"Not everybody," he says. "Just her. 'Cause telepaths can't touch her. Anybody else, if a nasty telepath got hold of 'em they could override the exo and take over their body. But not Aegis. So she gets to have it."

"So she does have mental opacity like the rest of us - but the rest of us who have it all have magic. Your world doesn't? Except insofar as 'mutant' powers count? Which it sounds like perhaps they should, but sometimes the line blurs a little."

"We don't have magic, no. Just muties." He grins. "That's a bad word, by the way, in case you couldn't tell."

"Noted."

"...The polite word for it is 'mutant', then?"

"And, because it would really bother Angela if that were not the case, is there by any chance some ultra-politically-correct term that people use when they're trying to sound fair-minded?"

He laughs. "Nobody tries to sound fair-minded about muties."

"Well, you can say 'gifted'," he says. "But actual mutants find that insulting."

[...yes.]

"What word does Aegis use?"

[Do you have a revised ETA or are you on your way now?]

[Yeah, we'll be there in a sec,] he says. Distractedly.

"She says mutant," says Sue, amused.

"All right then, mutant it is."

He grins.

"Alice and Micaiah should be down any second now," she adds.

"You're all so cavalier about bad language," muses Angela.

"Yes, and you're the odd one out. The rest of us don't have deities who care if we swear," says Stella. "Hell, Amariah named her Whistle after one of her goddesses, if that's not blasphemy I don't know what is, but I don't think the original minds according to her doctrine. You, on the other hand, associate swearing in full generality with people who also fail to take your somewhat more smite-happy deity seriously."

Micaiah teleports down, spots the hug in progress, and decides to join it.

"This is unutterably precious," declares Stella.

"So cute," agrees Angela.