The following takes place a little bit in the future(Ie, after the next few chapters), though spoilers are kept to a minimum

Live Stream: Mark 2

"Hello internet people," Ashley said with a wave, "welcome to the second Q&A stream to ask questions about my home universe. you might notice I'm not in costume."

This was true, in place of her superhero costume was a tightly tied ankle-length bathrobe and bunny slippers. "This is in part because my ID is public now and partly because I don't feel like it, you're getting casual wear"

"So, I've been away for a little bit because things have been crazy, but... Look, explaining stuff and getting a chance to nerd out is relaxing for me and this went well last time, so we're doing this now."

Ashley flopped down on the (more comfortable than last time) and picked up a campaign flute full of something red and fizzy, which she sipped. "Don't worry, it's just grape juice," Ashley reassured. "The PR clerk thought that having me drink something would make this seem more casual and friendly and didn't think it through, so... Like I need to seem more casual, am I right? Okay, I'm seeing the first couple of questions now."

"FlyMeToTheMoon asks 'why are you grey? Well, for one, I'm not grey, I'm periwinkle, a light and pale shade of purplish-blue. Beyond that... well. so this is gonna take a bit." Ashley sat up and made a show of getting comfortable, then stretched and cracked her fingers. "So, I'm assuming that you've all seen the lecture I gave on Mutants to the rest of the Wards and Protectorate here in the Bay awhile back? They filmed it and put the archive after the last stream? So, something I didn't cover then was Secondary Mutation: sometimes, certain circumstances can result in the Mutant Gene activating again after having activated the first time. It can happen for a number of reasons, from stress to having taken certain drugs, to environmental factors to just random chance: According to the doctor I went to for as long as I can remember, becuase my mutation kicked in when I was very young, I was at a higher than average chance of undergoing spontaneous secondary mutation."

"But that's not what happened, that was just trivia. See, when the Slaughterhouse Nine were in town, I was clinically dead for like, twenty minutes... Yeah, don't worry about me, dying and coming back to life is a thing that happens where I'm from, no biggie," Ashley said with a shrug. "But before that, I was separated from my symbiote and injected with a powerful mutagenic substance. Now, for people who have watched my lecture on Mutants, you might be noticing that I kind of look like the drawing of Apocalypse... Yeah, turns out I'm descended from him via my great-great-grandfather. For generations my family thought he was being bigoted to the Romani people when he'd get drunk and rant about Egyptians but no, he meant actual Egyptians. So con: I find out I'm a direct descendant of a guy who makes the most extreme and murderous of social Darwinists call bullcrap which, considering I've been disabled for most of my life, is a bit like telling a Jew that their grandfather was literally Hitler. Pro, technically I've got Royal Blood... actually I'd have Royal blood regardless, I'm descended from two kings of Ireland on my grandfather's side and I recently learned my mother's maiden name and googling it tells me that I'm descended from a clan that was like, the power behind the Imperial throne of Japan... the messed up thing is that apparently he had an epiphany and now he's trying to be a superhero, which... Hell if I know how that's gonna end up... I'm getting off track."

"Anyway, a lesser-known power that my ancestor has is that his blood has life-sustaining properties. Heals wounds, cures diseases, drink it and it's like you ate a whole meal. I was given a medicine made from some of his blood that was leftover from one of his supervillain schemes to treat the mutagen, but since I'm his descendent it made my powers stronger, which is another thing it does, but then I got killed anyway and my symbiote latched onto me and he reacted to the mutagen in my system and... The end result is that he metamorphosed and went along for the ride, which in turn resulted in my body having a more extreme reaction to the blood than normal and having a proper secondary mutation."

"Secondary mutation can make your original powers much stronger, give you new powers entirely, or whatever, but almost always come with physical changes. So now I can turn my hand into a laser gun but I'm also periwinkle with blue lips and red eyes. My expanded powers include being able to change my coloration at will, but that takes a little bit of effort and I don't feel like it right now."

Ashley of course was lying about the exact details of what powers she got from the Secondary Mutation sandwich ones were caused by Mister Snuggle's terrigensis, but since both events happened simultaneously and the two of them are permanently fused, it doesn't really matter. Ashley took a second to scroll through the replies the stream had gotten during the explanation.

"Boring, boring, answered last time, legally can't answer that one, boring, obvious troll, ah, here we go: Do the Twilight Books exist in your world and have you read them? Yes, and no: even if I was old enough to ready trashy vampire romance novels I don't read trash."

"VoidCowboy asks: 'why a robe and slippers?' Because they wouldn't let me wear my normal Pajamas and apparently spiders aren't an appropriate animal to model a Kigurumi on... Or at least that's what the one PR guy said when he was explaining why the other PR guy screamed like a little girl, peed himself, and hid under his desk when I had Mister Snuggles shapeshift into what I had in mind."

"IdealisticCyninc asked 'Last time you mentioned that Dracula was real in your world, are any other stories like that real where you're from?' Uh yeah. Frankenstein's Monster, werewolves, mummies? That's all real. Fu Manchu? In your universe, a racist caricature. In my universe, an actual international super criminal. He's been going by a different name for a while now though."

"In your universe," Ashley continued, "Robert E. Howard wrote Conan the Barbarian as fiction. In mine, he studied and translated the Nemedian Chronicles and wrote fictionalized but accurate accounts of Conan of Cimmeria's adventures for the purposes of entertainment and education. actually, an incident while I was visiting back home meant that I got some of Conan's skills and memories recently..." Ashley, of course, was leaving out that she got he memories of a lot of people recently, and how, "becuase it turns out he traveled through time at some point and wore a symbiote like mine for a bit. This means that you challenge me to a swordfight at your own risk." Well, that and bunch of other swordsmen whose codices she'd taken.

Immediately she noticed a follow-up question: "Nyoom asks 'So, the Cimmerians were the descendants of Atlantis and begat the Gaels, so doe that means that...' Okay I'm not reading that full question, it seems that Nyoom's a Howard Fanatic: Yes, that means that any Gaelic peoples are descended from the original people of Atlantis, which means that I'm very distantly Atlantean via Cimmerian ancestry. So are hundreds of millions of other people. Actually, probably billions or like, literally everyone. This was scores of thousands of years ago. Speaking of which: Either I'm a descendant of Conan or no-one is, becuase he was active ten-thousand years ago and most statisticians think that everyone who was alive back then is either a common ancestor for all of humanity or else has no living descendants. Considering that Conan was known to have had all of the casual sex with countless women and..."

There was an interruption from off-screen. "What's that? Huh? Okay, I'm being told I'm not allowed to say the word 'sex' anymore. I don't know why I'm just talking about biology and statistics. Anyway, next question."

"EVAnGeliAN234 asked 'do you speak more than one language?'" Ashley shrugged. "Technically I answered this at the mall but the answer has changed:" Ashley then proceeded to spend the next few minutes saying "Yes, I can" or it's equivalents in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Greek, Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, ancient Egyptian, Krakoan, and finished in Irish. "And I don't feel like explaining how I got fluency in so many languages and... Oh, damnu. nobody here speaks Krakoan. Gonna seem like random gibberish in the middle of other languages and I'm being told that this is the time for now, bye Internet people," Ashley finished with a wave.