There is presently one in Toronto!

Zoom zoom zoom. That's just a house. Cool. Bella's already pentagoned their native language (a surprising number of demon species have only one, but then they do have smaller populations than humans). She turns invisible, teleports to the front doorstep, spies no witnesses, re-visibles, and knocks. Her aura is withdrawn for now; this isn't a situation she expects to involve a lot of hostility.

"Hello!" says Bella. Interesting. Perhaps the crystal ball was giving her a heads-up about how integrated this Sessiaki is. "My name is Bella. I'm in the process of opening diplomatic relations with assorted species. There's a Sessiaki in your house. Can I come in?"

"Well, I'm working my way up to the ones that eat people, but the ultimate aim is making the world a better place," says Bella. "I don't think I'm creepy. My personnel officer hasn't hired me an actual ambassador yet so I'm doing some legwork in person."

He peers suspiciously at her, then says, "Okay, I guess you can come in. I'll get - Val."

"Thanks!" says Bella. She steps in when he lets her.

He shows her to the living room, then says, "Just a sec," and disappears up the stairs.

"Hi. I'm Bella. I'm looking to open diplomatic relations with miscellaneous species and there is a Sessiaki in your house. I could just go to Siathe, but it seemed like a better idea to try talking to the one who's already on Earth amongst humans."

"I'm Val," says Val. "Ike's asking Mom if she feels like talking to you."

"Ooh, cool, you're a half-Sessiaki? Neat. I'm a technically dead ex-Slayer with magic powers."

"Good for you," says Val. "Should I be worried about the 'Slayer' part of that sentence?"

"Nope. I'm not prejudiced or trigger-happy. My boyfriend's a vampire, the technically dead thing was a Watcher's fault so I'm not exactly on board with that standard program, and also I can resurrect the dead if I ever make a mistake anyway."

"...Cool," says Val.

"I sure think so!" says Juliet merrily.

"You're okay," Val declares.

"I agree," says Bella. "I am an okay person. You seem pretty cool yourself. What is it that you do?"

"Like... with my life? Um, I go to school," she says. "And have strong feelings about beer. And punch people who pick on my brother."

"I will not pick on your brother," says Bella.

"Good!" says Val. "Then I'm probably not gonna punch you!"

"Goodness knows it was never my favorite thing even when it comprised a much greater portion of my complete breakfast."

"What happened with the whole Slayer thing, anyway?"

"I got murdered," says Bella. "I have pasted most of the assorted abilities back onto my person, but the title is no longer technically mine."

"Who murdered you?"

"A Watcher who was supposed to test me by taking my powers and locking me up with a vampire, and got pissed off when I both passed that test and resented having had it administered. He's currently in lockup awaiting trial and extradition negotiations for other miscellaneous crimes; I arranged not to be legally dead so alas he cannot be tried for killing me."

"Sucks," says Val.

"Yeah, the Watchers pretty much suck as an organization. I have arranged for them to be unable to find my successor."

"Smart move!"

"Thank you!"

"Anyway, so what exactly did you wanna talk to Mom about?"

"There's a reason I'm starting my diplomatic tour with the species that don't like to eat people," Bella says dryly. "But I'd like to know more about the state of Siathe, and the state of Sessiaki integration - which is apparently pretty decent - and if there's anything I can do to help out, and I'm also going to be hiring, and I see no particular reason not to hire demons if any demons should care to apply especially since it's going to be way easier to explain all the magic stuff to the one population than to humans at large, so I want to know a good way to issue job ads when those come up. If the Sessiaki are on friendly terms with any other species I wanna know that too, so I can sort of stepping-stone my way around instead of just teleporting onto everybody's doorstep and knocking."

"Well, don't let us fool you, it's not like Mom can walk around town with her face showing," says Val. "She's kinda shy on Earth, you know, 'cause of the scales."

"I could fix that if she wants," Bella says. "Goodwill sort of gesture."

"...Fix what, exactly," says Val.

"I have very open-ended magic powers," shrugs Bella. "Could do it a bunch of ways. Suppressible illusion? Minor shapeshifting power? Small field of nothing-to-see-here? I am open to suggestions."

"...maybe."

Bella shrugs. "Or not, whatever."

"It would be kind of a big deal," she says. "For us, apparently not for you."

"I can't afford to do it for literally every Sessiaki. Well, not quite as casually, anyway, it'd have to be a big automated thing, it would be hard to make exceptions or customize anything. But one, I can do, and this one happens to have my attention, so, we can talk about it."

"Not a lot of Sessiaki want to live on Earth," says Val. "Even Mom doesn't, she just visits sometimes."

"Is that because of the cosmetic awkwardness or just a preference for the comforts of home?"

"Uh," says Val, "I'm assuming you don't want to move to Siathe, but do you have a reason for not wanting to or is it just that you don't have any good reasons to do it?"

"I know almost nothing about Siathe because the books available on Sessiaki and related topics are not very good. Moving there would be pretty meaningless, I don't really need a permanent residence since I don't sleep and teleport most places I go and conjure stuff I need on the spot, and I was thinking of designing myself a palace on Mercury though I haven't gone and built it yet. Why?"

"My point is that most people don't need a strong reason not to move out of their home dimension to a strange planet inhabited by a different species, it's just kind of not something that comes up."

"Well," says Bella, "yes, but she's got family here, so I didn't think this was the standard case."

"Oh, sure," she shrugs. "For Mom, it's because she gets tired of not being able to go outside. And she misses her friends. I just don't know what it is for everybody else."

"I meant about her in particular, not about the general population. Although my long-term plan does involve more freedom of movement for every sort of sociable creature in the world, and people do pack up and move house to distant places sometimes, I know a guy who followed his boyfriend from one world to another."

"Were they the same species?"

"Nope! The one who moved is a human, the one who he moved for is a vampire - not the kind we have here, a different kind with better perks and fewer inconveniences and no soul-losing. I'm sure the vampire would be happy to turn him but he hasn't taken him up on it. They have a kid."

"Cute," says Val. "But I mean, if that kind of vampire is made out of humans, chances are there's humans around in their world."

"There are some, yes, but the plan to gradually supplant the population with vampires and various species of hybrid and also werewolves is underway. I'm not sure whether they're going to replace that with resurrection-based solutions to death or not."

"Solutions to death," Val echoes.

"Yes. Not a fan of it, I gotta say, and I speak as someone who vividly remembers dying. Neither is the vampire empress of that world in favor."

"You know, I get the impression that solutions to death don't usually work that well. But maybe you're lucky."

"On net, I am sort of lucky. Also, hello, I am dead," says Bella, waving, "my solution is working out okay for me. I just have to pave the way for everybody else so I can scale it. That one scales easy, now, I have what you could call a software solution."

"Do you wanna, like, explain any of that?" wonders Val.

"Which bit? Because explaining all the stuff I can do would be a loooong story."

"Like, what in the name of crystallized fuck does a software solution to death even mean?"

"I mean, me and some other people went to the afterlife, deemed it not good, got management attention and worked out a deal, and installed our computer friend Jane who can do inter-world teleportation to handle stuff. And now if I want a dead person I tell Jane so and she fetches me the dead person."

"Okay," says Val, "see, that's informative. 'What you could call a software solution' is not informative."

"Sorry."

"'Sokay," says Val. "I'm gonna grab some cookies, you want?"

"Sure, I'll take a cookie."

"That," says Bella, swiping a cookie, "is a neat party trick."

"Yep," says Val around a mouthful of cookie.

"D'you suppose your mom is going to want to talk to me?"

"Probably not," says Val. "But if all you wanna do is talk about Siathe, I can do that too."

"Sure," says Bella. "Let's hear about Siathe."

"...You might have to get slightly more specific," says Val.

"If I knew what I was looking for," says Bella, "then I would be more specific. And if I wanted to just turn invisible and fly around in the place for a while, then I'd do that, but I would like person-filtered information to guide me. You are totally a person."

"Okay," she says, "so like - what do you already know?"

"The books on this subject are really terrible, except for all having consensus on the species not being anthropophages and not leaving me completely stunned by your party trick. I speak fluent Kiessa? My kinda magic is good at languages. I'd need to sit down and really dig at the implanted vocabulary to learn any culture from that, though."

"Okay," says Val. "The party trick's called iethat, somebody who can do it is an ithue, and either a third of Sessiakitsi can do it or a third can't, I always forget which way around it is. I can, Mom and Ike can't, I guess that slightly implies that it's the first one. Also Sessiakitsi, even half-humans, need a lot of heavy metals in our diet - if you visit Siathe, apart from all the other reasons it'd be a good idea to take me or Ike with you, we can tell you what local food you can eat without poisoning yourself. Uh, come to think of it, I bet that's another reason there's not too much immigration between the worlds. You guys would get poisoned and we'd get the chromium equivalent of scurvy."

"I will mind that I don't indiscriminately eat things if and when I visit," says Bella. "What are the other reasons it'd be a good idea to have an escort?"

"Because you will weird people out," says Val. "Not as much as a Sessiaki walking around Earth in broad daylight, but some. Whereas me and Ike have family there, so it's not so bad, and anyway I can just wave a tentacle and everybody's pretty much cool with me."

"I suppose I could go all illusiony but that would probably create more problems than it would solve. Are we talking weirding them out as in attention and questions, or as in torches and pitchforks, or as in discomfort and shunning?"

"Do not fake iethat," says Val. "Do not fake iethat. It would be a bad idea to fake iethat. Don't do it."

"...Okay, that wasn't actually the illusion I had in mind, but all right, why not?"

"Um," she says, "it's kind of a cultural thing? Actually, don't illusion yourself to look like a Sessiaki either, it'll keep random strangers from staring at you but it'll come off as weird and rude and weird once you start talking to people - but definitely don't fake iethat. Iethat's important. And you'd have no idea how to treat it, and you probably couldn't shake tentacles with anybody, and it's just a really bad idea, okay?"

"So, pretty much, I was right about it causing more problems than it would solve," Bella says.

"Yep," says Val. "You're not gonna get torches and pitchforks as a human, but you might get something like it if you pretended to be an ithue."

"I dunno, I can do a really good impression of something warranting torches and pitchforks without doing more than a couple tweaks to what I actually look like... Okay. Will not pretend to be Sessiaki or any sort of mix or anything."

"Oh, if I do that party trick my eyes glow and little bits of fire that doesn't actually burn anything pop up all over me, but most of the effect is something else, not visual," says Bella, waving a hand. "Also it is a scary party trick, I'm saving it for the mean demons who are more inclined to, like, challenge me to single combat before they'll talk to me or things like that."

"I will totally challenge you to single combat if that's your speed," says Val.

"It's really not," snorts Bella. "I'm good in a fight, but I'm much more disposed to cheating than good Slayery sportsmanship."

"Okay," says Val. "I will also take any challenges to single combat that might come your way, unless they're from like, gods."

"If you're that keen on it and the relevant challenges have affordances for substituting champions and my boyfriend doesn't insist on doing it himself, I will consider asking you."

"Cool," says Val.

"You like singly combating people?"

"I haven't done a whole lot of it, but y'know, it sounds like fun."

"Sparring can be fun. Fighting for your life, not so much. I'm not sure where most forms of demonic single combat fall on that scale. But I promise that if you fall in my defense I will fetch you out of Downside."

"Cool," shrugs Val.

Bella smiles. "So, since it's looking like your mom doesn't wanna talk to me, when would be a good time for you to show me around Siathe?"

"I'll ask Ike. We can email you," she says. "Do dead ex-Slayers do email?"

"I do email! I also do telepathy network, do you guys want in on the telepathy network? It's called a brainphone."

"Sign me up!"

[Behold! Also does text channel, busy messages according to whatever algorithm you like, and conference calls.]

[Awesome!]

"Shall I just add your brother now or should I ask him separately, do you think?"

"Ask him separately."

"Do you suppose he's still talking to your mom about me?"

"No idea. He might've got distracted."

"You want to go ask him? Seems impolite of me to go wandering through your house."

"Your brainphone thing isn't, like, contagious, I can't just give it to him myself?"

"Upgrades to how it works propagate that way, this is version two. Permission to add people to the network is separate and since I don't know you that well and haven't even met anybody else of your template I'm not quite there yet."

"...Template?"

"Oh, yeah. So, there's lots of universes, and some people pop up in more than one of them. I'm one of those people. There's ten of me known to, well, us, probably more we haven't found yet, and a lot of our friends and some of our enemies crop up more than once too. If you recur, I don't know about it, whereas if you were a copy of somebody another one of me had already vetted I'd be likely to skip some of the getting-to-know-you that I currently require before handing out magic."

"Gotcha," says Val. "Cool."

"If I do run into another of you I'll see about setting up an introduction, that's always fun. Us Bells have started throwing a party whenever we find a new one."

"Awesome! If I meet a me I am totally throwing a me party."

"If you wind up escorting me through Siathe that'll probably qualify you for an invite to a Bell party and we can see if anybody recognizes you. Although that's not perfectly reliable. One of me is a boy, for instance. One of my boyfriend is a girl."

"Well, I might be easier to spot 'cause I come with a twin," she muses.

"Yes, that's one way to figure it out. Although sibling configurations aren't perfectly consistent within all templates."

"...A me without an Ike would just be weird."

"Us Bells are all only children," shrugs Bella. "So far, anyway, although now that we know that we come in boy I don't know how long to expect that to hold. And he kept asking why he was girls, even though we're overwhelmingly girls, so if there's a dozen Ikeless Vals, they will probably think you're the weird one."

"But who would I punch if I didn't have a brother to get picked on by the assholes who are too scared of me to act like dicks when I'm looking?"

"I do not know. The worlds vary considerably. I have personally done a strikingly above average amount of punching for a Bell."

"I like you already!"

"Well, I mean, I was the Slayer. I didn't start out with the phenomenal cosmic power I have now. For a while I was just the Slayer. I had a crossbow, and sometimes I missed and then I hit things."

"I approve of hitting things," says Val. "If it's, you know, reasonably justified."

"Nasty bitey things all," Bella says. "Although once I miscalculated. My boyfriend and I had our first meeting separated by a lot of flying crossbow bolts. He is, mercifully, good at dodging."

"So how'd he convince you not to dust him? Vampire, right?"

"He's a vampire, yes. I missed a lot. He returned my crossbow bolts all tied up in ribbon, left on my doorstep, and got surprised by my sneaky porch lights. Then the next time I saw him he was breaking into a butcher shop for animal blood. And he gave me his ultraviolet laser pointer and offered to be my bodyguard. I put him on probation, and he didn't try to eat me. Then later I found out that another of me was dating another of him - the girl one, who is not a vampire, but still. It went from there."

"That's kind of adorable," says Val. "In a very, like, Slayer way."

"Isn't it just? Although if you want high-octane adorable you want his alt and the alt who's dating her, they're cute enough to give marshmallow peeps diabetes."

Val sporfles.

"No, seriously, look," and Bella illusorily reproduces-in-miniature a scene from one of the Bell parties with the trademark mutual adoring gaze. "That's Shell Bell and that's her girlfriend, look at them, they're just like that all the time."

"I want to hug it," says Val, and she reaches out a tentacle from her hand to curl puffily around the illusion.

Bella laughs. "You would have fun at a Bell party."

"That is also my last name," says Val, "so yes, I totally would."

"It is? Wow," laughs Bella. "We call ourselves that because we are seven Isabellas, five of whom prefer Bella, and one Bell and one Belle and one Campbell."

"That makes sense," says Val.

"Yes, it does. Were you going to go find Ike?"

"Nope, I was putting it off so I didn't have to get off my lazy ass, I'll go do that now," she says, and gets up.

Bella snorts and waits.

She comes back down and reports, "Ike would love to be on your telepathic phone network, but he's busy doing science and doesn't wanna talk right now, I was right that he got distracted."

"I can add him without him being in the room, shall I just do that?"

"Go for it!"

Bella does so. "So, lemme know when you have time to show me around the other dimension, I don't know how you usually get there but I can almost certainly do it more flexibly and faster, and I guess I'll see you then. And if your mom is alarmed or something by my having visited on the basis of her existence please apologize on my behalf?"

"Will do," says Val.

Bella salutes, and says, "Bye," and teleports back to the house that Jarvis is.

"And how did your diplomacy go?"

"Did not actually meet the Sessiaki. Met her two half-human kids, though, had a very friendly chat with the girl one, she has offered to stand in for me if anyone challenges me to single combat, I believe I'll invite her and her brother to the next Bell party. They're going to think on their schedule and brainphone me when it's a good time for them to give me a tour through Siathe." Bella leans her head on Sherlock's shoulder.

He wraps his arm around her shoulders and kisses her forehead. "Well enough, then. Do these people have names?"

"Val and Ike. Didn't get either parents' name. The surname, amusingly enough, is Bell." Snuggles.

Sherlock snorks.

Snuzzle. "I told her the story of how we met and she thought it was cute in a Slayerish way and then I showed her an illusion of Shell Bell with Pearl and she tried to hug it."

"Well, that's adorable," says Sherlock.

"I know, isn't it?" Snuggle. "I've never asked Shell Bell whose idea it was for them to have a mindreading thingy set up. I wonder which one suggested it."

"Sherlock, I bet," says Sherlock absently.

"It sounded like you could go either way, when you were discussing it with yourself before you fused." She pauses, then: "I can't imagine wanting anyone - anyone ever at all - to read my mind. Like, I don't even understand Amariah with Path or Cam with Grace, let alone Golden sometimes letting Edward do his thing. I don't get it."

"There is insufficient information density available in any language I have yet encountered to accurately communicate my perception of a single moment. You Bells are a curious lot. I can see why she might have wanted to give hers the most accurate possible rendition."

"Heh." Snuggle. "Shell Bell gave Pearl her recorder, it was like her notebooks. I can just about understand that far, because it wasn't exactly like notebooks, there were locked parts and she'd know if any of those were listened to, but still."

"I certainly cannot imagine you giving anyone your notebooks."

"- Would you want to read them?"

"If you wanted to let me."

"I could pick some out that would be fine. It's not all deep personal stuff - I mean, you looked at the notebook I did my autopilot dissection in."

"I am always in favour of more information."

"I'll pick some out sometime."

He snuggles her some more.

Snuggles snuggles.

"D'you want to design the wish?" Bella asks, squeezing him.

"Interesting question," he says. "The information transfer protocol is properly my domain, but you are the one who must put up with the format. I wonder if we can do it in pieces?"

"Is there some reason to use a nonstandard format? The visual channel thing? 'Three out of four mindreading Bells recommend' -" she adds in a parody of a commercial.

"Well, I didn't know if you had evaluated it personally," he says.

"The enchantress version actually sounds really sensorily neat and I wouldn't do that staring into space thing either because it's not literally visual, but I doubt it's quite as easily personalized, and since you want it controlled on your end," she shrugs and trails off. "Although maybe it could be, if you did the enchantment. Enchantments are like servants, it'd try to be convenient for you."

"I don't think I'd prefer an enchantment," he says consideringly. "But perhaps I don't know enough about them."

"Pentagon will skill you even if you don't wind up hexing the power," says Bella.

"Interesting notion. I'll think about it."

"Okay." Snuggle.

Snuggle!

Sherlock hugs her.

Hugs! Hugs and snuggles.

"I love you too."