[If you read that title out loud, it has an interesting play on words]
Mystique backed up from the Time Broker..
He certainly didn't look that threatening...but...
"You know who I am?" she said.
"I know who everyone is," The Time Broker said. "I knew you would come. And came. Come again?"
"What?" Mystique said.
"Exactly," The Time Broker seemed to think that was funny. "But there should be another one."
Morph came hurrying into the room.
"Mystique look--oh...TB?"
"Hello Morph," The Time Broker said. "I would say, a pleasure to see you again, but I saw you next and last time also."
"And you're the same as always," Morph joked.
"You still understand I see," The Time Broker said. "And you're not a minute too late, or too early, as it happens."
These time jokes were going to kill Mystique if Mimic didn't first, she thought
"Your dimension is in grave danger," Time Broker didn't leave much time for small talk.
"Yeah we know," Morph said. "But...uh...sorry for breaking the rules, and all, but--"
"Ah, I knew you would," Time Broker said. "I could have stopped it if I wanted to. But this is fine. Even Mystique has a place here. Come, look, this is your dimension right now. I have been studying it..."
Morph gave Mystique a look like "Are you still mad?"
She didn't return it.
Morph followed the Time Broker to the wall, and she did also, she had nothing better to do.
Mimic came in also, but he said nothing.
"This... is kind of blurry," Morph said. "Why? Usually it's more clear."
"The real reason I have not contacted you," the Time Broker said. "The connection to Earth 616, as we call it, is fading. And to earth 1081...both worlds of the X-men's existence..."
"Fading?" Morph said. "I didn't think that could happen."
"It's rare," Time Broker said. "Every so often...over thousands of years perhaps if we counted them all up, a old dimension...fades back into the Ultimate Reality, never to exist again. Sometimes a new world comes into existence...But the fading is not from that. There is a third way."
He studied the wall slowly. "Worlds can fade when whatever has made them what they are is wiped from existence. I believe this is what is happening to both of yours."
"Both?" Morph said. "But how, even influencing one world is crazy hard."
"It is...but parallel universes have some apparent connections that make it a little easier," Time Broker said, not very emotionally.
"The particular cause of this is, from what I can tell. A kind of Merging."
"Merging?" Morph said. "I...don't think we could do that either..."
"We are not supposed to," Time Broker said. "But there is a great evil, inhabiting one of those worlds...somehow they have begun the process. It started with just one person, maybe two. The number has grown...or is growing...or will grow. It's unclear. If it keeps up, the reality itself will start to merge...instead of being parallel, they will become one...but the cannot exist as one, and so they will be swallowed up, one or the other, and become a NO MORE."
