"Hey my bird. Aurora's confused about how Bells do poly and we don't think I'll help much but she's asking us anyway just for completeness."

"Bird?" asks Aurora.

"When we were kids we played this game and his avatar was a bird," says Aegis. "We spent more time together in it than out of it and when I needed to work at it to let him link me I had to concentrate on him being the bird."

Sue helpfully squares up an illusion of his bird-avatar, with its candleflame wings and many-hued body.

"Pretty."

"So anyway, we were kids, and then I figured he was gay, and then I found out he wasn't, and you'd have to swallow a lot of vacuum not to think he's cute," says Aegis, wrapping her arms around his arm. "And I knew perfectly well by then that sleeping around is just a Sue thing. Asking him not to would make about as much sense as asking him to boycott, like, toast, he is not going to feel any different about me if he has toast for breakfast."

"Also I like sex more than I like toast," Sue says brightly, squeezing Aegis's hand.

"At least now that you're basically cured of Unhealthy Sue Behavior."

"Unhealthy Sue Behavior," says Aurora blankly.

"Oh, while I was at Tactical I got a little fucked up and started fucking anybody who felt like it even if I didn't really want to," he says. "But Aegis helped me fix myself and now I only fuck people I like."

"Should I worry about Brilliance doing that?"

"Far as I can tell, I'm the only Joker who did," he shrugs.

"I mean, is the setup that led to that something that might happen to Brilliance even if the others have avoided it."

"I don't think so. It wasn't the same guy or anything, he got the Earth standard version."

"That guy is a recurring template? Eugh."

"Well, how it happened for most of the Jokers s really similar, we're not sure if it was all the same guy or not," he says. "And we don't really care. Mine was really different circumstances."

"He was set up," growls Aegis, "as a psych test."

"Holy crap."

"The IF is kinda fucked up sometimes," says Sue. "I mean, they didn't pay the guy or anything, they just noticed and decided to keep the teachers off his back and see what I did."

"And they let him see how to get into rooms. Our room."

"What'd you do?" asks Aurora softly.

"I froze up, he beat up Aegis, I unfroze, he beat me up for a bit, then I killed him."

"Damn."

"And then the psychologists kept squabbling with each other, like, why they even set this up if they didn't have an idea about what it'd mean any way it could've gone down I do not know."