"And I don't think any of them had better be allowed to visit Aurum, just on principle, as vampirism is transmissible."

"Agreed. Are you all kingfishers...?" Square.

"Hey, Glass, which one is the template?"

Glass points at Giles.

Giles blinks. "Really?"

"Yep, pretty clearly too, none of the vagueness there is around Golden versus Stella. You aren't modal like Pattern - I actually think we're more likely to run into more Ripper-phase Kingfishers in the future - you're just the template."

"Is one of them modal like me?"

"Nah. Yours is closest, but too - serendipitous."

"I'm serendipitous?" inquires Ripper.

"Oh, not very, but just a little -" Glass holds her fingers pinching a little bit of air. "You're right next to Pattern, who is perfectly modal in terms of her - original setup - or I don't think I'd be able to tell. You have small but noticeable effects from being from Origin in particular, and she doesn't, maybe because she was dead while the Joker and that bat person were up to what they were up to. You're less serendipitous than - Merryweather, say, who was set up to interact in a specific way with Aegis - if he has other setups it's with people I haven't gotten a look at. Juliet is actually serendipitous relative to Giles; he is exactly where he would have been anyway and she showed up in that place."

"Huh," says Ripper.

"And yet," says Giles, "I was sent to Sunnydale because the Council had such trouble finding her. I suppose, metacausally speaking, if not for Juliet there would have been some other reason?"

"Yeah. Juliet's also the only Bell who lives in Sunnydale - maybe the only one who has one, though it's a smaller town than Gotham so we'd have to actually look it up instead of just knowing. Sunnydale was collecting the next Slayer, far enough in advance for her to be born there; if it hadn't been her it would have collected whoever it was instead."

"The notion of Sunnydale collecting Slayers doesn't surprise me in the least," says Giles.

"There you go. It's the sort of place that collects things. It collected you, but not because of Juliet in particular."

"Right. Where is Juliet? I expected her to turn up and laugh at us at some point."

"I could go get her, if you are finding her absence problematic."

"No, not at all," he says, grinning.

"I'm sure she's made at least some token effort not to laugh."

"I'm sure there's plenty else to amuse her than the motions of templates through neighboring worlds."

"She was inordinately entertained by the existence of Ripper," says Giles. "Someone should really tell her we've found another one, if she doesn't already know."

Glass peers over the railing into the crowd. "She's talking to Amariah. It could easily come up that way."

"Ah, then all we have to do is wait," says Giles. "My favourite."