"I'd offer to buy you fancy shit on my alt's tab, but it'd all be weapons and ships you wouldn't know how to use or maintain and most of it would probably be a little big for Bar to handle."

"...What about blueprints? We do have a mechanical genius who's already reverse-engineered some stuff my sister and I have brought home from Milliways."

"Ehn. Yeah, I was a little afraid of that. Oh well."

"Sorry. And she can't do weapons either, or won't, so."

"I already knew that, yeah. Actually...Bar, is there any way you could tell whether my world has these Bugger things in it?"

Not with confidence. As found in Aegis's world, they do not publish recorded works nor have any artifacts that count as 'available for sale' in a way I can access. I can make tentative guesses based on the presence of similar alien flora which I could access as inedible garnish, but this is hardly conclusive.

"Hm. Oh well, it was worth a shot."

"Yeah. Pity."

"Pity indeed. So what's your best friend's power? You said it was harmless, but it's also the kind of thing a telepathic shield is relevant to..."

"He links people up. It's near-purely voluntary, and ups everybody's multitasking handling to compensate. Sue picks and chooses what to relay. More useful for allies than enemies, but if someone's hurting him he's been known to show them what they were doing, kind of a discount empathy deal, but it barely works, like that."

"Sweet. I don't think I've ever heard of that happening, but the thing about mutants is we're all so different. I think telepathy and teekay are a few of the only things that show up consistently similarly in unrelated people."

"There's been more repeats by my era, or things that looked like they weren't that turned out to be stylistic differences."

"Well, you've had longer to do it in."

"Yeah."

"Hey, Bar, can I see some books on mutant history from her world?"

How technical would you like them?

"A basic overview to start with, please."

A book entitled Mutation: Its First Century and a sequel called Mutation: Its Second Century by the same author appear.

Edie picks up the first one and flips to the index. Any mention of her parents or any of the other X-Men?

Yup! Those were a thing. There are pictures, even. ...Her parents did not get along. Well enough to have children, or do more than occasionally play chess while Erik was in prison.

"Are... you okay?"

"Professor X existed in your universe. So did my dad. They were, apparently, archenemies instead of best friends." She slides the page over. "Lehnsherr. My name is Edie Lehnsherr."

Aegis looks at it. "I'm... sorry."