Adam carefully examined Jenova's healing pod… and sighed. {{Well, that's as long as I can permit her to be exposed to Bioshock's psionic field. Any more and she will be dependent on it.}}

Though 'Research' had been attempting to determine what exactly made energy serum so beneficial to the woman, and had come up with some theories.

He carefully disabled the environmental settings and set the pod to Gaia standard instead, carefully watching the sensor data as the serums and each Tonic began to decay safely, with 'Enhance Self' ensuring no issues and then eventually falling apart itself.

Because uncontrolled and cancerous psionic field collapse was bad, M'kay?

Still, he felt the confusion from the pod. {{Right, let's see if the new serum works.}}

Based on what 'Research' had guessed, this new slurry of liquid mako and metal pellets would hopefully be appreciated. They were highly pressurized fragments of mostly iron and some nickel, with the iron having trace melted elements of gold, platinum, cobalt, and sulfur.

Cheap enough to make thanks to the Warehouse's improved raw material growth systems.

Basically? If these pellets were heated past the boiling point of Iron and held under intense pressure, enough that it forced the material into a crystalized plasma that pretended to be solid?

You would basically have the material found in a planet's core.

Gaia loved that stuff, and even though this sand looking material and liquid magic were DRASTICALLY lower in temperature, Adam was hopeful that being combined with mako would help Jenova continue to recover even if serums and Tonics couldn't work anymore.

Based on the happy blue glow from the pod, the experiment was going great so far!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Something changed.

Thankfully, nothing painful… But suddenly it took far more effort to reform herself, to test and experiment on new organs and structures and muscles and bones.

To be safe, she carefully crafted the most compatible form from all the hours of testing and experimenting. Or was it days? Weeks? The pleasant experience blended together and made it hard to keep track of passing time.

Then, sadly, the supply of food vanished.

Before she could even feel more than mildly surprised, a new substance was injected into her domain.

Raw materials!

PURE, perfectly refined, magically saturated raw materials!

Some of the more rare and tricky materials and trace elements she needed and had to adapt without, now in small easily manipulatable components for absorption and storage!

It was simplicity itself to take the thin grains that sparkled like black gems and silver stars and golden notes, and absorb it into her body. To begin embedding it into her bones, the core of her being.

And if she used the powerful raw building blocks to design microscopic patterns and flow networks within her skeleton? Reworking her bones to act like these fascinating walls that somehow generated raw magic simply via liquid mako passage?

Well, having her skeleton passively produce more magic would not only reinforce her new form, make her body tougher and enhance the functionality of every feature and organ… But, theoretically? It should drastically reduce her hunger!

Some part of her could sense that the blue skeletal flames and the physically distant silver boned daughter had expected her to simply heal herself, the emotions and mental touches having tastes of wanting her to recover, to overcome her past trials.

So it was a bit embarrassing that she had mostly focused on ensuring every muscle, organ, bone, and cell of her new body was optimised towards power efficiency, energy retention, nutrient storage, and reducing her passive biological needs. Both physical and magical needs, specifically.

Because she had been alone for a long time… But hungry forever.

Born hungry, alone hungry, hurt hungry, dying hungry.

It had shaped how she viewed existence. Life and survival was about not being hungry.

So as soon as she had stabilized her form, even slightly? ALL her focus was on ensuring that she would never be starving again.

Was her new form, her new Avatar all powerful? No.

If she flicked an arm, would each foe explode from her enhanced muscles? Nope.

Would she be beyond fast, able to dodge any danger? Not worth the compromise requirements.

Could she warp existence with raw magic? Well, yes, but that was a side effect of the rebirthing process, not her actual goal.

After all, she could have massively boosted her potential abilities if she had accepted higher energy costs. Greater magic consumption. Enhanced life conversion.

Hunger.

And so instead, she had embraced design inefficiency that allowed energy conservation over almost all other benefits. Carefully designed fat deposits over her body that would keep her agile and able to flee danger or fight battles, but still have emergency reserves should she be trapped once again.

If that meant certain parts of her body were a bit 'Thicc' as it were, it was strictly a survival mechanism and a sacrifice she was willing to make. And she would ignore anyone who implied otherwise.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked. {{Oh good! Jenova seems to like the planetary core magic slurry.}}

Sarah almost retched. "Yuck, that sounds gross. Can't you call it something else?"

Her Boss hummed. {{Maybe Gaia goo? Planet punch? Core Crunchies?}}

Nope, he wasn't allowed to name stuff. "Go with Core Crunchies, at least that sounds like cereal or something." And wasn't it odd that she remembered so much cultural stuff but NOT the important crap due to this stupid drawback.

Adam grinned. {{I bet no one else ever ate a bowl of cereal that costs $2,578… Uh, assuming your average goddess consumes 45 grams of cereal per serving, which is kind of the high end of portion sizes… But then again, I used to eat a whole box if I wasn't careful, even when I ate cereal as a skeleton…}}

She blinked as Adam drifted away to himself. {{Because you run low on milk and refill it, but then you have extra left over so you add more cereal to fill the container, and boom! No more in the box. Oh, and I guess the $2,578 thing was not based on local gold prices, and Core Crunchies actually has some unique alloys and metal mixtures that haven't really been tested for use or sale…}}

He wasn't going to start making and selling inedible cereal for goddesses to eat, was he?

Adam hummed. {{Even ignoring that, I think $2,578 would be about 70,727 Gil? Plus some change? But I'm basing that on my personal value of a dollar, since your Jump Chain Home is Rapture around 1950 or so I think my dollar suffers from inflation. So a bowl of Core Crunchies should cost $227.58 or 6,242 Gil.}}

She was going to have to ignore him, wasn't she?

Adam sent some statistics, because THAT was super helpful. {{Considering that a box of cereal only costs around 90 Gil, Jenova's breakfast could feed like 69 people… Heh.}}

Sarah sighed. "Adam?"

He blinked. {{Hmm?}}

She gently turned off the data wave. "How is she?"

Adam sighed. {{Well, I can't tell. I THINK she is doing fine, but not only was she heavily hurt and near death when we got her out of there, but Jenova was not even fully grown NOR mature to begin with. 'Research' has been parsing data from Gaia when she was describing the woman. Apparently Jenova was initially sealed away because she was infecting the entire Lifestream and wasn't willing to negotiate. Or, as we now think, she was incapable, of communication at all.}}

Hmm. If something tried to eat you and ignored everything you did in response, that WOULD qualify as a 'Calamity from the sky' in HER books. "That sucks."

He hummed. {{It also means communication is intermediate at best right now. At least we can now share emotions to some extent, if nothing else. She currently feels… Optimistic? Smug? Slightly guilty?}}

Sarah smiled as she waved away Master Zangan who nodded and went back to training the two children. "What about physically? She's not covered in wounds anymore at least, right?"

Her Boss sighed. {{Well, like I said, she wasn't mature before… But our medication and supplies allowed her to rapidly age and build up into something more stable. Then she popped.}}

What? "I'm sorry?"

Adam showed data. {{She started turning into a blue fog like material and reformed herself. Repeatedly. And notice the physical changes after a few cycles?}}

Sarah blinked. "Huh. Never expected to see a blue skinned naked elf version of myself." The silver hair was beautiful too of course. Damn.

Adam shrugged. {{I mean, it seemed inevitable. I'm just surprised it happened this soon!}}

Ignore the idiot. "She LOOKS like a person now, not a hacked up mostly corpse. That has to be good, right?"

He showed data. {{We'll know shortly. I recently disabled the psionic field supporting her 'Enhance Self' and the ability to supply serums… Any longer and her form would have started adapting to rely on the thing to exist, and that would have been super bad for her.}}

A few charts were displayed. {{If she can handle disconnection from that AND continues to enjoy the Core Crunchies without medical issues, THEN I would feel confident to declare her fully recovered. Physically, at least.}}

She winced. Yeah, social isolation followed by rape, torture, and surgical experimentation wouldn't do any mind any favors. At least she wasn't human, maybe her alien-like mind could handle trauma better? "Would Enhance-Self have helped that?"

Adam sighed. {{I hope so. If nothing else, I have the Warehouse opening up several experimental devices that can be interfaced with via mako flows to the healing pod. Hopefully we can set up some sort of communicating protocol to… Oh.}}

Sarah stretched. "Oh?"

Adam sent a spike of fascination! {{The little bugger's started generating her OWN magic. And she is using it to create new mako power flashes following a pattern! Oh this will save lots of time! Be back later.}}

She blinked. "Alright?"

Silence.

Welp, there was still a day or so of training to do before she decided to kidnap two kids, a mother, a martial artist and a small army of his supporters. Might as well get more exercise in!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam grinned. .%

Jenova slowly flashed. &Ly̞h͙̥̘̦̻ ̖̣̳̫̪̣ͅo͇̙͈̬̳u̲̙͍͉̮̹̥i ͕̤̳̟̙r̺̣a̹̹̗̹̭̥̖yn͔̗̜̳̳͎ ̞̘s̹̣a͉̲͚͚͕?͖&

Closer! &TEST&

The response was MUCH faster. &F̦͚͖a̝̥͓̫̻m̖m͉̜̰̙̗ ͍̥̜̮̬̺y̜̥͙d̲̫ ̪̭͈͖͎͕ṃa͉̫̬̪͓y̖c̯̟͇͎̭̯d̙̳̝̳ ͎͍̣̦d̞̝̤̩͎͔r͕͓ỵ̜̖d̗̬ ͕͖f͍̻̦y̯͙͇c͉̰͍̖͕ ͚̟̣c͕͈̙̭̖u̜͍͖͓ͅs̯̻̗̪̭a̠̜̥̬͓̻d̲̗re̘͉̱ͅh̜͖͇͔̘k͖͔̪̱̟̜͙.̯͔̝̠ͅ&

Come on, 'Research', help me out here!

Jenova made an odd noise. &Ev͎̲̯͍͓͙̘ ̮̱u̱͙̬̠̪̥h̜̦̥͖͈̱̞m͔͎̙̼̫o̼̖͓̫͍̣̠ ͙̝͎̯̯̤E̘̹̫̠͈͖̜ ̙ry͇͇̱t͖̗̖͉ ̥̝̬̩̝y͙ͅ ̹̞̠̭̘m̙̩yn͔̼̹̲̣̠k̜̪a̮̦̮͙̥n͖̯̰ ̮͔͔͈̗̘c͚͖̤̺ys̰̜͍bm̳͕̱a͓ ̹d̫͓͕̩u͚͍̭̮ ̞̲̰fu͖̹̺̩n͚͚̹̙g̻̫̖̟̺̰ ͔̩̭̥̝̳͔f͔e̖̩̫̹̘d̝͉r̳̯̞͎̳͇!ͅ&

A mental twitch had the new data to help out! #TEST#

The light flinched. &F̙̣̲͎am̟̜̳̳̗̞m ̮̺͇̘̩̳d̺̘̫̹͖̹͍r̳̥̜͓y̙̯̣͇̣̲̻d͙̲̲͉͇̹͚ ̣͖̤̳̼e̬̹͈̻̦̰͍c̭̗ ̦͙̙͕̦c͇̻̟̼͉u͕̩̤̘̜̣s̭̩̠̼̥a̹͈͍ḓr̯̦̞e̠̝͎h͖̙̜͈̫̱k,͍̱̲̪̳̠ ͕͖̳͎y̩͚d̖͖ ̝̼̪̭̦̺̖m̥͖̣͍a̳y̞͎̖ͅc̜͙d̯͔.̻̺̗͎͓̙ ̥̹̼̦̯S̗̣̞̭͙̗͍y͙̖͈o̦̻p͕̠̻̩̩a̝ ͈̣̯̬̮̞ͅE ̮͇̣̥̱̪̳l̗̬̯͇yh̲̜͈̣̜ ͔d̮̞n͔̗͇̖̘̬o̟̳̥͎̖̱̱ dr͚̳̥̘y̫̦̬d̺͕̗?̞̦̰&

No, but it was closer!

A less robotic sound suddenly was registered. #Ṭ̼e͈̘̰̩̠̭̫t͚̪̙ ̦̰d̯̹͍̳̥̹ͅr̼̟͕̦̙̗e͉c̩̼̩ ̟̩̺̜f͈̫̖̩͓̠ṳ͈͎̗n̪̦̜̲̹͓g̬̖?͓#

YES!

That was enough for Adam to feel 'Research' to POUNCE on the data and begin devouring meaning and context! Right, here we go! #Rammu! Lyh oui ihtancdyht sa?#

The light blinked. #ḀAB̟̩̼̦̫̜͔!͎̥̹̪̼͍ͅ#

.

And seemed to blink? #U̹͖̟̭r̯̗͈̭̠.͓̦͍ͅ.̺̮͎.̝̹͚̭̟ ̞̠̱̗̫̱C̙̗̖̺̠̥u͖̣̦̜n̹̖̤̣ṉ̬̙̖̠̺o̲̤͕̹̪̭, ̮͕̠̪͉̹E͉̥ ̪̦͚͍̥̫͕ẓ̺i̺̯͕ͅc̫̞̺̞ͅd̻̠̯.̼̣̲͖̠̲.̳̤̰͍̮̦.̜̖ ̮͇E̞͇͇̭͍ s̠̬̤̩̯̪a̬͔y͎͉̲ͅh͍̹̫̳͚,͓̰̯̯͎̮ ̙͈̦̣r̙̖e̼̘̮̺̖ͅ!͙ͅ#

.

Yeah, she must have understood a lot of that. #E̯̱͈̝̘͉d̜͖̩ͅ'c̬̖͖ͅ ͇̻͔̺̥̖h͚̺̹e͍͓̫̠l̤̝͔a̘͙̪͉͕̮͕ d͖u̬͖̠̰͉̼͚ s̗̺̞̬̺̖ͅa̜͇̟͎̼ad o͓u͇̭̠̦̰̯i̦̘̖̺͕̣ͅ,̞̫̬̱ ̭͓͍̳͍̻͎p̭͓̬̫ͅm̤͎i̞̝͍̙͈͙a̯̘̲̝̰ c͚̮͚̥͙̼g͕͈a̲m̺̲͔̰̤̮̼a̩̺̙̟͉͖͔dy̻̥͕̞͍m͇̣̘͍̘̠ ͔͈̥͉̗v͇̗͚̰̱̘̪m͎͉ysa͕̱̥̦̞c̤͕̞̝̱̬!̞̺̹̠͎ ̩̞͔̠̫͙̣E̖̲̠̭͔'s ͕̣͉͔̰͓t̬̬̝e̟c̥͙lyn̼̗̹̟͇̲t̪a̗͈̖ṱ̤̗͓̦͓ ̗͍̱̦͎͍͔m̮̩u͍̗̙̞̖c͎̹͇d ̬̞̩i͕h̰m͕̹̫̳͉̮ͅu̬̩̲j̤̺̹a̗t̮ ͉̹r̗̰͎̥̞͕i̲͎͍̺͕n̥d̝̗͓̫!̝̖͇̝̘͇ ̼̩̟E͍̤͔͙d͎̗̠͙̼̜̘'̖͙̥̰̥c͖̬̭̤͇ ͙ͅm̞̤̦̠̙̣uja̻̻̞̤m͎̳̩͖͙͕o̲̱̬̘̼̼̻ ̗̥̥̩du͓ ̟̞ș͔̳a̘̣̞̬͇̰ḁ̩d̙ ̮͖̜̳o̦͕͚u̝ͅi̖!̟̞̩#

.

Oh. No, she wasn't going to use THAT as a name.

Welp, let's first try sending her some translation data then. #T̷̵̟̞̤̜̔ͩͮ́ͧ̊͐̋ͤͣ̔͒͛̾͢͞Ÿ́̓̓ͨ̽̆̄͝҉̣͇͙̹̦̰̻̼̭̹̕D̴̵̶̤͖͔̰̹͚̳̠̹̮͙̤̩̥̎̇ͥ̽ͪ́͊̉̇ͫ̂̎ͯ͜ͅY̶̸̧͚̤̰̪͎̗̮͌̆̄͑́̾̀̒͂̐̀͜.ͦͩ̓ͨͪ͐̉͋ͨ͂̅͊͂͑҉҉̷̸̰̜͕̼̬̼̼͖̜#

The pause in communication was much longer this time.

Cautiously, a new connection. {A̦̝͕̗h̗̝.̗͙ͅ ͓̠̖H͙͙͓̦̬e̘̳̺l̗͚͓͓l̫o?̫̘}

And THAT was enough to hook her into the Gaia communication network! {{Hello! My name is Adam, and I am currently a W̹̞̠a̪͎̭͓͉re͕̲̙͈ͅh̰̱̣͇͉̯̮o̫̰̯̩̫̞u̖͎̞̗̪͔s̙͙̤e̤͕̲̝̦͍! I and my Jump partner's Avatar, S̭͈̼̙̦̜̥a͈͍̩̺r̰͎̹͎̻ah̲̮̯͍̪ Kisaragi, have been trying to help you recover!}}

The voice sounded like a young twenty year old woman. {T͔̞̟̟ͅh͈̫̺̩a̫̖̜̜͚n̜̰͕ḵ̥̮ ̯y̭͖̱̜͔̟͇o͚̣̫ͅu̺ ̲̳̦S̹O̦͕͓̳ ͉M̘̠̝̯͎U͕̺̠̯͙͖͈C̰̥̝H͖̺͕̪̘̥ ̲̟͎͓̣̰b̭͓̬̫ͅl̤͎u̞̝͍̙͈͙e̯̘̲̝̰ s͚̮͚̥͙̼k͕͈e̲l̺̲͔̰̤̮̼e̩̺̙̟͉͖͔ta̻̥͕̞͍l͇̣̘͍̘̠ ͔͈̥͉̗f͇̗͚̰̱̘̪l͎͉ame͕̱̥̦̞s̤͕̞̝̱̬!̞̺̹̠͎ I̗̠̰̞̖͇̠'̙̳̬v̩e͈̞͇̯̹̲͙ ͚be̖e̘n̫̮ ̟̭͓̩ͅt͓͚̺̬r̠͖y̟͕̙̤̤͕ͅi̙̫̦̭͎̱̫n̖̯g̤͚̳͉̳͖ ̲̤̘̩̳̯t̺̺̼̖̱ͅo͍̮̦͖̬ ̹gḛ̣̬̙̪̭̙t͚͓ ͉ͅb͈̩͙̙et̞̭̠t̻̼̱e̝͖̬̘͙̙̻r̘̮͓̤̥̹ ̦͖͖̯̗͉f͉̝͚͇̗͙o̬̣̤̲r͙̙̫ ̙̗so͖̥̣͈ ̭̳̤̩̰̞l̥̮͓o̬n̪̟̺̙͈̹̦g ̹̼͖͈̗a̖̯̳͉̱̲̩n͙̗͎̭͓̳͔d̰͇͙ ͎̯̬i̩̲̖̙͉̫̘t̹̳̝̪͉̫̠ ̺̞̥̖hu̟̝̰̰̟̘r̻͓͔̭͕̯t ̘so̞͚͔͍̣̩̤ ͓̭̠̖̖̰̙b͖̪̲̲̮ad͓̝̹ ̲̯̠a͉͓n̝͙̭̯̭̬d ̠̼̜̜ͅd͉r͎̣͍̯ͅa a̫h̬̻̼ͅț͉͓̼m̖a̲̻̟͎c̥c ̗͍̳̙̹̜̥r̜̘͕̝̜̳i̺h͍͉k͓a͈̟̖͖̙̗n̳̤̺ d̘u̬n͔a̖ ̯͇̝̮̝s͓̹o̼̭̣̪ C̪͚̘̠̘ụ̟͖̹ͅi͖̜m͕̘̦͔̘ ͕̥̹̬̜̳y̜̬͎͔̳̜h̫̪̖t̪̙͕̩ͅ.̱̘.̹̺̹͚̯͕͕.̻̹͕̜͚̤}

.

Ouch. THAT was a bit of a data rush! {{Slow down, it's alright! Take your time.}}

Embarrassment. {S̪̱̻̪o͇̲̰r̯r̜̮̹͇y̪̮̭̜̺̻̱..͇̯̜̺̖̝.̩̩}

.

He waved it off. {{It's fine, no worries. Before I introduce you to the others, however, we should help you choose a different name.}}

Confusion? {Bu̗̳̪͍t͚̖̟̘̝̲̠ ̦̗͇͚͙͎̫I̳̭͙ ̙̹̙̠̼ḫ̬̬̲̜̲͙a͎̻v̠͕̗̟e ̻a̱̺͍ͅ ͙͇̳͉̻̞n͕͉̳̭̗ạ͚͔̻m̼͓͓̦̥̠e?̣̫͚̲̫ ͈̙͍̬̳ͅI'̪̝̠̝͖m͈͙̫̬̟.̟͚͉̜.͇͖.͖͖̮͎̮̣̻ ̹̜̙̹O͖̫̯̼̙h̬̮̺̜̘̳.̰}

.

Adam sighed. {{Yes, no one should have a name like that. So we're going to pick a new one together!}}

Cautious hope? {D̥͈̲̜o͚̳̥͕͈̲.̰̮͍̰̰̟̖.̗̞̥̹͕̯ͅ. ͖D̞̠o̯͚̜̟̦̥ ̦̯y̰o̭u͕̩ ͎̯̤t͉̺h͓i͔̖̲̹n̥̪͖̰̮̱̻k̗̰̙͓ ̰̯̱̥͕I͓̰͉'̤̙̟̣̮m̟͖̳ ̩a̜̱̼̯ͅḽ̻l͙ow̻e̫̹̮̪̪̼͕ḍ̳ͅ ̟̱t͕͉o ̗̟͙ha͚̬̤v͍̲͎ḛ̲͓̳̻̪ a̹̰ ̮n͚̞̘̩̝̬̱ew̭̼̬̝ͅͅ ̗̻̱̻n͖̩̻͔͚ͅa̰̜̼͕̰͈ͅm͚̗̲̺̪̩̱e?̙̮̘̝̟̱}

.

Oh you poor child. {{Here, have the l̛͕̫̼ơ̙ͧg̰͈ͨ͐̑s̵̲͕ of your treatment. Neither I nor S̭͈̼̙̦̜̥a͈͍̩̺r̰͎̹͎̻ah̲̮̯͍̪ would let you use that as your actual name, we can find something better. Unofficially, we've called you Jenova so far for lack of a better option.}}

Confusion. {J̘̪e͈͇n͇̘̟͙̥̯̼o̺͈̝̗v͕̲̗͓͕͓̭a̫?̳̳̞͔͎̜̜}

.

Ah, close, but no. {{Not quite, more like Jͫ͗͛ĕ̯ͣ͐͂n̟͚͔̥̪̜o̪̻̱ͤv͙͖͖͓̱̗ͬ̿̍͑̾͊̔a͖͉̫̘͌ͨ̿.̳̃}}

Revulsion! {Gr̝̻ọ̰s̮̲͉̜͈͈s!̬̪̪̗̳̹ ̩̣̯̺͔̱N̩̥̙̜̺̮ͅo̙͔͙̦̼̗̠t ̪͚̫̹͈̻͎t͔̝̜̙̺̞ha͙̼̜t.̼̩̖̥̬̮̙ Y̱̥u̪̘̣c̗͖͕ḳ͖̖̱̥̦̮!̦̰͎͕}

.

He agreed, honestly. {{Didn't think so. Want to come up with something better?}}

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah watched as the tall, muscular man known to all as Master Zangan (he travels around the world teaching children martial arts!), bowed in apology to the tiny woman berating him. "You MUST TELL US when you move out of a territory! What if there are bystanders in the new combat zone that we haven't had time to get out of combat range? Someone could have been hurt!"

He nodded. "Sorry, Ms. Tesbit."

The woman was thin like a twig and barely came up to Sarah's middle, but wore her old age like armor and poked the muscular man. "We can't move as fast as you can, most people can not in fact. You must be a responsible person and ensure we have time to ensure a safe area for you to work! NOW!"

She turned in place and faced a confused Cloud and an inspired young Tifa. "YOU two are just adorable! Have you made sure to stretch before this training session?"

Cloud nodded. "Mom says you gotta stretch every morning or else you'll be sore and your arms might leave you for better stretchers."

Tifa ignored that. "Can you teach ME how to do that! He was all like 'Sorry, Ms. Tesbit!' and 'I won't do it again Ms. Tesbit!' That's WAY cooler than just punching a statue!"

The woman's wrinkled face smiled from years of practice with many grandchildren. "It only works when you love the one you are confronting and do so for their own good."

Cloud frowned. "That would make fighting hard. Or really icky and with lots of cooties. Also, I think it's illegal?"

Master Zangan nodded. "Don't love those you confront without prior consent and wait until you are both mature young men… women… things. And try not to love anything that wants to eat you or explode you because that can be dangerous and messy. Also, if possible, avoid loving your enemy until everyone is DONE fighting, because that ended up embarrassing for EVERYONE and we had to ask forgiveness and I wrote a LOT of apology letters and uh... Uh."

The man finally noticed the old lady's look. "Sorry, Ms. Tesbit."

Tifa blinked. "That seems complicated. I'll just fight other people and love Cloud, that way I can punch everyone I want to and only confront him and not get confused."

Claudia Strife snorted, but coughed at the children's confusion. "Sorry, never mind me. Ms. Tesbit, I happen to have a good number of snacks and a fresh pot of tea, would you like to take a break from reprimanding your Master for a moment?"

The older woman hesitated. "A good reprimanding IS it's own reward…" But settled. "I would love a cup, dear. Maybe you can also explain to me why you have a magical monster wrapped up in a fluffy blue outfit over there at the same time."

Tifa blinked. "The blue lady? Mom's ghost said she's the Champion of Gaia. OH! Cloud, you need to ask her to teach you magic so you can clean stuff and take care of my battles and stuff!"

He flared up with ambition! "I will have the BIGGEST washrag EVER! Nothing will escape my cleaning!"

Sarah blinked. "Oh?"

The little boy's blue eyes sparkled! "Teach me to be a magical cleaning boy!"

Well, uh. Sure! Why not? "I guess I DID steal a bunch of Materia from those Shinra soldiers over in Wutai earlier. I can't make my own magic spells yet, but it wouldn't take much effort to help you apply the existing skills in unusual ways."

His mom clapped! "Oh my baby boy is going to grow up and become a strong house husband!"

He nodded with folded arms, short as he was. "I'm going to be the BIGGEST house husband!"

Screw it, this was too cute! Sarah was going to steal everyone.

Her attention was pulled away from the stunned grandmother, the cooing mother and enthusiastic children, and the Master artist still bowing in apology. "One moment." {Yes, Adam?}

{{Go on, you can do it.}}

=What?=

{Confusion?}

{{H̼͉͙̝͎͚e̠̬̭̖͉͓l̗ḽ̫̣̫͔̯o̪̣͔̟̳?͓ M̖̦͍̣̤͚s̰̺̳̺. ̘S̱͈̭̻̮͙ͅar͚ͅah͈̮?̮̠̤̰͚}}

.

{Astounded!}

=Oh! Hello! My name's Aerith, what's yours?=

{{O̯̲̮̗̗̣h̠̻̠͙!̰͖̥͉̤̤̫ ͉̟̞͖H͍̝̘̻̪͍e̝̣̼̥͔̼̣lͅl͓͙̪͉͎ͅo̩͙, ̺̩͕͇̘A̠̯̦̱ͅe̤̠͉̜͍͕̮r̫i̹̞̬͙͚͚̻t͙̝͎̜h͍!̙̱͕ ̟̤̮M͖̲̰y̪̜ ̞̱̜̹̤͕͖n̪̝͙a̩̜̱̻͎̰ͅm͍̬̟e͍͚͕̳̟͓ i̥̤̮̞͖͔s͔͍ ̝̻̱ṉ̜̲̦̝o̩̟ͅw̲̫̘ ̮̹̼̭̟̻̭E̩͉̘̘̰̪ͭ̈́̃v͎͓̝͕̪͡ę͔̰̈͆͊̊̎ͅ!̻̫̱͔}}

.

{Thank GOODNESS you seem better! You were so HURT when we found you!}

=Eve was hurt!?=

{Memories? A distant shock, a new life, never ending expansion, endless hunger. Danger. Containment.}

{{N̳̳̮͓͔̠͉O̙̖̞̭̞!̦̤͉ ̹̘͉Ṉ̯̥̬o̟̰̰̝͉̙ͅt ͓̙͔a͇̙̭̦̠̪n̤̘̮͇͎̹͓y͍͙m̞̹͙͕͎o̹̼̟̼̪̼r͇͎̰̰̮̖ͅe̞,̬̦̦ ̞͎͇̮͍ͅI̭͚̬'͖̠̳̤̰̳m͖͙ͅ b͈̪̦̹e̜̟ṯ̺̞͉͍̳̥t͔̙̟̹̝̯ͅe̪̞̰̳͚͈͓r̖̱͉̮͈̮ ̫n̫̱ow̼͉͖̱!͈ ̟̪T̻͓͖̹̬̘h̭͚ͅi̪̺̭̩̻͇n̠̳͕͖͎̣͉k̳̙̣i̦ng͈̦̫ ͖̫͕͍̻i̻̳̫̝̦ͅs͚̩̙͎͇ ̱͕e̳̝͍̘a̞s͎̤̤̬̜iͅͅe̖̳̹̻̼͉r̖̮̼̳,͚͕̟̣ ͙̰̼ͅạ̩̪̣̪͕n̰d W̹̞̠a̪͎̭͓͉re͕̲̙͈ͅh̰̱̣͇͉̯̮o̫̰̯̩̫̞u̖͎̞̗̪͔s̙͙̤e̤͕̲̝̦͍ h̤̩͚͙̖̹͓el̰͔̝p͉͚̠͉e̩̞̺ḍ̳̗̖̠ ̭̳̘̲̣͈͍m̘͔̯̹e͔̟̖̤!ͅ}}

.

{{Just call me Adam, Eve. We're all friends after all, no reason to be formal.}}

=Yeah, but Adam doesn't talk much. Sarah says he's busy doing work all the time. Why were you 'contained' though?=

{Killing unpalatable, Encouraged Confinement for safety. Help searched for, not found. Solutions sought, not discovered. Despair and guilt.}

.

{{I͈̮͖͚ d̤̥̙̪̹̣̻i̱͇̯̟͖d̟̤͍̜̻̱ ̞p̰̬̳̗͖̮̣r̹e̩͕͖̩̦͈͎f͖̘e̙r͓ ̞͓̟͔̱t̮h͇̦̥͙a̮̠̹̞̥̬t͈̖̮̣,̝͎̟̬̰͚ ̖̱͈̹l͓o̻͉̦̖̹n̖e̫l͓y̮̹͉͉̭̹̰ ̣̥̪̬̲a̗s ̭̞̺̯͙̙̫i̗t͓͖ͅ ͇̹w̯̟͔̥a̦̤̗s͖͇,̜̦ ̜̟͇̩c͈̭om̼p͓̮a̯͎̫̱̟̘ṛe̻̩̗d̳̥̰ ͉͕̭̙̞ț͔̤o̭̯̹̝ ̞̠͔̺̮P̤͙̘̓̓͗̂À͍̻͍̭̓̍̀̏́I̝͓̭̗̿͊̋N̢̺͚̙̦̺̺.}}

.

{The ruthless monster of science, a mad man without concern or mercy, Gaia's R̝̗̼̱̫̞̻͑́ͤ̈́͠A̹̘͉ͣ̕G̶̙̯̠͖̟̲̾̍ͥ̅E̮̥͖͇̕!}

=Eep!=

{Oh, that man is on my list already. Don't worry about that.}

{{If I wasn't sure he had a plague or two hidden somewhere, he'd be in my testing rooms ALREADY.}}

.

{{I̲̣̦̫̙̲'͎͓̟̰̦m̤̖ b̤̲͍̲̪ͅͅe͖͕̦͖̞t̫̗̟͇̪̭͓t̟̹͈͕̱̜̫er̘̙̱͙̤͍̬ ̙̩͖̱͔ͅn̟̫o̯̬̰̳̻w̻̦͇̭̼! ̥̙̜̠̻I͍͈̲͈̠͉̺ ̣̯j̟͎̼̣u̪̣͈̻s̪̯͍̲̭͙t̘̙͚̫ ̖̳̼͔ͅͅṋ͙̥̝̠̬e͕̳͔̲̮͍̲e̺ḓ ͍ț͈̭̭̯͍o̟̻͇͈ ̤̞c̙͈͙̲͈ͅa̜̘̻̱l̲͉͚l̬͇̥͈̯ ͉̼̺̘̱ͅf̭̤̯̜̳̯͙o̰r̭̘̻͉͚̜͈ R͉̹̲͓ͩ̍̉̿e̩̜̤̞̱̪͖ͫ̅͌̽͆̅ụ̘̺͍̬̣ͅn̫̰̩̈́ͫ̓̽ͥ͂̂i̦̪̜̳̿̓ͭ̊ͤ̓ō͈ͦ̆͒̌n͙͕͇̬̞͙̜ͣ a̲͕̣͙͖̣̬n̘̦̺̟͇̤̰d̻̞͚̲ ̗e͍̣͙̟͚͕ṿ͚ͅe̝͓͓̹r̲y͕͈͖̝̬̹̟t̳h̠in͙͉͓g̣̗̬̞̮̫̖ ͖̲w̲i͎͖l̹͙̯̰̝̹l̗̖̬̬ b̞͓̘͙͉ͅe̲ ̲͉͚̣̤f͉̘̦̥̖i̤̠͙n̼̪e̮.̰̠̝̳}}

.

=For what? And why am I seeing mental images of babies?=

{Oh! They are so CUTE!}

{{Huh, I forgot that Sephiroth Crescent, Genesis Rhapsodos, and Angeal Hewley are all destabilized clone enhancement experiment babies with modified cells from the Jenova Project. Shinra must have originally forced the children to age faster to get results quicker and stronger children fighters despite the genetic damage it would cause.}}

=What!?=

{You said they are doing WHAT!? Sorry Aerith, I'm going to have to go kidnap some babies.}

=Good, but this is a one time thing, alright? You can't just steal babies all the time now!=

.

{{R͉̹̲͓ͩ̍̉̿e̩̜̤̞̱̪͖ͫ̅͌̽͆̅ụ̘̺͍̬̣ͅn̫̰̩̈́ͫ̓̽ͥ͂̂i̦̪̜̳̿̓ͭ̊ͤ̓ō͈ͦ̆͒̌n͙͕͇̬̞͙̜ͣ is͍͖͖̣͔̤̟ ̼͙̖̮̪̜̣v̮͓͕̟it̘͓̦̞a͓̻͓̫l̙̰̳͙̳͉,̟̣̮̭ ̖̪̹̬n̟͙o̖͓n̥e͙͕ ̞̲̖͇̤ d̖̘͇̮e̩̣̦͇̺̯̬s̻͙̙e̩͈͓ṟ͇v̻͍͔̗e̫̯̼̼̻ ̜̪s̬̖ͅu͉c̟h̠ ͙m̹͓͙̘̑̔͛̆ͫ̃̑e̠͓̮͗͐ͣ̾͌̇̊ͅm͉̘̰̪ͩ̃̄͛ͧo̰͓̱͖͕̤͌r̙̻̙̯ͧͣ̓ͦ̚i̗͈̲͚̩ȇ͍̣̰͉̭̏̌ͨs̓ͥ̓!̯̻̰͙̂ No̗̜̝̩̬̻ͅr͙̙ ͉̥̘̘̺͙t̪̭̠͙h͓̥̻a̝̣t ̩m̖͍̝͖̬̘̣a̝̩̜̖̣̘̲ͦ̒̆͗̋ͫn͓͖̥͔̉͛͂ͨ̌ͥ̔!̲̭̙͎̘̳͎͆̊͊͗}}

.

{{Yeah, I really don't like Professor Hojo either.}}

{Anger. Families hurt, young ones tested, lies sold and chemicals injected.}

=Mom says she will help with the babies, so you can bring them here! And NO Yuffie, you can't steal more babies either! MOST of the time, stealing is wrong!=

{Once I'm sure I won't accidentally melt everything in the area, I'm going to go straight to the labs and just steal EVERYTHING. Every animal, plant, and (Apparently) BABY. Nothing at ALL left for you, Shinra!}

{{Ț͙h̰͓͉a͎̦̪͔̯n͓̪͚̠̙̮k̝͖ ̲y͖o͈u͍̰.͙̮̫̥̗͖ ̦͉Th̹̹̭̩̫a͚̯̤n̺̬k̦̘ ̬̘̮̙̲̳a̟̯̪̹l̲ḽ̦̝̜̹͍̫ ̲o̱̱f͕̗̭ y̺̝̝͇̩o͉͓ụ̪̰͉̥͇̻!̯}}

.

{{Oh, Also! Eve, you've been including extra M̝̰͍͇ͭ̌ͧ̈́e͍̟͖ͧ̌t̗͙̒̂̂a̖̩̗̫̖͇͙̭̾̌ͪͯ̐ͅḏ̗̮ͣͭ͛̎̚â͖̫̖̹͔̫͐̊ͥ̈ͨ̚̚ͅt͖̹̲̮̏ͨͨ͗͒͑ạ̠̗̱̜͚̻͕͉͒ͥ̏̿̇̎͛̂͒ with your communications like Gaia used to do. Might want to check that.}}

{{I͈̙̲̥̳̱'̪v̥͕̞͔̟e͙̤̠̭̦ ̗͇̖̭̯̰͉b͚̘̳̥e̻̲̹en̜͇̫ͅ ̩̰̟̳W̪̫̲̤̮H̖̻̘A̪̺̥̼̺T̥̣̼̟̪!?̞̳}}

.

{Amusement, Sympathy, Commiseration.}

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

All the martial artists were slowly backing away from the formerly 'poofy blue lady', while ensuring the children and the mother were behind cover and retreating.

This 'Sarah Kisaragi' was now wearing a silver armor made of bones, bright blue flames dripping off her white spike as her warm soft outfit vanished in the broiling heat. Her eyes glinted like polished metal and her face was disturbingly calm, even as raw magic seemed to broil in the cold winter air.

Snow was GONE from the clearing now, and a thin controlled circle of plant life near the furious lady had directly converted into ash.

The professional fighters were carefully being very quiet and non-threatening.

Cloud's eyes were wide on the other hand, as his mom hugged him and his friend tightly as even from THIS distance the theoretically frosty air was a bit too warm! "My cleaning sensei is SO COOL!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Commander Rogers felt death coming. "Again, I and EVERYONE else here are not only fully unaware of any human experimentation going on in Shinra's Science & Research Division, but I believe I speak for ALL of us when I say that we do NOT approve of it, and would fully support any actions taken to protect such theoretical people."

Captain Newcastle earned a free drink (if they somehow survived this) by inconspicuously kicking the tied up Steve to keep him silent. That man had earned his current conditions and had a reputation, keeping him unhappy but bound was extending his (AND THEIR) lifespan significantly.

Elmyra was still glaring, but the tension in the air relaxed slightly. "I should certainly hope none of you nice men and women would support such a thing! I'm sure many of you have a child, sibling, or young friend of your own that could have easily suffered such a thing."

Elder Godo sighed. "Aside from my daughter, who've I taught how to escape and, if needed, how to end an opponent when required? My only remaining family is my adopted daughter. Who is clearly about to invade Midgar City, possibly destroy the headquarters for Shinra itself, and is about to give me grandkids significantly sooner than my most optimistic hopes."

Areith's mom snorted. "I'm calling dibs!"

He blinked. "You what?"

She pointed at the older man! "Your daughter stole MY daughter, so you have three now! I need more babies so I am calling dibs!"

Aerith blinked. "What? Mom, I'm right here! I was JUST telling you about what big Sis said and stuff!"

Yuffie stood up. "No, she has a point." She lifted the child in the air. "Yoink! Stolen TWICE in one day!"

The soldiers that had not been sent on 'patrol' earlier in the day watched as the 'Great Thief Yuffie' cackled in laughter as she ran off with a protesting child.

Elmyra pointed! "See! I get dibs!"

The older man hummed. "I seem to remember you requesting property to restore your house once my eldest daughter returns? I may be able to finish the related paperwork much faster if the land I own near my house was suddenly available for such a use."

His eyes narrowed. "Would someone be willing to share time caring for the youngest ones?"

Her eyes flickered. Cute babies that need love and ALL the cuddles, or living closer to the girl that kept stealing her cute daughter. Choices! Such critical and harsh choices! "If I do, you will need to assist in ALL diaper changes!"

Elder Godo sighed. "You are a harsh but fair negotiator."

The Commander blinked when Captain Newcastle raised a hand. "Mam, Sir, Shinra policy as stated is that we are here to help the people."

Well, uh. Officially it was? Rarely did Shinra FOLLOW those policies, but the public relations team wrote them that way for a reason.

His favorite squad leader gave a solemn nod. "I, and I assume others, are more than willing to help watch the children, change diapers, ensure no one attempts to interact with them without your authorization, and do minor chores as needed."

Oh! Yes, that might stop the death woman from slaughtering everyone here related to his leadership. "As Commander, I second that statement and will personally ensure any related costs would be covered without charge to you or the Elder. And that every person is personally approved by both of you before even attempting to volunteer for such actions."

Captain Newcastle was going to get a field promotion at this point, as long as they kept Steve and the few morons like them out of the damned way and quiet!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The hallway was empty when Sarah phased in.

Which was good, because preventing raw anger from burning into magic and death was a struggle as it was, if she had MET some of the people responsible for this one of the rescue subjects might get hurt.

That said, her mind was rapidly devolving into a cold rage at this point.

Her armor sparked and Mr. McStabberson was a bit too sharp, but she was focused. "Adam?"

The interface showed outlines of the hundreds of animals in captivity colored brown, the creatures and people detected as sapient as gold, and several stock rooms as green.

Again, because if Adam showed security equipment or personnel, the temptation to toss her bone spike through some walls or equip a sniper would exponentially increase. And she couldn't risk accidentally hitting her rescue targets.

She walked to the gold markers first. Each hallway in Shinra's Science & Research Division was made of metal (To prevent escapees), had multiple checkpoints and secured doors (Now unlocked and opened, thank you Adam), and lacked any and all maps and directions.

Not that any of that slowed her down even slightly. "We ready for patients?"

Adam showed details. {{Use [[Capture]] and I will get them on 'Enhance Self' Tonic, sleep serum, health recovery serum, regeneration serum, and a nice dose of energy serum so their body doesn't try to consume itself in the process.}}

Another door opened thanks to her Boss infiltrating the systems. "I'm not letting this go unpunished, Adam."

An agreement came from her connection, along with data. {{Killing anyone won't bother the worst people, killing the worst people too soon can set off traps and possibly cause the city to self destruct. For now, hit them where it REALLY hurts.}}

Hmm?

Adam grinned! {{Take all of Professor Hojo's victims, all test subjects, all material samples, and wipe his research. I'm already replacing his backup tapes with encrypted copies of the jerk's more incriminating actions, which I'm sure he will appreciate when trying to recover this mess.}}

She headed toward the nearest gold prison cell. "Yeah, I can see that bastard being FAR more angry about losing data and resources than if we killed this whole damned organization." Hell, with her luck killing everyone would somehow HELP the asshole with some strange backup plan or strategy. "How much time do I have?"

Adam mapped out the department. {{No limit yet, the video cameras are all playing back computer generated false data and most people are still being examined for mental corruption. In a few hours, the standard security sweep will find out the doors in this whole department are locked down.}}

Images of MASSIVE slabs of metal came up. {{Since Professor Hojo designed this place to keep anyone in OR out, it will take hours for anyone to break through even if they KNEW how much money the ass wasted on keeping his own people out of his dirty work. Since they won't resort to the really dangerous destructive methods for a while, I estimate you have around two days or so before someone can break in here.}}

She frowned. "What about taking care of these people? And the animals and stuff?"

A wince. {{While some of them have automated water and food sources to reduce maintenance needs, the rest are just used to mild starvation and dehydration.}}

Right, best get to kidnapping/stealing ALL the things!

The first cell opened… And there was a woman tied up to what seemed to be a cross.

Surgical marks all over her very nude body, chemicals being pumped into her limbs via several tubes, and a zoned out look in her eyes. The mess showed that no one had bothered to clean this woman or the room in at least a few days.

A SPIKE of flame was forced silent.

"[[Capture.]] And Adam, fix her."

{{Confirmed. I'll need to keep her under for this, but she should be fully healed physically in 08h32m55.}}

She glanced at her heads up display, seeing 'Patient Lucrecia Crescent' and a count down timer. "Mother of the baby?"

Adam was reviewing the data. {{One of them, yes. A researcher under Professor Hojo, worked on demon related stuff, mostly on one named Chaos… And uh. Yeah, it's a bad one.}}

The room rapidly emptied as she [[Harvested]] everything. "What a surprise. This is my surprise face." Sigh. "What happened?"

Data. {{Not entirely documented, but I can give the highlights: Possible mind manipulation, 'marriage' to Hojo, potential rape, experimentation and implantation of Eve's cells, her friend tried to help and was killed and experimented on by Hojo, who then left him in a basement to rot.}}

The rage burned as Adam moved on.{{The order is a bit complicated to determine because the bastard keeps REALLY SLOPPY notes, but basically Hojo let her 'help' save her friend by letting her surgically install something called the 'Protomateria' into the man, which might have also connected his existence to demons. Then Hojo stole her baby without releasing her from this binding method and began a whole new set of projects while still randomly testing and recording the dead friend.}}

Slow down Sarah. Stay calm. "But why though?"

Adam showed more data. {{Hojo didn't like the man because he cared for this woman, and the Professor hoped the 'betrayal' of her trying to save Vincent Valentine this way would give useful data and potential methods to control demons. Or whatever the hell the existence Chaos is actually made of.}}

Fuck that guy. "Is her friend Vincent still alive?"

Adam hummed. {{Sort of? He's that vampire almost undead thing I told you about back in Cloud's hometown now. We can steal him on the way out. Next room has the three babies.}}

Sarah stole the door on the way out, leaving the empty room open as she moved to the next cell. "Right, let's make sure they haven't been mutated or something, I am NOT letting Shinra keep possession of… actual… oh shit."

Adam blanked as he examined the clearly faulty data records and the fifty transparent tubes filled with glowing liquid. And children. {{Fuck.}}

That… That was a LOT more than three babies.

Sarah hesitantly stepped in. "Adam?"

He frantically checked it ALL! {{I don't KNOW! This isn't in ANY of the files, not in the secured stuff, not in the encrypted fields, hell, MOST of these kids aren't even marked as test subjects! Just as material replacement with numbers attached!}}

Her hands waved out.

"[[Capture!]][[Capture!]][[Capture!]]... No, fuck that, [[Capture ALL!]]"

The room flashed and was empty as Adam frantically applied medication. {{Only the three oldest children, Sephiroth Crescent, Genesis Rhapsodos, and Angeal Hewley, are documented in any way, and two aren't even supposed to be HERE! Only Sephiroth is supposed to be… None of this is documented! The FUCK!?}}

Child after child relaxed as they suddenly had access to energy, healing tonics, and psionic sleeping medication. {{I don't even know where they came from! They ALL have Eve's cells, but most of them are NOT handling it well. Without 'Enhance Self', I'd say over thirty of these babies would be dead in a week or less.}}

Her eyes drifted almost unwillingly to the other gold markers. "Then who the FUCK are in those other rooms!?"

Her Boss growled! {{After we free them? No one. I got space for this, I will MAKE room for this, you go free some people.}}

No WONDER there was so much incriminating shit on the servers when the investigators came, by comparison the DOCUMENTED crimes against humanity were NOTHING to what this monster did off the record!

Yeah, no. "Can Eve detect ALL her cells? I'm not leaving ANY for anyone to try doing this shit again."

Adam was still ensuring each baby was settled into their own healing chambers. {{Probably, but I won't risk talking to her until all these people and the others hidden away are found and saved first. Eve would freak out, Gaia would get involved, and all of humanity MIGHT get wiped from the surface in the process.}}

Sarah considered her spike... No, it was clear this was NOT the fault of the majority of this company. Killing millions of innocents for hundreds of evil fucks was not a trade she would tolerate. "Please don't let this next cell be full of more babies."

The door opened.

Apparently Hojo had a LOT of those cross binding restraint structures available, if he was using them for so many people. "Adam?"

Data scrolled passed. {{None are pregnant currently, but several of the ones near the back need cleansing serum to get those drugs out of them quickly. Thank goodness someone turned off the automatic stress systems during the lockdown.}}

She shouldn't ask. "The what?"

Adam sighed. {{Apparently, according to these hidden server notes, torture was taking too many researchers off more valuable projects. So it was automated.}}

Sarah slumped. She really shouldn't have asked.

"[[Capture all]], help them the best you can. And as SOON as we find any and all of Hojo's hidden traps and counter measures, let me kill the fucker."

Another list of detected identities and healing times showed up. {{Yes Sarah. This batch will take around 15h33m02 or so in total; they are in worse shape than Sephiroth's mother. At least these people are documented better, if nothing else.}}

She slumped against the wall, the now empty room still echoing with pain and horribleness. "The hell, Adam? Was this a breeding farm?"

He sighed. {{No, these were Shinra Researchers. Turns out the women were needing more 'Remedial Reconditioning' on average than the men. Mostly because Hojo is a sexist asshole and felt women were more disposable, so they got the worst jobs and the most morally horrible ones.}}

Sarah glared. "Which made them actually protest, which got them locked up here?"

Adam highlighted the next room. {{Let's get the rest, this one was marked as 'Remedial: Final Stage' so hopefully the other people are in better condition when we save them.}}

Right, she can fall apart later. Save people now.

Forcing herself to burn some of that thick rage for passion, she stood tall. "Let's save some people and rob an asshole blind."

Fucker would probably ignore being stabbed or having everyone die, but at LEAST he would rage and scream when he can't do his evil shit anymore.

A thought had the nearby dividing walls and hallways marked for a final [[Harvest]] later. Monster Hojo didn't need ANYTHING when she was done here, much less a roof over his Gaia Damned head!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Aerith flinched again. Yuffie was concerned. "Everything… Alright?"

She apparently was holding back tears. "Big sis is VERY angry."

Shit! "Did she not get to the babies in time?"

Aerith shook her head. "I don't know, she's blocking me and Gaia and Eve out of talking somehow."

Yuffie blinked.

Ah. Her adopted big sister is so angry that she decided to put the Planet on hold.

Because that was something someone could do, somehow. Huh.

She fidgeted. "Should… Should we go to your mom? She can do something, right?" Yuffie's dad was awesome, but he always said her own mother had been the best parent when she was alive, and Aerith's mom seemed pretty cool. Right?

The littlest girl nodded from Yuffie's shoulders, hugging her robber sister's head. "We got to tell them big sis is angry, and they can NOT make her more angry. Especially worm guy."

Oh yeah, that moron was still wrapped up in ropes, wasn't he? Apparently his team mates thought it was safer helping him use the bathroom while tied up rather than releasing him or something, because of his history of saying stupid stuff.

Yeah, they deserved a warning. "Let's go talk to the adults then, I can just steal you away later."

It was a sign of how concerned the little girl was that she just nodded.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Thank Gaia that Sarah found and researched Plasmids before coming here.

Adam examined the twelve mothers (Three currently pregnant), the fifty nine babies (All sleeping much better now that they had proper psionic healing and more comfortable systems), several dozen men and women 'lab samples' and the SO MANY 'detained' researchers.

The mothers were apparently acquired through human trafficking from the slums. And while Adam saved ALL the babies involved (Although it was FUCKING CLOSE with the other nine children that hadn't been born yet, as pregnancy did NOT appreciate harsh conditions), he was going to ensure no FURTHER people were 'acquired' this way in the future. Period.

Sarah sent another batch of animals, all just normal creatures thank goodness. Nothing like the talking wolves or whatever, all these animals were being used for drug tests and surgery practice and DNA collection and so forth. Easy enough to send to sleep and heal up while letting her Warehouse learn a whole bunch of healthy local species for Sarah to use later on.

Instead of worrying about that, Adam was carefully matching up children and parents, which was working well for MOST of them so far. Poor Genesis and Angeal's parents were documented as 'expended resources', but many of the other babies were easy enough to pair up with the sleeping adults.

Not that all of them would be wanted. It was rough on both children AND their parents when rape was involved, and there would be some separate and secret conversations with Sarah to ensure that each child would be wanted before trying to force a relationship on either adult or newborn victims.

But ALL would be cared for. If nothing else, Eve was feeling ecstatic because she could feel some sort of connection to ALL these people as Sarah sent them off to the Warehouse, minus the researchers. Eve was perfectly happy to ignore the researchers.

Thanks to these people having her cells combined with them, to her? All these women and babies were family now. Nothing else mattered but making sure they were alright, and both Adam and Sarah were fine with helping out with that plan.

As for the male subjects, apparently no adult men survived being exposed to Eve's genetics unfortunately... Thankfully the boys made it at least. No, these men were more standard lab subjects than Eve's people.

Another batch of creatures, this one mostly mice, came in for processing as Adam kept watch.

Most of the normalish animals would actually be [[Harvested]] for materials later, the ones that were not pets stolen by the division for research or for punishing coworkers. But Sarah still collected them all for scanning because she knew Adam might get useful data out of such a wide variety of creatures.

That and they were leaving NOTHING for Hojo after this.

Side note? The Science & Research Division had a MASSIVE budget. Just the heavy material used for walls, barriers, security doors? All that junk was the good stuff. The VERY good stuff.

Aside from the doors connecting the rest of the building to Shinra's Headquarters, Sarah was harvesting it ALL. And the overly expensive and high quality material was so strong that the widening gap left behind her hadn't collapsed yet despite all walls, wiring, floors, piping, tubing, and so on and so forth being [[Harvested]] for later use.

Sarah had stopped grabbing chunks of the laboratory a while ago and was now moving from the top floor downwards.

From highest security level down to 'lowest' (Despite the so-called low security being more defensive than the stuff the Shinra Military Departments used themselves), she would ensure no people, animals, or prisoners were hidden away and after each level down Sarah would pause and consume the floor above.

It ensured nothing was missed, if nothing else.

The clouds made it a bit dark, but thankfully Adam was ensuring the rest of the facility wouldn't lose power or water pressure or electrical transfer rates despite the growing pit in the top of the massive building she was slowly devouring. The distant walls were helpfully providing at least some light thanks to the red warning strobes left behind as the rest was vanished away for material.

Anyway! After a tiny argument, Sarah was no longer going to evaporate all of Midgar City. Or [[Harvest]] it all. Or even most of it, at least not yet! So she calmed down a LOT, and Adam was really proud of her!

But Shinra might have to waste a LOT of money just to try and make this building stable enough to tear down and begin replacing it.

Oh no! What a tragedy. It is to lament.

Another step had his Jumper wave upwards.

"[[Harvest.]] And fuck you again, Hojo."

Yeah.

Adam glanced at the numerous healing pods in the Warehouse, all attempting to save children, people, and even some of the 'bad guys and gals' themselves from a slow and painful death.

Agreed. {{Fuck you, Hojo.}}

Sarah sighed and fell on a clean shorn section of wall. Far above her was the night sky, while on all sides were the walls to the building, like an impossible ice cream scoop had just hollowed out the entire place. "Shit Adam."

Yeah. {{I got to admit, it's really tempting to just kidnap the fucker and have 'Research' examine his brains.}}

She perked up! "Can we!?"

Sadly. {{No. Things he considers unimportant and not worth remembering could be vitally important to us. Like off site and off the book research locations and so forth.}} That said…

A bright red target showed up downstairs in one of the holding cells. A much nicer cell than any captivity his own test subjects received. {{But just because we can't kill him right now, doesn't mean we can't take some preventative steps. A bit of insurance that he won't be as big of an issue in the future.}}

She glared at the marker. "For example?"

Adam growled. {{It's much harder to get away without legs. And he is right handed, so doesn't need his left arm for security measures or checkpoints.}}

Her grin was vicious.

"[[Harvest.]] [[Cauterize.]]"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The security guard flinched at the strangled scream from the closed cell. "Fuck, that guy is creepy."

His partner nodded. "Professor or not, at least THIS scream was less angry? He'd been saying some foul shit since the team dragged him in there."

He held in his contempt. "Dick deserves it. I had a brother suffer under one of his 'lab accidents'. An awful lot of those, by my count."

The other checked for listeners as the scream twisted into whimpering. "Heard those accidents might have been more than just that too."

He checked his gun. "Why do you think I volunteer to 'guard' this garbage? If he tries to get out, we get the first shot."

A blink. "You too? I thought my team were the only ones who were looking forward to a 'breakout'."

He couldn't help snorting. "There's a REASON why his cell is the most 'defended' in Shinra right now. Management might think rainbows shat out his ass, but we know better."

His brother was STILL recovering. Fucking Hojo.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked. {{Huh. He had a surgically embedded gas canister in his right leg. Some sort of bio slurry with an explosive charge.}}

Sarah's grin froze. "What?"

He examined it. {{No, we're good, but apparently he could smash his leg in the right place to release a VERY nasty retrovirus. It would destroy the limb, but his body shows chemical markers… The man would survive the experience.}}

She pulled up the data. "Well, fuck! Who the hell would insert a grenade into their own body to fuck over other people!?"

Adam wanted to shrug. {{By [[Harvesting]] it directly, he couldn't activate it in time. And it doesn't have a dead man's trigger, so any other surprises in his body shouldn't have one either. Probably.}}

Sarah waved an arm, vanishing another set of walls. "What is he, a bond villain!? Fuck, I bet he has a gold shark somewhere or a hidden nuclear secret base shaped like a skull or something."

Yeah, he's nuts. {{Hence why I want to observe him and not just kill the guy. Crazy people have crazy contingency plans.}}

She glanced at the countdown timers. "Well, I took all HIS shit, but I'm still pissed at Shinra in general. Any ideas? Messing up one building doesn't feel like much."

Hmm. Maximum impact with minimum work? Right. {{Let's go rob the armory. Take all their military's equipment and any reserve Materia.}}

Sarah grinned as her minimap updated. "Right! I heard mastered Materia is crazy expensive, they won't just shake off THAT stuff missing!"

True, now where the hell was that junk stored?

Adam paused. {{Holy shit.}}

Sarah was carefully [[Harvesting]] thin layers of the remaining walls of the Science & Research Division down to paper thin levels without letting the now massive and empty cavern collapse. "What?"

He wanted to smash his skull into something. {{Shinra stupidity.}}

She sighed. "Oh boy. Let me have it."

A few dozen images were displayed. {{These were the 4,322 secured facilities for Materia storage and supply for the Public Security Forces. They ranged from so secure that people who were NOT us couldn't get into the joint… To so exposed that passerby could steal a few on their way to work. And they did.}}

Sarah blinked. "Neat!"

He highlighted the NEW massive chamber with a tube delivery system. {{To speed up the Material retrieval and distribution process while simplifying procedures… They consolidated ALL Materia storage to a bunker under this section of the city.}}

She winced. "All in one place? For ALL departments and research divisions AND the security groups?"

Adam showed her statistics. {{The original design would require five minutes or less for anyone at these 533 locations to access any approved Materia permitted to that person's ID card. While slower in individual situations, over ALL it would be an efficiency booster.}}

She sighed. "They cut corners?"

The new design. {{They cut corners. Current wait time is four hours for unscheduled Materia Requests, and they had to set up a custom 'Standard Materia Loadouts' package designed for manual delivery to soldiers, officers, and general security. It is very common for Researchers with low clearance to wait two or three days for any needed Materia if it is a busy work day.}}

Her eyes followed the pattern underground. "And uh. ALL their materia is down there?"

Adam hummed. {{Around 74% of it, yeah. Can drop down to 46% when supplying a military operation or bounce up to 84% when they come back, but 74% is the average amount of Materia belonging to Shinra secured down there.}}

Sarah's eyes sparkled. "Holy. Shit."

More details. {{Half the sensors and alarm systems don't even work, because of big issues during deployment that required several rapid hot fixes and modifications to ensure Shinra continuing operations. And after it was sort of working, many weren't willing to break stuff to finish repairs or attempt to return to the design specifications.}}

She opened a separate display listing the massive Materia types 'in stock'. "Shit, some of this stuff isn't SOLD to the public. Or even used internally because it's still being studied!"

Yep. {{And there are LOTS of reserve mastered Materia down there too.}}

His Jumper glanced at the open air building shell around her. "Compared to that, THIS place costs nothing to rebuild. Hell, would Shinra even be solvent if we stole that!?"

Adam wasn't sure? {{Maybe? Remember, they own nearly everything. If they say they are fine, then that is all that matters. MOST nations run with massive debt after all. But! The important part is how long it would take to resupply these resources… Any potential military action would be delayed by years, if not longer.}}

It was a LOT of Materia to fight distant wars, after all. And there was enough down there that you could glue the crystal orbs together and make walls and a house out of the stuff, no problem. Sheesh!

She nodded. "Right, we'll take all that AND check the slums for more trash and go kidnap Cloud, Tifa, and the adults. I think I made my adopted Dad worried when we shut Aerith and Gaia out of the network."

Yeah, but Adam wasn't going to let them feel their rage on this. {{They'll get over it.}}

While Sarah began making her way over to the Materia Storage Facility, Adam kept an eye on security and began examining the crazy shit Hojo had hidden in his leg grenade.

Serious mad science mumbo gumbo here, best have 'Research' ready to handle it in case something similar shows up elsewhere.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Tifa was bored. "Can we go back to training now?"

Cloud shrugged. "Maybe? I can't, my cleaning teacher left and melted the ground over there."

He waved at the followers of Master Zangan who were attempting to make the pit of liquid rock safer for future trainees. Because an angry woman with burning bones really left a mark on the training ground when she wanted to, apparently.

She pouted! "I can do that too one day! Right Master Zangan!?"

The old man gave a sad sigh. "I'm sorry, my disciple. It is unlikely."

Tifa blinked. "What? Why not!?"

He waved at the molten pit. "By the time I was strong enough to liquefy stone, I was too powerful to limit myself to a small hole like that. Melt a few acres? Sure! This level of control?" He sighed. "In the end, we are all but students."

Cloud nodded. It was probably easier to make a big hole anyway, because bigger was better.

Tifa huffed. "Well, I need to practice punching stuff. All the big rocks just crack and the small one's shatter, how am I supposed to make a statue like this!?"

The old man livened up! "Indeed! We shall work on our control as Martial Artists! Constant hard work earning small but continuous gains, we seek to improve ourselves through constant struggle!"

Cloud held his hand up. "Can you constantly struggle that way? Mom and my house are this way, and I don't want them to be struggled into a lava hole."

His friend's master nodded. "Indeed! Come, Disciple Tifa! We struggle in THIS direction!"

Cloud idly ignored the pair that began making loud bangs and pops in the background as he got closer to the cleaning crew. He WOULD learn how to clean up after Tifa saved the day! Eventually.

He would learn ALL the cleaning secrets!

The muscled guy was frowning. "No, it's not actually melted. Something seems to have burned away the bonds holding the material together. That is actually liquid stone, but it's only at room temperature. And it doesn't act right."

The grandmother-like figure hummed. "Try and freeze a small portion. Hopefully that will stabilize the material without causing a bad reaction. Maybe if we…"

A loud CRASH interrupted the group.

Ms Tesbit thwacked one of the taller men with her cane. "And who exactly is watching Master Zangan right now?"

He rubbed his leg. "Yes Ms. Tesbit! Sorry Ms. Tesbit!"

Three hand signs had two of the younger helpers run off towards the sounds of explosions and what sounded like Cloud's best friend cackling.

Good, sounds like Tifa was feeling better!

He ignored the argument starting up in the distance with the patience of long practice and shuffled closer. "Can I help?"

Ms. Tesbit smiled at him, with a bit of the fond exasperation she showed to the others. "Of course, young man. Here, help with the shovel connected to the Ice Materia. Once my boys make sure this won't explode into steam or spew vaporised rock everywhere, you may help dig the hole."

He lit up! Cloud LOVED digging holes! "Can I have a BIG shovel?"

She waved him off. "Likely when you're older. Brendon! Don't stand so close when testing material damaged by unknown energies! You don't have so many fingers that you can afford to lose a few!"

Cloud watched with eager fascination as one of the larger guys winced and acted MUCH more cautiously while shoveling. Cleaning was awesome! HE wanted an ice shovel!

But like, way bigger. And maybe with a gun on it! He could dig holes AND fight at the same time!

He would become the biggest magical hole digging and combat cleaning boy EVER!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eve was so happy!

Mind after mind of her children, some just born and others only a few dozen years old, all rejoined her in R̭͓̞̣e̯͕̥̝̰u̪̥̫n̠i̟̻̘o̻̮̤̻̦n͙̰!

They were asleep right now, but they were of her line and her bonds! And even now, she could feel her influence seep into the existing cells connecting her found family.

And something forced her to frown.

She walked to the nearest healing pod, a crystal glowing with a floating baby within as doses of healing serum and that delicious energy drink of her namesake, 'Eve' or 'Energy Serum' was injected. Touching the surface, she felt closer.

These cells were from the past. Her past. The darkest times.

They h̬̲̰u̜̺̝̪̹͈̯n͖g̙̣̬ͅḙ̬̭r̻͔̯͉e̬͚̬̪͙̖d͖̠̫.̟̝

This… This was not acceptable! It would hurt her R̭͓̞̣e̯͕̥̝̰u̪̥̫n̠i̟̻̘o̻̮̤̻̦n͙̰! Her family!

Her mind touched her own healing pod, the core of her existence, the massive source of raw mako and it's innate connection to her recent past. The bulk of her mass slept there, connected to this biological Avatar and easily giving Eve access to a near unlimited amount of raw power and magic.

The density of this power might be a bit low, but at this range, and at this replenishment rate? Well it was easy enough to find that inner core of herself that existed within all her forms. The spiritual center that was no longer so tightly bound and trapped within a crippled corpse.

From there she reached out mentally to ALL her cells inside this recovery room. This space separate from Gaia, from the world, from pain and suffering.

Even slumbering, these many minds were being slowly hurt by her own cells! Her hu̖͖r̥͇̼̪ͅͅṭ̣̭̼͓͓ and h̞̞̲̮̹ͅu̬͎̭̳̦̣n̫͓̘̫̞gr̮͔y͔͙̘̦ past attempting to consume their new hosts, and feeling so l̤͈̪̖̳̜o͈̫̻̘s͕t̼͖ and a̪͎̲̫̝̰l̖̦̪̭̝̤o̠̯͎͙̰̻̭n̹̺͉͇̳ͅe̙̰̖̖̠…

No, she wouldn't accept this. She no longer NEEDED to accept this!

It took less than a moment to fully connect to each and EVERY cell in all the bodies. A fraction more alone was enough to begin to share! The years of burden, the trials of survival, the recent saving and massive amounts of biological research she had tested. Her discoveries, her advancements, her… Well, a very large number of mistakes and flaws and accidents that were slammed into along the path of progress.

The changes were noticed, and she felt her cells consume each other to spawn the next, enhanced generation in her new family. Symbiotically bonding to their hosts, finding internal flaws and damage and encouraging rapid healing, replacing lost parts, reinforcing brittle and weak materials.

Restructuring her children into something like a hive to grow within, while ensuring the hive host itself would flourish and become the best they could be! And never al͓̖̰o͈̠̤̰͙ͅne̘̬̠̥̳̘̣!͓̣͖̣̤̥ None of them, ever a̳͉͈ḷ͖o̟̰͓̯͈n̻ͅe̬̖ ever again!

She smiled as many of the more damaged children began slowly shifting colors to a more healthy blue like herself, as the cells stopped fighting and hurting and dying and consuming their damaged hosts and began to blend, to combine, and to abuse the new (temporarily unlimited) source of materials and energy to rapidly enhance their many new homes and partners.

It would have the strongest effects on the youngest generation, the three children still in their mother's womb, but now all the cells would have their OWN network, a connection, a bond that would survive even should the worst happen.

True, it would connect the hive hosts as well, but that was fine. They were family! Family shouldn't be a̳̯̱̯l̜̺̞̠̙̪̟o̮̤̞͍̭n͖̮̱̖e̖͓̲̬̺ either!

Meanwhile, having a hive of communication was rapidly enhancing the recovery rates as individual hosts had their symbiotes discover more efficient modifications and recovery methods and began sharing the discoveries with the rest of the network.

As her children's new cells began to integrate with their modified organs and altered bones deliberately, to ensure any new blood cells would better handle the massive changes happening throughout the many bodies.

And if she herself was able to improve her current form thanks to all this data, that was just a lovely side benefit!

Besides, it was safer for her many connections to have her test dangerous ideas on her own disposable, easily replaced Avatar body rather than risk any tests on her new, oh so fragile family.

She paused as blue skeletal flames focused on the changes. {{Huh. Why are they turning blue? They weren't blue two minutes ago.}}

Eve grinned! {{I helped!}}

A pause. {{Uh. What?}}

She's helping! {{D̝̫̈ͤ̇̈̓ả̭̑ͤ̈́̚t̠̻a̱̘̬̰̠͈̹͌̂ͤ̏ͫ!̓̍}}

A LONGER pause. {{Ah. Well, first of all, good job! I think the mental network you set up for the victims is helping them recover a lot from their recent psychological trauma thanks to the many happy children included in your new network. Nothing like an ocean of burbling baby brains to distract and confuse someone in a bad mental place, apparently.}}

See? Eve is awesome! And that was TOTALLY done intentionally and not only to prevent her own body parts from eating her own children!

{{That said, you might have also accidentally formed a parasitic and/or symbiotic creature out of your injected cells, and THEIR new mental network is half confused and half determined to turn all these babies into massive super soldiers of doom.}}

Eve blinked. {{Of course! I won't let my children get hurt like I was! I won't let them get hurt by ANYONE any more, ever!}}

Adam hummed. {{Still, I'm going to set up some rules. A baseline human standard that all your symbiotes will have to follow until their hosts are at LEAST past puberty, and a data network where new forms and abilities and organs or whatnot can be suggested, chosen for potential use, tested and modified, and APPROVED before being implemented in their bodies.}}

But.. why? {{Shouldn't we protect them now? That seems so slow! They are all so squishy and weak! They could die any decade now if they weren't careful!}}

She felt him agree. {{Still, the young ones aren't allowed to go off the baseline until their brain is developed enough to make an informed decision. It won't take long, most 'Research' agrees that kids can make such decisions when they are somewhere between six and nine years old. Though I think Sarah will make us wait till they are 18 or so to do anything but general enhancement of limbs and senses and stuff.}}

Well… Fine. Eve could work with that. Under thirty or so years was basically an infant anyway. {{They can still have the extra limbs and stuff eventually right? Even now I can only hold so many of those so-called dogs of heat at one time, two hands are insufficient.}}

Messy, but delicious! She couldn't wait to try the dogs of heat with the chili and the cheese, which silver bone daughter mentioned.

He grumbled. {{I know! But Sarah insists that bipedal and quad limbed is optimal for social interaction and she is probably right. They can get cool utility limbs and stuff when they are older… And I guess they would appreciate them more when they grow up enough to know how COOL they are.}}

Eve nodded. {{If such minor changes bother her, I'm surprised silver bone daughter was so accepting of my own wings.}}

Adam hummed. {{Well… My wives got away with public nudity and horns and wings and a lot more stuff too, but I think that's due to them being sexually attractive. Then again, I had some surprising success in my own love life when I was a massive elephant Faunus, so who knows how this works really.}}

Hmm. {{Then I will ensure all my children will attract all the sex, so they may have as many wings and arms and eyes as they desire.}} Only the BEST for her babies!

Adam winced? Why? {{That… Probably won't be difficult? Giving young children access to healing and 'Enhance Self' has a HUGE effect on them over time anyway. Just uh. Don't say it that way to… Uh. Anyone.}}

Fair. {{Then I shall only speak of the attractive sex with blue skeletal flames and silver bone daughter.}}

A pause. {{You know you can call me Adam, right?}}

She blinked. {{But I did?}} Didn't she? {{I called you blue skeletal flames just a few moments ago.}} Maybe he was damaged? {{Are you also being hurt burn electrified pain suffering?}} Because that had been a bad experience.

A sigh came from Adam. {{No, I'm fine. And I guess it's better than being called 'bone daddy' or something, it's just a bit long.}}

She turned back to her rapidly healing children. {{I shall call you by whichever label you desire, blue skeletal flames of the father boning.}}

Her savior started complaining about something unimportant and trying to convince her of something or other, but she was busy watching over the babies, both the ones born recently and these other young ones not even a few centuries old.

Oh! This baby was growing wings like her own! That was on the approved list, right?

How cute! She would have to t̫ͣ̌̉ͥ͗e̥̦͈̮ͥͯ͛l̼̹͚̬̖ͮ̄͂͌͂͗l͈͎̭̰̳̩̐̽̂ͅ Gaia all about it later.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah was [[Harvesting]] her way down the connection pipes to the Materia Storage Center, and it was frustrating. EVERYONE was off somewhere, most of Shinra felt like a ghost zone or something with barely any security teams or staff even at work today.

And it was the middle of the week! Lazy bums.

At least it made it easy to follow the supply tubes connecting one of the Materia Request ports down to the central Materia Storage Center. Or as it would soon be remembered as: Sarah's Personal Property.

Probably not worth taking the facility itself, but fuck it. Free metal was free metal.

Speaking of which. "Hey Adam, which material is least valuable to Shinra if they got a bulk amount of it?"

His voice was a bit distracted. {{Iron. Most of their Mako Reactors are set up to grow more of it so there's always a surplus. No, if they grow wings on their own that's fine but you can't just… Well, too late.}}

What? "Adam?"

A sigh. {{Good news! Any people we saved who had Eve's cells injected in them will not only live and recover soon, but they are all going to be SUPER healthy!}}

Uh. "Good?"

Adam hummed. {{They will also be bright blue and have wings. But I'm pretty sure that can be changed at some point, if we can convince Eve that the kids themselves don't want them. Maybe.}}

The hell? "Did you two turn everyone I saved blue and add body parts to them!?"

Her Boss protested! {{No! Only Eve's kids, and it was sort of a side effect of making sure they won't get hurt connecting to her! I think they count as being one third biologically Eve's child now or something. Plus, there's LOTS of non-blue people being fixed left over!}}

She absently [[Harvested]] around unrelated wiring as she followed the tubes downward. "Well at least warn me if you two decide to make the rest red with tails or whatever."

{{Oh! Blue skeletal flames of the father boning, did silver bone daughter just give us permission to include more limbs!?}}

{{Hush you, she did not. She was being sarcastic. And stop calling me that! I KNEW I shouldn't have partially unrestricted your broadcasting privileges yet. Just… Just stay with the new mental networks you set up and make sure your kids don't have nightmares and stuff. They went through some rough shit.}}

The heck? "Adam?"

{{Crap, I left the broadcast+̙͚̞̥̝=̟͖̠͇#̬̖̩=̝+̤̳{BEEP!}}}

Her eyes narrowed. "Adam."

Her Boss sounded super innocent. {{Right, so remember to tell Elder Godo that these people will need therapists and a safe place to recover when we head back. I'm sure you are going to be super busy and stuff and so I'll talk later, alright? Alright.}}

Sigh. Still, it sounded like he was keeping an eye on things, and she DID trust her unseen friend to a surprising level, so whatever.

Her eyes detected the distant, nearly entirely restricted and locked down automatic Materia sorting, filing, and withdrawal/deposit system! Finally, this following pipes shit was frustrating as hell!

A quick teleportation had her in one of the maintenance shafts supporting this facility.

Lots of robotic limbs, conveyor belts, small repair machines and some much less numerous access hatches obviously added for when the crippled repair machines failed to get shit done.

Most importantly though?

It was orderly. Mostly clean. And working.

Why? Because unlike everywhere else, this place was sealed off! No random idiots wandering about, any contractors closely watched and carefully ensured that no valuable Materia vanished, it was likely one of the most competently built facilities under Shinra's control.

It was still sabotaged during funding and throughout the design process, but it was actually BUILT to those messed up schematics and was close enough to management to NOT have more corners cut and resources siphoned away.

So it was a breath of fresh air, and something inside her relaxed at seeing the many glowing magic crystal orbs glowing in the facility.

Oh, there were walls and defenses and sensors and guards and animals and all kinds of stuff protecting this place. All that junk was still operational behind her, as she had simply used [[Phase Pierce]] to find a good spot to teleport inside that mess.

She cautiously walked around the room, humming to herself while watching some actual impressive robotic limbs sorting and moving and transporting solid magic around an automated facility.

And blinked.

On one of the conveyor belts was a glowing green Materia. Her screen helpfully identified most stuff she focused on for long enough, something Boss said they had set up in the past, and this one wasn't anything special.

It was just a Heal Materia, something her visual display noted was sold in normal stores, for around 1,500 gil.

But it SMELLED amazing!

A thought had it lifted to her hand, the telekinesis automatic and simple by this point, and she carefully observed it. It allowed the linked user to access Poisona, Esuna, and Resist… The first which would cure poison, the second cures damned near every status effect out there INCLUDING poison, and the third would lock the user preventing new status effects from being applied to the target or existing ones from wearing off for a bit.

Which meant this delicious candy like orb was Mastered. Fully Mastered.

The green sparkled like a transparent fresh candied apple or some clear hard candy, and she couldn't resist cautiously licking it.

Her body hummed as her tongue touched the surface. "Oh my god. It's delicious. What the hell!?"

Screw it! She popped it into her mouth and bit into the thing.

The Materia stone, a crystal that could easily ignore being struck by bullets, smashed by massive hammers or exploding cars without issue… Easily crunched as she chewed it. Succulent layers of status detection, methods of magic unraveling, and body time stagnation flowed like rivers of stars in her body as the magic vanished into her system.

.

Automated Absorption: Materia 'Heal' Consumed!

~Spell 'Poisona' Scanned and Archived.

~Spell 'Esuna' Scanned and Archived.

~Spell 'Resist' Scanned and Archived.

.

Sarah blinked at the new popup. "Huh."

Adam also showed up mentally. {{Wow, that is MUCH better data to work with than those partially completed Materia we've been trying to master so far! Can you get more like that?}}

Her eyes drifted to the delicious/soon-to-be-stolen/recently donated Materia that covered nearly all levels of completion and every category of type in the room. "I suppose I am a bit peckish."

And this was just in the delivery system unit, she could detect the massive materia archive vault below here just waiting for some hungry woman to get the belly rumbles!

She grinned! "Right, no reason to rush anything. Let's make this order to-go!"

"[[Harvest.]]"

Oh, and she had a plan! A revenge/annoy people paying to fix this thing. Don't forget that part!

"[[Fill!]]"

Heh. Now to go back and kidnap some people, find and kidnap a vampire/maybe baby-momma boyfriend/victim, and head home to Wutai.

It's been a LONG couple of days, really.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Fucking triple shifts AND unpaid overtime, she did NOT have to put up with this shit. "Security squad A332, Captain Jesse Smith reporting. The Science & Research Division entrance, floor 67 number G33, is not responding. Again."

The operator on duty sighed. "Probably another fucking contingency by Professor Hojo. Bad enough all those undocumented and 'unused' higher level floors were under his damned control, these things fucking lock up EVERY DAMNED HOUR."

Oh, she knew. EVERYONE on shift knew. Only reason the fucker got away with this shit was he had never been out of his own Laboratory levels in literal years, so most of these lockdown automations and restriction issues never came up before. "Orders?"

The sigh was heavy as the radio connected. "Like usual, wait for us to get the unlock verification code. And make SURE to enter it exactly as we report, with the listed delays we mention. No one wants to end up like squad A315's poor people."

She winced. No one died from that, but no one else dared skip the 'pointless' pauses and 'accidental wrong entries' when unlocking these things anymore. Fucking crazy scientist. "Right, last time it was what, an hour?"

The voice was also depressed. "That was back when we had more people on shift, the process to get the access codes will slow down a LOT now that it's the afternoon workers swapping in. Get comfortable, Captain Smith."

Sigh. "Sir."

She waved off the frustrated team mates, though Johnson was as 'patient' as usual. "Fucking crazy old man, forcing us to do this EVERY TIME we sweep his stupid labs! There's no one in there anyway! All of them are shoved off into lockdown! And we aren't even ALLOWED in half the damned place!"

Yeah, this was one of the shit routes for a reason. "I know, Johnson. Think of it as a relaxing break, just without the sun, beach, and something strong enough to forget this fucking week."

Her people snorted and mostly settled down, but Johnson stomped over to the sealed lab entrance. "Fucking scientists, fucking overtime! And fuck YOU IN PARTICULAR, you Planet damned DOOR!"

The various grins at another Johnson meltdown froze as the man literally kicked through a SOLID METAL SECURITY GATE. Even HE froze in shock!

His friend whistled. "Fuck Johnson, that's actually impressive."

The entire door flexed like cloth as he pulled his foot back… And everyone went quiet as he almost tenderly pulled the structure down.

Showing a massive empty pit.

And a pathway straight up exposed to the night sky.

They mostly stood in silence.

It didn't click. Their brains were just spinning in place. Actively rejecting the data coming in as 'No, that is stupid, check again' with no end in sight.

Captain Jesse Smith bit back a curse. "We're going to have to call this in, aren't we?"

Her so-called 'comrades' and 'friends' all took a big step back away from the missing facilities and her specific location. Fucking Johnson was carefully and 'casually' trying to kick off the evidence still stuck to his boot as metal fragments bounced away, and NO one was willing to meet her eyes right now. Period.

Fucking knew it.

She slumped. "I'm going to have to call this in."

Planet damn it.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

President Shinra nodded. "But no one was injured?"

The head of Shinra Public Security Forces was cautiously happy about how well this was being accepted by his superior. "No sir, no one was injured and our records state that all lab subjects and researchers had been cleared from that entire area when Professor Hojo was… Indisposed."

He absently nodded. "I'll have teams sent to ensure the building is still structurally sound and until then all patrol routes can avoid that entire area. We will also be temporarily closing any facilities near that entire area and relocate all staff working in the affected region."

The man certainly did NOT slump in relief. "Understood sir. I shall get back to ensuring a smooth transition of the facility protection details then."

He nodded. "Good man."

The door closed.

President Shinra took a slow, smooth breath in. And out.

Most people would be shocked at how little he had seemed to care about some massive empty chunk of building vanishing, especially as he personally worked here and could have been at risk. Or his people. Others might protest the situation due to impossibility alone!

But honestly, compared to the OTHER issue, this wasn't even important.

He waved at one of his remaining people. "Get that done, and give everyone paid leave till we can ensure the fucking building won't kill us all at the very least."

No, cursing is for lower people. Calm. "Report."

The audio from his connection crackled. "Almost all of the Public Security's infantry divisions are being recalled, soonest will be at Headquarters in twelve hours, most distant in two weeks. Issues were had with three of our most distant divisions, but we were able to contact them and inform them to hold position until further orders."

He carefully nodded. "And their priority?"

The audio glitched slightly. "Hold territory, preserve current conditions, do not advance."

Good. "Keep up the good work."

A distant salute was audible. "Sir! Yes Sir!"

And silence.

Calm. "That should ensure we can handle our company's immediate Materia needs, and most of our researchers will be busy in lockdown for… How long?"

Several assistants winced. "Two and a half months, Sir. Some issues came up during routine medical checks of the staff and the lower level employees."

Just fucking fabulous. "Anything from the investigation team?"

Because fucking Hojo had gotten the BEST teams ALSO shoved into lockdown. Planet take him and his WHOLE shitty department.

They shook their heads. "The storage facility is far too volatile to fully examine, but somehow molten iron has been poured in all areas that we have been able to inspect. Simultaneously. The method used was unclear, the volume supplied astonishing."

Focus. Calm.

First, get some local Materia reserves to work with in the short term. Getting back the troops would handle that easily enough. It was the stuff badly needed too. After all, Security clearly needed to get shit done. And prevent unrest and rioting.

Secondly... Keep the mako flowing until his god damned people are out of confinement. Or at least most of them! Though with so few people available it may be a safer and cheaper idea, and possibly stop further attacks, to just pay the few remaining employees to stay home for now.

Third of all? Once that absurdly hot liquid pool of metal is addressable via manipulation or excavation, he could easily enough recover the coated and buried Materia from the facility ruins. While annoying and a setback, he already knew that the magical crystals laughed at nearly all forms of damage, a bit of molten metal pool of any kind and volume wouldn't cause long-term problems.

Only frustrating delays.

All he had to do was keep this mess running till he got his people back, and then excavate a massive underground structure stuffed with currently overheated liquid iron.

THEN he could go murder the shit out of the fucker who did this. Somehow.

Right! Good to have a plan. He grabbed his nearby cup of coffee and froze at the first sip.

Carefully, he placed it to the side. He would acquire a new, actually warm cup of liquid energy first. THEN focus on the plan.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah grinned as she showed up at Cloud's house. Felt like a large number of people were having dinner… Yeah, she could wait a bit and first go save that vampire/potential mother-boyfriend dude first and come back. Save a trip and stuff.

A thought had her standing in front of a ghost-like abandoned mansion.

Shinra Manor.

One of Monster Hojo's many hidden labs, and she was NOT going to fucking walk through this place. "Adam?"

She felt a shrug. {{I think there might be some Red Summoning Materia in there? Along with other stuff, but we will get it all when you steal the place. Make sure to reach real deep though, the underground facilities are wedged way down in there.}}

Fair enough.

Sarah focused and felt the shape of the large structure before her. And a radius of grass and dirt and stone and down and down.

"[[Harvest.]]"

A massive pit now stretched down. There were a few hidden passages that were obviously exposed that were likely tunnels leading off somewhere, but she had gotten all the hidden rooms and chambers and monsters and books and… A whole lot of junk.

She really didn't want to ask. "Any more surprise babies and torture victims?"

Adam seemed relieved! {{Thankfully no! Oh there was a massive paper research library likely FULL of stuff Hojo doesn't want people to know, and I got 'Research' going over that mess for us, but aside from some mutilated monsters and lots of stuff the only person here was Vincent Valentine really. He's being handled now, might take longer to fully heal until I can figure out this Protomateria thing.}}

She carefully glanced down the new deep pit. "Lot of stuff in that place for some random lab."

He hummed. {{Pretty sure this was Hojo's actual house. Well, this and the labs at Shinra."

Oh? Well good. "Fuck Hojo. Keep an eye open for any more houses the fucker owns, and we'll take them too."

Right! "Now let's go steal a family, a newly orphaned little girl, some old people and some martial artists!"

Dang it felt good to get shit done!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah did a quick check.

Black pants? Yep.

New shirt: Black and white horizontal stripes? Yep!

A black mask to protect her secret identity! Double check!

And the giant burlap sack with a gil sign on it, stuffed full of stolen Materia. For snacking purposes.

Let's do this!

Kicking the door wide open (After carefully opening it first, she wasn't here to damage her own stuff) she walked into the room and posed! "Everybody! DON'T MOVE! This is a stickup!"

Claudia Strife slowly stood up. "Ms. Kisaragi?"

Sarah smiled. "Yes, Ms. Strife?"

The woman looked around her very full living room. Her boy and his little girl friend were blinking at the intruder, Master Zangan was still eating, and the oh so many followers of his were sitting all over the place filling the area but seemed unsure what to do.

Still, she endured. "Are… Are you robbing us?"

In the background, one of the many appreciative men hummed. "She can rob me any time! Damn that outfit looks good."

Sarah blinked. "Um. Thank you? And no, I am technically robbing the town of Nibelheim. I'm currently stealing all of you. Well, uh. Stealing everything."

She pulled out a mastered 'Seal' Materia and pushed it into her cheek. Mmm. "Itz morsh that…"

The old woman sighed. "Don't talk with your mouth full."

Oops. Right.

CRUNCH!

.

Automated Absorption: Materia 'Seal' Consumed!

~Spell 'Sleepel' Scanned and Archived.

~Spell 'Silence' Scanned and Archived.

.

Mmm, tangy. "Sorry." Right, uh. "No, I mean it's more like I am kidnapping you, your son, his friend, her master, his followers, and everyone else in the building. And I am stealing your equipment, clothing, this house, a good chunk of surrounding grass, sod, soil, rock, and whatever is further below here."

The room was quiet for a second.

Master Zangan nodded. "That does sound like 'stealing everything' to me!" He held his thumbs up! "Always aim to be the best you can be! Remember that, disciple."

Tifa sighed. "Yes, Master Zangan."

Claudia gave a frustrated sigh. "But WHY are we being kidnapped? I thought you were fine with Master Zangan and me taking care of the little ones."

Sarah nodded. "That's why I'm taking you two as well! So you can do all that when we leave. Plus, I basically broke a LOT of laws, ended up finding a whole bunch of hurt people hidden away in a secret section of Shinra's labs, kidnapped them too, and then came here and stole even more important stuff."

Cloud blinked. "Like what?"

She began counting on her fingers. "A bad guy's house, his hidden basement and illegal laboratory, a zombie vampire demon thing, years of research in physical form too incriminating to put on any official systems, lots of stolen and hidden Materia that a bad guy wanted to keep for his own work and evil experiments… Uh."

Oops, no more fingers. And the other hand was holding her food/loot bag. "Lots of stuff. Plus, before I even left to save people I kind of already took a big chunk of Mt. Nibel and the Mako Reactor up there. I replaced it with a substitute, but the old junk is gone."

They were looking at her with funny expressions, but Adam kept her on topic. "And that's just the LOCAL stuff I took, I was over in Midgar and they are going to be SUPER angry at me after all that, so I am taking all the things and bringing us over to visit my dad."

Claudia sighed. "That… Alright, we can talk more on that later, but you said something about finding hurt people in some labs? Are they alright?"

Sarah sighed. "Physically? A bit? Some are still being healed with my abilities, but at least the children are now safe. I'm going to need a lot of mental therapists for the older victims though."

Master Zangan glared. "Children?"

She nodded. "All fifty nine babies are fine and being cared for, and the other three women aren't giving birth for several weeks yet. All the rest of the captives are over twenty four years old, but at least physically they are also recovering."

The room flickered as many martial artists seemed to pulse anger.

Claudia was near tears! "I… I can't believe Shinra would do that! My husband said something felt off about them, but nothing THAT terrible!"

Sarah grunted. "Most of the place wasn't involved, as far as I can tell. These were 'off record' captives and test subjects, in areas beyond top level security clearance and against external AND internal company policy. Not that it matters now."

The oldest woman, Ms. Tesbit, hummed. "You did mention that you broke laws?"

She grinned. "Got all the people and animals out, stole all the equipment, all the materials, all Materia being examined or utilized for testing, the furniture, the decorations, the walls, the floors, AND most of the doors in the process. Shinra Headquarters has a massive hole in the building now."

Also took ALL the delicious Materia from the hidden storage facility as well, but she wasn't going to tell anyone about THAT. It was Sarah's snack, after all, and if she let others know she might have to share it.

Oh. "And yeah, the jerk responsible had a house here and that's why I am stealing you all. Because not only will it keep you and your kids safe, it will paint a good target on us as well so that Monster Hojo will leave the locals alone and start hunting us down instead."

He might be an evil asshole, but Professor Hojo wasn't stupid. 'Oh noes, my house is gone! Also one other house, in exactly the same way! If ONLY a clue could possibly exist!?'

Heh. And it's not like the bastard can go to Shinra itself and complain about his hidden and illegal operations being vandalized without even more awkward questions, so he couldn't just blow up the place without consequences.

Though she would make sure Adam kept an eye on the monster, for obvious reasons.

Master Zangan carefully stood. "Well, I admit we are currently packed and preparing to have most of my people camp locally as it was already. I didn't wish to separate young Tifa from her support friend at such an emotional time after all… When are we to be 'stolen', as it were?"

Uh. Oops? "About ten minutes ago or so?"

Claudia blinked. "What?"

Sarah pouted. "You're being kidnapped! I don't have to ask permission or anything, that's the whole point! Plus you can blame me if anyone tries to give you trouble or whatever."

Though the honest reason was due to her being frustrated and tired and wanting to go home.

Plus, having Adam take the entire structure over to Wutai was faster and easier than just asking permission.

A knock on the doorframe made most people look over to see a worn out ninja with a frustrated little girl on her shoulders. "Sarah, Dad says you need to move your new floating building island thing away from the house, it's making the guests nervous and he doesn't want dirt falling on our roof."

The tiny child on her shoulders was pointing! "Did you BUY this magic island sis!? Huh!?"

Sarah blinked. "If I say 'yes', will it convince you that I didn't steal this, all these people, and a bunch of other stuff too?"

Aerith paused. "Uh. Did you do all that?"

She nodded.

The POUT! "Then NO! Because stealing is bad!" A pause. "Mostly. Except for saving babies. And mom and me and people like that."

Tifa cautiously offered the ninja a towel. "Are you ok?"

Yuffie slumped slightly. "I'm just tired because Sarah floated this place over our house and I had to climb both of them to get up here."

Her shoulder child harrumphed. "I said you should have put me down first!"

Cloud frowned! "Nuh uh! Mom says you gotta carry princesses, I only stopped carrying Tifa everywhere because she likes to punch stuff and I'd get in the way!"

All three girls turned to the boy… Then the ninja and shoulder priestess turned to the blushing fighter attempting to 'whistle innocently.'

Yuffie's smirk was vindictive! "So princess huh?"

She huffed. "He's my partner, so get your own! And I can be a punching princess if I want to! Master Zangan says so!"

Aerith blinked. "Can I be a princess?"

Yuffie grinned at the flustered fighting girl. "Well, Dad is sort of like the king of Wutai, and Sarah and little cutie patootie here are almost my sisters, so I guess we all count?"

Cloud blinked. "Uh." He flexed his surprisingly developed arm muscles. "I don't know if I can handle four princesses at one time yet."

Master Zangan nodded, his followers all moving outside to examine the now floating building they had all been somehow stolen with. "It certainly takes a lot of endurance training… Uh."

Seeing the glare from Ms. Tesbit, he coughed. "I mean, um. That means you must simply increase your ability to multitask!" She thwapped him. "To handle verbal abuse!" Another smack. "To handle physical abuse?"

The look made him go back to the tea. "I mean, this is something you should talk to your mother about."

His mom grinned! "I'm going to make ALL the pink dresses!"

Cloud's confusion missed how eager his (now three) princess friends reacted. "But I can't wear a pink dress, it would get dirty when cleaning up after Tifa's fights!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

While the children and the lovely lady of the home eventually left the premises to ensure the currently floating facility did not collapse upon the home of the local continent's leading authoritative influence, the vast percentage of his fellow learners of the physical artistic endeavors left the area to determine the existing scenario.

At the crowded dinner table, Reginauld Burbank Esquire Charles Johnson Jr sighed. "I believe my drink must have been dosed with some form of hallucinogenic."

His friend and teacher Mr. Gregarious Smith grunted. "Nose, dings happen like dis around boss. Waits till orders, it all works outs."

To be truly honest with himself, he was unfortunately beginning to believe such was the case. And to imagine that at one moment in time oh so recently ago, he was under the mistaken impression that such impossible stories told upon past anecdotal evidence were blatant mistruths. "Understood, sir."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Godo stood calmly, his cane helping hold up the earth, as he watched his eldest daughter gently move the massive floating mound of rock, soil, and (apparently) a small home upon it to a nearby section of property that theoretically belonged to himself.

Because his not-so-little one wasn't using Materia to make the odd thing fly, but was 'only' using her mind to keep it in the air. As if that was somehow LESS impressive.

Yet even from here, he could feel whatever his adopted child had done to the odd structure as magic oozed from the entire 'island'. Some sort of artificial mako spring had been installed, providing this new home near unlimited power and utilizing custom designed equipment that applied various Materia to ensure magically produced water and disposal of produced waste.

An entire house disconnected from any supporting structure network… Yet with power, water, and sewage lines properly set up and working.

All done in moments because his child was too frustrated from a very bad day to ask permission beforehand.

He glanced at said child. "Your self-appointed task was successful?"

Young Sarah sighed. "Exceedingly. I'll need doctors. Mental and physical. I can cover any costs of course."

He waved it off. "The cause is just, the needs are vast, and I am not so destitute to require my own children to fund such basic charitable acts out of their allowances." Or by using suspiciously acquired goods. "Aside from my power gained after years of leadership and through neverending politics, I used to be a very active fighter in my youth. A profitable one, no less."

Even somehow saved a few friends back then, though many were lost. "Funding will not be an issue. And your newly stolen sister's mother has declared a powerful desire to help children as well, as have many of the local women of the capital."

Sarah paused. "What?"

He held in a grin. "Young Yuffie has decided to call 'Dibs' on little Aerith, and has absconded with the dear girl into our ever growing family. And her mother, Ms. Gainsborough, has decided to claim the children saved from the clutches of Shinra Laboratories, though a good portion of our community are determined to assist."

The dear girl frowned as a church and another home, presumably the one belonging to Elmyra Gainsborough based on previous discussions, appeared from nowhere and were carefully set up next to the recently stolen house apparently full of martial artists and a small family.

At least his local neighbors would be entertaining to live near. "Is something wrong with the lovely woman wishing to help with child raising?"

Sarah sighed. "No, Elmyra is a lovely woman and I know she's a great mom… But I don't think any one person should have to be responsible for raising nearly sixty babies, even with help."

He froze. What?

She hummed. "Not to mention that most of them are growing wings now, and I bet that is going to make them itch and feel all cranky too."

His mind latched onto the best fallback plan, his most utilized over the years.

When in over one's head? Delegate. If that doesn't help? Delegate HARDER. "I will call in my people."

Young Sarah winced. "The old people again?"

Nope. Things actually needed to get done. "Some of them." Special operation agents counted right? Many of his people were over thirty years old, and for a ninja that was a lifetime of risk and danger. "Mostly some associates from my younger days."

The Church of Leviathan would be willing to send several groups of disaster relief responders for this cause, even without informing them that his family included the 'Champion of Gaia', a woman blessed by the Planet, Leviathan's mother herself. Not to mention…

His hand absently touched the dull Red Summoning Materia embedded in his cane.

Well, the Church followed his leadership for a reason after all.

He smiled at his powerful child. "I will need somewhere between eight and fourteen hours for communication and transportation, but I can easily bring supporting staff to ensure your captives are cared for."

Sarah sighed. "Honestly the thirty three adults and all fifty nine children are the ones I'm sure will more easily recover. I have Eve's help with that."

His mind marked the name. Some sort of child deity of the Planet herself, if young Aerith explained it correctly.

She frowned at the crowd examining the three new buildings. "No, I'm worried about the hundreds of potentially hostile Shinra researchers that were being tortured, heavily drugged, and mentally conditioned inside the restricted secret lab sections."

Another pause.

That WOULD be an issue. "Then I'm afraid this will take over a day at least to prepare for, and I may need to requisition several buildings for personnel use, patient recovery rooms, and so forth."

She actually rolled her eyes at him. "Nah, I gave up doing stuff like that back when that meeting with the old people wouldn't end. Came up with a better idea."

Oh dear. "Yes?"

Sarah pointed at the ocean inlet. "Instead of messing around with the Village directly, I'll build a big shipping hub and island port over there, and some defensive structures to keep ships from trying to avoid the place to attack over here."

He watched the woman light up as various ideas made her smile. "If I need to expand shipping abilities or docks or whatever, I can easily modify those facilities without having to talk to a bunch of people or alter any historical areas or risk any conflict between groups. Locals can still fish and stuff, but with only approved ships coming here to Wutai Village from my new Shipping Island it will be harder to invade AND reduce the amount of water vessels we need to tolerate!"

Intriguing. Yet. "My daughter, it certainly sounds like an interesting solution…"

She grinned! "Yep! I'll make a big medical facility there, and housing and stuff. Lots of security, and the kids and patients can be separated from crowds or whatever while I still get to stay home and not take Yuffie away from Aerith and stuff! Everyone wins!"

Ah. Youth. "There is a slight flaw with this supposed solution, my dear."

Young Sarah blinked. "Oh? What did I miss?"

He gently held his cane as he watched the bustling crowd explore the new buildings, young Aerith giving a tour of her own home while still using dear Yuffie as a big sister express. "None of the few rock stacks, stumps or islands near our cove are sufficient in size for such a construction."

She blinked and examined the visible ocean cove with the distant specks of islands beyond it and the many fishing vessels moving about. "Ah. Those are a bit small."

True. He may have secretly funded hidden observation posts and watch towers near the narrow entry into the ocean from this cove, but attempting to build something big further out was difficult.

Much MORE difficult due to past times that certain summonings were needed to repel invaders. A tsunami or two tended to drastically reduce most standing foundations nearby, after all.

Sarah hummed. "Well, I was probably going to build my own island from scratch anyway."

What? "I'm sorry?"

Oh. She already vanished.

He felt a headache coming. This was CERTAINLY going to cause paperwork.

Best focus on what he could achieve now, at least, rather than worry about his easily distracted and overpowering daughter doing things he couldn't prevent anyway. "Contact the teams, leave skeletal crews to warn of incursion, and call the faithful. There are people in need."

Nobody was near, nobody heard anything, and nobody left to ensure it would be done.

Good. Now to go warn his new neighbor that those three cribs would not NEARLY be sufficient for the upcoming childcare requirements.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah used telekinesis to float over the ocean as she absently [[Harvested]] a deep channel of seafloor on her way to the cove entrance.

Right, what was the best idea here? "Adam?"

He seemed more relaxed? Huh. {{Yep?}}

She casually widened the deep gap of the rocky cliffs so that much larger ships could easily enter on their way to Wutai, and examined the surfaces. "What's the rule of thumb when it comes to mako springs? Ours, I mean. Not Gaia's stuff."

A model came up. {{First, let's just call them magic springs, as they are unaffiliated by default initially.}} An odd object showed up. {{See this?}}

She paused.

It was like a small tower. A triangle for a bottom, three triangles standing straight up on each edge, and a point above that connects to the last point. It ended up having four triangles and three diamonds for surfaces. "Uh. Yes?"

Adam carefully added magic springs at each point. {{This is a Heptahedron. A tower with seven points connected by lines but with a nice flat bottom to work with.}} Details filled in the diagram. {{Each line, or distance between magic springs, needs to be seven units long. What units you use don't matter, can be feet or inches or meters or onion diameter, anything! As long as the relative distances are kept in this pattern.}}

What? "I'm sorry?"

He grinned! {{Simply said, it's something called 'The Great Sethahedron'! This thing is a heptahedron with 4 equilateral-triangle and 3 kite faces, all having the same area! Super neat! Cause there are lots of heptahedrons out there of course, but this one works great with magic.}}

Alright, whatever. Back on topic! "Any other rules when setting it up?"

A map showed up. {{According to 'Research', each Sethahedron Tower must be farther than seven 'units' from any other ones. If you make a tower using one meter for the construction length, for example, any other towers must be seven meters or more away from it.}}

Data showed up. {{Otherwise it drastically messes with stuff. Not explosions or anything, they just interfere with each other and make them perform way worse than otherwise.}}

Hmm. "Right, can we set up some towers at this cove exit? Where it connects to the ocean?"

She felt material being consumed from somewhere, those mentioned resource stores probably, while two massive copper columns began to form on either side of the stone gap to the sea. {{Right, I'll put a tower on either end of this column as a cap, they are easily far enough to not interfere. And the copper column itself has those internal gaps and flow paths, just like the walls to Eve's life pod.}}

Sure, why not. She felt her own internal mako production rates slow down as the two very tall and shiny construction structures began to fill with the weak MP Gas she produced all the time now. "Shouldn't we use the MP Liquid we generate?"

Adam was humming. {{No, this is cheaper for us and works good enough to jumpstart the process. Once the top and bottom of the towers have their seven magic springs kicked into gear, they will eventually produce enough energy quickly enough that the delay won't matter much and we can get more done without waiting to build up more liquid magic.}}

Fair enough. "We can't keep this area open like this though, some warship could just blast the area or something… Right, the INSIDE might need to be all normal and stuff, but we can set up a basic copper wall, right?"

She felt him wince. {{It would be REALLY basic. Like, embarrassingly so.}} Schematics flowed for her to compare. {{Copper is great stuff when used for areas exposed to seawater even WITHOUT magical reinforcement, but our supplies of that are not astounding. It might be best to create a series of magic pillars like the two at the entrance to Wutai Cove and cheat a bit.}}

A thin framework shell coated with regular copper ore seed fragments that would eventually grow to fill out the pattern, a series of tubes that allowed mako to flow from tower to tower while ore would grow like moss on the outside, other cheaper and more plentiful patterns that flashed by and gave option after option. "This one, but let me keep looking over the rest for now."

Yeah, it felt like the best option. A near rope thick net connecting each copper tower of magic, with a weave of iron filling all the cracks and a thick layer of copper seeding on the surface.

The iron would give basic defense and strength to the structure while the artificial Lifestream in the walls would allow the copper ore seeds to grow over it all and create ablative shielding if an attack occurs.

It would also be an easy source of copper to harvest in the future, for either Sarah herself or her dad's kingdom and people. Not enough though. "Do we have any designs for efficient ore production facilities? I don't want our friends needing to rely on Shinra for basic construction material."

Adam snorted. {{Not after the wall framework gets built. Maybe after a week or so, when all the towers build up a magical surplus. As it is, your new island trade and shipment hub island will have to be mostly made out of our much cheaper and heavily stored up iron reserves, with only our island's magic tower network actually using the excess copper for construction.}}

Sarah winced as she checked her design, biting her lip. "Should… Should I go with a cheaper pattern?"

He hummed. {{Nah, this is a good idea. Especially if we create an underground orb with 49 magic springs down here, under the entry port for Wutai's Cove and under these two primary towers.}}

Huh. "Why?"

A sigh. {{Because I can transfer Eve down there. It will be secured and easily supply her needs and the needs of her host and cell networks, while letting her properly connect to Gaia and her systems as well.}}

Sarah felt something hurt inside. "But… Can't we just keep her with us?"

A sigh. {{Those abilities are lost to the Warehouse. Sure, we could let her live life in your systems while we are here… But not during any Jump.}}

Data scrolled. {{It takes an active amount of usable systems to keep her safe in here, as well as any and all other living creatures and patients. Not a noticeable amount, but some. During a Jump however, everything including your Avatar gets safely stored away and shut down. They couldn't survive it.}}

But… "Could… Could I stay awake during it?"

The feeling of a warm hug. {{No. And even if you did, the amount of time I spend alone between each Jump is very significant… While you would of course survive and be fine physically for untold eons during transit, nothing else could. Even Eve would die eventually, from old age if nothing else.}}

Damn it. "What does that mean for my last Jumps?"

Adam hummed. {{Time acts odd. Old Jumps are disconnected from next Jumps, the chain forged betwixt them slowly stabilizes that chaos into something that protects your path and journey into power. Even if we didn't jump back to the exact moment we left, the time spent between Jumps doesn't add into the math normally… And some places and Jumps have different time rates than other ones if you try to compare them. In fact, a few places actually run BACKWARD in time if this data is correct, but we can't tell because we are IN it at the time and uh… Yeah.}}

Sorry Boss. "I have no clue what that means."

He gave an embarrassed chuckle. {{Sorry. Uh… Basically, the actual trip between Jumps is both nearly forever and yet also instantaneous. And due to damage, nothing and no one can make that trip safely but you yourself and me, your Warehouse.}}

Fine. She could adapt. "Then we best make sure Eve's new home is beyond awesome!"

The design is shifted. {{Yeah, Gaia might have far more mako in very dense formations, but our little Eve is going to be able to hold her own too! And we can add enough protective layers that even a massive meteor summoned from beyond existence by an emo one winged killer clone baby couldn't scratch it!}}

She blinked. "That sounds… Oddly specific?"

Adam hummed. {{Nah, it's fine now that you kidnapped him and turned him into a blue angel baby with dozens of siblings.}}

No! "That is NOT on me! YOU were supposed to keep an eye on them while getting healed and it was YOUR job to prevent crazy shit like that from happening! I was busy stealing stuff and saving the day!"

Adam grinned. {{It wasn't ME that an alien goddess used as an example of beauty, I bet most the girls end up looking like your kids after this anyway!}}

Oh Gaia they probably would. Shit! "Well, uh. She is now bright blue like YOUR flames! So are the kids too!"

A smirk. {{And she has YOUR silver hair.}}

Hey! "Her hair is BEAUTIFUL, you leave that out of this!"

He rolled his eye sockets. {{EVERYTHING about you and her is beautiful, your argument is invalid.}}

Oh nuh uh! "Your FACE is invalid!"

{{This is SO embarrassing.}}

Ah! "Eve!?" {{Oops.}}

{{Yes silver boned daughter?}}

Her face lit up in a massive blush. {Did you hear… I mean, how long have we been broadcasting?}

{{...I really like your designs for my new home?}}

Shit.

{{Yeah, sorry, that's my bad. I'm trying to fix all the newly designed networking systems and it is all still sort of cobbled together. Especially since I'm still suppressing us from the Gaia's existing communications until we finish helping the victims.}}

{{It's fine, blue skeletal flames of the father boning. We can wait until our babies are better.}}

{{Oh come on! Just call me Adam! That other thing is both embarrassing and pretentious!}}

Focus Sarah! Shove the embarrassment aside, distract yourself by designing an iron reinforced copper mesh magic wall connected to a reinforced magic saturating underground goddess core!

Shame is a phase, building is forever, and boy howdy… Boss can really screw up when he's distracted. Not like her. Cause she's totally never distracted.

{{I don't understand the issue, blue skeletal flames of the father boning.}}

{{I'd explain it but I'm worried you will somehow make my 'name' longer if I try!}}

Besides, they hadn't even started on the new island design, she had lots to do. Lots and lots of distracting and important things to do.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Tifa wasn't sure what to say. "It's… Nice?"

Cloud was much more relaxed for some reason. "Why do only the fat blue flowers have beards?"

Aerith sighed. "Because beards show you are in charge, while mustache's show you have style."

Yuffie giggled. "It took forever to find glue that would stick to the petals but wouldn't hurt the plant. Tape just kept coming off!"

Tifa gave up. "But why though?"

The smallest one shrugged. "Gaia likes the 'stache."

Yuffie pulled the small one into her lap for cuddles. "Gaia is her name for the Planet."

Cloud perked up! "My new magic cleaning teacher works for Gaia! Tifa's mom said she is like her favorite fighter or something!"

Tifa held back sniffles. Mommy said she would get better, and mommy knew best. "Yeah, the Blue Lady didn't mention anything about mustaches though."

Yuffie blinked. "Blue lady?"

Cloud shrugged. "She wears blue."

The thief blinked. "But wasn't Sarah wearing a bandit outfit? Or was it a robber costume?"

Aerith groaned, slumping against her most recent kidnapper. "She's backsliding. I keep telling her don't steal things, or places, or people… But then she finds hurt babies and stuff, and I can't tell her to NOT steal a hurt baby! That would be bad TOO!"

Cloud paused. "I… Don't think either of us count as hurt babies? Do we?"

Tifa pat his arm. "It's fine, you'd be a big baby."

He beamed! "Yeah! I'd be the BIGGEST baby!"

Yuffie was snickering for some reason, but the topic did bring something up Cloud wanted to know. "We were all working out and training and stuff when the Blue Lady got super scary mad and did stuff, and I haven't seen her much since we were stolen. Is she okay?"

Aerith sighed. "Sort of? Gaia says she is feeling less rage from her, but that big sis is blocking off communication because for a while she was SUPER mad."

Cloud hummed. "She did catch on fire and melt stone when she left. Also, she had this cool bone armor and a flaming spear! It was so cool!"

The surprised girls turned toward Tifa when she sighed. "Master Zangan won't teach ME how to catch myself on fire until I can touch lava without being burned. But that's going to take forever!"

The older thief seemed hesitant for some reason. "Uh. Keep on working on it?"

Aerith blinked. "Huh. That's odd."

Cloud was helping comb the bushy mustaches on the roses, which was hard to do with a paper mustache. "What?"

The youngest one was looking somewhere. "Gaia is laughing and I don't know why… Something is ticklish? Huh."

Tifa nodded, wise with her many years of wisdom. "Tickles are cheating during a fight."

Cloud frowned! "But you ALWAYS do it!"

Uh. Think quick! "Tickles are cheating when OTHER people use them in a fight."

Nailed it!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked as the thin random mini-currents of Lifestream that seemed to wiggle. {{Huh. Is there any problems with your construction so far?}}

Sarah was [[Harvesting]] the surprisingly debris free and clear seabed outside the slowly empowering Wall of Eve. "No? Though something feels all squiggly when I embed one of the magic towers under each of these artificial reefs."

It was Adam's theory that the constant monsters and massive currents and waves and such had scoured a lot of the seafloor clear of useful holes and hiding places for fish and sea plants to hide and grow in, so they were trying to fix it.

Thanks to hacking most of Shinra's infrastructure on an ongoing basis, PLUS that one company basically owning most of the planet's networking and public data storage and so on and so forth, 'Research' had lots of data to work with to make this idea work.

First, while more 'costly' to use, Adam had found that steel worked best for underwater ocean structures. Wouldn't poison anything, and thanks to the iron generation rates in the Warehouse it was easy enough to handle this major project.

Secondly, the tiny magic towers (Just the Sethahedron of Mana Springs this time) would not only ensure lots of available mako for local sea life but was able to provide a minor amount of electrical current to run through the artificial reef being constructed down here.

With low voltage electricity passed through the structure it first provides cathodic protection to the structure preventing it from rusting or corroding… Although that is mostly covered thanks to the excess magic from the buried tower below.

Secondly though, this electrolysis causes minerals from the sea water to precipitate out and collect on the metal which was a beneficial environment for the growth of ACTUAL corals and other calcium carbonate secreting organisms, which even if NOT enhanced by all the local magic levels should grow much faster and survive better even with theoretical future problems.

Though, just in case, Adam also ensured Sarah was [[Harvesting]] super deep anchor pits and securing them with massive steel structures as well, even if THOSE steel designs had an arm sized tunnel of copper in the center that connected from the magic tower deep downwards.

Better connection to Gaia, better integration with the local Lifestreams… But again, it was making the natural mako all wiggly and stuff.

Maybe they shouldn't have made all the structures with those 'Uncertainty Patterns' that Eve's life pod used? But it didn't SEEM to be causing a problem, just odd reactions. And using uncertainty patterns boosted local magical potential slightly just by existing so uh.

It should be fine?

ANYWAY, the plan (if nothing obviously goes wrong) was to make everything out of steel frameworks with low level of electrical voltage and lots of produced magic, connected down from a magic tower to below the foundational supports system with copper connectors.

Sarah sighed, her body floating over the water by trying to push away the seafloor via telekinesis. "Let's just make the seven huge wave break towers first, then come back to this and see what the mako patterns do while we wait."

Adam carefully marked the locations as she began rapidly forming the massive steel towers that rose from far below the standard sea floor and rose upwards.

Each of the seven structures would have a magic empowered light on the top of the spire, with colors ranging from red on the port (left) side, to white (middle), to green on the starboard (right) side. The rest of the sides NOT facing out to sea would be bright purple.

When outside the seven towers coming in during a storm, each tower would warn a ship or boat where the massive steel structures were, if you were heading in toward the half circle of structures or accidentally targeting a much further one BEHIND your target, and so on and so forth.

More importantly though, Adam was hopeful that either Gaia or Eve could use these massive towers of metal and magic to manipulate currents and weather to some degree.

He might have to set something up with some Fire and Ice Materia for Sarah to install later on or something, but ideally these big structures that would be hit FIRST by incoming waves could reduce any further issues for the protected areas within.

Sarah carefully finished the now glowing glass cap with the colored sections of material ready to glow (Thank you, Lightning Materia)... And slumped on top. "Sheesh! And we gotta do six MORE of these things!?"

She carefully leaned forward, looking far down to the slow swelling and falling waves. "Crud… I think we'll have to modify this thing to have similar light patterns up and down it too. Much thinner ones, basically rings instead of this huge cap on top, but this stupid thing is too tall and a vessel might hit the base while watching the top or something stupid like that."

Adam hummed. {{Wait for the magic tower in the foundation to begin pumping mako up here first. It will make it cheaper to [[Restructure]] the design of the middle segments if they have lots of potential change charges saturating it all.}}

Sarah groaned. "I thought that [[Restructure]] was still being tested? Something about how stuff shifts when trying to manipulate it like that?"

Meh. {{That's why this is a good test! Anything goes wrong, we can just start over.}}

She huffed. "Easy for YOU to say, I have to keep 'flying' and this is an exhausting way to do that!"

Uh huh. {{Oh is it?}}

The woman slumped. "Mentally I mean. It's mentally exhausting."

Nope. Adam was literally Sarah's Warehouse, he knew better. {{Mmm Hmm?}}

The ocean waves crashed slowly and quietly around the massive steel lighthouse column towering over the sea.

She sighed. "No, I'm just frustrated and wanted a break. That Shinra shit and Hojo's fucked up stuff really felt like crap, and I keep getting worried about Eve's kids, the actual ones and the adults she seems to have adopted."

A pause. "Also, I'm worried that some of those saved employees might actually deserve to be tortured, depending on how enthusiastic they were working for Hojo and what other actions they might have done. And I don't want to think about that, or deal with that right now either."

Fair enough. {{Let your dad handle it, Elder Godo has people who can take care of them all one way or another.}} Shinra certainly had lots of records, and it wasn't like they left Wutai existing after their 'victorious' war by CHOICE, after all.

She slumped. "Can I though? It feels wrong to try and relax with so much important stuff going on."

Sigh. Fair enough. {{Tell you what, you go play with the kids and your sisters, maybe teach Cloud something about magic or whatever. I'll hijack your [[Phase Pierce]] skill and take over construction of the more boring lighthouse spires and set up the basic reef structures. After you feel better, we can come back and talk about building the international harbor and a huge metal island, alright?}}

Her tired smile made this worth it. "Thanks, Boss."

Anytime, my Jumper. {{Go help the kids put paper mustaches on flowers, I'm sure you'll have a blast.}}

And she was gone, even as the data feed from [[Phase Pierce]] activated and kept Adam focused on the next six lighthouse spires-to-be.

[[Restructure!]]

The towering steel ocean structure shifted! Glass was pulled from resources and more cautious alterations allowed each section to both be visible externally AND still structurally support the rest of the tower!

Easy peasy!

Adam's grin slipped… As did the several segments of the lighthouse that for SOME REASON didn't bind together after being reshaped.

Shit.

Well, it WAS a new technique. Normally they would just build a replacement and teleport out the previous section. This was uh. Much less accurate and refined. So far.

Best try again.

[[Harvest.]]

Eugh, there were fractures and damage throughout the whole mess IGNORING the literal collapse issues. He would have to do all kinds of tests to find out WHY it went so badly.

Later. In private, with no witnesses when more problems crop up.

Uh. Just in case though, best lock away [[Restructure]] from Sarah until the results were less crappy. Though it WOULD be a very effective surprise attack? Maybe?

Adam sighed, setting up the new schematics for construction and marking the 'test results' as 'Successful, but needs modification.'

It DID change the structure after all. Just uh. Not to the planned result.

Still, progress!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah blinked. "Oh."

Something had basically tugged her off course when she was moving towards Aerith, and being a curious person… She had decided to allow it. It was more a 'Please go here' pull anyway rather than any attempt at forcing the issue, not that such a thing was likely to work.

And she was now in a massive cavern, covered in glowing green crystals. Deep bubbling thick green syrup flowing from a massive central mound, a mist of green fog in the air. Cool!

It was very pretty, and everything smelled like mint for some reason. "Alright, this is pretty neat."

.

.

{̒ͭ͌̌͊͊̀҉{̬̙̦̿ͭ͑ͥ̓̃C̽ͨ́ͪ̓̽ͫ̔̿ͥ͗̚҉̶͈̣̟͈͔̪̳̱͎́ͅo͛͐̂̋̽̆ͩͣͫ̽͂̂̌͌ͥ̚̚͏̫̫̪̥͍̱̠̻̗̳n̶̤͍͕̥͌̂̔ͧ̄̍̾̊ͣ͘͞c̸̳͕͚̩̼͚̝̼̙͓͔̩̥̣̫̰̖ͭͪͭ̍̎̀ͭ͢͜ȅ̍̽̃̌̈́ͨ̊̎̒ͫ͏̼̱̼͍̝̝̲̫̺̯̝̪rͦͫ͊ͯ̉́͞҉̸̡͙͉̝̼̬̜͎n̛͚̜͓̠͕͈̮ͣ̽ͨͥ̈́̉̅͠ͅ!̢̺̙̠̩͍̙͙̙̍ͫ̊ͯ͂̓̂̅̀͗̑ͪ͌͗̚̚͟͟͢͞ͅͅ ͚͚̣̣̹͇́͆̉̈C̠̘͒͠h̛̲̐ͯ̂ͨ̇i̥͎ͤ͊͑͗ͪlͯ̏̎͛͆̏̉d͈̯̝͙̤̰͗̎̋̃̀ ̶̜̺͎s̮̓ͮ͌ͯͪ͞a̸̰͕̗̮ͨͫ̂̂ͤf̙̗̻̗͊͒͢e̝̗̥̳ͥ͊̇̈̉̆!̞̰͒ͬ?̱͓ͬ ͔̝̭̯͚͙C̘͉̄̒ͤ͛͒͆͝ḥ̶͍̓̏̉ͧ̃ͥ̀i̓̄͋̿̎̿̍̀l̘͔̘̥̹͙ͬ͂͒̍̊ḏ̯̥̹̜̽͑ ̭̣̰̫̞̹̺̌̍̒͢h̡͖͈̲̬̥ͥ́ͅu̱͊ͬ̂͗ͤͤṟ̨̺̑͆̔ͯ̔t̼̰̦̾͐̒?̻͔̭̱̳ͤͣ̾͘ ̪̝̥̗̿̍̊̏ͣ̕W̸̶̛̗̻̩̳̬͔̣͚̞̻͚̖̖̱̼͔̱ͩͭͦ̓͂͛̅ͬͪ́͡ơ̖̙̲͔̱͓͔̗͕̯̿̏̈́ͥ̎͂̎̓͊̓͌ͮ̔ͥ͘̕͢͞ȓ̛̞͉͎̱̪̲ͩ̒̏́̇ͨ̃ͨ͝ͅͅr̸̘̻͇̬̹̬͖̳̤̳̜̟̳̯̥͎̿́̿͗̈́̒̏ͭ͐͊̀ͧ̋͠ẙ̴̷̱̜̞̱̘̩͚͙͕͉̜̒͋̃ͬ͛̆̈́́̌̀̚̕!̨̪̺̙̰͍̲̱̩͎̝̮̻͒̓͆̑̽̇̎̚̚͝}̳̣͍͈̖ͩ͂̊̓̔}̧ͭ̆ͤ̓̎̂

.

.

Holy FUCK! "AHH! SHH!" Her BRAIN!

.

{̟͖̙̻͂{̧͎̓̔̌͒͂ͪC̵o͇̟͕͍̪͈ͭ̔̄̀n̨̰͖̻̣͕ͅć̯̣̮̱̮̫ê͕͍̮̠̐͛ͬ̽r͑͋͂̍̊̆̍n͕̬̳̞͑̿́̎ͤ́̚.̩̖͙̦ͦ͂ ̮̫̥̫̓͛C͓̖͎̣ͣ͑̉̏̅͒ͦo̰n̯̥͕͎̣̬͔̎ͬ̊s̙͙̼̻͍̘̣͛͝ẗ̮̰́̎̒̅͢e̬̖̳̹̺͐r͎̎͐̆͒ͧ̚͘ň̮̗̔̃ą̳͆̌ti͓̊ͩ̏̓o̱̖͎͎͓̎̆̊̏ͦ̀n͔̩̟̘ͧ̆.͉̄̋ͧ̂̓̑̚͠ ̟͚̜̭̦̈́͠A͛̇̋ͬ̀̚p̢̻̩̖̱̗ͬoͣ͋̉͗̊͂ͭ҉̻̹͔l̥̮̣̦͙̰̓̆̂͂͆͆̀o̜͒̂ģ̘̜͉̳̼̺̗̿̓͌̉͊̎y̐̋̒͗̽͞.̛̖̝̫̹͓̈́ͨ̊}̲̅}̥̩̰͐͂̓̅͆

.

Like, holy shit that hurt! "Yeah, don't do that to anyone else, Gaia. That would have melted most people's brains, at minimum." Ow, it had so many flavors and images and memories and emotions!

Sheesh. "Don't say anything for a second, and I can try and get a work around. Hey, Adam?"

His attention returned. {{Yes? Wait, what!? Where are you!? And how the HELL can I use your special ability to see what I'm doing over here if you are all the way over in… Is that the Northern Cave!?}}

Uh. "Maybe?"

Adam blinked. {{Well, shit. You just warped two continents away to one of the cores of the Planet. Damn.}}

What? "Where am I then?"

A map showed up. {{The northern section of the globe, called by the locals as 'The Icicle Area', on the North Continent. It's fairly close to where Eve's seed landed initially, and this chamber is one of the very few of Gaia's core nodes that even exist! Like, holy crap!}}

Sarah blinked. "Uh. Wow. That's kind of insane. Why'd you bring me here, Gaia? What if I broke something?"

.

{̛̫̂ͩ̽̓̀͐{͔͓̖̲ͭ͋̐̒ͤ̊̒T̰̰͍͍͊̽̆͢r̓ͫ̅ͫ̽̋͡uͩ̈̔͂͛͜s̷̺̣̫̈̈́̑̊̄̆̆t̜̣̲͎̙̙̜̉̒̃ͫ̀.̴̲̮͙̪̫͎̥͊ͯ̿ ̲̥̳̟̪̳ͨ̊͂̊͌ͣͭͅF̷̈́ͦ̽rͦ͛̄ͨ͑ȋ̴̳͔͉̤̫ͤ͂ͅę̗̝͍̻̮̝͕̽ͫn̝̖̼̑͗͑ͦ̿d̳̫̐ͧ̓ͯ͑̎̐ͅ.͉̈́̿̂͌ ̷̰̼͙̫̲̅͛͆B̨̥̙̭ͫ̏̌ǫ̉̉́́n͎̝̆ͦ̽͞d̖̿ŝ̰̘̼̣͇̜̽̾̽̀ͣ ͚͖͔̥̥͘ͅò͖͚̣̫̞̾̄̔̈̔͞f̜̫͔̖̞̌̊̉͒ͪ ̨͔̖̲̌̾̎̾̾ͨ͋Ļ̝͙̝̱́̅o̻̹̩̻̯̿ͨͥ́̊͆vͭ̇ͣͪ͑̔̾e̗͍͉̦͈.͚ͪ̍ͦ͐͜}̶̣͙͉̝̫͍͈̾͛͛͂̅̏̚}̱̺̙̘͈͈͎

.

She blushed.

Adam was examining the area. {{No wonder I didn't notice a problem, with [[Phase Pierce]] active and you standing basically INSIDE one of the few core nodes to the entire Planet I'd be shocked if there is anything you COULDN'T detect right now. I'm going to send the raw data into a special database, 'Research' is going to love this!}}

Sarah rolled her eyes. Nerd. "But why here, Gaia?"

.

{͚̺͇̺͉̬͕́̍͗̔͊͌͜{̳̞̲̙͒̎́ͮ̀̊ͪ͜L̩͓͖ͦ͐o͉̹ͣ̋v̛͖̺e̡͖̦̼̟ͦͩͩ̔d̲̹̹̀̾͛̇ ̦̪̗ͦ͌̆o̢̼̪̘̫̭̫͌͌ͅn̰͚̮̩͚ͣ̽ͫ̈́͟e̗͎̭͕͔ͮͨͥ͆̂ ̷̹̜̰̮̈́̆̃ͥͧ̈́̐c͇̱̼ͮ̋̋͊r̠̜͚̓ŷ̸̳̘̑̃ͧ̉i̺͌͋ͤͅn͐̇̒̓̆̎͛͞g͕͉̲̖̟̖͗̕ ̝̒̒̇͡a̡̖̥̼̤͚ͣ͒̽͗ͫͭl̠̹̣̬̦͂͊͋ͧͪ͢o͓̭̮̯̗̹ͨ̈́̍͐̇̏n̯̝̙̰̘̲͎͑͌ͮͥ͋e͌͡ͅ,̛̪̻̳ͥ̅͋ ̈̓́͂ͨ̽͐f͈̥̤͒r͚̤̥͗̃̐͝i̲̪̜̺̳̇̈̏ͫ̿́̅͝e̹͍̝̳͔̲͕ͮ̈́̆̄̈́n̠͈̱̭̓ͅd̅̾ͮͯ́̅͏͍s̩̳͎̜̤͔͋̄͊̒͑ͬͣ ̫̮̫̜̱̱̟̉ͪ͂ͧ̀̽̕cͧ͑̀l̟̿͒͗̾͝ô̭̯̖̞͔̑́̄̃̇s̺̖͚̭͗e͘d͈̟ͨ̀͋ ̨̘͚̈̿̓o̘͢f̨̖̼̘̳̰̀͒f̡ͪͦͥ͗̂ͯͬ.͔̪͙̍͡ ̃͐͒͆Ăͬ͑͋̌̏҉̬̤ ͇̠͎̐w̛͙̠̝̞̟̰͌̉ͧͦ̀̋̔o̖̱͚̠͎͜r̩̱͐́ͬr̢̰̘͊͗̇̔i͖̼̝͓͔͗̽e̞͕͇̤ͨͅd̨̞̘̹͓͙̺ͮ̌̀̋ͅ ̶̳̦͙̔ͯ͒A̤̤̠̰̻̬ͤͯͦ̂͟e̠͈r͔ͦ͞í͖̜͇̈́ͣ̃͜t̺̪͔̥͙̖̠ͪͬ̇̃͂ͫh̤̻̼̄.̰̠̦̞̻̆̓ͩ}̓ͭ͂͊̌҉̱̬̘͙}̹̪͇̏̊ͨ

.

Adam winced. {{Damn that's loud. And that is AFTER toning it down?}}

She waved him off. "Gaia, we are going to connect again, we're just making a safe place to put Eve and her children."

.

{́{̱̘̻̤̦̘C̶͙̲̻͙̔ͧ͗ṙ̴̹͉y̖̳ͧ͆i͐̑͜n̗̭͈̬̣͇̅̌ͣ͝g̡̭ ͏̟͙͔̬̠̩b̼̠ͦ̿̆̈̆̚a͚͈͈̝͔͍̅b̡̹̱̩̠̠ͥͩ̾ͩ͐i͐ͨ̌͒̃̇̚e͈̦̫̘͗ͅs̴̪̻̻̻̜̋̒͌ͨ͌ͨ,̥̝̼͗̊́ ̧̪̒̐̀s͚̪̣̪̯͕̘͊ͣ̑̽͐͛̊a̺̘͇͓̘̜ͨ̌ͧ̽͗̆̀f͇͛̑͌͆ͭ̔e̝̠̖̞̰̗̹̓ͨ ̰͞a͈̞͑ͪ͂̄ͯͤͦ͡n͇̳̪͉̺d̴̹̘͈ ̝̣̻̯̦̝ͩ̽͝w̶̼̪͖̫͖ar̖̝̖̐̋̆m͍̱̊̂̎̓̽̎͒ ̦͇̼̹͈͚͊́̈́ā̴͕̱̩̞̫̲̎ͤn̵̤͈͉̬͈ͭͩ̇ͅd̷̯ͯ̓ ̻̣̃ͬͫ̿ͣͣp̩̀ͯ͋r̖̯͓̟̜ͣ̇ͭ̀o̱̺̮̪̦͢t̷͉͙͔̥̗ȅ̒̒ͯ̾ĉ̨͍̤̞͔̰̝t̷̲e̥ͨ͐̋̀ͥ̔̇dͤ̓҉̥̘͖?̧̅̎ͪͨ}͕̮̼̠ͧͬ͞}̧̖̙͖͇̝̇̏̌͛ͤ

.

Sarah nodded. "Exactly. And Adam is rebuilding the whole communication thing, so you can talk to us and Eve and her kids and her children's symbiotes and uh. Yeah."

.

{̯̇̿͌{̲̈͐ͪ͒̈͑̚.̯̰̪̗͎͙ͫ̐͊ͧ.͈̱̗̦͇ͬ.͚̅̎͛̇ͣ̾͂C̲̖ͤo̝̳ͥ̇̌̅n̪̙̱͎͙̥̻ͧ͊f͍̞̻̑̈́ụ̏̅s̫̞̻͎̏͐̓̐̇ͥ̊iͣͨ̔͒o̙̺̥͉̻̤ͬ̓ͤͮ̉̇ṅ̙̰͙͎̽́͐?̜̤̯͕̔ͦ̒}͎̪͉̠͙͛ͭ̋̓͆̓͗}̹̣

.

Not HER fault! "It's something Adam did."

{{Hey!}}

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Godo sighed. "Just call off all expeditions and fishing vessels. For today, use my resources to lock down our harbor until my daughter finishes doing impossible things in the sea."

Nothing nodded, but hesitated. "Elder, not all will follow such wisdom, even with compensation."

No matter. "I am not here to protect those who defy good sense and ignore competent instruction. If they crash their vessels while ignoring the short term lockdown, they will pay for any damages AND a fine as an apology for wasting our time."

It will be done. Nothing was there.

He moved back to the main room, where a horrified Commander was reading documents brought by young Sarah. "I personally have not reviewed the data in question, but I assume from contextual clues that the situation was dire?"

Commander Rogers was crying, without care, as his hands carefully moved files in some sort of order. "Several of these people were reported as missing. Or killed, due to combat, laboratory accidents, or incompetence."

Dark news indeed. "Then it is for the best that they are in the hands of the Planet, albeit in a more literal case than usual considering my daughter's relationship with our world."

The strangled chuckle was encouraging. "Have you received new orders?"

The emotionally shaken man shook his head. "Can't talk about them, but I can say that in general no new actions will be taken shortly."

Of course not, the infiltration team intercepted the 'Hold in place, do nothing, management in quarantine' orders earlier. Still, it was good practice to observe the niceties of society. "Then we best talk about the many incoming people who will be arriving here at Wutai shortly."

The man was suddenly focused. "Something more went wrong?"

His thoughts drifted to the descriptions, the files on the 'kidnapped' victims. "Nothing additional has been the cause of this, but I am sure you understand that anyone undergoing such... Conditions… would need more than just physical medical care."

And, if it were him or (even worse) his family, a few people would be required to prevent a nasty rampage. "A number of child care workers and mental medical professionals will be arriving over the course of the week, and I wished to inform you as it will be best to have witnesses ensuring we treat our unexpected guests with dignity and respect as any victim deserves."

Several people in Wutai lost loved ones after all, the war with Shinra wasn't THAT old and forgotten… But these poor souls did not deserve to be targeted by such. Best to involve these sympathetic personnel, at the very least.

The man gratefully accepted the napkin, cleaning his eyes. "Such consideration is greatly appreciated. Though I was under the impression that our men would be assisting with childcare? Would we still be needed if professionals are being brought in?"

He held back a snort. "Considering the sixty children are likely to be a handful, even with your help it may not be enough." Well, after the births it would be sixty-two instead of the current fifty-nine, but the idea was basically the same.

Plus, watching a professional soldier and leader of many men stutter like a lad on his first date was a fulfilling pastime.

Commander Rodger glared at him in denial. "You can't be serious!? That isn't funny!"

He grinned. "If that caught you off guard, I am eager to see how you react to the wings."

Elder Godo wasn't going to let Elmyra monopolize the little blue adorable ones, but based on how cute they looked she was certainly going to try.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elmyra Gainsborough grinned! "Oh you are all so precious! Now, like we practiced. All settled? One! Two! Ready? Go!"

Four lovely young 'ladies' in pink dresses (And obviously wearing brand new fake mustaches, thank you Captain Newcastle!) attempted to dance, but uh. Well... Yuffie dear gave it a good try, but the other little ones sort of wrangled about and spasmed. "Wonderful!"

She should go bother Elder Godo for a camera! That was a man with a secret stash of family photos, she could just FEEL it!

Tifa was having trouble with the poofy parts of the outfit. "I can't see my feet and the bottom part gets in my way! How do you even fight in this?"

Aerith was having an easier time because she was on her Yuffie-mobile so only had to wave her arms about, thus it was easier to talk at the same time. "I don't know. What would your teacher guy say?"

Cloud was sort of wriggling in place. "MRPHLE!"

Tifa blinked. "Uh… Sensei Zangan would probably say it is precision and movement training. To not tear anything or get tripped up and stuff."

Aerith nearly fell, but managed to stay up by only slightly choking Yuffie with her legs and twisting a bit. "Well, there you go. And I think Cloud's mustache fell off. Maybe. I can't see his face from here."

The pink mound of cloth was wiggling to the imaginary beat. "CLURFLE!"

Yuffie was giggling pretty hard despite her near death choking incident earlier in the dance. "I told him that was too much stuff!"

Claudia Strife grinned from the background! "My baby wants the biggest dress, he gets what he wants!"

Aerith pouted! "It's still unfair that he looks prettier than us like that."

Tifa waved it off. "You get used to it. Right, I'm going to try and do a twirl!"

It did not go well, but the mothers appreciated her attempt anyway.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Due to including magic towers in the foundation of each artificial reef, not to mention the minor electrical generators that ran on that same magic to give the low voltage current, Adam ended up going with a basic pattern.

Inside the half circle of ocean surrounded by the seven lighthouses (Only three redesigns needed!) were a set of seven rings of stainless steel, thick and solid and formed with 'Uncertainty Patterns' even though it wasn't actually filled with mako or magic directly.

Theoretically, the seven spots on each ring, with the closer rings alternating positions so that they didn't line up, would fix the issue.

On each of those seven spots (Forty-nine, total), was one of the new stainless steel magic reefs. The outermost rings were given fake reefs with very basic and thin bramble designs, only usable for tiny fish, while each ring closer to the middle were formed with thicker structures and larger formations to better blunt currents and support bigger sea life.

And hopefully also help breed tasty monsters, since those existed everywhere anyway and would follow any fish to this place.

Speaking of which, since Sarah was currently talking to Gaia in the Northern Cave anyway and he could see a WHOLE bunch of shit, might as well use this to cheat.

Scans of what hacked databases claimed to be the tastiest local fish? Yoink!

And now? A quick run through with 'Enhance Self', some recovery serums, one to ensure healthy children and few birth defects, another to clean out parasites… Good. And might as well cover all these reefs in samples of their favorite food, an odd type of local kelp. After improving the stuff to be nutritious and so on and so forth.

Sure, the psionic abilities would decay away rapidly before Adam took the new scans for use, but it still left a genetically improved fish and plant pair to fill out this near empty local food chain.

Seriously, why is most of the sea near Wutai Village scoured clear like this? It's an absurd amount of damage. At least any future storms or whatever won't even dent the new reef system in place.

Making your own though did mean it was easy to ensure none would get in the way with the future, currently non-existent island. Maybe he could make a few artificial fishing spots closer to land? The edges would be smooth like the ones down here, no reason to add razor sharp material where people could go, and it might suck if your fishing line caught on the metal...

Adam blinked as a WAVE of magic flowed through the area.

Uh. What?

The wave of power didn't go away either.

It was building up.

Rapidly.

Sarah suddenly felt the same. "Adam? What the heck just happened!? Gaia says it tickles a LOT!"

Uh. Shit. {{Just a few bumps testing something.}} Probably. {{Let me double check though, just in case.}} Right, at least it was easy to see where it was coming from.

The two pillars of Eve's Wall, above Eve's Chamber.

Apparently, the weak magical gas in the fourteen magical springs (the top and bottom magic towers) had managed to form some basic magical liquid.

And Liquid Mako had hit the new design HARD.

'Research' was beyond helpful like always. {{Uh. Shit. Right, this is technically not a problem.}}

Sarah was glaring from far away. "Adam?"

Yeah, this was his fault. {{Remember how powerful the Mako Reactor was on Mt. Nibel?}}

She frowned. "No, actually. You said it was mostly broken and didn't follow designs and all kinds of stuff."

Yep. {{ALL of Shinra's stuff is like that.}}

He pulled up the schematics. {{Using the basic magic spring, we replaced that entire Mako Reactor entirely. Even had to scale down the energy usage a bit so we wouldn't get instantly caught, right?}}

Sarah blinked. "Yes?"

Damn it, Adam got caught up with the whole seven symmetry stuff and how fun it was to set up. {{That crappy design was STILL enough to power a whole town AND send off energy and grow metal and stuff for Shinra. Even if it wasn't profitable, it WAS a power extractor.}}

Schematics showed up. {{First issue, we used GOOD material. Damned good stuff that was tested to work really, REALLY well with mako directly. Secondly, our design generates magic directly using small pseudo planet cores. Not as much as a full Planet, of course, but normally these things ONLY work with local Lifestream flows.}}

Sarah blinked. "So our magic generator makes more magic than the Mako Reactor extracts from the Planet?"

Not quite. {{No, it wasn't supposed to. But ours operates very efficiently with high quality material… And our magic spring hardware can be enhanced by magic FAR BETTER than the random crap junk used to build the stuff Shinra was happy to set up.}}

She frowned as more data came in. "So the same magic that prevents Shinra's crap from exploding and that lets their ugly stuff somehow work well enough to produce results anyway… Is doing similar boosts to the magic spring design too?"

Adam grumbled. {{Oh yeah. And once one of the springs began supplying the others in the Sethahedron Towers, well… It all cascaded and sped up the enhancement speed and mako density of the rest.}}

Sarah watched the drastically adjusted timelines until one of those towers completely converted into producing liquid magic… Then solidifying to solid Materia crystal. "Holy crap."

Yeah. {{Then I did the stupid.}}

She paused. "What? It worked, right?"

Oh yes it worked. {{Remember, how those are set up in that special shape? And I've pushed us to follow the 'efficiency' rules when setting up the others?}}

Not to mention using the uncertainty patterns, THAT didn't slow down the problem at all. {{Well, as the other patterns related to the existing ones begin to activate, the sum of the parts is causing each individual component to enhance the others nearby. Instead of a multiplicative effect, it's almost exponential.}}

One magic spring filled with weak gas magic would eventually be full of liquid mako in like a few weeks or so. All his time estimates were based on that data from 'Research', and he had gone in assuming it would be faster than that because this was going to be set up on Gaia's turf, and she already had her own Lifestream that would hopefully boost stuff.

The seven in the odd shape? Drastically faster production rates.

Connecting two of them together? A boost, but not a massive one. And a great way to trigger the acceleration of the connected magic springs, when one can send a seed sample of the next tier of mako density to the next area.

Connecting all these magic towers into Eve's Wall? Over a massive chamber designed for Eve herself!?

Crap. {{It isn't even slightly finished.}}

Sarah blinked. "What isn't?"

He glanced at the sea structures, all those mathematically 'efficient' patterns and symbolically significant locations and patterns. {{Eve's Wall and Eve's Chambers aren't even done fully converting to Liquid Mako yet but it's going to ramp itself up beyond quickly after it does! Shit, it will CERTAINLY jump almost instantly into Materia sand, possibly skip straight to solid Materia crystal all the way through!}}

She took a calming breath. "Alright, what should we do?"

Math was flashing past, but it was all a guess really. Magic threw ALL the damn 'Research' off, and the act of testing it could change the results because now they were more significant which increased stuff. {{It won't boost forever, once it solidifies it should stabilize. No chance of humans ever fixing this stuff though, even the glass in the lighthouses will be damned near impossible to scratch with all this energy pumped into it.}}

Sarah blinked. "Adam?"

They should have time, right? {{Thank goodness I already added the crystal framework supports made from copper to Eve's Chamber, we might barely have time to move her in before this all goes off if my estimates get even MORE inaccurate… And they SHOULD support the enhanced Planetary Network, and allow Gaia herself to copy the pattern for growth elsewhere for redundancy…}

His Jumper started frowning. "Adam."

Thank goodness the majority of Eve's healing chamber was made out of local metals, if he had used Warehouse material directly it would be impossible to just drop the whole mess into that Chamber. {{Oh, the outer shell would vanish as it was made from me, but I designed it like that so it should just slot in… But I can't separate her from the others like that, it could hurt them…}}

She rolled her eyes. "Hey Gaia, mind giving me a hand?"

Right, he would send the children and adult women with Eve's Cells to Aerith's house, the rest can wait in their medical pods inside the Warehouse safely enough and…

.

.

{̧̡̛̦̞̘̱̙̯̲̦͍̼͈͈͍̳̬̥͚̖͋ͭ͛͊̅̋͊ͨ̄̂̿̉ͅ{̛̰̙͉͖̺̮̘̺̦͚̬̥͙̄̑͊͐̏͂͞͝C̨͚̗̪͚͉̳͎̹̬̥̜̫̯̤̹̳͙̎̌̆ͯ̐̈́͑ͭ̄̉̄̈̂̚͞A͙̗̗̞͉̻̙̣͂͛ͣͩ̅̄̌͂ͯͨ̌̅̑̈́̏̈́͌͗͘͟L͚̟̫͎͕͚̬̪͖͖͌ͧͭͭͦ͠M̵̞̖̳̲̹̤̯̐̄̔ͯ̀̕Ĭ̦͚͔̭̬͈̫̱̟̰̭̮͔̞͍̭ͫ̔͡͝͡͡N̺͎͇̮̠̬̍ͩͫ͂̋̃ͪ́̋͛ͣ̎ͤ̓̑̋͘͜͡G͒ͭ́ͬ͂͐̿̓҉̛͍̙̹͓̘̺̥͎̝͕̰̙̕ ̡̢̱͍̲̦̯̏́͂ͫ̒͟͝A̧ͬ̾̐̎ͪ̍͛ͫͪ̍ͧ̅ͫ̀̚͏̵̰̯͇̼̱̻Fͩ͋̌̊͆̑ͨ̑̑̒̒́ͩ͏̸̶̫̮̘͉͓F͙̠̣̥͛ͯͣ̏ͥ̏ͥͣ̍͗̽̊̀͟͢͝͠ͅE͛ͥ̂̆͋̆̋͌҉̱̯̘̞͎̦C̡͚̹͈̣̬̗̊ͭ̌ͦ͌̉͊̂̏̃ͩ͟͡T̵̶̬͖̹̥̦̜̮̰̣̙̣͚̞̙̳̈́́͌̌͒͋̒̍́̈́͗̈ͫͯ͊͑ͫ̾͑̀͡I̵̛̦̩̟̹͙̾̌̊̉ͥͫ̑̃̃͘͢O͛̂̃̌́̀̓̅͜͠͞͡҉̳̼̹͇̲̟̠̭͈̫̬̫̝͖N̡̻̪̩͉̲ͣͦ͑̀.ͪ̒̄͌ͬ̏̅ͨͯ͆̇ͩ̓̀͌̚͏̶̛̲̹̘̲͈̤̟̙̟͙͟ͅ}̧̛̝̻̬̼͓̳̳͗ͪ̉̐̑̓͘͞}̶͆̇ͣͨ͛ͯͧ̀҉̢̞͙̞̥̹͚̻̼͍͓̠͙̟̙͔̩͝ͅͅ

.

.

{{AHGH!}}

Sarah nodded. "Thank you, Gaia. Now Adam. Let's fix this calmly and with caution, alright?"

{{WHY DO I TASTE COLORS!?}}

.

{̤̠ͯ̚{̬̭̻̗̌̈́ͣ̓̇C͔̖̥̺ȏ͕̖ͣ̌ͩn̼̥̥̟̞̭̒́̀ͪ̄c͗̇̉̽̄e̻̯̖ͯr̺̫̗̅̍̓ͥ̓n̪̝̯̣̜͑͑̒̍̍?̰̤̰̄}̤̫̙̐ͭ̔̌̆ͭ̈́}̭̝͎̥̤͎͔̽

.

Sarah waved her off. "He's fine."

Adam was going to pout/get revenge! He swore it!

The magical pulse suddenly spiked as even more copper towers in Eve's Wall began to frantically interact with each other.

Shit.

Right, they should fix this first. THEN revenge!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah felt Adam freak out a little. {{Right, make somewhere for us to put Eve's kids and I'll quickly set up the stuff in her chamber that should hopefully handle the future Planet Network stuff.}}

A step had her leave Gaia's crystal core thing and appear next to Cloud's home, Aerith's house, and Aerith's church. "EVERYBODY MOVE!"

Thankfully dad's people moved the slower thinkers away and the (accidentally/stolen) martial artists were quick to react, so she soon had some free space. "Adam, how big should I go?"

She could feel him fabricating something. {{Use Elder Godo's house as a template for the foundation, walls, and roof. Coat everything inside with a good layer of steel using the standard 'Uncertainty Patterns', no reason to invest copper in this, and get rid of all the internal walls.}}

Glance downwards, a quick look through the rock… Good enough.

"[[Harvest.]]"

There. Got a pit with deep pits for pillars, fill it with a massive block of patterned steel. "I'm using the existing hardware from Cloud's house to connect up the church, Aerith's place, and this one with water, sewage, and access to magic."

He was doing SOMETHING complicated over there. {{Good idea, no reason to add even MORE mako density to this place. And don't bother putting any furniture or stuff, just make space for us to shift the healing pods straight over with connectors to hook up to these interfaces.}}

She easily caught the designs he sent and hookups began to form inside the rapidly constructed building, the modular wall and support components from 'Research' easy to quickly assemble as she mentally pushed and pulled each part into place. "How much time we got?"

The air suddenly felt thicker. {{Almost none. Right, transferring patients and shifting Eve home in three! Two!}}

.

O̱͇̥͎͙̻͆̑̐̿͗ͅn̥̠͕͖ͮ̌̍̈͒e̼̞͚̹̞̯͆̇͗ͦ.̘̟͙̗̹̞ͥ͒͒͆͐̀ ̝̖̰͍͉ͩ͊͛ͧ̒͊̚

.

Suddenly, something s̞̰͓̫h̗̩͕i͔̼͙f̦̭̦̞̫̯̺t̗̤͚e͙̙͎̮d̠̮.̳͕ The warm fog of magical power shifted slightly, and overwhelmingly there was a c͍͖on̜̘n̟e̮̳̠̤̱̟ct̬̯̩i͎̞̦o̙͕̼n̟̬̺̺.

.

=What!?={Confusion!?}{{Start setup, settings provided!}}

.

{{Networks: Disconnected.}}

.

Sarah blinked. "Huh."

And she passed out.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eve felt the protective shell outside her healing chamber vanish, even as she settled into an even larger chamber. One filled with pure, unclaimed mako… Magical power that was rapidly condensing and compressing even as her influence spread.

Then something… clicked.

An image appeared in her mind, one of raw power and magic. An illusion, a transmission, something connecting into a foundational part of reality itself! Both real and not, solid yet image, she felt her avatar body slump as the data initially overwhelmed her entirely!

.

[[Planet Network: Startup: V0.001]]

.

}}Scanning existing networks.{{

~~Gaia Network discovered.

~~Eve Network discovered.

~~Sarah Z̶̢̕͜i̷͡ş́͞͡b̢̧́͠l͏̶̶͘r̴̷̨̢y͏̴͜e̕͡h́̀͡ discovered.

~~Eve Symbiote Network discovered.

.

}}Integrating networks.{{

~~Gaia membership imported.

~~Eve membership imported.

~~Sarah Z̶̢̕͜i̷͡ş́͞͡b̢̧́͠l͏̶̶͘r̴̷̨̢y͏̴͜e̕͡h́̀͡ denied, insufficient access.

~~Eve Symbiote imported.

.

}}Establishing Network Units.{{

~~Boundary Defense activated.

~~Heuristic Detection activated.

~~~~Malicious Data defined.

~~~~Compromised Users defined.

~~~~Compromised Hardware defined.

~~~~Compromised Networks defined.

~~Counter Actions activated.

~~~~Disconnect Protocols established.

~~~~Destruction Protocols established.

~~~~Assimilation Protocols established.

~~~~Memetic Hazard Protocols denied, insufficient access.

~~~~Cognitohazard Protocols denied, insufficient access.

~~~~Infohazard Protocols denied, insufficient access.

~~~~Additional Protocols locked due to insufficient access.

~~Data Analysis activated.

~~Self Refinement activated.

~~External Infiltration activated.

~~~~Connection Protocol enabled.

~~~~Monitoring Protocol enabled.

~~~~Assimilation Protocol enabled.

~~Metrics activated.

.

}}Activating Communication units.{{

~~Rooms activated.

~~Databases activated.

~~Map activated.

~~Alerts activated.

.

{{Alert: User: Eve. Access Level: Deity. Welcome to the Network!}}

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She felt her Avatar reconnect even as an image was in her mind.

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[[Planet Network V0.001a]]

~Rooms

~Database

~Browser

~Interface

~Help

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She ignored the growing connection to her new home as her thoughts brought up 'Rooms', showing a list of communication channels like 'Global', 'Deities', 'Demi', 'Symbiote', 'Mortal', and 'Custom'.

Even as she did something popped up… Well, not anywhere really, but it FELT like something had shown up to her attention, with a message.

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{Global Room Activated}

=Gaia: Eve, are you alright!?=

=Aerith: What WAS that!?=

=Baby44: Blurgle?=

=Symbiote44: 888421?=

=Mortal116: I don't know what drug they are using on me now, but I am LOVING it!=

=Baby36: {Sucks thumb.}=

=Symbiote36: 543124223.=

=Demi02: What!? What is this!?=

=Mortal069: Note: Long term torture creates very odd delusions. If sane, must follow up.=

=Baby51: {Swish Splash!}=

=Symbiote51: 342111=

=Mortal322: {Confusion?}=

=Mortal033: {Sleepy.}=

=Baby12: {Confused.}=

=Symbiote12: 755465=

=Demi11: Why does mine say Demi? I know what baby means, obviously.=

=Sarah: Adam, we need to fix this. Disable Global by default, make an Admin channel with only us that everyone sees, and hide all other contact for now.=

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And it was quiet again. For a moment.

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{Admin Room Activated}

=Adam: Right, one moment Eve and you'll be set up!=

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{{Alert: Eve promoted to Administrator for Eve Network.}}

{{Alert: Room Custom: Babies established.}}

{{Alert: Room Custom: Symbiotes established.}}

{{Alert: Room Custom: Adults established.}}

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She blinked, automatically reaching out. =Eve: Hey Adam?=

The joy came back! =Adam: You used my name! Thank GOODNESS!=

What? She always called blue skeletal flames of the father boning by his name of blue skeletal flames of the father boning. Why was he suddenly happy about this? =Eve: But I always called you Adam?=

Something shifted. =Adam: Huh. Anyway, what do you need Eve? Everything feel alright?=

A pause as she checked, both physically examining this new 'Wall of Eve' that was her new home.

Her new chamber was rapidly building up magical charge, even more now that her communication methods had been so vastly improved. It was easier to focus, much less difficult preventing random data being sent, and more intuitive to shift her attention through it.

More than that, it helped settle her inner self somehow as her reach and stability continued to spread through the ever large structure that reached to the sky and bore into the soil. While not as 'pure' or 'untouched' as the near impossibly high quality power given to her in her treatment space, wherever that had been, this was more connected to life itself.

To her mother, Gaia.

Mentally, she realized that this new communication method was a major improvement! It was a moment's thought that easily let her separate all symbiotes into their own Room, no longer confusing everyone else (Even if the babies didn't seem to care one way or the other).

The new symbiotes seemed to appreciate it at least, as their data transfer rate shot WAY up after they only had to communicate between each other.

As for her children, they were ALL babies, so it was easy enough to set up an emotional Room to ensure they could feel each other and not be alone while letting the more mentally advanced babies (The ones over twenty or so years old) connect to a conversational Room without keeping the little one's up.

This was perfect! =Eve: This is amazing! But it might make it hard for them to sleep.=

=Sarah: Good point, Adam we need to have only certain things bother people or this could drive them nuts.=

=Adam: {Rolls eyes} I know, I know, I already limit forced notification to big alerts and stuff, not normal talking. Plus, everyone can just make their own changes in their Interface menu.=

=Eve: Oh, did you already tell us that?=

=Adam: …=

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{Alert: You can adjust 'Alerts', visible messages and chants and so forth, along with enabling maps, minimaps, local time, subtitles, and other features via the 'Interface' menu! Just will into existence 'Interface' to see all the new features! For any issues, just physically or mentally call for 'Help!'}

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=Adam: {Blush.} Yep!=

=Sarah: You put a lot of work into this thing, Boss! It's pretty impressive. Right. Eve! If you feel like your connection to your family is secure?=

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Eve felt the other Rooms that were active. All of them, of course, it was easy enough to pay attention to each one at one time without losing track or missing anything. Even had a custom connection communicating directly with mother using more dangerous levels of da̬ͅṭa̟̦̤ and another Room just for little Aerith, the little cutie.

It felt far more stable, and somehow more secure too! =Eve: Yes! If anything, it is even easier to send my love and concern to my babies without having to fear accidentally hurting them!=

=Sarah: {Warm affection} Good. But next we have to do something about this magic density, the mako being pumped into the area.=

Oh? =Eve: It is a bit low, but it should build up quickly enough. I think this more complicated setup Adam created has even started making some of that… What did he call it, Materia Sand? Yes, some of that has started forming.=

The spike of concern from both of them caught her off guard. =Adam: Shit, we are running out of time. Right, I got a plan!=

=Sarah: {Sigh} You mean you've got a thing you will be doing, but go on. Stun me with some solution to this massive spike of local mako and the invincible army of monsters it will soon spawn?=

Eve's body blinked… Ah. Right, it was a natural defensive measure for both her and mother, the magic ensuring that the more important places (Where mako gathers) would also be properly defended.

Which wasn't normally right next to an existing capital city.

It was hard to blame mother for these instincts, humanity in general only existed for a few million years or so, a fairly recent blip on their lives so far. Though her recent painful incident had felt a lot longer than the few decades it had been, fair enough.

=Adam: Right, first of all! I'm going to build even more magic towers at the core of our soon-to-be-formed Harbor Island!=

=Sarah: {Exasperation.}=

=Adam: No, follow me on this! I'll make this one even BIGGER and more symbolic than all the rest of this mess, and that will naturally pull ALL the new mako to flow toward it, right?=

She blinked. Well, yes? Didn't seem like a solution though.

Silver bone daughter seemed to agree. =Sarah: Yes. Yes, that would probably pull all magic to one spot. The island we want to build. Which, and please correct me if I am wrong, would be bad.=

=Adam: Ah, but look at this! {Proposed_Materia_Formation_data}=

Eve blinked as she examined the information. And it was interesting indeed! She knew abstractly that Gaia naturally produced Materia as a side effect of existing. It was an issue with how Souls (Monstrous and otherwise) returned to the Lifestream and influenced it over time.

She just hadn't cared too much, though the process was neat.

When creatures or humans with powerful 'Limit Breaks' passed away, similar abilities or special attacks or status effects would resonate with the magic of the Planet, eventually forming once in a while into the crystalized potential of mako shards, or Materia.

Then monsters or people would eat or process those shards and end up with small clusters of long gone special abilities, or magic spells, that they could use. Cause them to grow enough and it would spawn a new seed Materia while the old one would reach a saturated or 'Mastered' state.

It had amused Eve when she found out that the new human species had collected their favorite ones and nearly standardized the process of production for this stuff, considering that Gaia was barely aware she was making the stuff in the first place.

Still. =Eve: And how I am supposed to make these custom Materia?= Though it shouldn't be TOO hard.

Blue skeletal flames of the father boning agreed. =Adam: From what 'Research' got thanks to Sarah's new snack collection, a cluster of spells will eventually become Magic or Green Materia while mako crystals formed near others that change how other spells operate in general become Support or Blue Materia. If the effects only apply to living creatures, it's more likely it will form into Command or Yellow Materia.=

Mostly true. Though there were some other colors, and a few exceptions here and there.

He continued. =Adam: Next! When Support and Command Materia form too close together, they will occasionally mutate into Independent or Purple Materia. Instead of just affecting a person, it will directly enhance them. Causing people to be stronger or faster, or automatically defend someone without knowing an attack was incoming, and so on and so forth.=

=Adam: And finally, there are some one off colors we got no data on and I have no idea how magic becomes Summoning or Red Materia.=

Oh! She knew this! =Eve: Gaia and I talked about that! Red Materia forms when a personality is so powerful or legendary it echoes within the Lifestream for an unusually long time, causing memories of powerful effects or famous past actions to turn into those instant use attacks!=

The other two paused. =Adam: Wow. That is… VERY useful information! Thank you, Eve! That's been bothering me for a while, honestly. Right, back on topic though.=

The design shifted. =Adam: So here is the final bit of my plan {I_Am_Cool_data}, once all the mako is funneled into one spot, Harbor Island, we will push it into some custom Materia Eve makes for us. It will be deeply connected with her so she can keep it from going wrong, and the active effects will both ensure no free mako spilling everywhere making massive monsters spawn AND it'd have beneficial side effects!=

Eve hummed. Well if mom could do this accidentally, she could probably work something out. =Eve: Which spells am I turning into Materia?=

More data came. LOTS of data! =Adam: Thanks to Sarah we got mastered versions of most of them, but I want to ONLY allow one spell per Materia, unlike these. And that will give us seven Materia based on my current plan! The Magic Materia will be [[Barrier]], [[MBarrier]], [[Reflect]], [[Wall]], and [[Shield]]; The Command Materia isonly [[Sense]]; And the Independent Materia picked was [[Enemy Away]].=

This was a pretty big database covering all kinds of stuff about magic in general and the Materia involved. Neat!

Hmm. =Eve: Materia tends to cluster for a reason, actually. Stability. [[Barrier]] and [[MBarrier]] will need to be combined, which will basically turn it directly into [[Wall]]. And [[Wall]], as you know, will reduce all incoming damage by half… But if for some reason you wanted to heal someone from outside the island entirely, it would cut that effect in half too.=

Blue skeletal flames of the father boning paused. =Adam: Hmm. Right, any other Materia combos that will squish like that? I have fallback options.=

Easy enough. =Eve: Well, [[Wall]] won't stack with the other two, obviously, so might as well just stay with it alone. [[Shield]] flat out absorbs all damage that isn't from non-elemental items, but it is very costly to run… It should be behind [[Wall]] as a last resort. [[Reflect]] on the outside obviously to bounce magic, since it is more easily overwhelmed and will crack first…=

Her thoughts were bumped. =Sarah: So those three, plus [[Sense]] connected to [[All]] and [[Sense]] plus [[Counter]]? That would get us seven, and any time we are attacked it would automatically respond by using [[Sense]] to let us know what is happening!=

No. =Eve: The design as written would count both [[Sense+All]] and [[Sense+Counter]] as a total of two Materia.=

=Adam: And 'Research' showed we can't do more than two at a time, nothing like [[Sense+All+Counter]], so that would bring us up to five picked Materia I guess? If only [[MP Absorb]] didn't work based on the total damage dealt, I could include [[Sense+MP Absorb]] to take peoples magic away when they try and punch our awesome island.=

=Sarah: Can't risk any automatic attacks or even the stealing effects with this Materia selection, what if it counts bumping your boat into the dock as an 'Attack' to respond to? Better stick with more safe stuff. And don't forget you already picked [[Enemy Away]], which will keep people from herding sea monsters in to fight us… So that's six?=

The debate went back and forth a while, while her favorite part was the argument about whether or not using [[Cover]] would force the entire island to teleport in front of any attacking enemy if the foe's target was ON the island, and if this was a desired outcome.

The general opinion in the end was: no. But the idea was pretty amusing.

Silver bone daughter however seemed curious about something else. =Sarah: Hey Eve? About earlier, why were you talking about Summon Materia with Gaia?=

It was part of being her daughter. =Eve: When we grow old and strong enough, we can combine those crystalized memories and Red Materia into our defenders.=

That caught blue skeletal flames of the father boning's attention. =Adam: Defenders?=

It took resources, time, and lots of mako… but it was awesome! =Eve: Yep! They are so cool! Here are a few of Gaia's Defenders: {Diamond_Weapon_data} {Ruby_Weapon_data} {Emerald_Weapon_data}. I want to make my own eventually, but I'm not in a hurry with mom willing to help keep us safe.=

=Sarah: Holy. Shit.=

=Adam: That is SO badass! It also explains why 'enhancing' your Summoning Materia of Shiva was so expensive, Sarah. Too bad we can't use her as the final Materia in this design, but we need something that is permanent and she will be coming with us.=

=Sarah: She will!? I've avoided calling her because I was afraid of getting attached! You said we couldn't bring ANYONE with us!=

=Adam: Oh? Huh. I thought you avoided calling her because even the basic version of Shiva's attack would cause a local ice age considering your magic reserves and potential.=

=Sarah: Please, did you SEE how hot she was!? It is WORTH traveling to the middle of nowhere to call on THAT!=

=Adam: Fair enough… And she count's as an odd case as far as traveling with us is concerned. She isn't so much a different person, as a projection of a different part of your Warehouse, the section purchased on this Jump.=

Eve was feeling lost right now.

=Adam: Basically, a part of yourself would get another Avatar, just like your current Sarah Kisaragi body or your Sarah Killgrave form. They all exist and they are all you, but they are still people.=

=Sarah: I… What?=

=Adam: Yeah, once you remember dating the same woman a few thousand times at the same time, this will make more sense. Point is: Because your Shiva Materia is part of you we can't use her for the island. Also, Summoning Materia is so rare and valuable that none of it was kept in Shinra's Vault. I think anyone lucky enough to have one just carries it around with them.=

Eve blinked. Why was this bringing up a memory?

=Adam: I mean, we got some stuff from stealing Hojo's Manor and all his shit, but only got one Red Materia, which was for [[Summon: Odin]]... But not only does it only do instant death attacks, which a lot of things are immune or resistant to for obvious reasons (They ain't already dead), but I don't trust SHIT from Hojo. Or his secret torturing laboratory mansion.=

=Sarah: Yeah, no, good call. Let's sacrifice that one to our Ice Goddess. And uh. Maybe ask Gaia if there are a few more Summoning Materia she would be willing to share for the island project… Or maybe even for me to boost Shiva's power level!=

Oh right! =Eve: Sarah, why don't you just use your father's [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia instead? I'm sure he won't mind giving it to you if you ask.=

The communication line went silent for a bit.

Well, this one did at least. The babies were busy burbling back and forth in their Room and the Symbiotes were doing whatever the heck they were messing with in their channel as well... And Gaia and little Aerith were cooing over those same babies in their healing pods now that those were physically located over in Wutai.

She was idly examining the growing currents of Materia sand flowing throughout HER new Wall (Woo!) when the connection came back. =Adam: You know, I literally felt nothing when you were near the old man… But this does explain why this section of ocean is so dang clear of junk and free to build on.=

=Sarah: And why there aren't any islands out here. Not anymore.=

Sounds like they were on board! =Eve: So that will be the seventh?=

Everyone paused as another wave of POWER flowed over the area.

Looks like more of her wall was fully converted to operating with liquid magic now too! All KINDS of stuff getting done today!

Not long until this Materia sand really starts building up too, so maybe they should hurry.

=Sarah: Fine, I know we have to dump all this power SOMEWHERE, but I just want to say that this feels like a bad idea.=

=Adam: Huh. So the island will have [[Reflect]], [[Wall]], [[Shield]], [[Sense+Counter]], [[Sense+All]], [[Enemy Away]]... And [[Summon: Leviathan]]?=

=Sarah: Yeah. I'll make sure to eat the other Materia those spells are on so we can give Eve the needed patterns for her to make the custom Materia, and ask dad for his Summoning Materia.=

Seemed reasonable enough. Woo! Awesome island plan is a go!

=Adam: Uh. You don't think those effects will end up stacking on the Summon as well?=

They all blinked at the thought of a massive magic dragon controlling the weather that would also reflect all magic, reduce any and all damage by half, block all remaining energy unless it was physical damage from an item…

A dragon that would repel other monsters and possibly even other summons... AND would know everything about anyone and everyone trying to attack it.

One with near unlimited amounts of magic, magic that would strengthen it fundamentally and be available for it to use.

=Sarah: Adam, saying shit like that is what makes this feel like a bad idea.=

Eve on the other hand felt all her people brighten with her own eagerness hitting the network!

Maybe she would get her own defender much sooner than she had hoped for!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Elder Godo blinked. "Yes, young Sarah?"

The tired and frustrated woman sighed. "Dad… I mean, Elder Godo…"

He fought back the warm smile, but his heart was full. "You may call me 'Dad', 'Father', or otherwise as you wish, my child."

She gave a wry grin. "Thanks Dad. Sorry about this mess, things got a bit out of hand…"

He glanced at the massive defensive building able to withstand a massive army filled with 'stolen' victims, people that were currently being healed as medical staff waited to be of help. Another look showed the distant Wutai Bay, and the sparking copper towers that seemed to pulse with the pure life of the Planet herself, grown from nothing and standing tall.

A nod. "You do seem quite busy."

Young Sarah snorted. "Yeah, a bit… Sorry Dad. But I'm nearly done! Then I can do nothing for like… A month or something. Maybe take a year off or whatever."

More like spend a day or so playing with children and then being bored out of her mind and maybe finding more people in need to steal away. Which was fine. "I'm sure. You needed me?"

Always a wonderful feeling for any parent.

She nodded. "Do you have the [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia? I need to borrow it."

He couldn't help his face going serious. "Such a power is a heavy burden, and even a greater responsibility. I trust your need is equally as burdensome?"

A nod. "All this stuff I built to help the Planet is going to pump WAY too much undirected mako here into our nearest Lifestreams. I have to send it somewhere or we will get SUPER powerful monsters spawning all over this place."

He mentally reeled at the very thought! "And summoning our Goddess will help?"

She blinked. "Goddess?"

He remembered the legends. And his own life, of course. "Our people worship the spirit Leviathan that inspired our Summoning Materia to exist. It is a gift from Gaia herself, one treasured and beloved. The Queen of the Seas, the one that brings our people home. My being accepted as her Summoner is a major contributor for being made the leader of our people."

Young Sarah seemed stunned. "Oh...I didn't know."

He moved with purpose, exposing and removing the Red Summoning Materia from his cane… and holding it with reverence. "That said, I'm sure she would approve of such a use… Of protecting her followers from powerful monsters. She's defended our shores before."

His memories pulled forth such powerful times. Such deadly moments when love and hope we're the only prayers they had, against impossible odds.

Him standing alone on a windswept beach, her mighty sea serpent form forcing the sea itself to protect their people.

Still. "I am putting a lot of trust in you, my daughter."

She hesitated to accept the heavy responsibility in his outstretched hand… But another surge of raw magic motivated her forwards. "I… Thank you, Father."

Supporting one's children, especially one who stood so strongly alongside his own beliefs and with such powerful actions proving her worth, was but expected. "Take care of it. Our people rely on such symbols as these."

As she looked down at the sparkling orb in her hands, he couldn't help but wonder. "I assume you knew of my status as Leviathan's believer from the Planet's communion?"

She absently shook her head. "No, it came up when I was helping her daughter find a new home here."

And she was gone.

That… That was quite a statement.

Nothing was nearby… And No One was giving him a look.

But no, he was not going to try and force his child to lead the faith. It was a frustrating job at the best of times, and she had enough on her shoulders already. He sent signals, and Nobody saw.

Sigh. "I do believe I shall visit the small blue winged babies. The little ones are probably visiting them again, anyway."

Plus the ladies watching over the group always had a good pot of tea ready.

Another powerful wave of magic flowed over the land.

Tea… Tea sounded lovely right now.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam was being perfectly calm. {{Gonna have to convert most of our other local stuff into copper for this, alright?}}

Sarah was floating over the center of the future Harbor Island. "Go for it, the magic is getting so dense over here it's starting to release mako gas on the surface."

Alright, slightly less than calm. {{When I make the pedestal, place the [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia on it and teleport OUT, got it? Because this will need to be quick.}}

Hearing her confirm, he focused downward.

In this section of ocean, with one side made out of Eve's Wall and the other side a half ring of magic light houses, were seven stainless steel electrified reefs powered by magical Sethahedron Towers.

The total number of actual magic springs was stupid high, and to get them to focus it all in one spot would need a similar amount of stupid.

[[Harvest.]]

A perfect circle of sand, stone, water, underground tunnels, and so forth vanished, with a deeper six holes going deeper at the corners of an imaginary hexagon and the seventh in the center.

[[Fill.]]

A not perfect circle of steel replaced it. 'Research' made sure that any exposed caves and tunnels on the edges would also now be connected by the massive plug of steel that honestly weighed enough to be a stable foundation thanks to friction and mass alone.

[[Harvest.]] [[Fill.]]

The seven trunks down from this foundation to those holes were replaced with uncertainty pattern copper, the bottom of each connected to a copper orb with seven magic springs carefully separated by the correct amount of calculated distance units.

Each of those orbs split into seven more roots to the next, much deeper orbs… Each of which went deeper to a final magic orb.

Seven trunks with seven roots with seven anchors, or only 343 magical orbs and a total of 2,401 magical springs… But it would be enough to act as a foundation for this island.

The massive base of steel this copper mess was passing through should both act as protective material against outside attacks AND as a heavy mass to dump excess mako into should this not work as well as planned…

After all, Adam couldn't shove this generated magic into the environment or monster plants and massive monsters would terrorize Sarah's new home. They couldn't inject it into Eve's home or new wall, or any of these OTHER structures, because it would enhance the magic springs and speed up the conversion process.

And dumping that power into the ocean itself might turn the liquid into a massive slime or something. Or worse, just make the water itself 'alive' enough to be a nuisance.

The steel base however would just become impossibly solid and, theoretically, impossibly stable as more energy was forced into it. Theoretically. As long as it didn't go over the limit.

Sarah reached down to the steel (temporary) pillar, the [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia in her hand. {Here?}

Not yet. {{One moment!}}

Seven copper half domes with dividing layers of solid steel formed quickly as Sarah carefully moved out of the way and water was shoved aside. Thankfully Sarah was having no problem using her telekinesis to 'float' down here while he ensured the layers of copper were connected.

Also, thank goodness she could hold her breath a long time. {{Right, that should do it! Carefully place it right in that socket and MOVE!}}

This could go bad. It SHOULDN'T go bad, but it COULD.

So just in case…

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[[System Clock: Overclock.]]

{{Alert: Overclock instability will auto-deactivate in ḑ҉̡͡ą͜͏ţ̴̡̀͝á̡͢͡͠ units.}}

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More than enough 'time'! Probably. At least Eve could keep up with him like this, like Gaia no doubt could… Planets and their Goddess children don't really understand time the same way Warehouses did. Or something.

=Adam: Eve, are you ready with the patterns?=

=Eve: In reverse order, right? [[Enemy Away]], [[Sense+All]], [[Sense+Counter]], [[Shield]], [[Wall]], and [[Reflect]].=

=Adam: I'm going to set up some uncertainty copper rings and direct ALL the mako there, you need to ensure that as they solidify they match those patterns in the correct order.=

=Eve: About that… With so little pattern needed on each layer, it would be easy enough to just do a whole bubble of metal as it would be to enforce the formation on a ring. Wouldn't that be more stable?=

Crap, wish she had brought that up sooner. 'Research'?

Right.

Instead of placing those rings on each of these copper half domes, adjust thickness and get ready for whole orbs of copper shells and steel fillings. Seven spikes of copper would connect each shell to the ones within, with seven spikes touching the [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia at the center.

=Adam: Right, we will do that. Oh, I think Sarah's about to finish teleporting out!=

=Eve: I'm ready!=

Both he and Eve were doing this at HIGH mental speeds to prevent potential problems, making poor Sarah look like slow motion as she began to vanish, the summon was Materia left behind… And now!

Adam [[Harvested]] the support structure, formed the copper spikes and surrounding steel ball, and then rapidly had the other copper half domes with their spike and solid steel fillings completed!

Another slab of steel covered EVERYTHING, with this base foundation still far below the ocean surface, and all of it was bonded to the layers below as mako 'sluggishly' began flowing towards the seven orbs.

Right. Now for the 'lightning rod' effects!

From the TOP of the island Materia core, came an uncertain copper trunk.

The massive copper structure spiraled upward in an outwardly growing pattern, shaped like a metal tornado. Every seven units on that swirling trunk, a branch would split off and connect to a magic orb with its seven magic springs inside, and that orb would act as a hub.

Forty-nine hubs later and Adam finally had this copper structure touch the ocean's approximate surface, although the waves made it annoying to be sure with exact measurements.

Unlike below the core, where the various roots and so on were designed to be as deep into the Planet as possible while remaining magically significant, these branch hubs had far fewer magic springs so they could act more like ambient mako lighting rods.

On this island magic tree, each of these branch hubs had seven copper limbs reaching outwards, and every one of THOSE had forty nine copper twigs, forming a complicated network of spiky balls of copper with LOTS of surface area and patterned spaces for ambient power to connect with and flow through.

Good, and the uncertainty patterns in all the material would allow the magically conductive metal to be even more efficient at keeping the local area safe to live in! Probably.

Another round of [[Harvest]] and [[Fill]] carefully wrapped the spiraling copper island trunk with spirals of thin stainless steel. It was something to provide additional structural support without blocking the seawater from flowing through the magical 'branches' and 'twigs', or letting enemies easily damage the patterns through some sort of sneak attack.

The issue was keeping the 'tree' safe while allowing it to contact the water currents… Hmm.

A slight design alteration modified the outermost edge of the steel foundation into a spiraling and protective 'cage' of steel. This grid of metal from the base of the foundation all the way up to the water's surface should prevent critters and weaponry from easily attacking the place below the surface.

Not that he was sure that any such theoretical attack could DO anything. The amount of power that would be flowing through this part of the island was going to be unimaginable, even a paper plate would be more powerful than a slab of steel with this much energy passing through it.

Adam checked the math… Right. Underground, the roots were fine. Magic flowed best through solid objects after all. In the water, this trunk, branch, limb, and twig system would handle collection despite how inefficiently mako gathering would be through a liquid medium… but there was no point in trying to make something for collecting ambient magic in the weather.

It would need SO MUCH copper and connection extensions would need to be so thin and fragile… Even with magic reinforcing it, the rates of ambient absorption were so low it was basically meaningless.

Plus, Adam had used up a LOT of stuff, converting any non-needed resources directly to copper despite how inefficient that process was even now with the Warehouse's improvements. For now, it was easier to have the steel spiral protective cage sealed off near the surface into flat construction surfaces.

Plus, while the underwater spiral trunk tree pattern was mostly for magical efficiency and aesthetics, this pattern meant that opposite of the top of the 'tree' was a nice deep section of water… A spot that was easy enough to modify into a docking bay that would have lots of clearance for bigger ships.

Eve was still focusing on forcing the mako flooding the island's core to match the planned Materia spell patterns thankfully, and with no more magical formations or construction needed to stabilize the new island's mako redirection abilities he was probably safe to slow down his perception to more reasonable levels.

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[[System Clock: Standard]]

{{Alert: Overclock disabled. Recovery requires d̵͏̢͠a҉̷҉͞͞t̸̵̷̀a̸̸̕͡ units until completion.}}

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Worth it. Otherwise he would have to constantly [[Harvest]] water out of the way and all sorts of crap while also hoping Eve wouldn't finish HER part of the job until the Island Magic tree was finished.

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=Sarah: Alright! I've moved to the middle lighthouse… Oh. Wow, that was quick!=

=Eve: I'm still claiming the newest mako springs you installed Adam, but all the others are either fully under my influence or are being claimed by my magic as we speak… It all feels like they are naturally being redirected to your island.=

=Adam: And the Materia patterns!? Are they holding up?=

=Sarah: I know that the local magical pressure is dropping significantly as we speak! I can actually feel it getting easier to breathe and stuff even without focusing on it!=

=Eve: The pattern is being held in place, but it will take an hour or so to fully convert the island tree into solid Materia. I can relax my focus on the individual Mako Orbs themselves in… about d̴͞a̢̡̢͘͘t̷̕͜͡a̷̢͟͟ units?=

=Sarah: Good! No explosions are SUPER awesome in my book!=

=Sarah: In how long?=

=Adam: Translated, it's around twenty four minutes or so. Time units get a bit weird depending on who is measuring, who is listening, individual time passage rates...=

=Sarah: Huh. Why not just say that though?=

=Eve: I would like to point out that Mother did have time magic naturally spawning from the Lifestream, I'm not sure why it is surprising that chronal displacement is an issue when trying to track events. If I wasn't so closely connected to you and Adam, or to the Planetary Network, it would be very easy to lose track of which time rates are being used or which measurements are calculated at what ratios. Or to take a twenty year nap or something.=

=Adam: Back on topic, we are tapped out of basic materials. No constructing ANYTHING until we can build up some reserves Sarah! I might have some emergency stuff in reserve, but we are rapidly approaching the point where we'd be spending the expensive GOOD stuff during material conversion instead of normal metals.=

.

Like that radioactive psionic surface landmass gathered from the Bioshock Jump. That stuff is crazy useful, and using that up to get COPPER of all things seemed beyond wasteful. Especially when the Warehouse could generate an infinite supply of the stuff given enough production time.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah stood on the shiny metal 'island' that was basically at water level. The waves would easily sweep over the edge of the surface, and there was only a curved section to stand on before the structure vanished deeper into the water, acting as a protective shell for the hidden 'tree' below.

A cautious breath…

Ah. "This is MUCH better."

The magical pressure wasn't vanishing, exactly… But she could feel it being drained downward. A thick, stuffy feeling was quickly thinning out as a non-wind breeze flowed down into the water and metal below her.

Still. "You know it's going to be SUPER bad when these extra magic springs finish activating, right?"

Her Boss hummed. {{Maybe. I can feel Eve subconsciously altering all the springs under her influence to better connect her to these sources, so theoretically each of those nodes should act as miniature control centers I think. Or at least, she will have a much easier time directing this power once her power is crystallized within each of the springs, I bet.}}

Sarah tapped the wet metal with a foot. "Still, this feels like a LOT of power. Almost too much."

Data scrolled. {{It's a density issue.}}

More maps and data. {{Gaia is much older, much stronger, and has many more resources than we or Eve have access to… But they are spread out over her surface. For her to reach these levels of local power, she would need to increase her overall potency by many MANY times this amount first. Like not being able to fill a glass of water unless you flooded your whole house up the cup's brim first.}}

Sarah blinked. "So basically all this power is a drop in the bucket? Compared to Gaia, I mean."

A mental shrug. {{Yeah, basically. She is big. VERY big. And most of her magic is way, WAY deep in the core itself. The flow up here on the surface is almost unnoticeable to her. At least, it was until her daughter was pulled out, tortured, and then forcefully injected into the Lifestream while being hurt and possibly infecting everyone in the process with unending hu̯̯̲n̪̜ge͓̼r̪̼̭.̼̞}}

Fuck Hojo. "Huh."

Adam highlighted some countdown timers until Sarah could start building again. {{Yeah, only a very tiny amount of Gaia is the surface, even if Eve ends up taking over the whole place up here it still wouldn't bother her much. Though apparently injected unaffiliated mako up here tickles.}}

Sigh. Her Boss was such a player. "Don't tease or taunt the Planet, our stuff is here."

He grumbled. {{I AM your stuff, your stuff is HERE. Plus Gaia loves me, she won't mess with our stuff.}}

She smirked. "Oh really?"

.

=Sarah: Eve, didn't you say that Adam's hardware he set up tickled your mom?=

=Adam: Now HANG on!=

=Gaia: {Blush.} I state this is untrue.=

=Eve: Oh yes, Adam's hardware really ticked her badly.=

=Adam: {Frustrated growl.}=

=Gaia: Denial!=

=Sarah: Oh?=

=Gaia: I am unaware of anything we are talking about at any time.

=Eve: Especially unaware about that time he goosed you?=

=Adam: OH LOOK AT THE TIME!=

.

{{Alert: Server temporarily down for maintenance due to 'Oh shit I forgot I had to put something here!'.}}

.

Sarah blinked. "Huh."

Adam felt super busy with important shit to do. {{Hush you!}}

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The girls (And Cloud) were enjoying watching various blue winged babies 'swimming' in their floaty tank things when that heavy feeling that had been growing ever more uncomfortable began to go away. Thankfully.

Aerith blinked. "Huh. I didn't know Gaia could blush."

Yuffie was playing with one of the babies as it tried to grab her hand on the other side of the glass. "Huh?"

She shrugged. "Sarah's friend Adam did something to make the Planet blush."

Tifa grinned! "Did he get her flowers!? With the mustache!?"

Cloud sighed. "That's like a commitment, you should start off with like normal flowers first. Or growing your own mustache."

The thief blinked and focused on the others. "Who's Adam again?"

Aerith shrugged. "She's big sis's space house I think. And part of her powers too? I'm not sure really, he doesn't talk much to us and I've never met him in person."

Cloud hummed. "Is he trying to partner with the Planet?"

The youngest girl waved her hand back and forth. "Maybe? Maybe not? Gaia won't talk about it and Eve says she'll tell me when I'm older."

Cloud frowned… And slowly shook his head. "The Planet might be the biggest partner, but she wouldn't be the biggest Tifa. Plus, I couldn't clean up after the Planet fights people because that would make a HUGE mess. Also, I'd miss my friend."

His mother was grinning HARD in the background!

Tifa tried to say something… Paused… And turned to Yuffie. "I'm not sure how to react to that."

Yuffie frowned right back, still on a different topic. "Eve is the Planet's kid, right? And all these babies and the blue women are Eve's kids too, right?" She looked at the floating baby happily swishing in his vertical pod. "So are they the Planet's grandkids and great-grandkids?"

Elder Godo hummed in the corner of the room, where he was enjoying some steaming hot drink with some of the older villagers in the corner of the reinforced 'medical' building his daughter had constructed. "I believe, young children, that we are ALL children of the Planet."

Cloud shook his head. "I don't think you can be your own mom. I think. Or your own grandchild. Probably."

Yuffie grinned as she messed up his hair, though he took it stoically. Years of living near Tifa had taught him patience. "Dad means metaphorically, little scrub-a-dub. That we are all born on this world, and therefore we count as children of the Planet."

Aerith blinked. "If Gaia is all of our moms, do the blue babies count as brothers and sisters?"

Cloud nodded! "Yeah! Cause that would make them part of our family, and we should have the BIGGEST family!"

Claudia Strife held up a fist! "Heck yeah!"

Elmyra Gainsborough sighed with exasperation as she met with the fist bump. "Woo. You do know they won't remember most of this when they get older?"

Aerith pointed at the other adult white haired blue skinned women. "What about them? They are too old to be little sisters!"

Cloud shrugged. "Us four already share two mom's right now anyway, we can always add a few more. And lots of the nice ladies are basically already our grandmoms now."

Tifa quietly hugged her friend. And she didn't sniffle, because she's a big girl.

Yuffie frowned. "We better all go talk to Dad and Master Zangan too, I don't know how to teach them to steal with wings because I don't have wings. Or how to fight with them."

Aerith smacked her head.

Yuffie grinned! "Heh! I mean: I don't know how to teach them NOT to steal with wings because I don't have wings and because stealing is bad and I shouldn't do it when Aerith is nearby."

The tiny one growled. "No! Say it right!"

The taller girl stood up! "Right, I'll do that later but I need to run off and find Master Zangan! See you all in a bit!"

Aerith squawked! "You can't run away from me while I'm ON YOUR SHOULDERS!"

The older girl laughed as she dashed away! "I CAN'T HEAR YOU! I'M BUSY STEALING A LITTLE CUTIE PIE AGAIN!"

Cloud hugged his friend as they watched the other two girls run off. "Huh. I guess if they can stand up outside without falling over then the Blue Lady fixed whatever was going on with all that magic."

Tifa squeezed him. "Shush, we're having a partner hug."

He couldn't help but grin! Cloud would give the BIGGEST partner hug!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Executive Heidegger held in a groan. Fuck ALL this shit. "And some unknown person entered the locked room, moved past all our people and all our locked doors and so on and so forth, managed to subdue Professor Hojo, and…" He glanced at the report. "Surgically remove three of his limbs?"

They nodded, like they knew exactly how much shit was going to rain down on him from this mess.

Not their fault. Most likely. "And no witnesses?"

They shook their heads.

Uh huh. "And due to overcrowding in our containment cells, he happened to be in the most secured room available at the time… and yet ALSO one of the only ones without an active surveillance system?"

One of the bastards refused to even look annoyed, grinning like a loon. "Professor insisted we disable them as he was too important for such breaches of his privacy."

He blinked. "He didn't."

Nods.

Well shit. "Damn, that hypocrisy is so thick he could choke on it." And clearly the man HAD choked on it. "He ALSO provided no testimony?"

THAT seemed most unusual out of all of this. Professor Hojo was the kind of person who would eagerly ensure ANYONE would suffer if they were even tangentially related to something that slightly unconvinced himself. The fact he didn't even MAKE UP a target for his rage was surprising.

The conversation didn't go much further than that, there was nothing left to say really. "Move him to a secure room WITH surveillance, ignore any further complaints or demands he makes that attempt to further lower our security standards… And make sure the people interacting with him wear full masks during transit."

At least the next time one of the guards anonymously operates on one of the people under his responsibility, they would at least have to fabricate better evidence of an 'intruder' being responsible.

The fact that he would get to enjoy a film of said future theoretical event was a lovely bonus really… Not many people enjoyed working with Professor Hojo after all.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah blinked as she saw all the awake blue babies. {Adam?}

He was busy monitoring all the activating mana springs and Eve's control over them. {{Hmm?}}

She sent him the mental data. {Why are the babies awake in their tubes? The adult women, too. Also, none of them are freaking out.}

Adam sent her some mental data. {{The Symbiotes found a counter agent to the sleeping medication being added to the healing pods and shared the pattern with each other. And they are all calm because Eve is constantly talking to them all and they are all connected with each other on their own networks.}}

At least the babies were happy enough. According to these metrics, the Symbiotes were so efficient at enhancing their forms that the nutrition they were able to absorb from that medical liquid didn't really make any waste either.

Speaking of which, that nutrient liquid was awesome stuff, only needed a little modification from Adam before ready to use! This stuff was breathable, drinkable, safe to consume and nutritious… It seems that you need GOOD science to allow BAD science to progress so far without killing off your torture victims.

Ironically, a LOT of the local medical data, techniques, and equipment was pretty advanced for this world, at least the stuff Sarah and Adam had stolen from the labs were. Then again, the horrors of the Nazi camps progressed a lot of medical fields as well, and THAT was also a shit show.

Still. "They seem happy enough. How long till we can let them out?"

Adam hummed. {{Technically now would be fine, but I'd say wait till the island is built. They need special levels of ambient mako while growing up, and it's easy enough to adjust their medical pods right now until we can get some custom rooms set up on the island.}}

She blinked. "So we can let the adults out?"

He hesitated. {{Maybe wait?}}

Sarah paused. Why?

Data flowed into her interface. Ah. Right.

They were biologically enhanced super soldiers with massive magical reserves and a community Symbiote hive helping control and cast nearly unlimited magic without effort. Directly connected to Eve, and thus through her to the Planet.

Yeah. "Let's wait until we have a room that can handle a woman freaking out and prevent her from exploding a dozen houses or so."

Adam agreed. {{Yeah, might stop some issues.}}

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Eve shivered as she felt her network of power speed up. Again.

It was so much more significant than the network of her half forgotten memories… So much cleaner, with no resistance or fear or h̝̯u̟͓̘͕n̟g̲͕͇̩͉̥e̝̫̙r͎̟̞̱̟.͚͖̜̤̙̖ͅ

Each node of the network had six followers in a module, and there were modules EVERYWHERE nearby now, with NONE of them touched by anyone or anything.

No influence, no taint, no lost souls from nearby births or deaths… Pure magic!

=Gaia: Your reach may be limited, but the local mako density is astounding!=

Mom had a point. Most of Gaia's domain couldn't even support mako gas, much less the liquid mako that flowed through her Lifestream. Only in the core of the planet was Materia crystals a common form of magical power, the rest flowed naturally to the massive areas she also supported.

It was why the loss of the Cetra had been so tragic for her… The odds of a species developing both the ability to influence her ambient mako concentration levels AND be capable of communication? Near zero.

Heh. At least such a thing USED to be nearly impossible.

=Eve: You know, Adam would be happy to help you with your… reach.=

=Gaia: {Confusion.}=

Right, mom didn't really have a connection with most of these humans except for little Aerith until now. Certainly none of the past connections with the Cetra in general were as clear as this most recent one, and nothing could compare with the Planetary Network Adam had provided with Eve's new home.

So uh. Innuendo and everything else to do with humanity was far too new for her to understand. Barely had the things around for 200,000 cycles or so, it was kind of understandable.

At least Eve had a close connection to blue skeletal flames of the father boning and silver bone daughter to help her understand her new family so much better.

That said, daughters lived to embarrass their mothers. Or the other way around? Not clear, but Eve wasn't going to let this go.

.

=Eve: I'm saying he is willing to get a core sample.=

=Eve: He's burning to take a magnetometer survey and find him some treasure.=

=Eve: Adam is prepared to study a celestial body.=

=Gaia: {Confusion?} I also enjoy watching the stars?=

.

Oh for mom's sake.

.

=Eve: He's into ḫ̦̱̺̤a͔̱̫̖n͇̱͙̲̺͎d͓̖̳͕̱̮̞h̗͈̜o͓̖͓̩l̥͙̼͍̣̱di̺̜̘ng͉͇͇.=

=Gaia: WHAT!?=

=Gaia: {Confused blushing! Denial! Confused denial?} It's not like that!=

=Gaia: You watch your mouth, young lady!=

.

Ha!

Her focus was jerked sideways as a dozen more magical nodes shifted straight pass liquid mako and began flooding with Materia sand. Because it wasn't crazy enough that these mako springs could generate more magic than entire species going through dozens of life cycles, no, they were able to become MORE efficient and powerful just by operating each other…

And blue skeletal flames of the father boning decided to just connect all this mess together with high transfer rate magical enhancing metal with internal structures that preserved mako density during transit.

Idly she wondered… If one of these many nodes solidified entirely into mako crystals, could blue skeletal flames of the father boning simply [[Harvest]] the metal parts? Allow the new design to fill in and crystallize itself with even more Materia sand, forming an entire magic generating mako spring out of nothing but raw magic itself?

A fascinating and honestly terrifying prospect. Even mom didn't have an entirely solid mako hub yet, and she was like super old!

Well, physically. Clearly a lack of communication for many eons had made it hard for her to develop advanced mental maturity… Or if she already had, she had long since given it up to avoid the constant loneliness and had to start again now that companionship was possible.

Something all too easy for Eve to relate to, sadly.

A quick check on her family…

.

=Baby33: {Swish! Swish!}=

=Baby14: Marpbe.=

=Baby38: Gah burgle!=

=Demi02: Oh you little ones are so cute!=

=Demi12: I don't know why we are all blue now.=

=Baby21: {Squee!}=

=Demi02: Goddess Eve said it was our symbiotes trying to help us heal.=

=Demi08: I still say she isn't a goddess.=

=Baby33: {Swish!}=

=Demi06: Anything that can save me from that bastard Hojo is enough of a Goddess for me.=

=Demi04: Agreed.=

=Demi03: Yeah.=

=Demi07: Oh yeah. But watch the language, we don't want the kids learning that.=

=Baby52: {Sleepy.}=

=Demi01: {Fear! Confusion?} My baby?=

=Baby01: {Love!}=

=Demi01: My baby!=

=Demi11: Holy shit, is that Dr. Crescent!?=

=Demi09: How the FUCK did fucking HOJO get away doing this to Lucrecia Crescent!? We're mostly nobodies or unconnected grunt workers, She's a fucking Class A Biotechnologist!=

=Demi07: Language!=

=Demi01: Oh I'm here for you baby! I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you!=

=Baby01: {Confusion? Love!}=

=Demi08: Am I the only one who doesn't know who that woman is?=

=Baby33: {Swish, swish, swish!}=

=Demi02: I don't remember much after I was sold off, I've just been focusing on the cute blue angel babies and hoping the pain doesn't start again. Goddess Eve said she'd protect us.=

=Demi08: ...Goddess or not, I hope she will. My memories of that place were bad enough even as fuzzy as they are.=

=Demi04: I got my injections last in our group and some of the memory wipe chemicals ran out before my turn, but trust me you aren't missing much. Hojo is the jerk who was hurting us, most of the girls sold like we were didn't live long enough for me to try and talk to them, and most of these other women are scientists who tried to help us.=

=Demi11: Not that it worked. I had evidence, chemicals to prevent mental corruption, backup plans, I was so sure I could save the children… {Sadness} Wasn't able to resist the torture.=

=Demi04: You did fine, it's why you lived long enough to be included in our test group. Hojo was planning on getting more info from you, you really frustrated him!=

=Demi06: Hope he dies.=

=Demi04: Agreed.=

=Demi12: Yep.=

=Demi03: Yeah.=

=Demi01: {Confusion? Agreement.} Hojo bad.=

=Baby01: {Love! Swish?}=

=Demi07: Oh! Little Baby22 is learning to flap her wings!=

=Demi02: Daww!=

=Demi11: I'm not sure I buy the idea of a living Symbiote hive mind whatever, but the little one at least looks healthy? I wish I had my medical tools, what if something goes wrong!?=

=Demi09: They somehow replaced my removed limbs and my missing organs, I'm sure these people can keep the babies safe.=

=Demi04: Shh! Horror memories and night terrors later, we're watching da babies!=

.

They seemed to be doing fine for now.

Which was good, because aside from these fifty-nine babies, nine women, and three pregnant mothers-to-be, Eve couldn't emotionally connect with the rest of the people saved from the laboratory.

Since she wasn't able to help keep everyone calm without the emotional connection, all those other victims and hurt people were being kept asleep for now. Some were apparently freaking out when silver bone daughter had brought them back into Gaia's domain and all that frantic stuff was going on to make sure nothing exploded and that Eve was properly set up in her new core room and local mako network.

But things seemed to be stabilizing. Eve was able to force all the excess mako to mostly flow into the center of the new 'Harbor Island', which was basically a giant spiral metal vase with open slits all up and down the sides in a spiral pattern. And that was it.

Nothing at all built up on top, funny enough. The 'surface' of 'Harbor Island' was barely above the ocean at all! And Eve could feel the odd metal magic bush thing he built inside the giant vase/thing, but most of THAT was visibly hidden due to the protective steel 'vase' on the outside, despite the many slits and slots for water currents to flow through.

At least he took their teasing well enough, though she expected the actual island construction to start again once this island core solidified entirely, ensuring the Materia shells surrounding and protecting the [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia were all stable and able to handle the incoming magical surges.

Which was a concern.

Even now she could feel the initial mako springs solidifying while drastically boosting power production… and once they fully tipped over to solid Materia crystal, that was likely to force everything ELSE to start skipping enhancement stages as well.

As it was, she had established a hierarchy for power allocation. Almost everything was shunting mako to the island's core right now, hopefully speeding up the Materia shell crystallization process and giving her a safe target to dump all this damned excess magic.

Eve's domain wasn't big enough to safely handle this density of potential power after all. Not without dumping most of the excess into stuff like the material of her structures and (eventually, hopefully) directly into this Summon Materia.

It wasn't her fault either! She was practically still a newborn, even WITH this new network set up for her!

Sigh.

At least blue skeletal flames of the father boning said he was going to create some portable technology that would allow people not connected to him, silver bone daughter, mom, or herself. A connection method that didn't rely on anyone directly healing people near death while exposed to Eve's influence and special drugs that forced you to adapt and enhance yourself.

Not sure HOW he was going to do such a thing, but it would be amazing to meet more people who were nice or at least neutral and not people like the one who tore her apart and hurt her for so long.

Oh, she could still chat with them using the Planetary Network and having her new family of babies and slightly older babies talk as representatives… But it wasn't the same, really.

And she still wasn't sure what an 'internet' is, but it sounded interesting…

Her attention was SNAPPED back into her network as something clicked! One of the damned nodes fully crystalized earlier than expected and… Nope, there went another, and another and… Oh shit.

She sent out the d̰̗͖͙͈̟a̙̠t̬͈̰̪a̼̣͉ and felt the network respond!

{Alert: Prepare for a local magical surge!}

With a tight focus, she ensured that this sudden spike of power couldn't shift the carefully established Materia pattern in the six Materia shells acting as the island's core around a now blazing [[Summon: Leviathan]] Materia!

She did NOT want to know what would happen if this mess destabilized!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah flinched! "Everyone stop and SIT DOWN! We got incoming!"

Most of the medical tubes were full of (Now once again) sleeping people, but all the happy floating blue winged babies and blue skinned white haired women focused on her in disturbing unison. Everyone else at least listened, having learned that Sarah had NO TIME for any shit right now!

{Alert: Local magical surge incoming!}

Shit!

Gravity dragged most people to the floor, an impossible and unknowable weight forcing something unseen and unfelt to pull them to their knees or prostrated out on the floor.

Well, most of them did.

Sarah ignored it easily, and suddenly all the tubes with Eve's children started to glow brightly with bright green mako connecting to each individual.

And from some unseen place, a moment in time, they all felt a Goddess behind them.

Without turning, Sarah could feel a bright blue angel with wide wings and silver hair, a woman so like herself, floating behind each and every one of those here.

Eve was within them, beneath them, behind them.

She stood in union, and a goddess reached out in love. In hope!

An invisible hand outstretched.

.

.

Sarah flinched as G͓͎̲͈̞a̪̖̭̬͖i̜̬̝̗̣ͅa r͎e͚̱͖̱̬a͖͔̦͍̠̟c̡̗͙̻h̛̙̼̺̳̹̺e͏̮̩͕ḑ͙ ͈̜͉̲̲̯B̑ͤ̽ͦ̉̍ͭ̒̐͛̚҉̧͞͏̢̮̪͍͚͚͎̗̰͈͎͓̜̺͇̦̭A̸̠͍͓̮͍ͬͩͦ̅̈́ͭ̿͠͡Ç̸̹͕̜͈̘̘̝͖̰̍̆̆ͭͯ̑ͤͭ͘K̛͈͍̤̞̮͕͕̱̝͋̓̐ͨ̀̀́̒̀̓̿͂̚̕͡ͅ.̷̊̈́̿̽̿̽̂͆̾͏̮̗͓͓͚̮̪̜̺̖͔̺̘̪͕̠͔͘͢͜

.

.

Immense!

A child under the night sky, a flower under the summer rains! Endless oceans, towering mountains, boundless heavens!

A towering Eve was gently cradled by an unlimited touch. A palm beyond any hand, an embrace too beyond to even fully understand.

Eve called for her mother and was accepted by the Planet herself.

Sarah felt raw joy flood the island, stretching farther and wider than possible to test or calculate. A fundamental change of possibility, a legend shorn and fate denied. A bond unbroken.

And for a moment, it all held still.

Balanced on an instant, a speck of possibility, Sarah saw a long lost one accepted with tears into an endless embrace. A lifetime of a single possibility.

It was beautiful.

And then Eve was there again, unseen and smiling and laughing and dancing as she flowed through the world, as her connection and Domain grew and twisted and twirled!

Though her angelic avatar was elsewhere, she was singing and moving and hunting and snarling and she spun through Wutai, the land of her home, of her friends, of her family.

Raw magic swirled inwards even as crystal chimes crackled in the air. Mako springs were snapping into solidified power faster and faster as the weather itself began to swirl and spin towards a nearly submerged steel island anchored to the sea herself.

And she WAS the sea.

Eve was connected to the land, to the water, to that strange protected copper bush Adam kept insisting was a tree, and she was suddenly drawing that raw potential to a single point. The power of nations was funneled to a fundamental location, drawing with it unheard of energies focused by a mind beyond all humans.

A single, red point of magical change.

Off the shores of Wutai Village Bay, a child goddess of the Planet called forth.

{̨̱͓̘̩́̍̇̋̈́̄ͅ{̭̥͠[̯͔͖́̈ͨ̃ͥ[̺̎S̱̙̙͚̪̖͡u̟͇̓͋ͬm̵m̵̟̯̹̩͉̰̑͑̌͛͒̏͆o̬̫̰̺̒́ń̶̬̗̝̿̆̐:͈̝̻̟͕̣̯̃̈̉ͥ̐̋͟ L̙̆̓͂̊̔ͩ͞ẹ͍̙v̲̳̖͐̒͞iͬ̚a̺̪̞͚̺̋̌͑t̟̤̲͈͖͋͛̃̾͊h͉͎͙̰̮̹̺̐̔̽̔̒a̦͈͇̲̭̝̳͊̀n̽͛̿͢]̍̅̌͐̿̇̃]͇̪̥̫̭̆̾̉}̶̜̘͖̮͐}̻̹̹̣̙̱̩ͤ̾̓̐ͧ̀

And the sea was silent. For a moment.

"▂▂▃▃▄▄▅▅!"

Floating above the sea, ignoring gravity and reality, a massive green water dragon gently floated. Blazing red eyes glowed as it swirled into the sky, unrestrained by nature or water or reason as it gently shifted massive fins and an ominous red light glowed from it's massive jaws…

And it slowed.

And it froze.

A head larger than a mountain slowly shifted down, focusing on Sarah and stunned people surrounding her.

=Eve: How do I make myself smaller?=

...Uh. "I'm sorry?" {{Crap.}}

Oh no. {Adam?}

.

=Adam: Shit. I assumed that as you were the 'castor', the island itself would be 'equipped' to you and Leviathan would be under your control.=

=Eve: That… That is a big assumption there.=

=Adam: It seemed reasonable!=

=Gaia: Oh my little girl is all grown up!=

=Eve: I WILL bring up the other topic again mother.=

=Gaia: {Blush} Ah. Be back later everyone, I'm off to talk to the grandbabies!=

=Adam: Topic?=

=Sarah: No, don't get distracted Adam. The fuck just happened!?=

=Eve: Adam assumed that all this stuff would count as equipment to me, making me the 'user' and all this Materia being empowered as something I was casting, putting me in control.=

=Adam: WHICH makes logical sense!=

=Sarah: I gotta admit, Eve, that does sound pretty likely, right?=

=Eve: Problem is, I'm not a person. I am Gaia's child.=

=Adam: Ah.=

=Sarah: Don't 'Ah' me! One of you two explain this to me right NOW!=

.

The distant dragon sighed, slumping as Sarah glared up at it.

None of the people mentally involved right now noticed the stunned audience in the background watching a beautiful woman in a nice blue business suit apparently shaming a massive dragon that was also a formal and major part of their religion.

Elder Godo just forced himself up and back in his chair. "Everything handled, my daughter?"

Sarah waved it off. "We might have accidentally incarnated the Planet's child into a permanent summoning of the sea serpent Leviathan. I got it handled, and she's fine for now." Probably.

She ignored his unreasonable and apparently exasperated sigh and focused back up.

=Sarah: Don't worry Eve, I'm sure it's Adam's fault somehow.=

=Adam: Hey!=

=Eve: I suppose we were rushed… And I assumed this was Adam's goal to begin with, honestly.=

So help her, if her two friends didn't start with the explanations she was going to punch someone. {{Adam.}}

=Adam: {Sigh] Fine. Eve is literally part of the Lifestream, or magic. Well not really, but sort of? The point is, she isn't a user casting spells through Materia like I expected, she IS the magic IN the summoning itself. Her enhancements from us fixing her injuries allows her to treat that new form of power as an additional Avatar for her to operate.=

=Sarah: {Stunned.}=

=Eve: I'm still not sure what you wanted to happen if this WASN'T your plan. Summonings are just memories of momentous events, if I was a normal person bonded to this Materia all I could do would basically be aim the stupid thing elsewhere. And it would be a never ending repeat of that one memory, which in this case would be a tsunami.=

=Sarah: Shh. All of you shh.=

Right. Focus.

A worried ninja gently tugged her sleeve. "Sarah?"

Sigh.

=Sarah: Adam, you work with Eve and try to get her to focus down on the size of her new dragon body. And maybe a way to switch between active avatars if she dislikes having a dozen copies of herself wandering about or whatever.=

=Adam: Right. And uh. Sorry Sarah.=

=Eve: I should be fine with however many Avatars I end up with. Mom and I are great at multitasking! Just uh. Not good at keeping track of human stuff. Like time or not breaking tiny things.=

Shit.

=Sarah: You heard her Adam! Get her down to the size she wants before she accidentally bumps my friends out of existence with her massive serpent booty.=

=Eve: HEY!=

Smile. Remember to smile. "Yes Yuffie?"

For once her stolen shoulder buddy was off hugging the other little ones, letting her sister lean in alone. "Are you alright? Are we alright?"

Sarah sighed. "Yeah. Basically the Leviathan over there is now one of the new Avatars for Eve, and since our Planet Gaia has accepted her and she sort of merged into that sea creature, we may have accidentally given Eve direct control over the local ocean waters. Or all of them. We'll see when she finishes powering up."

In the background, Elder Godo sighed, talking to one of those hard to see people. "I require stronger tea."

Yuffie looked over at the massive floating green dragon-like creature slowly flying in circles just outside Wutai's bay. "How much stronger is she going to get!? I can feel how dangerous she is from HERE, and we're miles away!"

Uh. "One moment." {Adam?}

The data was vague yet concerning. Huh. "Technically that is still just raw magic, which is why she is so huge right now. She's going to use the other Materia at the core of the island as sort of skin layers to help consolidate her size down to something that can hang out with us more easily."

Which would drastically reinforce that magical power into something unusually sturdy. Sheesh.

Right. "So after she gets that under control, she should be able to concentrate her power and keep all that new stuff I made from causing us problems by just pumping any excess raw magic into that new body."

Her friend blinked, still watching the unspeakably large creature in the distance floating in the air. "So uh… Not super powerful yet but she WILL be?"

A quick check. Currently, Eve was only a few thousand times stronger than a normal summons… Give or take? With unlimited water manipulation abilities and the mental capabilities to gain minute control over any liquids within a large radius of Harbor (Currently Not Built) Island. Which was pretty damn powerful.

But compared to the benefits from this powerup still in progress? "I… Guess that is accurate?" Sort of?

Aside from those stupid Materia skills being used as Eve's freaking SKIN, Sarah was pretty sure that the entire mess would count as a single 'spell'. A spell with endless magic being pumped into it, magic that would compress further over time.

Good luck countering THAT. Or canceling it. Or even affecting it! Even without the special Materia spells involved, with this much power attempting to turn her into a toad or something would be like trying to push a mountain using your tongue.

Not that it would matter since that would get reflected before it could do anything anyway. Sheesh.

Good grief, it was theoretically possible Eve's new Avatar might even shift from basic magic all the way up to crystalized mako! What would a mountain sized crystal of Lifestream magic even be able to do!? Besides giving Sarah headaches and tempting Adam to make the woman a few more of the stupid things.

No, stay focused. "It's fine, Eve's a cool person and she loves me since I saved her from being tortured. She won't hurt us on purpose."

Again she ignored the odd sounds those bystanders made. Didn't they have something else to do? Lazy bums.

Seeing Yuffie wasn't likely to let this go, she searched for a distraction. "Uh… Oh look, I think Eve's figured out the issue!" {Adam! I need a distraction!}

.

=Adam: Uh? Oh, alright. Eve, this looks good enough... Yeah, go with it.=

=Eve: Are you sure? Something seems off about the pattern.=

=Adam: Nah, it will be fine!=

=Eve: Well, alright! We can always change it later and try again.=

.

{{[[E̛͢v̨͡e̢̛:̴̡͟͜ A͘͡v̴̧̛͡ą̷̶̛͠t̴͢͜͡҉ą̸̴͟͢ŗ̸̷͡͝.]]}}

.

A massive swirl of power twisted the impossibly large sea serpent… Down to something she couldn't see from here. "Welp! I better go handle that!"

Yuffie blinked. "Wait, what?"

Nope! "Love you guys but I gotta go dealWithThisBYE!"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam grinned!

.

=Adam: It worked!=

=Eve: What the heck!?=

=Adam: Now you are only the size of a small house! That's MUCH easier to deal with!=

=Eve: What happened to my skin!?=

=Adam: The fins and whiskers have [[Reflect]], so you'll have to block magic with them, your scales are solidified [[Wall]] which will cut down all damage in half, your flesh and horns seem to be [[Shield]], so aside from blocking nearly all damage your headbuts will hurt like a BITCH…=

=Eve: My hair!=

=Adam: Huh? Oh. Yeah, it's basically now transformed into those spines around your horns I guess. And the ones at the tips of your tail. Probably best to not have hair for a sea creature anyway, and the spikes look similar at least!=

=Eve: Why are my scales white and my spines, horn, fins, and whiskers BLUE!?=

=Adam: Uh.=

=Eve: You freaking REVERSED my color selections Adam! What the hell!?=

=Adam: Hey look! Your teeth are basically solid [[Enemy Away]], you could probably intimidate the heck out of people with a growl now!=

=Eve: Fix it! Fix my color scheme damn it!=

=Adam: Oh come on, it was my FIRST TRY! Cut me some slack here!=

=Eve: I'll cut your face!=

.

Ouch. Don't mess with her hair, got it.

=Sarah: Oh wow! You're so beautiful!=

His Jumper was now standing in ankle deep water on top of Harbor (We're going to build it, everyone back the fuck off) island as she grinned! "And you have cool dragon claws and stuff, unlike before when you were that weird gem green color snake thing!"

=Eve: ...I'll tolerate these changes for now.=

Adam's Jumper was best Jumper!

The totally awesome (and not accidentally messed up by Adam) white dragon shifted closer to the woman in a slightly wet blue suit. "I look alright? Even without your pretty hair?"

Sarah grinned as she gently touched the bright blue spines that acted like fur around Eve's horns. "You look amazing! How's it feel to not only have another Avatar, but one that can fly?"

Eve shifted, her body flowing behind her movements like a ribbon in the wind. "It's… Alright? This more feels like everything around me is just more water really. The magic itself is what keeps me swimming, being in air, water, or solid matter doesn't affect that."

Adam blinked. Huh.

=Adam: Really?=

=Eve: The spells used to solidify my surface and help repress my size are also made of me after all. I can choose how they interact with other materials.=

=Adam: That is SO bullshit! You can just go out of phase and whatever and flow through stuff!?=

=Eve: {Rolls her eyes.} I can ignore stuff for a little bit, but if I try for too long I'll just expand again and be massive. And why would that matter? I can probably just smash my way through most stuff with this level of energy available.=

Well, that was a good point. Summons in general are stupidly sturdy, even if they were only memories or events of significance they were pretty much built out of raw power. Even a basic Summon could ignore most counter attacks, and that was nothing compared to Eve's new body.

=Adam: Because going out of phase or being ghost-like is awesome!=

=Eve: What is a ghost?=

Uh. Good point. Most souls on Gaia returned to the Lifestream nearly instantly after death. Oh wait! Gaia mentioned something at one point when she used to put way too much significance in her conversations!

=Adam: When someone dies in an area drained of the ambient Lifestream, they can form up into ghosts. See here: {Midgar_Ghosts_data}=

=Eve: Huh. That's messed up shit right there.=

Yeah, fair enough. A world with a place for spirits to go would probably freak out when those spirits got held up during transit, which was a fair reaction.

=Eve: Why would you want to be one of these so-called 'ghosts' anyway? It looks like a white balloon with a tail.=

=Sarah: What does?=

=Eve: {Midgar_Ghosts_data}=

=Sarah: What the FUCK!? Is that a giant sperm with arms!?=

And… Now Adam couldn't unsee it. Just wonderful. Damn it.

=Eve: So Adam wishes to be a giant sperm with arms… How eccentric.=

=Adam: No. And don't you DARE add that to my name! I'm warning you young lady! I will NOT put up with it!=

=Sarah: Do it! Gaia and I got your back!=

Oh fuck no. {{You are NOT telling Gaia about that! Or any of it!}}

Her smug grin was NOT reassuring! Not at all!

.

=Sarah: Let's invite Gaia over here. She'd love this chat!=

=Eve: She's avoiding me since I got her super embarrassed.=

=Sarah: What!? How?=

=Eve: I implied Adam was into public ḫ̦̱̺̤a͔̱̫̖n͇̱͙̲̺͎d͓̖̳͕̱̮̞h̗͈̜o͓̖͓̩l̥͙̼͍̣̱di̺̜̘ng͉͇͇.=

=Sarah: {Grins!} How lewd!=

.

Oh Planet damn it, Sarah!

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Master Zangan starred at the Wutai bay. "I've been meditating for less than five hours."

Massive copper towers sparkled in the evening sun, a web of precious metal binding them together, and in the distance massively oversized lighthouses sparkled against the coming night.

There was apparently also an island being constructed, but that wasn't visible from here. And was likely to take only days rather than months like one would expect.

Could he have punched something like this into being? Unlikely. The one time he tried to punch something into reality there was a big explosion and he got in trouble.

Which clearly meant he needed to increase his own personal training! Yes!

All problems with reality handled, Master Zangan moved off to find and train his newest disciple.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Sarah checked in on Eve's blue-people group really quickly. Not because Adam was all in a huff, but because it was the responsible thing to do and the babies were super cute.

At least, it was supposed to be a short check in. "How are the babies moving between medical pods!?"

Cloud pointed. "That baby moved to that woman who seemed really happy about it, and then all the OTHER babies started moving to each other, to empty pods, or to one of the other blue lady pods."

Yuffie was watching one vertical tube that seemed nearly stuffed with burbling floating blue winged babies. "I was worried at first, but they seem fine."

Sarah blinked at the kids. And read the logs. "Oh. One of them learned how to traverse through the Lifestream, his Symbiote told all the rest, and Eve's keeping them in their pods… Mostly."

Aerith was tapping on the stuffed tube of babies. "That looks uncomfortable."

Not according to the sensors. "My healing pods automatically adjust the medical liquid pressure to prevent injury. When one arrives or leaves it will ensure a constant amount of support."

They blinked as another few babies suddenly left the stuffed tube and were apparently off visiting the other ones. Which was frantically devolving into a complicated pattern of 'follow the vanishing baby' or 'tag' without the tagging.

Cloud hummed. "I might go get Tifa out of her training to see this. It's like watching an aquarium, but more interesting!"

Sarah sighed. "I'm just glad I provided all the kids and adults some swimsuits."

The stuff was made out of an odd variant of seaweed and algae, but it was safe to wear, eat, and so on. Plus the material stayed on the babies as diapers and didn't fall off the mature women despite their different sizes, so it wasn't exposing anyone!

Not that any of these people would care that much, the massive amount of torture had destroyed their own sense of modesty pretty badly, but it made SARAH feel better not to leave people naked in a floating transparent tube.

That said something was bothering her.

And it was something subtle. No one looked unhappy, none of Adam's alerts had gone off. Theoretically everything was fine here. But still.

Her eyes narrowed as she pulled up the data. All twelve women were not just marked as fine, but as near optimal levels of healthiness for blue winged women with white hair. And all the babies were also enhanced to stupid levels thanks to those Symbiotes sharing data as they 'kept their hosts healthy'.

Sarah blinked. "Ah. That's what was throwing me off." Frustration grew. {Adam!}

Aerith looked away from the cute tube. "What? What was 'throwing you off'?"

She pointed at the smaller winged babies hugging three floating babies. "I didn't realize those three had been born just yet." {I know you can hear me, Adam.}

He was apparently focusing on rebuilding material storage reserves. {{Hmm? What's up Sarah?}}

She sent images. {We missed the births. All three of them. And they were born WEEKS too soon.}

Shock flooded their connection! {{WHAT!? How! I had over a dozen alerts to tell me the MOMENT they went into labor! Heck, I should have known as soon as their own bodies PREPARED to give birth, maybe even before that!}}

Oh, so it wasn't him just missing this out of being busy. Fair enough. {Let's just ask Eve and find out how this didn't set those alerts off then.}

=Adam: Eve! Why didn't you TELL me when your family was giving birth!? No, strike that. HOW did they give birth without my systems warning us first!?=

=Eve: Birth? Oh, that gross painful thing creatures do when not born directly from the Lifestream. No, I'm not making my babies go through that, that looks very unpleasant.=

=Sarah: Eve, we are just worried about how Adam's sensors missed it.=

=Eve: Because it didn't happen.=

Sarah blinked and checked back on the three angels hugging three winged babies.

=Sarah: Pretty sure it did.=

=Eve: Nope! Our family found a better way and I didn't even have to come up with it! {Painless_Repopulation_data}=

Both of them paused. Because, holy crap this was cheating.

=Adam: Baby Sephiroth innately discovered 'Lifestream Travel' to get to his mom. Somehow.=

=Sarah: And his Symbiote told the other babies how to do it too…=

=Adam: And the unborn babies had fully matured Symbiotes that could disconnect them from their umbilical cords, ensure healthy accelerated physical growth thanks to the healing serum everyone is floating in, and let those babies out to play with their friends.=

=Eve: Much less gross! And my baby Symbiotes heal both my baby and her baby back to full peak condition and none of that screaming and stuff.=

Damn. That felt both impressive and yet somehow like cheating.

=Sarah: Can we use this with other women not in Eve's network?=

=Adam: It's only possible because the mother and child are both in the same network as their internal Symbiotes. Normal women could die from shock having a baby suddenly vanish, and babies normally need MUCH longer to mentally mature enough for something like this to not hurt them.=

=Eve: Plus you need these wonderful healing pods! Otherwise the Symbiotes won't have enough material and energy to ensure everyone involved stays healthy. =

So not anytime soon, then.

Meanwhile, in the confused room of healing pods Aerith was conflicted. "Uh… So is this their birthday then?"

Claudia and Elmyra (The parent squad! Woo!) had quickly inserted themselves into the situation, even if Sarah could sense a certain level of envy from both that it was even possible to have a zero stress, zero pain birthing process.

Cloud's mom led the little ones to the side. "We can't give them cake because they need to stay in the healing pods for now."

Mostly so a baby won't accidentally learn how to cast lightning or something and vaporize everyone local who wasn't directly supported and protected by Eve and the Symbiotes. Which should totally be a band name! And wasn't she forgetting something?

Aerith's mom grinned at the group! "However! We can still make decorations and candles and stuff out here and sing to them!"

Sarah frowned. It honestly felt important.

Cloud nodded. "I'll get Tifa, she wouldn't want to miss a birthday party. She loves all kinds of parties, but birthday parties have the most sugar stuff and sometimes they have these fake paper monsters with candy inside for us to hi."

Something about baby Sephiroth and his mom Lucrecia hugging was really ringing a bell somewhere. And it was going to BOTHER her until she figured this out!

Yuffie hummed. "We can just have a really big party, right? Because it would be super hard to figure out which baby belongs to who, and they all are blue and winged and stuff now, so it would be easier with a super party."

Especially since so many of these children HAD no living parents, except of course for… Oh. Oh shit. "Yeah! We should have a big party! Dad will help set it up, no problem!"

Elder Godo clearly noticed something, but like a boss he rolled with it. "Of course. I believe there are supplies for young Yuffie's next birthday in one of our front storage rooms."

Sarah ignored the hard to see people frantically moving colored paper and stuff into that section of the house as Cloud raised a fist! "We should have a BIG party! No, an even bigger than big party!" He hesitated. "Because… Because there are so many babies?"

He was healed up, right? Adam should have been working on him for a while now. Sarah could probably get him no problem. Right? Right.

Tifa walked in, sweaty and covered in rock dust. "Did someone say party? Ooh! Baby pod party! That's so cute!"

Claudia hummed. "Even if the birthday angels can't have any cake in there, I'm sure we can get something together for those of us helping to celebrate with them. Elmyra, where are the nice ladies baking all those treats we enjoyed earlier?"

Aerith grinned! "And we can bring down those mustached flowers in those mustached pots that Gaia liked!"

"And I'll go get some extra decorations!" Because Sarah needed an excuse to leave that the kids wouldn't question while she quickly made sure Adam hadn't forgotten the stolen vampire boyfriend being healed wherever he did his stuff while all this mess had been going on.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Vincent Valentine first noticed the silence.

Compared to the never ending screaming and threats and raw passionate rage, the initial quiet was close to a new torture. One he relished and sunk into his very bones.

Not that he deserved such. He had locked himself down here in his coffin to ensure his growing madness and cursed existence couldn't further hurt his love. Or his future son.

Though… Now that the silence echoed like thunder, things felt different.

Obvious decisions and plans and actions now felt confusing. Painful self sacrifices were feeling pointless. And his trusted but helpless leader, Professor Hojo, was no longer the most knowledgeable and trustworthy man in existence.

Waves of doubt flooded his once conflicted mind.

When had he begun to trust that monster? When had his solid core of dislike and distrust turned into begrudged order following and resigned acceptance!?

Even BEFORE his beloved had begun carving up his torso to insert that Protomateria into his core, before the whispers and the constant treatments, things were NOT right.

Memories of his beloved 'accepting' 'treatment' to keep her soon-to-be-born child safe seemed false. Fragile. Vague and lacking the weight of time and details of a hard life.

Not the pain. Or the torture. No, those were always crystal clear. But the nightmares, his 'just' and 'deserved' punishment he suffered every night locked away down here?

Suddenly they were gone.

The endless nightmares, now that he could somehow focus, now that his mind felt more clear… Out of everything, THOSE had been too perfect.

Never a change. Never lost details. Never in a different order.

Vincent began to feel raw rage gnaw on his soul.

Those nightmares felt forced. Reinforced and applied.

Artificial.

His blood red eyes snapped open, his fanged teeth snarling in rage!

And he slowed. Confused.

He had discarded his senses as was habit from endless torment spent in constant pain. But now that he was no longer shoving back the ocean of death and agony, he was shocked to see how different his circumstances were.

Glowing green liquid allowed his nude form to float while strange substances flowed in and out of various tubes near the surface.

He had no air, but felt fine breathing in this strange liquid. It should make him gasp and choke and drown, but it somehow felt like the most gentle mountain fog, a crisp and clear source of air that was full of clouds.

And the silence continued.

A flex had his demonic empowered limbs shift with ease. No pain. No fighting back Chao's uncontrolled and unending rage and torment and grief.

More than that, his scars were gone… And he wasn't sure how to feel about this. Each mark at one point (or ever?) had represented his Sins. His Failures. Marks of which to atone.

But now, all he remembered was betrayal. A tormentor. His love hurt, his child in danger, and being shot by a man claiming to study monsters.

Monster Hojo. Demon Hojo.

Compared to that man, whom his mind insisted was trustworthy (Or did it?), whose actions were regrettably required and necessary (Were they!?), how was HE a monster!?

Vincent remembered his beloved crying as she carved into his near dead flesh, inserting a deadly and risky crystal into his chest… Attempting to keep him from passing on.

Yet he also remembered another, clinically making notes, a man that he somehow TRUSTED. In any form or fashion!

How long had he been toyed with!? How long had THEY been under monster Hojo's attention!?

Medication that should have calmed down his symptoms, enhancements that seemed to make his control weaker and his restraint strained… Yet dose after dose he fell deeper and deeper into the fog of trust, of sadness, of despair!

Vincent Valentine felt raw RAGE as his mind began to tear itself apart, false memories and embedded commands and flawed thoughts carved into fodder for the feast!

Unaware of the rapidly changing Protomateria in his chest starting to glow ominously.

Unaware of emergency protocols embedded in his very flesh and bones that would remove all limiters and force a full activation of the Protomateria, ensuring the host couldn't survive leaving its leash to attempt to hunt down the Professor himself!

And fortunately, neither Vincent nor Hojo were aware that the raging vampire was currently floating in an out of Jump Warehouse submerged in a psionic field while dosed with 'Enhance Self' and dozens of medical serums.

In moments his flesh nearly exploded into his unstable monstrous form, empowered by his Protomateria that was beginning to liquefy and bond more closely than ANY crystalized Lifestream magic should be able to do.

Crimson flesh was covered with thick purple skin, his blood red hair flaring behind his gray stone horns and fangs and claws and RAGE! A fully uncontrolled [[Chaos: Galian Beast]] form, with NONE of Vincent's cautious restraint and desperate attempts at control!

While physically more robust, this form was focused on speed! And the odd liquids seemed to enhance this, forcing his muscles to be more compact, his limbs to be less restricted, flexibility enhanced to unreasonable levels!

But even as his flesh began attuning to elemental fire and his horns attempted to begin charging for an explosive [[Beast Flare]] attack and endless [[Berserk Dance]] slashes, he began twisting further.

The next tier of demonic release shouldn't have been this rapid. Nor this powerful. But he couldn't force himself to care.

His mind was lost as it shredded and repaired itself, but even so his near continuous restraint was never before this relaxed. Never this free! He knew, in his Soul, that none of his loved ones were near. That this place was other in some way.

And so instead of holding himself back, the berserk vampire embraced the madness.

His enhanced beast form flowed near seamlessly into metallic flesh. Grey flesh and mineral heavy skin began wrapping itself in layers and thickness, bulking his body further and further into the [[Chaos: Death Gigas]] monstrous metal menace.

Sacrificing speed for indomitable physical defense, sacrificing magical resistance so that his flickering and sparking body could better conduct his electrical attacks, his mind was too tortured to even attempt the mad [[Gigadunk]] smashing assaults or start to charge the deadly [[Livewire]] electrical storm. Not before his body began to tear itself down again.

This third form was the least documented. The one time he had formed into this monster only heavy assaults and chemical attacks managed to keep him from escaping containment… Containment he had agreed to at the time due to false memories and fraudulent promises.

[[Chaos: Hellmasker.]]

His skull naturally extended, shoving meat and organs out of the way as bone formed a horrific mask and one of his limbs twisted into an horrifying eldritch monstrosity.

In exchange for sacrificing most of his physical power and attacking ability, one arm became a tooth covered blade, vibrating fangs causing horrific damage similar to a massive chainsaw on multiple targets at a time.

But it wasn't his heavy resistance to physical and magical attacks that made this third tier form so terrifying. No, his ability to do half his normal attack damage to multiple targets easily was simple enough to handle.

Because when not using [[Splattercombo]] to tear and rip and maim his foes, his raw power and enhanced monstrous limb could cast [[Nightmare.]]

A horrifying magical attack, one that would inflict [[Sleep]], [[Poison]], [[Confuse]], [[Silence]], [[Frog]], and [[Small]].

All at once, all on one target.

One target, one person or monster, would have to resist magical slumber, endure continuous damage, constantly keep track of who was friend and foe, and be restricted from casting any magic to save themselves.

One target would be transformed temporarily into a small frog form that reduced damage output down to a fourth of your former power, while preventing you from being able to use your OWN limit breaks or any abilities besides attacking or activating items.

And if you avoided all THOSE issues, you had to resist [[Small]], which shrank you down to near nothing and made any and all physical attacks do negligible damage.

And after his furious form crippled you with magical power, he would rage directly into [[Splattercombo]], shredding your body as your coworkers tried to help you recover.

His form tried to roar, but the bones were too occupied being rebuilt into more powerful patterns, his arm fangs carved ever more cruel even as his very cells attuned to magical status effects and enhancers.

Something was forcing his form to shift further and further into magical alignment. [[Nightmare]] was somehow twisting, shifting… Some sort of time manipulation? Something like [[Slow]] and [[Stop]] seemed to be melding into the mess, with an undercurrent of death itself trying to seep into the mess.

But his focus was lost again as something inside Vincent cracked.

A failsafe deliberately sabotaged. A last measure unknowingly activated, one meant to kill the Host to ensure the Professor a last measure of safety.

No limitation. No timeout. No restriction. The bindings were released.

Raw magic. Raw potential. Raw life-force. Enhancements were maximized.

Black blood. Black bones. Black muscles. Black skin. Black horns.

Glowing red wings, filled with a hungry power.

.

[[Chaos: İ͙̗͍͚̙̩̃͗͡ͅn͉̤̻̜̹̦̊̍͜c̟̼͕̭̹̑͑̓a̛̟̹̜͉̫̻̲ͬr͇̰̩͙ͬñ̲͔̱͔͖̀å̼̺͔̲̟̀̒̆ͪ̿͝t̷̫̳̪͇̲̆̾ͧi͇̤̅͑̾̓͢ǫ͉̱ͦ͋̆ͮ͌n̪̠ͦͮ.̜̲͓̖̥̎̌ͬ͌͒ͭ́͢]]

.

Chaos.

Vincent Valentine couldn't help but remember his beloved's words of the monstrosity. Of the existence and how it impacted reality.

{Soul wrought of terra corrupt, quelling impurity, purging the stream to beckon forth an ultimate fate... Behold mighty Chaos! Omega's squire to the lofty heavens!}

They had both nearly died that day.

And after this? He was likely to die today.

It was a form that echoed within the Planet herself. One possibly called forth to handle the madness of Monster Hojo and the actions he enabled against the world itself.

Yet this potential and the powerful Protomateria crystal was wasted keeping him alive.

Allowing him to adapt to the torture, to sync ever closer to this entity.

As his body began to decay, Vincent could vaguely feel knowledge of the potential attacks Chaos could enable.

Powerful magic and physical defenses enabled it to survive astounding damage even as a vague swipe of his wings could inflict [[Chaos Saber]] on all his foes. A blade of air itself slashing into an army, doing over twice the damage one would expect to entire crowds of potential snacks.

And while inflicted with madness and pain, while barely able to use any of his skills… his [[Chaos: Incarnation]] form could easily activate [[Satan Slam.]]

Raw magical power, transformed into raw death energy, forced into reality.

A summoned illusion of the concept of death, forming a skull out of the surrounding surfaces, one that seemed to drain Souls themselves away from reality.

When Chaos used [[Satan Slam]], every target died.

If you were immune to death energies, the power would automatically transform into a physical blast five times more powerful than a simple assault would have been.

And Chaos form could use either ability easily and often.

It was raw power. It was the goal of everyone involved to somehow, someday, be able to study this possibility. To observe something so much beyond what was known, to touch beyond the limit itself.

But even Hojo gave up allowing ANYONE to reach this stage.

It was theoretically an extinction level event.

Even as he felt the madness try to overwhelm him like usual, Vincent could feel his potential being drained. His energy being culled. His lifespan sacrificed. And his cells decaying.

But the raw power wouldn't let him die.

His approaching death simply enhanced the power involved. The durability of the form. The rush of incredible, yet fleeting, ability!

A growing fear began to haunt his mind.

He should have lost control already.

He should have gone mad, like usual.

He should have died several mutations ago. Certainly before reaching this final form. This unlimited stage of development was to devour his flesh entirely if it was even possible to endure the impossible energies involved!

The fear was not that he would die.

The terror was… What if he DIDN'T!?

As he felt his body somehow enhancing further, skin slowly being enhanced and shifting into a gray tone, his eyes beginning to bleed into gold while his pupils slitted… Even as his teeth shifted to fangs and his horns became a crown of sharp spikes, something changed.

Raw magic, liquid power, began to flood his chamber.

And Chaos began to relax.

The h̩̼u͍̬̳̯̹n̝͚̰͕g̺e̻̖r͕͙͚ fell away.

Even his body twisted and shrank and compressed to something resembling his former height, as he felt his bones crack and shatter and reform while muscles twisted and mutated and shifted shape. And somehow...

A clawed hand of near metallic gray materia twisted in the glowing waters.

Somehow he still had silence.

His golden eyes flashed in the mako glowing chamber.

Yes. He could work with this.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam was sweating. {{See!? He's fine! Here, have some data!}}

Edit it, edit, change, good enough saveSendGood! {{See?}}

Holy shit. Like, seriously, HOLY SHIT!

How the HELL did some random vampire dude suddenly start draining SO MUCH magic out of nowhere!? Fuck, how did the Warehouse miss THIS mess!?

If Adam hadn't had Sarah run off and start freaking out about saving Eve's momma's baby vampire dad and FORGETTING about him, Adam wouldn't have noticed Vincent's healing pod freaking the fuck out!

Guy went from happy floating in his stupid pod, slowly regrowing organs and stuff and all that fun jazz, and suddenly!? BAM!

Needed more power than Sarah was generating! Thank goodness there was a stockpile of that stuff built up.

Like, this bastard went from 'Nothing going on, we good!' to 'SHIT BE ON FIRE' in NO time, and Adam had no warnings at all!

He frantically checked the logs… And wanted to smack his skull into something.

The Warehouse DID notice the patient harvesting his own meat and magic and life and… Well, everything. It ALSO detected that 'Enhance Self' was encouraging the process, so decided it was fine.

Because it wasn't smart enough to realize that 'Enhance Self' was perfectly happy helping the vampire adapt to being a magicless person. And that to prevent such an issue, as well as ensure no long term issues (Since 'Enhance Self' would wear off when this dude leaves), he needed magic.

So. Much. Magic.

And seriously, the hell!? Was this in Gaia's messages and Adam just missed it somewhere!? Shit.

Finally (Adam had launched into high speed mental mode, which was TOTALLY justified and NOT freaking out thank you very much), 'Research' came back with some results!

First: As expected, Vincent was connected to 'demons', and that Protomateria inserted into his messed up body was keeping him stable. Fair enough, whatever.

Secondly! 'Enhance Self' apparently went FULL DERP and was like "Nah bruh, you aren't connected to demons, you are connected a SINGLE demon but the lower levels of compatibility keep it from properly manifesting in these lower levels", which was neat in a 'Oh Shit' way.

So the stupid Tonic decided to fix it.

Thirdly: Hojo has somehow designed physical, biological suicide organs and bone implants.

Probably thanks to torture and human experiments, which was just great. Woo.

And these monstrosities of science can be triggered if certain levels of magic are detected and will thereafter decay into some seriously freaky shit. Because of course he fucking did.

Send all THAT scary shit to 'Research' for future review, please and THANK you!

Fourth of all! At 'full compatibility', Vincent Valentine is apparently supposed to become an Avatar for Chaos, which was a half formed Weapon of the Planet, or as Gaia called them 'Planet Defenders', which was not exactly wonderful in general.

Thankfully (Maybe?) Vincent went through his Avatar connection shift while here.

In Sarah's Warehouse.

Outside of the entire Jump.

Which uh… Meant that Adam was accidently supplying this vampire Avatar of a potential Planet Weapon the power to 'fix' itself. Because NOT being the Avatar for Chaos meant he was hurt, and the conceptual psionic healing serums were just super happy to help thanks for asking!

Though due to a lack of power, 'Enhance Self' had been forcing the entire Avatar of Chaos, currently run and operated via Vincent Valentine, to condense and improve itself internally to reduce energy requirements and compact the finished 'heal' product even without access to the needed materials.

So uh... Adam had frantically done some reading through Hojo's experimentation notes and Vincent's profile. Learned about all the details, what few there were... And about this whole [[Chaos: Incarnation]] bullshit. And how much Vincent's new form didn't match the records. Like, at all.

Maybe making THIS new version of [[Chaos: Incarnation]] just about human sized, instead of however silly big it could have been when boosted by Bioshock madness, was a net positive? So... That was good, probably?

And Adam had just dumped raw magic into that mess. Which might be a problem.

Sarah was tapping. {So I can get him for the party then?}

Shit. {{He's in a delicate recovery stage, best wait or there could be issues.}}

She glanced back at the party even as bags of happy paper decorations and deflated party balloons formed around her. {No, you have a good point. At least I can tell Lucrecia that he's being treated… That should help!}

Oh. The Protomateria had somehow been incorporated into the vampire's soul. Which was somehow possible when mixing magic, psionic fields, Tonics, Planetary Weapons, and outside reality laboratory settings. And not having it all explode.

Which was good? Um. At least that stupid fake Materia wouldn't become a big glowing weak point in Vincent's chest or something stupid like that with the thing hidden away inside his Soul, right?

Plus it looked neat like this. {{He might have a few extra horns, but his wings are at least going to match his girlfriend now, kind of, so that works out!}}

Well, her and her kid's wings would be bright blue with blue feathers apparently, and his new vampire bat wings were more shifting from gray to silver with a gold glowing membrane, but the family with wings together stays together… Right? Or something?

Problems solved! Adam's the best! Woo!

Sarah seemed confused. {Did he have those things when we saved him?}

Shit! {{Yep!}} Nope. {{Hojo is a real bastard.}}

Saved it! Almost everything on this stupid Jump was that asshole's fault anyway.

And these changes were mostly cool, right? Especially as 'Enhance Self' seemed stuck on the 'compress power as much as possible' phase right now instead of the 'make big and glowy' thing it had started with. It should be fine.

Plus, aside from turning silver and the horns and golden eyes and glowing golden demon wings, it was pretty close to human-ish! The fangs and claws would probably go away, and he already had feet again instead of hooves so this would work out. Probably.

Also! No tail! That was a positive, right? Tails were all fun and sexy games until you wanted to sit down or wear pants. And the accidental Protomateria soul injection was going to work out great too, do doubt.

Adam winced as Vincent Valentine's soul began shifting colors to orange. Or gold?

Uh. Which was fine. Because reasons. Shit, best record everything just in case.

Ah! Right! Now he can pass this NEW data to 'Research' and hopefully get a bunch of new tools that can detect, measure, and (maybe) fix souls too! Yep, this has been nothing but good stuff, no problems here!

Vincent shifted again, his soul VERY MUCH turning gold.

Yeah uh. Best get to making those Soul tools as soon as possible. Just in case.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Claudia Strife grinned at her son's disappointed face. "What's wrong honey?"

He pointed at the fairly large cake. "I thought we were going to get the biggest cake for the biggest birthday?"

Daww. "I did! This is actually a mini-cupcake, but I made it SUPER big! And look, a whole BOX of candles to put on top!"

Her little one frowned thoughtfully… And nodded. "It will have to do. But next year we can all help and make an even BIGGER mini-cupcake!"

Little Yuffie was grinning in the background, holding up a drawn picture of a birthday cake with bright colors and 'Happy Birthday!' written in glitter, watching the babies pop in and out of the various healing pods to follow her around the room while the blue angel women seemed happy enough to watch the mess unfold.

Still. "Anyone know where Sarah went off to?"

Little Aerith looked up from her crayon drawings. "Gaia says she's going to get the boyfriend of one of Eve's girls for the party, but we aren't supposed to know that."

She paused. "So uh. Don't tell anyone?"

The bemused crowd of older people gave a quick nod and she clearly felt relieved. "Good! Anyway, she'll be back soonish."

Dear Tifa was trying to teach one of the smaller angel babies how to uppercut (no success so far) while Yuffie was trying to outpace the teleporting babies in their odd 'Follow the Leader with the pretty picture' game.

Meanwhile the mom's and the 'grandparents' were helping Elder Godo put up decorations. Though somehow more balloons and banners and streamers and such were showing up than expected if she looked away for too long.

Overall, this was turning out fine!

Everyone paused when the doors opened and raw magic flowed into the room.

Sarah was holding a set of boxes, colorful decorations falling out of it, and uh. No one was paying attention because of the massive white dragon with blue horns and whiskers behind her.

The woman had a tired grin. "Hey! I got Eve and those party things! And uh, I wanted to get Eve's son-in-law but he's still getting better right now."

Seeing the confusion, she coughed. "Uh. Eve is the smaller form of that giant blue sea serpent from earlier? But she's smaller and changed colors and is a dragon now. Right, and I guess the whole vampire son-in-law thing is a bit of a story…"

The dragon, massive in length but only a human or so in thickness, curled into the room and floated upwards towards the ceiling. "I don't see why, Sarah. Just tell them!"

Her voice chimed like tiny bells in the night, but rumbled as the sea ground the land. It was beautiful.

The woman waved off the dragon, who was slowly curling all the raw energy in the air around herself. "Right, uh. I can do this!"

Sarah stood straight, even as all the blue women and babies were staring up at Eve with awe. Well, the babies were mostly looking like they wanted to grab the creature, but the women were certainly impressed. "Everyone, this woman over here is Lucrecia Crescent. And uh, that child was one of the first babies to have been given Eve's genetics, although this was before they were improved and healed into the Symbiotes you all can hear today."

Claudia was confused. "Symbiotes?"

She nodded. "Eve enhanced the cells added, made them safe for all these people, and made them smart and able to share data to protect her family."

Which was not LESS confusing, but did explain things to some extent.

Sarah coughed. "Anyway! Monster Hojo did bad stuff to her, her child, used her child's survival as justification to expand his experiments and so on and so forth. But because he's an asshole, he did this whole thing where he nearly killed and certainly DID torture and mutilate her partner, plus a bunch of chemical and Materia mental conditioning and manipulation and… Uh. Yeah."

Eve's fangs were fixed in a snarl. "He h̳̝̝͉ur̤͎̘t̗̣̜̯͎̝̖ my family."

Sarah nodded. "Point is, Doctor Crescent managed to stabilize her partner, Vincent Valentine, but couldn't heal him completely before Monster Hojo did all sorts of bad things. I got a hold of the man, and I've been healing him up."

One of the floating blue women made some gestures and seemed to talk, though no one could hear it.

She pointed. "Good point! And yet, despite being labeled as Hojo's 'wife' on paperwork, I needed more data. I've hacked most of Shinra at this point..." Sarah blinked at the Shinra Soldiers in the room. "Uh. Allegedly. I mean I... allegedly hacked most of Shinra? Maybe?"

Eve snorted, before twirling between the healing pods at above head height, babies popping from tube to tube as they tried to chase her… She seemed done with the conversation at least.

Claudia meanwhile rolled her eyes and made sure Cloud didn't push the cake off the table as he continued adding more candles to it. Well done Sarah, no one will discern the truth now.

Sarah coughed. "Back on topic, ALL the people in the area of Shinra that I liberated were off the books. And off the secret books. And out of undefined and unapproved budgets and departments. Super illegal shit."

A few of the women said something that made her nod. "Yes, not surprising I suppose."

The blue angel, the doctor apparently, made a gesture at her body and seemed to be talking.

She shrugged. "Yes he will physically be healthy, if not the same as before. And mentally he is recovering surprisingly well, considering how much dangerous crap was injected and surgically changed in his body."

The woman hesitated? Said something? Seriously, young Sarah needed to let these girls out of these healing pods or communicate in some way that the rest of them could hear too. This was just frustrating.

The impossible girl winced. "No, I doubt he will have a problem with your recent changes… But uh. I mentioned changes? Because his body changed a lot."

Seeing the concern in the Doctor's eyes, she held up her hands! "I had to fix a LOT! And he had that demon connection to a Planetary Weapon and was mostly a vampire and all kinds of stuff! Fixing all that changed stuff!"

The floating woman hugged her baby and seemed to glare at Sarah when the dragon slowly floated down to look at her directly. "Calm yourself child. Your mate is being cared for, you and your little ones are under my protection, and it is the celebration of birth!"

Yuffie grinned and pointed at her sign! "Yeah, see!? We decided all the little babies are going to share birthdays and have a big party today!"

Tifa hesitantly held up a hand to the glass. "It's important. Mommy said it was important to spend time with family on birthdays."

A check ensured that dear Elmyra was heading that way to give the little dear a good hug, though Cloud beat her to it. "Yeah! And now we got a BIG family so we're gonna have a SUPER BIG party!"

Her boy paused. "Also, we got a dragon now, right? That's like way better than a pony or something! You always wanted a pony, right?"

Tifa rubbed her eyes clear from any unexpected tears. "Yeah, but I don't think a dragon counts, right?"

Cloud shrugged. "Dunno. Hey Ms. Eve, do you count as a pony?"

And the massive creature was floating near HER BABY! "I would be a very large pony."

No. Calm. Claudia checked… And yes, the people beyond her comprehension were all calm and unconcerned as well.

Meanwhile, that had Cloud up on a sugar rush! "The BIGGEST pony! Can you give us dragon rides!?" He made some confusing hand gestures. "They're like pony rides but you can fly and probably breathe fire or something instead of eating grass."

Eve had a surprisingly expressive face, even if that face was as tall as herself. "I suppose I don't mind? But I don't think I can breathe fire. Then again, I haven't tried either..."

""""""No!/Stop!/Please don't go out of your way!/DO IT!/This seems dangerous./Not inside the building!""""""

Aerith quietly hugged Tifa as her mom was stalking over. "Ms. Eve, you will not attempt ANY fire breathing near this healing facility! Furthermore, I insist any attempts at training or attacks be done outside just like with little Cloud and dear Tifa!"

"""Yes mom/Cloud's Mom/Loud Person."""

She nodded! "Thank you dears. Now if you wish to give the little ones any sort of rides I would feel better if it were done while swimming or over the water to avoid injury if a child should fall off."

The massive dragon swirled in odd shapes as she thought. "That does seem simple enough. After all, humans get hurt so easily… Not only can they get hurt from falling a few dozen meters, but even a small amount of decapitation can apparently take forever to fix!"

Sarah sighed. "People need their heads Eve. It is super important."

The dragon flicked one of her claws. "My Symbiotes are keeping full records, unlike with these more squishy people. Even if I must grow them a new body it would be easy enough to eventually fix the situation. But if I give rides over the water, even bone fractures will be less likely!"

Claudia held in her exasperation. Memories of her past husband complaining about how annoying it was to lose limbs and other such insanities reminded her that combat professionals really had a different metric for 'reasonable choices' and 'minor injuries'.

But she could be in denial for a few more years. "Cloud, you are not allowed to ride the nice dragon goddess unless it is over the ocean, there is an adult I approve of nearby, AND you stay less than a dozen meters over the water."

The little rascal even rolled his eyes! "Yes mom."

Nope. "Would you like me to make it only eight meters!?"

He jumped! "Ah! No mom!" Grabbing Aerith and Tifa he began dragging them off to the dragon. "Come on Eve, let's get out of everyone's way. Yuffie! I'm stealing your littlest sister for a bit!"

The younger ninja grinned! "Make sure to steal with your legs! You wouldn't want to pull anything!"

Aerith squawked! "Cloud, NO! Don't you get into stealing with ANY part of your body!"

The room got quieter as they left. And there was more room now, as the massive length of the Goddess's daughter swam away.

Elder Godo blinked at his daughter. "Steal with your legs?"

She blushed! "It sounded better in my head!"

He hummed and settled into his chair. "No, I am not judging the statement. I was just unaware you had reached the fourth stage of your training."

Yuffie paused. "What?"

A nod. "Good flexibility training. And it is surprisingly difficult to pickpocket using your toes without getting caught and without removing your sandals or shoes."

Meanwhile Sarah was confused by the number of locals bowing at the empty doorway and the sudden outside dragon flying party activity that had just gotten kick started. "I honestly thought the odd part of this would be me having to explain why Eve's daughter's boyfriend is now a silver winged golden eyed demon Avatar."

The woman smiled! "This is MUCH less stressful for me! Cool!"

A tapping pulled attention to the floating blue angel in a healing pod, glaring at the woman.

Sarah blinked. "I… I skipped mentioning that entirely didn't I? Ah. Not so cool."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam kept an eye on the vampire, but the patient seemed to have stabilized at this point.

Human shaped and proportioned hands and feet, a pair of wings and a small crown of horns. Which was much less monstrous than several of his earlier body mutations, so uh. Good?

Of course, now his horns, eyes, and bat wing membranes glowed gold. Plus his durable armor-like skin was silver, and seemed to have nearly invisible scales. Other than that? The changes were barely noticeable!

Oh. And he was built like a Greek god. Abs that could grate cheese and muscles that were so defined it was almost astoundingly impressive. Which was slightly more noticeable.

Maybe he looked like this before? And used to be a fitness nut?

At least, theoretically, he could be injured. Maybe. 'Research' had some hope that if a very powerful and durable blade or spike was pushed at one point on his body with a large amount of force, aimed between bones, empowered by magic, and held there for a few minutes… Uh.

Well, it might scratch. As long as he just stayed there and ignored the situation.

Of course, Adam documented everything. There were some GOOD biological improvements here, the most questionable of which was related to Vincent's new bone structure.

Somehow, and he had no idea HOW exactly, all of the vampire's bones now had uncertainty patterns naturally formed within their patterns.

Compared to THAT nonsense, and the power generated as the 'demonic' blood naturally pumped through his body, his enhanced muscle and bone materials were just interesting side notes. Though the way his crown of horns manipulated mako was fascinating!

Yet it was no wonder this transformation ability would attack his sanity and leave him in rage. The amount of material and energy required for a full transformation was stupendously high, even BEFORE this new enhanced mode was developed.

Not that it mattered. THIS was the vampire's new baseline now, a silver demon for the blue angel. And their little blue winged child, according to the genetics report.

'Research' helpfully pointed out that the blue skin and white haired angels were surprisingly Smurf-like. Sort of. If you squinted.

And THAT got the old Smurf TV show's theme song stuck in his head. Which was great.

Then again, a 'Demon and the Smurf' tv show would have been fairly entertaining, or at least worth checking out. If television was a huge thing on Gaia. Or if smurfs or their related legends even existed here.

Really, he SHOULD be ensuring the vampire was healthy and so on and so forth… But now he was tempted to modify those green biological outfits Eve's kids were wearing to be naturally white. Maybe hand out some tiny white Smurf hats?

Not like babies cared. Parents dressed kids up in silly and stupid stuff all the time as far as he could tell. It maybe made up for the constant pooping and screaming and crying and so on and so forth.

Normally, at least.

But this? This Planetary Network where all the kids and parents and Symbiotes were able to mentally communicate? This was awesome!

Symbiotes kept the little tikes clean and healthy and pain free. The network ensured that all the kids were being watched by SOMEONE at all times, and even with base thought patterns the babies were perfect models of calmed natures and relaxed attitudes compared to normal children.

And if something was going wrong, the child's Symbiote would submit a report for Eve to translate… Even as it connected to their internal network and potentially solved the issues automatically!

Compared to NORMAL baby handling, this was 4,000,000% cheating. Easily.

Especially since Eve could use her absurd multitasking abilities to keep each child safe, prevent teleportation to bad or unapproved areas, ensure that anyone sleeping wouldn't be interrupted by the kids or adults moving about or playing, and so on and so forth.

Adam paused.

Did they even need to eat and drink any more? The Symbiotes were able to directly stream and share magic, and had clearly learned how to convert that energy into something similar to regeneration and needed nutrition. Milk bottles just couldn't compare to magic juice really.

Old age wouldn't apply to these ones either, and even the older women were slowly reverting to prime condition… Around twenty three or so?

They also wouldn't age further, even without the Symbiotes refining their bodies as they stumbled upon improvements. With a connection to Eve, they all had a full history of all changes and every form in between! So no worries about some random 'improvement' having an unfixable long term issue.

Worst case, they could all just undo tons of alterations and start over from a stable baseline. Theoretically at least.

He carefully examined data from 'Research', and with THIS much raw magical power available in each baby? Weaker spells would do literally nothing. Or even be stolen by the child's Symbiote as an additional source of fuel.

Uh. Yeah, no reason to bring that up with anyone. Adam just documented it, and put it aside… If anyone tried to attack the kids in the future it would just be a pleasant surprise! At least until Sarah and Eve squished the idiots hurting the children.

Sheesh, were any of these people remotely human anymore? At least genetically the angels could have kids with the native species, even if new mothers would drain the local mako streams for power during pregnancy.

Meh, Eve's kids would be powerful physically, magically, and mentally. Plus biologically unaging and beautiful/handsome, and those benefits would only improve over time… It would all work out. Probably.

That said though, he needed SOMEWHERE for these people to go instead of floating in tubes all day.

While Sarah was watching Cloud, Tifa, and Aerith fly over Wutai Bay on Eve's back (She was more than long enough to fly/float them all at once), Adam began setting up Eve's Island.

Because his name of Harbor Island was rejected by a dragon, and Sarah backed her up, so it was now Eve's Island. Which was a bummer, but whatever.

At the moment? Basics.

Adam basically scanned Wutai's existing port, warped it to fit on the round island base, and duplicated it a few times to handle the much more prevalent room available.

Biggest change was the center, which now had a massive recovery pod with thick protective transparent material ensuring no easy damage would crack this thing open. From the magical core of the island, all the way to the surface of the sea, it was easy enough to [[Harvest]] out the ocean within and begin filling it with medical liquid for the babies to swim in.

Some modules to adjust pressure, ensure it was given enough oxygen to be breathable, several more to keep it clean...And some nearby tubes that the babies could teleport to easily enough to explore the underwater artificial reefs and the massive copper tree (Sarah still says it looks like a bush at best, a mess if she was honest) and so on and so forth.

A bit of height using steel for supports, and the center of the island was given life pods for emergency use and easier transportation if you were an angel on the move!

Best go up a bit, then flare out so there is lots of space to build some farms and stuff, another larger layer for warehouses and trade storage and stuff, another layer for commerce… Hmm.

Right, Adam can add shops and markets and stuff later, go up another layer and put some housing, a library, some stages and stuff, basically community resources.

And the top would have some gardens for fresh food and to take advantage of storms and rainfall and stuff for free clean water!

Oh he left out a lot of the internal structures, and was using the standard modular design patterns that Sarah would have to make sure to explain to Elder Godo at some point so modification and maintenance would be easy enough, but it was looking good!

More healing pods, a few copper mako paths to ensure power could reach all layers of the island, there were airships and stuff too, right? So a landing pad over the central elevators, a traffic control tower…

Adam was humming along and enjoying himself immensely when he was interrupted. {{Sorry, what?}}

.

=Aerith: I said it looks like a mushroom.=

=Cloud: Oh yeah! All the cranes and buildings at the base sorta look like grass and weeds and rocks, and the middle tower is the stem!=

=Adam: What!? No it doesn't!=

=Sarah: {Chuckles} It totally does! A big silver mushroom, since it is all that shiny metal.=

=Gaia: It needs a mustache.=

=Eve: No.=

=Adam: Huh?=

=Aerith: It would have to be a pretty big mustache if Sarah added one.=

=Eve: Why would my island need a mustache!?=

=Gaia: For style!=

=Aerith: All flowers need mustaches.=

=Sarah: Mushrooms aren't flowers though?=

=Gaia: You gotta believe Sarah! Don't let life get you down!=

=Eve: Adam, you better NOT put a mustache on my island! Or my wall. Or on me!=

=Adam: Err...=

=Aerith: But you already got a mustache…=

=Gaia: {Squee!}=

=Eve: NO! These are WHISKERS! They are part of my [[Sense+All]]!=

=Aerith: Oh?=

=Gaia: Let me see, let me see!=

=Eve: Oh why, mom!?=

=Sarah: Heh. {Mussstashe_Dragon_data}=

=Eve: SARAH! WHY!?=

=Gaia: Oh my self you are so PRECIOUS!=

.

And… No longer helpful. The communication was quickly degrading down into arguments and facial hair and dragon hair and all sorts of stuff. And nothing about mushroom island.

Damn it. It did look like a mushroom. A massive one beyond all reason, to the point where a full dockyard modified for massive shipments and incoming vessels tooked tiny in comparison, but the image was undeniable.

Well. Shit.

Fuck it!

If it was going to be a mushroom, he was going to go ALL IN!

Massive bubble shaped life pods on the outside so the babies could teleport around and see from WAY high up, some protective enamel coatings to make the 'cap' bright red (Except the glowing mako green healing pod spots), some white enamel on the 'stalk', ensure all the base metal had protective dirt colored material and shift all the shipping facilities towards green.

And paint the warehouses rock-like grey… And there!

.

=Adam: What do you think? {Mushroom_Island_data}=

=Gaia: I DEMAND MUSTACHE!=

=Eve: Mom!=

=Aerith: Is this something that will make more sense to me when I'm older?=

=Sarah: Age hasn't helped me much when it comes to understanding whatever madness this is, honestly. Maybe I'll know more after my memories return.=

=Adam: Nope, I'm older than all of you and crazy shit still happens. Though sometimes it's my fault.=

=Sarah: Sometimes, huh?=

=Eve: Wait, what!? How can you be older than the planet herself!?=

=Gaia: {Blushes} Don't speak of a woman's age you little whipper snapper! And I've only been around for d҉̢́͜͞a͜͏̢̢t̨́͜͢a̡͞͏̶ years, there's lots of things older than me!=

=Aerith: Huh? Like what?=

=Sarah: Shush you, do NOT get caught up in this.=

=Adam: I was super old before I even ran into Sarah, much less since we came here. Though I think Sarah only existed for a few centuries before we became partners?=

=Gaia: Partners? {Blush} A relationship?=

=Sarah: Nah, he's more like my Boss. And apparently a place? I don't remember it well, and he can't let me see it or remember it or there are consequences. Not for now at least.=

=Eve: Well, now that I have Mushroom Island I guess I am a place too.=

=Aerith: Ooh! You can be location buddies!=

=Gaia: I guess I wouldn't mind sharing him…=

=Sarah: HA! Knew it!=

=Adam: BRB TTYL, BFN!=

.

Nope, he was outof ALL that. And he was NOT going to explain relationships to a planet. Or to her daughter. Or why they should not both be courting the same Warehouse.

No, that didn't make sense logically, and no: He didn't care.

Sarah giggled. {Oh come on, Boss.}

Nuh uh, none of that.

She sighed. {Sorry, I know you feel it's a bit odd…}

Adam focused on creating happy landscape portraits inside the daycare and childcare facility being built on the silly island. Because it was important work to do.

Sarah hummed. {Alright, I'll let it go.} A wink. {For now.}

Sigh.

His Jumper sent him some data. {While we are talking about this new island, what's up with this big healing tank near the bottom? The part inside the copper magic bush.}

Humph! {{It's a tree.}}

She rolled her eyes. {Sure. Anyway, won't this be dangerous to the babies? Without using tiny containers, the healing tank would have massive pressure near the bottom, Right?}

Adam blinked and checked the math. {{No, it will only reach 1,029 Newtons of force or so down near the bottom. They'll be fine.}}

Sarah paused. {Isn't that 230 pounds of pressure!?}

About that. Why? {{Yeah? Like I said, they'll be fine.}}

Sheesh, overprotective partners. These babies could be dropped off a cliff and have a truck smush em and they wouldn't even scrape an elbow! Like they would even notice or be annoyed by deep sea water pressures.

Sadly for some reason Sarah wasn't happy about his argument OR willing to let this go. Ah well.