"Convenient. I hope they don't exercise the 'take your kids' option too often."

"Think of it as 'social work if they cared enough to put people and attention and thought into it'. They took us once for a few days - they thought our mom might be hitting me, because I was always injured, because before my basics I was really clumsy. We got them to give us back, though."

"Okay, that much is fair."

"I'd be inclined to summarize the governmental reaction to gemini suddenly popping up as 'surprisingly non-dystopic'."

Snort.

"Our government was mildly dystopic about the sudden public existence of mutants, but luckily money and some really good preemptive PR."

"I've got the impression mutants run in families?" says Flicker. "There is a limited extent to which that's true of twins, but it's only particularly visible on the population level. Anybody can have a set of twins. Like, there were some historical complications, twins who'd been separated by this or that sad historical event suddenly being able to twine and not speaking each other's language, etcetera, there are public figures associated with Getting The Twins Thing Right, but I think mostly it's that anyone could have one and there is no way to construe having a twin as being a behavior someone could control, like homosexuality. So everyone sort of liked us in a general sense and everyone acknowledged that it needed getting right."

"Mutants absolutely run in families. And yeah, that sounds like it would do it. Although all things considered I'd be surprised if there wasn't anyone who didn't come up with an excuse to hate you."

"There are such people, but not very many, at least near us. Might or might not have helped particularly that for high school we had to go to a gemini school where everyone was a twin."

"We also went to a school for only people with powers! Boarding school, even."

"Ours is not a boarding school. There exist boarding Gemini schools but ours was just like a regular public school, only with uniforms and arrangements to keep twinsets in the same classes and no gym class until after one turned sixteen."

"...Now, like, after Yellowstone exploded? School everywhere for everyone is canceled for - a while. It'll start up again eventually."

"Uh, yeah, that's pretty much what I meant. And--yeah, that makes sense."

"It didn't get my dad's house, so me and Alli and our mom moved there. Our parents get along better than a lot of divorcés, or it'd be awkward."

"I can imagine."

"I think they might get back together," opines Alli. "Sometimes I go down for a midnight snack and there's nobody sleeping on the couch."

"Well that's an. Interesting way to find out."

"The couch is very uncomfortable and if they're managing to share a queen size bed that doesn't mean very much by itself. I don't think we'd better read into it."

"Yeah, but still!"

"I mean, it's better than random bedspring creaks, I'd imagine."

"Thank you for that mental soundtrack."

"Sorry."

"What color do you want your ashbot, and do you have a use for small unfaceted diamonds?" asks Lorica.