among her own kind

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell finds Milliways once when she is eighteen. She has been there for two days now, setting up her sign ten minutes out of every waking hour, wiping down tables for her quarters in the staff area, eating buttery potatoes (she has been told that this is a complete nutrient package, for humans). Her wand is holding a bun of hair in place on the back of her head. Her shells are stashed safely in her room; she's budgeting carefully and she'll pay her tab when she leaves.

No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.

Comments

[ferratus]

"Now that is something I can do," he says.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Can you? Good."

[ferratus]

"Most of them are ignorant patsies," he says. "Like, upwards of ninety percent. And then you have the ones who are pulling crap, which is most of the rest."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Nearly nobody being decent?" sighs Bell. "Well. I guess that makes logistics easier, if there's just about no one it's a massive priority to avoid." Pause. "Are we on roughly the same page with casualties, here?"

[ferratus]

"What page are you on?" he asks.

[she_sells_seashells]

"I expect people are going to die," Bell says flatly. "I expect not all of them are gonna be personally responsible for the Games, or for policies related to public flogging, or for people in the Districts not having the vote. I expect that, since as of this time we are all humans with extremely limited resources compared to the bad guys, we will be off our game one day and somebody who really oughtn't be dead will die - somebody we like or somebody who happens to be twelve or somebody who would've gone on to cure salt fever. And I expect we ought to do what we can do anyway, because if we wait for someone else to do it, that amounts to betting that the next revolution will not only succeed, and will not only be less bloody than ours would, but that it will come quick enough for this difference in death toll to make up for every person in every District who'll die in the interim of the Games or of starvation or of terrible medical care or of casual execution."

[ferratus]

Tony exchanges a look with Sherlock.

"Believe me," he says, "we get it."

[she_sells_seashells]

"So," says Bell. "Pages, similar, yes. Okay." She turns her attention to the map.

[ferratus]

"I mean, not that I wouldn't love to do this without killing anybody we don't wanna kill. But unless we have seriously superior force, the real world doesn't work that way."

[she_sells_seashells]

"But," Shell Bell says, "the more superior the force, the faster and more surgically we can work. So I think you guys probably want to set up signs for assassinations and custom engineering projects. And acquire stick-equivalents of your own if you can."

[ferratus]

"The kind of custom engineering I do best, if I sell it to the wrong people it could actually give us worse collateral than trying to run our revolution on a shoestring budget," says Tony. "So: yes, but very carefully."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Right. You both wanna pick customers carefully. I'm not so picky. I think talking to me usually cuts casualties in the worlds of whoever I'm consulting. Even if they aren't nice people, the ones whose priority is being not-nice don't want my help in the first place. We can coordinate, maybe, if I get people who could be running things cleaner with some precision stabbing or explodey trinkets."

[ferratus]

"Now that sounds like a plan," says Tony.

[sicaria]

The phrase 'precision stabbing' actually causes Sherlock to smile slightly.

[she_sells_seashells]

"And," Bella says, "comm devices could come in handy here. I'm happy to just live in Milliways for months now I'm not running down a supply of shells that I could get away with leaving by whichever door and the ones I can carry on my person. If I find somebody, I can stick my head out the door and call you, if we have those. And then you can try for a door-summoning, yeah? If the timeline works out. I'm not so sure how that works. I hear all kinds of stories but I've never found anyone else from Panem here before. So I haven't been able to compare."

[sicaria]

"The most obvious question is, when are you?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"July ninth, year 72," says Shell Bell. "It was early morning, if that matters. I found this instead of the hall when I opened my bedroom door. Tony's supposed to start his Victory Tour next week."

[ferratus]

"Sounds about right," says Tony.

[sicaria]

"Yes," Sherlock confirms. "This time at least, we are within a few hours of one another."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Are our districts even in the same time zone? Actually - forget districts - Four spans two all by itself. I'm in the earlier one. And... what does this imply about us being able to contact each other again? If you leave and I stay here, even for a solid six months - when I come out it'll still be July ninth, early morning. You won't have time to find the place again. Unless you will. I've seen people enter and leave several times, when they come often enough and it's one of my longer stints, but me being here doesn't do anything to time passing in their worlds. For that matter, I'm not clear on how Sherlock appeared here when I've already been on the premises for two days. Ugh. I've been coming here for twelve years. Actually, I spend so long here that it might add up to more like thirteen by now. And I still don't get this sort of thing."

[sicaria]

"I am not sure anyone does," says Sherlock.

[ferratus]

"I'll be right back," says Tony, and he gets up and heads over to the bar.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Well," says Shell Bell. "We can experiment and make tentative conclusions, provided we don't expect them to hold every time. But it would be really convenient if we had a way to communicate in Panem, too. Especially since it's otherwise going to be hard to coordinate service sales. In theory I can take down room numbers and Tony can leave whatever he makes as an inter-room package for the next time the customer reappears. I don't think assassinations can be made to work the same way. Do you do anything else?" Bell asks Sherlock. "Anything... portable."

[sicaria]

"Solve difficult mysteries," she says. "Although I am not sure that is especially portable, either."

[she_sells_seashells]

"It could be, if at least one of us manages to meet the person more than once and collect lots of portable evidence the second time - photos of places? Articles by unreliable reporters? What can you do with that sort of thing gathered by not-you?"