Morty knows he shouldn't be screwing around with multidimensional shit. It's dangerous, it's impractical, it's blah blah blah. But it's a potential key to unlimited energy, how does nobody see that? He's built a dimensional siphon (it kind of looks like a cardboard box with a funnel and a TI-84 taped to it, but it damn well works), keyed in the dimensional coordinates to a random plane, and by God he's going to use it.
He flips the switch and waits for the energy bar to fill up.
It does! It fills up very rapidly. Then it explodes, along with the box. There's rather more smoke than there should be, and once the smoke clears someone is standing there.
"Oh dear," Morty says faintly.
"There is not in fact a Mutant God. There's some gods, but invoking them is kind of risky, so facetiousness."
(With each oath, she absently makes a quick gesture.)
"I am not inclined to oaths of that nature. Just the classic metastisized Valley-Girl-ism of 'oh my God'. Does the gesture help?"
"Judeo-Christian's safe; we're pretty sure something's taking up that conceptual space, but it's not doing much of anything and you can safely swear by it. The gesture's kind of like... the opposite of what you say? Like, swearing by something sends a little bit of energy its way, but the gesture shoves it back in. It's more trouble than it's worth until you've got enough magic intuition to do it on reflex, though."
"Okay. I'll avoid getting into spirited discussions of the spiritual beliefs of the ancient Romans, then, shall I?"
"You can say their names, just not, uh, invokishly. The Pantheon's not really the big threats, anyway, they actually incarnated themselves and got the living hell beat out of them a couple of years ago, so they're not in the best shape. Still best policy not to invoke them, but they're not so hot."
"Okay. 'Invokishly'. I'm pretty sure these entities don't, literally, exist in my world, I wonder why there's recognizable parallelism at all."
"Hell if I know. Maybe they're just recognizable patterns that show up when somebody needs a religion, and hereabouts that ended up coalescing into actual gods?"
"I suppose if people here generating religions can also generate gods in the process that serves as the majority of an explanation."
"It's possible! Personally I don't know all that much about gods. Circe is the expert, but she doesn't like talking about gods too much unless they're ending the world or something."
"She may be willing to talk about it in a few decades once she feels like she knows you well enough, if you're still curious."
"Neat. But I won't write it down, I'd just keep reminding myself that there's a thing I shouldn't ask."
"Not really. They used to be a lot more common, back when anti-mutant shit was really high. And this place is right next to a bank, so they've got extra incentive, there's not one in every mom-and-pop. But... yeah, panic rooms are a thing most places."
"Okay. Am I still blurry? Should I still be blurry? Secret identities are a thing? People must have seen us get up."
"Secret identities are still a thing, but we're in Chicago, so nobody knows you. And my identity is not a particularly well-guarded secret. And the blurriness includes an anti-camera charm, which I left on longer than the blur itself. And can take off when we get back to Whateley."
"I can put it on you with the same spell I used for mine, if we'd be working together. Otherwise, there's techniques for getting them on in a hurry, notably just wearing most of it under your clothes. And then of course there's the classic enchanted domino mask. You've got options, is what I'm saying."