Ansharil notifies Sarion.

Beast contacts Rose.

Sue pushes a summary to Aegis and Jellybean brainphones Cam.

Aegis is the first to appear; she lands in midair and floats down, opting to sit on Sue's shoulders.

Stella teleports in, looking dubious.

Sarion walks, elfy aura giving a peculiar quality to her gait.

Rose appears presently, carrying a napping Céleste using her shoulder as a pillow, and pecks her husband on the cheek.

Cam teleports in, leans on Jellybean as casually as though Jellybean were a wall, and looks expectantly at Glass.

Aurora has to disentangle herself from Lexi, but eventually makes her way to the group, too.

[That makes sense,] says Jellybean, putting his arm around Cam's waist and kissing his cheek. [I mean, we're us.]

[I don't know any of you very well, but you have extremely strong attractors, even if they can be bent into a variety of shapes; a specific way to meet Bells just doesn't happen to be one of those attractors,] says Glass.

[There are some regularities. They are all older than us corresponding Bells,] says Rose. [By a little or by a lot.]

[I think that's mostly a minor default thing, plus a combination of Bells tending to be young when we get into a life stage where meeting intended-people is part of our attractor set, and some of the Joker attractors being compatible with being very old - especially if a lot of that time can be spent in unpleasant circumstances.]

Aianon laughs.

[I don't mean not having attractors makes sense for us in general,] says Jellybean. [Just that it makes sense we don't have strong ones for the way our relationships work, even when they're with a bunch of the same other template. Well... except for the retirees, you guys all had that thing with the Bat.]

[I don't know you guys,] Glass reiterates. [This conversation, the I remind you extremely confusing stuff I can see about your attractors, and the contents of the Bellbook, are what I know about you. If this makes sense to you because of something about your personality, you are going to have to explain it. I'd have a much better chance at figuring out how you all diverge from the personality template than saying anything about what it's like without being perturbed.]

[I think that how our relationships work depends a lot on details and circumstances,] Brilliance contributes. [And that that's not something you could change easily without changing who we are.]

[Me and Ghosty and Queenie are all pretty much the same story down to a sneeze, before I found Milliways,] says the Joker. [It's kind of a chicken-and-egg question whether that's because or why we all fell out with Batsy pretty much the same way, though. Does the Bellbook have Batsy in it, or do you want storytime?]

[It mentions her only in brief summary. I'm not supposed to give her coins. Let's hear the story.]

[Once upon a time,] the Joker begins, [when I was younger and prettier, I met this lady who liked to dress up as a bat and beat and/or scare the shit out of criminals. I killed some people and blew up some stuff, all to get her attention so she'd turn some'a that lovely violence my way. Worked like a charm, too. She had me locked up and then I started dreaming my way to Milliways and I'm pretty sure the rest is history. Same deal for Ghosty and Queenie, but instead of finding Milliways they kept at it until they died.]

The Joker chuckles.

"Your attractors have a different character from Bell attractors, some of them," muses Glass. "You've got the same, intense, invariable undercurrent through all of you. We have our necessities split up between - more traits, which aren't indivisible, which can interact in ways that weaken each other under difficult circumstances. The analogy I want to make is that Bells all cast the same sillhouette but Jokers are all made of the same material. Does that make sense?"