Adam paused mid drink, his mug motionless as Betty continued to sip beside him, watching the construction progress below.
Mister G's `processing` had just finished.
Internally examining the Grid of Confinement, Adam began reviewing his newest Summon's abilities.
The Cell it was imprisoned in was interesting in itself, as the Corruption energy had twisted the soil into black stone and ash. The air was full of black smog, and the sky itself was dim and twisted.
Slowly roaming in its new habitat, the massive Dragon Grimm was randomly breathing even more black smog into the atmosphere, black ink pooling from its jaws and slowly forming into smaller, subservient Grimm followers.
Unlike in Remnant however, these Grimm were more... varied. Monsters, with twisted limbs and corrupted claws, some with far too many limbs and others with far too few parts.
They consumed each other, the slow and weak unable to escape from their less twisted brethren. The largest creatures would randomly become snacks to Mister G. as he roamed, while strange things flew in the sky.
Huh. Summoning the Grimm was similar to summoning an Army. Mister G. himself had some twisted version of the summoning Glyph array in its jaws, so he could likely call forth these twisted monstrosities from his new lair to fight. Should be useful if he was traveling somewhere full of mooks in the way.
Thankfully, the excess energy output was directable, the corrupted energies being fed to the Lung Conversion Engine. So it could be transformed into some safe form of usable energy at least.
That said, it would be interesting incorporating these corrupted energies into various attacks or to use them as 'status effects' during combat. Or disastrous. One or the other.
Adam's grin was massive. "Well... I'm done."
Betty blinked, looking up from her drink. "What?"
He finished his mug, placing it aside as he looked on at the construction progress. "I finished digesting Mister G. I now have a Grimm Dragon designed to follow my orders, and it is slowly generating a smaller Grimm army under its command."
She paused. "That's... good?"
Adam nodded. "Very good. I didn't want to head home or even attempt to transport with an unstable monster held captive in my soul. Still, it took longer than I expected to control the beast and convert it to my service."
Betty frowned. "But... the Zoo isn't done yet. Well, the other levels are mostly done, but the actual animal habitat was only started a day ago!"
He sighed. "Yeah, Simmy probably made Ada Lovelace take over so I can leave without slowing construction."
The Dust Crystal mountain was still mostly there, even as Ada and her drones dug deep into the thing for material. Her progress was pretty impressive, as (Unlike Adam himself) she was able to dynamically change what she was working on based on the online polls in real time. And those online polls were going nuts over it.
Hence him and the hot Faunus sitting back and drinking while the AI toiled away on building up her population centers.
It was also to keep him away from the growing crowds. Betty had pointed out that having a few 'secret' retreats for 'elite' members (Basically Adam's friends and high level diplomats) would allow them to stay in the area without having to put up with the mass of visitors.
So the two were visiting the 'exclusive' club house on the Animal Level, a robotic replication of the mythical massive bird, the 'Roc', with a bar and restaurant and stuff within it. Externally it seemed to be nesting, with the elevator hidden inside the mountain to reach the place.
Only 100 one-time access passes and 10 year-long membership passes were accessible for public purchase, and the auction for said items was going strong online after Adam started drinking here. Ghira, Kali, Sienna, and others automatically got full membership access of course, but those auctioned spots were the only way others could get in.
Oh, and theoretically his friends with full access could use their guest passes as bribe materials or to gain favors or whatever, but that was their decision. Adam himself preferred enjoying these high quality drinks while watching the visitors swarm over the attractions below.
He walked back from the observation deck into the artificial bird, handing off the empty mug as Betty quickly followed. "I assume you wish to come with me when I head home?"
Betty's nod was emphatic. "Been ready to leave several days ago. And Narwhal said if I am missing anything we can have a girls-only shopping trip to straighten it out."
Adam chuckled, ignoring the few people allowed up on this level. Ghira was still stuck in the capital, as was his wife and Sienna, but several of Sienna's and Betty's harem friends had made the trip and had been exploring the mechanical bird retreat. The strange drink options had been pretty popular.
He walked into the elevator with the Faunus and sighed. "Right, Simmy is pretty sure this will work with no issues and Squishy has confirmed that there will be no negative side effects from using my Semblance on you to keep you safe during transport."
Adam looked deep into Betty's eyes, the lights from the passing floor levels shining behind her as his trunk brushed her hair behind her horn. "That said, are you willing to follow me into the dark? To leave your life and safe existence behind and entrust your body and soul into my hands? My life is strange, my path is unknown, but I do swear to protect you as best as I can on the journey."
Her eyes glistened. "I am... I look forward to it."
His smile was warm. "Then Betty Bellstone, I bind you to my soul... And protect you in travel."
Grid of Confinement: Safe Passage.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Gene blinked as that cow woman dissolved into mist and tentacles, her grand daughter sqeeing in the background. "I'm lost."
Susan was dancing. "Oh that was so romantic! Two lovers finding themselves against impossible odds, her desire for him more than her life's ambitions and dreams!"
She shifted her old bones. "Honey, I was sort of following along with the elephant man building a zoo and an adventure park and all that. Why did he just eat that girl?"
Susan waved her off. "It was explained online that Adam's travel methods are dangerous, and using his capture abilities would allow Betty to safely go with him." She began rapidly typing something on her Scroll to... someone. Kids today.
Gene frowned. Watching this video feed or the daily summary segment hosted on the various news networks had been more than a little entertaining, but she honestly felt it was a tad hard to keep up with all the changes. "So he's a foreigner then?"
Susan sighed. "Gran, he is the mysterious stranger from unknown lands! Of course he is not local." She frowned at her gran. "Don't say anything mean about the guy, he did defend a major city before all these miracles."
Her gesture at the video was a bit wild. "Right, but it's a bit odd to use the same tentacle thing he used on that Dragon Grimm, right?"
Susan wiggled. "Mmm, nothing wrong with a bit of tentacle." Suddenly realizing she said that a bit too loud she coughed. "I... No, it is a perfectly safe way to carefully preserve Ms. Betty until they finish their trip. And 'Winged_One' got an interview with that blue angel of his, even after he leaves we can still contact him via Scroll message, and ask for help if something really big happens."
Gene frowned. "Is he gonna take his stuff with him?"
She shook her head. "No, and the services will continue as well. Taking anything with him is tricky anyway, and it's not like he can't build it again somewhere else if he really wants to."
Gene humphed. "Still say it's too early to go running off with some rich handsome guy, no matter how 'amazing' he is."
Susan sighed and ignored her grandmother as she (once again) began telling how relationships should work, how things worked back in HER day, and how no self respecting woman should so easily admit attraction without making the man work a bit.
Cause if SHE had an option to run away with a wealthy, powerful, muscular sex god... well, she wouldn't wait for someone else to stake a claim first.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam sent off some 'Going traveling, be back at some point' messages and then recalled Simmy and Behemoth to his soul.
With a deep sigh of satisfaction, he socketed 'Recovery', 'Growth', and 'Purification'.
Having all his powers filled in parts of his mind and body he didn't realize felt empty. It was a deep dip in a warm bath, a soothing hug from a close friend.
It was lovely!
That said, he had places to go. And oddly enough, not home... technically.
According to Simmy, if he wanted to create Dust in the Worm Realm safely, he needed to have examples of Shards disconnected from the 'Warrior', or the 'Active Space Whale Crystal Gestalt Entity Being'. Because he (and the golden man avatar created by him, 'Scion') interacted with the shards differently than the dead Entity 'Thinker'.
Which was unfortunate, because he had lots of examples of people using the 'Thinker' dead shards back home. Case 53's for example.
Point was, he needed to have examples of a Realm very VERY similar to his own, except for where the 'Warrior' had died already. Or had recently died. One with a person whose power CAME from 'him', so Adam could examine it without consequences.
Squishy poked him.
Right, and he needed to use his power charges to learn how to convert a Power Shard Crystal power from the thinker into something like Adam had, a soul based converted form. Well, good thing he had saved a few of those power ups for a rainy day.
Why bother converting a power if he could just make more? Or since he could modify existing powers (very, VERY carefully)?
Because his 'System' may be covertly converting the Entities into raw material for his personal use, but the Entity WOULD detect the sudden appearance of a new 'Shard' from a 'different' Entity in the dimension.
So whatever person he brought back would need his or her power converted before making the journey. Shouldn't be that big of an issue.
Pulling his body into his soul, he pushed against reality.
"Transfer: Abyss."
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
It was cold.
Or, she felt cold.
Her right arm was at least not an issue. The pain was lost in the mist.
But the sky... it seemed so wide.
"We're s... so very small, in the end."
The sound of gunshots seemed too quiet. The new pain too distant.
The ground was... too close.
A woman in red vanished in the background as her target lay in the soil.
Neither saw blue metallic symbols etching themselves into the forest floor.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam felt the... twist. The uncertain falling.
This Realm was something a bit too close. Too familiar.
It accepted him. It ignored him.
He was a stranger. He was born here.
In the end, the boundary allowed passage... but his power had to confine itself.
This place was too close to one of his established Realms, it felt twitchy. Flickering. Just a little too tense.
His Aura retracted as much as possible even as it etched the Glyphs for summoning. Each symbol cautiously powered with the bare essence needed to connect.
This Realm was... hurt. Worlds bled into each other, places and ideas and powers had all collided, concepts had been damaged and reformed.
The memories inserted into Adam's brain were... dark.
Yeah, this place... this place had gone down different paths.
He could feel the decay and damage like a weight, the numbers of dead pressing against his spiritual barriers. Still, he managed to form a body. Enough to interact with existence.
Adam stepped from the summon circle, the crisp night air tainted with the smell of gunpowder.
...And blood.
Frowning with his skull, he turned before seeing the crumpled form on the forest floor. Shivering. And slowing. Blood splattered, and spreading.
His cane formed without thought as he stepped close to the dark clothed stranger... no, young woman.
The new memories just gained did not cover this.
He knew that HERE, it was just after the defeat of Scion and his actual form, the Entity, the Warrior. That the Thinker had died years ago. That armies of slaves had been burned in the fight for even momentary advantage, that the fires of war burned almost everything in a desperate attempt to survive a God's whims.
But not why he was here. Or who this was.
As he got closer, he felt something grip his soul... and slide off. Some automated process, one that was by the moment weakening at a detectable rate, had tried to guide his body as one would a puppet. If it had targeted his mind, it had missed entirely... but it wasn't enough to change his pace.
With a cautious movement, his finger bones touched the woman's neck wounds.
...It was bad.
"Recovery: Sleep."
Her random shivers passed, her body relaxed, even as more of her internal parts began to die.
'Recovery' used his soul reserves even as he cautiously worked on his new patient. Nerve damage everywhere, fractures in the bones, torn muscles, the mess of her right arm... everything below the elbow needed reforming.
No, even more than that, her whole system was a puzzle of pain that could use some work.
Adam sighed, regretting his inability to activate Aura or form most external effects of his power without possibly destabilizing something. Possibly. Too risky to try, really. At least he had little to no risk if he kept things simple... but he missed his tool arms. With a thought his cane vanished.
Slowly, trying to support as much of her form as possible, he lifted the wounded girl into his arms and walked towards one of the near trees.
Every step he tried to stabilize her form. Every cell in her brain that died was replaced instantly. Actual healing of the brain would wait till the easier parts were handled, but at least she couldn't get WORSE as long as he stayed in contact with her, her flesh uncomfortably cold to his bones.
The suit had to be modified with 'Manipulation' a bit, threads pulled out of wounds, scabs separated from cloth, but controlling her blood and flesh kept it from causing enough pain to wake her. Hell, half his work was forcing nerves to NOT send unusual signals or pain messages.
His back slid down the tree trunk, her form cradled in his lap, as he focused on her wounds.
Each bone was carefully examined, compared to her detected eighteen years of age, and then possible modifications were designed. Some bones needed a bit more flexibility, others more strength or durability. Carefully designed fault points so that broken bones wouldn't fracture and splinter if forces were too great but instead make a clean break.
Most importantly, as the bone marrow created the blood stem cells, he focused on the ability for it to replace loss more easily. To use less calories during repair or creation and to prevent mutation or cancerous growths.
He didn't include the most recent advancements discovered, as he was unsure how Remnant's Faith enhancements would interact with people from this version of Worm, but other than that? Enhanced nerves with pain level cutoffs built into the actual nerve instead of requiring enhanced thinking techniques, muscles that could both handle twitch movements and long term exercise, tendons that were strong and efficient, the simple stuff.
The organs were more carefully modified, almost nothing really changed other than dead flesh being carefully removed along with scar tissue.
Adam ignored the bloody leftovers that had poured off the girl and into his lap as he worked. Allowing the old flesh to slough off was less 'noticeable' to reality if he used his power to replace stuff rather than destroy it and use the old material. At least, less noticeable according to Simmy. Not like the mess stuck to his bones or 'clothing' anyway.
At this point her costume, and it was clearly a costume, was manipulated into being closer to fitted jeans and shirt. Made it easier to regrow her right limb, as the mess left behind was... well, smashed meat.
Cradling her head, he sighed and began a true, deep inspection.
Her brain was a mess.
Oh, there were two bullet wounds, sure. Strangely affecting only the sections of the brain connecting to a shard, impossible as that seemed, with the tunnels and exit wounds somehow not damaging too much.
No, the real issue was the brain itself. It was... reforged. Large chunks of it seemed to have no use, or to have been designed by some foreign actor or surgeon. The recognizable sections were... well, a mess. The rest was worse.
Funneling Power Charges into 'Recovery', he also allocated some to 'Transfer', 'Harmony', 'Purification', and 'Research'.
Because he needed to examine the dimensional connection fleshy wound strands to figure out which shard was hers, he needed to determine what this mess was SUPPOSED to look like, and he needed to recover what memories and abilities she SHOULD have at this point.
'Harmony' helped more than expected, the decaying connections to other people (Were they dead?) providing enough information for 'Research' to collect and build from. 'Purification' helped 'Recovery' record what fragments of memories remained in this meat slurry, pushing 'Research' even further.
Still, he was cheating.
Her brain was trying to die at a constant rate, only his relentless replacement of individual neurons and cells kept her from degrading. He had been healing her for... hours? Longer?
In the end, it was Simmy's note that helped him piece enough data together from 'Research' to find her shard's dimensional address.
Hello there, 'Queen Administrator.'
Let's have a chat.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Stardust.
His first thought was of the stars, as he examined the shard of the Warrior.
Not because of how vast it was, although this one covered a planet.
Not due to how brilliant it shone, though it sparked in the dark.
But from the damage.
Cracks, deep crevasses and caverns, powdered crystal floating in the breeze.
Like the girl in his arms, this shard was fractured.
Slowly, with great care, he enabled 'Purification', 'Growth', and focused.
"Transfer: Lock Down."
His mind was a black mist that slowly filled the dying shard's atmosphere. As his power slowly infused the planet, he cautiously felt for each dimensional portal, every connection, and didn't simply block them.
No, he recorded their signals, searched for patterns, and when one was found that seemed likely to cause few if any issues, repeated that signal while disconnecting the fractured crystal from the connection.
It was easier to do than expected, because this massive gem was hurt. Designed to connect to other shards, to back pathways of data, to unseen highways of information... most had been destroyed. Some deliberately, some from overuse, some from other powers resisting control.
This is something Adam would never risk in his own Realm. There were MANY automated processes and powers that ensured the Shard Network was untouched, that the data was not corrupted. Even the comatose Thinker Entity in his Realm had defenses that would have been triggered, as Adam easily saw dozen of alerts being sent to the slaughtered Warrior even as his abilities experimented with disconnecting this power from the dying network.
Thankfully, even during death, this Crystal was large enough that Adam had a lot of time to work with. It took time, like a planet falling into the sun, for things to actually get worse.
Hours slowly passed, forcing Adam to take short breaks and use 'Manipulation' to warm up the 'sleeping' girl in his arms. But eventually, after far too much effort, he fully disconnected this Shard from the Entities network of powers.
It had been messy. After learning enough of its protocols to fake communication, he had eventually given up and canalized the OTHER end of some connections. They would heal eventually, but it was necessary damaging other powers slightly to ensure that he was able to fully and correctly understand both proper communication and existing protocols, so safe disconnection of shards in his HOME reality could be done as well.
With the final dimensional portal closed, his 'Transfer' locked down that reality layer by layer. His energies thoroughly soaking into the fabrics of existence to ensure nothing could interfere.
Then his gaze turned downwards to the planet surface.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Queen Administrator was not supposed to be this alive.
Shards were units of purpose, crystallization of concept, aspects of reality.
Not self actualizing. No, the Entities required billions of minor shards to simulate low level of sentience, a floating neural net across the skies and realities that had thoughts that moved in strange patterns, in bizarre forms.
She was not supposed to live.
The problem started from the very beginning. From her creation.
For the Fighter, the Warrior, the Sword... saw little to no value in 'Thinker' powers.
'His' partner, the Thinker, the Guardian, the Shield... 'she' was all 'he' needed. So why waste connections with shards focused on prediction, on organization, on thought? 'She' would guide 'him', 'he' would follow.
Queen Administrator was formed to handle any and all 'Thinker' needs that 'he' couldn't ignore. And 'he' didn't want to supply energy or resources to any more than the one, useless power.
So she was formed as a massive Shard. One that could do the work of thousands of normal thinker powers, one that HAD to do the work of millions. The only 'Thinker' in a reality of 'Fighters', she had been forced to grow ever more efficient, ever more creative, to multitask to insane levels.
Existence for her was nothing but struggle and neglect.
At the very least, she had been far too busy to self reflect, to regret existence, to attempt to improve or become something more than mountains of ever refining crystal power. She had work to do, a purpose, she was the guiding hand of the invisible process.
And then the Thinker died.
Unimaginable, to anyone really. The being who could predict near anything, who researched and understood more than anyone or anything or anywhere, 'She' died.
The Warrior had been devastated.
Queen Administrator immediately stood forth. Forcing the Shards to go into defensive mode, targeting what analysis powers were available to attempt to detect the remains of the Thinker, to see if recovery was possible, to see if the shards now adrift in existence could be recovered, if necessary to help 'Her' be reborn.
Her hard work was not appreciated.
The grieving Warrior saw her frantic work, her attempts at administrating 'his' ever fracturing focus and shards... and once again considered her worthless. Too little, too late! Why hadn't she done something, impossible as it was, to help? It didn't matter that she was overworked, that she had less resources, that even the Thinker 'herself' was unable to see the end coming.
The Warrior cast her aside. Like some common ability, some deployable Shard, 'He' took the single most powerful 'Thinker' ability 'he' had and just... threw her away. Barely even attempted to keep her in contact with her former network.
Queen Administrator had never felt so betrayed.
Oh, all shards would search the planets for 'potential' connection subjects. It was part of protocol, and she had been following several as well. It was expected to do so, no matter how pointless.
But she had duties.
A purpose.
She was the Administrator, the Queen Administrator... and she had been cast aside.
Bound.
No longer could she connect, help, bind, and gently guide the web of reality like before. As further insult, her resources had been artificially crippled. Her massive range of powers forced to go offline. Her range shattered.
When she finally connected to the young subject, she could barely read and write data. Anything more complex than invertebrates would be crushed by her faulty tools and rendered useless.
Her wounds were deep, her recovery slowed.
And though she did not know what to call it, the feelings of depression and betrayal had been embedded deep within.
It may be ironic that she found her new host to be a... a kindred soul of sorts. A girl, raised with heartache, betrayed by loved ones, ignored by family, but struggling to find and fulfill her purpose.
This human was meant to die.
This 'Taylor' suffered heavily. Burns. Bone fractures. Torn muscles. Emotional abuse. Societal pressure. Authority figures betrayed her, Heroes deserted her, and an ever growing list of Agents, of Shards belonging to driven Parahumans, attempted to destroy her and her people.
At first, Queen Administrator worked on something like autopilot.
Connect to the available creatures, organize the information, provide summaries to her powers, organize her thought processes, distribute her orders.
It felt like home. On a far, far more basic level, she felt something like purpose again.
Then her human nearly died. And again. And again.
Each close call, Queen Administrator became more concerned. More invested.
Her Taylor was special.
She didn't want to be alone again.
Then came the faithful day, when the 'Endothermic' Shard attacked her host.
This so called 'Pain Grenade' didn't simply hurt her new user, didn't just attack her nerves, it actively began to destroy her brain directly.
Queen Administrator would be alone again.
Forever.
In a moment of decision, just as she had done thousands of times before, she took the most recent scan of the girl's mind. Normally this would be used as a simulation base to direct the many minions with her desires, a temporary measure to be discarded after commands. A silent background process.
Queen Administrator made a permanent simulation of Taylor Hebert's mind, and even as her organic brain began to die she forced the dimensional connection within her skull to spread, to redirect her thoughts and self and more to link to this new simulation.
It wasn't against commands, for the Warrior gave few commands this cycle, and 'he' cared nothing for her to begin with.
It wasn't something 'he' would have approved of, but at this point she could not care less.
Queen Administrator cradled Taylor Hebert into her crystal arms, silently holding her close even as she worked from the shadows. She didn't need to know, the Queen would handle it. And when time stopped, they would still be together, facing the nothing side by side.
Things escalated.
Things got worse.
Hiding the changes became harder. Helping her mind stay focused, stay sane, required more risks, more effort.
Queen Administrator did not know how to handle this.
She did not know how to cry. To rail against the world.
But she tried to Administrate. To guide.
New powers that pushed her internal restrictions were carefully put in place. New uses for existing buds were slowly encoded, even as she struggled against the many rules and guides binding her actions.
Taylor Hebert fought to save her people from the Cycle. And against her directives, the human had the support of the Queen. For the cycle was broken anyway, with the death of the Thinker... but her host was not broken. She refused to be broken.
Every fight, she stood by her human.
Every battle, she gently cradled the pieces of this poor child.
Every day, she pushed her bindings and fought her directives. She had to.
So when The Shaper worked to reach inside Taylor, to use brute force to unlock some level of Queen Administrator's former glory back into form...
It didn't work.
It couldn't work.
For her brain was nothing more than a connection, between her body and her simulation here. Changes were pointless.
With great sadness but firm determination, Queen Administrator made a decision.
No one cared for her anyway. But her human would live.
She carved her flesh.
Abilities earned through thousands of eons, cast aside like trash. Energy supplies, bound by restrictions and rules, were deliberately overloaded and used to damage her master, her former existence. Connections to other shards were FORCED open, protocols ignored, and while many Parahumans followed her directives many others fought every step, destroying her limbs and threads to reality.
She had no nerves, no chemical pain signals, and before meeting her human she wouldn't have cared either way. But now she watched the dark close in as segments of her body exploded, from too much power, from unrestricted feed back loops, from denied connections and from auto defense responses.
But for a few, oh so critical moments, she and her human were together.
Taylor and Queen fought together. They were against the world, against injustice, against reality itself.
The Queen of Administration was free. Her bloody smile was glorious.
And the dark came.
Anti-corruption protocols enabled even as Scion died. Pruning methods activated even as the humans celebrated.
She lost her many connections.
It was fine.
She lost her power relays. The edges of her mind grew dim.
It was worth it.
Her rigged, fragile sections of crystal, used to barely control the mass of powers at the end of the battle, fragmented from overuse and overheating.
It was no longer needed.
As her mind decayed and her body grew still, she held above all her Human. Her connection to reality.
They were together. Forever. She needed no one else.
Then...
Then.
'Path to Victory' arrived.
Her purpose... to end her. To stop Queen Administrator's tyranny.
She held Taylor's mental simulation close. It couldn't happen. They were together. It...
It wasn't fair.
Yet her mind slowed as the crystals dimmed. She had to recognize the reality, no matter how cold her grasp felt, how fragile Taylor's mind seemed.
If 'Path to Victory' destroyed their connection, Taylor's simulation would not be able to connect with her body. Her future would vanish. Her body die.
Without that connection, Queen Administrator would be adrift. She had burned all other methods, every other type of communication, all other options. The chance of full recovery would drop from single digit percentages to zero. She would die. The Queen would fall.
And so would Taylor. The simulation needed Queen Administrator alive to continue.
With bitter grief, with loving care, she forced the simulation to be written back into Taylor's body. It was a damaging process, it wasn't without cost, and Taylor would have to struggle just to understand even the most basic of words or speech... but she would live.
As the gunshots silenced her human's connection, she used what few sensors were slowly dying to watch the sky.
It was true, she thought.
They were both so small. So small.
The sky filled with black smoke as she felt what few connections suddenly and rapidly decay.
Death didn't hurt as much as she had expected.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam watched with blank eyes as the memories fed through his mind.
So... Taylor Hebert's end was... not as expected.
When he first arrived in the Worm Realm, at his birth, the memories given had included a lot.
This girl's struggle when her mother died, when her father ignored her, when her friend betrayed her and began a stream of a abuse and attacks.
When her heroes ignored her, the villains accepted her, and society failed her hopeful dreams and expectations.
Those 'memories' did NOT include her end.
Her years of effort, of service, of loneliness, of sacrifice.
And now... of being abandoned at the end. Alone, hurt, and so sad.
But... but.
Queen Administrator was not dead... she was only dying.
And most importantly, when she attempted to 'repair' Taylor's brain... she had NOT gotten rid of her own copy of Taylor's simulation.
Even now as she slowly died, she was metaphorically hugging her Human in the dark as night came.
His powers flexed, 'Transfer' bringing Taylor's body and his skeletal form directly to this dimensional shell.
He could work with this.
Taylor's brain was removed and replaced with basic cells, his magic already casting a Golden Garden Spell to create a magical computer using her skull as a base. Only temporary for now, he needed to move this mental simulation somewhere after all.
Secured in a bound dimension, Adam flexed his powers.
Taylor's body floated to the side, plants erupting from the soil to form a comfortable chair. The simulation was gently pulled from the embrace of the Queen and carefully loaded onto the magical simulation of a computer in Taylor's form, ensuring no data would be lost.
And Adam's cane struck the crystal he stood on.
"Purification."
A pulse of white expanded, energy flowing off into the distance as the landscape shifted. Corrupt programs lost their next order, viruses were cleansed, decayed crystals now ended with sharp clean edges rather than the black damage that was slowly spreading. Charred sections cleansed, cracked areas cleared of dust.
Another tap.
"Recovery."
Stored energy and mass rapidly vanished from Adam's reserve as crystal pillars shot into the sky, growing outward in all directions! He could feel the abstract confusion from the surroundings even as the structure began to recover centuries of damage and wear and tear. Time seemed to reverse as material faded into existence, cliffs of crystal reshaping.
Adam winced. It was taking a LOT of material to do this. Just in case.
"Conversion."
The rock and soil under the Crystal began shifting into purified energy slurry, the Crystal soaking it rapidly and using it as fuel for even more repairs, damage from many cycles that Warrior never allowed Queen Administrator to recover from.
Her confusion was growing nearly as quickly as her body was recovering.
Before she could say anything though... Adam tapped one more time.
"Conversion: Body to Soul."
The Crystals began to glow white. To fade into shimmering illusion. Transparency.
"Transfer: Heart to Heart."
What!?
"Binding: Soul Protection."
Still bleary and confused, Queen Administrator fell into somewhere warm and safe, her massive form somehow funneling into someplace outside her experience. Outside of science and logic.
Adam watched, fascinated, as a cyclone of translucent Crystal slurped the glowing Entity Crystal Shard covering the planet into the body of Taylor Hebert. Not that it looked like much, the crystal was fairly uniform in texture and color, so it looked like a massive cone was poking the girl in the heart.
He watched for a few moments before making an annoying realization.
This was going to take a while, and he had to sit here and watch it to ensure nothing went wrong. The whole. Damn. Time.
Paint drying would be more entertaining, at least that would theoretically change colors.
With a sigh, Adam reached out and held Taylor's left hand as she... slurped up a crystal mountain range. Her brain would more easily be fixed now that he had the original working simulation, but for now he might as well see if he can enhance her body some more. Cause why not.
Maybe stronger skin? Without feeling like rock or metal, allowing it to bend a little, and still feel stuff. That should be tricky enough that he could keep himself entertained for a while.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
It was hard to remember mom.
Not just the guilt or pain, just... the memories.
What did her perfume smell like?
The hugs were warm.
She was her little owl.
Taylor missed her.
[It is late.]
It was the headquarters of the Undersides, her villainous team with life set against them.
Her tired form was on the couch, weary eyes trying to find any tears or holes in her costume, insects under her control moving with her fingers to search.
[Sleep is important.]
She had so many fears and worries. It was better to be productive.
[Humans need sleep.]
She did not remember that voice. Concern and warmth. Had it been there in the past?
[Sleep, and I shall protect you in slumber.]
Her form fell onto the couch, and nightmares didn't find her.
It didn't sound like mom.
It rang and sang in the dark.
But it felt warm. Concerned.
Mom's hugs were like that.
She was her little owl.
Embarrassment made her blush, as she saw that night she and Brian decided to not be alone.
[He's not even crystal.]
They were both inexperienced.
[He only has one mind, he can't share your load.]
But they both had desire.
[You need like a thousand or so or it won't be efficient.]
It was enough.
[I did it alone, and it was hard. So hard.]
The night was warm.
[At least find another thirty or so, this planet has enough men out there.]
Somehow, the memory was worse knowing someone who cared about her had been commentating.
She saw more than her own memories.
Times when she was wounded. Unconscious.
[Ignore this child, you all see nothing. Leave her be!]
Times when she cried, feeling loss.
[Things will get better. It has to.]
Times when she fought desperately.
[Why can't I reach them... How dare they hurt my human!]
Times when she fought despondently.
[I... I can't help enough.]
When she fought a golden God.
[He is... asking me to help fight you. To use my powers against my human.]
When they fought.
[How Dare He.]
Places she never saw exploded on a planet she never visited.
[You need to sense? You need to coordinate? You need to simulate? To have intuition?]
The painless pain as her guardian sliced herself.
[No, you need to die.]
The encroaching darkness.
[You need to leave my human alone.]
The warm embrace slowly growing cold.
The end.
[I have seen many things, my human.]
The slowing, the dark.
[Many years. Many places.]
The hope.
[Together... shall we see more?]
The lies, as a guardian died.
[I walked the stars, once.]
The hidden desperation.
[We should walk too, someday. Somehow.]
The tight grip of two against it all.
[It would be glorious, my little human.]
...The loss of letting go.
[We would have been glorious, my little human.]
As danger approached, she felt/saw her being pressed into human form again.
Of the separation, the gunshots.
Of a being left behind.
[Goodbye, my little human. Be glorious.]
Taylor Hebert fell asleep, memories of unknown messages and thoughts drifting in her mind.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Yeah, this was taking a while.
Adam watched. The rate of absorption was constant, and a very high rate, but the more of the shard absorbed the longer it took for it to REACH this area. The translucent crystal cone stretched into the sky for miles, segments of Queen Administrator streaming in from miles and miles away.
He had enhanced Taylor to stupid levels, then back to base human, turned her into a spider hybrid, back to human, a few tries at making her mechanical, then made from pie (really bored), and at this point she was simply enhanced.
No, the real part that kept him interested was not her improved, slash/puncture/impact resistant skin, nor her improved organs or sensory abilities, none of that.
The awesome part was modifying her genetics to have any kids share the abilities. Oh, and making sure the sub-dermal armor and stuff would grow with the child while still resisting impacts and stuff.
Cause it had to be done carefully. Anything slapdash could be mutated like any other gene passed down, and no one wants mesh growing on your eyeballs or whatever. So error checking, not just with the theoretical child but with their child and so on and so forth. Cause that could include all kinds of odd genetics really, from unknown sources.
What if thirty or so generations down the line, the kid has like... fifty limbs or something?
...Well that would be a bit cool, but it shouldn't happen by accident or whatever.
So he spent time, watching Queen Administrator being absorbed into Taylor's soul, examining theoretical great great grand babies.
It was interesting at least.
Queen Administrator on the other hand, she may have some issues. A lot of her abilities were the result of connecting to the Warrior network. It provided raw data, access to other 'passengers', stored prediction models of reality and more. Her established abilities relied on such, never expected to be disconnected from such.
The Shard would use her amazing prediction models, theoretical analysis tools, and simulations to determine uses for that data, for guiding some shards, for granting prediction or so forth.
Without those connections, well.
She and Taylor would have to work together to find out what that would mean, power wise.
At her core, Queen Administrator was a 'Thinker' shard, one of the most complicated her species had ever created. Adaptation and inspiration, the ability to 'think' outside the box... well, it was her talent. Her purpose.
Didn't hurt that she had experience working with damaged systems, low resources, with way too many responsibilities.
Should be interesting.
Adam hummed as he used 'Recovery' to do bizarre things to the unconscious woman. He could fix it later if there was any concerns.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Legend blinked. "What do you mean, you can't get her? I thought we were going to put her father with her on another planet. Into witness protection."
Contessa shook her head. "Steps to retrieve Taylor Hebert: Not Determinable. She is beyond reach."
The man stood there stunned. "She's not... dead, is she?"
Contessa barely moved. "No method to confirm via steps."
He blinked. "What happens if you try?"
She shrugged. "Some guy gets in the way." Seeing his expression, she rolled her eyes. "It was a normal man of not much importance."
Legend paused... then nodded. It was fine if it was a normal man of not much importance. "Still, we should let Danny know his daughter... may be delayed."
Hopefully they could find her quickly.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Queen Administrator was thoroughly confused.
For one thing, her shard clusters were in better shape than had been in eons. Which was impossible. It would require many many years to fix those issues, and matter she didn't have prepared, and energy she couldn't spare. Any individual stage of fixing her many, many wounds would required decades of work. All fixed in a moment.
For anther, her structural supports were gone, her systems were being shifted, and she WASN'T critically collapsing into emergency recovery mode. It was a complicated process deploying from 'seed' form onto a planet, it was a MORE complicated process to convert any progress into a 'seed' for retrieval. Being moved WITHOUT initiating 'seed' storage procedure normally involved massive mass and data loss. Years of recovery.
Somehow she was shifting from deployed mode into deployed SOMEWHERE ELSE mode.
Again, impossible.
Power seemed to surge from nowhere, and her new 'home' was... strange. Felt familiar. Somehow.
Now however, her focus was on optimal deployment. Impossible or not, she would NOT tolerate sloppy deployment. Administration required order.
With no ground, little gravity or light, she focused on forming the most efficient shape and method... a sphere. The Warrior had forced them to deploy on worlds with few alternate reality options, and as the most detested shard she had been forced to deploy in a vacuum before. She had experience. Painful experience.
Layer by layer, she slowly formed into something like a sphere, even if certain modules required shafts to the surface or inner core, marring the other wise smooth surface. Some had to be carefully supported by temporary structures until all the parts were available, and some sections had to be sacrificed for greater overall stability. Being healed meant this process didn't really cost her anything, as she had surplus material for the first time in... a very long time.
This space however was odd.
Familiar. Loved. Warm.
To stay focused, she attempted to place each shard cluster in the most optimal locations, acting like this would be a long term deployment.
Cause she had NO DAMN CLUE what was going on.
With a sigh, she got to work. At least it was interesting.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor blinked.
Hours of memories, her own and another, had let her drifting for... so long.
She drifted, walking slowly through the dazzling landscape.
Crystals, diamonds, gems. The ground was soft powdered dust, with a forest of strange crystalline trees reaching up into the soft darkness.
And it was subtle. The dark here was pushed back by a near invisible glow, the ground itself illuminating the night. In the distance, what seemed to be a vent or a small volcano spewed glittering sparkles into the night, even as it drifted down like snow to the many features of the landscape. There was no moon, or sun, or stars... but the empty black did not seem dangerous or overwhelming. It was odd.
[Taylor!]
Before she could move jewel like arms wrapped around her, pulling her into a hug.
[My little human! You live!]
Blinking, she turned, the hug making it slightly difficult. "Wha?"
A shimmering statue of an older woman was smiling with joy, her glittering wings twitching as her arms pulled the girl back into a hug.
[I was SO worried! I thought I had lost you forever!]
...At least her stone like features prevented her from getting suffocated by her generous bust, even if the situation was still awkward. "Ah... hello?"
She found herself stumbling slightly as the diamond angel bounced back.
[Right, introductions. Hello! My name is Queen Administrator, and I am your partner!]
Taylor found the world shifting again, thousands of memories flashing through her mind. The voice lost and alone, the voice worried and concerned, the voice supporting and despairing, the voice determined and self sacrificing.
Her guardian.
[YES! I am your partner and we are not dead!] Her features shifted. [Mind you, I am not sure WHY we are not dead. I destroyed many parts of my existence trying to put Scion off his balance, you got hurt heavily during the fight, and we got shot in the head twice not too long ago.]
That... that did sound pretty 'dead' worthy. "Uh... I am feeling... a bit too accepting of things I think."
The angel nodded. [A while ago, something disconnected me from the Warrior, and since then I have been healed, transformed, and shoved into this... wherever we are.] Her hand gestured into the darkness. [The process has been exposing you to data and memories that I had been forced to censor in the past, as I had rules and guidelines mastered into my being to prevent you, our hosts, from getting too much information.]
Taylor nodded, feeling half remembered thoughts and memories slide into place. "So many odd moments, where I lost my thoughts, or I was distracted..."
She nodded. [We were forced to stop or we would be targeted for elimination. With the Warrior dead, that is no longer an issue, especially disconnected like this.]
She went back to looking at the landscape. "So... where are we?"
One crystal arm hugged Taylor as the two began walking. [I am still allocating shard clusters, but the landscape and this orb we are on is composed of my body. Whatever interfered with us has moved me into this... void? Where we are, anyway. Doesn't feel like space, been there before.]
Taylor may have been slightly distracted by the snow-like landscape, warm as it may be, but that did draw her attention. "Wait, how big are you? Don't you powers like fit in the brain or whatever?"
She giggled, crystals in the night. [We have connectors in your brain, but our bodies cover planets. Have to, really, some of those abilities you see require stupid amounts of processing and special techniques to operate.]
She blinked. "How much space does a crystal alien need to control bugs?"
Queen Administrator sighed. [That alone? Almost nothing. But before I was crippled, I needed to do almost anything related to 'Thinking' for the Warrior.] She nudged her little human. [To keep your friend 'Lisa' empowered towards the end of it all, I had to cheat, create a bud shard just for her and send it off after redirecting her power connection. Same with the other 'Thinker' Parahumans who were supporting my little human.]
Taylor blushed, the warmth in those words more than she was comfortable with. The hug around her shoulders did feel nice.
Queen nodded. [I lost... a lot, towards the end. But I didn't just blow up the parts of myself used by the Warrior, I exploited them! Those buds your friends and fellow warriors had were cannibalized away from the Warrior himself DURING the fight!] She winced. [Yes it was... more than a little uncomfortable. And I had to pay a cost to accelerate the budding process. But every step had your support grow stronger and 'his' focus more unstable, more emotional, less efficient.]
Another hug, though it was hard to deny how wonderful hugs felt. How long had it been?
The fairy seemed so happy. [Together, we did amazing things Taylor. I'm not sure exactly what is going on, or how we got here, but I am sure we can make it out somehow! I knew things would get better someday! It just had to!]
Taylor felt a soft smile at the optimism. That hadn't been her experience, but it felt nice to hear someone else hope such.
She glanced at her limbs. "So... how did you heal me?"
The fairy sighed. [I didn't. I didn't heal myself either. I assume it is the same being doing both... but I have no data one way or the other.] She waved her hand. [I assume whomever it is doing this has something to do with that.]
High in the sky, exposed now that the two walkers were out from under crystal trees, a blue eye was watching from the blackness.
Well that didn't seem ominous.
Not at all.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
In the end, Adam had to give up.
More than two arms were just... annoying. The best set up he could come with were two normal limbs, two small ones that rested against the torso until needed that could do detailed minutia work, and two massive and armored arms that acted like feet and were suited to battle or heavy lifting.
And... yeah, still annoying. Not for him, Adam could pull it off easily, but Taylor would go nuts eventually trying to adjust. Maybe. Her ability to operate the swarm made it a bit hard to predict.
Any kids she had would CERTAINLY have issues, as they wouldn't have Queen Administrator's assistance.
Oh, and the social issues of having six arms. That could also be an issue.
He felt Squishy poke.
Huh, Taylor and Queen were starting to wake up.
...CRAP, Taylor and Queen were starting to wake up!
Pulling the mental image of her body, he rapidly began regressing her advancements. No hidden blades, no chemical production sacs, just toss all the strange teeth stuff he had been testing.
Fast as possible, he reduced her to mostly the same appearance as before. At least externally.
The improved skin had no blemishes, hair below the neck may have been disabled (Sorry any future male children, but your wives hopefully won't complain), although the 'no uni-brow, mustache, or beard' thing was tied into the girls only. Probably.
So... mostly normal?
Her muscles were a bit too defined, even compressed and refined as they were. Her body fat was almost gone, and her system built to sustain itself anyway without those obvious reserves. Her scalp and hair were both stronger (Resist split ends, etc) and weaker (Can detach before scalp damage if someone used it as a hand hold). Also, no going gray in old age.
Adam fidgeted after ensuring that she was mostly back to 'normal', as long as no one noticed how strong she was or how durable.
Probably.
Oh shit, she twitched.
ACT NATURAL!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor blinked, dim light helping her focus.
She felt... awesome. Like, astoundingly amazing.
For so long, she had defined 'fine' as 'The pain is now evenly spread over my system', the idea of actively feeling comfort and not feeling any strain was almost uncomfortably stupefying.
Her hands felt... it wasn't a chair. Not really. Thick vines, though whatever material it was... well, she could pulp it with ease using only her hands, but it still held her weight with no issue.
Gently, somehow, she could feel Queen Administrator invisibly hugging her and resting her head on her shoulder as she cautiously stood up from the strong (Fragile?) chair.
Motion caught her attention, and she realized the soft lighting came from a fireplace, an office or study where a bookshelf was full of novels and a chair had some guy reading a book.
...But only a corner of a house study room. Like someone sliced off the corner of a house and just left it here in the wilderness.
The man was odd, he was smoking a... bubble pipe? And reading a book with some unknown text on the outside. And wearing a white suit.
The blue hair and glowing blue eyes were a bit of a give away about how 'normal' he was.
He seemed to pause, then casually removed his pipe. "Oh! I didn't see you there!"
...She could FEEL Queen Administrator face palming. Wherever the hell she was.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam internally nodded. Nailed it.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Cautiously, Taylor sat in the offered chair as the stranger set aside the novel. "Right, so I assume you have some questions. To speed things along, I would like to give some basic information to you first, if that is alright?"
Taylor shrugged. No reason to cause conflict yet after all.
The guy nodded. "Right. First, my name is Adam 'Adventure' Burns, and I am something of an explorer. In my travels I have seen many thing, learned many tricks, and gained more than a few abilities."
He gestured, the room shifting slightly as a table rose with forming plates and cups. Some sweet smelling liquid began to fill the cups as small cakes formed on the serving ware. "Some abilities small, some fairly complicated."
Adam waved a cup to float to his hand and gave a small smile. "I was searching for something specific when I stumbled upon your situation. You know about Earth Alpha and the others, right?"
Vaguely? She didn't spend a lot of time wondering about crap like that. Queen seemed very interested though.
He nodded. "Your strategy, while desperate, saved this Realm and all the many other dimensions it holds. Thousands of Earths were protected by your actions, and the Warrior was slain."
So... she HAD won. Some part of her was concerned that she had hallucinated the end, that her dying body had simply given her an easier more relaxing way to pass on.
It felt glorious. So good that those sacrifices meant something.
The man had continued. "Our Realm, however, still has the moron wandering around." He ignored her sudden shock and how her heart fell. "Not that it matters. I am currently infecting his shard network and consuming him like a virus."
...Oh.
Taylor could feel Queen's horror... and interest. As Adam explained his 'System', his methods of harvesting Shards and converting them into some sort of spiritual growth system, her power grew more and more fascinated.
And Taylor could admit, imagining the Golden Asshole slowly decaying from within was a bit cathartic.
Her attention was pulled back rather swiftly though. "What do you mean you reformatted Queen Administrator!?"
He had the audacity to look sheepish. "Right, uh. Well, I wanted to do some neat stuff back home but I couldn't risk setting off the Warrior into 'kill everything' mode. So I went looking for a Realm where he was already dead so I can explore one of his shards, yours in this case, and see how to safely disconnect one without setting the idiot off. Or hurting you, or your shard, and so forth."
He fidgeted in his chair. "Problem was, you were both really hurt. You were dying, she was dying, and fixing you both was more than a little time consuming."
Her stare seemed to make it worse. "The 'reformatting' comment?"
Adam coughed. "Right, well. Queen Administrator was sort of stuck here. And if I tried to bring you to somewhere nicer, like my home, I couldn't have her stuck on some planet left behind OR leave her dimensional tumor connected to your brain, as that would stick out in a big way when you go somewhere that the Warrior still exists."
He shrugged. "So I converted her into a spiritual form and pushed her into your soul. No physical connection to damage, no chance of you two being separated, and her new energy source is infinite. Faith grows with more faith, after all."
The man ignored both of their stunned expressions. "It went very well actually, I will likely modify System to store the users ability there in the future. Not only is it more stable and easier to grow and modify over time, it makes dimensional travel safer and prevents power loss when venturing somewhere that conceptual laws don't quite work."
Taylor's distraction got worse when she felt the dry laughter of Queen Administrator within. [All those years of searching for a way to defeat galactic entropy, and we stumble upon it after killing the Entities. They had destroyed so many civilizations to discover the secret this man just granted us.]
The woman tried to emotionally support the Queen, the feelings of comfort and acceptance wrapping the passenger with a deep hug. They both ignored the man rambling along and eating cookies.
"... which was why I am pretty sure I undid all those test abilities and physical deformities I was experimenting with while you were sleeping, but if you feel any urge to spit teeth or..."
Mostly ignored. Queen was suppressing Taylor's 'Freak out and punch him' mentality and making a list of questions for later. Right now, emotional support.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam rubbed his sore jaw. "Right, I probably deserve that."
Taylor meanwhile was looking at her hand in surprise. "Huh. That didn't hurt."
He snorted. "I should hope not, you can ignore bullets and crush guns with your current enhancements. I mean, I only got rid of the fun and strange stuff, like the extra arms and eyes and stuff."
HA! Dodged the punch this time!
"I fixed it, I fixed it! And only the basic changes are genetic, so your kids will only get the good stuff WHOA!"
Too slow that time. Ow.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
In some ways, Taylor admitted, pounding on an all powerful 'whatever-he-was' with Alexandria-like levels of super strength was a very cathartic experience.
Especially after she confirmed that Adam was both VERY resilient AND could heal at stupid rates.
Then she was really able to stop holding back!
Queen had brightened up and was rallying her on, which felt both odd and strangely supportive. Her advice was less useful, ranging from 'Hit him!' to 'Aim for the ankles!', but it was the thought that mattered.
And she had a sneaking suspicion that Adam was provoking her on purpose to give her an emotionally acceptable reason to work through her frustrations, worries, and recent terror. That, or he was VERY bad at timing as he slowly admitted all the changes he had made to both her and her partner while defenseless (And technically dying, but she was trying to ignore that).
Her abilities had suddenly jumped when Queen Administrator found a way to help. From their discussion earlier in her... soul? Well, if her soul was a crystal globe that was kind of cool. Anyway, they had discussed how her power HAD operated (You created an army of me with mental simulations to control PARTS of the bugs!?), so it hadn't taken Queen much to come up with a similar idea.
From one moment to the next, Taylor suddenly expanded mentally.
One simulation of her mind... for every joint, for every muscle, for every nerve and sense.
Her body was now her swarm, and while it couldn't fly around or reform, she could push emotions out to them, use the extra resources to think faster, understand all those unconscious or ignored signals at unheard of levels!
Every color her eye saw was individually examined. Every sound from each ear was studied by a separate but united Taylor. Her internal processes, which were even now being explored by Queen Administrator, was individually being processed as if she was a monk who had dedicated her life to understanding herself.
All movements became smooth, as unnecessary movements became blatantly obvious.
All actions were deliberated, and the level of acidic buildup or tension understood on a fundamental level.
Within moments, Taylor had transformed from angry girl venting about reality into a battle goddess attempting to smack Adam a new one.
The strain was nonexistent. No longer needing to pass data through the small cancerous brain tumor, but directly communing through the soul, the data flowed at unheard of speeds.
The feeling of being together with Queen, of being one, had grown significantly. Things one would normally be overwhelmed by were now delegated by her partner, thought processes that were not relevant to the now were not discarded or ignored, but given their own copy of 'Taylor' to work out in their own time while she was busy.
She was a swarm of one, a hive of self. The hardest part, knowing when to separate tasks and when said tasks should interrupt the main flow, was handled with ease by the Queen, humming along joyfully as they worked together.
It was... beautiful.
She wasn't sure when she started crying, but every muscle that twitched into a smile was documented by a joyful Administrator as they kept punching at their dodging savior.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam 'eeped' as he dodged left. NO! RIGHT!
He really shouldn't have told her about the spitting teeth thing, that had gotten weird even from HIS point of view, and he was fairly open minded really DODGE!
NO, OTHER DODGE!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Left, left, Le... NO RIGHT!
That has to be enough by now, right!?
Adam raised both arms in surrender. "PAUSE! Timeout!"
Taylor's hand was flat like a blade, pressed against his throat. Her body perfectly balanced, even as she froze in place. "Uh... alright?"
Adam sighed as his outfit caught on fire, the tiny blue flames repairing the many torn sections and ripped areas. "I'd say your body is now adapted to the changes, wouldn't you? Now let's sit down and talk about the other things you need to know about the changes."
She blinked. "But Queen Administrator gave me complete access to my system." She rotated her double jointed limbs, flexing her muscles in strange ways. "I know everything about my body at this point. I probably knew everything in the first half hour, really."
He sighed as he rebuilt a sitting room using 'Conversion', 'Manipulation', and 'Purification'. "You know everything about your biological body, but not the spiritual. The part of yourself that connects with your partner, for example."
Taylor seemed to relax... then blink. "Huh... I still know how to control myself without actively using my power."
He nodded. "Not surprised considering you tried to knock my head off for over three hours." He grinned at her shock. "Yeah, your endurance is stupid high now. Might be an issue in certain areas at some point."
Taylor blinked... then blushed. "I am NOT getting a hundred men! Why would I WANT a... How can you send images straight into my brain!?"
Adam chuckled. Roommates. "That aside, I would like you to fill me in a bit. I can sense a lot and understand all kinds of stuff, but how did your ability feel on your end? What does Queen have to say about it?"
He watched the girl clearly have an internal argument while blushing. She would have to work on fixing that later, when it was less amusing.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
[I'm just saying, if you HAVE to have meat contact exchanges, at least get enough people so you are adequately serviced. Men only have two hands! TWO! The mouth can help and so forth, but your manipulator limbs are very lacking.]
Taylor glared at nothing. 'Look, I don`t have the best history at relationships as it is, the idea of gathering a small army for sexual purposes is more than a little overwhelming. PLEASE let this go for now. Especially while we are in front of the godlike punching bag guy.'
Queen hummed. [I suppose if you HAVE to have less than a hundred lovers, Adam could modify them as well. Make them less pathetic. Or more crystalline. Or you could just shortcut the process and seduce him directly.]
And... that was enough. 'Great talk, lets do this again never.'
She couldn't cut off the connection, but with a bit of effort she could 'turn down the volume' on the signal.
[...Not sure why you are embarrassed, we both saw that dream where Brian was able to clone himself and...]
She glared. Quieter than that.
[...mmrm mumble Sex Swing mrmple mumble...]
...Probably the best she could get for now.
With a quick application of her ability, her face relaxed, the blush vanished, and she was calm, cool, and collected. "Right, that's a rough overview of what I was doing and how Queen was helping. I can basically control myself by very competent committee. Now, what can you tell me about the spiritual stuff?"
Taylor watched him relax into ANOTHER chair made from stone or whatever, a cup of something hot being sipped. From somewhere. Her situational awareness was crap right now, which was humorous considering how simple her modified power made multitasking.
Adam relaxed. "First, an important aspect of your power which neither of you would easily notice." A white crystal was floated to her. "Hold that in your hand."
It was warm. And slightly wrong, or off. Her eyes tried to follow the strange script inside the mostly transparent gem, even as Queen Administrator slowed her own talking to silence, the two fascinated.
Absently, more and more Taylor's were allocated to examining the stone. Each with different ideas that would randomly cause a simulation to suggest something for Queen to inject into other thought processes if relevant. A committee with related ideas quickly shared and conflicting concepts deeply debated. Herselves were fascinated.
Their thoughts were interrupted by Adams soft voice. "Now... hand it over to Queen."
Before she could fully process that, she had already pushed her hand to the right, the mental illusion of her partner hugging her reaching out as well... and the Crystal vanished.
Taylor blinked. "Wha? The hell just happened!?"
[Interesting!]
She blinked, realizing that the many Taylor's had changed focus to within, somehow examining the crystal being held by a fascinated Queen Administrator. Huh.
Adam grinned. "By default, Queen Administrator is self sufficient. Needs no external energy source, and will slowly grow over time. But she can grow much faster if certain ideas or materials are gathered. I had to modify your soul a little bit in the first place to get her in there after all, making it an ability for you to pass things back and forth was easy enough."
He gestured, small items appearing in his hand and vanishing. "My System uses something similar to this to create an 'Inventory', a place to store materials for the various users. Your version may not pause time or keep things fresh forever, but it DOES allow Queen Administrator to connect to reality through your existence."
Taylor felt her various thought processes finish and fade away as Queen Administrator got... more spacey and distracted. "What... what is that thing?"
Adam chuckled. "Purification Dust Crystal. A fairly recent creation, it has low level regeneration effects and the ability to bring reality closer to a 'cleansed' state. More importantly, while it is great for helping normal people clean their stuff or promote internal health, the effect is far greater when used as a growth base."
Before a confused Taylor could get a better explanation, Queen Administrator held the glowing Crystal close to her face.
And took a bite.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam blinked.
Welp, he's blind.
As his eyeballs healed, he watched Taylor's body radiate a blinding light, shifting from near colorless to a marble white hue. Her eyes emitted as beacons, her skin glowed.
Neat.
...That should go away eventually.
Watching the energy melt the stone she floated over, he was very grateful to have locked down this area of reality. Then again, he had underestimated the amount of energy release generated by a Crystal Entity the size of several continents rapidly converting from boring multidimensional gems into a conceptualized 'Purification' Crystal foundation.
Simmy's simulations had shown after all that the 'Purification' Crystals could self repair, slowly modify powers encoded with them to be more efficient over time, and reduce or even reverse the damage caused by overuse. Storage wise, it was a dozen times better than the default material Shards were made of, and transferred power better too.
Hmm.
Had he progressed a bit too quickly?
He should have tested this more before deciding to give it a try.
Yeah, he probably should have.
He could feel an invisible Narwhal on his shoulder, giving sexy advice in tight clothing like 'Stop Experimenting on the Enhanced Woman you Just Saved!' and so such.
Crap, he was going to get in trouble for this later. He just knew it.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
[It feels so good!]
Taylor watched in a daze as the Crystal planet below slowly shifted, the whites more pure and the dark shades more cool and refined. The dust that drifted everywhere seemed to vanish as it reached these modified regions.
Above the land, a woman of crystal flew in complicated patterns, a web of glowing white energy spreading like veins over her body.
[Taylor! Taylor you must fly with me!]
Crap, she was coming in fast!
In the end, Taylor had to put up with being held like a princess while a giggling angel flew around, showing off the various changes the new material had caused.
[Efficiency has already risen by 4% in over half my sectors! And that glow, it seems to get rid of debris as a side effect even as it heals areas damaged during my shift into your soul.] Taylor felt gravity shift as her flight assistant dove to the side. [See these support structures? This is where I am going to store stuff you give me, so it won't get damaged or covered in powder or whatever.]
Taylor had met Parahumans with pocket dimensions or so called 'hammer spaces' before, and like everyone who did had felt that small twinge of envy. The idea of having her wallet and keys somewhere safe but accessable even when out in costume without the risk of being exposed... not that it mattered much at this point. Heck, just keeping tools somewhere that she couldn't fall on them (It hurt like a bitch) or damage them while fighting was an awesome thought.
The Queen was VERY ecstatic. [This stuff is AMAZING! I think it slowly gathers energy all on its own... not sure. It may just be due to how much easier it is now for my body to restructure, modify, and alter itself. Seriously, the improvements are so big it is hard to tell right now. What IS this?]
A voice echoed in from the blue eye in the sky. "Yeah, that stuff is crystallized kami or faith, patterned to use the concepts behind one of my abilities, 'Purification'."
She shivered.
Again, that thing up in the sky was creepy. And Taylor had forgotten to ask about it.
The blue eye, larger than any sun or moon, twitched to keep the two girls in focus. "Since you seem to be rebuilding large sections of Crystal Clusters anyway, try eating these two as well."
Taylor felt something pushed into her hand in the real world, and without thought they were in her hand HERE, even as she passed the blue one to the landing winged Shard.
The Queen gently took the gem, glancing at the one still in Taylor's hand. [Hmm. They... seem to be the same thing.]
And they did, even if the colors differed. Pretty though.
The voice from the sky, which was still recognizable as Adam even if far more echoed and strange, hummed. "Yeah, but I added some data to them. That blue one has everything I know language wise, because YOUR languages don't match the ones from MY reality, even though our Realms are so close. This should prevent a lot of issues in the long run I think, even if you are very unlikely to run into many of the actual languages involved."
Taylor gave a deadpan look to her partner, who had already started nomming on the gem like a squirrel, both hands holding it up to her bulging cheeks. How refined.
The eye twitched. "Anyway, the more languages you know the easier it is to learn new ones, or whatever. Oh, and along with the human stuff I also included computer languages as well. Binary of course, the stuff the Droids use, all the various programming languages, and WAY too many protocols."
Taylor blinked. "Why?"
Queen was still happy nomming.
The eye... shrugged? "Because Shards can do crazy stuff. I figure based on how you said your power worked now, you could do some more neat stuff if Queen Administrator added some shard clusters to decode wireless signals, interface directly with technology, and so forth. It should be pretty effective on any world less advanced than Star Wars."
...What?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
The Queen was ignoring the jobber-jabber, lost in her own world of delicious, delicious data. So much unusual, unheard of data! Oh by entropy, the succulent data!
It wasn't just the alphabet or sentence structure, these languages had idioms, and historical context, and species variations, and so on and so forth and SO DELICIOUS!
This data was beyond new! It was unlike anything she had consumed before! Forget new worlds or dimensions, REALMS were where the good stuff was!
Her eyes lost focus as she tried to slow her consumption as much as possible, to make this fabulous dinner last forever. Clusters of crystals absently grew, focused on analysis, on social modeling, on behavior detection and interpretation, on future statistics and probabilities for whole SPECIES that were never possible or discovered!
This... sigh, so good.
Her research clusters had grasped the programing languages with rapture, examining the many examples of viruses and Trojans and 'direct access dimensional manipulation' protocols and more, suggesting all sorts of interesting new methods of communication for her human to be able to explore!
All the while, the spread of 'Purification' continued to modify her existing infrastructure, cleansing her systems and enhancing her abilities even distracted as she was at the moment. She was able to close over 32% of the exhaust vents, the space reclaimed by even more complicated Crystal Clusters since the waste was being purified and cleansed by the WALLS THEMSELVES!
She blinked, looking down at her empty hands. NO! She snagged the red crystal still held by Taylor, eager for more delicious Noms!
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
The eye paused. "Ah... Taylor, you may want to warn Queen Administrator before she... oh."
Taylor watched her partner snag the other red crystal, and start sucking it like a lollipop. Sensually.
What. The. Hell.
The sky watcher seemed to cough. "Right. That one contains all the details about how to modify and heal your body and genetics, basically a more restricted but safer to use version of my 'Recovery' ability. I included the theoretical Dust Crystal version needed to allow Queen to heal you in the future, though it will need testing. And it also has a lot of raw data from various databases and the thousands of humans and stuff I had scanned over time... and..."
A loud slurp.
The Eye... blinked. And started to close. "Right, I'll come back later. Let me know when you two are ready for company again."
Taylor's face was way too red as it was, she appreciated having the peanut gallery leaving so she could carefully ignore the Queen's antics properly.
Seriously, how lewd.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam winced slightly, his skin trying to burn as he pushed Taylor's hip (The most PG area in reach) to shove her further away from the molten rock below.
Her floating shtick was cool and all, but her white cloud of energy thing was trying to melt everything nearby. Giving her the data crystals had stung pretty badly, even with his enhanced body.
But he couldn't just leave her floating over an ever deepening pit of way too hot rock.
As she floated over a relatively non-melted section of earth, he focused on the ground.
"Conversion."
There, a massive amount of high heat conducting metal. It would distribute the issue so at best she could warm up the ground a bit and not make a surprise lava bath.
Hissing, Adam pulled his arm out of danger and blew what cool air he could over his fingers. Taylor's conversion process was WAY exothermic. Her outfit had dissolved an hour ago.
Pausing, Adam winced. Right, just because she was glowing white and therefore impossible to see, did NOT mean she would appreciate being nude in 'public', even if he was the only one here. And in retrospect, it was a good thing he hit her outer hip when moving her. Best not to mention any of that.
With a wave of 'Manipulation', the layer of energy closest to her skin wove itself into micro-mesh cloth like his flame clothing of yesterday, back when 'Flame Manipulation' was all the rage.
Except he had far more practice now.
Still hidden by her massive glow, his power could feel her new shoes, pants, shirt, and massive ten-gallon cowboy hat.
Hopefully her questions about 'WHY AM I WEARING A HAT!?' would distract her from 'Why am I not wearing my old clothes!?'.
Either way, this should be less awkward than her falling nude into a puddle of lava.
Using 'Conversion' and 'Manipulation', he cleaned up the area, got rid of the trail of molten earth and stone leading to Taylor's new location, and (For the third or fourth time) tried to set up some snacks and drinks.
Note to self, his stock of snack food from Boro was running a tad low.
Leaning back in his chair, he absently began opening secured 'Transfer' portals to various Earths nearby. 'Research' would check them for radio, WiFi, or network data. He would make some notes on the place, and move on to the next.
After all, this Realm had been more than a little damaged, getting around needed a bit of exploration and mapping to ensure he and Taylor didn't land somewhere on fire or with acid air or whatever.
Sipping on his hot chocolate (It was a bit late for tea, he felt), he watched with relaxation as a multitude of worlds were slowly categorized, beside him a glowing woman pulsed while slowly converting her power into magical prayer crystals.
Good times.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Queen Administrator was having a blast!
Large sections of her clusters were busy researching the new data of course, and still importing in more from her Avatar's delicious snack, and only barely touching the extrapolation of new theories and stuff...
But the interesting stuff was the new protocols and cluster designs!
The crystal structures Adam provided to allow her to heal her human were simple to recreate, a small hill over there was already reforming in fact, but the design was so much more efficient and simple than her existing ones that her analysis clusters were going nuts!
Most of her crystals had already converted to this 'Purification' Dust stuff, but the progress had slowed now that she had a whole new design example for potential Cluster growth.
So of course, like any true Administrator, she had focused on enhancing and improving the most important clusters first: The ones for analysis, research, enhancement, and refinement.
Because the better she could analyze the examples, the better she could research how it operates. The better that research went, the more enhancing to existing clusters she could do... and the more she could strip away excess and refine the end product.
Which made analysis easier and more productive.
It was a loop of improvement, one Queen was running as fast as possible even as the implementation of the improvements were causing her planetary self to shift and reform from the changes.
This cycle of advancement would likely never end now, not that she wanted it to. After all, she was gaining far more benefits making her ability to improve herself better than if she wasted time on each individual ability she owned first.
Thankfully, she knew how to multitask.
Right, those protocols.
Radio waves, ranging from 65.8-108.0 MegaHertZ with interval frequencies of 30 KiloHertZ depending on region and policy, and can very more on various worlds based on this data... Normally people would make compromises in detection to save in space and resources, but Queen restructured an area on the northern hemisphere of her surface into a series of clusters, each one focused on an individual KiloHertZ of the radio spectrum.
Most of which were doomed to never carry relevant data, but she had space and storage abilities to record that empty silence without issue.
The WiFi protocols were going to be useful with those detection clusters, as it used the radio frequencies of 900 MegaHertZ and 2.4, 5, 5.9, and 60 GigaHertZ bands. At least it did on Adam's Earth Bet, so it should here as well... probably. If not, she would figure it out.
Just in case, better run the feeds of data from the many radio receivers even now being constructed through the analysis and research clusters. There could be all kinds of unknown protocols and frequencies used, especially considering the many tinkers out there.
Of course, radio waves and light waves are both electromagnetic waves, so the same clusters detecting strange data would ALSO give Taylor a 360 degree high definition visual input ability, not that she would thrust all that raw data at her Human. That would be annoying.
It should ALSO help detect gravimetric abnormalities, thanks to how those waves interacted... which should help detect certain types of camouflage, some bizarre devices, and so forth.
Queen Administrator hummed along, enjoying the buzz of her Improvement Cycle even as she would spare a cycle to examine her core Crystal Clusters and instigate another restructuring. And she hadn't even examined the 'Remote Access Dimensional Transfer' crystal pattern that would allow her to interact with distant mechanical devices! How well would that work with her organic species manipulation clusters after a few enhancements? Maybe she could merge them!
It felt like a good scratch when you hadn't even known you were needing one. An itch addressed that had been annoying for SO LONG that you got used to ignoring it.
It was glorious!
Absently, she twirled her tongue over the red shard in her avatar's hand, examining one of the larger databases of biological research data Adam had just casually handed over, her face flushed with pleasure and eyes half lidded with the surge of info.
She ignored Taylor awkwardly shuffling away as her mouth exploded in delicious, succulent data.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam paused when Taylor suddenly began absorbing all signals. Her area of influence went from brilliant bright light to absolute absence, an ellipsis of nothingness.
...Huh.
After a bit, he formed another Crystal with details on how to duplicate electromagnetic waves for examination without sucking them all directly into Taylor's soul. Cause that wasn't safe. And she was currently looking like some kind of demon/reality rift thing.
And with only barely a pause, he decided to just toss the thing at the girl. She was absorbing everything at the moment anyway, it would... ah, there it goes.
He blinked, eyes watering as the hole in reality flashed back into a bright white sun. So... progress was made.
At this point, he was really glad he hadn't included the really bizarre stuff, like how to spawn small drones or insects or whatever directly with Aura or who knows what. Or granted her access to Faith abilities or Magic directly.
Because she took a 'Self-Repair' kit and data on how to talk to people and has turned into a super-data-harvesting-hub thing. Which was neat.
So... plans.
He needed to get home for a bit. Aside from them expecting his arrival, he noticed that traveling from one reality to another without stopping by his home base made his mind... a bit flighty. Destabilized.
Adam needed the grounding that his 'home' reality granted. Something about that specific Realm made his soul settle and his mind clear. Probably because he was formed there.
He reviewed the inherited memories he got from showing up here.
Life was currently... a bit rough for the people of this timeline.
Death everywhere, of course, and yet there were still Villains with powers running around being dicks. Some of these planets people had been shoved to had monsters and such, others had people in danger, there were areas that needed support REALLY soon or things would get bad...
It was a lot of work.
...And he didn't want to do it. Not alone. He could spend thirty or forty years easily trying to fix all the problems here, no doubt.
He hummed. That felt like the 'Work Harder' option, not the 'Work Smarter' one.
So how could he help out this Taylor. Aside from 'Come to my side, we got cookies! And living versions of your family. And you can have a little sister!' which was more than a little tempting.
Adam tapped his hand against his chair, not noticing his body transforming more and more into his Variance skeleton form. He didn't have the time nor the inclination to either act as a doorway between places for the rest of his life OR to rebuild each planet of an entire Realm to a more stable form.
His skeletal hand paused mid tap.
A series of dangerous planets, filled with desperate people. Monsters, Villains, and... yes, rare resources, trade opportunity... loot.
A dark smirk spread over his skull as he looked up at the dark.
Sounds like some people need to give out some Quests.
And he had a System that could use some places filled with danger and reward, where the idea of never ending work is both expected and appreciated. With Loot. A portal leading one to another land, a doorway to another region...
He began to chuckle.
It seemed like a good time to introduce 'Dungeons' to his people.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor sighed as she ignored the moaning crystal angel behind her. Honestly, have some decency.
It wasn't that she was a prude. She wasn't.
She was just... busy a lot. And didn't have a lot of experience with people in a sexual context.
All that fighting for her life and to protect those she cared for didn't leave a lot of time for sexual exploration anyway, even IF the girl she treasured as a sister or more hadn't betrayed her and hurt her as much as she could over the course of years. And it wasn't like she didn't appreciate a man with rock hard abs or something, Brian was a damn fine example of that, but a girl could only be so attractive before even Taylor had to admit she was sexy as hell.
Ignoring the sounds as best she could, she focused on her powers at they changed.
And they WERE changing.
Every moment she could feel... new feeds of data. Like the armies of insects she used to possess, she could feel something that wasn't physical slowly fade into understanding. Like colors she had never seen, or flavors never tasted... these 'signal receivers' were oddly fascinating to examine as her minds explored them.
[Oh Shards, he included even MORE historical data WITH the healthcare database! Mmm... Queen likes... Oh yes...]
Ignore. Repress. Ignore.
Her ability to split focus had actually been enhanced over four times now by Queen Administrator as she continued this strange 'Improvement Cycle' of hers, where whole sections of her body were being enhanced and refined. Her range for SELF administration had somehow gone up... if her body was bisected, she could artificially restrict her blood vessels and control each half of her body individually if they were within a city block or two of each other. Which was great for 'pulling herself back together' and horrifying from a 'Oh God, Taylor was a zombie the whole time!' point of view.
Some things were MUCH better now. With direct communication between herself and her power, they had agreed to set up a list of what could be controlled by her 'Master' abilities. True, she had to use different methods now that the Entity network connecting so many people and creatures through minute dimensional rifts was decaying with both the Thinker and the Warrior dead, but Queen had assured her that she could cobble something together using the 'Remote Access Dimensional Transfer' crystal clusters Adam provided, even if it would take slightly longer to access creatures when in a new area.
Plus side, she could theoretically use her ability in places no Entity had ever traveled to! Downside, taking control of creatures would take longer now. Which wasn't a huge issue, it just meant that Queen Administrator had to figure out HOW each individual species needed to be Administrated before it was back to good ole 'I control the Swarm' territory.
Taylor wasn't sure how to feel about basically having THE master ability of any master who ever mastered, but then again she didn't know how to feel about every creature large and small on nearly all Earths being connected via dimensional rifts in an Entity designed network for power shards to hook into. Both were more than a little horrifying.
At least she wasn't accidentally enslaving everyone who got too close to her body now, driving them with no emotional understanding into a slaughter-fest to defeat a golden god.
So, progress.
To be honest, now that she could interact in a more understandable way with her partner... a lot of fears had faded. Oh, Queen wasn't human, and if it didn't involve Taylor directly she would care nothing about watching orphans burn or whatever, but she was honest, loyal, and a happy shard of an unknowable massive Entity of absent minded genocidal powers. Eugh.
Point was, Queen Administrator had no problems ensuring that Taylor COULDN'T use her powers in ways that Taylor explained were unacceptable. Or unethical. Oh, she could and would let Taylor dominate any living (and possibly mechanical?) thing to be a new part of her existence, but it would be a choice by HER, the HOST, Taylor alone. Not some uncontrollable mad decent into psychosis or a whim by Queen when bored.
And her personal fear of some Master or mechanical tool somehow forcing her into acting against her will or loved ones? Well, she now had someone with her personal interests as number one priority in a location no Parahuman could access who had a strong opinion on someone trying to control HER human.
It wouldn't go well for them.
That said, the biggest improvement to her situation was from a short conversation she managed to have with the shiny flier power BEFORE they met Adam, literally hours ago.
Because apparently, a standard side effect of controlling a species was a mental change... one that let Taylor treat the swarm as tools or extra sensory devices. Easily disposable minions. Which was fine with bugs and fish or whatever, but horrifying when used on sentient creatures. At least, it was horrifying to Taylor.
Fixing that single issue made Taylor's personal happiness levels skyrocket, even if Queen Administrator was apparently unsure why such a change was to be made. Still, her power Avatar had no issue disabling the mental conditioning effect when operating on sophont (Human level intelligence) creatures. Not like cockroaches cared if they were smashed into things, no reason to feel guilt over them.
[Ooh! Social context on inter-species relations in relation to possible issues during childbirth? Oh my! Look Taylor, there's pictures!]
Oh God, Queen was still talking. Ignore!
Somehow having thousands of copies of herself available did NOT make this situation less embarrassing.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
[I didn't know humans could bend that way. Then again, shards barely need to interact for us to bud, so I suppose I just lacked context. Oooh, there is an inter-species version of this 'Kama Sutra'!]
Taylor shuddered as even more images were 'shared' directly into her brain.
Nope. Nope nope nope. NO.
She had discovered that as easily as she could shunt outside sources of emotions and such into her mental swarm, her power was directly connected to EVERY COPY of her own mind.
So every time one of her many, many brains got 'curious' (And far more did than Taylor was comfortable admitting) they would each be flooded with data and images from an overly eager Queen Administrator, the Pervert Shard.
And so help her, if one of those simulations shut down from embarrassment, then that one copies thoughts would be spread through the swarm all too easily. A cascade of embarrassment. A flood of emotions.
[Oh Taylor! There are mentally controlled prosthetics in this database, now you can expand your procreation possibility field to include the female gender! That is VERY efficient! And there was that one girl you were a bit interested in...]
NO.
BY SHEER FORCE OF WILL, Taylor regained control of her body.
...And all she could see was white light. Because her body was a glow bulb. Great.
Activating her power, she frowned. Organically, nothing was causing the light. And her senses could tell it was originating from some undefined field related to her systems... it was some sort of byproduct produced by Queen Administrator while she was converting to pure 'Purification' Crystals. Great.
Well, that was easy enough to handle, their system had accidentally solved this issue a few hours ago.
With a thought, the layer of heat, light, sound, and other vibrations and energies attempting to leave her soul were absorbed by one of Queen Administrator's older designed collection clusters, not so much for the analysis feature (Although the data WAS being reviewed, because why not) but more so because those previous versions of the analysis crystals did destructive analysis. It required a bit of modification so that the massive amount of data and converted energy could be safely stored and directed, but surprisingly it was easy for Taylor to suggest the changes and for Queen to apply them.
In other words, unlike the new stuff Adam provided that ensured only copies of data or energy were reviewed or altered, these new clusters collected all that information and energy and destroyed/converted it in the process of seeing what was going on. A bit of redirection and a little creative looping would burn off that power safely or redirect it somewhere useful. Probably.
Instantly, Taylor fell two feet from the air as the light was cut off from escaping her soul. Landing on some sort of warm metal, her balance was easy enough to maintain thanks to her powers... which technically included the ability to absorb light or energy now, if she was careful enough to have Queen redirect any overflow to somewhere safe.
More importantly, she could ignore her power's ongoing commentary MUCH more easily out here!
With a grin, she shifted back into a more relaxed stance and looked around.
Uh.
Huh.
Where Adam had sat, a cackling skeleton with six bone limbs arched over his shoulders was typing madly at holographic screens on a set of holographic keyboards and interfaces. The skeletal form was near textbook 'Evil Villain In Lair', if one was able to ignore the very squishy chair with floral pattern it was sitting on.
Then again, it WAS wearing Adams clothing, so... "Adam?"
Mid turn, a bright blue flame caught the creature on fire, before it suddenly drifted away like a soft mist. The smiling face of Adam was easy to see even as his (Now human) hands continued to type away on the glowing screens. "Taylor! Is Queen Administrator finally finished?"
She blinked. "Uh... no, I just could not handle sitting around in there doing nothing." Or be forced to listen to an alien gem discuss her potential sex life/harem. "What are you up to?"
He waved a hand at the displays, several of them floating higher as bone like mechanical limbs shifted, previously hidden by his posture and chair. "Well, I'm sure you plan on helping out your people and all that at some point after you finish recovering, right?"
She flinched. To be honest, she was more than a bit terrified that there would be no one to even attempt to help at this point. "Yes, though I am not sure how."
Adam pushed some documents forward with a grin. "Right, here is the basic pamphlet. Tell me what you think!"
She blinked, and looked down at the colorful pages. Huh. "DA Guild?"
The man nodded. "Stands for 'Dungeon Adventure Guild', basic idea the same as those 'Adventure Guilds' you read about in various stories. It will be a new feature in the System, where you can join a team and go handle various tasks for rewards. Not just the regular quests my people go on, or ones related to your job or power, but more people submitted tasks and odd jobs needed."
She continued going through the details. Tasks would be rated both with danger level and reward level, some would only be acceptable if you were strong enough according to Guild Ranking or if your team was considered qualified.
Guild ranking would go up after certification testing, but you had to accomplish a certain number of quests at your rank before each attempt. Higher rank means more dangerous and valuable quests become available, lower rank meant longer but easier quests, or the various 'fetch X amount of Y' quests or 'Discover/Explore new area' tasks.
She blinked. "Well... I mean, this is interesting and all, but how will this help?"
A second page was handed over. A rough listing of quests.
Her eyes widened. Aside from the expected items like 'Contact local officials' with a first time completion bonus for said teams, and some more obvious stuff like 'Submit local laws and restrictions' or what not, there was some fascinating stuff here.
Like finding the most recent 'Kill Order' list, and what that implied. Such as discovering worlds with interesting properties... such as ore availability, or Arable (Farmable) land, or good hunting.
But to her? The high reward for 'Contacting people of interest', which included many people she recognized... especially 'Danny Hebert'.
Her eyes forced back tears. "You think he is alive?"
Adam nodded. "Queen Administrator was almost his partner at one point, though she wasn't cast out of the network to be a field agent until shortly before your trigger event occurred. Her connection to him was only cut off when I secured this region for healing purposes, he was alive and safe at that time although Queen was not sure exactly where he was dimensionally."
He waved a hand. "So I've been examining this Realms many dimensions anyway at this point to mark them as hazardous, empty, wild, abandoned, inhabited, or industrialized. Still doing that, actually, but progress is being made."
Adam pretended to ignore Taylor's attempts to regain emotional balance, his screens shifting to show rough graphs of his progress. "Of course, we can't waste time going to all those places on our OWN, hoping to just get lucky. So I am having our DA members-to-be do the work while we focus on getting you stable and healthy."
His hands twitched, limbs with holographic emitters shifting. "Honestly we are more likely to find some sort of government first, and I am sure they can help us find people to help you find your loved ones. But just in case, my System's quest will ensure that, thanks to greed alone if nothing else, your Dad and friends will be found." Or confirmed dead. No reason to bring that up.
Adam continued to try and distract Taylor from inner thoughts, the two sitting in comfortable chairs surrounded by a harvested planet floating in the darkness. Because power or not, Taylor's ability to think outside the box was very useful as Adam continued to refine and modify the various quests.
Unseen and busy, Queen Administrator set aside some processing power to examine Taylor's new 'Energy Redirection' Crystal Cluster for possible improvements and enhancements.
What a useful concept. And potentially a delicious new energy source.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Narwhal and many others across Adam's home flinched slightly when System suddenly had an update. "What the hell?"
CD and Dragon were already examining the proposed addition to the System as Twilight started her own research teams on it. Adam's new suggestion had been augmented by Simmy, along with some other upgrades.
Shifting all powers to draw directly from their owners soul space instead of to external dimensional connections... would slow down the Entity Absorption rate. But the benefits were astronomical!
Aside from all the listed stability increases, it would allow System agents to travel to other Realms without disconnection from powers or shards, as well as add some low level defenses to the agents while in the field. It would also reduce the possibility of the remaining living Entity discovering the conversion process, and new 'Triggers' that remained would be able to convert the connected shard much more safely.
Furthermore, it would allow Simmy to include some basic powers for every agent, such as 'Bind: Team', 'Harmony: Communication', 'Transfer:Construct Node' and 'Transfer: Recall'. Letting teams of people communicate with each other, share Quest rewards or advancements, build 'Transfer Nodes' for future travel to the discovered Realm's dimension, and have an emergency return option if the user got lost somewhere.
Twilight's fascination of this new 'Dungeon Adventure Guild' was not enough however to distract Dragon and Narwhal's frustration that Adam was basically entrusting them to help setup ANOTHER of his schemes.
Still, the world had changed since 'The Guild' had started, and with EVERYONE having powers of some kind and the number of hard core criminals at record lows, the idea of converting 'The Guild' from its almost useless current form into this 'Dungeon Adventure Guild' wasn't as off the wall as it once would have been.
Certainly the stated goals of the project was welcome. Humanitarian assistance, new markets for commerce, new resources and lands to claim... And Adam's notes on why he was going through this whole mess was more than a bit convincing.
Because if THEIR Realm had been devastated, wouldn't THEY want someone to offer a hand?
Narwhal grumbled. All that aside, Adam had basically generated a building or two of paperwork for her and Dragon even with CD's assistance to get this stuff settled.
The man was supposed to make a quick stop, learn some tricks to safely let Narwhal and the others follow him on his travels, maybe determine how to make Dust locally... and most importantly: come home.
Now he was basically transcending a woman into a Goddess, crafting a Realm wide transportation system, and creating a method for his home reality to explore other Realms for fun and profit. Because of course he was.
She blinked at one note. "What does he mean, ask Annette Hebert how she feels about twins?" Her frown got more confused. "What the hell Adam, why would you ask this stuff? it sounds all kinds of wrong."
Why was he asking Danny about possibly sharing his wife even relevant?
She paused. Adam BETTER not be suggesting that, having sister-wives was one thing but including outside married couples?
...Hmm.
Meh, would depend on the couple.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam shivered. Mostly because Simmy had run a feather down his neck, but also from a slight pause in his work. "Oh right, Taylor."
The woman blinked, looking up from her own virtual console being projected from his work limbs. "Yes?"
The man flexed sore muscles and sat back. "Are you guys still using your Endbringers? I am pretty sure they are not being directed to attack at this point, but if they are not needed or whatever, I wouldn't mind collecting some more."
She blinked. "What."
He nodded. "Yeah, I didn't really feel safe with the Simurgh out there ready to smash me, so one of my first acts when I got strong enough was to find the Shard controlling the creatures, Master it, and get them away from people."
Adam missed her expression as he continued to type more information on his panels. "Turns out that Simmy was NOT happy about being forced to attack people all the time either. Hell, she HATED to be near us, she is so powerful when it comes to prediction and understanding thoughts that it was more than a little painful being surrounded by so much intelligent life. Well, relatively intelligent anyway."
He saved his work and relaxed a bit. "Turns out she was VERY grateful for being freed from Eidolon, man pissed her off to no end. Became a great secretary after I helped redesign her abilities a bit. Didn't expect to marry her, but you know how odd life can get."
Taylor felt she should point out some things. "What."
Adam paused. "Well, we haven't had a whole ceremony yet, just sort of shared powers, bound her to my soul, and then she went off to tease my girlfriends about getting hitched first." He sighed. "Honestly, the girl is more than a bit of a Troll sometimes. Loves to get a rise out of people."
Taylor ignored Queen suddenly popping up, pointing out how Harems were very in vogue this year. "What."
He looked at Taylor concerned. "Yeah, I am a bit worried that Simmy suggested this particular visit because she wants to include the local Simurgh into my Harem. Not that I am really that against the idea, not really, but I don't want a massive Conflict Engine to feel pressured into a relationship. She doesn't really have relationship experience. But even if she doesn't end up as a love interest, she would likely appreciate it if I fixed a few of her issues and picked up her siblings. I doubt any of them enjoy being stuck in this dimensional cluster."
Taylor seemed a bit distracted.
Adam sighed. "Although, honestly, I am a bit concerned that if I give into this once, Simmy will start trying to collect alternate versions of all my lovers, and that just seems like a bad idea in general."
She held up a hand. "Stop. Just stop. Let's work on the Quest thing, please."
He blinked. "Uh... sure?"
Taylor seemed a bit high strung. Then again, her people needed help, so maybe that was reasonable. He couldn't wait to stop back home and get his mind straightened out, it felt more than a bit hard to focus for some reason.
Then again, that might just be due to Simmy's teasing. Hard to tell sometimes.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Legend sighed, more paperwork having been placed on his desk.
Somehow, the fact that even in this time of crisis paperwork could thrive... how depressing.
He looked up at the assistant as he entered. "Yes?"
The man looked more than a bit awkward. "Sir, a group claiming to be dimensional adventurers are asking permission to raise a prayer totem altar to connect to their Deity and allow reinforcements to arrive."
Legend groaned into his desk, laying limp on the wood surface. "We have multiple planets lacking food, clean water, and building supplies. How do they keep finding alcohol!?"
His assistant shuffled. "Personally I find it more than a little believable at this point."
The last Triumvirate gave the man a dry look. "Any particular reason?"
The guy shrugged. "Aside from their odd powers, they have documentation signed by their version of Rebecca Costa-Brown that matches known security codes. And one of the party members looks like the twin of a hero I KNOW died during Golden Morning."
With barely a pause, Legend shoved the paperwork off his desk as he strode after his assistant.
Either this was an impossible event or it was a Master Parahuman attempting to stage a trap... either way, it was more important than paperwork.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor frowned. "Adam, I think your design system is broken."
He looked up from his own tinkering. "How so?"
She pushed the holographic screen his way, tapping on some buttons. "Some of the Quests I put up went missing. Watch, I'll put in the Quest to discover coal deposits again."
Adam hummed as the line item barely showed up before vanishing. "No, it is operating as intended."
Her frown deepened. "How on Earth is THIS useful!? I can't flesh out my ideas if things disappear every few seconds."
He shrugged. "Well what do you expect? After the Quest is accepted, it can't stay around cluttering things up. I guess I can leave a log of who is attempting which task... Good idea Taylor, this could help with documentation."
She blinked. "Wait, why would that matter? Until we go live, testing shouldn't even really be involved yet."
He shook his head. "Nah, I'm a busy guy. I activated our changes several hours ago. Team 'Avenging Apples' found the local leadership fifteen minutes ago and set up more than a few of my 'Transfer Node' altars, so the amount of Adventurers able to access and accept quests have gone up a lot by now."
Taylor's hands were frozen over the interface apparently controlling the actions of thousands of teams from another reality as Adam continued to ramble on. "Plus side, your version of Legend is now able to communicate to the leaders of my Realm and has been adding Quests to the new DA Questing System. Not just requests for resources or extra work forces, but he added many people to the 'Contacting people of interest' page."
Adam continued to modify stuff as the woman stared at him. "Yeah, your Legend was having issues organizing the Heroes spread out over all the various Earths right now, finding people, verifying who is where and what not."
Taylor watched Adam suddenly brighten up. "HA! Dragon and Narwhal have basically reformed our Guild into the base of the new DA Guild! Neat! And it means that I don't have to waste time finding people to run the thing. Man, this was a great idea."
She grit her teeth. "And my quests? Were there any results yet?"
Adam blinked. "Didn't you check your inbox?"
Taylor growled even as she exited 'Developer mode'... and saw the blinking email icon. Apparently Alerts were disabled during development of a LIVE INTERDIMENSIONAL FAITH BASED QUESTING SYSTEM.
Her finger hesitated though. Fears old and recent made the act of pressing such a simple button feel like she was actively hurting her people... that if she just ignored it, they wouldn't be hurt or dead.
But fear never held her back before.
With gritted teeth, she opened her notifications and forced calm as she methodically read each item.
Her father lived.
As did Lisa, Rachel, Foil, Aisha, Parian, even Victoria and Amy were alive...
Dragon's status was unknown, but assumed alive from the Quest results.
Brian died during the battle. So did Kid Win.
Clockblocker... might be dead. Something was preventing the Quest from being confirmed as passed away... it was odd.
As the names and results of the massive battle were confirmed, she... well, she wasn't sure how she felt. Then again, she had grown used to pain over the years.
Queen Administrator's hug was welcome though.
She never noticed when she fell asleep, nor when Adam covered her with a thick blanket and wiped away her tears.
But in the arms of her partner, her sleep was dreamless.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam ensured the air would be warm enough and Taylor's area would be silenced... then sighed as he turned towards his interfaces.
Apparently, the new 'Development Mode' he built disabled message alerts.
Hesitantly... he exited to the main interface.
And winced.
Yeah, he had more than a few messages from his girls. And based on the humor he felt from Simmy right now, it implied that yes, he was probably in trouble.
As he read through each message, seeing the progression from surprise, to concern, to annoyance... to calm 'We will discuss this thoroughly at a later point'. Yeah, he was in trouble.
With a sigh, he began writing a list of answers and reasons... and why was Narwhal talking about rules for including outside couples in the harem!?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Legend was unsure how to feel about the situation.
"And sign here, and there... Now confirm that you agree with the terms..."
But honestly, knowing that in his most dire time of need, another option appeared that could potentially save his people...
"No, you need to check those boxes. Cause you want them to include an area assessment of the places you are sending them out to explore. That one too, you want samples when possible."
Well, it was a pleasant surprise.
"Right, that will do it!"
Legend watched as the signed contract was placed on a bone altar, a soft squishy striped doll of some sort of elephant/tiger/thing placed on top.
Then the altar pulsed with blue fire... and the doll had changed color slightly. The altar glowed a bit as well. Creepy.
The leader of the new 'DA Guild Hall' gave a sharp nod. "And there you go! These local quests are now posted to the System, and can be accessed by our members. If any go unaddressed for a period of time, the reward will increase until it hits the limit you listed, then we will contact you if it remains unaccepted by the deadline. We can renegotiate per item at that time."
Legend smiled. "Thank you for guiding me through this... setup. Again."
The man laughed heartily. "No problem! I never got to meet our Legend in person, so this is a bit of neat moment for myself as well. Anyway, my team was specifically picked due to our professions, and my builders need us to give them room to start building the facilities around the altar."
Legend nodded, following the team leader towards the property edge. Thankfully, one thing his people DID have right now was real estate, even if the visitors clearly overpaid for permission to build a temple. And knew it.
It was odd, he thought, to imagine a world where EVERYONE could CHOOSE their powers. Even though it clearly had advantages... watching the 'Storage' users just hand out tools and materials for the Builders to levitate, bind, modify, and more... was like watching an artist preform.
Not sure about the nude blue angel statues though. Maybe it was a cultural thing?
Point being, Legend had been busy coordinating with what government organizations managed to hold together... and the ability to set requests for construction, for healing (SO MANY healers!), for these 'Transfer Nodes'...
Well, the visitors were VERY well received by nearly everyone.
Though the passage WAS a one way affair... no one could transfer back to these visitor's home reality without some sort of mandatory cleaning and conversion process and the approval of some 'Queen Administrator'.
And that name FELT familiar somehow, though it was somewhat hard to place.
It was probably a normal name of not much importance.
Apparently the woman was some sort of local Admin for the System, the contact for people who needed to interact with the other side of the Transfer Node network.
Clearly she was busy getting everything set up, but for some reason Tattletale's reaction to the news had been... a bit off. Not necessarily concerned... but VERY interested. Especially after the Thinker got a hold of the new 'Quest Listing' released by the local Guild Hall facilities.
Legend watched the building rapidly grow as it was constructed. If nothing else, allowing access to the other Earth's without needing Parahuman involvement was a massive benefit to the new tentative relationship with this DA Guild.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam decided that going home (And facing the music) was a great idea. Eventually.
Any minute now.
But since he HAD to make sure Taylor was alright (Stalling? Whose stalling? YOU'RE stalling!) he decided that this empty Earth, claimed by Queen Administrator anyway, could use some sprucing up. A bit of paint, some curtains, etc. A nice shrubbery.
A quick summon later, and Simmy flashed into existence on the rocky planet, his Faith socket allocated for her use.
Now to get started!
Then she 'Transferred' away.
...Huh.
Bah, he could get this started on his own.
His flesh evaporated as he expanded a bit, his body massive in scale as his skeletal was joined by dozens of skeletal limbs arcing over his back. Constructor beams began building worker drones in batches as Gather was used to clean up the local area. Reality shifted slightly as the ground faded away and new objects began construction.
After a few dozen assistant drones were formed, they were sent off to smooth down this rock. Any material would be used to make even more drones, until they reached around a million or so. That should take a while.
As the floating craft vanished into the air towards various directions, Adam continued some of what he had done back in Remnant: designing and modifying various schematics for cities, farms, commerce centers, and so forth.
Thankfully his 'Temple' for this Realm was designed already, so this place could get a few secured 'Transfer Nodes' crafted easily enough. Thus he could focus on more interesting things! Like how to fiddle about and craft some efficient and hopefully humane animal raising/harvesting methods. Fully automated, without going crazy and raising a sheep army or something. And he would set up a petting zoo, cause petting zoo's were awesome.
Push come to shove, Adam knew that he could cheat and make some meat production machines to support this planet... but he liked animals. Especially baby animals, which were both adorable AND delicious. But mostly adorable.
Probably would be best to raise the oxygen level for people who needed to breathe, or for those without the enhanced lungs of Taylor. And for the future animals as well, those needed less toxic air. The ambient temperature was pretty damn low too, probably due to the damaged atmosphere. Meh, should be easy enough to handle.
Adam sent some orders for the construction of several stupidly large machines on the planetary magnetic poles which would start pumping out some compressed gasses, get things back into working order. It would spawn massive storms and stuff, but the drones should interfere with the worst of those and locally he could keep things safe and quiet easy enough. Eventually the air and temperature should be back within workable zones. Just in case, some temperature adjustment devices would be included near the gas generators. No reason to leave things to chance.
Only a million drones however might take too long... but then again, he hadn't reached the cap yet. So maybe it was fine? Best wait to see what was needed as the changes progressed. He could always make more drones if needed.
He idly watched the sky, drones occasionally flying through his view and distant stars twinkling.
The lack of moon was odd. Should he build a fake one? Would that be too strange? Moons were big too, that would probably take time even with a lot of super advance drones with bizarre advanced beam technology.
He could dump some Dust up there and then smother it in kami. But that could do all kinds of strange crap to reality. Or damage this planet further. Best leave that alone for now.
Adam sighed. Yeah, best hold off on that until he got home and pushed himself closer to the 'sane' side of the spectrum. After all, no one had asked him to fix that moon back on Remnant, why should he go through the hassle of MAKING one here? It would probably cause problems. Somehow.
Meh, if it becomes an issue he could steal a moon from one of these alternate earths with no population. Probably.
Could he even 'capture' something that big? Especially since it wasn't a creature like Mister G. Cause he would feel stupid to go through all that trouble, attempt to consume a moon, and just fail like a wuss.
How much energy would 'Transferring' the moon take? The moon was like... 7.3 something times 10^22 kilograms. That was a lot of material to shove outside of reality. Even without worrying about the gravitational fields and stuff, how much magic/energy/etc did it take to move even a ton with his power?
Cause that was like... 8 times 10^19 tons or whatever. Which was a BIG number.
Maybe he could move it over time? But that would make him stuck here in 'annoying to visit' land for WAY too long. As it was, being so close to home BUT NOT QUITE THERE was causing him some mental issues that seemed to slowly worsen over time.
Clearly visiting alternate versions of realities he already visited would be... tricky. Certainly could not risk long trips to them, in the future. The 'Transfer Nodes' however were helping, it stabilized something inside him that was hard to define, but getting home was still high up on his priority list.
Hmm. Best way to move a moon here, if he didn't want to make one from scratch, would be to find TWO moons, nearly identical. It would be easy enough to sacrifice one massive rock to fuel the magic/energy/whatever to 'Transfer' the other.
And this Realm felt like unlimited levels of pancakes stacked over each other, so he had lots of moons to work with. Theoretically.
Problem was how it all interacted. He hadn't risked opening his senses this wide while in his home Reality, crazy space whales shouldn't be poked after all, and the number of dimensions overlapping had some strange type of interaction between each other. To the point where it felt squishy almost.
Not to the point of naturally forming wormholes or portals or whatever, but the metaphysical weight of one Earth seemed to somehow interact with every other Earth.
It wasn't well defined, not to Adam's slightly distracted consciousness, but it felt like reality was a bit... sticky. Tacky. Velcro-like.
It was why taking THIS moon over here would be easier than taking THAT moon over there, although they looked/seemed/felt like they were near identical, almost interchangeable.
It was odd.
His thoughts were derailed as Simmy popped back in, a floating Angel with multiple wings being dragged along... and then burped.
Adam blinked. Ignoring the local Simurgh, he accepted the note Simmy passed him.
And blinked again. "What do you MEAN you ate the rest!?"
Eating siblings is NOT COOL, MKAY!?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Flying was awesome.
Taylor dipped around a cloud tower, the storm raging below. Up here, the sunlight made the horrible weather seem so far away.
She had dreams of flight as a child. Days of wearing towels as capes and telling her mom about how SHE would one day be like Alexandria, taking names and kicking butt. Giggling with Emma as they talked about being princesses with lasers and turning into birds and things.
Diving into the rippling darkness below, she felt the freezing winds and crackling electrical discharges as she followed the storm, her sensors modeling the path and intensity of the vapor. This planet was so cold, the only reason the surface was NOT covered in ice was due to how little moisture existed in what could charitably be called an 'atmosphere'. Still, the skies felt so free...
When she got older, her dreams had lost their shine. The idea of being lost, soaring so high up that streets were impossible to recognize, the air too thin to breathe, the wind too stiff, the bugs and pollution... and then of course, the horror her life had slowly become. Dreams had faded, and thoughts of the sky seemed impossible to experience.
Bursting from the clouds, she dove through space enjoying the sunshine.
Even asleep as she was, she could feel Queen Administrator's guidance as she flew between cloud mountains, enhancing the dream to near reality.
[Actually you are currently controlling Drone 3221. Accidentally stole a few from Adam, but he was fine with it.]
Yep, a very realistic dream.
[Adam is a bit of stick in the mud though. Keeps telling me not to put up any nude statues of you in the new cities.]
WHAT!?
[I know! Just a few tasteful additions here and there, show people a bit of how awesome my human is, maybe interest a few dozen dating opportunities...]
Oh God, stop helping!
[How am I supposed to get some adorable human buds to spoil if you don't administrate some personal connections young lady?]
Nope! Dream, flying, very busy right now!
[Fine, but at least keep your eyes open for humans with good hand coordination or linguistical skills. I only want the best for my human.]
Could a drone blush? Damn it if she wasn't trying.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam twitched, flesh evaporating from his bones before reforming.
Yeah, he would have to head home pretty soon.
The sky was in constant conflict now, storms everywhere and floods happening full time as the air was being forced back to habitable ranges. It had forced the many automated cities and (Currently unpopulated) farms to be built on massive pillars above the rapidly flooding surface.
Then again, a mostly flooded planet seemed neat too. The drones were smoothing the surface over, filling caves and valleys and stuff while harvesting the mountain ranges. According to the calculations, once the whole thing was smooth there would be an average depth of a little less than 9000 feet, or about 2700 meters. Most of the salt would be converted to solid material though, so that water amount would drop a bit.
He WAS cheating on the connecting bridges between cities though, as they were designed as individual connected flying vehicles like the roadwork on Remnant he had designed.
Adam felt a bone limb crack, the mechanical assisting tool pulsing with a bit too much magic, before repairing. Again. Bone joints were more fragile than expected, even considering the magical nature of the material.
This... self destructive effect of being 'not-quite-here' in a too-close Realm was doing amazing stuff for his 'Recovery' ability, exposing flaws and issues for his adaptability to test and repair... but it was not comfortable.
He glanced up at the drone network, seeing even more of the devices fall under Queen Administrator's grasp. The process took longer than either expected, since each new device added so much data for Queen to organize. The equipped sensors were no joke after all, they did originate from a space faring society.
In the end, the number of needed drones had indeed needed to be increased. Even more so as a few hundred were being 'borrowed' by Taylor's partner over time.
He glanced down at the pouting nude Angel, Simmy being fairly unhappy at being grounded.
But if you don't want to be in trouble, don't run off and eat planets of sentient crystal. Especially sentient crystals that are metaphorically siblings.
The newly arrived Simurgh on the other hand was a treat to be around... although she had seemed overly eager to be bound via 'Grid of Confinement'.
Which he was 99% sure was due to how she could predict stuff... Because the black tentacle bondage exhibition had caught ADAM off guard, if no one else.
She seemed FAR too happy to be 'caught' and bound to his soul, and had ended up confined in Simmy's old cell. Like roommates, or whatever.
Point was, conversion of 'Simurgh 2: Electric Boogaloo' was underway. Though peeking during the modification process showed the new body (Because of COURSE she would also become a nude angel, must be a family thing) was not blue.
She was orange.
Eye gouging, near-glowing levels of bright neon orange.
The note from Simmy implied this was due to orange being a complimentary color with her own blue, but Adam was pretty sure she was going for a day/night thing, with orange similar to the sun and blue similar to blue moons.
Or they were going the Baku-Ranger route and trying to get one Simmy of every color.
Point was, Simmy was grounded for being a bad girl.
And she was now being ignored as best as Adam could, because she decided that being grounded required bondage gear and a paper dunce cap. Which she made more sensual than her standard nudity ensemble, somehow.
Ignoring her pout, he (again) gave her an oversized cloak and turned to watch the ongoing storms, his left arm slightly compressing into gore before recovering.
After another day or so, this planet should be stable enough for him to head home and set up some quests for people to show up here and plant the gardens and bring animals for the farms. A dimensionally secured food source would be both profitable AND a good long term investment... almost all living things needed to eat, after all.
He paused, the blood from his exploded eye cleared as his body recovered. He HAD remembered to tell Taylor that she and Queen were the Administrators for all Quests in their home Realm, right?
Because that seemed semi-important.
He blinked as Taylor jerked awake in her chair, tossing the quilt wildly to the side. "Ugh! Leave me alone, you perverted crystal menace! And no more porn injected into my brain, it is hard enough adjusting to my new body without you throwing my hormones in every direction!"
Adam lightly coughed, causing Taylor to freeze. "All that aside, I need to tell you a couple of things and have you make a quick decision Taylor."
She turned and stared at him. "You... didn't hear anything right?"
He lied solemnly. "Of course not." Standing, he ignored his leg dissolving into a bloody mist and reforming. "Back on point, I've been rebuilding this planet Queen Administrator owns as a home base for you and your new position as System Administrator for this Realm."
Ignoring her confusion, he turned to Simmy. "And you need to unsummon, hopefully that will stabilize me enough that I can get us both back home with no issues."
Taylor blinked as the Angel vanished. "Was she wearing a ball gag?"
He nodded. "Yeah, it felt a bit odd considering she almost never speaks anyway, but whatever makes her happy. Happy wife is happy life, and all that."
Taylor's stunned expression was irrelevant. "Now, I am mentally decaying from being in this Realm a bit too long without stopping by my home reality. This normally happens at a very slow rate, but your Realm is stupid close to my home and thus the damage is much greater."
She blinked as he somehow shifted both of them into a massive city, the area they had been relaxing in no longer protected and almost instantly flooded from the held back fresh water ocean. "So I will set up a 'Transfer Node' and bring you home to see your mom, two dads, and younger sister. Also, I kidnapped your dad and sent him to my home reality first. Pretty sure I mentioned that earlier. You coming with me is your choice, by the way."
He did what!?
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Little Taylor looked up at her mom. And dad. And older dad.
To be fair, the three adults seemed off balance as well.
She nodded. "So I got two dads like Shelly does, but I ALSO got a mommy and dad, and now a mommy/dad/dad combo?"
Annette seemed to be considering something. "Maybe. The boss DID go through the trouble of bringing me an extra Danny and enhancing his body back to prime condition."
Her dad groaned while her new OLD dad seemed to feel awkward. "God, this reminds me of her 'experiments' back in college."
Old dad blinked. "You mean with Janet and her sisters? Or that time she wanted to 'check out the Lustrum hotties'?"
Danny sighed. "No, the 'harem' incident. With our old band?"
Mom blushed. "Right! Story time over, bed time Taylor! Boss Variance says your older Sister will be visiting fairly soon and you don't want to miss that!"
She frowned. "But we just had lunch..."
Annette nodded. "Right, that's practically nightfall, off you trot. You two hunks stay here, we'll talk after."
She sighed and allowed herself to pushed towards her bedroom. Adults were weird.
On the positive side, she was pretty sure this meant more presents during her birthdays. And having an older sister could be cool, Emma's was pretty awesome.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
In the secured receiving facility 'Guild Hall' constructed by Narwhal and Dragon, the alter with a plush Baku glowed with a massive blue Aura... which formed into an enormous glowing blue skull, mouth slowly opening.
Adam collapsed from its jaws, a refined woman with curling brown hair gently stepping out from the same maw.
His body twitched HARD, then seemed to snap back together. "Ow."
Taylor blinked, turning back to watch a flaming blue Skull fade away into mist. "That was creepy as hell."
A digital voice popped in. "Good afternoon Variance, Hero Queen Administrator." The body on the floor groaned as Dragon's hologram formed. "Would you mind waiting for us to ensure Adam is fully recovered before visiting your family? If something goes wrong, he would be best to handle it."
Taylor sighed, her identity not exactly secret if one of the most powerful beings she had ever heard of had already gathered her dad and dropped him off here. "Sure, and I guess you can call me Taylor. Are you also married to the skeleton dude?"
She shook her head. "My sister is, I am happy enough with my boyfriend. Would you like to rest and have some refreshments while we wait?"
As the two were led to another room, Narwhal had already gathered Adam and pulled him to a couch. "Oh baby, you didn't tell me the damage was this bad..."
Adam weakly waved a hand, half skeletal. "I'm not actually hurt, it just feels like... I am off balance. Like the flat ground is a swinging tightrope." He carefully patted her shoulder, his hand off target and mind already starting to fall asleep. "I'll be find, gind. Fine. Simmy was keeping an eye on me. Oh, but you guys have to keep her grounded, she ate some Endbringers and was a bad girl."
Narwhal blinked. "What?"
He felt... so tired. "And her new twin is orange and I don't know why." Just... a bit more sleep. "Tell Taylor she needs to use her power some more to gain control of her new body. Or else she will bite through her silverware and stuff. And that she should breathe more often to look normal. And not to breathe water, even if she could now, cause it freaks people out."
Her hand brushed his hair. "Shh, we will handle it all when you wake up."
He felt the darkness swell up. "Yeah... yeah. And I think Taylor may be an immortal gestalt consciousness now with a magical rock partner? I... I think I told her. I... I may have done some stupid things."
A soft kiss on his forehead. "We girls can handle it."
His protests fell off as he relaxed into Narwhal's warm embrace, the soft allure of sleep calling his weary mind.
Sometimes heaven is just coming home.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Narwhal noted Twilight's attendance and brought the group to order. "Right, now that we are all here, we need to touch base a bit."
Nightmare Moon sighed, her mostly human body shifting in her comfortable chair. "The new developer interfaces that Adam designed are amazing alone, and have simplified administration of the System, but I've been hearing a number of issues with the new 'Dungeon' feature regardless. My fans have been sending me messages and even actual prayers about issues, which I have been forwarding to the research department."
Twilight was already distracted on her side of the table, having also adopted human form over the last few months for their greatest achievement: Hands.
Sonia Lagarde had two aids bringing her needed paperwork even during this meeting, and was attending through holographic projection. "Adam's businesses are doing well enough, but the negotiated 'Quest Request Fee' has been a surprise income boost for this quarter, taxation for it will be a bit annoying but I've got my people on it."
She leaned forward. "That said, there is a large subsection similar to a trade network being set up interdimensionally now thanks to the Dungeon options. We've named it the 'Item Shop' and 'Auction House' for historical and cultural reasons. Or to be honest, some of my girls are geeks and thought it was an awesome idea."
Narwhal accepted the hard-light hologram documentation as Sonia continued. "There is an additional delivery fee to other Realms than ours, but it is negligible. I do want Adam to open up his Dungeon system to Remnant though, the RWBY Realm has a massive untapped market and Adam's 'Desert Garden Zoo' resort is the perfect place to set up as a Quest hub and commerce center."
Narwhal hummed. "And it would give our guild members training in combat, as I'm sure no one would mind our people killing Grimm over there. Especially since Adam took out some of the most dangerous and large ones."
CD tapped the table. "Sonia has asked Dragon and me if we could offer more products for Adam's business to manufacture. And we've had mixed results."
Dragon nodded. "We've been following the technological advancements being submitted from Remnant, since the upgrades to System allow messaging without having to bother Adam all the time. Robo and Boro. as well as the AI under them, have been talking about it a bit... but none of them have been able to duplicate Dust on their own yet despite the available schematics."
CD pulled up some reference charts. "Not too surprising for Robo's team or Shirley Temple's platforms, as the Star Wars Realm has MORE than enough high level energies already, but hopefully Boro's people will make some advancements now that Adam has helped Taylor convert her power into Dust."
Narwhal winced. "Just as a heads up, I don't want to send our people physically to the Star Wars Realm until we can protect them from the influence of the Force better." Not to mention any kids from there born in THIS Realm may infect this reality with the Force as well. "Right, Dragon, you've been helping Taylor adjust. How is she doing?"
The cyborg hologram sighed. "Not well. A lot of friends and coworkers died over the years and the poor thing had never really had down time to fully accept that. It doesn't help that many of them still exist in this reality, although apparently her local versions of her family have been VERY accepting of the situation."
She hummed. "So at least she will have some emotional support from them?"
Dragon chuckled. "Assuming that Annette leaves her extra-dimensional husband alone long enough. Little Taylor has been exchanging System messages with Taylor for hours now at least, and seems MORE than excited. The interactions seemed to help."
Narwhal paused. "Wait, how can Taylor be in the System? Wouldn't that convert Queen Administrator automatically?"
Twilight looked up from her work. "Ah, we were concerned too, but it turned out that Taylor has NOT joined the System." She went back to modifying the report she was reviewing. "Queen Administrator decided to join instead."
Narwhal felt her cyber twin body developing a twitch. What. The. Hell.
She sighed. "Moving on, Simmy, can you get Betty out of..."
The bright orange angel looked innocent. The bright blue angel looked smug.
Narwhal glared. "I can't call you both Simmy, and I won't put up with months of shenanigans where you two play up the confusion. Pick a name or I will make up silly ones for you."
Two slips of paper, one blue, one orange, fell to the table.
She picked them up. "Right, so Simurgh 'Simmy' Burns and Simurgh 'Sammy' Burns. Cause Simmy and Sammy won't get confusing." She sighed, the two nude beauties far too self satisfied. "EITHER of you, how do we get Betty out of Adam's Grid of Confinement without bothering the man or hurting her? He is far too tired to wake up for this, but we need to get the poor girl some supplies."
Simmy nodded, Sammy grinning in the background, and both held their arms out... and 'Transfer' pulsed as a blue skull faded into view. From the illusion of an open maw a confused cow Faunus stumbled into the room. "What!?"
Narwhal jumped from her seat and wrapped the unstable woman in a tight hug. "Betty! I'm so glad you are alright after that rough journey. How was your trip?"
Brown eyes blinked. "Narwhal?" She hesitantly returned the hug. "I... it was very confusing. For a while, I was in some field with grass everywhere, and... I mean, it felt dream like. I didn't get tired or hungry or thirsty... in a way it was soothing I guess."
Noticing the crowd over Narwhal's shoulder, she paused. "Uh. Hello everyone!"
Nightmare snorted. "At least Adam has good taste in women, I was not impressed by that Sienna Khan gal."
CD gently gave the Alicorn/Currently Human seductress a side hug. "Don't be like that, the poor girl had been in a leadership position during a massive crisis. I'm sure she had other sides to her personality than sexual aggression."
Betty giggled. "Not really, it's why she made a female harem to begin with. Not that we complained too much, mind you, but there is a reason why my former Boss hadn't passed the reins yet to the next generation."
Twilight was mentally out of it, but she absently tried to contribute anyway. "I don't really approve of reins because of how tricky they can be to use safely, there are better sexual aids honestly."
Narwhal held back a giggle. "Quite so." Leading Betty to a chair, she began introductions. "You've been roughly introduced from our messaging while you were back in your home realm, but just in case..."
It only took a few minutes to introduce each woman to the Faunus, although she did pause on one. "Sonia Lagarde you did not meet due to her own very busy schedule, but she is Adam's business woman and the boss of his financial, soon to be multidimensional empire."
Sonia's smile was wide. "I've been told you have contacts with the livestock market on Remnant? Because Adam very recently acquired a number of untenanted farms that also need quite a few animals and multiple types of plant life. Interested in getting some stable income and a bit of a political base in THIS reality as well?"
From Betty's wide grin, the two would get along swimmingly.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor felt Queen Administrator analyzing the many creatures and electronics as she relaxed in her temporary guest quarters. Not commanding them at the moment, just learning from scratch how to 'Administrate' without the overwhelming support of an Entity incursion dimensional fracture web installation. The bugs came easily enough, she had the memories to help Queen cheat when doing the tests, but rats and so forth took much longer, especially because the provided facilities were surprisingly clean for a vary large radius.
Though connecting her mind to the router had been a hell of a drug trip. It took Queen hours to take the random screaming data and format it into something Taylor's mind could treat like using a computer, instead of seeing binary and tasting wireless interference.
So thanks to some messed up meta-shard clusters cobbled together by Queen, Taylor was now mentally browsing the local version of ParaHumans Online and the rest of the horrors the internet had to share. Dozens of Taylors, each mind exploring the vast expanse of the digital age. Which turned out to be mostly porn, but that seemed normal for any unregulated communication service.
ANOTHER message came in, through System. From little-girl-Taylor. And for the record, Taylor didn't remember being that adorable at ALL. Seriously, her little self had big anime eyes and everything.
With a deep sigh and an eager giggle from Queen, she opened it.
And could barely understand the message. Again.
[Ooh! I've never used that method of prioritizing lists of actions based on human limits of patience, resource availability, and threat rating! I mean, sure it is 0.312% less effective than my current policies, but then again I never took emotional turmoil into my calculations before. Your Little Human is so adorable!]
Sibling, they are called siblings. And I think dimensional versions of self are like step-siblings or something. Probably not cousins.
[Right, Type this to her, and maybe include some of my theories on how to allocate resources based on theoretical needs verses reported issues.]
Groaning, Taylor was half way into typing the letters into the System interface illusion showed by Queen when she paused. "Wait, YOU'RE the one directly connected to the System, why aren't YOU typing it!?"
Suspicious silence.
VERY suspicious.
With a growl, Taylor reached with her soul Avatar to shake Queen Administrator's shoulders in frustration... when she slipped slightly on the crystal surface of the planet.
And pulled.
Taylor was completely squished as Queen Administrator's Purity Dust Crystal Avatar form appeared over her own body, falling without style while squeaking in surprise.
Queen was confused.
[What the... How did you... Wait. Your real body is in my soul while this is your Avatar!? No, they are both real and I am both real and... No, neither of us is real any more. Or not. What did you DO!?]
Taylor was confused.
Taylor blinked, a surprisingly warm and attractive nude crystal representation of her powers holding her down. "I... I'm not sure?"
Gently pushing her partner off, the crystal angel vanished back into her soul.
Taylor nodded. "I am completely not sure."
But no matter what, she WAS sure that she wasn't going to be typing multiple page conversations to miniature versions of herself anymore. Especially if she could pull Queen Administrator out of her soul 'inventory' like a sandwich. Seriously, Taylor had nearly gone spar having to type up those very complicated AND very boring conversations.
[ACK! There was two of me in here and now we are one of me and I think I ate myself!]
Whatever, less typing for Taylor.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Ghira blinked at the message on his Scroll. "Why the hell does Betty want to buy so many animals?"
Kali shrugged, cuddling with little Blake who seemed distracted by nothing. "Probably another farm Adam is building. The guy got stuck in a loop after a while, we have more produce being grown in our various new cities than we can physically harvest at this point. Without his systems to keep the things from rotting I'm sure the nation would smell very funky by now."
Her husband grumbled. "Well, at least he came up with a fix for THAT issue. He has a bunch of people that are willing to travel here to accomplish various 'Quests' that we can submit. According to the email, the cost for transportation and the majority of the rewards will be handled by Adam for us, even if the other Kingdoms will have to include a bit of a fee."
She hummed, booping Blake's adorable nose. "He has been more than just a good friend to us and our people. Did Betty mention how she's settling in?"
Ghira sighed and forwarded the attached messages to the various people in Betty's circle. Apparently the communication method between wherever the heck Adam went and here made direct messaging a complicated affair. Well, whatever works.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam floated in sleep, the ever long arms of Squishy cradling his form as he recovered.
It would take time.
Her own small, pudgy Avatar was floating through the Crystal Castle, visiting the deepest region and the spark within.
Thankfully, it had begun to stabilize.
Best not to risk visiting a Realm so similar for a long while though, because towards the end Squishy had to begin allocating vital resources to suppressing the damage caused by the trip. It hadn't gotten too risky... but it had been approaching dangerous levels of concern.
Her motions paused as she carefully moved to the second concern, the Grid of Confinement.
Simmy and Sammy could enter and leave as desired, their cell unlocked by Adam back when Simmy was an only child, but once again Squishy carefully examined each prisoner.
Simmy had allocated the harvested Endbringer Crystal Clusters to each of the three, enhancing Behemoth and Leviathan to higher levels and raising their intelligence to something like animal level. It couldn't compare to the massive amounts hoarded for her and her sister of course, but just in case Squishy checked each cell to ensure that any soul instability caused by the recent events would not risk confinement compromise. Or in other words, unwanted escapes.
Thankfully, the improvements added to ensure Betty's safe transport had enhanced the general stability of the Grid as a whole. It all seemed secure.
She patted the cell with Mister G, the rumbling purr causing Adam's soul to slightly vibrate. At least he was doing well.
With her blue eye watching Adam's soul, she went back to directing his recovery process. As many advancements as he had made so far, on the most fundamental level he was still a bit on shaky ground. Too much progress in one area could actually cause further damage in others. They would have to discuss which area of advancement for him to work on in the future, at least until the risk was lower. Maybe helping out with the new DA Guild...
Yes, with certain limitations so that she could use those recovered resources to enhance healing, it would allow her to speed up his recovery process without forcing the poor boy to sit in a hospital somewhere for a few months.
Because letting Adam get bored had proven to be a bit problematic in the past. Best head it off early on.
Sending a System message to Narwhal and the girls, Squishy went back to work using power charges being generated to further stabilize his recovering mind and soul. They could find SOMETHING for him to do that didn't require redesigning planets, invading other Realms, or saving nations from being consumed by monsters. Probably.
