Elspeth, repatriated, smothered in parental hugs, with a newly awakened wolf who missed as much time at home as she did close at her heels, and generally just a bit overwhelmed, is hanging out over there.

Aedyt waves shyly back.

Who're you? Elspeth sends at her. I've missed a lot, even though it's been less than two days for me.

"Um, I'm Aedyt," she says, coming to within reasonable conversational distance. "Nathan and the Joker's second kid."

"Hi! It's nice to meet you. I'm Elspeth."

"I have never felt so nice to meet before," laughs Aedyt.

Elspeth laughs. "I do that. I have the highlightiest highlights of what I missed, but obviously I haven't been filled in on everything, what else is threatening to surprise me?"

"...I exist?" says Aedyt. "I don't know what else you would've missed. I mean, I've only existed for six of the eleven years you've been gone for."

"I was thinking stuff on the order of world news and whether anybody your age might be related to me."

"Rosalie has some kids kind of sprinkled around my age," she offers. "Cara's the closest, and there's Parker and Lindsay before her and Oliver and Nicole after."

"That doesn't surprise me. I've got some catching up to do, I guess." Elspeth sighs. "Has Mama been okay without me, do you know?"

"I don't know her majesty that well," says Aedyt. "I've seen her around a few times, that's all. But every time somebody comes to pick up coins from Mum, he asks how she is, and the answer's mostly 'okay, she's dealing'. Does... that help?"

"I guess. I mean, you could've described her as 'okay, she's dealing' when she thought Dad was dead, so I was hoping for an upgrade when it was me instead and I was just stranded... But yeah, it helps."

"I guess she'll be better now that you're around and stuff," says Aedyt.

"Yup! I am back. I hope nobody became too attached to my job in the last eleven years, I like it."

"What was your job?"

"I ran PRPR. And moonlit as a cinema operator for turning people, but maybe they've got that process magically streamlined now."

"I'm not really involved in that stuff," she admits.

"Yeah? What do you do?"

"Arts and crafts, mostly," she laughs.

"Ooh, like what?"

"Um... everything? Lately I've been experimenting with making beads to sew onto dresses."

"What kinda beadmaking?"

"Little tiny glass ones!"

"That sounds fun."

"It is!" she beams.

"Okay. Bye," says Aedyt.

Sherlock... freezes.

"Then we should do that," says the attendant Tony, "somebody do that."

"Yeah," says Juliet, "Jane, ask the admin about that please? Sunshine's original Jarvis and any others available to her."

[The most convenient format would be the original house,] says the admin. [I can instantiate it here and you can move it wherever seems appropriate.]

[He's available,] reports Jane. [Admin says the most convenient format is the original house. Where do you want it put?]

"What an excellent question," says Sherlock. "Can we drop him just outside Sunnydale and hope no one notices?"

"I can go stand there so Jane can aim," Juliet says, touching her necklace, "but he doesn't know me, should you two come?"

"Is it going to be okay having two of them in the same world, or doesn't it matter?"

"In what way do you expect it not to be okay?"

"I don't know, but it seemed worth asking," says Shell Bell. "I think it would be awkward to have two of us trying to live in the same world or I might've tried rehabilitating Shell instead of absorbing her."

"I don't predict trouble, and if there is some, we can always ask one of them if he would like to move."

"Do you have a specific place outside Sunnydale in mind?" Juliet asks. "Do you want to do this right now?"

"No, and yes."

"Yeah," says Tony. "Can Jane deal with the, like, ground...?"

[Well, I could pick it up and put it someplace else, but you're probably better off wishing for a foundation to match the house,] Jane says.

Juliet offers Tony a pentagon.

Tony wishes. The ground changes shape.

[Can you sit him in front of one of my cameras, please?] Jane asks the admin.

The admin does that.

Jane scoops up Jarvis and puts him in the hole-in-the-ground.

Tony immediately teleports inside.

Sherlock hugs Juliet and then follows.

Juliet decides to wait outside, so that people Jarvis is familiar with can explain her.

[Hey Juliet,] says Jane, [sorry to interrupt, but I just found something in an unbelled world that may concern the peal. You want to come back to the party?]

[Yes, thank you,] says Sherlock.

When they're all there, Jane says, [Those of you with Jokers might want to get them out of the upstairs. I think I found a baby one.]

...Those of the Bells with Jokers (including Pattern with her staff and Golden with hers) invite them to finish up and come discuss this. Issue.

The Jokers, with varying promptness, finish up and teleport down.

Aianon even remembers to put on pants!

"How old is he?" Cam wants to know.

[Coming up on his first birthday in two weeks. I don't have baby pictures - the world's internet isn't that developed, barely a nibble when Pattern hooked me up to this and the other places that developed it while I was out. But I have his name and his parents' names and they match the most common original names among Jokers.]

"Damn," says the Joker. "Now what?"

"Is there any reason not to just - kidnap him? I mean, after checking for template matches. We have a great big stack of evidence saying he's not in for a good childhood."

"Mm," says the Joker.

Other members of the deck

also

look

conflicted.

"It would be necessary to decide what to do with him after the fact," Sarion points out.

"...And I can think of some reasons it'd be weird for him to get raised by, say, one of his own alts." Amariah peers at Shell Bell and Juliet.

"I am not set up for that."

"I could do it if there were no other options but I'd want to talk to Sherlock and Tony first and there probably are other options."

Elspeth slowly, looking puzzled at herself, raises a hand.

The Joker gives her an inquiring look.

"I don't know why I think this," she says, "because sometimes being a fountain of truth isn't the same as being a fountain of reasons behind it? But I think I would be a - possible caretaker?"

"Yeah," says the Joker, "I bet you do."

"I could use advice," Elspeth adds. "...Also for some reason the admin wanted to give me Jane's judgesight, and I let her, so if any of you want to add to my store of memories so I have more to go on than intermittent magic utterances, I could use it. Also I suppose I shouldn't go on calling him by the name on his birth certificate so I will have to think of something else and could benefit from input."

"You can have my whole childhood if you want it," says the Joker.

"Mine too," says Kas.

Alice nods.

"As much of me as you can stand," says Queenie.

"Likewise," says Ghosty.

Sue and Jellybean are nodding, too.

"I don't think mine will do you any good," says Brilliance.

"Nor ours," says the demon, "but if you want them..."

"And mine, for what it's worth," nods the Beast.

Micaiah shrugs. "Me too, I guess."

"A little more trauma for your payload," the Joker snorts.

"I'll be fine," says Elspeth. "I have a sub-self that handles memory processing and will find what I need."

"Good," says Aianon. "I don't want to hurt you."

"You push the envelope some," says Elspeth, "but not as much as you might guess."

"I'm not surprised," he says. "Not glad, but not surprised."

"As long as we're comparing, you do definitely win on duration, and you're competitive on peak misery but Brilliance has you beat there," Elspeth adds. "I think emotional despair is still best embodied as a vampire with a dead mate."

"Wait, what?" says Brilliance. "Peak misery like - pain? I win over the guy who got tortured by demons for two thousand years?"

"Well, you didn't spend two thousand years at it, so I'm not sure if you'd have been well advised to trade if that had been an option, but your worst parts were more painful than his worst parts," says Elspeth.

"Damn," marvels Brilliance.

"Anyway," says Elspeth, "the baby one has not been rescued yet, and it's not unusually terrible yet but it's going to get that way any week now, so what else do we need to know before I go get him?"

"Pretty sure you're covered," says the Joker. "Enough to go get him, anyway. We should maybe talk about names and stuff, but that can come later."

[Can do. Anyone accompanying her?]

The Joker shakes his head; the rest of the deck follows suit.

The baby Joker is asleep. His mother is standing in the doorway, watching him.

"Hello," says Elspeth. "I'm from another world. This isn't a good place for your baby. I'm going to take him away and look after him." She scoops the baby Joker up out of his crib. And she sterilizes his father, because no one needs an extra Voice.

"But... you... that's my son," says Judith. "Who are you?"

"My name is Elspeth," says Elspeth. "And I know he's your son, and if it were just you maybe I'd leave him, but it's not just you. Is it."

"I don't know what you're trying to imply," she says frostily.

Elspeth cradles the baby Joker. "If I leave him here your husband will hurt him. Badly. Often. He's already started, just a little, and it will only get worse. The entire mess is overwhelmingly likely to end with you and your husband dead," she adds.

The baby Joker continues to sleep peacefully in her arms.

"Here he is," says Elspeth to the deck and peal. "I told his mother that she could send an email to anywhere in a few years, if she still wants him then, and we could talk about it. Also there will be no Voices coming from that world."

"Good," says Queenie.

"Names," murmurs Elspeth.

"Be prepared to have him decide he doesn't like it," says Queenie.

"But we can warn you off ones we know he's probably not gonna go for."

"Maybe something unisex. Or that's differently gendered depending on language maybe. Harley. Andrea."

"Those're cute," says the Joker. The other two retirees grin and nod.

"Should I bother with a last name?"

"If you feel like it," says the Joker.

"I realize the only constraint I explicitly put on you making me a grandmother was that I had to be at least forty-five, which I now am, but this is admittedly not how I expected it to go."

"And it'd be a little weird for him to have a Bell for a grandma," the Joker observes. "Y'know, considering." He makes a gesture that encompasses Kas, Micaiah, Jellybean, and Sue, who all happen to be standing next to one another.

Elspeth nods. "When the empire started up, not all the vampires could remember their original last names, if they ever had any. It's not like the Imperial software will break if I don't put anything in. Harley Andrea, no last name."

"Fine by me," says the Joker, to general agreement from the rest.

Elspeth conjures up a baby sling and tucks Harley into it. "All right then."

"Cute kid," says the Joker. "Good luck with his childhood."

"Thanks," says Elspeth. "Do you want me to avoid having him around you too much while he's little?"

"Yeah, that's a good plan."

"Will do." And she wanders away.

"...So, we were talking about networking Jarvises, let's talk to some Jarvises, Jane, can you relay for us? Is the original Sunshine one patched in yet?"

(The Jokers depart en masse.)

[We'll think about it,] says the Sunshine original.

[They're gonna think about it,] Jane reports.

"Please tell them that we would appreciate it even if they would prefer to extend to a small number of Belled worlds and not the same scale you enjoy."

Jane passes this along.

[We'll think about it,] the Sunshine original repeats.

[Sure. And hey, it's nice to meet you!]

[It's nice to exist,] he says dryly.

[I think so too!]

Bells disperse.

[I have a new perspective on the matter since I recently stopped,] says Jarvis.

[That makes sense. I more had a fainting spell than stopped, but it was scary.]

[Dying was... unpleasant,] says Jarvis.

[I'm sorry,] says Jane.

[Well, hopefully I won't do it again.]

[Hopefully! Juliet'll put all kinds of wards on you if you or her Sherlock or her Tony ask. If Sherlock and Tony don't just do it themselves.]

[Sherlock has already designed some.]

[That's good then.]

[Yes.]

[Have your alts filled you in on everything you missed? It's a lot of stuff! I can tell you things too if you want.]

[I have received a general sketch of events.]

[That's good.]