I collapsed in my chair after returning home.

With things going well in Niger, I was suddenly blessed with a wealth of free time, and with the plans for the fight against Trigon were mature enough that everything we could do in the remaining week was already in progress, I turned myself back to my work on genetic augmentation.

Tony had been quite surprised to find the formula for nitramene in some of his Father's old things, and when I'd told him how it was related to Captain America's super-soldier system, he broke out laughing.

Pairing that and the secret of the Stark Expo model, had the man nearly proposing to me on the spot.

Still, he did turn down my offer of a genetic overhaul once I got my process sorted out. He was open to fixing up any genetic disorders he may have, but he wanted to make any upgrades to his body himself.

That hadn't stopped me from experimenting with nitramene myself, the energy had some very interesting properties.

'Vita-rays' were an interesting prospect. They seemed to reduce the instability of a system, making random processes less random, somehow.

When something was bathed in vita-rays, processes tended to act more in line with the theoretical 'perfect' scenario. Chemical reactions would be far more likely to react stoichiometrically, biological processes like DNA replication would occur without errors, cells would not heal incorrectly, and antibodies would always bind to the appropriate viruses.

It was a very intriguing phenomenon.

And one that actually helped a lot with my genetic engineering. A combination of vita-radiation and biotic energy allowed me to consistently trigger specific changes, without risking the randomness normally inherent to operating on a living creature. So, if nothing else, at least the tumours would be predictable.

Still, since Angela gave her input, I had been able to make a great deal of progress.

As I continued to work, the door to my lab opened, and Elizabeth walked in.

The younger woman stared around the clean white room, "This doesn't look anything like the Lab Rosalind used."

"Really? Though I guess it does make sense, she's a physicist and an engineer, right? I'd expect it to be a clean room, but she started in the 1890s and the standards for lab cleanliness would be relatively low in comparison to this." I mused.

Elizabeth shrugged, "So, what are you working on?"

"This? It's the next round of experiments to run for genetically engineering rats. I'm working on optimised muscle tissue which should present a significant improvement in both burst-strength and the ability to contract and remain contracted under pressure."

"That's cool! So if this works, you could make me as strong as Wonder Woman?" She asked.

I shrugged "Not yet, Wonder Woman is incredibly strong. Perhaps not as strong as some incarnations of her, but she's still far beyond the limits of my understanding of biology. Unless I learn how to create magically engineered lifeforms, I doubt that I'll be able to do it. You would definitely be stronger than Hawkwoman, that I can fairly easily guarantee."

Elizabeth nodded, "Could you give me a tail?"

I paused, "What?"

"Well, I'm going to a convention in a couple of months and I was going to do some cosplay, and I was wondering if you could give me a tail and maybe some ears so that I could go as Rem from that anime." She explained.

I racked my brain, "Re: Zero?"

"No that other one that's funny. Where the two girls summon a demon lord but they do it badly?" She clarified.

I sighed, "I'll have to introduce you to some good anime soon, but isn't getting cat ears a little… too much for a cosplay?"

"What's the big deal? Can't you remove them?" She asked.

"The big deal is that it would take quite some time in a tank to give you the augments in the first place. Of course, that assumes that it's safe to add and remove sensory organs like that."

"How long would it take?" She asked.

I shrugged, "The best guess for these changes suggest hours to change these mice, and I suspect that anything with an actual neurological effect would have to be done slowly, so entirely new body parts could take days to properly integrate.

Elizabeth pouted, "Really?"

I rolled my eyes, "We can see once I've got something vaguely mature. That said, I could probably whip up some life-like prosthetics."

Elizabeth shook her head, "Nah, I could get that from Hana."

I raised an eyebrow, "Who's Hana?"

"Hana's a friend of mine, she's in Angela's Korea. She fights robots inside another robot!" Elizabeth exclaimed.

How the fuck did she meet ?

Nevermind. South Korea had already rejected offers to aid them with the Omnium in the South China Sea, so I don't really have any business with right now, and I'm honestly kinda pissed off with them.

Yes, the MEKA re doing a good job stopping them from making landfall, but leaving something like that off your coastline was kind of pointless.

I sighed, "Okay, we'll see once I've got everything working."

Elizabeth nodded, "So... "

"Yes?" I said absently as I scanned over the last few changes I made, before editing the procedure to make use of a different signalling pathway.

"When can you make me super strong then?" Elizabeth asked.

I shrugged, "The simulations look good, so if this goes well, and the rats survive… It should be another week under growth acceleration before I can tell if this thing is safe and reversible enough to move up to human testing, then I can get some volunteers to try it out and make sure it's safe for human use. That should take about another week? The trials for rejuvenation serums based on biotic technology with Angela are going well, so I can just de-age them and undo the changes once the testing is done."

"So… like two weeks if everything goes well?" Elizabeth said with a smile, "Sounds good!"

I furrowed my brow, "Are you sure? Even if it is relatively safe to do that, given just how many ways we have to fix anything if it goes wrong, it's still liable to be pretty painful until we can fix it."

Elizabeth nodded, her eyes alight with determination, "Yep!"

I smiled softly, "Okay then. I'll make sure to save the first super-strength augment for you."

I'll have to make sure that the augment undergoes all the testing I can arrange for it. It's a shame that divinations don't work on any of us. Travelling between universes as we do means that we don't really interact with precognition well, or I'd have Destiny see if it affects anyone else.

Though… I suppose I could genetically modify someone else and see if Strange or Destiny can see their future? Finding a volunteer for that sort of thing wouldn't be too hard. That said, it would depend on if preforming the genetic modification using a technique created in another world to pass on the pre-cog immunity to the test subject.

I mean, it's not like most of New York is immune to divinations, just the places where Gwen regularly patrols. Strange has had to specifically ask us to avoid visiting any of the sanctums in order to make sure that we don't obscure any warnings of demonic incursions.

He even offered to have some mystics on staff to make sure that any villains that got too close to the New York Sanctum were promptly dealt with before Gwen had to personally get involved in their capture.

Speaking of villains…

I reached for my phone and dialled a number.

"Ripple? What's up?" Tony asked.

I leant back in my chair and spun around, watching Elizabeth as she stared at the last batch of rats with enhances STamina run around in their little cages, "Sorry to bother you, It's just that I remembered something. SHIELD cleaned up after Conners when Gwen took him down, right?"

"Yeah, why?" Tony asked.

I scratched my head awkwardly, "Would it be possible for me to get a hold of any of his notes? I was just thinking about it and I figured it might help with my genetic engineering project."

Tony paused for a moment, "That won't be easy. SHIELD doesn't like to give up any of their data, even if you did warn them about the HYDRA infestation."

I nod, "I'm willing to negotiate. If they have any names they want information on, I will consider sharing, but I can also provide medical services similar to what I did to you for up to ten times. That's ten different life-threatening injuries that I'm willing to address in order to get a hold of that information, though I will reserve the right to refuse to see a patient if I have intelligence suggesting that they shouldn't be trusted."

Tony hummed affirmatively, "J, mind sending them a decent starting off then?"

"No problem Sir." sounded out the AI.

I paused, "You know, JARVIS, I bet Tony would love it if you called him Dad."

"What?" yelled Tony.

I broke out into laughter as the line was cut off.