(The Joker also arrives, with an arm wrapped around Jellybean's shoulders and his nose pressed into Jellybean's sugary-smelling hair. Mmm.)

"Well," says Cam. "That's an interesting... welcome... we got. I guess now I know what your aura does, huh, Jellybean."

The Joker beams at Nathan and hugs him.

"Aura of candy," Jellybean says cheerfully. "It makes me the tastiest Joker in the deck. Knew that already, I just didn't know it worked on vampires." To Nathan, he adds, "If you wanna chew on me for real sometime, I'm game."

"Cool. I'm gonna go chat with Golden and see if her husband can in fact behold me without being as disturbed as he is by girl Bells," Cam says, and he teleports away.

"Sure, I'll show Addy," says Jellybean with a shrug. "You wanna get your nibbles first?"

Nathan spreads his arms in a display of readiness. "Rar."

Nathan is in no condition to appreciate the fine details of his bouquet. He's just biting and growling and swallowing.

He also stacked up his regeneration like the Joker's, so his supply of candy-flavoured blood is endless.

"Fun?" he inquires, closing down the aura again and rubbing at the already-healed wounds on his neck.

"Tasty," Nathan says. "Intensely drinkable. Massive sensory head trip. Did the vampire one of you guys get his teeth into you?"

"Nah, he was being squishy for a bit," Jellybean explains. "Liked the way I tasted human-style just fine, though."

Nathan laughs. "Well. Welcome to Aurum."

Jellybean laughs. "I'm definitely feeling the love! Hey, you think there'll be anybody else who'll want a bite?"

"Addy almost certainly. Let's see, who else... not the Imperial Family, I don't think, except maybe Emmett or Jasper, but plenty of the staff'd probably take you up on it."

"It's pretty fun being a chew toy," he says cheerfully. "I wanna do some more of it."

"If you talk to the Princess she'll issue a general announcement for you. Well, probably."

Jellybean beams and kisses Nathan's cheek, then snuggleattacks the Joker.

"I'm being ferociously cuddled!" he declares. "Mm, somebody's in a mood. Sweetheart, we're gonna go fuck, you wanna come with?"

Nathan consults himself. "Yeah, all right," he says after a moment, "but don't form any particular expectations about me-on-Jellybean action that looks more like sex than violence."

"We won't," says Jellybean. "Anyway, I'm definitely up for some more violence."

"I am a willing supplier."

Jellybean giggles and hugs him.

Nathan picks him right up off the ground. "Babe," he says, "this'd be a good time to teleport us to our room."

He does that.

Sex and violence ensue!

[Did anybody tell you about my aura of candy?]

Alice mentioned it. She says it won't bother half-vampires since we're more used to literal candy, but if you let it out among full vampires they'll start fighting over you because the relevant instincts don't expect you to contain enough blood for sharing.

[Awwww,] he complains, [but being mobbed by thirsty vampires sounds fun.]

Yeah, but they won't actually try to bite you till their instincts are convinced that won't get them killed by all the other vampires who want to eat you instead. Possibly except in the case of mated pairs.

[Any mated pairs who wanna bite?] he inquires brightly.

You'd have to check with Alice, but as far as I know the only mated vampires who'll bite you at all are Nathan and other-Alice, and that's because they don't mind if it's a turnon for you. Mated vampires are by and large really monogamous.

[Awwwwwww,] he sighs. [Oh well. Having them one at a time is almost as good, I guess.]

Addy will try it. For science, says Elspeth. Ace as they come, so it'll stop there.

Jellybean giggles.

Do you want me to announce your availability just in case?

[Yes please!]

Done.

[Any takers?]

If there are any, they'll brainphone you. I'm not a social calendar.

He laughs. [Okay, thanks.]

[Sure,] Jellybean says cheerfully. [Can I just teleport to you?]

[Yup! I'm in my office.]

He kisses Nathan and the Joker, both on the cheek, and disentangles himself from them and freshens up his outfit and teleports to Addy with his aura still furled in case of bystanders.

Her office is otherwise quite empty; it's just Addy, a standing desk and a computer, and some random objects (glass of water, bottle of bubbly, stack of files). She looks him over, taps him on the nose and hmmms and shakes her head, and then folds her arms and looks at him expectantly.

Jellybean shrugs, and opens his aura. The scent of delicious candy fills the air.

Chomp.

He squirms and giggles.

Addy is a little more restrained than Nathan; she drinks to the point of discomfort but not distention. "Fascinating," she says. "This operates on a completely different level than the tastes of magic do. Does the exact type of sweet you - emit - change at all, ever?"

"Yeah," he says. "If I'm not flaring it just kinda drifts around between candies; when I flare it does 'em all at once."

"Can you direct it? Intensify some subset of them during a flare but not all?" she asks, tapping her chin.

"Not really," he says. "Well... I dunno. The Bells say the auras mostly aren't voluntary, but the Jokers can do all kindsa shit with them that mostly is."

"Ah, you're a little out of date on Bell auras, Golden's gives her fine shield control that she didn't notice till she tried to use it," Addy says, wagging a finger. "I don't know about the others, they're not as accustomed to indulging my curiosity. What all else can you do with it, now that I'm full enough not to get distracted and leap for your throat with it turned up?"

"All the normal Joker stuff," he says, gesturing vaguely—his soundtrack fades in with melancholy violins; his mood-aura dips to match, then brightens into giggly happiness while the soundtrack keens sadly onward. His aura of candy flavours itself pineapple, then blueberry, then acquires a hint of chocolate.

Addy attends raptly to these changes, looking like she'd eat him right up, again, if she had room.

Jellybean laughs. "I can't tell if that look is about the magic or about the candy," he says.

"Eighty-twenty," says Addy. "Keep messing with it, I want to see what else it does!"

"Fine," he snorts, and he flares the candy part. Suddenly he is an every-flavoured Jellybean.

Addy grabs his hand and bites into it, teeth not quite meeting in the middle. She just sort of leaves her jaw there, apparently to distract the bits of her that want to do eating and not science. [Carry on,] she brainphones merrily.

[Charming,] says Addy, raising an eyebrow.

Jellybean is snickering too hard to answer this intelligently.

[Are you unable to concentrate on your aura if I'm biting your hand?] Addy inquires impatiently.

[The hand's a little distracting, but mostly it's the part where I'm laughing my ass off,] he says through giggles.

Addy sighs through her nose and waits.

"Somebody's grumpy," he snorts, and his aura informs her that she is being gently made fun of, although this was already pretty obvious.

Addy gives him a withering look and crosses her arms and continues to restrainedly not bite his thumb and forefinger completely off.

His mood-aura spins through a wildly varying array of emotions, most of which he isn't really feeling. The faster that changes, the faster his flavour seems to change, although the rates don't precisely match.

Addy notes this with interest. [The emotional broadcast is interesting. I don't think it's all genuine, but is it indicative of something genuine?]

[I have to remember feeling like that to put it out there, if I'm not feeling it right then. Same way for everybody else, I think; we didn't really talk about it.]

[Didn't really -? Weren't you curious? Where is everyone's experimental mindset, I ask you. All right. Is it easier to do some emotions than others, assuming you remember them equally well?]

[Yep, but it's different every time which ones are easier, it's about what mood I'm in but it's not directly related to how different what I'm feeling is from what I'm trying to 'say'.]

[So what do various moods do exactly?]

"It's called the Speech," he says, still speaking same; the Speech's name for itself translates as such, but has stronger overtones of fundamentality. "It's from my world. You can use it to talk to anything that can understand you, and if you speak it, you understand anybody who's trying to talk to you. Somebody should teach it to your princess, I bet she'd have a field day."

[She would. I want it. Will you tell the local Bella that it's harmless so she'll let me have it, pretty please?]

He shrugs. "She can talk to Cam, he's an expert on harmlessness."

[It is harmless though, right? She won't let me copy minting,] Addy pouts. She does in fact pout, an interesting feat with his bloody bitten hand in her mouth.

"It's very context-dependent," he says. "Cam can tell her about whether she wants you to have it way better than I can."

[Maybe you could just teach me and we won't have to bother our Bells at all,] suggests Addy.

[Trading histories with Golden, nothing uninterruptible, why?]

[Addy wants the Speech and she's trying to wheedle it out of me, do you care?]

[Uh, probably safer not to, if Addy gets out of control she starts marauding for magic, at least if she doesn't know the Speech she can't get far if she ever manages to get made into a wizard.]

[Aww, but it's only a language, what's the harm?] wheedles Addy.

He snorts. "Can I have my hand back?"

She opens her mouth to let it go. "Pleeeease?"

"Nobody wants me to have any fun," huffs Addy.

"Live with it," Jellybean advises.

"Harrumph. Well, tell me more about it, anyway, even if I can't have it."

"It's a universal language," he says, "I mean literally, our universe is written in it. Names are weird in it unless you borrow them from your native language; mine's—" he says the word. Self-Defining. "But most people's are at least twenty times that long."

"I want to know my name," says Addy, bouncing on her toes.

He rolls his eyes. "Get somebody who's less easily bored than me to figure it out. Try Cam, maybe."

"Aww, I bet he won't help," sighs Addy.

"Well, I hate figuring out names, so I'm not gonna help either."

"Maybe I should go to your world," she suggests.

"...yeah, don't do that," Jellybean says consideringly.

"Why not?"

"'Cause I bet you'd end up falling in with Iggy and then I'd have to kill you or something and I don't really wanna bother," he suggests.

"Iggy? Who's Iggy?"

"He's kind of a problem. His main deal is lying to people and offering them power so they'll do stuff for him and then killing them when he gets bored."

"If somebody killed me I'd turn up Downside, but come to think of it I'm not sure if Bella would bother to get me out at this point," muses Addy. "But if he's only lying about the power that'd be no fun, would it? I'd never get to play with anything he promised. So that's not a concern, is it?"

"He's a really good liar," says Jellybean.

"I could show up borrowing Maggie," suggests Addy.

Jellybean cracks up.

"You know what she does, right?"

"I can guess!"

"So there's that! Then d'you suppose I could go to your world?"

"I don't really give a shit," says Jellybean, "and I can't put you there myself, so why're you asking me?"

"Jane does what Golden says, Golden'll ask Cam, Cam'll ask you 'cause you've met me and he hasn't."

"And I'll tell him I don't really give a shit," says Jellybean.

"He's not gonna ask you if you care, he's gonna ask you if it's a good idea, can I bite your hand again?"

"Nope," he says, "feels weird now, I'm bored, bye," and he teleports to the Aurum version of the Joker's asteroid.

This one is not terraformed. It's just a rock.

[Yep,] the Joker says cheerfully. [Why, did you wanna watch?]

[Still talking to Golden. You can come talk to us too if you want.]

"A pleasure," says Golden, and Edward, behind her, nods once with a neutral expression on his face.

"Addy? Yes. Both of those things. Also completely amoral and only barely kept under control by the fact that she can get access to more interesting magic by keeping me happy than otherwise, so thank you for not attempting to grant her access to any of yours, I would have had to have words with you or asked Elspeth to do so."

Jellybean makes a face.

"I do hope you can forgive me for wanting to keep the supply of power to the wildcard who once opted to have my daughter tortured under strict control," says Golden dryly.

[So I guess that's a no?] Cam asks weakly.

[No,] says Jellybean, [it's a bunch of feelings I don't wanna have in front of a telepath, I'm sorry about her daughter, I get it about her daughter, I'm kind of mad that she was talking like she expected that to be incomprehensible to me.]

[Yeah, I get it about Edward, I would've left long ago if he could read me but he can't. You could ward up against that too. Unless you want me to read your mind. And even then the standard option comes with a workaround for wards.]

[I wouldn't mind it from you,] he says fondly. [You I like. Edward I don't know from a hole in the ground.]

[As far as I can tell, he's Golden's extremely beloved radio.]

Jellybean laughs.

[But like, absurdly beloved, she lets him read her mind sometimes and that's a really big deal for Bells. So there's that.]

[Does anybody seem to care that I fucked off?] he asks idly.

[No, not really. All the Bells seem to have a sort of polite incomprehension about what any of us see in templates that don't match our own significant others, except maybe Amariah, so she's probably just filing this under "apparently that's something that Bells with Jokers get used to". If Edward has any reaction to anything that isn't whispering in Golden's ear I haven't seen it.]

[Should I bother talking to her about why I left, or does she probably not care about that either?]

[She hasn't asked me to explain it, so either she thinks it was reasonless and there is no answer to the question, or she doesn't care. I'm sorta curious about how you'd put it.]

[That, she definitely didn't know. You want me to tell her? Or just end the conversation and come hug you?]

A few seconds later Cam joins him and pulls him into a hug. "She's going to have Elspeth coordinate with everybody to write 'before you visit this world, here's what you should know' pamphlets, Aurum first, Alethia next because of the spontaneous daemon thing, and so on. And she's not going to let Addy leave Aurum without an escort anymore."

Cam kisses his cheek.

He closes his eyes and smiles, nestling closer.