"Well, this book suggests he did use it for a while in your history." Flip flip flip. "...My sister and I never existed in your universe, it looks like. Not really surprising, all things considered."

"Yeah, it sounds like a lot of things were different. Maybe you don't have buggers, either."

"Here's hoping. Although I suspect that the aliens in the metal spaceships would be more easily defeatable if the world's prime magnetist isn't swanning around being a supervillain."

"I think the First Invasion postdated him by a little..." Aegis rechecks the year. "Yeah, he was dead. And anyway they mostly hit from orbit. Little out of most people's range."

"Ooh. Luck on that."

"It's bad enough I never got to meet my grandmother. I really, really don't want to lose my dad."

Nod.

"If I do manage to acquire longevity for my loved ones, I'll keep an eye out for you in a couple centuries."

"You can leave things with Bar for specific people, or templates. I got a key to a room that some of my alts paid for and permission to use the richest one's tab."

"Oh, that's convenient. I've never met an alternate version of myself here or I might have done something similar."

"Apparently a bunch of mine have magic, but unless I run into one in person I can't have any, they don't dare leave it lying around."

"Lucky. That makes sense, though, if it's at all worth having."

"Yeah. They don't want to trust obscurity and an ordinary door lock with it and Bar can't distribute magic items."

"That is an entirely sensible attitude to artifacts of significant power."

"Frustrating as hell for me, though. Magic I could deploy right under the IF's collective nose without them being able to do squat."

"Deploying things under the noses of obstructive persons without them being able to squat is one of life's little joys, yes."

Giggle.

"One of the benefits of being at the genesis of mutantkind is that the people in charge haven't figured out how to catch most of us at deploying things yet."

"Yeah? Fun stories?"

"Well, we can catch us at deploying things much more reliably, and I grew up at a boarding school for young mutants, so I don't have all that many fun stories from my childhood--of the deploying things variety anyway--but I think the college still hasn't cottoned on to the fact that the fire alarm mysteriously gets pulled at the other end of the building when Professor MacGregor starts inserting homophobia into his lectures."

Snort. "Who's doing that one?"

"Well, I can't promise that the fire alarm's getting pulled on any lectures I or someone who's interested in collaborating with me haven't attended, but it's my sister who pulls the actual metal bar. I let her know when to do it, she does the doing."

"Cool. Mutant rights aren't what they could be but things're mostly better for gay people," Aegis mentions. "In my world. Based on my heavily filtered information from a planet I haven't seen since I was six."

"Hopefully things will get better faster with the two most prominent mutants rights activists working together instead of at each other's throats and one of 'em's a supervillain."