"What went wrong with that one -"

"It's not very surprising. At that scale any difference in conductivity is going to affect the range of temperatures this can function under, and vibranium has three orders of magnitude less conductivity than the alloy you were using. I didn't know what would go wrong but it would have been astonishing if nothing had."

"I've tried a buncha different alloys and that never happened. Run it again slower."

They seem like they're having fun. "Is there anything I should catch you up on," she asks Maedhros.

"I think I have a clear picture of most things," he says in Quenya rather than English, "except why that man is wearing armor."

She turns off Allspeak to answer him in Quenya too. "Recently in a fight. I guess it's comfy and general utility enough to not bother taking off right away."

"Is his comparative advantage really in shooting-at-things?"

"I'm not sure! I'm assuming he invented the armor and maybe it's that much of a good thing to have on the field and that much of a learning curve if you don't know the specs intimately? Odd fielding decisions could have been called for trying to stop Mr. Murder Trillions."

"Does your universe of origin have Mr. Murder Trillions?"

"It does not. I think we might be earlier and we have an at least slightly different composition of planets."

"I realize you expect you can stop Melkor but you do realize that if you couldn't, Mr. Murder Trillions wouldn't be wrong -"

"Yes he would, he only killed half the population and he did it to prevent resource overrun."

" - why is it better for resources to take twice as long to run out?"

"I don't know! When we have taken all his rocks, you may ask him if you like."

"It does sound to me like the rock-taking is something Huan would be delighted to take part in, if you think he'd be useful."

"I thought so! He might be, we don't know everyone we're fielding yet because we have to decrypt the diary to find out, better to have him and not need him."

"Is there a way for me to learn about the people you do know you'll have -"

"I just got here myself. Uh, one of them is an alt of my sister, Thor, who is also named Thor, and they seem similarish?"

"How similar are alts -"

"Yous are really good at identifying alts, few minutes of conversation'll do it. That's how we first discovered that alts don't all look alike. It's a personality, basic mindset, kind of thing, but templates vary in how much their circumstances vary and in how much their circumstances affect them. I have not met Thor alts before this one and this one has had a really rough week so he's in a state I haven't seen my sister in before right now."

"Stark reminds me of some people but I don't think in quite that way."

"I do not think he's related to you in another world. Your family is very consistent. If your dad has kids at all he has all seven of you and you don't have different faces so far except for the genderswap Arda and as necessary for species. You're also always in some sort of privileged minority, usually 'royalty' once 'wizards', except arguably Matirin, who is a centaur alien and may conceivably not have had any leg up besides natural talent in ascending military ranks."

" - I understand if you are too busy, but if you are not, do tell me more. That sounds like an interesting collection of people."

"I'm not busy right now at all, my brand of R&D can't pay off in this time frame. Usually you'd get an intro packet with a billion people's names in it but I don't have one on me. I can give you the executive summary." She starts in on the map and main players in the multiverse.

He is less convincing than Loki's Maedhros about finding this kind of thing fun and fascinating, but he does ask lots of questions and get all the cool stories.