sweeping changes

[mind_game]

Jane has finally been updated in all of the "extra" worlds with no Bells, Jarvises, or other routine visitors to the peal, and she is conducting template sweeps in them.

[Hey,] she tells all the Jokers and all the Bells. [There's a Joker in world number twelve who wasn't there before I crashed. Can't find him online at all, though.]

Comments

[gunpowdergelatine]

"Felicity," Queenie suggests.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Unless he has something else in mind, Felicity will do," chuckles Elspeth. "Okay. Jake, we're all right?"

He sighs. "If he does go off on you and it's bad, can we call over - I don't know, who's really impossible to ruffle? Carlisle or Esme. Didyme maybe. Call over a babysitter and go off for a while."

"Yes," says Elspeth. "I'm sure Grandma and Grandpa will be happy to help."

"Then I'm fine."

"Okay." She's still holding his hand; she kisses it, and he pops back to Aurum. "Jane, I'm ready."

And then Elspeth is in world number twelve, and then she is invisible, and then she is where the local Joker is.

[inhispockets]

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.

[her_imperial_radiance]

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.

[inhispockets]

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

[her_imperial_radiance]

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

[inhispockets]

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

[her_imperial_radiance]

"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."

[inhispockets]

He skids to a halt so fast he nearly overbalances.

"You're what?" he demands.

[her_imperial_radiance]

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

[inhispockets]

"Fine," he says, "let's go."

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Jane, Aurum please," says Elspeth.

And then they are in front of a computer terminal in a clean white room, otherwise deserted.

"This is my world," says Elspeth. "It's more like yours than some, but we don't have a Gotham, it's the year 2060, there are vampires and werewolves, and my mother is the Empress Regnant."

[inhispockets]

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

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Because your template - fifteen-ish other times versions of you have come to exist that I and people I know have run across - you guys have lousy childhood situations, except the other one I also grabbed. Also, if I left you where you were, you were almost certainly on-track to eventually fall into obsessively unrequited love with a costumed superhero and terrorize a city for her - or possibly his, in that world - attention."

("Fifteen-ish" is accompanied by a largely cosmetic hint about what sorts of things could constitute "ish"ing a number of Jokers: the situations with daemons, Sue's fork, Aianon and Ansharil. It doesn't so much convey this information as that the "ish" represents actual ambiguity about how many of him there are in circulation, not ignorance on Elspeth's part.)

[inhispockets]

The boy considers this.

"So... what took you?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

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."

[mind_game]

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

[inhispockets]

He eyes the Janepoint mistrustfully.

[mind_game]

"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."

[inhispockets]

...He boggles.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"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."

[inhispockets]

"Yeah? Why's that?"

[her_imperial_radiance]

"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."

[inhispockets]

He snorts derisively.

[her_imperial_radiance]

"Hmm?"