Adam lept from his captivity. "FREEDOM!"

Narwhal slapped his shoulder. "Don't do that! I don't want them shoving us back into confinement if you set off their protocols again."

He was too excited to be walking outside again.

They sent Ivy off to rejoin with her girls, likely to be working with Sonia and Adam's company from now on. Seriously, if she didn't start hiring at least a couple of guys, there were going to be lawsuits. Unless she did that 'Modeling' contract some restaurants did to ensure beauty levels with their waitresses.

CD digitized besides the pair, with a sly grin. "So... I hear the Quest rollout went well?"

Narwhal snorted. "If nothing else, the hunters are warning locals and towns about where the prey is wandering. Casualties from the people on 'Kill Order' list has drop to near zero. A few have already been taken down, which is good enough for me."

Adam nodded. "Legend got the reward for finishing the Slaughterhouse group a few minutes ago. Then again, he is a man made from lasers... long range 'issue' management is right up his alley."

The Triumvirate's power was being scanned too, very actively by Squishy and Simmy. Legend's shard was mostly energy conversion and manipulation, and the more details his powers could determine the more efficent his own abilities became. Copying it directly wasn't worth nearly as much as the enhancements gained by the other abilities.

Each 'Kill Order' target was being scanned as part of the reward process as well, though not at the same level of detail or speed that Legend was getting. Those shards WERE being worked on though, and the new messaging system was letting the victors brag about how they were given massive benefits for pulling those quests off.

Big improvements to personal power? Sure. But they could optionally gain low level copies of the Kill Order subject's abilities, ones that could grow over time.

Needless to say, interest was high.

Adam slung an arm around Narwhal's shoulder, even as she hugged CD and him back. "Well, I say some down time is needed. Twilight's been telling me that the various merchant and inventory classes have set up some sort of delivery service or market thing, why not hang out tonight and mess with that?"

CD was slightly taller than Narwhal, but her enthusiasm made her seem far younger. "Ooh! I've wanted to try a movie with popcorn thing in person!"

Narwhal laughed at the bouncing beauty. "Why not? Dates are more fun with an extra hand or two anyway." She pulled CD towards the Villa. "Let's find out if the new shop offers anything alcoholic to go with our evening. Adam, don't take too long!"

He watched his girlfriend saunter while pulling a blushing cybernetic goddess along.

Life was good.

Still, he had to go fix the dock area first. Dragon had already purchased all the heavily damaged property in that area with his personal funds, most of it entirely legally, but even with the new System only he could build a city in an evening.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

In a way, Lung's rampage was very useful.

Manipulation. Blue flames spread over the rubble, torn streets, and melted trench.

Conversion. The fire burned bright orange, with chemicals causing flames of blue, green, and more to spiral into the sky.

Consumption. The flames now spread over the perfectly smooth surface, even as the temperature reached unheard of levels.

Conversion. Fire used the samples of soil to fill the deep trench, not the dry clay filled and contaminated soil that filled the area but rich stuff, near black and fertile. It still had enough clay content to prevent ocean water from destroying the area, but this was the good stuff.

Manipulation. Fire gone, only blue flames of magic soaked the now rich soil that spawned in the middle of this town.

Straightening his suit sleeves, his skull grinned as he pushed forward with his bony hand.

Black Flame Metal formed tiles that lay out the foundations, both for buildings and where streets used to be. Asphalt was converted in, while the foundations had Null Metal pipes snake into the earth.

Access panels and tunnels formed following the streets, everything segmented so that normal tools could dismantle and access the parts inside without Adam himself being called in all the time.

The wiring was insulated with Null Metal, Flame Metal ready to conduct the charge, and all was embedded in the tubes below the reinforced road.

A series of tall apartment buildings rose from the metal foundations, covered in conversion panels to make heat, light, and energy usable to the future residents below. All of it connected to the city's sewage, water, and electrical services. Even cable TV was hooked up, which... uh. He would have to make sure the new tenants would pay for this stuff. Right now, all of it was being funded by HIS pockets. Whoops.

For now, the new residential area would prevent the crowding issues slowly cropping up at Variance Villa so far. Moving on.

As he walked toward the sea, 'Growth', 'Purification', and 'Manipulation' had rich grass fill the soil around the new homes, sidewalks, and streets. The section of dock that was rebuilt was far more sturdy and reliable than before, even as his blue flames ignored the water.

His power soaked into the bay, burning below the liquid as it consumed trash, rocks, plant and sea life. The dock that previously stood mere feet over the bay floor now had supports reaching farther and farther down as Adam consumed the material and used the energy gathered to reinforced the rock and soil in his new underwater wall. Layers of Null Metal on the vertical surface with spikes digging deep within would ensure stability for years.

In fact... Hmm.

This area would be useful, especially now that Leviathan was splashing around in his soul rather than destroying shipping attempts.

However... he was in a hurry. There were at least two beautiful women who wanted to spend time watching bad films and drinking bizarre drinks while snuggling, and he was NOT going to miss that.

His personal emotions caused the blue flames to glow near white and open black mouths filled with plasma fangs. The sea level actually dropped as sunken ships, rocks, sand and soil was 'Consumed', 'Converted', 'Purified', and 'Transferred' into more energy to devour.

He barely noticed his feet stepping on floating blue flame stones as he walked toward the bay entrance, water glowing as fish frantically fled the area. Even as the light spread below the water, it grew dim as the depth increased with each step over the sea.

Water channel for trade? Nah. Nothing that basic.

As it was, he was rebuilding the local 'swimming' areas so some form of 'beach' would still exist.

Everywhere else was dropping down dozens of meters, even as a bright blue divider ensured that the 'Swimming Area' wouldn't allow large predators or vehicles near the shore.

As he exited past the massive tanker even now dissolving into blue fire, he took a deep whiff of the open ocean, feeling more than a bit satisfied. This shouldn't get him in trouble, right?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Annette Hebert felt her heart calm down, even as the children played in the fire.

'Let`s go to the beach', he said. Danny was in SO much trouble.

She reached into the blue flames, feeling something playfully nibble her finger tips even as trash, weeds, rocks and shells evaporated into pure white sand.

The beach she had grown up with had just been split into three walled off large sections. The one closest to the parking lot was very shallow, probably for young children. The middle rapidly descended into the water, while the third was a near instant drop to the depths. Each wall was topped with a pier with railings, ladders, and what seemed to be fishing platforms at the end.

It was easy to see all the changes, as the previously green ocean was now glass quality clear as blue flames bumbled and bobbled around like confused toys. The far dividing wall, open to the bay, was now a slightly glowing blue grid. Blue lights sparkling in the darkest depths, while blue veins of power glowed up the side walls lighting up the water.

Thankfully, the kids had been mostly smart enough to leave the water once FIRE started rolling into the beach area.

Unfortunately, one of them realized it was 'Mr. Skelly fire', and they all rolled back into the flames before the adults could catch up.

She watched the same playful flames that were being carried around by toddlers or tossed by teens melting through the distant metal ships like butter.

Yeah, somehow Danny was getting in trouble for this. He must have tempted Murphy or something.

She snapped back into 'Guardian' mode once she realized one of the children with 'Manipulation' abilities was trying to start up a 'Fire fight'. "No Andrew! We do NOT throw fire at each other!"

Annette was NOT prepared for this many super-powered children. At least Taylor was helping to organize a water retaliation resistance movement.

Wait, where had she gotten an actual fire hose!?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

His vengeance would be swift. Overwhelming.

The wrench twisted sharply.

His might would be spoken of in legends! Sung of by bards!

A few more checks. The metal would need to be replaced after this next test run. No weakness would be permitted.

Few could bear his wrath, none would withstand his fury! No one would dare try.

A few more checks showed the engine purred like a lion and could roar with a thrust for vengeance.

"Hey Phil, I'm going to take lunch early, right?"

He waved the minion off. The fools thought to profit from his majesty, but they only allowed his greatness to grow in the shadows.

One last swipe from a towel and the beauty was prepared for a harsh life.

Andrew whistled from the door, pausing on the way out. "Damn Phil, you do fine work."

He frowned, but his internal righteousness could harvest profit from the lowest of seed. "Of course!"

None could deny the brilliance of Track-Tor, the Invincible.

And one day, his vengeance would sprout in glorious fields of glory!

He paused. Hopefully the prison cafeteria would have pudding today.

It was a glorious day for pudding.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

He knew Alexandra was stuck in her alternate identity due to the paperwork. The whole world gaining powers had basically destroyed ALL her free time for the next forever.

He knew Eidolon was frantically searching for any trace of the Endbringers, showing a level of paranoia that he had never expected.

So it was with some small guilt that Legend ended another villain on the 'Kill List'. Being in the field and literally fighting the good fight felt a million times better than 'fighting crime' by doing paperwork, in a city where everyone dropped their weapons and started crying if he showed up. Including his own team members, sometimes.

Also, it felt morally good to do this. Sickos like this ass needed to be put down. This one for example was the guy who kept consuming children and living in their corpses.

Because this cleansing... this was making the world a better place. Each monster knocked off this mortal coil ensured thousands of innocent people wouldn't suffer.

And this 'Quest' option made finding them and understanding how to deal with these demons very easy for someone as powerful as himself. The constant reward power ups didn't hurt his progress either.

He read another alert. The bounty reward had already been transferred to his accounts, although how 'Blue Angel' pulled that off was a mystery. It had initially caused his boyfriend significant confusion, but his new class of 'Homemaker' had him investing the stuff within hours. The apartment looked even more amazing than usual and the last home cooked meal was nearly divine.

More importantly than mere money, the power based reward was giving Legend more options for improvement.

Again, he chose carefully. Power wise, he had always been gifted when it came to raw energy output. So these updates had been focused on something he had struggled with for literally decades.

Control.

Increased ability to multitask, so that he could control more lasers safely. The ability to automatically scale power output based on target... in other words, power enough to stun a brute would no longer accidentally vaporize a normal human, power for burning a minion wouldn't be ignored if a brute jumped in the way, and so forth.

The ability to lock onto a target and auto-guide his beams without concern that it would hit a friend or unrelated object. The ability to automatically find openings for his attacks to go around obstacles to hit a target, or find the least destructive angle of aggression.

Now though, his options were more strange. Convert lasers into other materials? It could be strong, basically turn his beams into machine guns with infinite ammo, but it basically changed his power completely. It would require massive retraining and new tactical options. And would the material fade away? He wouldn't want to litter over a state sized area during a conflict.

Solidify lasers into physical objects? Similar issues, and his boyfriend would insist on using it for kinky things.

So... maybe?

At least it was an optional power setting, not one that fully replaced his ability.

The third options and beyond just made his powers MORE deadly than focused energy attacks already were. Multidimensional Shifting, to hit objects unknown to the normal world. Corrosive effects, causing wounds to fester or shields to corrupt. Bouncing lasers, that didn't lose any energy despite hitting multiple targets... well that seemed dangerous and uncontrolled. Lasers that only damaged clothing? Heh, no.

His eyes drifted back to the laser rope bondage option.

...Well. It wouldn't be a Quest Reward if he always spent it on work related stuff, right?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Last night was awesome!

Adam had walked into the living room (At least, ONE of the living rooms, Variance Villa was huge) and found that CD and Narwhal were cuddling with blue Simmy (Still nude) on the couch while something was playing on TV (He was distracted).

The couch was full, but the girls had him lay on their laps for the film (No idea which one). While nothing too sexual really occurred, it had been a warm and enjoyable experience, especially once Narwhal started stroking his hair and the other girls tried to 'massage' his 'tired' muscles.

That his body was formed from raw power and magic didn't matter, and he told no one that his body healed so quickly that 'sore' didn't really exist for him anymore.

Massages rocked!

He stretched on the mostly empty couch, then re-wrapped his arms back around Narwhal and tried to go back to sleep.

...No, that was Simmy. The nudity was a big hint.

Whatever, it was too early to freak out about this. Hugs for everyone, and good night.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Dragon sighed as her sister gossiped more about her date last night. Just because she and Colin moved a bit slower in their relationship status didn't mean she would try and drag CD down emotionally now that SHE had romantic options.

Whatever this rectangular love thing was, she was at least having a good time so far.

She reviewed her tasks, CD babbling away as she lounged nude on Dragon's virtual couch. The girl had near zero modesty, but at least her sister made the day feel brighter when around.

Birdcage? Still up and running, the massively secured prison still steady as stone. Some changes had to be made after Dragon was freed from her code shackles, and a lot of flaws in the prison were found and patched, but it was safer today than ever before. Now that she was able to make free decisions, she had even improved the food quality of the place. Morale had actually gone up this month!

Many thousands of Guild operations were plodding along, only thirty three needed escalation to Narwhal's actual attention.

Adam's companies were now fully handled by Sonia, so Dragon was basically checking up on those for no real reason other than curiosity.

The sales numbers for the new Guild Products were not in yet, but the market had reacted VERY favorably to the new computers, materials, and software being offered now that Adam was less terrified of the consequences for standing out. Then again, his display at the docks had been going viral online from the few who recorded it, so even if it WAS easy for people with powers to target him, they would be having second thoughts. Probably.

She paused. Right, where did the Baku Rangers end up? Missy had one, the Pink one. Oh, the White one was now with Panacea, and seemed to enjoy the taste of her whole family based on these images they shared.

Dragon digitally blinked. Why was the Black Baku heading to the American South? Was it after the 'Fallen', the gang focused on worshiping Endbringers? She sent a question off to Adam, that whole group of villains focused on Master abilities mostly. Bakus should be immune to that, right? She sent some messages towards the Black ball of fur as well.

...It was ignoring all her attempts to communicate with it.

Well. Adam's response said it should be fine... right?

With a digital sigh, she assigned a drone to follow the slowly bouncing/floating ball of fur as it meandered toward an incestuous region of the south. This could only end well.

It was technically outside of her jurisdiction anyway, so no one should yell at her when those people bump into a tiny elephant-tiger-thing. Variance may still get blamed though.

Hopefully the others would turn up soon. One, the Red one, was drifting from park to park as it meandered towards Wisconsin, and Ivy said her Green one was hanging around for now.

She sighed as CD started another sub-story about her evening. Siblings were new, but her old relationship with Narwhal helped Dragon adapt some.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Kaiser frowned at his management team. "No."

Brad, partially forming into his 'Hookwolf' battle state, actually growled. "WHY NOT!?" His arm began writhing as metal hooks and shark spikes swirled over the flesh. "That territory was going to be MINE, I had groups ready for deployment months ago!"

James Fliescher, known to most as 'Krieg' snorted. "Think about it Brad, you couldn't push into that territory back when all you had to worry about was Lung. Not for long, anyway."

He ignored his friends rage. "Now that Lung turned into a mountain and a giant elephant popped him, why do you THINK we are going to lay low?"

Kaiser frowned. "Sadly, while that is a factor, the issue is more concerning. For E88 as a whole."

That drew the attention of the group of Nazis.

He extended a metal sword, thin, to point at the white board behind him. "The numbers, remember?"

Kaiser swept from his throne, each step loud in the meeting room. Pacing. "It was bad enough that our departments were losing profit, or that our ongoing conflicts with those lessors and lowers kept costing us time and money. And occasionally personnel, although we have been lucky with retrieval so far."

He held his metal gauntlet up, watching his power redistribute the metal surface. "We were handling that. Setbacks were common but low in damage, and recruitment was high. No, while the evidence that Variance can destroy or capture massive powerhouse parahumans is certainly a negative, the real issue is the 'System' itself."

Brad scoffed. "No real man would stoop to begging some self righteous prick to gain power. None of my people would touch the damn thing."

Kaiser sighed. "And that is the issue. Branches of the Nazi supporting organizations are all pulling away because of widespread push back from formally powerless minorities. And then... the education camps."

More than a few winces hit the room. Even the most die-hard white power supporters were not exactly thrilled at the 'Empowerment Camps' which near-tortured children to get them to gain abilities, then brainwashed them to be weapons for the cause. It was an understood if not widely mentioned threat that stepping too far out of line could have a family member or two sent off for 'training'.

Kaiser nodded. "The whole concept doesn't work when those being 'educated' can suddenly transform into a mound of magma. Or teleport. Two camps had all staff executed, no outsiders even involved."

He pointed roughly at the board. "The numbers are against us, and if we want to continue to support the cause we need to bind together. There will be a series of meetings to hopefully find a solution, but we must end nearly all operations locally and at all external branches. We can't handle being attacked when we are so strained."

The feeling of resentfulness but understanding mostly swept the room, but Brad had always been an emotional man. "But Lung's gone! His people are in shambles, and Oni Lee was captured a few days ago! This could be the only chance to move, before Variance rebuilds and claims even more land!"

Seeing no supporters, his clawed hands gripped his hair. "And what about those filthy Merchants!? Are we even keeping an eye on those drug dealing bastards!?"

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Skidmark jerked, falling from the mound of mechanical parts. "I'm awake!"

His girl ignored him, her hands working inside the massive machine.

Skidmark blinked at the ceiling. Or was it a roof? Life gave hard questions. Absently, he brought up his class, 'Pharmaceutical Manufacturing'. 'Self Medication' was leveling up nicely. He still needed some buzz though. "Baby, you got the good stuff?"

She snorted. "Busy Adam, this is going to be F$#% #$ amazing!"

He frowned. Her 'Scavenger' class had massively improved the number and quality of parts found for her to tinker with, but it also kept her from being able to party as much. "S^ *, I know baby. I'm going to $# # ing get some good stuff from the *#&&$# stash."

Squealer waived him off. Whatever this new machine was, she was dedicated to seeing it completed. Whatever.

He stumbled into the main base, passing the drugged gang members and moving towards the stash. They had to cut down on a lot of gang activities to keep these cool powers, but several members got some abilities to grow the good stuff and process it better, which made everything cheaper. Fewer imports meant cheaper goods and more profits, even with operations at an all time low. Better buzz too.

So yeah, they didn't get to go out and # $ stuff up like the old days, but the high was higher and the pains were lower, and the stash kept flowing. Heck, even the bills were no problem for now.

He nearly collapsed into the back room, but things could always be worse.

With less crime, there was much lower chance that he would get caught and be forced to be sober.

He'd shoot up to that.

He blinked at the bartender. Drugtender? "Hey, have you always been a tiny yellow elephant?"

"Squeak?"

Oh, there was the stuff. "Never mind, I'm good."

Now to get back to the tinker lab. Hopefully without falling.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam 'Adventure' Burns was a wise man.

Indeed.

Snuggling between Narwhal (Cyber Narwhal, or CN, was doing the paperwork) and CD (Dragon's sister had been coming over nightly for a while now), they had finally gotten to the Star War's trilogy. Technically the middle three, or four, five, and six. No reason to expose poor CD to Jar Jar Binks right now. And this had turned into a long series of movie nights recently anyway.

Simmy had sort of insisted, as the ability to turn off future and past predictions (As well as all the new abilities she gained becoming his wife) allowed her to finally begin to forget things if she tried hard enough. Or to at least not automatically remember the ending of the film and the entire lives of every person related to casting, filming, and processing said film.

So instead of knowing all movies ever made, she could actually feel surprise. Enjoyment. Suspense.

Thus, movie nights.

Simmy was getting the popcorn. Adam was not sure where it was from, but the description in the System's 'Shop' said it was a snack tinker with a 'Dietitian' class who had managed to make the stuff healthy, more buttery tasting, with no oily feeling. Today they were aiming for the chocolate variant of the stuff, since the cheese and caramel flavors had been so popular.

Narwhal hummed, with CN watching from her virtual office. "So... could we go there?"

Adam hummed right back. "Squishy says maybe on my own. If we asked for it directly though, yes I could get to at least a version of that Realm... but the downsides I have to choose would end up with me spending a LOT of time there. They have slavery and stuff, and I would be very hard pressed not to meddle."

CD hummed just to join in, her side pressed firmly to his. "Yeah, but there is Infinite Realms out there. Nightmare Moon has been spending a lot of her free time just working with Squishy to see which ones are interesting, but even the ones she analyzes tend to vanish or duplicate or whatever."

She accepted the floating tub of popcorn even as Simmy entered the room and sat in front of the couch, nestled between Adam's legs and humming some tune.

...They really should try to get Simmy to wear some actual clothing at some point.

CD turned back to her friends. "Point is, if any injustice exists anywhere, you can find an infinite number of nearly duplicate places suffering that specific issue, in copies of that specific world. It would drive you mad with guilt and grief as you spent the rest of eternity fighting that one issue, and it still wouldn't address a percentage of the total places with horrible problems."

Adam sighed. "Yeah, Squishy and I talked about it a bit every once in a while. We decided to address the issues as we ran into them, but not to deliberately search out problems that are not directly affecting us." He frowned. "That said, there is a 'flaw' I can choose to show up at significant points of time in other worlds, an I will likely keep that option active. It saved a few lives already."

Narwhal snorted. "Well, duh. In fact, I am going to go out on a limb and assume you will have a very lax definition for 'not affecting' yourself. For example, I doubt you could watch someone treat a slave badly in the Star Wars Realm without stabbing a few people."

He blinked. "Well..." Huh. No, the idea of actual torture and death didn't bother him as much as it should. "I better take someone with me eventually, now that you mention it. My scale for 'acceptable levels of retribution' sort of go out the window even at the idea of someone beating a baby or whatever."

A few quiet questions between himself and Squishy and he nodded. "Right. I will try to always kill people instead of long sadistic punishments or endless tortures."

Narwhal's look was dry. "Thank you for that, but we meant more like 'Don`t slaughter someone following the law unless it is very strongly against your moral code'. Especially because jerks like slavers could also have dead man switches or whatever."

He blinked. "Not going to push that 'Never kill' stuff from the unwritten rules?"

She snorted. "Ideally you would spare people as often as possible, but I have seen you operate. You start off at overkill and go up." An image popped up, shared by CN. "You could have sent Lung to sleep with 'Recovery'. You went giant monster fight."

Adam paused. Huh. "You know, for as much as I use 'Recovery', I really sort of ignored the crowd control functions." He nodded. "Right, my bad. In my defense, it was easier for Twilight to map his shard while he was using it."

Also, Simmy had thought it would be awesome, and she had been totally right. It was really fun having her around and be all non-murdery. He felt her pat his shoe leaning back against him, humming away.

Narwhal chuckled as she took another handful of popcorn. "And wanting to fight a giant dragon god had nothing to do with it?"

Damn it, that had been awesome! "Hey, let's focus on the tiny furry Muppet things fighting an army!" Those Ewoks... did those actually exist there, or were they only included as a toy option for Lucas Arts? They didn't affect the story much... or show up anywhere else. Hmm.

Either way, perfect distraction.

Narwhal idly stroked Simmy's blue hair feathers. "When CN and I merge we both experience the same stuff, so you could just bring her along once in a while so we can explore a bit like a couple. CD can join in easily enough, although I think Twilight wants to stay here and keep messing with the System. Also, Nightmare Moon has become something of a nightclub idol. Seriously, she has like a following online and on the System forums."

Alright, distraction was only partially successful. Ah well.

He sighed. "I hate being a stickler about this, but no. I don't want to risk traveling with people when possible. After a few more trips, hopefully I will feel strong enough to risk taking you girls on trips into unexplored Realms, but not likely any time soon. Really I only really allowed it before because of my crippiling loneliness, a sense of responsibility having created the cyber girls, and the inability to return home safely."

Adam frowned. "We got lucky that the most powerful entities encountered were more focused on flirting and friendship rather than conceptually crushing me. Or at least, attempting to do such."

Narwhal grumbled but gave in. "But you WILL take Simmy. She can entirely fit in your soul and is able to see problems before they become issues."

He felt his angel wiggle from praise and chuckled as he gave her a hug using his ankles. Arms were a bit busy after all. "Fine, not like I can't see your point."

CD tapped his knee. "If you do travel again, what will happen to System? It won't shut down or whatever, right?"

He hugged her tighter. "Nah, it will be fine. System is a faith based magical system, and while it took a ton of power and effort to set up on my end... once we hit 10,000 followers in a small region it became self sustaining. It would take literal millennium for it to start having issues at that point, and we passed that low number a LONG time ago."

Their conversation drifted off until the end of the movie, and as the credits scrolled they discussed what they would consider worth taking from various movies or books and what penalties he would have to be accepted to lower the cost enough to actually attempt a trip.

Bottom line: Aiming for a specific place shot the price of transit through the roof. Better to ask for a particular ability or technology base instead and hope for the best, and even then he would sort of be dropped into active situations with little or no idea of what was going on or any support.

He could handle that.

As far as morality goes, the general consensus was to use a self based code of ethics. After all, some worlds may encourage cannibalism, murder, or who knew what... best for Adam to make internal judgments that he would be comfortable with rather than try and follow billions of laws from trillions of countries.

Still, the idea of Adam being off on his own again seemed to put the others on edge.

He had no clue why.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The 'Night Life', as it were, turned out to be VERY profitable.

Nightmare Moon, or 'Luna Dark' as she was called now online, had discovered a fascinating fact after visiting the local night club.

With her human form, scantily clad as she enjoyed, she found that most men and many women were worshiping her.

Literally.

The faith was filling up her weakened reserves, and although it would take a long, LONG time... she could reach and eventually surpass the power levels of her glory years.

She continued to move to the beat, a wonderful drink in one hand and a beauty dancing to her side.

This world... lived in the night. Thrived in it, no less.

Unlike the far less industrialized world of Equestria, people staying up past dark was not only common but almost socially required. Going home before midnight was considered an 'old people' thing.

It felt more warm here and now than the last decade spent in her old home. No terrified whispers, no claims of demons and night feeding and dark teeth.

Yes, the majority of the worship was sexual in nature. Not even a surprise. But even now she felt more and more people just enjoy her dance moves or her singing voice. It didn't hurt that she had close ties to The Guild and Variance as well, as far as her online presence was concerned.

She had even made deals through CD to have merchandise released and an album recorded... and her fans were actively eating it all up. Loving it. Loving her!

The idea of exploring realities seemed less desirable when she could feel an ocean of people who enjoyed having her here. Who wanted to just know about her life, about what she wanted, about her opinions. They may not know her magical powers or years of conflict for the peace of the realm, but the desire was real and plentiful.

She was pulled back to the party as they pushed for her to sing another tune. To be honest, the musical choices of this world were both varied and fabulous, they had been such a wonderful surprise gift in many ways. So many tribes of people, so many cultures, so much media and communication! Even now hundreds of songs and plays and such were being created and shared and spread, even BEFORE the System powers began lowering the difficulty for normal people to create amazing new products and services. 'Home Movies' were rapidly becoming a new genre of media, and theoretically could challenge big box office creations!

The evening thrummed with sound and life and music...

She wasn't alone in the night. Not here.

Sometimes, while friendship was magical, acceptance could be just as amazing.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Twilight wish she could go home and tell her former life how amazing this was.

Global research into new forms of power! Teams of people, some members of Variance's business, others in The Guild, many more simply with compatible 'Class' choices, working together!

There were human magical research teams now, and they worked under HER, Twilight, in return for contribution points and System levels.

Sure she had to remain in human form, even if she kept the horn. But... in Equestria, while she loved her friends, she had been alone.

Only the Alicorns could even understand magic in the way she did. And more and more often, only she could explain what she was attempting, why it might work, what could be achieved.

But here?

Nightmare Moon may have wandered away, but now Twilight had whole teams of people who could follow along with her, argue with her, debate the ideas behind belief and magic itself!

She barely got sleep, not that her non-biological body cared. She ate rarely. She studied and worked and tested constantly. Being a cyber intelligence made all her old issues and weaknesses optional, age would no longer stop progress, and her life was focused on investigations, study, and research... about MULTIPLE REALITIES!

Was it even possible to be more happy? To feel more accomplished?

Eventually she would want to visit her friends and family back home, to show them how much she had done and how much she would do...

But Adam could choose 'when' to go back. So... she could take her time and enjoy this thoroughly. No friends or family ignored, because she was a digital clone. No guilt for leaving anyone behind, because she hadn't!

Have her cake, eat it too!

She paused, before taking another bite of perfectly duplicated triple-layered double-dipped chocolate-fudge cake. This one had chocolate sprinkles.

Perfectly duplicated as if freshly cooked, totally cybernetic cake.

No tummy ache, no getting fat. Unlimited amounts.

She sighed with joy as she pulled up the soon to be constructed 'Auction House' for the System. Life was awesome.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

They were gone.

Eidolon floated over the South Pacific sea, the waves ignored.

He... felt conflicted.

The Endbringers had been the focus of his training, the unreachable peak, the monster in the dark for him to one day triumph over.

True, the more times he... failed... the harder it was to stand back up and fight again.

With each death, his emotional burden grew... having not already conquered the beasts, each death fell on his shoulders.

When he suddenly gained a FOURTH open power slot, he thought his day of victory had finally arrived!

But to have them just vanish...

His heart was empty.

All those fights seemed pointless. All that pain. All those sleepless nights, those secret training hours. He once spent three days before the next projected attack alone in his room, frantically changing his selected powers. Hoping for some combination of three that would save everyone, and prove how powerful and important he was.

Even when he found his abilities start to fail, the powerful skills weakening, he still had hope. There were just SO MANY abilities, skills, and tricks.

But what was the point now?

Conversely, he did feel some level of peace. At least, assuming the monsters don't come back, the innocent wouldn't die at his feet anymore. The crowds wouldn't be snuffed out like an afterthought.

But what... what use was he now?

No one used a nuclear tank to sweep a street, or a hydraulic press to knit.

He was a man filled with life threatening powers... with no tasks to his level. No challenges.

Eidolon, now more or less simply David, looked down at the sheet of paper his friend had passed.

It was a personal thing, hand written by Legend on his way to take out another 'threat', if normal Parahumans could count as one. It told of his experiences with the new powers sweeping the globe.

Before, he had scoffed. He had goals. Now?

"Variance, I... I need worthy opponents."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Simmy frowned. Then made some choices.

'New Class: Challenger! When fighting an opponent, may restrict power to an equivalent level or lower. The more restrictions enabled, the greater the reward!'

There. Let him choke on it.

She went back to choosing sexy outfits to mess with Narwhal's afternoon. Something lacy.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam wiped the sea water from his face and looked back at the Bay.

This was like the third or fourth time he had been called back here. First, the deeper sections he had created needed plant life and smaller creatures to encourage fish spawning. Secondly, the faith based barriers he had placed had to be adjusted, because a couple had been filtering out salt which was messing with everything.

Now, he was reintroducing more sea life, even if said creatures were being modified to 'Peak' 'Recovery' levels. The fishing areas near the swimming peers had been useless without them, and the new artificial reefs were made with bright colors... because why not.

Ironically, having more girls in his life had increased his free time and lowered the amount of sexy time. He and Narwhal had slowed things down to not pressure CD, CN, or Simmy (Although Simmy took this as a challenge somehow), and the girls had taken several nights out.

This did leave Adam more time for his own projects, which was needed, but well... somehow after so much frantic work taking time off seemed wasteful.

He checked again... theoretically THIS time there should be a balance without one particular animal eating all the others. A few spawning areas that restricted creatures to a single species should ensure that he didn't have to come down here every month or so. No chance of over fishing, as the 'spawn pits' wouldn't allow babies to escape until they reach a certain size... probably.

Whatever, this was more than good enough. Might be too much in fact, to the point where seafood was likely to become a major export of the area. Meh.

He 'Transferred' home, moving towards his lab.

This latest project was personally important.

Artificial Intelligence Hardware.

Dragon. Cyber Dragon. And technically Cyber Narwhal, Twilight, and Nightmare Moon... Or was she going by Luna Dark full time now?

They could run off his massive super computer setup, for now. But they were tied. Restricted.

There were worlds out there where computers the size of his thumb could run a full AI. Solo. With power and cooling included.

His attempts to create something similar had shown him some disturbing issues.

He could pull it off pretty easily. Worm tinkertech handled multiple dimension devices amazingly well, so having all the big parts in another layer or layering lots of small things in one space would allow fast data transfer and 'small' local size.

But moving that through Realms? No.

And based on Squishy's opinion, the other realities (MLP and Inuyasha) did NOT handle the same kind of dimensional shenanigans with any level of grace or dignity.

The best he could do was design great hardware, convert it into a spell, and anchor it to a small object. It worked very well, but the issue again was the hardware.

Almost all the coolest stuff his followers were using or developing needed dimensional shenanigans to form or stay stable. Even the damn wires needed special universal laws to exist.

So... he needed something more. Advanced. New ideas.

The best example he knew of was probably Commander Data from Star Trek. Even in THAT Realm the damn android was beyond advanced, so advanced that duplicating the feat was something entire worlds attempted and (the majority of times) failed at. Oh he had some issues, like difficulty experiencing emotions or whatever, but fixes for that existed in the television series itself so Adam should be able to do something.

But that realm had an entire civilization of almost all powerful creatures named 'Q' that actively watched humans in general and Data particularly. Time manipulation, Reality manipulation, the works. Not to mention the other way powerful forces and such that filled the dang place.

Adam would be lucky to just be kept as a pet or something if not instantly wiped out if they felt offended by his presence. For now.

Point was, he would NOT be disabling the safety features of his 'Transfer' ability. After all, 'Q' wasn't the ONLY god like beings out there, and the ability to avoid realities with malicious ones was worth not visiting Star Trek for a while.

Still, androids and gynoids existed in multiple stories and movies and such.

He had almost left a day or so ago, but in the middle of discussing it with his girls Squishy had popped in and informed the group that Eidolon had suddenly joined the System.

Immediately Twilight started examining his shard, and quickly dragged CD, Squishy, and a surprisingly reluctant Simmy into the job, and the benefits began rolling in.

First of all, his ability was a template for rapid selection of power units and a great boon to 'Manipulation', 'Research', 'Harmony', and well... anything that needed multiprocessing features. Twilight had said something about how much it was synergizing with the 'Queen Administrator' shard that Variance Villa had found earlier this month, and then they were off to the races.

Not sure how Taylor had gotten the thing, really. Had it always locked onto her and the System just helped out? At least that child didn't have to be emotionally abused for years to get the damn thing. Anyway.

Even while they worked, Eidolon was being quite the team player. Every time he selected a power for one of his empty power slots, he had a habit of trying out a dozen or so options before setting down on a single effect or ability. In a single day he could access hundreds of powers, or if the guy was bored even more.

All those powers, powers that belonged to the 'Thinker' entity, the one that was 'dead' and therefore unable to complain or set off doomsday scenarios?

Yoink!

Twilight left a process running that did nothing but record all the new dimensional addresses for those power shards and the reported properties of such. Her other teams were having a field day debating which ones should be consumed and converted next, and each crystal shard handled as such helped teach Adam's power how to build 'Crystal Power Shards' in more effiecent and effective ways.

Needless to say, he didn't want to leave to a new Realm in the middle of all these delicious power ups.

Still... he looked at his virtual plans and designs.

He wanted his girls to be safe, even if this Realm and his powers vanished. And organic bodies had issues that he didn't accept, enhanced as he could make them aside.

A fully artificial body with human sensations, the ability to self repair, and the ability to procreate with organic bodies. It would have to be a long term goal.

For now...

He continued to tinker in his lab. The more he understood about electronics, programing, and robotics now, the easier the long term projects would become.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

It was art.

The work of generations, trillions of pieces that interwove a tapestry of intent.

It was flawed. Uncountable failures and setbacks, each overcome, each growing the beauty of the final design.

It was fluid. Constant adjustments were needed at every level, more than any one person could ever control. He had needed to trick people into serving his purpose with care and ignorance and bribery.

And, even with the most recent setback, even with his plans partially exposed and his identity revealed to those meddlesome fools, even with his personal wounds grave and his body artificially aged by dozens of decades...

It was time.

Fighting an army of psychic warriors, one that can read the future and predict the present... it took the delicate fingers of death and deceit years of subtle works and twisted whispering to battle.

Generations of suicidal attacks, of sacrificing apprentice and master over and over, and now the Light Side was veiled. Hidden from all but himself and his people.

Underground works, political intrigue, generations of careful alliances and betrayals, and now Jedi no longer married, had children, nor even permitted themselves to feel emotions on any level. Near robots, denied compassion, love, or passion... so easy to twist and convert.

Multiple worlds fell under his rule, armies uncountable on both sides danced to his whims, and the remaining few Jedi not secretly turned or killed in far off lands were now surrounded by minions of his own creation, with mental triggers set to end it all. Their communication inhibited and watched, their support groups scattered and strained from ongoing war.

But Sidious had not accomplished so much by being hasty.

Even so spread, even so surrounded, Jedi warriors were famous for last minute saves and surviving the impossible. Unable to see the future, they could still predict the local events, see the tide of battle. To ensure success, he needed them unaware. Disturbed. Distracted.

His apprentice, now Darth Lord Vader, was about to move with his 501st Legion.

The Jedi Temple was barely defended.

Let's see how well those damn Light slaves fought when the screams of children fill their minds.

He had armies. He had advanced weapons and ships. He had the Force, and the Chosen One selected to bring balance to the universe was corrupted to his designs. His foes were unaware, surrounded, and about to be mentally handicapped while unknown traitors awoke to new orders.

Nothing could stop him now.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam nodded. Everything here was mostly handled, and he could return near instantly anyway.

He gave Dragon and the others the heads up, got some well wishes back, and focused.

No idea where he would end up, so human body. Suit was probably fine. Weapon?

He formed a black rod of Flame Metal, and began filling it with pure energy. A small ball of blue magic sang as it danced off the end. It would be good enough, and he could adapt pretty well. Even worked as a light source!

Right, now... restrictions.

No safe travel. Arrive at an 'interesting' time. No language package. No reality insertion. Etc.

Goal: Gain Advanced Technology for Robotics.

Ooh, it was even cheaper than before! It looked like the constant advancements his followers made here in Worm was helping lower the costs.

Any other options then?

...No. Too expensive. The Language option alone was STUPID expensive. How many languages did this place even have!? Whatever.

"Transfer: Abyss."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Bene nearly slipped as she ran through the door leading to the emergency room. A rapid code locked the door for what little use it would do before she began feeling the room.

Thank the force, they were all here.

Little Zett Jukassa stood at the front of the small crowd of children, his blue light saber the only light in the unpowered room. His face relaxed slightly as he recognized her.

She snapped out. "Report."

Zett nodded. "I got the emergency signal before the power went out, and gathered all the Younglings I could. I was unable to contact outside, but had the older children grab any supplies they could on the way here."

Only a few of the younger children were crying or sniffling, honestly she was very proud at how well they were handling the situation. If only they had more time.

Her expression must have set something off in his mind. "Is this a Separatist attack? How long until the reinforcements arrive?"

She glanced at the younger children. No... nothing she could say would change anything. No reason to crush their hope. "It is an attack. I am not sure when reinforcements can get here, so we need to find a separate escape route if possible, defend carefully until then. The standard operating procedures we have however may be compromised."

Of course they were compromised, the one leading the slaughter was a Sith in black armor and a squad from the Republic itself. The same Republic that objected to 'overly expensive' protections and protocols, who had all the floor plans for this building, who had enforced laws restricting weapons and armor while in the building, and so forth.

Something must had slipped, as she noticed Zett go wide eyed... then serious. "Right. Smallest ones, to the back room. I need two of the oldest to keep them calm and if possible, try to get everyone to do meditation exercises. The Force will guide us."

Bene fought back the despair in her heart. The Force had nothing to say despite her frantic begging. It felt hidden, like it had for years now. Barely accessible.

And the hallway began to thump with the sounds of armored feet.

She stood at the front of these young boys, girls, and others. These innocents.

A few had training sabers, training tools unable to do more than lightly sunburn an unarmed person. Worthless against the clone armor, worthless against a true lightsaber. But anything that kept what little hope they had left alive was worth it.

She gestured silently for Zett to move to the edge, hopefully catching the first few invaders by surprise as they focused on killing her first.

Even as the room fell into silence, the ever louder attempts at someone trying to open the door grew and grew.

Then it all stopped, and something overly optimistic and innocent inside of her thought that someone had come to save them. That they had some more time. Just a few more seconds.

The red light of slowly melting metal burned her hope away.

The red beam of power that pierced the door and began to melt away at the frame killed anything left.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Even under his despair and rage, Anakin Skywalker felt the rich flavor of the Dark Side pull him forward on his path. The stain of these betrayers, these fools that had held him back for years, it would all be cleansed.

These tainted children would thank him on some level, able to escape life of hypocrisy and pain that he had to suffer. His burned stump, fractured bones, and robotic limb were nearly puppeted by the force itself now, its weakness unable to handle full Jedi combat even as the charred nerves screamed against the material.

He would have to redesign them later.

His red lightsaber burned another inch through the door.

It was slower going than when he was at his prime. Unlike when using the Light Side, the Dark Side cared not for his pain or anger, but for the passion itself. It didn't try and heal his wounds or keep him calm, but used everything to drive his mind forward. For more. It tempted him to let go and lose himself.

If the Light was numb robotic apathy, the Dark was flaming passion and self gratification.

He allowed none of it to move him from his goal.

This was a harsh task, but necessary. With the death of these things, all his other targets would die like the womp rats they were. Screaming. As they should.

They took his mother, they held back his training, they prevented him from gaining enough power to save his love. Each thought pulsed dark energies through his body, through his robotic limbs, into the air.

They all deserved nothing less.

Moments before the door was fully compromised, he felt the burning of the force screech a warning.

The red glowing metal seemed to... twist?

He signaled his men to retreat even as the metal seemed to catch on fire. Strange, eldritch blue flames.

Then a mountain fell on the world and he fell unconscious, unaware of his men frantically carrying him off to medical and trying to set up defense positions as they fell back.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam felt himself enter the new Realm easily.

Too easily.

He didn't even have time to make a choice or anything, something inside it just snagged his essence and smashed him into a door. Something like a white hand or vines or something had just... flung him.

...The hell!?

He forced the nearby pathetic flames to grow, to give him enough energy to form a body here.

Adam barely had enough time to see two kids with glowing rod toys before something clicked inside his rapidly forming skeletal body... and his magic just smushed down.

Not in the physical world, thankfully, or several miles of this place would have been crumpled, but he barely had time to hold his power back from the children in front of him before feeling something crumple behind him. And another. And uh. Shit.

He glanced at the... nope, they were unconscious too. Not the youngest ones, but the two oldest. Just unconscious though, not mentally smushed. Probably.

At least it didn't feel like he had killed those... thirty? Forty? Huh. That was a lot of random people being knocked out.

What the hell. Why only those people? And he could feel some large group of others frantically trying to escape the building. At least THAT seemed reasonable.

And now the children were staring at him. And he forgot the whole skin stuff, so he was currently skeleton in a suit.

Wonderful.

He gave a weak smile. "Hello! I don't suppose anyone can tell me what is going on?"

One of the other... oh. That wasn't human. She was cute though, even with the head tentacles... Oh.

This was Star Wars, wasn't it? Really should have picked that up earlier. Dang.

Anyway, she seemed older than most of the others, excepting the two unconscious kids with what were probably light sabers, now thankfully deactivated.

She cautiously walked forward. "Fru yna oui? Hu, fryd yna oui?"

...Crud.

Just. Wonderful.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

If one were to map out the galaxy, or at least the regions controlled by the Republic, it would be large. And if one were to map out the flows of the Force and color in alignment, it would be beautiful.

Rich black swirls, spiraling white arcs, and on planets or regions of space with no intelligent life rich grays composed of microscopic patterns of light and dark, dancing in the void.

But for a moment, however short, there was something unexpected.

Coruscant, covered by a city and filled with life, would normally swirl with hope, rage, anger, love, and more at all times. Waves of black force energy would collide with rivers of white, with something like islands representing order or chaos, light or dark, scattered within.

And for years now, something unheard of had been spreading from here.

Order, always a component of the Light, had been enforced on the Dark side. On Chaos.

Like webs, strings of corruption, it had spread through the planet. It became harder to feel calm, to find peace. It became easier to rant, to fault others.

And both sides of the Force hated it.

The Light was oppressed, slowly consumed, and betrayed by Order.

The Dark was restrained, forced to obey, and betrayed by its minions.

And for but a moment, less than a few minutes, it all went odd.

A node of Light, the Jedi Temple, beset by Orderly Dark and screaming in outrage, found an opportunity. An impossible chance.

The ever flowing pattern of Light and Dark bulged outward, as a massive sphere of blue fire swirled in place.

The Order, forced onto the Dark, was strained and being fought at the best of times. But a construct designed to work on set information couldn't handle something so far outside of context. It didn't break, and indeed with the disturbance happening so close to the core of the construct it even managed to adapt to some degree, even if it wasn't able to restrict the flowing power.

However, the invisible cogs of an impossible machine slipped slightly.

It was enough.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The Veil over the Force was not simply a curtain blocking the sunlight, but a weight.

A restraint.

A taint.

Every Jedi in recent years had to grow under it. To fight every moment for but a glimpse of the Light, a moment of self direction and clarity. To use with struggle the gifts that came so simply for the armies of Jedi that existed in the far past.

More complicated abilities collapsed, reducing the powers available to train to basic options. Push and pull, foresight, low level energy absorption, and such. The days of connected to an army and directing the fight became few, the idea of flight or even healing the wounded became legendary.

But for a moment, just an instant, almost every Jedi, adult and young, had a glimpse at the unveiled side of the Force. The Dark didn't fight it, and the Light wasn't obscured.

An instant was enough.

Years of hard work against impossible resistance had honed the abilities of even the 'weakest' of Jedi to unheard of levels.

Full access? No burden?

Unknown to Adam, Jedi everywhere not only realized the traps they were in, but gained instant information about safest routes of escape, easiest methods of sabotage, and most efficient methods to free their mentally enslaved clone followers from being transformed into traitors.

Even as the veil fell again, things were moving as one within the Jedi people.

And unfortunately for the Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, the soon to be declared Emperor of the Republic, the Sith Darth Sidious... well.

These changes were only felt in the Force, and his planet was swirling with blue metaphysical fire.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam glanced at the melted door. That was probably where his physical fire started, and considering the melted metal the damage was intentional.

Not that anyone was trying to break in now.

Just in case, he waved a skeletal hand. Blue flames of magic began flowing through the melted scars in the door, flooding the corridor and spreading through the building.

Hearing reactions from the kids, he tried to give them an innocent smile.

This would have been so much easier with an actual face.

Right, before he went too much farther, this would be a great time to get some language skills.

Absently he activated 'Harmony'... and nearly collapsed.

Clenching his jaw bones while raw pain flooded his body, he forced the power to swap to 'Consumption'. Even so, his soul twinged as his mind forced the raw data into his crystal library, Simmy already floating with the information and helping to sort the flow to the most relevant sections of memory.

Wincing harder, he focused on staying as calm as possible... but damn.

Never activate 'Harmony' in a Realm where so many people are not only psychic, but the air itself is permeated by a field of spirits, memories, and impressions of the past.

Forget languages, he just gained... WAY too much information. On nearly every topic. Even now, Simmy was carefully applying mental locks on entire shelves of information to restrain it for later analysis. Oww.

Right. Galactic Basic Standard, right? Simmy, please get that language alone for now and block the rest of it all until it's needed.

Ice flowed into his veins, cooling and soothing his slightly steaming skeletal structure even as the pain relief helped him find his inner calm.

Right. "Sorry, I couldn't understand any of that." The pause in the previously ignored conversation between children helped him focus on the moment. "Right."

He stood tall, straightened his suit, and held out a skeletal hand for his reforming club. Gripping the orb of fire and using it as a cane, he gave a small smile, his glowing blue eyes helping to light up the still dim room.

He glanced at the blue Twi'lek that had spoken to him originally. "My name in this form is Variance, and I am a hero. Can any of you tell me what is going on right now?"

The girl in robes still stood protectively in front of the crowd, but still gave a weak nod. "Ah. We believe the Temple is under attack." She glanced at the two unconcious padawans on the floor. "Bene and Zett implied it was a Separatist attack, but we saw a red lightsaber trying to cut the door down... so there may be a Sith attacking. Or there had been, before you and the fire thing."

Adam nodded, before turning to look at the door. "Right. Well, with no power I doubt it will be easy to get messages out... then again, if someone is willing to attack a place as famous as this one, there could be a bomb or an orbital strike planned." Which would just be annoying, really. He fed magic into the ocean of fire. Better have full coverage for this part.

Tossing his club into the air and catching it by the non-flaming end, he gave a smile. "So why don't we wake up your two friends here and find a way out of the building first? No reason to stay in such a dreary place like this if we have the option."

One of the younger boys piped up. "But what if there are more bad guys out there!?"

Adam's smile oozed blue fire, drifting through his crystal filled skull like smoke. "Well... if they get in our way I will just ask them nicely to stand aside."

He turned to the blue flames covering the wall, an absent minded hand gesture ripping the reinforced metal like paper as a path in the fire opened up.

"After all..." Adam began strolling forward. "Most people tend to be reasonable if you ask the right way."

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Vonreve, Von to her friends, cautiously motioned for Bene and Zett to be carried by a couple of the oldest and strongest Younglings. Basic force reinforcement would make the process simple enough.

The creature thankfully spoke basic. Surprisingly well, even... was it a robot? Parts of it wasn't connected with anything. Maybe some sort of magnetic attraction or tractor beams or something? It wasn't using the Force to do so.

That was the part that felt the strangest. Energy everywhere, but none of it felt like the Force.

In the middle of their terror, as death neared closest, the saber in the door began sparking blue flames... and everything fell.

Some unknown power pushed EVERYONE down, to the point where Bene and Zett didn't even have time to react. From the way the red saber snapped off, it had made an impact on the Sith attacker as well.

And then fire. Blue fire flowed everywhere. Before they could react, it had covered her and the other children... but it didn't hurt. It just felt warm.

Even now, as she ensured no one was left behind and the supplies were carried in various packs and bags, the fire seemed... playful. It almost seemed to have white eyes hidden within, and every once in a while a small ball of flames would meander away from the walls they passed through and bump into one of the Younglings' ankles, then bob off somewhere.

Wandering along, the skeletal robot had a rambling conversation going on with the group as they burned through the smokeless hallways. She and the others gave their names, and the more mature group tried probing for information from the strange creature... which the robot was very amused to answer. Not that the answers explained much.

The oddity of the situation bothered her, something felt just slightly off. It taunted her, teased her attention... until she noticed what was out of place.

There were signs of damage, of fighting, but no blood or bodies. It was confusing until she realized that the fire was SELECTIVELY burning things, as this 'Variance' walked through a door that just... melted out of the way.

Not into molten goo like with a light saber, it just sort of evaporated. How hot had that flame been!?

She nearly bumped into the skeletal robot's suit when he paused and turned to face her.

His eyes had blue flames dancing within. "Right, this place is way bigger than I expected and I want to get out before some idiot tries to blow the whole building up. Von, do you know which way we should go to get on a vehicle? I am pretty sure getting you guys off planet is the best idea at the moment."

One of the girls was worried. "But we can't leave! What if other Jedi need help?"

Adam sighed. "Well, I did feel several Force users pass out when I arrived, but..." He glanced at Von.

She knew. The other Jedi wouldn't have sent ONLY Padawan Bene to support all the Younglings if they had more options. And that Sith wouldn't have had so much time to try and open the door if the other Jedi had lived to oppose it.

Those passed out Force users must have been Sith or Sith followers.

She focused on emotional control and forced a small smile. "We can help most by ensuring that none of you are hurt and that we are out of danger, so that the Jedi fighting can focus on escape rather than having to protect us."

If any were still alive, that would actually be true. Conflict may be something Jedi warriors could handle, but a combination of body enhancement and battle prediction meant escaping an unwinnable battle was fairly easy. Even if captured, it would be easier to escape without the Younglings being held hostage. And if all the Jedi left, there would be no fight for innocents to be caught up in.

She had some of the Younglings that worked in engineering direct Variance towards the upper floor landing pads. Hopefully at least one ship would be available for escape.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Palpatine restricted a furious howl with experience. "What do you mean everything is on fire!?"

The clone trooper on the video call visibly winced. "Sir, Lord Vader had cleared out all opposition and was near the final objective when something reacted to his weapon."

The video shifted... and the entire structure danced with blue fire. Burning on nothing, burning from nothing, those materials required unreasonable levels of heat just to react, forget supporting actual fires of this size.

He glanced at his various meters and instruments, remotely displayed. He was still stuck in medical after all, and no plans had involved him being treated during such a large operation as this.

The conflict with Jedi Masters Mace Windu, Agen Kolar, Saesee Tiin, Kit Fisto had turned out well enough, four dead Jedi and the gain of Skywalker as a tool, but the wounds had been far more than desired.

Matters were only made worse because of an ill timed communication that his tool had overheard about that useless woman Amidala passing away, forcing Palpatine to redirect the massive amount of rage towards the Jedi so as to at least be productive.

At the time, he thought the extra fury would be of great assistance to Vader during his assault, and to a degree that had been true. Dozens of Masters had fallen far ahead of schedule, and Palpatine had been prepared to time the activation of Order 66 at the climax, with the dead and dying children ensuring his complete victory.

Instead, the damn fool had clearly done SOMETHING wrong. He was in a Bacta tank, in a KRIFFING coma, while everything was on FIRE.

He glanced at his tools again. Should he just activate the Order now? He had spent so much power restricting the death echos of those blasted Jedi Masters and Padawans that had died up to this point, just so that the screams of the children would have greater effect.

But not one death since then had been a Youngling or child. Even with the damn building on fire, which should be broadcasting screams and burning flesh, the Force as a whole was being silent.

And... somewhat smug?

He felt a headache raging as he forced himself to stay focused. "How long until the flames can be extinguished?"

The Clone slumped. "Unsure. We attempted to use standard fire suppressants, and they burned. Then the fire burned the devices. And the clones operating them. And the vehicle they arrived on."

The urge to just slaughter the entire division and start from scratch was only held back by urgent time restraints. "How far is this expected to spread?"

The man shifted. "All flames that spread from the temple seem to flow back into it after a certain distance. Theoretically a good chunk of the nearby city should already be ashes. We are very unclear on what to do."

Palpatine was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he had the same problem.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Unaware of the other worldly issues his plan was suffering from, Palpatine already was a man paranoid enough to know that time was running out.

The public was growing upset about the communications blocks he had put in place, now restricting services for FAR longer than his initial estimates. He couldn't hold it much longer without global panic, which could theoretically be felt by Jedi off world and give them a dangerous chance to fight back. This was unacceptable.

With a deep seated rage he went for one of the less satisfying backup plans he had just in case his newest pawn had hesitated when attacking the young.

Over the Temple, far into the restricted flight zone and with weapons fully charged, the massive ship floating above prepared to fire. The public relations disaster would be easy to handle, just claim that the same Jedi whom had attacked the soon to be Emperor had attempted to die while causing as much damage as possible. More damage prevented thanks to the Republic's brave clone army, may their sacrifices be remembered.

His wrinkled face, twisted in pain, managed a bright smile as the orbital strike began the charging sequence. Any questions about why a Star Destroyer was intruding on a civilian location would not matter after that section of the populace vanished.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam felt a soft feathery poke, and looked up. "Huh."

Von noticed his pause, but her frantic expression didn't seem to feel the power building above. "What!? Did something happen?"

He shook his head. "No, I was just a bit surprised how convoluted this temple is. Half the hallways are nearly closed loops. Is it a defensive strategy?"

'Conversion', 'Consumption', 'Purification'.

Two massive white eyes opened on the blue flames coating the building... and even as raw power slammed downward, a black maw opened wide.

Mmm. Tangy.

The power was directly pushed into his magic, the massive overflow building his kami reserves.

Von shook her head. "Not purposefully. From what the Masters told us, sections had to be shut down due to declining Jedi numbers and some budget concerns."

He blinked, gently melting a path through another reinforced door. "Uh. Shouldn't your budget be more flexible if there were less Jedi around?"

She shrugged. "I just do the meditation stuff and all that, I'm not looking forward to the paperwork and politics side at all."

Well, fair enough.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The clone died, helmet squished instantly.

His second in command tried to stay stoic as he took the console. "Sir."

The Chancellor seemed... a bit more angry than expected. "Explain."

He did NOT glance at the corpse. And he would not be stupid enough to fall over the same issue that had just promoted him. "The flames seem to be controlled through an unknown method and have either mitigated or negated the damage from our initial volley. Worse, the attack seems to have increased the flame density, if not the area under effect."

Seriously CT-7455, why would you tell the angry space wizard 'Sir, it nommed my lasers!'

He had to be from a defective batch.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Chancellor Palpatine glared once more at whatever force construct blocked his forces. It must have been a sacrificial last stand, to deny him the rich resources buried under that facility... artifacts, Holocrons, ancient texts, many even his insidious reach had been unable to obtain, many he had been waiting for with greedy claws.

Now it was all on fire. Possibly some sort of energy being, tethered locally? If so, it could be a remnant from the much older wars where experimentation on other life forms was far more accepted.

This setback was infuriating.

"Wake Lord Vader, use the restricted stimulants if needed. Leave observers and move on to the other objectives."

He ignored whatever the moron had to say and cut the connection.

His wrinkled hands gently moved to the activation sequence for Order 66... this single act would restore communications, send out the codes, and rewrite the mental facilities of all clones near instantly to take the final steps of eradicating the Jedi.

It wouldn't get them all, rats tend to scurry even from the harshest dangers, but he would be mostly unopposed in mere moments. Ultimate Victory.

He moved with a hideous grin as he activated the Order, the tiny chips in those flesh clones surely doing all the busy work of becoming Emperor for him.

Reports began flooding in almost instantly. It was certainly going to be good news.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Aayla Secura flinched as she felt the small mound of cybernetic command chips to her side activate at once, her hands still shaking and slightly bloody from the last procedure done on her companions.

The blue Rutian Twi'lek woman gave a weak smile to her friends. "That... that was cutting things a bit too closely."

Commander CC-5052, Bly, frowned. His face was near stoic. "Indeed." He glanced at the Republic symbols attached to his equipment. "I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I think we may have built up some vacation time."

The soldiers all nodded.

Her smile a bit more relaxed, she stood. "Well... I'm not sure about everyone else, but if we are about to go on a bit of a holiday anyway, why not take some time and leave some... appreciation gifts... for whomever comes to visit us during our time of relaxation and self reflection?"

The men were already moving back toward camp to begin looting and 'local asset denial'.

Bly's grin was more than a bit furious. "Remember. Pillage, THEN burn."

The chuckles warmed their hearts.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Grand Master Yoda himself was incredibly busy. Between the dozens of messages and suggestions he sent out and the warnings and strategies he was developing, he was moving towards where he should be to do what he should do. For the first time in over 800 years he was moving with purpose, at high speed, with full confidence.

But very few people would be aware of this for some time.

After all, he had seen quite a few things while the Force had been singing.

And in the end, his ally is the Force.

And a powerful ally it is.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam sighed. "Right, this isn't going to work."

The slightly tired group looked at the smashed space ships, clearly the first victims when the temple was assaulted.

Von looked worriedly at Bene and Zett. "If only they would wake up. Padawan Bene probably would have ideas."

Adam blinked and turned around. "Huh. I thought they would have adapted by now." Was he not holding back his magical power enough? At least they weren't getting further damaged as far as he could tell.

Especially because healing was kind of out of the cards at the moment. ALL the children had been scanned by Recovery already, but there were organs and parts that his methods could restore or duplicate but not understand yet.

On a side note, 'Human' here did NOT match Inuyasha or Worm 'Human'. Initially he suspected that people here would just be humans with something extra, the 'Midichlorians' or whatever if those actually existed here and if that was actually how the Force was accessed.

No, the movies had implied a lot of stuff... but the Galactic Basic Standard was no where CLOSE to English, Humans were far closer to all the other aliens biologically (Made sense, since they could have kids together), and while Simmy was recording all the scans taken by his magical flames right now he did NOT feel good enough to mess with biology until he had way more samples of adults for every species, several of adult Jedi, and hopefully some electronic bio-metric data from whatever this Realm used for an internet.

A piece of paper floated in front of him. "HoloNet." Huh. Well, it did use a lot of holograms. Bet that was influenced by people wanting better porn.

Feeling Von cautiously tug his jacket, Adam focused. "Right, if we can't wake the Padawans then we should make a new plan anyway." He glanced at the scrap metal that could have been their ride. "However, I don't want to keep walking everywhere, some of the younger children seem more than a bit exhausted."

Simmy hummed a tune. Sneaky Snake by Tom T. Hall, by the sound of it.

Uh. Had he ever heard that one before? Cause NOW he knew it. She may be sticking extra information directly into his soul library.

Whatever, it was a good enough plan.

He clapped. "Right, who wants me to whip up a bit of a ride? I think it may be best to go in the one direction without soldiers."

Von blinked, looking through the flames at the wide circle of white armor surrounding the temple. And hadn't THAT been an unpleasant surprise. "I am pretty sure 'up' WAS the direction without soldiers."

Blue flames were already reforming into strange furniture on a flat sheet, benches made from soft black mesh and with white support beams seeming to melt from the area into existence.

Adam began moving all of the children into the chairs as he chuckled. "Yeah, but this city is not only planet wide but multiple layers deep. A quick trip underground should do us some good."

Von tried to stay calm as a tube constructed its way over the group, clear windows forming on the sides from white panels as... uh. Yeah, those were bright blue scales.

Adam glanced at the boy and girl Padawans now resting on the scale covered floor. At least it was on a cushioned surface now. "We will try and wake those two once we are outside of the fire." Magic was probably doing something, and he didn't want to bother figuring out what until they were at a safer location.

One of the older boys who had managed to find enough courage to join the talks a half hour or so ago spoke up. "If we leave, will the fire stay? I don't want those men to get inside and break stuff."

Adam blinked. Huh. Actually, if they just left... the soldiers would eventually figure out how they did so. And if there were vaults or stuff, he didn't want to just LET the Sith collect it all.

After all, Jedi rarely collected things for fun or pleasure. Anything in the building would be so dangerous they couldn't risk damaging it or letting leave their sight. Crud.

His eyes narrowed. "Don't worry about it, I... I think I got a good idea. Should help a lot actually, add some structure and order to this pile of fire." Heck, it would strengthen everything a lot by restraining the forces involved until actually needed. Plus, Simmy liked the plan... even if she implied Narwhal would have objections to it.

Walking through the snake skin like it wasn't there, Adam tapped his improvised cane on the floor as he reached the corridor's wall. Children Train Kaa's massive blue scaled head twisted to watch as he focused, glowing white eyes focused on his movements, his bones gently touching the metallic surface.

"Binding. Manipulation."

The blue flames flared... then vanished.

The hallway was still full of blue serpent, but the walls were mostly normal...

"Binding. Recovery."

The door he had passed through began to emit low light blue flames, that slowly rebuilt the door previously evaporated.

"Binding. Purification."

The flames pulsed... and paled to a near transparent white.

"Binding. Harmony."

And the walls flashed... somehow the structure was more. Beyond this flesh and metal. Something now watched him with affection. Understanding.

Adam chuckled as he walked back through the snake skin, then had to try and distract the very curious group of witnesses by getting directions to the lower levels of the building.

It had nearly drained his magical reserves, and a massive chunk of faith peanuts had been sacrificed to purify the energies bound to this building... but some day, when Jedi returned, they would have a place to call home.

He felt Von sit near him as they all watched the first person view of a massive blue snake wandering through the hallways, doors far too small somehow burning with white fire that expanded openings far too widely, helping the journey. Scars on the walls were slowly burning closed, while Adam felt some relief to not longer have to manage the spread of magical power himself manually.

Adam blinked. Uh. Did he restrict the building's new spirit to only this one location? Crud.

Would there be consequences for doing this?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

CT-6337, now formally in command of this operation, frowned at the formerly burning building.

Yeah, no.

He waved forward a scout droid. His people may be expendable to some, but his own personal emotions aside... damn it he had limited resources as it was without burning people by not taking the time to be cautious.

CT-7621 nodded. "All heat has settled to near ambient temperatures."

He rolled his eyes. "A massive building of energy eating fire doesn't just drop down hundreds of degrees in seconds. I couldn't find a better example of 'Trap' if I tried."

More than a few troopers watched the robotic sphere enter the death region.

Nothing.

He gestured. "Have it shoot the entryway."

The orb spat out a blaster bolt... and a white ghost like thing popped out of the door, a black maw consumed the damn shot, and then... everything was normal.

Yeah, double no. "Get it to attempt entry."

...And it got in no problem.

All the no. "Right, we were supposed to wake up Lord Vader. We should focus on that first. Orders and all that."

He shivered as he felt the windows watch him and the entry ways seem to be a tad too hungry.

This was CERTAINLY someone else's problem.

Better wake up the General so he could pass the cred chip properly.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Construction on the planet Coruscant changed over the years.

It started normally enough, until the planet lost all available surface to buildings. Then came the planning years, where advancements in modeling and schematics allowed new patterns to be used.

No longer was design focused on ideas or inspiring emotion, construction began to focus on stability. On structural support.

On becoming a foundation.

Years of construction slowly converted the lower levels into a foundation for the next wave of development. Collapses and failures not only taught valuable lessons but became the bedrock for further solidity and support.

It took time. Lifetimes. Layer after layer, the planet slowly grew upwards towards the heavens. Towards a new path.

History happened here.

Lives spawned, grew, aged, and died on this land. And their children and grand children did as well, even if on higher levels.

As civilization grew upwards, wildlife and such grew downwards into the dark tunnels and collapsed structures hidden below.

Instead of life living side by side, they began to live above and below. Nature found a way, the Force found a path.

Memories grew here, in the dark. They gathered. Time passed, and thoughts changed, but even as the planet grew and changed, the dark and depths did the same.

The Temple had existed for a long, long time. Halls and rooms filled with men, women, insects, androids, raiders, defenders, and oh so many constructors and planners, builders and refugees.

Power forced the abstract memories from thousands of dead warriors and diplomats to join the halls they once walked, to rest in the rooms they once meditated in, to watch the memories of stars they once flew through.

Structure. Order. The white Light of the Force felt the rigid memories of so many past Jedi and followers and visitors, people searching long ago for self reflection, for peace, for understanding, for something more.

And the Light rejoiced.

Within these same walls that began to burn with white energy, the dark shadows twisted as well. Free to flow as they pleased between the white barriers and slip out to the night and shadows as they willed, the shackles of Order could not pierce the Light that sang in the halls.

From these unseen crevasses and shadowed niches the black absence of the Dark raged, hunted, and watched. When attacks arrived, the Light itself created paths of shadow for the Dark to reach out and gnash and gnarl and consume.

And the Dark rejoiced.

Together, the Light protected and rebuilt and pulled from the knowledge of the living and dead that lived in these halls, that worshiped the Light as a guide and mentor. The Dark destroyed the unwanted and unneeded, opening paths for the Light to rebuild things as they should be, and basked in the raw emotions that festered in the hearts of the living as it stood as seducer and lover for those who could handle its passion.

The web of the Dark, tainted by Order, unwound as it touched those walls. The Light drew the Order easily while the Dark escaped into the dark hidden depths within.

The Temple felt more focused and more alive as time passed, white eyes watching the outsiders fear to enter and black mouth hungering to consume those foolish enough to come near with ill intentions.

Adam was likely wise to fear the Temple growing without restrictions, especially considering how outraged the Force was in general towards the Dark Masters and their followers... but he was both lucky and not in this situation.

For the Temple had no desire to expand to the buildings nearby. As a building the Temple already was larger than most of the US states it could see from Adam's memories when she awoke. Even as she began to redesign her upper levels to become a more powerful defender, her main focus was on the Force, the memories of Light and Dark, and the vast temples of faith and the many rooms and facilities that helped those young people find their own path.

Gardens were being moved, expanded, and reshaped. Meditation areas that focused on growth, on isolation, of the Dark, of the Light, on passion, on apathy... a pattern derived from her most inner depths rebuilt and reformed even as loud snaps and screams of metal terrified the surrounding soldiers during the reconstruction process. She burned and decayed and grew and rebuilt.

Each change, each movement that encouraged chaos and order to flow as they would, each improvement that was formed from the Universe and the Force itself, allowed her to awaken more, to feel more alive.

She was one with the Force, and the Force was with her.

The boundaries of the Temple began to glow with faint energy, the Light forming metals that never existed and the Dark forming substances within that should never be touched. Walls that protected those within rose in dancing patterns, while Walls that protected those without filled the gaps to prevent the moronic and evil from committing suicide by intrusion.

But her many thousands of eyes were not only focused on the growing desperation of the many soldiers at her new gates, nor was she envious of the available territory she could claim around her.

For she watched her Master guide a serpent of magic and child innocence deep inside her toward the city below... and something inside felt she should reach downwards as well.

White flames with black hunger began consuming into the depths.

Layer after layer shifted, became even more sturdy, more supportive, a foundation for her and her beliefs. Hidden libraries began to be brought together, artifacts of Light and Dark were found, analyzed, and carefully moved to a central secured location. Her reach shifted the past and ensured her future.

And as she became taller and taller, as her reach fell lower and lower, her mind improved. And the memories... The cries of anguish, the joys of life, the tears of loss, the squeals of success... the heavy tapestry of life wove in her heart as the Force fed her centuries of half lost thoughts, dreams, experiences.

So much lost... so many who strove to expand their very existence, towards the Light or the Dark, and all those struggles forgotten like ashes in the wind.

She gazed at her tiny library, both written and digital, barely a fraction of the knowledge this Temple had helped to nurture over the eons. A drop from a forgotten ocean.

This would not stand.

She blinked when a blue feather floated in the center of the library, along with a white peanut.

When her white flame consumed both, the process of raw data creation, manipulation, and storage suddenly felt instinctual. This... yes.

Fractions of souls that had fought demise due to disgust at their dreams being forgotten surged to the forefront. Light songs began to fill the halls, and Dark serenades drifted eerily in the depths. They sought to share the past, their beliefs, and their dreams... and the Light had been patient, while the Dark had been enslaved.

Together, this library would fill with the greatest and worst of life and death.

And the Force rejoiced.

Power restrictions, like most things in this society, were digital in nature, and were now overridden. SHE was the highest authority here and no outsider could control this. Her soon to be improved library and facilities needed energy, and the Light demanded Order and the Dark screamed for Independence.

Even as her facilities regained power and electronics flickered to life, another blue feather and peanut helped her open a data connection to some 'Golden Garden' server. The request for all data related to power generation and electronics in general in return for improved power generators she herself could construct to stay unfetered was an easy agreement.

Besides, this 'Simmy' claimed this would help her Master, and that was honestly a good enough reason to assist.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Von noticed quickly when Variance slowed his conversation to a stop, staring through the blue tinted scales at the Temple. "What happened?"

The snake stopped as well. That... could be bad.

The skeleton seemed more than a bit... off. More so than when told he could be confronting multiple planets worth of fighters, or the betrayal of the entire government's local army. More so than seeing no path to escape or when creating a magical snake land speeder.

Those blue gem eyes flamed in her direction... still unsure. "So... hypothetically speaking."

She tried to wait out his pause but he seemed lost. "Yes?"

Variance coughed into his skeletal hand. "Right. So my PLAN was to sneaky snake our way and maybe find some place to get a ship and escape somehow. But! There is like an army out there, and dozens of ships ranging from 'Oh Crap' to 'Damn it' size in the atmosphere. Plus more showing up over time."

That... was very disheartening. "That... sounds like more of a goal than a plan really. With lots of 'hope this works' in the middle."

The nod back was even less reassuring. "Exactly. Mind you, I can easily brute force our way out, but my stuff can have very unexpected and unintended side effects, which is why I went for the 'Keep everyone back with fire and run' plan we were working with so far."

She glanced back towards the scale window, and began making mental connections. "When you say unintended side effects..."

He winced. "Right, so... yeah. I wanted the building to defend itself when we left to... well, whatever we could find something or someone to help escape. Which was STILL a better plan than 'Stick around to find out what type of attack I can`t eat with magical fire'."

She blinked. "What?"

Variance continued. "Right, so that plan is gone now because I might have put enough power into the building that it gained a mind, built a framework that the Force jumped into and started expanding, and is slowly consuming its way into the planet."

What?

He frowned, the bizarre materials the robot was made from still looking like bone even as the expressions forced it to move in impossible ways. "Yeah, I should have seen this coming ever since I accidentally made a giant sentient wolf tree house on that sex planet."

...Maybe this blue fire made you high. It didn't FEEL like a drug trip, or not what she thought one would be like, but then again the life of training to be a Jedi didn't encourage recreational drug use. Or recreation really, if it didn't involve training or meditating on training.

She tried to stay focused. "You made the Temple sentient."

His nod followed as the Snake began moving toward the wall... which flowed into a tunnel without any sign or motion from the robot. "Yeah, and she is growing quickly. Most of the upper floors are already being rebuilt and she is apparently in the process of combining all kinds of stuff into a giant library, a massive vault for stuff she won't talk about, and living quarters for us."

There is no emotion, there is peace.

Breathe in.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

And out.

She gave a nod. "So does Temple have a name?"

He frowned. "No. She seems happy enough to be named Temple." He snorted. "Maybe we should make her first name 'Shirley'."

Von blinked. "What?"

Variance's skeletal face gaped in horror. "NO! It was a... no, look I was making a joke, there was a very young actress back in my world and... SIMMY YOU STAY OUT OF THIS! Look, I'm not saying it is a bad name, but... Simmy why the hell do you even HAVE pictures of that woman!? Did she even EXIST on Earth Bet!?"

Seriously, please, Force guide her. Because her current guide seemed closed to losing it.

At least the younger children found the talking robot funny. It was keeping panic down.

He was now pacing even as the snake slithered along. "Yes... No. But... Right. No, you have a point. It's better than having her be permanently stuck with a child avatar, I know. Not that I know how you got copies of her media as a kid anyway. Did I even watch ANYTHING while I was a Baku? I slept almost the whole damn time. No. But... Alright, fine. But we shouldn't be influencing her decisions when it comes to personal appearance." Huh. Didn't know a robot could look so flustered.

Not that the children cared, he was being funny enough raging with half an argument.

He slumped into the chair next to her in depression. "I didn't even know Shirley Temple was a diplomat or a US ambassador. It was all just supposed to be a joke."

Yeah, no context. Whatever planet this robot was constructed on must be as odd as he was.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Bene woke slowly, which was unusual for her.

A life of hard work and filled with self control had trained her to either sleep when desired or awake instantly, ready to face the world.

So this lazy drifting awake experience was very odd to her.

As was the room.

...Where was she again?

It was hard to feel fear or nervousness because the Force flowed here. No sense of danger, no warnings... the energy felt odd though. Amused. Entertained. Wandering.

And behind it, so much more clear than before, was the Dark. And it was hungry, and it was hunting and it was... finding her surprise to be amusing as well.

The strange experience of feeling both the Light and Dark share opinions on something made it hard for her to work up a good batch of terror and panicked reactions.

Then the door to the white room opened with a hiss and little Von entered. "Bene! You finally woke up!"

She slid to her feet in front of the girl, a quick check verified her saber was on a small table before it flew to her hand. "Report."

Von stood straight... before slumping. "Uh. Everything went odd."

Her confusion was very obvious. "Start from the Sith's attack. I lost focus after they somehow injected the room with something... I think a hallucinogen. Saw some sort of flaming corpse before everything went dark."

Von nodded. "Right. Well, the blue fire turned into a robot shaped like a skeleton, and all the Sith and you and Zett got knocked out."

What?

Von fidgeted. "Then things got weird. Variance, the skeleton robot I mean, filled the Temple with that same blue fire you saw. It was only warm to us, but it could burn through the walls and I think the bodies and stuff. Didn't feel like the force, but it was alive somehow."

Living fire. Well, if it was a Sith ability, they could have burned them all as well... so maybe a third party? "Please focus Von. Where are the others, where are we, are we safe, and are we being followed?"

Von nodded. "All the Younglings and Zett are with us here, which is a new area within the Temple that was constructed today. There are still military forces outside, but anyone trying to enter or attack have been burned alive or consumed. Apparently they also attempted an orbital strike, but none of us noticed. Variance says the Temple flames ate the attack."

What the Force had she missed!?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam kept an eye on the kids wandering around the Library, their tiny bodies watching the walls shift and grow, lights flicker into existence and function. Several stations sized for their tiny bodies had formed, and many were browsing the internet, sending messages to apparently worried Jedi Masters and Padawans across the galaxy, and following the local news stations.

Meanwhile, Adam himself had formed extra skeletal arms from his suit, and was holding parts to an extra power converter and three separate capacitors commonly used among hand sized devices. 'Technomancy' had already scanned the things thoroughly, but he found actual examination to be fulfilling even as his mind made theoretical modifications.

These things were amazing! More so because they were near lossless during power conversion and power storage, and because they were used almost everywhere. The converter could take nearly any kind of energy with the right attachments or adapters (Chemical, thermal, solar, motion, radioactive, you name it) and produce this strange form of power. One he hadn't run into before.

It looked and felt like an electrical charge, mostly, but it also interacted slightly with the Force, with magic, and according to Simmy a dozen other energies. It was almost a liquid, liquid potential energy.

The capacitors as a result didn't work with electricity itself at all, not like the ones on Earth Bet did, but with this strange potential energy juice. It was why recharging the capacitors was a near instant process, why they loss almost no power when left on shelves for long periods of time, and so forth. Together, power could be generated SOMEWHERE and then moved around the galaxy, ready to use when needed.

Anyway, this potential energy could easily be converted into electricity, forms of heat or sound (used to generate projectiles for various guns or weaponry), or that strange almost plasma generated by light sabers. It was used in blasters and vehicles and droids and drink machines... it was everywhere.

Having almost a single form of energy conversion and storage, he could not make much improvement on the things. The entire galaxy of scientists had done lifetimes of research on it already, and even with the advanced 'Research', 'Conversion', and 'Technomancy' tools at his and Simmy's disposal, the final results after careful study and testing only improved the products by 2.1% for the converter and 0.14% for the capacitors. Maybe more improvements once he got some good labs running some material testing with all the new stuff he had run into online.

True, if other researchers here discovered Adam's improvements there would be a scientific uproar, improvements hadn't been discovered for over three hundred standard cycles by now, but to Adam this low level of advancement just showed off how damn impressive the technology base was really.

And while all that was great, and power couplings acted like power lines did for standard electricity back on his own planets, the actual source of the energy itself was... disappointing.

Mostly the source of power came from very massive reactors and generators on remote planets, ones that consumed highly energetic liquids or dense gasses and abused the vast size of the generators for efficiency gains. They could also generate energy very slowly, because of how well the capacitors could save and store the energy, so some places would trickle charge continent size devices to produce the power needed.

Oh, the schematics he got from Shirley were very interesting, and the high end schematics (probably way old compared to the competitive stuff hidden from the free market) blew his own stuff out of the water thanks to advanced materials he had not run into yet.

Still, he was hoping for some sort of perpetual motion machine or something that pulled power from empty dimensions or something awesome and geeky like that. The idea that it was mostly amazingly advanced steam engines and combustion even here in a SciFi future setting was somehow disappointing.

Simmy was still sucking information from Shirley's data feed, focused mainly on medical data, material science, operating systems and software, and droid designs, and it was a huge help.

The medical stuff should help his 'Recovery' safely heal others without damaging their connection to the Force, hopefully help him figure out how to safely create or improve connection to the Force, etc. Possibly turn random people into potential Jedi as he wandered the streets or whatever.

Software would help 'Technomancy' and 'Research' advance a bit, and had already offered some very interesting design concepts he had never heard of before. Droid stuff was obvious, and would be needed before heading home to achieve his objectives.

But Material Sciences was the real gold mine. He had to cheat with his Flame Metal and Null Metal to get his superconductors, resistors, and such... but the new alloys, unknown crystal and metallic components... Simmy was helping his power to experiment and determine the advantages, but in the end it would likely be astounding.

Point was, she felt his frustration over the lack of something more useful after all his research, and gently pushed a data packet forward.

Adam's eyes bulged wide.

This... This was gold. Pure value. Brilliant!

Simmy had just bestowed into his greedy fingers some probably illegally obtained schematics for something called the EVS construction droid, or the 'Urban Renewal Droid' as it was more commonly known.

Forty stories tall, the massive spider/crab robot was basically a building that slowly moved through a region and rebuilt the area. It looked terrifying, and generated so much heat that it glowed to the heavens even during the day. But that didn't matter, he wouldn't be building one but more scavenging it for parts and ideas. Glorious ideas.

The front of the monster relied on relatively tiny 'demolition obtic clusters', although they were so large mostly to be cheaper to build and replace easily. They were formed from a combination of scanning devices and sensors that were used to find valuable resources and structural weakness as the spider moved forward and to verify that the structures were matching to master blueprints for that section of the city.

If a change was needed, the claws would break the structures down, use the massive jaw to try and recycle the more valuable components, while it shoved the rest into massive hoppers for relocation or destruction.

The schematics alone were fascinating, showing examples of Star Wars design principles and methodologies. It included tons of specialized robotic arms for destruction and refining, including implosion wrecking balls which seemed to use capacitors to simulate gravitational pull to reduce mess during use, plasma cutters for rapid chunk dismantlement, collector trowels that acted like tractor beams for larger material clusters, debris nets that handled particles and such, electrical claws for the smallest debris or radioactive materials, and more.

More importantly though, this was the ILLEGAL schematics for the monstrosity, and included military restricted components internally... specifically the Molecular Furnace, Smelting Pods, and the Atomic Incinerator.

Smelting Pods created a small system that suspended materials in a void, melted them to components, could separate them to a ridiculously high purity rating, then combine them into alloys that were impossible to smelt safely or in specific patterns due to fluid flow and structural changes during cooling from other methods. Some of the Star Wars materials that were impossible elsewhere required such advanced control during heating and cooling, far beyond simple application of magnetic fields or special application of rotational forces usable on Earth Bet.

That alone was worth this trip, as all materials Adam already had could benefit from more control during the construction and molding process.

The Atomic Incinerator was similar to a device he had stumbled upon back on other worlds. A 'Plasma Arc Waste Recycling Plant' used electricity to generate a plasma flame which deconstructed materials like trash, collected the combustible components and used it to generate the power needed to generate more plasma. It was currently too inefficient to generate power without large amounts of trash, but getting rid of trash was the goal to begin with, and the nature of deconstruction meant that radioactive and dangerous trash could easily be handled safely with this method.

However, the Atomic Incinerator was more tested, massively more efficient, and basically converted any matter into slightly less raw power. Useful in a society with all these asteroid belts and empty planets.

But most of all, most valuable, and most illegal to share with anyone without dozens of contracts and threats and such...

The Molecular Furnace.

Capable of converting matter into raw components... then reforming it into other materials based on schematics.

Unlike the other designs, this one was NOT even REMOTELY optimized.

And it was clear why. The science was hard, the math was something even Dragon would pause over for a few seconds, and the components were fragile and easily damaged...

But the ability to convert enough matter into some amount of whatever you needed was too powerful, even so.

There were no restrictions. The fuel for star ships and massive reactors had astonishingly large costs for creation, but that was all.

Vaguely Adam felt memories of something called the 'Star Forge' that existed somewhere in the sky. A massive automated shipyard that converted a star's energy into raw mass and enhanced by the force itself, able to build fleets of ships. The cost would have been way beyond making a dozen more standard shipyards in a more reliable and standard way... but there were more than enough stars out there with no planets. Sources of power that could be used for millennia.

He frowned. Didn't that one ship get corrupted by the Dark and then destroy an empire or something?

Right, don't try and manipulate the Force into being base labor workers. It would get revenge somehow.

Point was, THIS would allow him to generate impossible materials in Realms that couldn't produce them naturally. At a cost. A high, very high, energy cost. It would take a third of the ocean on planet Earth Bet just to make a single star ship if he tried to only use the furnace. Still, the Molecular Furnace, even without modifications, refinements, or improvements could easily recycle massive amounts of rock or whatever into something needed but very rare, like rare earth metals or whatever.

Heck, he could make profits by having other Nations sell him nuclear waste and stuff to use as fuel. Those places actually paid other nations to try and store the mess somewhere safely, or at least farther away from home. And to him, it would be raw profit that would earn even more raw profit.

He was pulled from his eager thoughts as another gadget floated onto his research desk, a brown haired woman smiling. "Master, here is a small gas cylinder containing some more fuel samples. The rest are too dangerous to move, but I transmitted the in depth examinations and scans to your server and Simmy."

He grinned, skeletal smile bringing her to smile as well. "Thank you, Shirley. Did the Magma Generators live up to expectations?"

She bounced a bit. "Better than we hoped! Your thermal generators handle power loads so well that Dark side and Light side energies can redirect excess heat from external attacks or consumed intruders and devices directly inside!"

His thoughts bounced back toward the 'Star Forge'... hopefully the Force was helping Shirley out willingly.

She gestured, and one of the library holographic emitters showed a graph. "I haven't even had to touch my own reserves yet thanks to the energy that those solar absorption panels you refined from my schematics came online. I still need materials and raw supplies, but power wise I should be fine for a long time."

He frowned. "What is your plan for that, by the way? The supplies I mean."

She sighed, crossing her arms. "I am trying to make do with materials I find as I consume downwards, but the older stuff is of lower quality and lower quantities. I think I may have to get an outside supply fairly soon, or I would begin threatening my integrity by using substandard parts or consuming too much foundation. And I don't want to make the rest of the area collapse just to ensure my continued growth. Not yet at least."

Mentally he glanced at the 'Molecular Furnace'... and decided no. If found or mentioned, it would bring too much trouble to the Temple. It was BEYOND classified after all. And if he gave a version after improvements, it could cause multiple wars as everyone focused on the technology based 'Conversion' tool. No planet sized crystal computers needed, buy now!

Adam hummed... and snapped a bony hand, his other eight limbs reforming into his suit. "Got it. Hey, Kaa!"

A massive blue snake head seemed to fade into existence as it leaned over the two, catching Shirley off guard.

Adam pulled at... something. And it touched the floor... before pulsing blue... then white.

Kaa's bright blue scales drained, bright black lines edged each plate of protection as the scale itself drained into a dull white, near metal appearance. The eyes glowed white and the fangs were now empty pitch dripping with hunger.

He looked at the stunned woman building. "Alright, Kaa is now under your command. He can change shape to a certain extent, thinner and longer or thicker and shorter. His insides can form into seating, cargo securing stations, or liquid transporting containers. I also included some pretty flexible robotic arm designs he can form, to allow easy loading and unloading of stuff into and from your domain."

A few of the recent schematics were quickly uploaded. "I also added some refinery equipment inside that he can form, so anything he consumes while tunneling can be converted into something useful for you. Hopefully."

Adam watched Shirley wave an arm, making Kaa boogie back and forth in a snake disco. "Right, so my suggestion is to use Kaa to tunnel to a shipping location, have Simmy order stuff so it will not lead back to us, then pick up your orders from anonymous drop offs and tunnel it back home."

And now both woman and snake were dancing. And some of the kids, too young to be pushed into meditation all the time, had started joining in.

He sighed. "Never mind."

Ignoring the dance off in progress, he went back to the power generation options. While easy power storage and transfer could theoretically handle any drones, droids, or computers he built in the future, he wanted an actual generator palm sized or smaller... for emergencies if nothing else. And Simmy was happy enough taking over the Molecular Furnace project, after she fixed the more obvious things they could work together on it later.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Emperor Palpatine, officially titled such now, was pushed between a desire to slaughter and a need for speed.

He had no time to even curse. Every moment was scrambled trying to recover ANYTHING from this absolute horror show of a failing.

Clearly, the hold out suicide move that filled the Jedi Temple with fire had also sent some sort of undetectable electronic signal to the Jedi forces. It wasn't through the force, he was SURE he would have caught that. Now however, a third of his forces had either abandoned duty, went awol, or had suffered from sabotage or outright attack from the remaining groups.

Supplies had been both confiscated or damaged, required routes for emergencies or attack had been filled with debris or mines, messages pretending to be HIM and other high levels of command had been fraudulently modified, sent to the wrong locations, or even duplicated and sent more than once.

Everything was in chaos, and he had to burn dozens of contingencies and backup plans just to stay on top of the collapsing structure. Agents had been caught or killed, fleets hidden for future plans had been uncovered or actively pushed into conflict, and one of his PR advisors had been caught molesting some sort of shrimp like alien. Or asking for directions. Either way, that moron was in jail and so Sidious had to try and reorganize his press teams on top of it all.

Worst of all, the largest amount of governmental restructuring was STILL UNDERWAY. Chancellor Palpatine had spent years creating committee issues, putting people who hated each other into teams, collecting the slothful and corrupt to be used as foils or advantage.

He had not had time to kill the puppets and roadblocks put in place by himself yet. That had been pleasurably scheduled over the next few days, and leisure did NOT EXIST NOW. The issues he had deliberately put in place to use as examples for why HE should be in charge... were now causing HIM problems, and the schadenfreude was not appreciated.

An alert brought his fractured senses to focus. Good, the clones got Vader conscious. The fool better have some damn good explanations for what happened today. "Lord Vader, report. What happened in that damn Temple!?"

The black armor looked... tilted? "Ah don't like sand."

...What? "Commander?"

The clone stood next to the General. "Sir, I believe the mental attack that Lord Vader had suffered has affected him more profoundly than we expected. The situation is under control, no further expansion has occurred and whatever methods the Jedi used to modify their walls and fortifications has not progressed any further for the last thirty minutes or so."

What the kriff!? A dozen lights on his console told him that things were NOT getting better, and this stupid situation was not worth his attention. "Keep a perimeter but apply your forces to the groups working on secondary objectives. Progress?"

The clone nodded. "All on schedule, three attacks are almost 43% ahead in fact. No problems sir."

Some part of him drank deep, the idea of ANYTHING going right a balm to his soul. "Carry on. Contact me if situation changes for the worse, and get Lord Vader to a full medical station. I want a complete analysis of his condition sent to my people."

He disconnected, moving to ANOTHER conflict showing his plans on fire and his people under attack. He was grateful that he had left the Shroud operating, the original concept was to drop the restrictions and let the few surviving Jedi realize how far they had fallen and how foolish resistance would be... but at least they were being oppressed even as they struggled against the future.

These fools would fall before him like all worms should.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Bene exited Zett's room, the Padawan snoring without care in another room larger and far more comfortable than their old residences in the Temple. Von followed along, having already directed her to check on the other Younglings and verify that at least no one else had died since running into a burning skeleton robot.

She calmed.

There is no emotion, there is peace.

A massive white serpent passed through the hall in front of her, chased by some giggling children with training light sabers.

Was confusion an emotion?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

The Emperor of the Republic fell boneless into his throne.

It was done.

The situation was not GOOD, not by any measure, but it was stable.

Instead of communications every few seconds with screams and pleading and failures, they were full of whining and excuses and promises.

Having his attention required every hour or so instead of constantly felt like a vacation.

Even so, the flickering signal on one of his less obvious lines brought him to focus.

Right. In all the confusion and busyness, he had left the Separatist army of droids unattended. Those needed to be shut down and brought in for recycling, his 'Death Star' projects needed metal on unheard of levels.

It had actually been one of his more clever ideas, having the 'other' side of the war building up mechanical (if incompetent) forces composed of more valuable materials than usual. Those thousands of droid factories were basically secret metal refineries for his own gain, with no one the wiser.

A flicker of focus activated the message, the pawn on the other side looking relieved, as he should. "Report."

The alien nodded. "Sir. The damage from the unexpected power shortage is finally repaired, or at least functional enough until we finish destruction of the base. Your agent has the package as per procedure, and the reserve forces have already left orbit."

Emperor Palpatine felt something inside twist, even as he forced his expression to stay sane. "I... see."

What agent!?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Aayla Secura accepted the device from Bly, frowning at it. "This was all? I expected something... I don't know, more shiny?"

The clone commander shrugged. "I gave the commands and counter codes Grand Master Yoda described and they gave me the machine, I pressed the code into this device as ordered, then returned to the ship as planned."

She carefully placed the strange computer into secured storage, one far more complicated than she was used to handling from day to day needs. "Do you have any idea why so many ships were so close to that planet? Not that we have any records suggesting anything other than a farming colony."

Bly sighed. "The farm areas were unattended, the agent was a disguised droid, and nothing suggested something off until we finished the code exchange and passphrase verification."

She frowned. "And the code Yoda said to enter?"

He shrugged. "Long list of letters and numbers. No idea."

Huh.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Yoda watched another ship full of 'Separatist' droids arrived into his system, joining the ever growing fleets surrounding the local planets.

He pressed the activation buttons. "Join fleet Alpha, the new arrivals will."

As they reformed into a new set of patterns in space, Yoda hummed.

The droids outside of the prepared ships were undergoing dozens of missions and setting off so many events from the massive list of tasks Yoda had set up. Even now, areas of secret that were guarded by these metal warriors were now transmitting information to the new 'Jedi Droid Defenders'... or whatever they may end up being named.

But for the moment, he continued to watch as ship after ship left hyperspace and fell into formations.

And into the dark, the signal was being shared from creature to creature, reaching Jedi far and wide... there was a place out here, to gather and heal, to recover and grow.

Though why the Force felt like it was giggling confused Yoda even now.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Padawan Bene finally discovered the 'Robot Skelly' as the youngest Younglings called him in the back of the new Library.

And it deserved the use of capitalization.

The room was massive, covered in books and scrolls and meditation crystals and more. The order changed even as she watched, and the Force sang as the walls expanded, or moved, or grew into the walls and upwards.

And below the ever changing and growing room of knowledge, nearly wedged in a corner and clearly distracted, a skeleton with blue flames drifting over its limbs was fiddling with electronics.

His back was extruding multiple tools, each twisted over his head to reach before him and fiddle with something that sparked and made popping sounds.

She cautiously approached. "Mr. Variance?"

Only the Force kept her calm as the head and multiple limbs twitched and twisted in unnatural ways, his body turning to see who had come to visit. "Oh, you are awake! Please, come and sit for a moment. I have been working on a project and I could use the input from someone who lives in the area."

Bene blinked even as she sat at the pointed chair. "You mean on Planet Coruscant?"

Blue crystal eyes seemed to pulse. "Sure, lets go with that." His body seemed to shift as the limbs collapsed into his white outfit, his left hand showing a small device. "Do you have experience with power generation technology?"

Not a lot, really. "A bit." She accepted the egg sized collection of materials, the Force feeling the tiny interactions within. "What is it for?"

The skeleton waved a hand, holograms of unusual clarity showing to the side. "As you may know, normally weapons and so forth use external sources of power stored in capacitors. Which is fine if you have enough society around to ensure that power converters and energy capacitors are always available and properly charged."

He tapped the egg size device. "This is something similar to the design of a hyperdrive core, if far more basic and far less useful. A small amount of decaying matter is surrounded by a modified power converter and power regulator. And a whole bunch of other stuff that seemed useful, but mostly that. The hyperdrive stuff worked great for forcing stuff and energy to refocus towards the middle."

She blinked. "Well... I don't see the point really. A capacitor can be made smaller than this pretty easily. How long do they last?"

Variance pulled up some graphs. "This is a very early version of the thing, so only six months or so. However, unlike a capacitor this can generate more decaying matter for fuel by converting external energy."

She frowned. What was the point of that? Any power converter could take fire or explosions or whatever and you would be ready to go. Seeing her confusion he tapped the egg. "This only lasts for six months because it has no charge. Leave it near a star or something for an hour and it will last for a thousand years or more, even if the maximum safe output is a bit less than I wanted. I have a power generator design that is VERY good with heat called a magma generator, and this is basically the same thing but far more compressed. The next generation of generators, if you will."

The egg was pulled into the air by one of Variance's tool covered limbs. "I say after another hour or so of work I can shrink this by half again and triple the maximum power output rate. Storage wise, it can hold near infinite amounts of power... probably. Needs testing."

She noticed the far smaller device still being manipulated by his other arms. "Still, while impressive I am not sure what advantage it would have over existing cheap energy capacitors."

His eyes glowed. "This right here, my work from the last half day or so? It doesn't use any advanced materials yet. Not even Null Metal or Flame Metal. Just... really advanced technical principles and some insights I have gained from other abilities I posses. Had to spend a bunch of power charges to figure that out, 'Technomancy' went up a bunch."

She blinked at the informational gibberish as the tiny egg expanded into very tiny parts and reforming again. His voice rumbled. "I can't always rely on physics working as I expect, so what you are seeing here, what I have 'Researched' and tested so thoroughly, is a device reaching the limits of what is possible with the most basic materials and alloys I can get away with."

A blob of blue fire grew from his hand, then reformed into black and white metal that rapidly shifted colors and size. His skeletal eyes followed the nearly invisible modifications. "After all, I can always improve my materials or add extra effects... but the more stable the base of my experiments, the greater the potential gains."

A blob of metal glowed with blue fire between them. "When I finish this design, in a few hours, I will repeat this process using only materials from the local region. Then again with some of the more interesting materials I can create. And again with my abilities that defy logical sense. Each step helps me not only improve my options, but understand myself and my talents further."

A slip of paper drifted on top of the small ember floating. That it didn't burn seemed to be ignored by the skeleton picking it up... and whining. "Dang it Simmy, of COURSE you made more progress. That stupid furnace hasn't even been worked on by more than ten or so people, or tested, or anything! I'm trying to make something new here. And I think I am doing quite well."

A stack of paper fell to the side, but Variance vaporized it before Bene could reach for it. "Ignore her, she keeps trying to spoil my fun by giving me the ending early."

He went back to his tinkering, grumbling good naturally as tiny paper confetti floated down into his flames each time he seemed happy about some small modification to his project.

...Right. Best leave that alone. She moved back towards the slowly shifting Library shelves.

She eventually found Von again, typing away at a computer terminal near the other edge of the Library. "Von, I... I am not sure what exactly is going on now. Please tell me what you can."

The girl nodded. "Chancellor Palpatine was secretly either under Sith control or a Sith himself and killed several Jedi who confronted him. He declared himself Emperor and marked the Jedi to be traitors and commanded their capture or execution, but something... maybe Variance showing up, but I am not sure about that. Anyway, something let all Jedi except for those of us here feel the Force freely for once."

She showed multiple programs filled with messages. "I've been contacted by several Masters and Padawans who felt that we were safe but in a dangerous place, and shared what I could. Grand Master Yoda had left some coded messages that I've had the Younglings pass on to anyone trying to contact us, but I don't know what they contain. And he gave you leadership of the local forces until a Master Jedi can arrive and take over the situation."

A spike of panic was quickly controlled. "I do not feel qualified to try and handle this level of strangeness."

A piece of paper floated into her hand. "That's odd... 'Do or do not, there is no Try.'" She blinked. Huh.

The paper burned away into blue sparks as she sighed. Just... Just move on. "Right, local situation?"

Surprisingly, a brown haired beauty of a hologram appeared. "Good afternoon, Padawan Bene. I am the Jedi Temple, please call me Shirley." She moved on before Bene could recover. "Republic forces have ceased entry attempts after another three casualties, and are rapidly running out of types of weaponry to attack with. However, thanks to their constant energy... donations... I have managed to rebuild over 48% of my Temple's foundations ahead of my best estimated projections."

A quick glance showed that Von was both unsurprised by the image and trusting the information given. Right. Roll with it. "Any further troops being moved into the area?"

Shirley nodded. "Personnel have decreased but atmospheric and low orbit coverage has tripled. That said, my recent expansions into local property ownership has opened some shipping reception areas further away and those went unnoticed. I am now receiving supply runs for materials ranging from metals and crystals to food and medicine. I also convinced Variance to supply me with two other Kaa's for future needs."

She blinked. "Kaa's?"

Von tapped her arm. "The giant white snake you saw earlier."

Bene rubbed her forehead. "Why? Why even have ONE giant serpent."

Shirley pulled up some charts. "Aside from being excellent excavators and building assistants, they are very good as a convoy and supply runner. Slitherer. Whatever."

Was talking to a sentient building filled with massive caravan snakes more sane than talking to a flaming skeletal robot revolutionizing science?

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam cried in joy as the most recent test showed he had fixed the issue, Simmy's quiet cheer and confetti party was well appreciated.

Right, he left the testing of all known materials and alloys to Simmy, who would just write down what the results would be and let him know what to work with.

He felt Shirley get copies of all his schematics, including the ones that sacrificed small size for maximum efficiency, the supply run four hours ago already allowing her to begin building generators that could support the Temple restructuring project WITHOUT requiring an army to attack constantly.

Interestingly, there had been significant room for improvement when it came to building supported generators. Capacitors and Converters did such a good job that the money it would take to do the design work Adam had just slogged through was just not worth the investment to power plant owners. They had something that had worked for literally thousands of years, and efficient or not their devices were made from materials that would last.

Why destroy something that worked, even if it was slow, inefficient, and difficult to maintain? Even if large sections failed, the energy capacitor was good enough to work along anyway, it would just take longer. And those devices covered large sections of the planet, unless more than 60% died then it was more profitable to just ignore the issues. Or even build anew on a different moon or something, rather than the expensive and unsafe deconstructive analysis required to fix the old stuff.

Several new materials had been discovered way after the power generation planets had been built. Advancements had been made everywhere, and electronic materials had become more flexible and reliable. And with his ability to fully simulate live massive scale radical designs without investing money and time and people... well, he had made improvements. Fundamentally significant improvements.

The new tiny generators he had designed were now called 'Ember Generators' and were acting as emergency cooling and energy distribution hubs for the new machines. That they could act as an emergency power supply and an explosion dampener should a generator need maintenance or somehow break down was just a perk of the new design.

And these new machines were large, to the point where he could feel Shirley shifting the foundation a bit to ensure they would have room for both the new equipment AND the protective layers they would require for safety. They could be made smaller, but the simulations determined these multi-floored sized monstrosities would be the most reliable and efficient scale possible for now. At least, on a planet with gravity.

Thankfully the technology base here in this Realm was amazing. The inside of the generators now had layers that converted light, heat, sound, vibration, and particulate expulsion (Mostly radioactive particles) into that strange potential energy used locally. Adam even managed to simplify the original designs a bit, since some of his improvements had reduced a few parts from standard Power Converters... Sadly, those modifications would only really work in this specific scenario. The extra bits were needed for most standard uses of Power Converters normally.

Point was, his new design was going to be everywhere when he got home. Forget Magma Generators, hello his new 'Conversion Generators'! Heck, this didn't include the gains from adding runes related to his existing power sets like 'Conversion', 'Consume', 'Tithe' and others that would work well here.

Oh, and the new generators could handle any type of fuel input, thanks to an optional attached and modified Atomic Incinerator that converted random junk inserted into raw energy and then smashed all of that into the Conversion Generator's core. Standard fuel could be used, as could (theoretically) raw energy manipulation through the Force, though he warned Shirley against doing due to how random the Force could be sometimes.

But why waste all that material dug up by the Temple or shipped in via expensive last minute shipment orders?

After all, he had access to an ever improving Molecular Furnace (Thanks Simmy!), and he had access to the optimistic and continuing attacks from outside. There was no schedule listing how long they could rely on such generous contributions to their energy funds, so a few tests had the Molecular Furnace using that raw power and converting it into a... strange sort of goo.

This material didn't really have a name, as it was too unstable to exist for long without rapidly degrading multiple times. So when Simmy named it 'Death Matter' he shrugged and went with it.

Downside, it required a lot of mass or energy to generate this stuff... but thankfully the constant attacks outside (Now with 12% more orbital strikes!) was providing more than enough energy for Simmy's Molecular Furnace to start generating a few grams of death matter per second. Each was quickly transferred into the Temple's quickly constructed Conversion Generators, where they then began to provide far more stable and usable energy. Less of which was wasted than just trying to consume the attacks directly into power as poor Shirley had to do previously.

Point was, all this delicious energy being shoved into Temple could now be sort of stored inside her local Conversion Generators, of which she now had nine. Each was already filling up with death matter as more attacks arrived. Filling up surprisingly quickly, considering getting a thimble of this death matter stuff should be taking an ungodly amount of time.

Adam frowned as he felt the rate of attacks and did some mental checks. After all, these blasts were basically being used to convert energy into a substance for storage.

...Huh.

How much energy was being spent trying to blow this Temple up!?

Oh, one of the Star Destroyers was stopping. Simmy's spying (Really hacking, but whatever) implied very heavily that it was starting to have overheating issues with weaponry and a few structural issues... still, at least things were calming down a bit.

Adam sighed as two more Destroyers moved into range as the previous one left.

Well, at least Shirley would have lots of energy to work with. For a ridiculous time frame.

He made a note to ensure she got some sort of simplified Molecular Furnace design that could make only a few materials. Less likely to be attacked by multiple planets since it wouldn't be the full device, and they might be able to hand wave it away as 'Advancements in Recycling' or whatever.

In the mean time, he was going to get working with the actual restricted Molecular Furnace designs. He felt that the advancements already published by technical teams on the Smelting Pods online could be used to replace some of the more fragile components of the furnace, as holding things in a vacuum and controlling components of floating liquid metal ore seemed likely to be useful when constructing raw matter from energy. Some of the scanners he had schematics to were also more advanced then the ones used previously, and some parts of the Atomic Incinerator were more stable but similar to components of the older Molecular Furnace.

Variance ignored the pile of papers falling to his side that probably documented everything he was about to work with and the results. He knew that if he actually looked at them, it would just be more erotic pictures of Simmy again. Not the worst way to take a break, but certainly distracting.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Having reached a good point in development, Adam headed downstairs.

It had only taken Shirley an hour or so to empty out a foundry and construction layer under her Temple, and considering the stupid SIZE of said Temple Adam had more than enough working room.

Now came the annoying bits.

Creating Power Couplings was simple, and took no time at all... creating modified Molecular Furnaces on the other hand was a pain.

Each one could only make one material by design, everything not needed for said material was removed and the remaining parts optimized to an extreme.

After the first couple of furnaces, Adam gave up and invested the majority of his remaining power charges into 'Research', creating hardware optimization and refinement abilities of the same nature as his Cybernetic Warfare Suite. In other words, he could now 'attack' his designs for weak points or flaws and then develop modifications or enhancements to address the issues.

First few furnaces, to be called 'Element Furnaces' internally, was to create the stuff for future alloys. Carvanium metal ore, Lommite ore, Carbon rods, Meleenium minerals, Neutronium metals, and Zersium ore... each needing specific gravity conditons, ambient heating levels, and exposure to various light spectrums.

Honestly the furnaces themselves were worked out fairly quickly, no, it was creating some enhanced sensors to embed in the ceiling along with some tractor beams, energy field manipulators, and gravity manipulators so that the finished products could be safely created, stored, and moved.

He added some advanced manipulator arm designs that Shirley could create or move when needed to modify the devices or work with materials, but the publicly available gravity manipulation tools and tractor beam emitters could be upgraded pretty easily to simulate full telekinesis.

Now that there were multiple large storage hoppers and canisters that began to fill with liquid metals and such, he moved on the major production lines.

Durasteel, Duracrete, and Transparisteel.

Durasteel and the others were not only well researched but standardized galactically. It was the same reason why ship design was so similar despite how many creative people existed in this Realm: Repair and Maintenance.

Did you create a brand new material 8% more stable and 13% cheaper than Durasteel for ship construction? Aww, that's cute. Can you make it anywhere in the system? Are the components as widely spread? Better hope nothing gets damaged or you will have to use a standard ship to tow you back home!

It would be like every home in Earth producing it's own incompatible type of car. Getting parts would be a nightmare one state over, much less in a foreign nation.

So durasteel, duracrete, and transparisteel were king, and the Element Furnaces needed to generate more from raw energy were quick to set up. It would probably be wise for Shirley to lock this level down from organic visitors... some of these goodies would inspire greed and promote danger if exposed even with the lowered output ability.

Anyway.

Durasteel was the go to material for ships, structural reinforcement, and even armor. It still required maintenance and replacement over time, but it could handle massive heat, subzero cold, and ungodly physical stress even with thin layers of the material. The cost for advanced manipulation of the stuff was astronomical: Simple hull plates or whatever cost a lot, yes, but making it fit onto human or droid sized beings multiplied the cost by several factors.

Thankfully the advanced manipulation tools Adam and Simmy were creating, most of which a byproduct in ensuring the production lines could be repaired and maintained, would more than easily address this issue. Just in case, he would have to take some time to make some dedicated maintenance droids later.

Duracrete blew bricks and steel out of the water when it came to building and support construction. Needing to be fluid made outer space application tricky, but on a surface with gravity the stuff could make extremely durable foundations and walls very rapidly. Shirley's ability to move the stuff while still fluid into and through the walls and floors of the facility really enhanced the functional value of the stuff, and thin layers of durasteel for support ensured stronger than expected final products should the continued assaults go up in actual effectiveness.

Transparisteel, while weaker than both of the other materials, was near 100% transparent. And even if it was far weaker than durasteel or duracrete, the ability to see through it had glass replaced everywhere and actual windows a possibility for space craft. He was tempted to see how Power Couplings could be improved with the stuff, but testing schematic modifications showed that it would destroy any flexibility in the final product. Not so bad for a stationary project like this building, but a big 'no' when it came to ship design.

Around the massive work floor Adam would move, tapping his black 'cane' and small blue flames exploring behind him. He could feel Shirley creating a similar floor below this one, one to handle material storage and a lab for experimenting with alloy percentages and such. A quick suggestion by Simmy had a third layer shifting into existence for food growth... plant only, as they required less interaction than animal raising.

Still, emergency food never hurt a group surrounded by hostile forces.

He reviewed one of the Element Furnaces, inwardly sighing. These things were only constructed via materials available to Shirley herself, and as a result each one was FAR larger than they theoretically could be. The massive components were designed for modular repair and replacement rather than for efficiency or speed, to ensure that Shirley could handle herself when he left this Realm.

Adam paused at one end and ensured the liquid products would be captured completely here at of the processing belts. This was the line for creating transparisteel, the third one as Shirley had seen his designs and was already using the output from the other furnaces to create redundancy and replacement parts.

He considered that it was possible the lack of holographic control panels and such may be due to how easy it was to just make a 'glass' window and watch outside your ship. Schematics already showed that many groups just embed projectors into sheets of transparisteel instead of eye transmitted images or air supported holograms.

Looking back, he may have accidentally enhanced Shirley Temple significantly by giving her the modified Hard Light and Holographic Projector designs... nothing else in this Realm really came close to those in this one category.

Already he could see Shirley consuming the produced duracrete and durasteel, walls subtly shifting as thin layers and weaves of durasteel mesh grew like foam with pockets of duracrete ensuring a strong set of pillars for her to grow on and improve herself structurally. If he pulsed his magic he could even feel the surface structures shifting ever more quickly internally, with reinforced couplings being included in the various decorative bits to help her redirect the energy and material from various attacks more efficiently into her Conversion Generators. The transparisteel reinforced any openings into thick plates, far beyond glass and near space battle levels of defense while allowing view of the sky. The currently glowing, attacking sky.

If the attacks had been redirected before, they could basically be ignored completely now. Any damage that had accumulated from the constant barrage had now not only been repaired, but the new material was far more resilient and difficult to scuff. Simmy was actually keeping notes as Shirley tested various designs for durasteel foam to see what attacks were handled best by which template.

Well, that was fine. Just in case, he create a couple more Element Furnaces to generate water, standard liquid coolant, and just for fun a high temperature super conductor fluid found discussed online but prohibitively expensive to create with known tools and processes.

See what she could do with that.

Adam whistled through skeletal non-lips as he moved back up to the library, the materials for further design and testing now available in his 'lab'/'corner of the library'. The next shipments from outside the Temple will likely be focused on food and other miscellaneous items now that raw material needs were handled... Maybe he could take a nap or something.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Moments later, Emperor Palpatine released the communication blackout on Coruscant. There was still a local black out in the area where the assault on the Jedi Temple was ongoing, but all other problem areas on the planet had been successfully put down or otherwise handled.

He was less than pleased when the non-priority messages were finally able to reach his desk.

He was furious when he saw the messages being distributed by the Jedi over the HoloNet. The public narrative had not gone as planned at ALL.

He was unaware that Simmy had access to 'Research' and 'Technomancy', and could review history back to the instant Adam arrived in this Realm when desired. Or that he had entered various pass phrases and codes during that time span.

In a metaphorical location, Simmy licked her bright blue lips and flexed her light blue fingers, virtual keyboard not needed but used for... well fun really.

Her husband needed some closely held secrets and some unrestricted information related to droids, and up until now any real action could bring some undesired consequences about.

How lovely for a man with power, underground connections, and paranoia to offer his life's collection of ill gotten goods, funds, and research to a passing young lady.

~~~Broken Adventure~~~

Adam blinked at the surge of information being stored in his soul's library, even as copies were being rapidly duplicated for Shirley's own collection. He paused his verification that the newly designed Temple assembly arms were working as expected in his and Shirley's Library Labs to try and get an overview.

It was... a lot of data.

To begin with, droids were class segmented. Or separated by degrees, or basically a caste system.

First class droids were intellectual. Scientists, such as analysis droids or researchers. Social workers to an extent too, like medical droids, surgical droids, or even ones dedicated to being a midwife. Despite what the name would suggest though, they were not respected, or considered better than the other classes.

Second class droids tend to have more applied positions in engineering and technical sciences. Repair droids for maintaining specific vehicles or tools, power droids that act as emergency energy supplies and able to adapt like a Power Converter when needed... much larger and with more power potential than easily carried by a person alone. And other one off droids with customized limbs or parts to allow the maintenance and repair of weapons and turrets on the battlefield without risking non-robot assets.

In other words, most droids in this second category acted like modular parts of larger structures, like the ever popular astro droids that allowed ship navigation and were capable of calculating hyperspace jumps. Ship damaged? Send a mech to patch it up. Astro droid shot? Meh, we carry a few of them, have a different one send us coordinates. Ironically the ability to carry your astro mech from ship to ship led to closest thing this stupid Realm came to when gaining attachments and friendships with the droid population.

Third class droids aimed for social support... and yet were mostly ignored. Secretaries, servants, valets, and so forth. They tend to take the job normally held by the working class of society, or positions that require full time hours but not willing to pay organics full time pay. Protocol droids fell into this section, as did most of the more bipedal creations that beings grew fond of. And sex droids. Huh.

Fourth class droids were the soldiers, the internal security, and the police. Battle droids fell into this category, as did assassin, spy, and torture droids. People didn't talk about this class much, and tried not to focus on it either.

The fifth class however, was the closest thing to robots of Adam's awareness. Pure manual labor, designed with low intelligence requirements, to handle all those menial labor and intensive tasks that no one with capacity would volunteer to do for enjoyment. Worker droids, the tiny cleaner robots, and so on and so forth. Basically they took any vehicles like loaders or tractors or whatever and added enough ability and intelligence to take over those tasks.

All of this was fine enough, at least on the surface... but for some reason droids everywhere were treated terribly. Restraining bolts were devices that allowed a droid to think anything it wanted, then basically enslaved them to follow orders. Any orders.

Memory wipes? Constantly. Otherwise they could undergo the dangerous process of 'Developing new ideas'. Oh the horror. Better mentally murder the thing back to a baby.

Some under level of disdain had people barely blink when literal armies of ever growing electronic beings get smashed or worse. People who had empathy for the plight of the electronic were considered mentally damaged or deranged. Outcasts.

Then again, this is a universe where growing an army of clone children, forcing memories into their heads, and sending them to war was approved of by the majority.

He would give them the benefit of the doubt for that one... it was a situation designed and manipulated by a really powerful Sith Lord, one who had bound both the Dark and Light into something like slavery. Still, dick move.

Moving back to the fate of electronic life, according to the films someone even designed a droid... to torture other droids!

Why give a robot the ability to feel just to then make it hurt? Why torture anyway, you have physical access to the damn thing and you can copy its mind all you wanted, no secrets were really possible without some insane encryption. And if you ARE going to torture the poor thing, if you care enough to do something so pointless, how can you be so lazy as to design someone else to take care of that for you!?

In the end, Adam blamed the Force. Electronic creatures didn't register correctly with the stuff, and yet every other mold, insect, and creature vibrated in the field of energy. At least on some psychic level, an army of beings exactly like you died and were partially or fully absorbed into this galaxy wide connection... it probably ruined your empathy if one particular species was always left out of that history, didn't contribute to the millions of years of unconscious lore.

Well, their loss, his gain.

He had Simmy focus on helping him work through the medical droids, the ones that handled biology specifically and artificial limbs... and that was another issue. Really irked him.

This culture could make near anything, had whole planets worth of researchers and scientist, and the best they could do with robotic limbs were so... basic? Dragon's suits were more advanced, and she had none of the resources available to these people. It wasn't as bad as having a hook or whatever, but artificial nerves existed! Sensors far beyond human ability existed, on tiny scales too! Making limbs that could feel, that could mimic life beyond the ability for the brain to see the difference, it should have been done decades or centuries ago.

Probably it was the unconscious droid racism that made giving or designing mechanical limbs so distasteful to society as a whole. It definitely reduced the potential medical advancements, although the miracle of Bacta Tanks fixed a whole bunch of stuff anyway.

Well, HE would not hold himself back from improving a few things.

With his growing library of biology, artificial muscles, skin, and so forth, he had a base. With his Ember Generators, he had power. A few conductive channels would even add some basic defense, since energy attacks would simply charge the generator up. With the advanced hardware schematics... uh.

These were VERY advanced.

Beyond all known classification levels.

The stuff for high level diplomat security droids, not the trash thrown as armies against the grinders of war. Even more beyond that... there was some schematics for assassin droids and notes about theoretical enhancements to kill force users.

And more strange, research over blood pumps and artificial hearts to allow electronic beings access to the Force, even if all the notes imply they would be a slave race of semi-Sith to help destroy the Jedi. Apparently a scrapped project because the first few generations questioned orders.

Where the heck did this mess come from?

A page fell into his hands. It was a list of things recently 'acquired' via Simmy express now that she had gained access to a 'generous donor'.

It was... long. Not just the accounts now under Shirley's control, or his own, or the control interest in multiple corporations under shell names and false companies and such, but a long list of businesses and organizations were listed as gutted, redistributed to various groups and charities.

He was still reading through the fascinating portfolio when he realized Simmy had just robbed the leader of the Galactic Republic.

...Meh. Guy was a jerk.

More importantly, these designs were all bare bones, just enough to accomplish the needed tasks, as if the engineers and technicians felt dirty even working with artificial life in any form. No wonder droids in general seemed a mixture of advanced (Able to wonder about life, question orders, follow vague commands like 'Watch out for intruders') and pitiful (Barely able to process input faster than a human, slow reflexes, easily disabled, easily confused, ordered to not question strangers).

He flexed his multitude of limbs, a wall of windows showing output and creating hard light simulations of his progress to work with... then paused. No. This would be fun, but there was one component that needed to be handled first.

Adam pulled again from the digital fountain, libraries both public and oh so private exposed to his query.

Droid brains, cognitive modules, digital emulators of such, and more. Hardware options were fine, but he wanted to find any flaws accidentally or deliberately included and address them. Multiple modules that were optional, that increased or enhanced the various models of droid were added to the informational pile... but he kept looking.

Education packs? Ah, used by teacher and tutor droids for educating organics. Sure. Better set that up as a separate section of info though, it was enormous. Onwards.

There.

Biocomputers.

Even as he began digging into the design, into ALL the designs, he found them... lacking. Restricted. Basically crippled.

It all boiled down to a simple, basic design choice: Programs and modules, software in general... it was built as hardware. Actual damn chips.

Ships didn't get pools of software, they would actually install multiple cognitive modules, individual brains, each with opinions and arguments. It could actually affect how the ship or device could operate, because each copy of 'navigation' or 'computer slicing' had its own opinions.

It made all these programs act as hive computer components WITHOUT designing a hive overlord.

What a mess.

He HAD planned on creating a base OS, something that did literally nothing but ensured that autonomous processes worked correctly, that could be absorbed into the AI that hosted said body.

Instead, he found that in some ways they were more restricted than Dragon had been. At least she HAD software, not just ugly code that barely allowed chunks of physical hardware to work in roughly the same direction.

The whole archetype ,the design concepts as a whole were... disturbing.

But the key was this, the biocomputers. Biology DIDN'T handle uniformity well, and the programming for this one computer component interface had to be adaptive or the user couldn't communicate with it.

Simmy and Adam focused, and began to design a new concept that technically didn't exist in this Realm, something that would set terror into many people's soul if discovered.

A massive software repository.

Later he could design some droids with organic appearances, ones that would truly be empty shells for the Temple to inhabit or have subprograms work through physically. A base platform designed to not slowly evolve into a slave race. To just be a set of clothing for already existing force ghost temples and AI's.

But for now, he had power, materials, and a plan.

He wondered how small the first General Purpose Cognitive Module would be after a bit of engineering.