inside

[arenaria]

Shell and Bell have worked out (well, Bell has worked out and Shell has tentatively commented on) a merging protocol that they think will work for them.

Shell's memories are going to be perfectly accessible, but they will not come up automatically in response to stimuli unless the resulting Shell Bell is expressly open to it. They will keep Shell's hard-earned tolerance to pain, insofar as that's separable (Shell is quite sure that she'd be able to make a pentagon if another situation as important as getting ahold of Sherlock to mint Juliet came up). All of Shell's insights about Sherlock's importance stay. Her itchy discomfort with Sherlock not getting her importance will be folded into Bell's resignation to same. The merged Shell Bell will be comfortable referring to either past in the first or third person, but will default to using "I" for Bell and "she" for Shell. She'll torch, but that's the only supernatural property Shell's bringing to the merger; she'll retain all Bell's magic. Shell looks a little older, but not much; they'll go with that, as they think torching probably conflicts with actually aging and they don't think twenty is the ideal place to sit forever and whatever Shell is supposed to be is closer. They are omitting the nightmares, good riddance.

"Last minute questions, comments, reasons to expect this to be a bad idea in some way?" Bell asks.

Shell shakes her head. She is looking forward to not being a separate person anymore.

Comments

[she_sells_seashells]

Wish.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan takes a while to adjust. (He spends this while hugging the Joker, though.)

[gunpowdergelatine]

"I love you, sweetie," he says, snuggling up. "You okay?"

[temporal_affairs]

"I'm fine, babe," says Nathan. "Kind of weird to have been a hundred years since I died one way and a few months the other, though."

[gunpowdergelatine]

He hugs him some more.

"Good."

Glancing at the Bell(a)s, he adds, "Somebody wanna perma-mint me while we're at it?"

[luminous_regnant]

Golden nods.

"...That took an evil," she says a moment later. "Why did that take an evil?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"I don't know. It probably doesn't take an evil by a lot? I wished for all of the magic I had before the merge, and torching, and I got both, one evil."

[gunpowdergelatine]

The Joker hums thoughtfully for a moment.

Then he says, "So what's the plan?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Torturer's control has to go, and so does the power the judges have to hand it out like party favors," Shell Bell says promptly. "Some reasonable ground rules need to happen. We need a system to repatriate people to where they belong if they want to go back to their worlds or other worlds and will behave like people and not like - like Downsiders sometimes start behaving, torturers or not. We need to empty the catacombs so people aren't in limbo until some miserable self-righteous shit of a judge gets around them. We're probably going to get attention from upstairs - we need to check out Upside too, maybe it's bad in its own ways - and we need to be ready for that, we need supplies of stars and evils, we might want to see if there's another level above that if we can talk any of our respective helpers into trying, we need several of us on the ground and one or two hanging back in Milliways ready to bail us out if she's too much to handle. If she is, we need a way to just funnel people out manually and process them somewhere other than her turf. It would be good if we had a system of interworld travel that was under our own actual control, though, so we should experiment with that, see if it's something we can do with coins."

[gunpowdergelatine]

"If you wanna throw a lot of pain around, I'll catch," the Joker offers.

[luminous_regnant]

"You're clearly equipped to be an evil factory. Are you sure you want to try for a next tier?"

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Only one way to find out!"

[luminous_regnant]

Golden shrugs. "Well, Shell Bell, you're the one with the agony beam."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Do you want a ramp-up when the endpoint is ten times the minimum for an evil?" Shell Bell asks the Joker.

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Sure," he says amicably. "Sweetie, pick me up? I like it when you pick me up."

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan scoops him up and holds him tight. "You sure about this, babe?"

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Mmhmm," he says, leaning his head on Nathan's shoulder.

[she_sells_seashells]

Since the Joker can demonstrably make coins pretty fast when hit with a hundred thousand, and since they do also want a supply of evils either way, Shell Bell starts there.

She slides up at a rate of five thousand per second, watchful for signs that she should speed up to shorten the trial, or slow down to make the slope gentler.

[luminous_regnant]

Golden averts her eyes.

[gunpowdergelatine]

He curls up in Nathan's arms, smiling and nuzzling him contentedly, and accumulates a pile of evils in his lap. Occasionally he wriggles, as though trying to get comfortable, although comfort is of course not remotely on the menu.

[she_sells_seashells]

At Shell Bell's chosen rate - which she sees no reason to adjust - it takes three minutes even to reach one million.

[gunpowdergelatine]

By that point, he is hugging such a heaping pile of evils that some have started spilling onto the floor.

He has also started making small sounds and pressing his face briefly into Nathan's shoulder now and again.



The next coin after the one million mark is indeed something new: three equally spaced prongs, each with one point aimed outward and two more hooked back toward the middle, so it has nine points all in all. It looks positively vicious.

The Joker doesn't—quite—looks like he wants to stop.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Can you talk?" Shell Bell asks, holding still at one million exactly.

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Yeah," he breathes, and emits another barbed nine-pointed coin. "Mmmm'm I there yet?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Yes. Say when you're done."