"Makes sense."

"I'm trying to figure out some kind of equivalent for mutants but it doesn't work, we just don't have interdependent powers that way."

"I don't think I've ever even listed the gemini package completely - so, twins who actually both exist when they turn sixteen, as opposed to being chimeras or one of them dead or something, get bonuses that work well together. How much varies, Alli and I have powers that work pretty well independently and the only obvious synergy is that she doesn't count against my passenger limit. The bonuses vary in quality and aren't necessarily fair within a set; like, you could have someone whose bonus is turning things yellow who had a twin with the power to make yellow things blindingly bright. But you won't get someone who can turn things green and a twin whose power is to make yellow things blindingly bright. And in addition to the bonuses are basics: Olympic-level ability - but not form - no maintenance required in general physical can-do, and we can talk to each other at any distance but have to talk aloud to do it, and we can sympathetically-heal anything short of death."

"Healing sounds useful. Magnetism and telepathy aren't really linked but teleportation and duplication don't seem linked until you get to the passenger limit thing, I wonder what a pair of us who were from your world or an equivalent would be like."

"I have no idea. But you don't look familiar, so if you exist you haven't been making waves."

"Oh, I think we probably don't exist in your world. I was speaking purely hypothetically."

"None of us look familiar to you, right?" Flicker asks Mistral and Lumiere.

"Pity. I like having an alt. She makes me presents."

"I am arguably also getting you a present, seeing as I'm paying for the materials."

"Yes, I appreciate that very much, but I couldn't count on duplicating the effect by finding more of you."

"True enough. Of course, another alt of yours might not have the skill or resources to make you more presents."

"That's true, I'm not really pulling my weight for Lorica."

"You'd do the same for me if our positions were reversed, I'm sure," says Lorica, serenely applying a blowtorch to something.

"If the door had been less uncooperative you could have teleported my sister and I somewhere nearish the people we were supposed to be dealing with."

"Key suffix being 'ish', these people sound scary. But yeah. If the door comes back before I leave I still can."

"It would still cut down significantly on travel time. Anyway, resource sharing is an important function of alts! When applicable, anyway."

"How many of yours have you run into?"

"Let me think..." she considers for a moment. "Seventeen."

"...That's a lot of alts."

"I've been coming here for a long time! Most of them weren't at once."

"How alike are you all?"

"Pretty alike, most of us. There was one who had a living grandmother and one whose parents were women and two who were princesses and one who was a dragon, that was the farthest-out one, but most of us were mostly the same."

"Ooh, a dragon."

"She was also the developmentally youngest and therefore most adorable."