Amy Dallon

"And I'm finished."

I nodded at her whlie reading through the newspaper, I thought about altering my orange juice but decided against it. Things were settling down since Lung's proclamation and murder, and that's what it was even if the asshole had it coming. But that left another problem, the Butcher was try to conquer the city again. Honestly, I hated that bitch, there wasn't a member of New Wave who hadn't been injured by her in the past, and the attempt to take her down by tying her shard to her body didn't work. We went from a body-surfing, immortal, teleporting psychopath, to an immortal body-surfing teleporting psychopath.

"What ya reading?"

"I'm... did you waste money on more space water?"

She smiled.

"No."

I went back to reading.

"I spent it on space soda! This is from Rhea, it's french."

I put down the paper.

"How much money did you waste on that crap?"

"50 bucks plus shipping and handling."

"You wasted 50 dollars on soda."

"I got a 6 pack of the orange and the grape."

I took in a deep breath.

"You spent 50 dollars on 12 cans of soda."

"It was more like 75."

I got up and put away my breakfast.

"You do this to annoy me, don't you?"

"Mayyyybe?"

"Why?"

"Because that little thing you do when you're angry is adorable."

Just wash the dishes, don't think about the murder.

"I don't do a thing."

Vicky smiled.

"You totally do a thing, you're eye starts twitching and you get this little vein."

Urge to kill rising.

"And thats why you waste money on stupid crap."

She shrugged.

"Yeah why not? Look we both survived the long ten, we're going to get checks from the UN for life, we both survived the long 20 and that's a check from Uncle Sam for Life, and I'm one endbringer battle away from 30 which means full military pay and benefits for life instead of this half pay garbage."

She savored her soda can.

"So I'm more or less set for life, any money I make on top of all that is just gravy at this point."

"So you're just going to live off your retirement checks?"

She shrugged.

"And fight crime, college is going to be free so I will probably do that too."

We walked outside and I got on Vicky's back.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

I really hated that I wasn't allowed to bring my suits to school, seriously it would make my life so much easier.

"They're working on the next world."

We landed.

"Yeah, Canada's pretty happy about it, I don't think its a good idea to try to remake Earth though."

Vicky tilted her head.

"Why?"

"Because there are limitations Vicky, trade offs. Seedlings only have a certain amount of power so you have to work with in those limitations."

"Then use more power."

I sighed.

"Ok, Your average seedling will give a terraformed world 525 million years of life, using more power can shorten that or rupture the seedling which might cause said planet to go boom. Keep in mind you're borrowing mass from alternate dimensions, and doing a whole lot of other stuff. There's a reason why a small army of Thinkers, scientists and really smart people armed with the best tech on the planet do this for a living."

"So you're saying we can't recreate Earth."

I shrugged.

"It might be possible but it might also not be the best way to do things, take Rhea it's built to maximize arable land."

She stared at me.

"It's really super good at growing food, but to get that they had to limit other things like mountains, it still has them but not as many. You can't create a perfect world, so you have to decide what trade offs you're willing to make."

"Ok I'm getting that, so you think we're going to get another win this year?"

I shrugged.

"I hope so."