in between moments

[she_sells_seashells]

Shell Bell has not found Milliways by herself since the occasion on which she first met Sherlock.

Today, after eight months, she does.

She makes sure that Sherlock and Tony are both awake, finds that they are but do not want to join her in the bar today unless she finds something interesting, checks her coin supply and finds it sufficient, and steps through.

Comments

[pythbox]

"He's probably doing something important and military," says Tony. "Or sleeping, he could be sleeping. Better not."

[she_sells_seashells]

"Okay," shrugs Shell Bell.

[sailorheavymetal]

[Soooo,] says Darcy, [can you put Heimdall on the brainphone from where you are?]

[she_sells_seashells]

[Yeah, sure, does he want in?]

[sailorheavymetal]

[Yep!]

[she_sells_seashells]

[Done,] she conferences to Darcy and Heimdall both. "I just added Heimdall to the network," she informs Tony, "so if you don't want to talk to him, you can set up a busy message instead of being surprised if he talks to you, though I have no idea if he's likely to."

[pythbox]

[Thank you,] says Heimdall.

"Okay," says Tony.

[she_sells_seashells]

[You're welcome.]

"You know, I really wish there were a good way to set up Milliways-independent interworld travel," remarks Shell Bell wistfully. "But I can't do it even with the pointiest wishcoins Sherlock ever makes for me."

[pythbox]

"...Hmm," says Tony.

[she_sells_seashells]

"...What, thinking of an engineering solution?" Shell Bell asks.

[pythbox]

"Maybe."

[she_sells_seashells]

She laughs. "I'm not optimistic, if I can't do it with a star - although Stella's boyfriend has made even pointier coins, so maybe those can, although the big wishes are kind of mean - it's not even safe to use stars unless you know a certain secret - so she hasn't tried doing anything with them yet, she even calls the class of coin 'evils'."

[pythbox]

"It's weird that pointiness is a measure of power," says Tony.

[she_sells_seashells]

"And," says Shell Bell, "everybody gets unique coin colors! Well, I don't know about everybody everybody, but even alts don't all have the same ones. You saw mine."

[pythbox]

"Yep," he says. "Weird."

[she_sells_seashells]

"My Sherlock does a sort of gray pearly color, and none of the Tonies are mints so I don't know about them."

[pythbox]

"Why not?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"It's not a good idea to make people mints just because. One of the things coins can't do is unmint a person. I trust my Tony just fine, but he doesn't tend to go for jaunts in other worlds like I've been doing lately, he can just ask me or Sherlock for whatever he wants, and also he wouldn't be a particularly effective mint - I have the power so I can make my own triangles and squares new wherever I am, but all my big coins are from Sherlock and the other Bells who are mints get theirs from minted Whistles, because -" Pause. "Are you, like, squeamish?"

[pythbox]

"...Not especially?"

[she_sells_seashells]

"The coins are made of pain," says Juliet. "More of it gets a pointier coin and a bigger wish. Whistles love it like candy; Sherlock liked it enough that it didn't take a lot of magic to get her to hexagon- and star-making on the regular. Most Bells - though not me or Angela, we come from totally nonmagical worlds - have a sort of inborn mental opacity power that won't let anything alter our brains, and even me and Angela don't like the idea, so even we take help where we can get it."

[pythbox]

"...Wow," says Tony.

[she_sells_seashells]

"Kinda fucked-up magic, but so useful," says Bell.

[pythbox]

"Yeah," he says, "I'm starting to get that."

[she_sells_seashells]

"One time I met an alt of me - that was Juliet - and I had just run into Angela, and I gave Angela all my big coins including the hexes, which are how one makes more mints, and including the pentagons, which would've been enough to wake up Sherlock and call her over without losing the door. I shouldn't have done that, Angela has a Whistle, she only needed two hexes to start, not anything else... And Juliet of course did not insist on breaking my arm for the sake of getting magic even though the magic in that cluster of worlds is nasty, addictive, dangerous stuff that she's been advised not to try. So I just visited her for a while and made her a big heap of squares and helped the one Tony install the copied Jarvis and then I went home."

[sailorheavymetal]

[Okay,] says Darcy, [holding this door is getting kinda old.]