"Brilliance is shaped like you when he's being a human, but he's also a deck of cards and a staff thingamabob sometimes," says Aurora, "and he was made by some people, who were seriously shitty, to have a lot of magic and destroy planets with it, which he was not on board with. And he attaches to a sorceress - me - in some way that I do not fully understand, but we have some magic privilege sorts of things with each other, like, this classy dress I'm wearing, that's a thing devices do is outfits. Not wardrobes, just specific magical-girl-type outfits called Barrier Jackets and this is mine." She tilts her head. "He sort of is also the Barrier Jacket, but not in a lot of detail, he said." But she pets the material of her skirt anyway.

"Awww, that's cute," says Kas.

"He's kind of skittish about it because the people who made him were so shitty, but we're managing," shrugs Aurora.

"People who make Jokers usually are. We deal."

"Do you usually have to spend four hundred years hopping around the universe in deck-of-cards form unable to pay significant attention to anything but not blowing up whatever planet you're visiting because you've got a control program installed after having only coincidentally escaped attempts at torturing you into being an obedient weapon? Or, not that exactly, but I was really hoping that was worse than the usual, because it's bad."

"...I think the other new one's the only one who comes close," says Kas. "You'd have to ask them which one's worse."

"For reference, we think Shell Bell's got the lousiest history of us, I think that holds even versus Sarion, but Sarion's competitive, so's Golden for a bit of it, but Sarion's got a trickier fix ahead of her and Golden was patched as soon as she found out her husband was alive, everybody else has had lesser or briefer shit happen to us. You?"

"...I think I'm basically untraumatized. I mean, the preventing Brilliance's control program from destroying the world when it turned out to have possessed Lexi was bad, but it didn't last long and I didn't find out Lexi was involved till it was over."

"Voice is the one who got Shell Bell," Amariah explains. "That template is - we're not sure about it, or at least there's no consensus. It's a Joker's-little-brother template, cropped up three times, Beast has one and Queenie's is Voice and Micaiah has one. Angela got Micaiah's little brother out young, though, she thinks he'll turn out all right. But he does not get to be in a room with Shell Bell."

"It's really sad," says Kas. "I don't think we should have brothers."

"Sweetie," says Amariah, "the kind of people who make you shouldn't have children, period."

"But then there wouldn't be us, and I like that there's us."

"Well, yeah," says Amariah, "frankly my parents should never have gotten married to begin with but that doesn't mean I don't like existing."

"I like you existing, too!"

"I bet you do. Thanks for your help, I'm gonna find Golden," laughs Aurora, and she goes looking for Golden.

Golden is over there! Coincidentally, so is Liselen, who is walking around the party with an adoring Lexi on his back.

"Hi, Lexi, hi, unicorn," says Aurora. "Hi, Golden."

"This is Liselen!" says Lexi brightly. "I am riding a unicorn and this is the best day."

"Hi, Aurora."

"Hi, Aurora!" says Liselen. "Your sister is really excited about unicorns, it turns out!"

"There was a period when we were twelve when she pretty much wallpapered our room with art of unicorns," says Aurora. "I'm not particularly surprised. Anyway, Golden," and she summarizes her quandary yet again. "And Amariah thought I might want to talk to you just to figure out how you're modeling all the poly Bells."

"I'm not sure I'll be very helpful. I am mostly accomplishing the feat by modeling them as not vampires."

"What's the difference with vampires?" wonders Liselen.