"I dunno, you just looked - more upset than I'd expect from somebody who just got tons of superpowers and a free vacation from all of life's problems," shrugs Robin.

"Pealing is pure upside, to the point where it comes with enough leeway for Butterfly to be something other than completely on and controlled and functional one hundred percent of the time. So some stuff is bubbling up."

"Okay, that makes sense."

"Which is good, being on all the time is exhausting, especially without magic boosts."

"Well. Have a nice magic holiday?"

"I am, thank you."

"Good!"

"Did anybody tell you you're a template? I mean, you'll have to check with Glass to be positive, but you resemble a template."

"Who do I resemble?"

"They're called Kingfishers, because the ones who go by Rupert and the ones who go by Ripper are embarrassed by each other and they compromised on the suborder shared by the animals they'd have as daemons."

...Snort.

"Aw, it's cute," says Robin. "Go me."

"So it looks like I was right. And they all have Ethans too but most of them don't like them nearly as much as you like yours."

"Really? Why not? I mean, Ethan's very... Ethan, but I still like him fine..."

"One Ethan faked his death in order to provoke his Ripper into writing the local Bell an email," says Butterfly. "There's less peal-common-knowledge about the falling-outs the Ruperts had, though."

"...That definitely does sound like something that'd piss me off," she acknowledges.

"The Bell in question is now dating her Ripper, which apparently both Bells possessed of Ruperts instead find very funny."

"Juliet moreso than Aegis."

"...Are any of these other Kingfishers girls?"

"No, just you. A lot of templates have strong but not perfectly consistent gender skews. There's one boy Bell, for instance."

"Huh."

"Also, templates come in two kinds, which we don't know anything about except that Glass can see them and your kind is much more likely to be bisexual masochists. You're purple, we're green."