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

[manofmyword]

"I've only met the one of me, and he went by Alice. Haven't heard of any others. Could be, though."

[she_sells_seashells]

"So why will they know who I'm talking about? Are you just here a lot?"

[manofmyword]

"If they've heard of me, they'll know, and if they haven't they won't," he says reasonably.

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell's becoming less interested in this conversation now. If she were still nine, she'd be hanging around and keeping him talking and throwing manipulative looks at the jelly beans. That was years ago. "Well, yes. I think that's how that works."

[manofmyword]

"I usedta be famous," he adds, taking another jelly bean and repeating the inviting gesture. "Back home. You meet somebody from Gotham, two thousand eightish, they'll tell you all about me."

[she_sells_seashells]

"What did you do?" Bell asks. She takes the jellybean. She hasn't been on the Starks' tab long enough to obliterate her instincts that say yes, carbohydrates, take. "I don't think most people in other worlds get famous the way it's customary to in Panem."

And this conversation has begun to interest her again so she sits down.

[manofmyword]

"Mmm. Well, there's a lotta ways I could tell that story," he says. "You the squeamish type? Bet you're not."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I'm not," Bell agrees. She's pretty sure no one from Panem who doesn't actually faint during the Games broadcasts is "squeamish" by normal standards. She gets woozy around blood, but only in person - it's the smell, not the sight of it.

[manofmyword]

"Didn't think so."

He takes another jelly bean, invites her to have some more again, and settles back a little on his bench.

"The really short version," he says, "is I'm a retired terrorist. But I think you'd rather have the details. Am I right?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"Yes."

This is, as of recently, relevant to Shell Bell's interests.

[manofmyword]

"There was this girl, y'see," he says. "And I guess she thought there were too many criminals in Gotham—mind you, she mighta been right—and she decided what they really needed was the hell scared out of 'em. Worked out fine as far as that goes. After the first coupla times she swooped in on a drug deal and beat everybody half to death, they were sure as fuck scared, lemme tell ya. But some of 'em were mad, too."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Okay," Bell says, trying to figure out if she's supposed to imagine a rogue Peacekeeper or maybe a member of the fictional United Panem Defenders.

[manofmyword]

"Some of these people decided—well, I say decided, I might've had a little something to do with it—anyway, they hired me to kill the lady. She had 'em by the balls, see; they couldn't make any money with her wrecking their operations from here to Sunday. Heh."

He delicately picks another jelly bean out of the bowl in front of him. This one is blood red.

Crunch.

"Buuuut I didn't really wanna kill her," he says. "I just wanted her attention. I got it, too. We chased each other around the city a couple times, she got me in a police interrogation room and roughed me up some, I detonated a friend'a mine and left... oh, it was loads'a fun."

[she_sells_seashells]

"It sounds like... an adventure," says Shell Bell diplomatically.

[manofmyword]

"Oh, it was," he says with a nostalgic smile.

"Didn't last, though. I blew some more stuff up; she threw me off a building and then turned me over to the cops." He dusts off his hands.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh." Well - he's not an Avox. He looks like he could've been flogged, maybe more than flogged, but he doesn't sound like that would stop him. What is it other worlds usually do? "And your prison has enough doors in it that you can come here sometimes?"

[manofmyword]

"Nope," he says. "I started coming here in my dreams, the night she caught me."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I've never heard that one before."

[manofmyword]

"Her majesty hadn't either. Guess I'm just special."

[she_sells_seashells]

"I guess. So you're technically there now?"

[manofmyword]

"Nope," he says again. "Her majesty didn't like my style, so she found somebody to take her to my world for a bit and she put me on a little asteroid all by myself."

[she_sells_seashells]

Bell blinks.

"...Because her boyfriend cheated on her with you?" she asks skeptically. That doesn't sound like her, let alone like the utopia-building versions of her with magic whose citizens tend to have such nice things to say. "Or because you were going to blow up more things from inside prison?"

[manofmyword]

"Well, I was gonna get out first."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Oh."

Yeah, she could see doing that.

Bell doesn't even know enough about astronomy to ask how he can live on an asteroid. She is vaguely aware that asteroids are in space.

[manofmyword]

He shrugs.

"Kinda lonely up here, but she gave me some neat magic toys, so I don't starve or get too bored. And every so often, this place shows up. That's always fun."