by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.
Dimensional ShenanigansIn the domain of multidimensional transportation, there are several powers allowing people to move around, and several super-powered individuals able to use them. There's Doormaker, for instance, able to open stable portals between places.
In Canada, a member of the Toybox group of Tinkers, Dodge, can create hideaways. His basic offer is a cube held in non-space, with grey borders. It can appear in our reality as a plane of the same grey, same size or smaller, allowing anything pushed through to enter the cube. And if you continue in the same direction and hit the opposite wall, you exit through the plane's other side.
What people didn't know was that Dodge could do much better. The hideaways he sold with the basic fixture were already in high demand and thus priced quite high. And it was for a good reason, too: initially, each of them took its toll on his health.
But since his debut, he had experimented. Apparently, he could delegate the hardship to other persons, and even animals. He thus collected pests of all kinds and their cumulative life force helped him work and refine his better creations.
At the very beginning, before doing cubes, he had worked with tetrahedrons, but it wasn't convenient for people used to square edges in everything – whether houses, office buildings, and lairs. But after that, he had tried the other solids, and even several of them together. He could now have a rectangular block of any size, as well as dodecahedrons and icosahedrons… and after that, any shape that could be mapped with triangles.
His hideaways could also be furnished with interior decoration too. The first trick he had tried was to layer the initial volume with a layer of concrete, on which you could bolt anything. It required some work on his part, but not as much as if he was doing real work: as things went, he could do it mentally with a dollhouse version, before expanding it to real size.
Levels, stairs, even doors and windows. The doors would be an easy-to-guess way to access the outside, and could be labelled by the destination they opened to, while the windows could show whatever view he wanted. He "just" had to prepare the things beforehand, as more points of view or entry required that he visit more locations.
His creation weren't only for escaping places and living there: he also had all kinds of traps. Because with dimensional portals, you could really entrap anyone not able to move through dimensions by themselves. And even then, you could drop them in a star. Or a black hole.
Or, in a more funny way, you could have people walk somewhere trapped by an invisible doorway (or one showing as solid floor), only to arrive in a place with the gravity oriented differently, pushing them back or throwing them somewhere else.
Given how he had amused himself refining his powers, he even got Doormaker jealous, when Cauldron's main transporter looked at his creations. From then on, Doormaker tried to have his portal react in other ways, too, even going to install permanent doorways, much like Dodge, so that his charges would stop asking him to "door" them from work to home and vice-versa. Lazy humans.
Of course, it wouldn't do for a permanent portal leading somewhere dangerous to be kept available to any trespasser, which is why keys were issued. At first, only a given key could open a given portal to its given destination. But things changed: soon, a given key could open any portal towards a specific destination, limiting the number of unexplainable closets in the Triumvirate's offices. And they immediately linked the keys to their bearers, too, because leaving around keyrings leading to Eden's garden (for the biggest example) would be too dangerous.
That left Doormaker (and, by association, the Clairvoyant) more time to enjoy themselves. And discuss ideas with Dodge. And they came to the realization that they could get rid of Scion, once and for all – Cauldron was always listening to whatever they said, and reacted immediately when those words were uttered (because Scion often reacted to them as well). But Contessa not moving and actually munching on popcorn gave them pause.
Scion moved slowly, and had already been moved somewhere by way of dimensional portals – that had been the day of Behemoth's rampage in Cairo, and had given the Golden Man enough time on site to destroy the Endbringer. Unfortunately, it had heralded the "birth" of others, but Doormaker and Dodge had worked hard on transporting each of them into a Black Hole. In another dimension.
Transporting Scion there would have been enough too, but Contessa had already warned that it wouldn't be sufficient: the Golden Man was only an expression of the Entity's body, and it would cross dimensions to cross powers with anyone who would make him cross enough.
Their new idea was to siphon its powers each time he passed their portals. He had a large amount of those, but it wasn't infinite. Thankfully, they could prepare the portals in advance, and stick a large number of them together. They specifically geared their efforts so that the siphoned power was to make the portal work, mainly, because they also knew that they couldn't devise an "attack" on the Warrior – he would know, and defuse it.
So they gained plenty of powers, several times. The first time brought a shock, because they discovered that the Entity's powers were unbridled. Unlike theirs – they were particularly tired from their first attempt. With Cauldron's technology of extracting powers safely, they refined theirs and continued. Other powers were "offered" to worthy individuals in Cauldron's Grand Plan – Dragon, Armsmaster, Panacea… and even Skitter (or Weaver, as she was called now).
Bit by bit, they chopped at the Entity's power base, until they caught the one power that held him together – much like a little girl named Fortuna had done to Eden, a long time ago. Contessa sighed, her job done, and started finding Plans to amuse herself.
Meanwhile, with Doormaker and Dodge still working at it, Cauldron was offered a portal to the transdimensional planet where the Warrior's body was waiting for looting.
Every human in the world ended up with powers. And with the threat of the Endbringers gone, they worked their way into space, in a never-ending wave of colonization that spanned galaxies and eons.
No, they didn't prevent the Heat Death of the universe, but they took every pleasure they could on the way.
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To be continued… not todayAuthor's Notes: Just a couple ideas that don't fit anywhere else for the moment.