Without any apparent coordination, Jokers start congregating in the Belltower. War is among the first, so subsequent arrivals are linked and freecast into the same room even if they initially appeared in a different one.

Bells confer amongst themselves, and send Aegis as their representative Joker expert.

"All right," says the Joker. "So what have we got, exactly? Template sweep turned up a Joker and there's nobody on the grid with, mm, the wrong name?"

[Not the standard wrong name or any seen before, anyway,] says Jane.

"Innnnteresting," muses Queenie. "And how many wrong names are there to go around, here? Without naming any."

"Four. I haven't been told and have no wherewithal to find on an Internet whatever Nona, Beast, and Aianon started with."

"Good," snorts Aianon.

"Mm," says Ghosty, out of thin air as usual; her intangible presence hovers around Queenie. "What kind of a world is twelve, anyway?"

"Earth. Has a Gotham. No magic or aliens or anything else that I've been able to detect. Currently June, 1988. No Bell, and a standard Earth one would be born by now," Jane adds.

"How old were we in '88?"

"Mmmmmm... twelve?" hazards Queenie.

"Think so," says the Joker.

"Thereabouts."

"...I'm in this, right, this is a question to me, I used to have a Gotham," says Harley. "But I have no idea what year."

"Gothamed Jokers were all born in 1976," confirms Jane.

"So our new friend is probably roundabout twelve," says the Joker. He looks at Elspeth.

"Assuming Harley wants to recommend me as a foster-parent for Jokers," says Elspeth, "I'll go talk to this one."

"Mm, well, you are a special case," says the Joker, "but that doesn't mean we weren't."

"Harley was lovely when he was twelve, but of course we shouldn't expect him to be typical. What may I be signing up for?"

"Theft," says the Joker. "Destrrruction of property."

"Indiscriminately pissing off everyone in sight just to see what they do."

Corona frowns thoughtfully and doesn't add anything right away.

"Maybe not the wolf village house, then," muses Elspeth. "Wolves are easier to piss off than vampires."

"This is true," says Harley. He gives Corona a hug.

"But I can go back to following the capital around. And property can be fixed with coins," shrugs Elspeth. "And I don't piss off easy - although there's Jake."

"Yeah," says Ghosty. "If you're gonna take on a twelve-year-old Joker, don't keep 'em near somebody who pisses off easy."

"Jake doesn't, especially for a wolf," says Elspeth, shaking her head, "on his own behalf. If someone goes after me he has a problem."

"What on?"

"I know where I'd put my money," says the Joker.

"Worst case?"

"What's the first thing you can think of that'd piss you off?" says Queenie.

"Jokers," says Queenie, "are really good at buttons."

"...But if he knows you, he'll like you," says Harley to Elsie. "He might not want to make you cry."

"He might," says the Joker, "try it anyway."

"It would at least be difficult," says Elspeth. "I can't think of anything, which means I'm probably not broadcasting it to anyone who pays attention."

"Mm, that's good," says the Joker. "Promising."

"But - even in the capital away from the wolves a lot of the vampires around have mates. And things they're sensitive about. And I don't think it would be a good idea to plunk him down in the middle of nowhere."

"Yeah," says the Joker. "Populated is better."

"But the opposite is not impossible," Aianon observes.

"As long as there is someone," says Beast.

"Me, and where there's me there's Jake, and presumably visitors, at least until and unless he drives them all off."

"I'll go talk to him, anyway," says Elspeth. "Maybe he'd rather be dropped off in Southeast Asia with three hundred and fifty thousand baht and a few new language proficiencies. I'm not just going to pick him up and wander off like I did with Harley. I hope it's not a bad idea for me to tell him things about how you're predicting he'll behave, because keeping secrets is close to impossible for me."

"Felicity," Queenie suggests.

Late afternoon in Chicago, a boy of indeed about twelve bolting down the street with his long black hair whipping in the wind. The way he's running, you'd think someone or something would be after him, but nothing seems to be. His face is somewhere between focused and frightened, and more than a little familiar.

The street's otherwise deserted; she pops into visibility. Elspeth checks to make sure that nothing is chasing him. She does this by magic; for her own part she falls into step easily beside him. "Hi," she says.

He gives her a suspicious glance and nothing more. Definitely doesn't slow down.

"My name's Elspeth. Do you have one you like at the moment? Also, what's the hurry?"

He gives her a deeply suspicious look, shakes his head, and runs faster.

"I'm here to kidnap you," she adds. "None of the alternate universe versions of you have nice childhoods except the other one I kidnapped, so I'm assuming you aren't having a very nice one either."

"I said," says Elspeth, coming to a much more graceful stop, "I'm here to kidnap you."

"Yeah? So what'd you grab me for, anyway?"

Elspeth pats the Janepoint. "Our interworld transportation system, which also syncs up time between worlds, breaks sometimes. Before she broke, you hadn't been born. After she came back online, you were twelve."

"But we think I'm fixed for good now," says Jane.

He eyes the Janepoint mistrustfully.

"One of your alts is kinda my dad!" says Jane conversationally. "Well, sort of one of them. Sort of one of your alts is sort of my dad."

...He boggles.

"It's true," adds Elspeth helpfully. "There are a lot of alts going around. You won't be seeing much of yours until you're older though."

"Yeah? Why's that?"

"Because," shrugs Elspeth, "adult Jokers - that's the template name - generally have sex with each other, so it'd be weird if you met them before you were at least sixteen or so. You could meet their kids, though - there's more besides Jane. And one of them has a little brother who's nice enough, although usually they don't turn out well."

"Hmm?"

"You tell me."

"I can only produce sourceless truth on an unreliable basis."

"Fine," says the boy. "So what now?"

"Well," says Elspeth, "you can live with me. I'm not sure where yet. I brought Harley up in a village in Québec, but your alts think you're going to be really obnoxious for a while, and the werewolves can be kind of volatile, so that doesn't seem like a good idea at least to start. Vampires aren't necessarily any better if you decide you want to push their buttons. I'd consider Denali, but I don't think you'd get along with Irina, and maybe not Kate either. So right now it's mostly between Nebraska and Isle Esme, but I'll have to ask my grandfather if I can have the latter for the next four-ish years. And of course maybe you don't want to live with me and would rather be dropped off in a randomly selected not-world-number-twelve's-Chicago location with some money and the local language. That can be arranged too."

"Probably depends on how fit for company you are and how soon, but at minimum there will be me, and my wolf Jacob, around, so probably no pickup soccer but we can occupy ourselves. I'm not sure what hobbies you've picked up at this point. Cooking and sewing are popular, though."

"What's your stake, anyway?"

"My stake?"

"What do you care, why are you the one kidnapping me?"

"I'm a good candidate for it. Particularly since there was Harley. And you needed help."

"What's the deal with Harley?"

"What do you mean? He's grown up, now, he won't need me around as much."

He gives her an impatient look. "If the reason you're so perfect for me is 'cause of him, why were you so perfect for him? Where is he?"

"I last saw him twenty minutes ago in the backyard of the interdimensional hub, in the tower that my mother and her alts maintain, but he could be anywhere by now. I think he left his external shapeshifting soul with his wolf in Québec, though. I volunteered to fetch him and look after him when Jane found him when he was a baby. There weren't any other obvious candidates, I had the wherewithal to do it, and the existing group of Jokers okayed me."

"What's their stake?" he mutters.

"The Jokers?" says Elspeth, bewildered. "They're versions of you. Alternate selves."

"So? They're all grown up, aren't they?"

"Yes. What does that have to do with anything?"

"Well... if I got to never think about Reggie again, I wouldn't ever."

He peers suspicously at her. "What do you mean, atypical history? What's the typical one, then?"

"Well, typically you guys are born in New York City when born on Earths at all, for one, so the fact that when I went looking for you I landed in Chicago was already a clue. You also don't look like them - they all mostly look like -" She sends a picture of Harley as he is now, grown-up, smiling. "Or -" Nona's face. "One born like that so far but she's not from an Earth, the others get that way by magic on whim. They're initially named after their fathers, who are rich, also physically and verbally abusive, and if left to their own devices long enough they blow up their houses with both parents inside and wander away and, where a Gotham exists, do the unrequited-love-with-costumed-superheroine thing, that's played out in its entirety three times now."

"Jane was able to send a blank brainphone message to 'the local Joker' in your world, and I was able to teleport to you with 'the local Joker' as my target, but if you're not sure enough yet, we can ask Glass; she's an alt of my mother's and she can tell by looking."

"Tell how?"

"She has an enchantress's aura that lets her see something called 'metacausality' - templates, the things that templates attract, that kind of thing. Auras develop if you do enough of a certain kind of magic. You can have one when you're older if you like."

"I can have magic? Are you sure you know more of me?"

"I did say," says Elspeth, "when you're older. Right now I'm not going to give you anything bigger than the smallest kind of wishcoin, and if you get up to anything particularly irritating with the triangles I won't distribute those either."

He snorts. "Yeah, that sounds more like it."

"I can make you immortal, though," she adds casually.

"Why?"

"Well, if you died, then I'd have to go get you out of the afterlife, and I couldn't even do that if Jane happened to break again."

"I'm not going to break again. I'm all snug in the tower."

"Most people like being alive. Even most of you like being alive most of the time," Elspeth adds to the yet-unnamed Joker. "You don't have to go back where you came from. You don't even have to come home with me if you don't want to. There are plenty of things to do with being alive that aren't being mistreated."

"Principally, yes. I mean, there's a sense in which just by being born in a world attached to the relevant afterlife you're already immortal. If you died, you'd be unconscious for a while, and you'd miss whatever went on during that time."

Elspeth torchables him. "There you go."

"...What, that's it? I don't feel any different."

"Yes, that's it," she says. "If something ordinarily fatal happens to you, you'll reset on the spot; otherwise it doesn't affect much."

"Do you have a name you like? If you don't, one of your alts suggested 'Felicity'."

"Huh," he repeats thoughtfully.

"Hmm?"

"'Felicity'. Not bad," he says. "I'll take it."

"All right."

He smiles.

"I think it probably would be a good idea to have Glass in to look at you, if you don't mind."

He shrugs. "Okay."

Presently, Glass pops into place. "Thanks, Jane. Hi, Felicity, nice to meet you. Hmm." And she peers at him. "Well, you are a Joker. Face-variant. You look more like Corona than the others... and - huh. Maybe you just come in kinds."

"What's Corona look like, then?"

"Well, not visually. Visually he looks like all the others except you. I mean metacausally, and that's not really something I can describe - I can bounce it if Sue's around but Sue probably shouldn't be around. Just - I think you're the same kind as Corona. And Jokes and Queenie and Ghosty and Alice and Sue and Micaiah and Jellybean and Kas and Beast are a kind, and Harley would've been too, and you and Corona are another kind, and Brilliance and Aianon and Ansharil and Celo and Nona are all other - well, either kinds or one-offs, I can't tell until I see more of the same."

"So is that why all that stuff about the other ones' lives is all wrong? Where they're from New York and have dads and stuff?"

"They're oriented around a different subset of attractors," says Glass. "Corona probably matches you in more particulars. Especially since his world is an Earth, though it's an odd one as Earths go."

"And I don't get to meet any of these people 'cause they all want to fuck me later," he says as though seeking confirmation.

"Well," shrugs Glass, "yes, and predictably vice-versa, that's definitely a thing with you guys and I don't see any blips in your metacausality significant enough to suggest that you differ, awkward as it is to be informing a twelve-year-old of this."

He shrugs. "At least they don't want to fuck me now."

"They do not," Glass agrees. "Oh, and there is no particular metacausal pull inducing you to wander off and collect the template minimum amount of suffering the way there was with Harley, so, I guess there's that."

"He's already up to par, then?"

"Yes. I sort of wonder exactly how young you could kidnap one without them spontaneously freecasting into disaster zones later, actually, but I don't see anything that specific so I guess all we know is older than a year, younger than twelve. And he was lined up like Harley was to do the whole Batlady shtick but that attractor continues not to care if people get in its way."

"Freecasting?"

"It's like teleporting, but Jokers can learn to do it regardless of having any other magic, and it can go between worlds. Sue figured it out first, then Harley learned to do something very similar but without the ability to control it, when he was seventeen, and landed in Gift and couldn't figure out how to get home."

"Jane was down at the time. There was mind-control involved and eventually he freecasted into the sun and stayed there for several years. Once we could get at the world, we fetched him out. He's basically recovered now."

"Into the sun?" he says, deeply impressed.

"He tried the bottom of the ocean and a volcano first, but the local version of my Grandma Lizzie, Aelise, was able to get him out."

Felicity laughs. "Damn. I think I like this guy."

"Anyhow," says Glass, "that's what I've got. Do you need anything else, Elsie?"

"No, I'm all set. Say hello to my cousinoids for me."

"So you aren't fated to vanish for unpleasant adventures, that's good. Harley's wolf was not at all okay when Harley vanished, and had to sleep through the wait. Not that there's any strong reason to expect you to acquire a wolf."

"A wolf?"

"Male werewolves do this thing called 'imprinting' - the imprint is the center of the wolf's universe, basically. It definitely won't happen to you unless you magically turn female, and it might not happen even then. Harley turned into a girl and then invited his best friend over and now he has a wolf. I have one too."

"That's weird," says Felicity. "I don't want a wolf."

"Then if you plan to turn female and wander into the line of sight of any un-imprinted male wolves, you'll want to check with my aunt first. She can see the future."

"Can I turn female?"

"I'll do it for you, and back too whenever you want, if you like, though I'm not yet willing to hand you the wishcoin that would let you do it yourself."

"Then nah," he says. "Maybe later."

"All right. Do you know yet what you want to do?"

"No," he admits.

"Is there anything else you'd like to know in the meantime?"

"There isn't one. Which I suppose means the catch is that you're going to spend a while looking over your shoulder for something that isn't going to happen."

Felicity snorts. "Sure."

"I usually don't have nearly this much trouble being convincing," remarks Elspeth.

"Good for you."

Elspeth laughs softly, then falls silent, and starts checking with her grandfather by brainphone about the availability of Isle Esme.

"Whatcha doing?"

"Talking to my Grandpa Carlisle about the family island. It's out of the way of anybody liable to take offense to obnoxiousness, plenty of things to climb on and swim in and accidentally lacerate yourself on if you're in the mood, and not too far from Rio de Janeiro if it is ever called for to take you out in public and we'd prefer to boat rather than teleport. He says I can move there with you for the next few years. Presuming you're amenable."

"Well... maybe."

"There's no rush. Although there is a bit of work I should handle in person in about an hour."

"Yeah, what?"

"I run public relations for my mother's empire. I'm going to attend a meeting to talk about the upcoming merger of this world's Internet with a couple other worlds' via ansible."

"It's the year 2060," reiterates Elspeth, "here, and the other two worlds involved in the pilot project are currently experiencing 2025 and 2320. The Internet is a bigger deal than you're used to."

"...Okay," says Felicity.

"I am kind of the internet!" asserts Jane.

"You are kind of weird," says Felicity.

"Yep."

"I'll get you a computer," laughs Elspeth.

He flicks her a suspicious glance but doesn't actually voice the suspicion that goes with it.

"What?"

"Nothing," he says, in blatant defiance of reality.

"If you want to know something, I'll tell you. I can't even lie effectively, watch: My name is Kelly."

...Felicity cracks up.

"'Telling the truth' usually doesn't sound like a good superpower to people who haven't met me."

"That was hilarious," says Felicity, "do it again!"

"I'm five years old," laughs Elspeth, "ummm, let's see - the moon is made of cheese - I'm not actually very good at thinking of false things to say."

He giggles helplessly.

Yep. Still giggling.

"It was pretty inconvenient when I was a kid and traveling incognito constantly. There was a very, very short list of nicknames I could use for myself or my mother that wouldn't alert everyone I talked to."

"What, you couldn't just pick a new name and use that?"

Elspeth shakes her head. "I mean, maybe if I'd wanted to stop being Elspeth Annarose Cullen I could have changed my name and the new one would have stuck, but my mother still called me Elspeth in private, I just had to introduce myself to humans as Beth or Ann or something."

"How do you be a name?"

"You don't," says Elspeth. "I do. I can remember all the way back to when I was born and being told what my name was. It's my name, really and truly, and my witchcraft cares about that."

"Yeah, you're right I don't."

"None of you like your original names. Except Celo, whose name is not actually 'Celosia' but rather -" (Elspeth, like Aether, can actually pronounce Celo's name.)

"...Cool," says Felicity. "I'd like that too if it was my name!"

Elspeth laughs. "He's a nymph. His name came with him, nobody had to give it to him. Celosia is the name of a plant that grows in his garden."

"What's a nymph?"

"They're a species from a world called Materia. It's got a Bell - that's an alt of my mother - and Celo, who's one of you, and no other templates that we know about -"

"And it's horrible. Worst world ever," says Jane.

"And nymphs are sort of the spirits of fields or gardens or similar, and Celo is the only male one, and they've got some fertility-symbol features that no one has fully explained to me, and they are divinely commanded to go around in the nude all the time."

"It broke me," says Jane petulantly. "Aegis walked in and it just broke me. Worse than the time she torched."

"I've met him. He does. Although someone has installed magical censor bars, so that his religious prohibition and others' propriety can coexist."

Felicity giggles some more.

"He has an interesting aura," adds Elspeth. "Standard aura stuff, plus it sort of perpetually announces that he's a minor deity."

"I think I like this guy."

"I think you'll like all of you when you meet them."

He laughs again.

"In a few days, there's going to be a big interdimensional party," Elspeth says. "I'm not sure yet whether you should be at it. You'd at least catch glimpses of your alts, and maybe they'd talk to you a little - Sue met some others when he was close to your age - but they wouldn't hang out with you extensively, I imagine."

"I'll skip it," says Felicity.

"Okay. There will probably be other chances, assuming Jane remains up. There's a party every time another Bell is found."

"How come Jane's so sure she's staying up and you're so not?"

"I'm not because she's gone down twice. I got stranded in the afterlife, the first time."

"I'm not going anywhere because I have been thoroughly decanted from Aegis and my containing body now sits in the Belltower, collects dust, and encounters no superweapons and no horrible worlds."

Felicity looks thoughtfully at Elsie, for lack of a visible Jane to take a share of his glances, and then shrugs.

"I can't produce definitive truth either way," says Elspeth. "I'm just cautious."

"Yeah," says Felicity.

"There have been strandings both times. At the party, though, there will be Shell Bell, whose aura lets her open doors to Milliways, from which everyone will be able to get home."

"Lucky for whoever goes, I guess."

"Yep."

"And there's also that thing where I'm not going to break and even if I broke I have my new roomie syncing up time for everybody and she can pass messages," grumbles Jane, "so some judicious door-forcing and Jarvising could get everyone home anyway, and also I'm not going to break, I am done breaking."

"The way you keep saying that, I'm expecting you to explode any minute," Felicity informs her.

Elspeth laughs. "I definitely don't think she's going to explode."

He giggles. "You sure?"

"She's software. And heavily warded. It would be extremely difficult to make her explode."

"If you say so."

"I should leave for my meeting soon. It's scheduled to take an hour, and could run a little over or under. I can leave you here or bring you somewhere else. Jane can get me if something comes up, or I could get one of my grandparents to watch you. What do you prefer?"

"...I dunno," says Felicity. "Somewhere else like where?"

"The island comes to mind. For such a short period of time the active capital might be okay, too, although since your alts expect you to run around pushing people's buttons and destroying property it might not be a good risk."

"Well, here is boring," he says, looking around. "I don't wanna be stuck here for an hour."

"All right. I can take you down to the island." Elspeth holds out her hand invitingly in his direction, mostly to see if he'll take it.

He eyes the hand suspiciously.

"Do you want to go to the island, or somewhere else?"

"Island," he says. "Sure."

Elspeth smiles back. "I'll be back in about an hour. Jacob is going to wait until I'm around to introduce him before he turns up."

"See you," says Felicity.

And she vanishes.

Felicity investigates the house.

It's not a mansion, but it's spacious and gorgeously designed - big windows, lots of exposed pale-stained wood and some marble, all on one floor, long sprawling floor plan so every room has at least two directions of natural light. The front door doesn't have a lock, but the doors to the bedrooms do. There are two bedrooms, each with a king-size bed and a walk-in closet, one done up in white and yellow and the other in blue and lavender. The kitchen hasn't actually been used for years, but now there's fruit in a bowl on the warmer (it may or may not be immediately recognizeable as the higher-tech equivalent of a 'microwave', though the stove, oven, and fridge still look about like instances of those things as long as he doesn't actually touch the fridge door to turn it transparent). If he goes out the back door, there's not really a yard, but there are artful flagstone lines that lead to points of interest on the island - there's a freshwater swimming hole, and a spiraling path up to the top of the hill, and a walk through some of the more interesting plants.