"Huh. Jean has telekinesis on top of her telepathy but I've never heard of either of those going with pyrokinesis. I suppose your world must be different from mine. Well, it's not like I thought you were a mutant telepath anyway."

"I suppose you're from another plane entirely. Extraplanar studies," she snorts again.

"I suppose plane's as good a word for it as any. They can travel to other--planes, dimensions, whatever, where you're from? That must be interesting."

"Well, traveling there is usually not advised, but some people study them or summon things from them, that sort of thing. I assume somebody majoring in it took this supply closet for a test subject for a spell or something."

"I'm fairly certain that Milliways has been around way longer than it would have to be for it to be a creation of a random college student...but on the other hand, Bar did say that time weirdness happens sometimes. I'm probably not late to Calculus, for example, despite having been hanging out here for a while and only having been a few minutes early when I came in."

"I'm not sure if they summoned it or made it or baited it with extraplanar bar treats," says Aether. "I'm not certain they were involved at all. It's just how I'm categorizing the event." She sits at the bar. A brief telepathic conversation later, she receives a peanut butter milkshake.

"Fair enough. I'm categorizing it as 'weird shit happens to my family' and being glad it's not even a little bit trying to kill me."

"It is awfully friendly for an extraplanar bar."

"I confess I have no particular expectations for extraplanar bars to compare this one to, but it is quite friendly compared to--well, life in general. Ooh, I should check if I can get things from here to solve problems back home."

Mmm, milkshake. "Like what?"

"I don't know, advanced medical technology to reverse-engineer or advice on social activism. More likely the technology, I think--Bar, do you sell things like that?"

"I'm fine, I'm not going to drown in milkshake, that would be undignified. Did you just say you're going to buy technology from Bar and reverse-engineer it?"

"Well, probably not me personally, I don't have a lot of money on me and I'm not the best person to guess what's reverse-engineerable in the first place. I'll probably get Papa and maybe Dr. McCoy in here and let them do it. I am not actually a seventeen-year-old with enough money and knowhow to do that kind of thing. That would be silly."

"Are you from some kind of science fantasy world?"

"...Mutants have been accused of being particularly fantastical, but I've never heard of technology described that way."

"I mean, mutants is a kind of science fantasy word but that could have just been an aesthetic thing."

"We did only come into the public consciousness less than two decades ago. I think the word was used in sci-fi before that."

"You're science fiction to yourselves?"

"Mutants in pre-nineteen sixties science fiction do not strongly resemble actual, real life mutants."

"Okay, but the technology before. Are we talking, like - what do you have, is this a word for 'we invented the wheel' or do you have - 'internal combustion engines' or 'immutable laws of physics'?" She says these phrases like one might expect a person to say "crystal-energy powered chariot" or "divine blessings".

"I. Am not sure what the alternative is? To immutable laws of physics, anyway, I suppose combustion engines are less mandatory."

"Okay. Great. The supply closet has a portal to an interplanar bar with a science fantasy person in it. Of course."

"I'm sorry, are you saying your world doesn't have laws of physics? How do you exist if you can't depend on the strong nuclear force keeping your atoms together?"