Miles

After the spank, mini-Taylor calmed down or at least acted like it. No longer did swarms of bugs try to fill his nose, eyes, and shorts. Leave it to Taylor to go straight for the balls. Miles tried to make the journey as gentle as he could, with mini-Taylor suffering from a slight case of cracked ribs. While he was the enemy from her perspective, that would not last long, and he'd rather not give her any more hard feelings to latch onto.

Sam mentally rolled her eyes at Miles and made sure to broadcast that heavily through their bond. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know how to act around other people. They had spent two years inside a loop with only an alien cat, an omnicidal spider, and a woman who killed a god. A regular human just didn't measure up. And that didn't include what he and Taylor got up to at the end. He'd have to lock that down for now, unless they want to accidentally put on a traumatizing show out of habit.

Miles mentally dragged his mind back on track, not thinking about all the options that opened up with not being locked inside a blank workshop. This wasn't the time when he was looking for a place to lie low while they waited for Taylor to come back from her reverse abduction. Or was it forced protection? Whatever it was, Dinah wouldn't be a drugged out seer for Coil.

The roof groaned under Miles' weight as he spun in place, taking in the scene. They were nearing the train yard, and the number of people walking around thinned out heavily. This warehouse had not a single person in it and the inspection showed all four walls to be reasonably strong, with entryways barred.

Mini-Taylor groaned from his shoulder. Hands were still covering her butt cheek he had spanked as her legs kicked uselessly against him. Maybe he shouldn't have done that, but the mental mix-up between mini-Taylor and Taylor was honestly annoying. They lacked the bond, but the mental feel of mini-Taylor's brain was like Taylor's, but more angsty and immature. His gut reaction while cursing at their misfortune was to playfully treat her like he did Taylor. That was the wrong option, yet Taylor found it hilarious.

Miles walked a quick circuit of the roof, looking for a weak point to enter without destroying it. It was fast and lackluster, as he found nothing.

"Hey, Buggy. You know a way into the warehouse?" He figured that if anyone could find it, it would be the girl controlling insects.

Mini-Taylor rubbed her rear, as if debating whether to help him with how much her butt hurt. The feeling that he had made the wrong decision kept hitting him. "Will you let me down?"

"Yeah." Miles quickly agreed. He'd rather not carry around mini-Taylor, anyway.

"The far corner, near the drainage. My bugs can get through something over there."

"Thank you." Miles said, patting her thigh on instinct before freezing and mentally chastising himself. Sam, on the other shoulder, laughed through their bond, rubbing in his lack of social grace.

Just because mini-Taylor was a younger Taylor, did not mean physical affection was okay. He kicked himself. Even as the Emperor part of his spark said, everyone should bow to him and accept his actions. This was going to be an issue.

Once over at the small hole, only a quarter meter wide, he flexed his telekinetic might and ripped the roof apart. He jumped down, falling two stories and impacting the ground with a slight thump, bending his knees to take most of the impact. Mini-Taylor grunted from her shoulder again as he swore. The hole closed back up as the pieces all fell back into place.

Miles carefully picked up mini-Taylor and placed her down like a toddler before patting her head. She collapsed to the ground, her legs giving out from under her as she curled up into a ball, hugging her ribs.

A war of indecision battled in his head about whether to offer help, but mini-Taylor pulled herself up by using a nearby wall without his intervention. Miles eyed her before his brief examination landed on her suit. A spider silk costume. That fell slightly within her biological specialty.

As Miles looked it over from meters away, but then had to see it up close. He grabbed mini-Taylor with his mind, not giving it a second thought as he reeled her in. She hovered centimeters away from his eyes, screaming as he inspected her outfit in depth.

If he had to guess, there were at least eight layers on the thinnest areas, with double that on the chest. Mini-Taylor's chest rotated into view as he poked it. Not just for protection, he concluded, with a slight enhancing of her curves with it. To confirm his hypothesis, he rotated mini-Taylor around and poked her hips before nodding, and did the same with her rear. While not strictly for protection, those areas could use it anyway.

Mini-Taylor squealed, arms flailing at his inspection of her body.

Then Miles shifted to the weave itself. It wasn't flawless, with light bunching already taking place, but with how the layers interacted, none of the bunches overlapped. Over time, the protection would decrease with wear as creases formed, leaving gaps in protection.

"Good, good, protection is light, but overall the weight to coverage ratio is fantastic." Miles absently commented.

"What are you doing!?" The mortification was apparent, but he really didn't care.

"Don't worry, dear, he gets in these moods sometimes. Don't take it personally," Sam helpfully chipped in.

"You can talk‽"

Miles twisted mini-Taylor around in search of seams, inspecting the inseam, armpits, and crotch, where they always were, but didn't find any. The only weak point was the low-grade zipper that held the back tight. He held a finger up and dug it into the mini-Taylor's inner leg, a non-vital area. The outer layer was easily scraped off, exposing the one underneath. It has low environmental tolerance; sunlight would eat through it quickly. Some sort of coating would be best to preserve the spider silk and help stop it from melting when exposed to high heat.

Mini-Taylor giggled under his ministrations. "Stop tickling me!"

"He's not paying attention, and of course, I can talk. I'm a being just like you are, but in a different shape. I'll have to apologize for my bonded again. There's little point in snapping him out, but he will examine your suit later."

"I wouldn't mind so much if I wasn't in it!"

Miles then rotated her around, looking for weak points in her armor before holding the back of her head in front of him. He poked it, feeling her bare skull through the flowing locks of hair before tsking at the lack of coverage on the most vulnerable part of her body.

"Good job for a newbie, mini-Taylor, but we can do better."

"HOW DO YOU KNOW MY NAME?" Taylor screeched.

Miles still wasn't paying attention to her as ideas of better silk came to mind. It would be easy to make a carbon nanotube based one, but the spinneret Queenie had, required quite a workaround to stop the tough and thin webbing from cutting through biological tissue. Single-atom-thick webbing ate through a surprising number of materials before they wove it into functional silk.

The organs were easy. Keeping the organs running through the damage inflicted was worse. Unless a millimeter from each spider per day was fine while they healed the rest of the time.

Miles plucked a black widow from the air as it fell toward him. Another option was to remove all unnecessary aspects of web production while making the end product denser. If he did so to a black widow, then he created a stable breeding population. Mini-Taylor could pump out spider silk clothing that offered more protection than her current suit. He flexed his fingers, popping the spider between them as mini-Taylor's incoherent screaming continued.

That was a future problem for him to fix, as without his lab and tools, none of that was possible yet. But that led him to consider the assorted DNA he had memorized throughout the battles. During the starship trooper fight, he sampled the assorted bugs and DNA sequenced them during the fight. Sadly, the bugs didn't contain the DNA for all the different bugs within each one. They were made that way during spawning. Almost no junk DNA existed, which let them maintain efficacy and radiation proofing that much easier.

They were a potential asset to mini-Taylor, but that brought up a question about how a hivemind built around sapient intelligence would react to her control. Would they improve mini-Taylor's intelligence the more they added to the network? Or would they supersede her control and use her as a makeshift brain bug? So many questions.

Miles rotated mini-Taylor around until the top of her head was in view. He could remove the top of her skull and gain access directly to her Corona Pollentia and Gemma. If they implanted a computer chip into the connection, he could either directly access the shard or let mini-Taylor control computers. He licked his lips as he sharpened a telekinetic knife to literally dig in.

Sam poked him through the bond.

Miles blinked, watching a few hairs fall to the floor from mini-Taylor's screaming head. "Ah, shit."

Mini-Taylor thrashed in his telekinetic grip while a plague of bugs filled the warehouse. None of them were a danger to him, and Sam killed any that got too close to her.

"Did I zone out again?" He asked, holding mini-Taylor away from him.

"Yes, yes, you did. In fact, you were about to cut open her head and examine her brain. I don't think Taylor would like that, would she? You also called her mini-Taylor."

"I did? Haha, whoops. Say, mini-Taylor, if I put you back on the ground, will you stop screaming?"

Miles cocked his head to the side, watching mini-Taylor rotate around in midair with her arms and legs flailing as her incoherent screaming continued. Something told him that he screwed up a little, maybe a tad bit. He brought her to the ground, letting her feet touch while still holding her in place as she slammed shut her mouth, glaring daggers at him.

"Sorry?"

Miles heard mini-Taylor's mouth clack shut a few times before adjusting her hair. A few deep breaths later, she answered. "Just stop treating me like a toy." The bugs pulled back but stayed bubbling around them. He might've broken her trust if he hadn't kidnapped her in the first place.

Sam chittered next to him, rubbing his head. Why couldn't Taylor have dealt with herself?

'Do you think I could start over by introducing myself?' Miles asked Sam. She only shrugged.

"Okay, sorry." Miles started, and it was harder than he wanted to admit to even say the word again. "I'm Miles Carter, otherwise known as Emperor. This is Samantha, my bonded treecat. We're not exactly from around here and all that. No harm done." He fully released his grip on her.

To his surprise, Mini-Taylor didn't run, as she struggled to calm herself. With clenched hands, she eventually said something. "Will you answer my questions?"

"Sure." The least he could do.

"Why did you kidnap me? How do you know my name? What do you mean, not from around here? Are you a tinker? Are, are you… going to rape me?"

That was quite a list of questions, but before Miles could start answering them, he needed to start with that last one. "What? No. Why would you think that?"

"You just examined me."

"Bah, why would I want to do that?" Miles waved his hand in dismissal. "I was just looking at your suit."

"I- I- I'm that bad looking?"

Miles closed his eyes and sighed. Mini-Taylor would be the only person who would take that denial poorly and as a personal insult. He poked Sam, only to get a laugh. The traitor. "Let's ignore that. Why kidnap you? You'll find out when Empress comes back. The same goes for why we know your name. We are from a combination of the future and different dimensions."

Sam hopped down off Miles' shoulder before stretching out and padded off into the warehouse now that the misunderstanding was over. She had never been in the real world before, just the workshop and battles. Mini-Taylor kept a wide distance from both of them as she chewed through his answer, not sulking at all.

"What do you want me to call you, mini-Taylor? We've got bug, Skitter, your future name, and Weaver, an even further-out name. "

"Just, just, let me think!" Whatever her name was, stomped away.

Miles pulled up a broken box, broke it down, and made a seat that could hold his weight as he waited for mini-Taylor to come back. He sighed. He was acting a little weird, sure. Maybe he would explain why. Yeah, that sounded right.

"You're not going to hurt me, right?" Taylor asked after a few minutes.

"I don't plan on it." Miles answered without opening his eyes.

"No, you'll just mortify me." She uttered it under her breath.

"I'll tell you this: Empress and I have been away from people for almost two years. For the longest time, it was just the two of us, and we might have missed a few social queues. That's not even considering how much our heads have been messed with."

"That doesn't make up for spanking me in public! How can I be a hero with that hanging over my head?"

"Hero? Were you not just robbing a bank?"

"Ergh! You know what I mean!"

"I never knew heroes robbed banks."

"Just- just forget about it!"

Mini-Taylor gave Miles one last glare before turning around and making a point of not looking at him as she found a spot to sit. He gave the angsty teen another break and poked around the warehouse.

There was a lot for him to do in the coming weeks to jump-start their industry. A nanite constructor was so unreachable that not even his spark could help. There was a gap of over twenty generations of tools to even start making one, and the first small-scale one would take ages. The calibration of the gravity projectors was beyond anything else, and it had to be in a gravity neutral environment. Thank god for the REMODEL perk that let him cheat most of the issues away.

'What could he do with REMODEL regarding powers?' The thought popped into his head as he glanced over at mini-Taylor after taking back his seat. There was so much to discover, and maybe he could loosen the restrictions or fully take over a shard if done right.

Mini-Taylor noticed his gaze and looked back at him before walking further away and finding a new seat.

'You're scaring the poor girl.'

'I just can't help myself! So many options and new things to explore!'

'That's not how it looks to her.'

'I know…'

"Hey, mini-Taylor!" Miles called out.

"Stop calling me mini-Taylor!" Mini-Taylor screamed back.

"No, you're a mini-Taylor. I call it as I see it. Maybe be bigger, you'll be a regular Taylor."

Mini-Taylor let out an inarticulate scream from the other side of the warehouse.

"Miles, you're an idiot." Taylor said from behind him.

"What? It's true."

"Do you... No, you don't see. I'll go talk to her. Don't listen in."

"Sure." Miles readily agreed. There were more useful things to do besides deal with teenage-mini-Taylor. Like examining the multitude of new perks the last fight gave them.

Then a light sniffle from behind him had him sighing. Of course, there was some other person that he had to deal with. Miles spun himself and the seat he was on around and faced the young girl standing there with snot running from her face.

"Shh, shh, it's okay. We'll not hurt you." Miles said. "What's your name?" Of course, he knew her name, but still asked for her sake.

"One point five." The little girl winced in pain after uttering the words.

"That's not a name."

She fidgeted with her hands while looking at the floor. "The chance you would h-hurt me."

"That seems pretty high, to be honest." That damn Spark acted out after so little research for far too long and, with the mystery of the powers so close, even the limit perk had a hard time controlling the urges.

"You c-cackle with crazy eyes and cut open my h-head." Dinah said with a sniffle.

"You have a point." Now that Miles knew of it happening, he might head it off or find a suitable target to experiment on.

"Can you?"

"I'm sorry. What?"

Dinah wiped her face, looked to gather her will, and walked over to Miles. He watched as she hopped up on his leg and turned to him with the biggest puppy dog eyes. "Please cut my head open? The numbers show it will make the pain go away."

"Well," Miles licked his lips, fingers trembling. "I really shouldn't."

"Could you give me cat ears?"

"Um, well, I could."

"A tail?"

"Um." Miles' mind ran through the issues having a separate set of distinct ears would cause, and then both the physiological and mental challenges a tail would bring. "Prehensile?"

"Prehensile?"

"You know, able to control it with your mind."

"Can cats control theirs?"

"No.

Dinah shook her head. "Drugs?"

"What do you mean, drugs?"

"Something that will stop the drugs injected into me?"

"Well," That would depend on what the result Dinah wanted. If she just wanted to protect her mind, then having a blood filter installed in her neck would take care of it. To stop her mind from being addicted would take more work, but improving kidney and liver function was easy.

"Can you make me stronger? Tougher?"

"Okay, stop." Miles said, putting his foot down even against those puppy dog eyes. "Why are you asking me, a complete stranger, to change your body so much?" He had to do something to stop the temptation that kept growing. There might not be any equipment around, but that wouldn't stop him from cutting a tween to pieces. Then use crude junk to literally fill her body.

"It makes the numbers better." Dinah said, the corners of her lips twitching, and he could see tears starting to form in the corner of her eyes.

'Sam, could you take care of this girl before she makes me do something I will regret?'

Miles hadn't received a response, but she thumped down beside them and wrapped a long, fluffy tail around Dinah. She pulled Dinah from his leg, guiding her over to another clean spot before enveloping her in a ball of fluff. He could feel her purring from there as the waterworks were unleashed.

'You owe me.' Sam muttered down the link.

"Queenie, you can come out." Miles said towards the ceiling once Dinah closed her eyes.

The gigantic spider dropped from the ceiling and landed as soft as a feather. Bits of red colored the fur around its face and the tips of its legs, with a few scorch marks on the thorax.

"What did you guys do?"

"Squashed some pests."

"Killed them?"

"With prejudice, Master said I could go all out. Their screams were music to my ears."

"You don't have ears."

"We are going to reenact our first meeting one day. Mark my words."

"Go, bug your Master."

"You're not funny." Queenie scoffed before skittering off.

Miles leaned back in thought. It had only been an hour since their arrival and Taylor had killed people, abducted a girl, and they had seen him carrying away another. There was no way they were not marked as villains already. It was a foregone conclusion, not that it bothered him, but he would've liked a little more of a buffer instead of it happening literally the moment they appeared.

What with Queenie and Taylor killing the mercenaries. Those same mercenaries kidnapped a little girl and killed her parents, which was objectively bad, but it was on the orders of another. If anything, Taylor should've given them a heavy beating and left them for the cops, but he wasn't there and didn't feel their minds. That would've made a sizable difference in how he treated them. Eh, he would ask her later. But he had new perks to look into.

These he had no say in and came one at a time during their last moments until the energy ran out. He wished they could've picked which one, but he wouldn't argue with having more.

The first to come was helpful, Tinkerer from RWBY. It allowed the crafting of variable weapons and increased their technical skills at maintaining, modifying, and making things as long as we made the item or came up with the blueprints. Just another notch in our construction abilities.

Then came a pair of quantum entanglement communication arrays. They would never degrade and provide instantaneous communication no matter the distance, as long as they were in the same dimension. It was kind of useful, in a way, but with the limit perk, they could decipher how to build our own. But they wouldn't be unlimited. The limited amount of data the copies could transmit would keep them for emergencies.

This next perk synergized with his Spark too well, and might be the source of Miles' outbursts. The crazed physician made them one of the best doctors around with the worst tools. It also gave them absolute knowledge of the human body and any other they dissected. That was precisely what Miles was trying to do to both mini-Taylor and Dinah. The incomplete information on them was driving the perk crazy.

Miles didn't know what to think about this perk. The planning and building of mega projects. He could plan out and manage the construction of a perfect city with minor issues, and combined with the next perk that revolved exclusively around resource management, the sky was the limit. The duo seemed tailor-suited to Taylor.

Though the last one scared him too much to use without an absolute need. Dimensional teleportation using hell, either from one place to another in the same dimension or to different ones. It reeked of terrible decision-making.

Though, the entire set was perfect for empire building, and he didn't know how much of that was from random luck or a hand tipping the scale.

Taylor and mini-Taylor walked back then, mini-Taylor leaning against Taylor, who had an arm wrapped around herself. At least they were getting along with each other and not fighting to the death, not that there would be much contest.

"I'm Rose now. This is Taylor, not mini-Taylor." Taylor, no, Rose said. "What was this about fondling my younger self?"

"I was just examining her suit." Miles said, defending himself. While true, now that he looked back at the exact actions and how close he got to each spot, it might be worse than he thought.

"And the attention to her chest, hips, and butt?" Rose leaned forward as much as Taylor hid her face.

"I was confirming my hypotheses of extra padding in those areas." Miles countered, sticking out his chin.

"Did- did you just call out my body-conscious younger self for padding?"

Miles got to his feet, puffed himself up, and waggled a pointer finger at her. "No." Before he turned around and walked away, head held high.

"Is that really our husband?" Taylor asked, almost making Miles stumble on his retreat, no, strategic repositioning.

"Well, there weren't really many options." Rose said.

"I heard that!" Miles yelled.

"It was on purpose!"

Miles grabbed a small pebble with his mind and threw it at Rose. It broke the sound barrier with a crack as she tilted her head out of the way. She grabbed a chunk of metal and threw it right back. While not as fast, it still weighed a crap load. He snatched it from the air, compressed it to a disk, and whipped it back while stomping forward.

Taylor hastily ducked out of the way and stood next to Sam and Dinah, all watching the show. Miles and Rose stomped toward each other, ever ramping up the objects thrown at the other until they were within arm's reach of the other. He snaked his hand around Rose's head and grabbed a handful of hair as she did the same to him. They glowered at each other before they ducked in with perfect symmetry as their lips slammed together. Their minds roved over each other as their bodies followed.

Miles ran a hand down her back, landing on her rear, cupping the firm globe as she did the same to him. Each tried to tie down the other, chasing lips with teeth and using tongues to push them aside. As they did that, they strained their bodies against each other, trying to push one another down. Muscles strained, concrete cracked until a lucky hit caused Miles' knee to buckle.

The ground rumbled as his back slammed down, Rose on top, pinning his hands above him. She ground her core against him as their breathing grew heavy.

"Ah-hem." Sam butted in.

They broke the heavy intertwining that left them less as two people and more as one. Miles blinked once before raising an eyebrow at her. She never interrupted them.

"There are children present."

Oh.

Miles looked past the annoyed treecat and saw a heavily blushing Taylor and Dinah. He scratched his face, rearranged his package, and pushed Rose off. "I blame you." He said, and she didn't even counter, that they both knew she instigated it.

They brushed each other off without a speck of shame. Emperors and Empresses just didn't have it.

"I can see why you picked him, and it wasn't for his personality." Taylor jabbed when they made their way over, her eyes dropping a few times in her examination. She obviously took his comments to heart.

"Yup, stick a gag in and have your way." Rose quipped back.

"Seriously? Do you want to start something again? I'm sure we could go find another place to wreck." Miles said as he pushed into her personal space, though it was weird to have a fifteen-year-old twin of Rose joining in.

'Seriously?' He sent over.

'What? We're the same person and I know I would've appreciated some candor back then.'

'What, did you tell her everything?'

'Everything.'

'I have no words to describe the level of awkwardness I'm feeling.'

'Then you're going to hate this.'

"New plan, we're going back to my old house and talking to Dad." Rose said.

Miles looked at her with an unamused expression that was matched by Taylor's own frown. She wasn't a fan of this turn of events either, and neither was he. So much happened today, and all he wanted to do was lie down and explore the internet. Entertainment was but a hair's away after almost two years of withdrawals!

"Not only that, but Taylor is joining our team! Whether or not she likes it, isn't that right?"

"... yes."

Taylor sounded less than pleased with how Rose was taking over and pushing her along. At least, Miles assumed she was only going along with it because they were literally the same person, and she now knew where her actions would land her.