"Trivially. Two different ways. I have not yet chosen to make either experiment."

"What're your ideas?" says the other one, as they sidle up to him in a snuggly manner.

Sherlock laughs.

Juliets grin.

"Of course. I wouldn't dream of neglecting either of you."

Dinner gets a kiss, and then she gets collected into his lap, and then she gets bitten.

Sherlock snuggles Dinner and hums contentedly against her neck. [I think it sounds lovely,] he tells both of them.

[Lovely. Endearing. Delectable. Some combination of those.]

Sherlock gives Dinner a kiss and a snuggle.

Dessert gets a snuggle and a kiss!

Dessert gives as good as she gets.

Dinner snickers helplessly when the noises in question emerge from her counterpart's mouth. Dessert is also doing something helplessly but it is not snickering.

They are both lovely darling creatures.

And they love him and Dinner has obtained one of his hands to nibble on.

That is a delight. She is a delight. They are collectively a delight.

Good. They aim to delight. That was the point of showing up here.

Their aim is magnificently accurate.

That is good, because Sherlock also aims to delight!

Dessert is delicious.

That is the idea, is it not?

"I love you too," says Sherlock, cuddling Dessert with his free arm. "Something on your mind, morsel number one?"

"You seem to be assuming that I haven't already found you out."

"Did you?" the other one asks.

"At some point in the last half hour, yes."

"What did you conclude?" inquires the first. They have developed a habit of taking turns to speak; when the one whose turn it is not speaks forgetfully, they generally say the same thing.

"New," he says, indicating one, "and old," the other.

"Little discrepancies."

"Is 'full access with equal weighting to both sets of memories' not suitable? That's what I have," says Sherlock.

And one of them makes a wish, and then there is one, and she snuggles up.

"Yep. I'm us, we're me, I contain multitudes, etcetera. I love you." Nuzzle.

"I should probably go talk to Soph at some point." Cuddle. "But not riiiiight now."

Snuggliest snuggle.

Mmmmsnuggle.

Before Bella has decided that snuggle time may be temporarily recessed, she sits up abruptly. "Dammit. Glory's out and I can't pentagon her away anymore and she's whining for a snack."

"Oh dear," says Sherlock. "To Mercury, then?"

"Yeah. You want to come?" She squares into her clothes.

"I might as well." He does likewise.

Glory scowls thunderously.

"Says the girl hanging out with a vampire," sniffs Glory.

"All right," concedes Bella, "nonconsenting human minds are not snackfood."

"You know," Glory remarks, "I don't think I like you very much."

"I don't need you to like me, but I need you to quit brainsucking people."

"Too bad for you," says Glory.

"Is it? Do you have a way off this planet?" asks Bella, gesturing.

"Of course I do."

"How long would it take, is I guess the next question."

"Which I should answer because... why?"

"You answered my last question," Bella shrugs.

"How about: if you don't put me back on the right planet right now, I'll kill you," says Glory.

"So you can do it, but not in less time than you're imagining it'd take to kill me."

"That," says Glory, "depends how much you annoy me first."

"My goal isn't to annoy you, but that seems to be an unavoidable side effect. I don't suppose we can come to some kind of compromise? You want to go home, right?"

"Yes!" she pouts. "I want to go home!"

"If I liked the idea of you being home, I could take you there. What would you do if I did that?"

"I'd have a big party with all my scruffy little minions," she says dreamily.

"A party consisting of what?"

"What do you care? You're not invited."

"So I know whether I feel like enabling that party or not."

Glory tosses her magnificent curly hair over her shoulder and hmphs.

"I can do it, you know, I'm in and out of demon dimensions all the time, and you wouldn't have to do much to talk me into it."

Glory eyes her suspiciously.

Bella regards her impassively.

"Wouldn't have to do much, like... what?"

"You'd have to convince me you weren't going to hurt anybody," says Bella. "But then, that's what you'd have to do to get off this planet for more than fifteen seconds in the first place, so I don't think it's a tall order."

"And what, starve? Ugh," says Glory.

"So you're saying you have to hurt people to survive?"

"I don't suck brains for fun, you know!"

"And you have to do that even at home, it's not some side effect of being in this dimension?"

Glory makes a 'yes, duh' face.

Bella makes a broad gesture. "Supposing I fixed that?"

Glory makes a disbelieving face!

"No, seriously, indulge me, if I fixed that and you weren't going to starve without brainsucking people and I extracted you from your human host and brought you home. Would you hurt anybody?"

"Um... do you know who I am?" Glory wonders.

"You're a hellgod named Glory who's been fucking around in ways of which I do not approve. I would like that to stop. I am investigating ways to stop it. If I can do it by giving you nice presents instead of killing you, that's grand, isn't it?" Her aura ripples a little at "killing you", then subsides. Her aura is more interested in advertising that she can kill people than that she can give them nice presents.

"That's a terrible pity."

Glory scowls.

"Are you going to answer my question about what you'd do if I sent you home and you didn't have to brainsuck people?"

"No," sniffs Glory.

"Then I guess I can't send you home," sighs Bella. "I guess I'll have to set something up to box you in here, or maybe someplace else."

Glory seems annoyed, but not overly worried.

"At least Ben'll be happy when I've got you out of him," mutters Bella, thinking of wish designs.

Glory snorts and shakes her head.

Bella runs her confine-Glory-to-this-area-of-Mercury wish by Sherlock for double checking, by brainphone. [Look good?]

[Entirely.]

Bella's at max brain clockspeed and kicking Glory in the sternum, away from Sherlock, before anything else happens. [Sherlock what happened -]

Sherlock is still apparently offline.

[It would be bizarre if I couldn't tenner her dead but could punch her to any useful effect, but yeah.] Bella continues punching her, in the absence of any better ideas.

[Try it.]

Bella tries it. She starts with the stars, in case it can be done with stars. Nothing doing. She goes up the coins -

On the tenner, Glory vanishes.

"Just a bit. Ugh. I'm going to go try dooring Downside and see if I can get him and make sure Glory didn't wreck anything from her vantage point forty astronomical units away from the nearest Downside settlement." She eyes Sherlock. "...But that is not urgent on a scale of minutes. Are you okay?"

"For some values of 'okay'. Still dripping hexes," he says wryly. "Losing my soul again is probably to my ultimate benefit but, alas, that didn't make it any fun."

"...You're talking more like you used to," she observes, smiling faintly.

"I didn't realize I missed it, but I kind of did."

"You know," he says, "so did I, a little."

Hugs?

Hugs.

[...Good luck,] says Giles.

"Increasingly," he says, snuggling her.

Snuggles. "I love you."

Kisses on Mercury standing in one of the pits in the ground left by the fight! Lovely.

"Going to found your colony on the spot where you more-or-less killed the demon goddess?"

"Palace grounds," says Bella. "The colony will be a little farther off."

"I am. I'm the best."

He kisses her some more.

Makeouts! Bella feels positively about makeouts.

So, unsurprisingly, does Sherlock.

Delicious soulless boyfriend.

Mmmmmmakeouts.

A nervous minion peeks out from behind a door. Another comes up behind him. They hold a short whispered conversation.

"Yes, hello," says Bella to the minions, "Glory's dead," (or near enough), "what do you lot plan to do next?"

"It certainly establishes your qualifications," says the second minion. The first one nods.

Bella runs a hand through gently flaming hair. "...You don't have anywhere else to go?" she repeats. "Glory didn't, like, steal you out of a peaceful agrarian dimension to which you would like to return?"

They both nod.

"How many of you are there? What do you guys know how to do?"

[...Sherlock, I accidentally inherited Glory's minions, do you have any clever ideas for uses for unskilled demonic labor?]

[...Groundskeepers on Mercury?]

"That sounds perfect!" says a minion, and the other one nods enthusiastically.

"Okay, I've been putting off setting up a palace and grounds on Mercury, but I can do that later today after I take care of some other business, and you can... prune topiaries and water flowers and mow various kinds of grass and stuff. I want," she adds, "a list of your living requirements and any amenities that you'd like to have, so I can set up someplace to put you too. I'll be back in an hour to fetch you; pack any personal effects and tell the other fourteen or fifteen minions what the story is while I'm gone. Okay?"

"Are the titles strictly necessary?"

"Well," he says reasonably, "what else should we call you?"

"Bella is fine. If that would be uncomfortable you could get a jump on calling me 'Your Majesty', although a colonial population of sixteen or seventeen is pushing it on the accuracy thereof."

"Your Majesty," the minion echoes. The other one nods.

[It was mildly irritating,] says the administrator. [Please don't make a habit of it.]

[Uh, there might be more of her in other Sunshine family worlds, and I don't immediately have any better ideas, but I'll try to think of alternatives or at least warn you?]

[Thank you,] she says. [While you're here, are you aware of the interesting special case from your world?]

[...Besides Glory? No. What is it?]

[...That's Steph. She was my Sherlock's daemon but he torched without attaching her to it. And... then my present ripped out his soul, and she sort of is a representation of his soul.]

[Interesting. What would you like me to do with her?]

[...Keep her sleeping for now. I'll ask Sherlock. Circumstances may have relevantly changed; we might be back to pick her up. I do need the guy my present killed, though. Are you still of the opinion that if Jane were dead, she'd turn up here in a way you'd notice?]

[I wonder if it wouldn't keep Jane from glitching so dang much if she were, in fact, deceased... And yes please.]

Ben appears in front of Juliet, floating upright and asleep the way people do in the catacombs.

Bella decides to take him home so she can explain what's going on in familiar surroundings. [Thanks.] She tows Ben back through the door, and then back into Jarvis, and then checks his home, wherever that may be, for supervision.

His home is unsupervised.

He lets out a little shriek and flails around for a few seconds.

"It's okay, you're okay, Glory's gone," says Bella. "I'm really sorry about that, I tried to appear you out of the way but you were stuck on but good."

He winds down over the course of this speech, until he's just huddling unhappily on the couch.

"She's gone, you're okay," repeats Bella, "I went and got you, I apologize for the unpleasantness, I can owe you three wishes if that'd make you feel better."

The minions are all collected up in the living room with a neat stack of luggage. Several of them are eating chips out of a large bowl on the coffee table, one has a cup of orange juice, and one is reading a book - I Had Trouble In Getting To Solla Sollew, by Dr. Seuss.

"Is this all of you?" Bella asks.

"Yes, your majesty!" says one who might be the youngest, with a big smile on her face.

"Okay." Bella teleports them all to the new Mercury palace, which is tall and made of assorted pretty rocks she has encountered in demon dimensions. The flora she's put in is also mostly demonic - although all magicked nice and nontoxic - although there are some roses, some wisteria, and one variety of tree that she completely made up. She's made the gardens a bit more extensive than planned to give all the demons things to do, with paths winding between and spiraling loosely through little ecosystem-neighborhoods. "Welcome to Mercury. Do you have that list I wanted?"

"Yes, your majesty," says one of the two she was speaking with before. He hurries forward with the list. It is long, and in fairly terrible handwriting, but neatly organized and fairly complete - including necessities for survival (food and water), comforts and luxuries (shelter, books, candy - M&Ms get a special mention), and long-term requirements (visits from Bella at least once yearly; clear feedback on whether or not they are being good minions).

"Okay," says Bella. "I don't have a good impression of how your social structures interact with housing, or for that matter what they are at all; how many dwellings do you collectively want of what sizes?"

"Sure," says Bella, and she speeds up and designs a dormitory-style building with twenty-five bedrooms on two floors, and a common space with a TV and some computers and a kitchen and a replicator, and a library in the basement with copies of the entire current contents of the Los Angeles County public library system (absent duplicates). The whole thing's a pentagon; she puts it at the edge of the gardens, perpendicular to the main line of the palace. "There you go. I'm gonna put you all on my telepathy network so you can let me know if something comes up; it'll let you talk to each other too -" [like so.]

"Oh, thank you, Your Majesty!" beams the littlest minion.

"No problem. So, the plants -" She gestures at the plants. "The red-bordered sections get watered once a week, the blue-bordered ones twice a week, the white-bordered ones every day, I hid a little garden shed with tools in that enormous white-leafed tree over there, the replicator in your dorm will make plant food as well as stuff for you guys, I don't really expect a weed problem because there weren't exactly any seeds on this planet when I conjured the garden up but some stuff might turn invasive I guess, feel free to mess with the locations and shapes of stuff or expand things past the current area if you take viable cuttings or stuff goes to seed, none of this will kill you if you eat it but I can't promise it'll taste any good because none of it's from your dimension and most of it isn't Earthly either so maybe don't try it."

The minions all nod on hearing this set of instructions, and someone gets out a pen and paper to write it all down.

"You can divvy up the work and the dorm amongst yourselves assuming that's all amicable; if you need me to settle disagreements let me know. As long as you're here you can also let me know if anyone shows up on the planet who isn't with me or one of these people -" She conjures up illusions of Sherlock, Tony, Soph, James, Minnie, Virginia, and, what the heck, Giles. "These folks are all allowed, anyone else might not be and I will want to investigate."

"Yes, your majesty!" says the one who handed her the list. The rest all nod.

"Excellent. Anything else we should go over before I go do other stuff?" asks Bella, clapping her hands in a businesslike manner.

There is a general shaking of heads.