"Hi," says Aegis around a mouthful of cheese and crackers. "Who're you?"

"My name's Edie. It's not often I meet another mutant in Milliways, apparently most worlds don't have them."

"Aegis. I noticed that. How do you tell who's a mutant?"

"Oh, I'm a telepath. Mutants' minds feel different, and other telepaths even more so."

"I'm not a telepath."

"...Are you sure? Your mind feels a lot more like a telepath's kind of shielding than a non-telepaths."

"I'm kind of surprised you're even getting that much. I'm an anti-telepath. Pure defense."

"It feels like really really good shielding, even for a telepath. I don't think even the Professor could do as well."

"I don't know who that is," Aegis points out.

"Professor X. Charles Xavier. The most powerful known telepath."

"In your world, I assume. If we even have one in mine he's probably been dropped from my curriculum in favor of xenobio or military econ or something."

"Yeah, in my world. Why, where are you studying? Some kind of military academy?"

"Yup. Space military academy for space military academics in preparation for space military practicalities."

"Space military! That's a bit after my time, I'm guessing. I'm from 1984, how about you?"

"2169."

"That is pretty far in the future. I don't know, maybe you didn't have one, I'd sort of expect him to still be remembered all things considered but maybe not as much in space military academy."

"We cover history but it's all military stuff, branching out only as much as necessary to cover things like 'your chain of command may be disrupted if you've been having personal conflicts with people in your off-hours, here are examples'. So if he wasn't a combat telepath, and a big-deal one at that, I probably wouldn't've heard of him."

"Well, he does lead the X-Men...I wouldn't describe combat telepathy as his primary thing but he definitely does it. And, like I said, most powerful known telepath."

"Well, maybe we don't have one. Or he hasn't been born yet or wasn't a telepath, that could happen."

"I guess. He's pretty instrumentals to the mutants' rights movement, though. I'm not sure if it's a good thing if you didn't have one."

"I mean, we have mutant rights, far as that goes. Maybe I would've learned all about it in the fourth grade or something if I hadn't gone to Battle School. For Battle School purposes what matters is that I have the exemptions necessary for my exoskeleton," (that must be the copper lace all down her arms and hands) "and rules about powers during games which don't apply to me since mine doesn't do anything but did get my best friend in trouble once when they thought he might've done something. Matters even less in Tactical now we're not having battles."

"Oh, I was wondering what that was. What kinds of exemptions do you need to have it?"

"The stuff's a nice fancy alloy that won't let any random person with a teekay mutation stab me in the spine with it or rip it off me, but the reason not everybody wears one is because it makes it many times easier for a telepath to hijack physical control. The exo partially bypasses a lot of brain architecture about how bodies are supposed to move to give conscious control and conscious precision. Same way it's easier for most telepaths to tell what somebody's thinking right then than to tell whether they're distributing their weight evenly between feet, it's easier for a telepath to turn someone with an exo into a puppet than to do the same to anyone else. And the exo makes for a ridiculously fast and graceful puppet. There was a nasty incident where someone did exactly that and people died, so the exos were pulled from production and I only got one for my balance problems because I handle the telepath problem separately."

"Eek. Yeah, that would be bad."