"Just retired?" mutters Elspeth.

"World's Downsideable," reports Golden in an undertone.

"I don't know what that means, but it sounds murdery; don't just up and kill her, please," says Tab, "she still has enough contact with the population for it to be a sharp shock."

Golden's aura is still out, like all of them except Juliet's; her hiss is very nonhuman, but she doesn't disagree aloud.

"And Corona is dead."

"He denied Kers's protection and died about a minute later, a little while after you dropped yourself into the sun," she says. "We never found his body."

He stares some more - frowns - licks his lips - shakes his head and hugs Elspeth some more.

"Corona was Harley's local alt," says Aelise, in case anyone might find this clarification useful.

"World's Downsideable," says Glass. "We can pick him up on our way out. We were going to Origin next anyway." She nibbles her lip, then says, "World's related to Eos and Aurum, in that way they have."

"...Pick him up," Aelise echoes.

"From the afterlife," says Lizzie.

"And is also some, although admittedly not most, of why I sounded murdery," Golden adds to Tab. "If we eventually come up with some way to safely store Chelseas - perhaps we accumulate a few hundred of them and can store them far away from anyone who doesn't produce informed consent in triplicate after Elspeth's gone over them - then they won't be irretrievable."

"What is Elspeth doing?"

"I am deprogramming Harley," says Elspeth quietly. "My power is oriented around truth. I can make people stop lying to themselves in the ways that support what Chelsa's power does. It's harder for this one than it was for the Aurum version, but I can do it."

"I hadn't even gotten to the point of thinking to offer. I'm only working on Harley. For Chelsea I could do a lot of people all at once. I can barely do one at a time with this one. It took almost half an hour last time."

"Well, just for future reference," she says, relaxing slightly. "I'd ask you not to spread it around, too, but apparently you can't."

"As far as I can tell," says Aelise, unruffled, "either people from my world just have a higher inclination to go to war with each other than people from yours, or throwing Gifts into the mix changes the game significantly. When I let Chelsa loose on the world, I was trying to avoid it being nuked down to a population of one. As far as I can tell from what Harley said to Tab about ten years ago, your world has never faced down a crisis of that magnitude, or at least not from such a short distance. Now that I've finally got her back in the box, I am not going to let the last three hundred years go to waste by ripping the band-aid off six billion minds."

"It's the Gifts," reports Glass. "That's what I was seeing - the world isn't meaner, it just has higher stakes, bigger powers than Aurum or Eos have."

"I think a subset of us should go to Milliways," puts in Aurora. "Shell Bell and Golden are the only Bells who need to be here - and maybe Tab but we'll only be out for a moment and she's got New Bell Stuff to do. Me and Glass and Juliet between us can get Downside to grab Corona, to Rainbow to snag Brilliance if Corona's not on board with enchanneling, and to Chronicle so Tab can dump power into the forest, and have her back all nicely Belled up, yeah? And Harley and Elspeth don't need to be here unless anyone besides him needs deprogramming. You have been safe, right, Tab?"

"Yeah, that's my Gift."

"I'm on board with going to do New Bell Stuff, trying to do diplomacy is -" Juliet shakes her head. "Shell Bell, if you would? Agent Honey, sticking around or following us?"