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

[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."

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Okay."

Not yet, apparently.

One more—one more—they're much slower now than they were at the bottom of evil range.

And one more time, he drags the pain across his mind. A fifth one of the new kind appears.

"Done," he says on a soft exhale.

[she_sells_seashells]

Million drops to zero as soon as she can tell what word he's emitting.

[arenaria]

(She's not like the torturers Downside, who've heard stop so many times that it's permanently lost meaning -)

[she_sells_seashells]

"Golden, do you want one of the - what should we call them? There's not one for everybody."

[gunpowdergelatine]

The Joker presses his face into the side of Nathan's neck and whimpers softly, his arms tightening on his lapful of evils hard enough that some of the points draw blood.

[temporal_affairs]

"Babe," murmurs Nathan, "I got you - babe - you okay?"

[luminous_regnant]

"I have no clever naming ideas," Golden says. "You can hang onto all of the nine-pointed ones until we have a complete expedition put together and can discuss strategy, by which time more may have been accumulated, from the Joker's alts perhaps. I will take a few of the evils." She does.

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell takes everything else.

"Thank you, Joker," she says gravely.

[gunpowdergelatine]

No more armful of coins—he wraps his arms around Nathan and hugs him as tight as he possibly can.

And takes a deep breath, and lets it out, and takes another.

"Yeah," he says, slow and soft. "I'm fine, sweetie."

And he lets go and sits up a little to toss a smile at Shell Bell.

"Anytime," he says flippantly.

[temporal_affairs]

Nathan hugs back, snug but not breaking. "Good."