Having been abandoned by the young witch she was recently talking to, Lexi is now vaguely in a search pattern, since people keep telling her she should meet the other Bell-sister and she'd like to be able to tell them they're late to the party. No immediate sign of her, though. Hmm.

A naked Joker equipped with a magical censor bar over the critical region appears next to the buffet table and starts investigating the tiny pies.

Lexi yelps. "What is with people and abrupt teleporting and what is with Jokers and not wearing pants?"

He glances up from the pies. "Hello to you too," he snorts. "Sorry about the teleporting, didn't know it'd bother anybody. Not sorry about the pants, it's a nymph thing."

"A what now? I can't keep track of you, all I know is that this is like the third time I have been around a Joker who was not wearing pants and that is too many times. Four if you count Brilliance being a deck of cards but I'm not gonna be unreasonable there."

"I'm Celo," he sighs. "I'm a nymph. Nymphs don't wear clothes."

"Why? I mean, I appreciate the censor bar, at least, but still."

"It's kind of a cultural/religious thing," he says. "And religious thing in Materia means actual literal existing god who occasionally appears on TV and will fuck your shit up if you piss her off. Nymphs are the divine children of Mother Khaele, and she says no clothes, so no clothes. I don't toe the line on every single thing, but I do on this one, 'cause it's important to me."

"I would not have pegged Jokers for containing religious types who allow gods named after lettuce to dictate wardrobe, however literal they are. Huh."

"I'm kind of not on speaking terms with her anyway, but for mostly unrelated reasons," he says. "And I'm technically my own god these days, but I still don't wear clothes, because it's not a religious thing for me, it's about being who I am. The religious thing is why nymphs in general walk around naked - without censor bars, that's actually violating the divine edict, just not in a way I personally care about - and why I don't get arrested when I do it at home."

"Why could you not be who you are now with added pants?" She does jazz hands at "now with added pants".

"Wearing clothes as kinky. Wow. That is one of the stranger things I've heard today and this is a Bellparty so it has competition."

He laughs. "Yeah, I'm getting the picture."

"Yeah, I think I've been some people's weirdest-thing, showing off my Peachy." (Persica, hanging round her neck, glitters.) Lexi inspects miniature sandwiches and takes one with prosciutto or some sort of custom organism that can pass for it.

"Your Peachy being...?"

"Hi," says Celo. "Yeah, we talk. We just haven't specifically talked about other Devices much."

"Well, there's mine and there's Agent Honey's and there's Bella's - Aurora's I mean - there's Brilliance. And that's probably all the ones you're going to find at a party, I haven't met any other ones unless you count the really really dumb one Be- Aurora has on her hair elastic to do her anti-clumsiness that's not smart enough to say hi."

"Okay," says Celo, smiling.

"So which world are you from, are you from the one that broke Jane or one of the other new ones, which has nymphs?"

"The one that broke Jane. Materia."

"The Bells went to all this trouble to set up the nametags and like half the people I meet aren't wearing theirs."

Celo shrugs. "Guess they didn't feel like it."

"Or don't have anything to stick it to. I bet you could get one that sort of floats illusionishly if you wanted."

"Maybe I could even get one with my name on it," he snorts.

"What, is it impossible to spell or something?"

Lexi's eyebrows go up when his aura comes out. "Keen aura. My Bella's is kind of boring compared to some of 'em. Also, keen name."

Celo grins. "Thanks! I love my name. I'm the only Joker who likes the one they started with."

"How come?"

"Well, most of us hate ours because we got them from shitty people one way or another, and Harley doesn't even remember his parents but he still likes the one he grew up with and not the one they gave him, but nobody gave me mine, it just came with being me. And it suits me."

"I guess that's different then. I think my whole name is just too long. Al-ex-and-ra. I played with a bunch of ways to shorten it when I was a kid but I like 'Lexi' best."

"It's pretty nice," Celo says amicably.

"Thanks. So how are you liking being plugged in to the awesome interdimensional community of People Bells Like?"

"Being plugged into the awesome interdimensional community of Jokers in particular is fucking amazing," he says, grinning. "And I'm pretty happy about the rest of it, too - I moved my garden to the Enchanted Forest, which is probably going to cause me some trouble with bureaucrats but at least means that nobody can claim to own me anymore."

"Somebody used to be able to claim to own you?"

"Well, yeah. Every nymph has a field, and somebody owns the land your field is on, and once in a while it turns out that technically speaking that makes you their property. Usually not a big concern, because most nymphs don't leave their fields in the first place, they just hang around doing the nymph thing. But me—" he gets a distant look in his eye for a moment, then shakes his head and resumes his interrupted sentence "—when my garden was claimed by the city, they decided to send me to school. So now I'm double-majoring in martial combat and domestic arts."

Lexi doesn't ask about the moment's distant expression; that looks like a can of worms to her. "Yeah, that sounds like a Joker kind of double major all right. You could qualify for college without having ever gone away from a garden?"

He shrugs. "Sure, why not?"

"Well, assuming I go to college instead of living on Bella's enchanted planet playing video games all the time, they're gonna want to know how I did in high school and stuff."

"There's different ways to qualify," he says. "Tests and stuff. A lot of the students at MU are from places where high school is not really a thing."

"Huh. And you can just major in fighting, so I guess that's different too."

He laughs. "What, can't you in your world?"

"No? You can't even major in, like, football, that's extracurricular."

"Football?" he asks.

"It's a game, with a ball. There's tackling in it so it's kind of fighting-ish."

"So kinda like skirmish, I guess. You can't major in skirmish either. But man, what's the point of a school that won't even teach combat?"

"Most people don't get into fights a lot? I mean, you can take a martial art, I think some schools will even offer those, but mostly people go and learn to be veterinarians or engineers or art historians or something."

"Well... most people don't major in martial combat, I guess, but there's enough," he says. "When you say most people don't get into fights a lot, do you mean, like... your world is just generally safe enough that it's not worth teaching most people to use a weapon? I haven't been getting that sense from the other Jokers, but maybe I wouldn't; Jokers go where the trouble is."

"I mean, I guess I could get mugged? But I'd have to be in a bad neighborhood or something and even if I took a semester of - weapons? Seriously? Okay, a semseter of knife-fighting, then I couldn't probably beat off a mugger, it'd be way safer to just give him my purse and cancel my credit cards and write off the fifty bucks. If I didn't have magic, I mean, now I could just teleport away and be like 'dad come arrest this mugger'."

"...yeah, okay," says Celo, "I'm seeing it. In my world, though? Magisterius University has a weapons policy. As in, unless you have an exemption, you have to carry a magical weapon ready to draw if you're on campus and not indoors. And if you stray off the warded paths at night the school's not responsible if you get eaten by a ghoul or whatever."

"Eww, ghouls. We don't have those. Wait, someone made a policy that requires an alt of Bella to carry a sharp object, seriously, that doesn't sound very safe, she's okay chopping carrots but not if she has to walk around at the same time."

"Oh - Aether has boots to help her with the walking around part," he says. "And obviously she's got all that handy Bell magic now. But yeah, the weapons policy kinda failed her there."

Lexi snorts. "But yeah, I guess if there's ghouls and stuff all over it makes sense to try to teach people how to not get... ghouled. What do they do, do they eat you?"

"Yep! It's pretty nasty," Celo says cheerfully.

"Anyway we don't have ghouls, just humans. And Devices but they are not instigating a crime spree on Earth, I don't know about other places."

He snorts. "Yeah. Brill's info is a little out of date there."

"No kidding, what is it with Bells and older men?"

"We're all really hot?" suggests Celo.

Lexi snorts. "I'll grant you don't look centuries old, not a one of you. What would that even look like, I don't know."

Celo giggles. "Yeah, the kind of people who live to be centuries old aren't usually the kind who'd show it."

"Exactly. I'll probably just look seventeen forever, I think seventeen is a good look on me."

"Huh," Celo says contemplatively. "I never thought about it, but I could change how old I look now, if I wanted. Nymphs don't really age; I've looked this way since the first time I came out of the ground."

"You just sprouted whole?"

"Pretty much! I mean, I don't literally grow these bodies like plants," he says with a gesture at himself. "They just kind of... happen. Not exactly appear, it's not like a teleport, more of a process than that, but not anything observable and definite like sprouting."

"These? Are there like four of you walking around?"

He giggles. "No, but when one of me dies, I grow another one. Nymphs are like that. To actually kill us you have to burn our fields and probably salt 'em too."

"Oh. Well, that probably won't happen in the Enchanted Forest, that place is made of friendly fairy tales and really big trees."

"I've heard!" he says. "It wasn't that likely at home either, but it's way less likely now."

"Does that work funny with torching?"

"Probably. We keep meaning to go talk to the torching expert about it, but we haven't done it yet. It's not hugely urgent."

"I guess, if your field is safe in Happy Fluffy Land and you already do a thing just about as good."

"Yep!"

"Nymphs are like unicorns and vampires and stuff, there's stories about them at home, but all the stories are about girl nymphs," Lexi muses.

"Yeah," says Celo, "I am the one and only nymph with a dick in all of Materia, as far as I know."

"Huh, why?"

"Well, nymphs tend to match the desires of the people who seed us," he says. "I guess at least one of those people really, really wanted a boy." (He's got a little of that distant look again.)

"Seed you? Do I wanna know?"

"You probably don't," he snorts.

"Okay, not touching it."

"No, actually? Like, right now my mental image is someone goes to the store and buys a packet of nymph seeds and then blows out the candle on their birthday cake and makes a wish, and I'm sure that's totally wrong but it sounds like I would rather keep thinking it anyhow."

"...yep," says Celo, "I bet you would."

"Why do people go do whatever it really is instead of buying nymph seeds? Is it just like they decide to have kids and the long way around is too much work or what?"

"...noooooooo," says Celo, "as much of the exact opposite of that as it is possible to get, pretty much, except I guess in some really fucked up circumstances - okay, one of the practical reasons to want a nymph is because you don't just seed a nymph in bare dirt, you do it in the middle of a field of some kind of crop, and then you don't have to do anything else except keep the nymph happy and you'll get a nice crop of whatever it is every year."

"Oh, I guess that kind of makes sense? Farmer nymphs, okay."

"Nnnnot exactly," says Celo. "I don't do things to my field, I just am it. It's healthy when I'm healthy."

"Okay, farm nymphs, then," shrugs Lexi.

He laughs. "Sure."

"And I guess it's easier to keep nymphs happy than to keep broccoli or whatever happy."

"Way, way easier," Celo agrees.

"Because you can move around and get your own nymph food or whatever. Cool."

"Or whatever, yep," he agrees with a crooked smile.

"...Do I wanna know?"

"Probably not!"

"Okay then! Wow, there is a lot of stuff about you I do not wanna know."

"Yep," laughs Celo.