"It was all there."

"Excellent."

"Let's get going, then." Onward to the ship - "You okay flying us back, Tayab?"

"You got it."

Kiss! "Thank you."

And off to do that.

Settling in with the new alts, then, and: "It is a bit of a flight - I can summarize the different alts we have around on the way, if you want."

"That would be helpful."

Hum.

"So - there's two universes involved. We'd found alt sets native to this universe, but hadn't really known what was going on with that. A few months ago, three people crossed over from another universe, using their native magic - one of them was a you, and two were alts of my teacher, Anakin. The you from that universe is Ellie Potter-Canta, and the versions of Master Anakin are Anathema Potter-Canta and Fay Reynolds. Ellie and Anat' are both about my age, and Fay's in her early fifties. They're all dating, and the two Potter-Cantas are married. We know about a probable alt of me from that world - Lily Potter, Ellie's mom - but haven't confirmed. She's... Technically dead but using a quirk of their magic system to keep influencing the world of the living. That group recently won a major war and then turned to experimenting with one of Ellie's powers - Ellie has a lot of control over stuff related to death and dying. She can resurrect people, embody ghosts, and travel into an afterlife and then jump from there to other living worlds - she also says she self-resurrected at one point during her war, though I didn't see her do that, and she can apparently permanently destroy some types of usually indestructible monsters from her world. Anat' and Fay have less unique things, but are overall powerful and knowledgeable with their magic system. Anat's fairly - lighthearted, I don't think she takes a lot of stuff seriously - while Fay's been mostly quiet so far. Pretty curious, though, and she's been super helpful with figuring out how the Force and their magic interact."

"Native to our universe, there's Anakin Vendar and Anathema Jedi of my teacher's alt set, me and Sidious of mine, Ellaita Dameron and Elesse Vendar of yours, and then Tayab, who we hadn't known was part of an alt set until now. Master Anakin and I met 'Hema and Ellaita around the same time. 'Hema's part of a group of clones created to fight for the First Order, one of the Empire's allies. She is not actually a member of any Jedi Order; her group - the Collective - all named themselves, and they ended up with 'Jedi' as the profession-name for their Force sensitives. Most of them aren't actually Force sensitive, but 'Hema got lucky, managed to throw a pretty large talent for battle meditation, and defected with all the clones of her line from the First Order. Ellaita wasn't actually trained in the Force when we met... She'd been part of a group fighting the First Order, had gotten captured on a mission, and 'Hema set her free during her defection, intending to flip to her side. Their ship crashed during the fight, though, and while 'Hema got out, Ellaita got knocked unconscious - I found her and brought her back to Master Anakin to be healed. We managed to meet back up with Ellaita's group, and Master Anakin successfully intimidated the leader of the First Order - who's her grandson, Master Anakin's biological family is very dramatic - into cutting it out with the dumb war. That was about four years ago."

"Elesse is an actual Jedi - so, Master Anakin was originally a Hutt slave, who freed Elesse after Elesse was captured by the Hutts. Elesse came back for her, and Master Anakin joined the Jedi after that as Elesse's padawan. Sidious was at the time pretending to be not a Sith, and he got himself elected as Chancellor of the Republic around then. He orchestrated a war to get power concentrated in his hands and to help him with destroying the Jedi Order. He also orchestrated a fight between Master Anakin and Elesse during the fall of the Republic, which Master Anakin won - Elesse died, which is incidentally how we know Ellie can resurrect people. Master Anakin kind of spiraled into the dark side after that, and Sidious took her as his apprentice, Vader."

"Master Anakin had had two kids shortly before the Republic's fall. She faked their deaths and hid them, since she knew Sidious would go looking for them. Both kids ended up fighting the Empire, and one of them, Luke, got training as a Jedi and then successfully talked Master Anakin into turning on Sidious. She killed him, refused any medical treatment - died of that, then sort of just failed to stay meaningfully dead. We actually have no idea how, but she ended up as a powerful Force ghost unlike any of the normal ones we've encountered or found records of - she kept growing and learning and generally being a person after her death, and when Ellie offered to embody her, she refused until a way could be found for her to be only embodied when she feels like it, since she finds having a biology sometimes annoying and limiting. - She then found me when I was a little kid and decided to teach me, about fourteen years ago, and she's been teaching Ellaita and 'Hema whenever they'll sit still for it."

"Recently - Elesse's been resurrected, we've been settling into working as a large alt group... Also both Master Anakin's and your alt group keep all hooking up; Master Anakin is dating all of Ellaita, 'Hema, and Elesse, and the two polycules keep having crossover - I think mostly at the Anathemas, but like, there definitely were all seven of them in one room last I checked; and I'd actually decided to go on the field trip where I found you two just to get out of the house. Hopefully they're done by now..."

"That sounds like quite a group of characters."

"It is! Makes family dinners very chaotic."

"Still, better than a war."

"...Yeah."

"Pretty sure some member or another of Master Anakin's biological family has been significantly responsible for, like, most of the major wars of the last century, it's somewhat ridiculous; there probably actually would be a war if certain family members got put in the same room for too long..."

"Sounds like something to be avoided, then."

"Yep."

"Fortunately no one in the actual house wants each other dead."

"I imagine that would make dinners even more complicated."

"Might be a break in the incessant flirting, though."

"But at what cost?"

"Probably mostly just inconveniencing the person with resurrection? Although, also, the Anathemas especially might keep flirting even while trying to kill each other, so might not even fix the problem..."

"Oh dear," Occlus laughs.

"They are very a way - I do like them, but, also, they keep stealing all the competent women, and I do not want to be in a hookup chart with my mom or my alt's daughter."

"Understandable concerns."

Small smile. "Maybe I should introduce you to the happily married ones first," she teases. 

"As our guide, we are of course at your whim in this matter."

"They have quite a lot going for them! Definitely some of the most interesting powers, seeing how they're the interdimensional set."