friendly door

[her_imperial_radiance]

Elspeth gets a door.

It's been so long she reels for a moment, and then she throws herself forward and almost lands in a peal of Bells. Yes, there's Shell Bell, there's Juliet and Aurora, there's Glass, there's some Matilda she hasn't seen before.

"Elspeth!" exclaims Glass.

"How long has it been?" Aurora asks.

"Seventeen years. Shell Bell - I need you to help me find Harley," says Elspeth.

Comments

[thaumobabble]

"I do!" she chuckles. "It's an interesting party trick. And I predicted at the last Bell party that something awful was going to happen to Harley and there was nothing we could do about it - fat lot of help that was."

[salus_populi]

"...If he was in some way fated to have horrible experiences, that actually explains a lot about the last ten years," Aelise says thoughtfully.

[thaumobabble]

"It's a template attractor. Horrible things have to happen to Jokers; there are strong tendencies for it to be a certain short list of things, and there's flexibility on the amount, but it's not escapable. Elspeth took Harley away from bad parents when he was a baby and he grew up happy and safe in Aurum, so of course he had to develop uncontrollable teleporting ability and land somewhere that wouldn't treat him kindly."

[incanted]

"If they re-run the Trauma Olympics I wonder if he's competitive with Aianon and Brilliance, now? Probably depends on how they count psychological tampering."

[salus_populi]

"He teleported three more times while he was here, apparently deliberately - once to the bottom of the ocean, once to the middle of the largest active volcano on the planet, and once into the sun. I managed to retrieve him from the ocean and the volcano. The sun was a tougher problem."

[incanted]

"Aianon was tortured by demons for a couple thousand years and Brilliance has an unprecedented pain ceiling," says Aurora. "If Harley's in the running at all, it's because of Chelsa."

[salus_populi]

"But now at least I have a better idea of why he teleported to those places in particular," she says. "Corona was rescued from a bad home situation too, for that matter. Was it the stepfather, with Harley?"

[luminous_regnant]

"Harley was taken from his biological parents. That's it in every case where parents are the thing, I believe, although I suppose it could have escaped common knowledge if Jellybean or Kas had stepfathers, and Brilliance is not an organism and has creators instead of any form of parent. And I don't know about the one from the Jane-breaking world; that Bell had a Joker but we don't know about his provenance."

[salus_populi]

"Corona's stepfather was an unpleasant individual. His biological father was just absent. Interesting that that appears to be the exception," says Aelise. "Any comments from the template expert?"

[thaumobabble]

"There was a bit of an - off - twist to the attractor. Not as off as Brilliance, but nonstandard - or maybe an alternate standard. I'd recognize it if I saw it again."

[salus_populi]

"Hmm," says Aelise. "This alternate-universe information thing is fascinating. Are there more templates we should be keeping an eye out for?"

[incanted]

"We should do a sweep. And through Downside, too, now we've added Gift to it. I only found my Beth when I ran a check for all the templates I knew after meeting Agent Honey. I'll just run through the list we did in Chronicle -"

[luminous_regnant]

"And I think I'll look for some more people from Aurum who aren't known to be templates, since apparently Chelsea was one and there could be more... surprises, pleasant or un-."

[thaumobabble]

"I can also tell by looking whether someone's templatey even if I haven't met any of their alts, if there's someone you'd like to be on the lookout for more of," Glass says.

[incanted]

"Found an Anna, found a Sandy. They're together."

[luminous_regnant]

"Chelsa comes with an Afton alt. Of course she does. ...Found a Demetri. I suppose if he's not a vampire he's probably not doing what Demetri did in Aurum. And no Allirea."

[salus_populi]

"...Anneia, Sandre, Amdon, Demauri?" says Aelise. "Do templates tend to cluster like that? I wonder if there are any alts of Luhan... your guess is as good as mine about where to find him, though, he's been roaming the Canadian wilderness for a decade."

[thaumobabble]

"Templates do cluster. Some of them are attached to each other - Bells all come with the same set of parents, Libbies all come with Chrises, etcetera - and some just drift together a lot; Bells and Jokers do that. Will Luhan have a heart attack and die if I just teleport in front of him to see? Would that be a bad idea for any reason?"

[salus_populi]

"Luhan once survived being very close to the epicenter of a nuclear explosion, but he might be displeased if you just teleport in front of him without warning."

[she_sells_seashells]

"That would've been a convenient talent to have," murmurs Shell Bell.

[thaumobabble]

"I could brainphone him instead, would that be a bad idea? You seem to have some snug operational security at work."

[giftedandtalented]

"Luhan's cleared pretty high, I don't know about this high. Frankly I don't know how high 'this high' is. We are apparently a big deal."

[salus_populi]

"...actually," says Aelise, "given which nuclear explosion Luhan survived, you might want to talk to him before you set up on Venus, Tab. So by all means, brainphone away."

[thaumobabble]

[Hey, Luhan, I'm an extradimensional visitor who is an expert on what person-templates repeat across universes and how, and Aelise wants me to look at you; is that okay?]

[pythbox]

Silence.