plotting to unnerve her

[self_composed]

Bella finds Milliways in the moon palace instead of one of her balconies.

"Huh," she says aloud.

Then, to Alice, Libby, Elena, and Mary, and Lazarus except he autoreplies with a busy message, [Hey folks, Moonstone Palace grew a bar that I don't remember putting in, come check it out.]

Comments

[self_composed]

"She didn't publicize this information? The cops didn't?" says Bella exasperatedly. "Grand. Well. If I'm not cheating, I have no hopes of overpowering the average person who might lay hands on the detonator, or want to take it from me if I had it in the first place. The choice is out of my hands here unless I want to jump into the water, and my swimming abilities without cheating always amounted to "dog paddle and wait for rescue". I don't imagine said rescue would be a priority on this day. I don't think a not-cheating me-on-this-ferry has any options besides sitting tight."

[manofmyword]

"Poor you," he says. "Don't worry, though, you got out safely. Nobody hit the button, and Bats got to me before I could hit mine. That was when she threw me off the building," he explains. "And left me hanging upside down from a grappling hook for the SWAT team to collect. As I recall, they stood around watching me giggle until I passed out, annnnd the next thing I knew - Milliways!"

[self_composed]

"Welcome," says Bella, lifting an imaginary glass. She hasn't ordered anything and for some reason it seems rude to conjure beverages in a sentient bar.

[manofmyword]

"Turns out I come here in my sleep," he elaborates.

"And I gotta ask. What do ya think the twist was that time?"

[self_composed]

"Besides rigging the ferries after warning about the bridges and tunnels? The detonators could be wired the other way around, or they could be dummies, or only one of them could be either, or there were only enough explosives to sink, not obliterate, the boats, so you'd get to watch survivors fighting over wreckage to hang onto..." She shrugs.

[manofmyword]

"Ooh, you're vicious," he says approvingly. "I like that in a woman. But nope, that's not it. The trick is, one of the boats had a detonator for its own bomb. The other one had a detonator for both."

[self_composed]

"Which was which?"

[manofmyword]

"You tell me."

[self_composed]

"I could see either one," Bella says. "If the prisoners blow themselves up and it looks like the civilians did it, the civilians think whoever had their detonator pushed the button. That person's confused, no one believes them if they say otherwise, everyone thinks they had the stomach to blow up five hundred people, they start doubting their own memory - just a little button, maybe they slipped, maybe they deluded themselves, maybe they repressed the memory? - and you've still got lots of live non-criminal civilians, the city doesn't mass-evacuate out of grief and panic the next time they think it's safe to do so and leave you with a ghost town. If the civilians blow themselves up and it looks like the prisoners did it, there's a crackdown on the prisoners, maybe you find your next stint in prison more interesting, political interests that care about looking after the welfare of prisoners get into fantastic fights with political interests that don't - I guess they do that in either case. Maybe a guard on the boat presses the button and you get most of the psychological benefits - so to speak - against him that you could've against a civilian who doesn't remember pressing hers in the other scenario. And it doesn't matter who pushes the button if they all explode. From the outside, from the perspective of everyone left alive, it looks like they both did it at the same time. It especially doesn't matter if you just explain the trick after the fact - then no matter what the buttons actually did, you get to leave everyone paralyzed with indecision if they get caught in one of your pranks." She regards him steadily. "I think I'm glad you're in jail."

[manofmyword]

"I think I'm glad you're not the Bat," he says.

And almost immediately admits -

"That's a filthy lie, I'd love to run a game against you. It'd be short but oh, would it ever be sweet."

[self_composed]

"I'd make a terrible Bat. If you presented me with a building with an explosive and a district attorney in it, and I wasn't cheating, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I am an eighteen year old girl with a lot of magic and a lovely brain that, prior to locating the magic, I mostly exercised with high school curriculum and classic literature, not anything practical for combating terrorism. If it would be short, it would be because you got bored with me not being able to do anything but snark at you and you decided to kill me or move on."

[manofmyword]

...The Joker seems to find this hilarious.

[self_composed]

"And if I did get to cheat, it wouldn't be interesting either," she shrugs. "I have superpowers coming out of my ears."

[manofmyword]

"Sweetie," he says, "that's half the fun. The other half is that you're too smart to fall for my cheap tricks."

[self_composed]

"I wouldn't have to decide if I believed you or not, if I was cheating," Bella says. "I could nullify all the explosive materials that aren't actively operating well-controlled engines and power plants on the entire planet in less time than it takes you to blink, and then it doesn't matter what buttons originally set them off. I don't try to be clever when I can be sure."

[manofmyword]

"Well, yeah," he says. "And if I told you right now I had a bomb planted somewhere in this bar, is that what you'd do?"

[self_composed]

"Yes," she says, "just to be sure, before finding out what you really did. I wouldn't like to start reading people's minds without their explicit permission, but I'd do it, if I thought I needed to."

[manofmyword]

"See? Short but sweet," he concludes.

[self_composed]

She shrugs. "If that's to your taste, sure."

[manofmyword]

"It's not to yours?"

[self_composed]

"I was thrilled when the nemesis I thought I had turned out to be a well-intentioned lady with a miscalibrated sense of personal boundaries who was happy to help me become the Empress of the Stars by teaching me some more magic and operating as my personnel department. Enmity is not intrinsically fascinating to me. You'd hate Mars the way I made it. Even Alice won't live there; he just can't get comfortable in a place where the local laws of physics have been bent so no one could suddenly decide to hit him with a baseball bat and successfully manage to connect it with his nose."

[manofmyword]

He bursts out laughing.

[self_composed]

"So no. Your games are not to my taste. But talking about them passes the time while I wait for Alice to finish talking books with that girl he spotted reading his favorite."

[manofmyword]

"Anyway," he says, "if I wanted to play you, I wouldn't rig a bomb. I'd kidnap your boyfriend. And he'd like it."

[self_composed]

"He would like it. When he stopped liking it, he'd teleport away. I wouldn't even have to be involved if that was all. If I had any suspicion you'd actually kill him - if I thought you could - or if this went on too long, I'd tell him to come home because I need him, and I think he would do it."