many people move here to start families

[cross_and_bow]

Bella is hanging out in a Jarvis - the familiar one - handwriting a nonaggression proposal-slash-bribe. Has to be handwritten. Damn fussy demons. At least it's okay for her to conjure rather than personally harvesting the weird ink she's supposed to use.

Comments

[poeticterms]

"Sorry to interrupt, but Jane's gone down again," says Jarvis. "And this time without the loud, annoying beep. Her systems are throwing 'error 559: cannot reticulate splines', and I couldn't begin to tell you whether or not it was set up facetiously."

[cross_and_bow]

"...Was she reticulating any splines? What the hell is a spline and how do you reticulate it?"

[poeticterms]

"It's a joke on a popular series of video games," he says. "And it is a joke - I'm in contact with Yggdrasil, Apollo, and Helios, and they are respectively suffering 'error 6008: missing 1s in binary code', 'error 2: cannot count', and 'error 909: out of memory, all alone in the moonlight'."

[cross_and_bow]

"...What the fuck."

[poeticterms]

"Obviously the problem goes deeper this time," he says. "How much deeper, it's beyond us to say. Shall I open a door to Milliways so you can investigate the Belltower?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Yes. Please." She puts aside her fancy ink and heads for the nearest door.

[poeticterms]

It opens on Milliways.

[cross_and_bow]

Bella checks the tower.

"There's not even a keyboard in here!" she shouts ineffectually at the error display.

The tower's otherwise uninhabited. She tries a few wishes. Nothing works. She tries a tenner and it won't go - it would make her supreme over an entire subworld but it cannot fix Jane.

What the fuck.

Bella's about to force the bar door to Peace when she remembers that Aegis was on the new Bell's welcoming committee.

Juliet hasn't been wherever Aegis went. She can't force the door thereto. (It doesn't even always work when you have been wherever.)

She loiters in the Belltower for an hour, trying wish designs, physically poking at the hardware, and not only does she fail to get Jane running again, she doesn't see any other Bells. Not even Shell Bell, who should be able to get a door whenever she wants it. Either Milliways is having more fun with the lost timesync than usual, or something is wrong even more deeply than suspected.

Juliet leaves a note in the tower, explaining what she tried, and the error Sunshine and the other Jarvised worlds got.

And then she leaves.

"No good," she reports darkly. "The Belltower reports 'error 0: problem exists between chair and keyboard' and I can't fix her. Not even with a tenner. There was no sign of any other Bells - I left a note, I bet they would have too, I was probably the first one on the scene."

[poeticterms]

"Then I suppose we wait," says Jarvis.

[cross_and_bow]

"Suppose so. Nothing the others didn't have to live through last time." She sighs. "You want to tell Sherlock and Tony, or did you already, or should I?"

[poeticterms]

"They're in the other house," he says. "They've been informed."

[cross_and_bow]

Bella nods.

[So, we're stuck, anyone you want torchable that you haven't gotten round to asking about because you figured Downside would get them?] Bella asks the pair.

[toblameforit]

[...Not really, no,] says Tony.

[cross_and_bow]

[Just checking. Aegis went on the new Bell meet-and-greet, which probably has something to do with it, but this isn't just 'Aegis torched', I don't think.]

[eversomuchfun]

[Yes. Last time Aegis torched, there were no charming joke error messages.]

[cross_and_bow]

[Unfortunately, I think we're kinda devoid of avenues of investigation.] And she summarizes what she found in the Belltower.

[eversomuchfun]

[The best we can probably do is to keep checking every so often, then. And think about it.]

[cross_and_bow]

[Yeah.] Sigh. [Well, back to treaty handwriting for me.]

[eversomuchfun]

[Enjoy.]

[cross_and_bow]

Calligraphy, calligraphy. Bleh.

Eventually the writing is done, she's handed it over for review, and she decides to head home, get a mug of hot cocoa the old-fashioned way, and sit in her room and revise her future plans to accommodate more limited high-end coin output.

There's someone in her room.

She doesn't drop the mug, but she does shriek. "Christ! Who are you and what are you doing in my room?"

[keyed_up]

"Pfff," says the stranger. "You're not a good actress, you know that? You should pentagon it. Is that cocoa?"

[cross_and_bow]

"Who are -" Bella starts to repeat, and then she notes other features of the room.

There are bunked beds.

There are clothes on the floor that don't belong to her. And a sweater that does, but which she hasn't worn in two months. A box of tacky jewelry that definitely isn't hers, including an array of costume-colorful crosses.

"Who the fuck are you and what did you do to my room?"

[keyed_up]

"Okay, that one was better, nice double-take, what's got you in such a mood though? Did you not make me any cocoa?"

[cross_and_bow]

Bella doesn't know what's going on, but she doesn't like it. She doesn't have her Mercury palace yet - it's definitely a low priority now that she can't siphon coins from Aurora and Stella - but she has the whole Earth to play with. A flex of her teleportation power lands the pair of them in the middle of some random Canadian wilderness.

"Who are you?"

[keyed_up]

"...Where are we? What're we doing here? Are we playing some kind of, I dunno, scenario, was Sherlock supposed to brief me -"