"Why not?"

"Because some of them are stupidly powerful and would still be that way even if the universe itself did not enforce their superiority."

"We are also stupidly powerful and getting moreso," he says. 

"Are you epic?" says Fëanáro.

"Not familiar with the word. I stopped time forever over a space of several miles, I can do that again at need."

"Epic is a loosely defined term which basically means 'if you get in a fight with a god, while in Materia, you might win'. Gods come with all kinds of inconvenient properties and some of them might be categorically immune to temporal effects or something."

"Loki's probably epic, then," he says, "and we can wait on Materia until she's helping."

"What'd she do?"

"She wields the Tesseract, she killed Thauron in single combat and Morgoth with the twitch of a finger, later, and she's working on resurrection of Men at the moment I think because she kind of adopted the species. Very capable person." He says it approvingly. 

"...sounds awesome."

"Yes. We were fortunate, with her. And well-positioned to aid her. And the Enemy underestimated us all."

"You can go get all these people?"

"Ah, I think someone has to hold the door open. Because of the rules of the bar. But yes, I can. Want to meet her?"

"My epic counterpart from the future, what am I gonna say, no?"

So he steps outside and pops, and then a minute later pops back. "No one is sure what planet she's currently on."

"That is a fun problem to have, I guess."

"D'you not have a teleport? You said your magic could do it..."

"We can do teleports, yes and planar shifts - my Fëanáro did most of the research for those, I was stuck in Materia at the time carefully casting no spells at all and being a therapist instead."

He looks back at little Fëanáro. "Why was she being a therapist?"

"She was scared Materia would eat her. I was scared it'd eat me but I wasn't there to be scared every minute and I needed her back. She saved our mother."

"She saved our mother?"

"In your world did she die?"

"Yes. Yes, she did."

"- did she come back, you said everybody came back?"

"She didn't want to stop being dead. And then the Valar changed the rules so she wasn't allowed to. But after we won the war, yes, she did, she lives here, she - she says I did okay, she says she's proud of me -"

"And she's... okay?"

"She got to watch the strings of fate unravel before Vaire's eyes. Shouldn't she be okay-"

"The reason she died was she swore to kill us when we were a baby,"  Fëanáro says.

"Oh.

Well, Loki gave us all free will. So."

Bella relaxes.

"How'd she do that?"

"She wielded the infinity stones. They might only work for one if you're already epic, I'm not sure. I haven't tried it, if you try and they don't like you they might blow up the planet. Anyway, they're obviously as evil as the Valar but they helped a lot with the war and Loki likes one."

"The infinity stones are obviously evil but she likes one?"

"'as evil as the Valar' doesn't mean, you know, the Enemy, it means 'could have saved the universe and didn't and I'm unimpressed. And this one at least sent her, albeit only because it was bored. I think. When you meet her you can ask."

"The Valar and I did not part on good terms what with all the begging for my life I was doing."

"...they tried to kill you? That doesn't seem much their style."