that?"

"I also like you too," says Sherlock. "And I am not a particularly romantic person."

Bell sits on her bed. "I've never been with anyone of either gender. So all my concepts are influenced by the media, which is mostly dominated by depictions of romantic people. What is dating a not-romantic person like?"

"I do not know," says Sherlock. "I have never tried."

"Huh." Bell looks at her hands, folded in her lap. "I think I need at least a few hours alone with my recorder to come to a decision. It would help if you were less neutral about it, though."

"Can you tell me anything else about your feelings on the matter, though?" Bell asks.

"Why?" Bell says. Her face is right near Sherlock's ear. She whispers.

Bell lets her go and sits back, making eye contact. "You are a perfectly likeable person," she says. "I suppose it doesn't help that much for me to tell you that, though? Since I've said equivalent things before."

"I may need some time to get used to the idea."

"...I am not sure, in either case, what kind of answer you are looking for."

"What will you do? What will happen? What states of the world do I now have it in my power to cause with this choice?"

"I think me being upset is fairly self-explanatory," says Sherlock. "I will be upset. Experience indicates that no one besides Tony can tell the difference unless I mention it to them, but I have already mentioned it to you. As for the other, I do not know."

"Oh." Bell resumes her prior sitting-on-the-bed position and bites her lip a bit. "Well, I guess I can work around some informational limitations."

"Should I leave you to it, then?"

"Unless there's anything else you can tell me."

In the basement, continuing to make friends with that generator, where else?

"Hey. Are you interruptable?"

"Yeah, what's up?"

"I burned down the train station. The original fire started all by itself, on a house, I made it look like a natural spread. And Sherlock was there when I did it and now she says she's attracted to me again. And I think that since the holiday drugs thing, I know enough about what it's like to be attracted to her that I could do it again purpose? And if I don't she'll be upset. And I don't know anything much about what will happen if I do. So I thought I'd ask for your advice. I hope that isn't weird."

"...okay," he says, "as much as I love Sherry, if 'she'll be upset if I don't' is your only reason it's probably a pretty bad reason. And I'm not sure that me thinking you guys would be cute together is a much better one, but for the record, I totally think you'd be cute together."

"That's not the only reason I have, just the only thing I know about the results," Bell says. "She wasn't a lot of help with making detailed predictions about either possibility."

"Well, yeah, of course not," says Tony. "She's terrified of thinking about it."

"A significant factor in the con column is that she seems like she'd be emotionally high-maintenance," confesses Bell.

"She... is and she isn't," says Tony. "Depends what you mean."

"What do you mean?"

"It can be pretty rough, caring about somebody who's so... not okay with herself," says Tony. "But she knows that, and she tries not to make it any harder than it has to be."

"Good to know." Pause. "Oh, um, I've been recording this, is that okay? I usually don't ask, but I'm usually not trying to form long-term working relationships."

"Yeah, that's fine," he says agreeably.

"Thanks." She smiles faintly. "You think we'd be cute together, huh?"

"Adorable."

Bell sits and leans on the wall. "I'm not sure what to do. I've been talking to myself for a few hours now and I'm still not sure. It doesn't really help that I don't think I can just will myself back into holiday-drugs-mode, I think I'd have to playact at it a bit to start, and there's a chance that it wouldn't work and that would probably be hurtful."

"...Well, I'd tell her that part first," he says. "But I dunno. How's the talking to yourself been going?"

"Except for the fact that it trailed off without coming to a clear conclusion, about like normal. Why?"

"Because maybe I missed it, but I don't think you've mentioned an actual reason yet."

"A reason to, you mean?"

"Yeah, that."

"...It's, uh, it's possible to date a guy and not have kids with the guy," says Tony. "I mean. I'm just saying. There are options."

"When I say any risk I mean any risk. I'm not trusting that nasty-smelling tea the - well, I don't know what you have around here, but in Four it was nasty-smelling tea, and I have observed women who habitually smelled of it to fall pregnant. I don't mean to denigrate your entire gender or anything, I just don't think most people-in-general feel as strongly as I do, so agreeing on which precautions are necessary would be hard."

"Uh, okay," says Tony.

"Awkward topic," observes Bell. "Anyway. Reasons. They exist."

"They're pretty good reasons," he says.

"Yeah. I'm just unfamiliar with decisions of this form and don't know how to weigh them against the others."

"Well. Anything else you wanna know?"

"No. Thanks." She gets up. "Bye."

"See ya," he says. "Good luck."

Living room. Book.

Bell sits. She's not sure if Sherlock's interruptable. She will wait for Sherlock to notice her.

"Hello," says Sherlock.

"Hi. I have what could be called a contingent decision."

"...Yes?"

"I have never tried to edit my brain in quite this way before, but any change on this scale usually requires what I am going to call pretending, to start with. I had to pretend not to care about my grades before I could really stop; just knowing that passing the wrong test would get me effectively kidnapped and stuck in a different District didn't do it. I had to pretend to be way more obsessed with shells than I actually am before it came readily to me to throw a tantrum if someone moved a bag of them that I'd been keeping near a door in case of Milliways. And I think that in order to slip back into what I'm calling holiday-drugs-mode I will have to first pretend. And it might not work. And that could easily be unpleasant on your end."

"More snuggling, probably. Kissing you while still pretending might or might not be necessary but wouldn't hurt. Generally acting and talking like I am your girlfriend."

"I am thoroughly in favour of more snuggling," says Sherlock. "Independently of other concerns."

"Snuggling independently of other concerns would be nice," agrees Bell, squirming a little in her chair.

"...Would you like to snuggle?" says Sherlock.

Bell transfers herself to Sherlock's sofa and leans her head on her shoulder.

Sherlock closes her book and snuggles up.

"You don't have to decide on what you want me to do about the pretending right away," Bell says.

"I do not know what to decide or how to decide it," says Sherlock.

"Then it's good that you don't have to figure that out in a hurry, isn't it?" Bell maneuvers through the snuggle to wrap her arms around Sherlock's middle and press her face into the back of her shoulder.

"Can I help?"

"Possibly," she says.

"What do the gaps in knowing-what-to-do look like?"

"I am not very good at wanting things," she says. "I don't have much practice."

"You don't? Want things? What, in general?"

"Not easily," she says. "I have priorities but they largely revolve around making sure Tony is alive and happy. I enjoy things but I don't often make significant decisions based on what I anticipate enjoying."

"Why don't you make significant decisions based on what you think you'd enjoy?" asks Bell, puzzled. And snuggled. "...What's the threshold for significance you're using?"

"Decisions on the level of what to read or make for lunch are not significant. Decisions on the level of whether to take over the world are. I am not always sure about the range in between."

"That reminds me. If we manage world takeover, do I get to be Empress? Like the other mes?"

"I see no reason why not," says Sherlock. "Provided you are a good one."

"The people I've talked to seem to think that other mes are. I don't know how much like them to expect to be. Do you not... I don't know. This is probably an ill-advised example, but you wanted the surgeries from the Capitol, didn't you, even if they were inflated by your terrible ex-friend? That doesn't seem very much about keeping Tony alive and happy." Pause. "...I don't suppose that's why you have hangups about wanting medium-sized things? Because your terrible ex-friend used that one to do terrible ex-friend things?"

"...yes," she says. "That seems likely. And I was a child at the time. I was able to articulate what I wanted but not to measure its cost."

"Is your terrible ex-friend still around in some capacity such that you still actually need to worry about him?"

"...Kraken."

"Yes," says Sherlock. "Quite."

"That is terrible. Wow. Okay, so he's worth worrying about - do you think he's still motivated to be terrible at you? Is he still occasionally terrible at you?"

"He is frequently terrible at Tony."

"Eegh. Do I want to know? Can it be helped on net by the cunning application of fire?"

"You probably don't. I would have killed him already, but he made sure to let me know that he has made arrangements for Tony to be killed if I do. I am not sure whether setting him on fire in a cunning way would qualify."

"Internal burns would look very strange on an autopsy report, but they would not look like a stab wound or a broken neck," says Bell. "I'll try it if at any time you determine it's a good idea and you can get me in range."

"Thank you," says Sherlock.

"You're welcome." Nuzzle. (Platonic nuzzle.) "Can you think of other reasons to have hangups about medium-sized wants?"

"If there are any, they are not so obvious nor of such magnitude."

"Do you think... President Snow..." It's weird talking about him like he's just a person, who has ex-friends and so on - "cares who you date?"

"Not particularly."

"Can you convince your brain of that enough that it will try figuring out how to want stuff on that subject, then?" Pause. "This is hard to talk about, everything I know about it is in note-to-self format."

"I am not sure the causality is so direct."

"No? Tell me about it?" (Nuzzle. This is comfy.)

"Despite obvious evidence, I am on some level convinced that wanting things inevitably leads to calamity."

"That almost sounds like some kind of anxiety disorder." (Bell has read introductory-level books on psychology, at Milliways.)

"I am not sure that's the best fit, but it is a reasonable analogy."

"Would it be preferable if - I don't know, if I flipped a coin? No, that would be silly, the reason my results are contingent is because I don't want to hurt you, if you wanted me to flip a coin that would just amount to saying you're up for the risk..."

Bell laughs. "That's good! I am too."

"How convenient."

"It is." Pause. "We are adorable. Tony is smart."

"I asked for his advice when just a few hours with the recorder didn't get me to a decision. Pretty much his input boiled down to 'you'd be cute together,'" Bell says, sort of speaking into the side of Sherlock's neck.

"He is correct," says Sherlock.

"Mm-hm. Hey, do you bake, or just cook?" Bell wonders.

"Yes I do. Why, did you want something baked?"

"Yeah, I've gone and become self-indulgent over four and a half months of Milliways with access to money and appear to be in the mood for cake."

"I will bake you a cake," Sherlock says gravely.

"You're so serious about it," laughs Bell. And she kisses a tiny little kiss right on the side of Sherlock's neck where her face happens to be.

Bell is not in a position to notice. "How long do cakes take?"

"Just short of an hour, generally speaking."

"Hmm. I do not require cake urgently." Bell makes no move to let Sherlock go.

"There is some waiting involved in the last stage of the cake process," Sherlock observes.

"That's truuuue," muses Bell. "Do you want to get up right now?"

"I would like to bake you a cake," says Sherlock.

"Okay." One more itty-bitty neck-kiss and Bell lets her go, smiling.

Sherlock's blush becomes more obvious after they have disentangled.

"You're blushing, that's adorable," says Bell, clapping her hands over her mouth.

...She grins, ducking her head slightly.

"What kind of cake do I get?" Bell asks, getting up to follow Sherlock into the kitchen.

"There are many options," says Sherlock. "What are your opinions on the relative merits of chocolate and lemon?"

"Chocolate is better," says Bell contently, sitting at the kitchen table.

"Mmm." Bell inhales the scent of nascent cake. "You are good to have around."

"I create cake," Sherlock agrees. "Cake is good."

"So good," agrees Bell. And when it goes in the oven, she says, "This must be the waiting period I've heard so much about!" and she trots sofaward.

Laughing, Sherlock follows her to the couch and resumes snuggles there.

Bell giggles.

"We are cute," Sherlock decrees.

"You are cute," says Tony. "What'd I say?"

"You said we'd be cute!" chirps Bell. "You are smart." (Nuzzle.)

"Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww," says Tony.

"And she baked me a cake," Bell says. "I will let you have some."

...For some reason, that makes him giggle uncontrollably.

Bell grins impishly at him, then readjusts her snuggling position to compensate for any drifting that may have occurred.

Snugggggggggle.

"You are even cuter than I thought," says Tony. "I did not know that was possible."

"I'm possibly overdoing it during this part," Bell confesses. "It may settle down after I'm no longer continually polling my brain for 'what would Drugged Shell Bell do?' and then doing that."

"Well, it'll be fun while it lasts, then," he says. "I want to hug you guys. Can I hug you guys?"

"I don't see why not," says Shell Bell.

In that case, Tony hugs them!

Bell is pleased with this arrangement.

So is Sherlock.

Hugs for everyone!

Presently cake becomes available. Shell Bell shares. Parts of it cease to exist, quite enjoyably. Sherlock gets a kiss on the cheek for her trouble.

"Ooh," says Bell. "We can go see if anyone we were hoping to see again is there."

"Let's," says Sherlock.

"Yeah!" says Tony.

And in they go. Bell takes her usual first-walking-into-the-bar inventory. Any familiar faces...?

Yes!

A

few.

"What did I tell you," says Elizabeth.

"You could have mentioned your reasons," Obadiah says mildly.

"I didn't have specifics, I just know a bad idea when I see one."

Meanwhile, Sherlock has shifted posture just enough to emphasize to the other Sherlock which side he is on.

And Tony is giving Obie a look of semi-affectionate despair, 'I can't take you anywhere' flavour.

Sherlock is in full-on bodyguard mode.

And Tony is... pretty much frozen.

"I'm pretty sure I can handle this," she adds.

"Aargh," says Tony.

Sherlock pats his arm.

"That's my fiancé," Elizabeth agrees.

Sherlock looks at Sherlock, then both Tonies, then Sherlock again.

She nods.

He raises his eyebrows slightly.

She shakes her head.

Bell peers between the Sherlocks. "I suppose you don't want to share with those of us who aren't observant enough to pretend we're telepathic."

"He offered to help me assassinate Snow. I declined."

"Oh." She turns to the other Sherlock. "That's very kind of you, though."

"It seems necessary."

"...Let's go with yes," he says uncomfortably.

"What all did Elizabeth tell you about our world and how it's shitty?" asks Bell.

"That it's shitty. And we should talk to you about how shitty it is."

"Yeah. Well. That guy's alt is President of our shitty world. If our actual President showed up here he would need to be made dead, consequences of outside grudges brought into Milliways be damned, because we're all three of us recognizable to every person in our country and it would not be smart to take a chance on him deciding that people with reason to hate him having access to Milliways is fine and dandy."

"If you can't guess the rest, you don't wanna know it," he says. "Maybe yours is different."

"Not by much," says Sherlock.

"...I'm pretty sure Obie isn't an evil dictator?"

"They could easily be different in any number of ways. I happen to know that I come in vampire, for instance. But frankly I'd rather not involve your - his name is Obie? There's a difference, ours is called Coriolanus Snow - in anything that would put us in the same room again. At all." Pause. "Unless he's good enough and a good enough actor that assassinating ours and replacing him with yours to avoid triggering deadman switches would make any sort of sense? Probably not, but it's worth floating...?"

"No," says Tony.

"No," says Elizabeth.

"Definitely not," says Sherlock.

"Didn't think so."

"...Also, back up, vampire? Good vampire or bad vampire?"

"I haven't met her," says Bell, blinking. "I haven't met any of me. Milliways and I have this inconvenient relationship where it's willing for me to come here sometimes but it's not nearly as convenient to my wants as other people seem to find it. But I met a friendly werewolf who lives in the world that vampire-me sort of secretly rules. And he seemed to think she was fine, or at least an obvious improvement over the previous secret vampire rulers of that world."

"Huh, okay," says Tony. "We have vampires in our world but they are, like, all assholes. Pretty sure they don't secretly rule anything, either."

"I think my vampire alt was notable for not having eaten any humans, but she still had not eaten any," Bell says. "According to the werewolf I met. If the ruling things is secret how would you know if yours do?"

He points at Sherlock.

Sherlock smiles faintly.

Bell shrugs. "Reasonable answer, I guess, I don't have a lot of detail about how secret the secret is. So. You wanna help us?"

"Yes," says Sherlock.

"I think I'll leave you guys to it and go placate my future husband," says Elizabeth.

"You didn't want your entertaining advice first?" Bell says.

"Later," she says cheerfully.

"Okay. Thank you for bringing help," says Bell earnestly.

Bell pulls out her recorder. "I have the explanation of Panem I gave Elizabeth recorded, if you don't have specific questions lined up and she didn't tell you much," she offers.

"By all means," says Sherlock.

"Oh, do let's fix that," says Sherlock.

"What manner of deadly weapon have you got in your hair?"

"It is my stick," says Bell. "It does fire. It takes practice, don't try it, I'm alive because my practice location happened to be a beach."

"I was not planning to," he says mildly.

"Yes, I just disclaim that whenever I explain what it is."

"Reasonable," he acknowledges.

"Have you figured out what the necklaces do?" she asks curiously. (It doesn't seem like a significant possibility to her that he doesn't know that the necklaces do something.)

"I'd give good odds that they are protective in some way," he says.

"Nicely done," smirks Bell. "They're not heavy-duty. Mine is mostly to minimize the damage when I inevitably trip over something imaginary and fall down the stairs. But yeah, magic protection amulets. Fire wand. Fancy generator and whatever Tony can put together out of parts we can get. Versus the Capitol. What're you guys bringing to the party?"

"Me," says Tony. "And whatever Stark Industries stuff I can fit through a door." He looks at Tony. "You and me should go have a serious technical conversation," he says. And then, because he is Tony, adds: "And probably also make out a little."

"Good plan," says Tony. "Let's go."

Bell blinks. She was not really expecting that. She tilts her head as they depart.

Sherlock looks at Bell, then at Sherlock.

Sherlock looks at Sherlock, then at Bell.

"Well, I guess he's not the first person I've heard of who - oh." Bell puts her hand over her eyes. "Oh. Is it time for a quick are-we-monogamous conversation, Sherlock?" She's addressing hers.

"Apparently so," says Sherlock.

"It's like you're telepathic," remarks Bell. "Okay, normally I'd say I wanted some time to think about it, but I'm pretty sure I know what the answer after my thinking about it is, because the other person I've heard of in this situation, who I mentioned, said he slept with his alt who was my alt's boyfriend. So I'm pretty confident I'm equipped to come down on the side of 'okay' and there's no strong reason I have to do all the steps of that beforehand. Have fun. If you can get pregnant, please don't do that."

"...Do... I know you...?" Bell asks the girl. It's not her usual introduction. She launches into that. "I'm Shell Bell. I'm from Panem, Earth, year 72 by our reckoning and something I don't know by everyone else's."

"...Um. I'm Matilda," she says. "I think we've met. About twelve years ago, my time."

"That... sounds right, yes, are you the one who can float things and who I lost in my panic about the squid in the lake outside?"

"That's me!" agrees Matilda. "Is your world still horrible? It turns out mine does have magic."

"My world is still horrible! I am collecting magic so me and my girlfriend and her brother can make it not-horrible. What kind do you have?"

"The contagious kind!" says Matilda. "Or, sort of contagious. Sometimes, if I use a bunch of magic on somebody, or even a little, they end up able to do magic themselves. Sometimes nothing happens. And since I started doing magic, of which the floating things was some, more and more people in my world have been able to do it too even though I've never met most of them. It's a fascinating system. I wrote three papers on it and now I have the world's first PhD in thaumatology."

Bell stares at her. "Contagious magic? Can I have some? And my girlfriend and her brother too when they finish what they're doing?

"No. Nor at home."

"Would you like one?" she inquires.

"There is not enough yes in my vocabulary for this question."

"...If you can just appear them out of nowhere, any chance I can get one for the girlfriend and one for her brother too? And maybe one for said brother to take apart and turn into nifty things? He's an engineer."

"Sure!" she says. Another snap of her fingers, and five more laptops appear stacked neatly under the first one. Then she does something to hers that causes the top three on the stack to blink small blue lights in their upper left corners. "And now you've all got a copy of the magic manual."

"You're awesome," declares Bell. She finds a place to sit. "Should I just start reading it now? In case I don't run into you again for another twelve years and since it's a contagion prerequisite?"

"Good idea!" says Matilda. "Let me know if you need help figuring out the interface."

Bell is not mystified by computers. She's borrowed them from Bar. This one is unfamiliar, but nicely designed, and Bell only has a couple questions on her way through the directory tree to the manual. She reads it with a ferocity normally reserved for starving people presented with food or drowning people presented with air.

"Sure!" says Matilda.

"Thanks! The statistics are at least encouraging that one of the three of us will get something workable. I hope it's me, but I could work with it being Sherlock or Tony."

"Want me to give you a first try before you go and find your friends?"

"Okay. Mind if I levitate you a few inches? It's easiest."

"That's fine," chirps Bell. "More than fine. I'm so glad I found you."

Bell levitates a few inches off the ground. Matilda opens up the thing she was looking at earlier again.

Bell reads more of the manual, after the part with the helpful graphs. She's a little less manic about it now that she is floating.

Matilda is very open to being talked to! Don't tell anybody, but she's kind of a nerd.

Then she has found the right person to talk to.

"I will not go anywhere," Matilda affirms. "Unless you're gone for six hours and I really need to pee."

"Well, if that happens, we can leave each other notes at the bar and try to catch each other again? I'll be here more frequently than I used to. Tony can sometimes summon the door and Sherlock runs across it more often than I do. Anyway, I'll try not to take six hours!" She scoops up the laptops, stashes them, and goes Stark-hunting.

"I found someone with contagious magic," Bell says loudly and without preamble.

"Downstairs. She's called Matilda. I met her when I was six and then never found her again. She has to do magic to whoever she's trying to be contagious at. Come on, come on!" Bell can't contain herself; she races down the hallway to the stairs again.

Sherlock follows immediately.

Tony takes a minute, because first he has to put on pants.

Bell finds Matilda again, and on the way down the stairs, she chatters: "And she can conjure stuff out of thin air - I got us laptop computers, and extras for Tony to take apart - and her magic system can do just about anything if you understand it well enough and the contagiousness thing doesn't work perfectly but the odds are good it'll work on at least one of us, and," breath, "there she is! Matilda, this is Sherlock! Sherlock, Matilda!"

"Hello," says Sherlock.

"Hi!" says Matilda. "Would you like to be levitated?"

"Yes, please."

"And me again too, please."

Floating ensues.

Bell giggles uncontrollably and plants a delighted kiss on Sherlock's forehead.

Giggling right back, Sherlock hugs her.

Matilda awwwwwwwws.

When Tony comes down the stairs, Bell waves him over, hopping up and down as effectively as she can when suspended in midair.

"I am magic! Would you like to be floating too?"

"Yes I would!"

Now he is floating.

"I'm floating," he declares.

"She made us computers! I solicited extras to take apart!" Bell repeats for Tony's benefit. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee." Sherlock gets another forehead-kiss.

"You are adorable," says Tony.

"We've established that," laughs Bell. "Matilda, how do you tell if we're getting magicked? Does it perchance involve magic?"

"I can tell," she says. "It's a specialized skill; not a lot of people have it. If I see any sticking, I'll let you know."

"Extremely!" says Tony. "Some of the stuff he's working with is kinda primitive by Capitol standards, but not all of it is."

"...What happened to you?" Bell asks, picking up Sherlock's hand an examining a little cut over one of her knuckles.

"Sherlock and I wanted to know which one of us would win in a fight," she says serenely. "The answer is me. Damn close, though."

"...It was close? Damn."

"It was fun," she adds.

"Well, I did tell you to have fun, I guess. Do you decide to see who would win a fight between you and sufficiently interesting-looking people in Milliways on a regular basis, or just Sherlocks?"

"This has been the first such instance."

"First of maybe-several?" asks Bell, raising an eyebrow. "Since it was such fun, and all."

"Hmm, potentially."

"Lots!" he says excitedly. "He doesn't just have gadgets, he has money. And he says he'll take me through sometime to check out his workshop and meet his house."

"Meet... his house...?"

"Yeah, his house has an artificial intelligence named Jarvis. He sounds pretty cool."

"Wow. Okay, that is pretty cool," says Bell.

"And apparently Jarvis can open a door to Milliways anytime he wants, so I'm not gonna get stuck or anything."

"Can I come along, then?" is Bell's next question. "And meet the house and see the cool stuff and - I've never been in a world that wasn't Panem before. Only as far as here. I've always been afraid I'd get stuck. But I really want to."

"Sure!" says Tony. "I mean, I'll ask him, but the answer is totally sure."

"Oh my," exclaims Shell Bell, releasing Sherlock on hearing her own voice - not as it sounds in her head, but certainly as it sounds on her recorder - and realizing that she doesn't know how to run across the room while she's levitated several inches into the air. "Uh, Matilda, can you let me down - I have to go talk to her!"

"Sure!" says Matilda. Bell settles onto the floor.

And she's off, running and tripping and catching herself and making it to stand in front of Isabella. "Hi," she says breathlessly.

"I'm... not a zombie?" tries Bell. "I'm just a - human." She was about to say person but that doesn't seem politic in Milliways. "And we're doubles because we're from different worlds but based on the same... template... thing! I'm from Panem. I'm called Shell Bell."

"Why do you keep saying zombie?" wonders Kas. "I mean, I don't see any daemons, but—" he gestures at Isabella.

"Can't you tell? They're not just separated. There's a difference. You really can't tell? Look. Shell Bell." Isabella reaches up to her shoulder; Path steps onto it. "Have you got one of these hiding somewhere? If you're not a witch maybe he's not an owl. Firefly? Tiny dragon? Any sort of creature - do you have a daemon?"

Bell startles. "So... daemons are... shapeshifting... pets...? That people who aren't zombies have where you come from?"

"I'm Kas," adds Kas, because why not.

"Okay. Well, this place is Milliways. It's a restaurant-slash-bar at the end of the universe." Bell waves at the window. "If you go out the door, you'll be right where and when you were when you came in, so you can stay as long as you want and it doesn't matter. Doors appear according to different patterns for different people - I find one only about once or twice a year, but my girlfriend runs into one twice a month, her brother can summon it one in three tries, and his alt's house can open one at will. Speaking of which, can I get you to come meet some people?" she pleads. "And tell us about yourselves and your world?"

"Okay," says Isabella slowly.

"Sure!" says Kas.

"This way," says Shell Bell, glowing with excitement. "Sherlock! Tony! Matilda! Look who I found! This is Isabella Amariah, and her friend Kas, and I have reassured her that we aren't zombies just because we don't have owls or snakes or anything following us around."

"Hello," says Isabella reservedly.