The next morning, as I made breakfast Mercy was being interrogated by the other girls, "How was he?" Asked Gwen.

Angela blushed, "He was great…" she muttered.

"Come on, we need more details than that!" Ahri asked, "We saw you limp out of there!"

I served up the breakfast bowl for Angela, "Don't let them pressure you, my angel. And you don't have to worry about me either, I have nothing to hide."

Gwen squealed, "That's so sweet!"

Angela poked at her food a little, "You know how he knows what we will say if he does anything?"

A light went off in Gwen's eyes, "It works in bed too doesn't it?"

Angela blushed a deep red and squeaked, "He knew exactly what I wanted, even when I didn't say anything. He just swept me off my feet and took me."

"Ooh!" Gwen grinned wickedly, "Was he your knight in shining armour? Did he make you feel like a princess?"

Ahri giggled, "Maybe like a conquering king treats a princess. She was limping remember?"

Angela shrunk into her seat, and I called out to the group, "Ladies, give her some space."

Ahri pouted, but I gave her a stern glare.

I served up breakfast to the other two girls, "So, what's the plan for today?"

Angela jumped on the lifeline immediately, "Well, I'll be meeting Raven later to see if we can save Amelie. It's been years since it happened, but if we can find anything in there, we might be able to do something."

I nodded, Next to me Gwen perked up, "I'll be speaking with Strange about getting some backup when opening a gateway to the last few universes. According to what we've found, Ahri's world should be pretty safe, so we'll be trying that tomorrow and then going to Hinata's world this weekend. If everything plays out well, we can have everyone else home within a week. A week and a half at worst."

I nodded, "Ahri and I are going over life force manipulation. Ever since we found that Biotic Energies are in fact life force, it's opened up a lot of normally unethical spells for us to experiment with."

Ahri ginned, "I don't normally get to play around too much, but even is it isn't as tasty as my normal meals, I can bulk out what I get very easily so I have a lot more to play with."

As we at conversation started to drift off to other topics, "By the way, what's the status on the Trigon situation? I heard from Robin yesterday that the GLC has located a dead world where the battle can take place. Fate, Zatanna and Dr Mist have all agreed to join the fight."

Gwen nodded, "Strange says that he's willing to help and even bring some of the Masters of the Mystic Arts to the battle. I'm trying to get in contact with Thor, but he's on Asgard right now. The Avengers, in general, don't want to get involved in the affairs of other worlds right now, especially not with the mess that happened in Tanzania last month."

Angela nodded, "The work on scaling up Biotic technology has been going well, and I think I've managed to adapt the technology to use some of the warding mudras that the Shambali use. We will have to find out if it works, but if it does, the technology would allow us to seriously cut down Trigon's options. The results have been a little hit-or-miss though."

"Mind sending me the notes?" I asked, "Levi has done some amazing work on the virtualization of spell matrixes, I might be able to help."

Angela nodded and Ahri stood up, "So anyway, when are we leaving?"

I turned to her and held back a sigh, "I'm not eating, and the Biotic generator is already set up on the other world, we can leave as soon as this conversation is over."

Ahri nodded and I turned to the other girls, "Anything else you want to talk about?"

The two just shrugged, "Not really," Gwen offered, "You can go with Ahri now if you want."

I nodded and pulled out the portal projector.

Sliding through the options, I found the option for the training grounds and brought up the portal.

Ahri and I hurried through as it quickly collapsed behind us.

The wide-open field was already marred by our various experiments with magic… mostly Raven's experiments with magic, truth be told. Though, after my fight with Mauga, I had taken some time to explore the use of technological reagents and focuses for magic here, to mixed results.

I turned to Ahri who has summoned a sphere which was sucking the golden glow from the person-sized biotic generator.

I walked over to the small building that was sitting here, keying in the code to take a look at my weapons locker. I dug through the shattered remnants of various focuses that hadn't worked out to dig out the successes. The main things an armoured coat and a long, metal staff topped with a cluster of strange mechanisms.

Chanting under my breath, I activated the systems, directing the flow of power with my magic.

After several minutes, I saw the spell lock into place, my vision warping before snapping to crystal clarity as the gravitic barriers snapped into place.

Focusing, I lifted off, gravity within my sphere of influence altering to allow me to reposition myself in the air.

I turned to Ahri who was still greedily guzzling the biotic energies, "You ready?"

"Almost!" she called out. A few more minutes passed before she cut off the flow.

I primed the miniature biotic generator in my staff, lighting up the head with golden light, "Let's see what we can do."

Turning the biotic energy to other purposes was a little tricky to start with, but Ahri had already done most of the work. She had long since figured out some basic self-defence against the denizens of the moonlit world she occasionally found herself at odds with.

Her knowledge was quite instinctive, but with a little experimentation, I managed to produce equivalents to her force bolts and several other attacks, as well as produce a simple area-healing spell that used the biotic emitters more directly.

Angela would be pleased with that last one. She hadn't had much time yet to start learning magic, but we had a session due in a few days, and being able to use her biotic technology more flexibly was a big one.

I had even managed to partially address my speed issue.

My latest prototype of an electronic grimoire had proven quite effective. With it, I could cast the spells stored within at a moments notice.

Only the spells stored within.

The current version of the Grimoire couldn't take inputs with which to better adjust the spell to my needs. I should be able to adjust that in the future, but my work on adapting the familiar spell to the Grimoire was being too finicky right now.

I really needed to look into better options for mental components for enchantments, but nothing I had found worked nearly as well as the familiar spell.

Perhaps it would be better to upgrade the tech itself, applying the enchantments to a neural interface might provide a better result when it comes to properly communicating with the system.

I would have to start a complete redesign though and possibly divorce the technology from my staff entirely.

And I might have to upgrade the programming. It seems a little dumb right now, and I think part of the difficulty might come from the fact that the familiar spell is usually applied to fairly intelligent animals.

I'd want to find some sort of specialist on that scale then. Animal level intellects were fairly common in the world Angela called home, so I should be able to find a decent option on that front.

Actually, there might already be something like that open source. A simple assistant VI that I could set up as the caretaker of my grimoire and a casting aid.

I'd have to run the idea against a few people first. I had never been the best at considering the deeper implications of various technologies. And I didn't know how these technologies would interact with magic.

Hmm… I'd want to run this against Raven, but Hinata was always a good bet at catching the worst ideas. Even if she didn't completely understand the technology we wrked with, she could usually tell if the general premise of the idea was going to end in fire.

Touching down, I stowed the jacket away for the moment and considered any other options.

With the staff joining it in the weapons locker, I turned to Ahri, who had released her tails and begun sunning herself on the side of a small hill. I turned to her, "How did your tests go?"

She jerked away, "Huh? Oh, Jon! Yeah, I got a few spells working that I've wanted to play with for a while."

"So…. Do you want to do anything, or should we wrap up here?"

Ahri stretched as she picked herself up, "No, we can wrap up. It's about lunchtime isn't it?"

I nod, "Yeah, I need to get the roast out of the oven before the girls get back."

As we ducked through the portal again, Ahri looked at me, "So what do we have planned for the evening then?"

I shrugged, "Does clubbing seem okay to you?