Brockton's Celestial Forge

by Lord Roustabout

The Celestial Forge is the greatest combination of crafting powers in Jumpchain, meaning it is the greatest combination of crafting abilities in all of fiction. In Brockton Bay a forgotten side character's trigger event ends with him linked to the Celestial Forge rather than his intended shard. His expanding collection of tinker abilities drag him into the city's cape conflicts.

140. 96 Breakthrough

96 Breakthrough

I closed the entrance of my Workshop behind me, severing the connection to Blasto's lab. The Key Link still held, allowing me to access the door whenever I wanted. At any point I could pop back into his lab through that supply closet. I didn't know how he would react to that, but I wasn't sure how he would react to a lot of what I demonstrated.

Not needing to be obsessively cautious about every potential misstep was both liberating and terrifying. In the past I would never have risked that kind of display, even against an allied cape. Showing that capacity to a villain, even one as removed from the local situation as Blasto, was harrowing.

Even so, I wasn't really afraid of this coming back to bite me. I knew that I could handle whatever the fallout might be. We could handle the fallout. Having a team really changed things. Still, shifting from desperately trying to minimize my impact on the world to suddenly being able to take action openly was a massive step.

It was one I had always known would come at some point. That was the whole purpose of the Celestial Forge. My power built upon itself until it could counter any problem that might present itself. Until it reached the point where it was 'safe' to take action.

I think for a lot of people their thresholds for what was 'safe' would have been reached several days ago. Frankly, if I was looking at my current capacities from the perspective of my early days, I would have agreed with them, but the world was regrettably more complicated than that. It was easy if you just thought about things in terms of who could punch harder. If you could beat the person who would be coming after you, then what else did you have to worry about?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. The reactions of organizations that were not yet openly hostile but still potentially destructive, the social dynamics surrounding an unprecedentedly strong cape, the shifts in the balance of between established groups and creation of power vacuums, and, of course, that mounting threat of unfathomably massive scale that was getting closer every day. The threat that had something to do with the passengers and the source of parahuman powers. The threat that Taylor could handle, in the right circumstances, or I could make an attempt to manage with less confidence from my Passenger.

Though more than I had received from his initial assessments. Quite a lot of projections had been revised as my powers started synergizing with each other, rather than being considered in isolation.

I could manage those concerns, even the more frustrating aspects that were being handled with the involvement of Tattletale, but it wasn't the kind of challenge I was expecting when I first got my power. I was so excited about the fact that I would eventually be able to kill an Endbringer that I didn't consider how the rest of the world would react to that feat. If someone could beat an Endbringer they were effectively more powerful than the combined efforts of the entire world. That wasn't the kind of thing people would feel comfortable around. At least not without a lot of effort on my part to manage both public perception and the reactions of the world powers.

The Celestial Forge was nothing if not full of surprises. I had expected a free ride of constantly increasing power and also gotten geopolitical stress and public relations issues. Honestly, the problem was more with my impression of what being a cape entailed than with the way my power was structured.

One of those surprises was waiting for me in the… It didn't really feel right to think of it as the 'main area' of the Workshop any more. That impression had functioned when it was cordoned off, but since the workshop's expansion to an area the size of Texas that distinction had kind of broken down. I suppose the best way of putting it would be to say it was in the open area of the Workshop, rather than one of the contained facilities.

The Workshop's newest arrivals were set up on the 'southern' cape of the landmass that composed my Workshop. Cardinal directions weren't exactly fixed, mostly going by the emulated movement of the sun in the Sky Simulation. On the 'south' coast my Housing Complex had provided rooms for all of them, but it was clear they preferred the more industrial level of the Workshop compared to the Loft level. The rest of the team had been working to deal with them while I'd finished with Blasto. Through that conversation they had provided regular updates, which was more than a little distracting, though it did leave me eager to see things for myself. After a quick check I took a moment to focus before teleporting directly to Cape Kerbal.

The name was apparently still up in the air, with other suggestions including the alternate spelling Kape Kerbal, purely for alliteration, and the more direct reference to be found in Cape Kerbaveral. Regardless, I finally got the chance to see the Kerbals with my own eyes.

Twenty-four Kerbals had been added to my workshop, tacked on to a power called This Is How I Want It. The power provided me with a mental design and assembly space. It was a mental realm where I could piece together plans for any device. The space included a list of all components I had available and acted as an enhancement to my previous ability with modular technology, allowing components to be mixed and matched to determine a combination that would function optimally.

That was an impressive enough ability, but there was a secondary effect. I had the ability to hand off any design I came up with to be assembled by the Kerbals. The Kerbals in question were short green humanoids from an alternate version of the Earth called Kerbin. My power had provided me with a pilot crew and engineering team, apparently entirely as a means of facilitating that particular aspect of my power. Twenty engineers and four pilots, kidnapped from their home in order to work as my personal assembly crew.

I would have been upset about what had happened to them if there was any indication that it was causing them the slightest bit of distress. Instead, every report has shown nothing but raw enthusiasm for their situation. Raw enthusiasm seemed to be something of a default emotional state for Kerbals, but it was better than needing to comfort sapient beings that had been stolen from their home planet.

Kerbals seemed to operate with something of a singular focus. The power that brought them here had the same origin as my modular Leggo power and an early power called Aerospace Engineering Makes Things Go Fast. I remembered using principles of that ability in the design of Taylor's wind knife, but the intention was the design of high-speed aircraft and space vehicles. The latest power came bundled with an ability called This Is, Actually, Rocket Science, which granted an instinctive grasp of Delta V and orbital mechanics. It all added up to an exceptional focus on space travel, which was exactly what I was seeing in the Kerbals.

The Kerbals' facility, both their accommodations from the Housing Complex and the additional buildings that had already been constructed, looked like an idealized NASA facility. Not the actual work environments, but the polished impression that they always gave the public, as if they actually worked in a futuristic museum and the gift shop was just a coincidence. Everything was sleek and polished with tasteful depictions of space vessels and celestial objects incorporated as artistic touches, with the only clashing element being the Kerbals themselves.

Kerbals were people from an alternate version of Earth, but they weren't humans. Their species had clearly taken a very different path from ours. Looking at them, it was hard not to think of them as green potato people, but a better description wasn't easy to come by. Kerbals were about three feet tall, though nearly half of that was due to their oversized heads. They were at least humanoid, even if their proportions were somewhat cartoonish, including large eyes and oversized mouths, even for the size of their heads.

And they were green. Medical scans were still working on that. They weren't exactly plants, but they were probably closer to vegetables than mammals. That was probably why their need for sleep, water, food, and oxygen were practically non-existent. I don't know if they were obsessed with space travel specifically because they had a biological makeup that made them perfect for it, or if it was just a coincidence.

A very significant coincidence, considering they were effectively immune to damage from G-Forces on top of everything else. I would have suspected biological engineering, but thankfully there was no evidence of such. They also had their own language, history, and culture, not the kinds of things you'd expect from an engineered race.

Survey had been working constantly to transcribe as much information about the world of Kerbin as possible, only slightly slowed by the fact that she didn't actually speak Kerbish. The language was… complicated. I don't think a normal person could actually pronounce it given the number of sharp sounds and unmelodic syllables. Fortunately, I could both speak and understand it perfectly thanks to a power that was called 'Speak English, Dammit!'. Incidentally, that seemed to be Survey's attitude towards the situation.

Fortunately, my duplicates also possessed that ability and had been acting as emissaries and translators for the new arrivals while Survey frantically worked to build a full translation of their language. The work was going to be redundant the second I or one of my duplicates could get into the Spiritron Computer to build a full linguistic guide, but when it came to new information Survey could be a little impatient.

The Kerbals were currently in one of their new assembly buildings, which had been built courtesy of the Matrix. The Matrix had been responsible for pretty much all of the facilities that weren't provided by my power and seemed to have enjoyed the novelty of being able to design and construct their own space center.

I knew exactly what they had done even when I was outside the Workshop. One of the items I'd acquired over the course of the previous night was a Personal Reality upgrade called Central Control. It was a Smart Pseudo-Intelligent computer system built into the very structure of the Workshop. Its primary function was to track the location and condition of every item in the Workshop, but it was able to interface with various other systems for added benefits.

The system integrated with Dynamic Waterworks to control the exact proportions and flow of any fluid integrated with the system. Right now that was mostly the Volcanic Forge's lava and Tybalt's milkshakes, but there was some theoretical potential, particularly if we manually expanded the system's reserves to other liquids.

It worked with the Computer Hub to tie into the Workshop's intranet, something that the recently arrived Robots were also connected to. I'd been using drones since the first set of expansions of my Workshop, but these were dedicated sorting and retrieval robots that were tied into the Workshop's systems. They were also fully upgradeable, something my duplicates had already looked into.

Most of all, Central Control synergized with Hallowed Earth. Since that upgrade had arrived my workshop had technically been my own divine realm, but beyond providing blessings to everyone other than me and potentially serving as an afterlife it didn't have much effect. With Central Control, that had changed.

The tracking effects of the Central Control system extended to me, enhancing my awareness of the Workshop and its contents. I knew where everything was, every item, every structure, every blade of grass. It would have been overwhelming, but some part of the connection made it easy to manage. It was like I was aware of an extension of myself rather than dealing with outside information.

The expanded awareness had informed me of everything that had been constructed for the Kerbals. It also let me know about earlier projects that had been completed by my duplicates and not fully documented, instead left as surprises for me to stumble across one day. Nothing harmful, but I'm sure that the duplicates who assembled the hockey rink were hoping I'd end up accidentally activating the disco conversion mode. I have to say, they were exceptionally creative in hiding the mirror ball and light-up skating rink.

My link to Central Control was how I knew what to expect when I stepped into the manufacturing bay to find the entirety of the Celestial Forge, four Kerbals in flight suits, twenty Kerbals in a mix of lab coats and short sleeved dress shirts, and a partially assembled recreation of the Mercury-Redstone Launch Vehicle.

"Hey!" One of my duplicates waved to me. "Come meet the new neighbors."

I smiled as I approached the crowd. With the Celestial Forge outnumbered three to one the Kerbals were a bit much even for them. Survey had manifested six holograms of her avatar and spread them through the crowd in an attempt to both gain as much insight into the new arrivals as possible and provide what translations she could, with my duplicates roped in to assist. Fleet was speaking with one of the Kerbal pilots, at least as well as he could with the limited translation. He was nodding as the woman mostly communicated by gesturing emphatically. He was simultaneously controlling a half dozen miniature vehicles to the considerable interest of the engineering team. The Matrix had generated multiple drafting boards and computer consoles with rendering software and was listening to technical explanations from a group of engineers. Context was a lost cause given the current level of translation available, so they had defaulted to commutating entirely in technical drawings, much to the Matrix's enjoyment.

Garment seemed to be split between interest and confusion, given the fact that the singular focus of the Kerbals was on something other than fashion. Still, she had access to an entirely new world of clothing, even if most of it was centered on practicality and space travel. The prospect of mission patches did intrigue her greatly, particularly since I had received a power called 'Emblems' along with the arrival of the Kerbals.

Emblems automatically emblazoned my creations and vehicles with my symbol, but it also allowed the creation of cloth emblems specific to any mission. While there were no inherent abilities tied to the mission patches, they were completely unique and specific to the mission in question. In fact, there was a fiat effect that meant I could only issue the emblems to people who were participants in the mission. The prospect of a new, unique form of clothing accessory with inherent limitations intrigued Garment enough for her to seriously inquire about the prospect of flight training.

Tetra didn't have much of a chance to express her own interest, given the fact that she had become a minor celebrity with the Kerbals. The presence of an actual alien in their midst had apparently nearly caused a riot and she had found herself fielding a non-stop barrage of questions that had only recently started to taper off. She seemed to be enjoying the attention, but clearly was a little overwhelmed.

I found Aisha and Tybalt near the edge of the crowd observing the barely controlled chaos. They nodded as I approached and I took a moment to hold back with them before diving into things myself.

"You know, after the living glove, the talking cat, the alien, and whatever Garment counts as I didn't think your power had much more to throw at us." Aisha said dryly as she watched the antics of the overly excited new arrivals. "You'd think I would know better by now."

I shrugged. "This took me by surprise as well." I said.

"You're sure they're not aliens?" She asked. "I mean, they're literally little green men."

I shook my head. "Alternate Earth. I assume there was some version of me there, but I don't have memories of it. All the powers are completely technical. No context to them at all."

"Duplicates have checked." Aisha said, turning back to the Kerbals. "None of them knew you, or even a 'Kerbal' version of you, whatever that would look like. Seems you just grabbed a chunk of staff from their NASA equivalent." She looked over the sea of smiling faces. "At least they're taking it well."

"We're lucky." I said. "I don't know how I would have handled it if we had people struggling with separation from their families or desperate to get back to their own world."

"That does not appear to be the case." Said Survey, manifesting a seventh hologram next to us. "I have conducted a series of interviews and it appears that none of the arrived Kerbals have family or social connection that they wish to return to." She transferred the data of her results as she spoke.

"Yeah, lucky that you grabbed the unconnected loners." Aisha said.

"It would be incorrect to say the Kerbals lacked connection. However, all serious points of friendship and social support are found among the group that was transported." Survey elaborated, highlighting the relevant areas in her report. "Though I must state my analysis is incomplete given the translation issues. Now that you have returned, I would request formal assistance in Kerbin language structure, preferably with the assistance of the Spiritron Core."

'I've got it.' One of my duplicates conveyed to me telepathically. 'Survey's put up with enough of this as it is.' He vanished with a slight pop, appearing next to the Spiritron Core.

It had only been a few minutes, but I understand where Survey's frustration was coming from. The multiverse structure of my power was one of the most significant mysteries that we were dealing with and one that Survey had limited capacity to address. She was entirely at the mercy of whatever my next power would be, usually in the hope that it would contain some clue as to the wider structure of my power.

Now we had representatives of another universe. Not the vague connections we'd been working with, but people with a full and complete understanding of their world. The fact that they seemed to have no knowledge of my connection to their world or how they arrived here was unfortunate, but it was still a crucial piece of data.

But unlike Survey, I wasn't concerned about the data. Well, it would be more fair to say I had more pressing concerns. "Do they have someone ready to speak for them?" I asked.

Tybalt meowed up at me, explaining that they hadn't made the selection yet despite it being the sole thing I'd requested upon their arrival.

"Why not?" I asked. "Nobody's in charge?" I looked across the crowd. "Nobody wants to be in charge?"

"Well, Survey explained things to them." Aisha said, giving Survey's hologram a side eye. "Apparently they put together that anyone who's serving as ambassador is going to have less time for space stuff. They're not exactly thrilled about that."

"With the absence of biological needs or rest requirements and the assistance of Workshop utilities, administrative tasks would require a commitment of less than ten percent of the individual's schedule." Survey explained. "But apparently, even that has been ruled to be unacceptable. I believe they would prefer to operate in an entirely subordinate role, providing they can pursue their primary goal, rather than maintaining a level of autonomy."

I took a breath. "No. These are representatives of another world. I'm not folding them into my workforce without a clear breakdown of rights, boundaries, and representation." I said.

"Then I will press the matter with the Kerbals." Survey said. Her hologram winked out and she began explaining things to the various groups in greatly improved Kerbish. My duplicate was running at over four thousand times normal speed and had already translated all of her recordings of the language and begun working on a linguistic guide as well as structured English lessons for the Kerbals, should they wish to communicate more easily.

I watched the enthusiasm drain away from the crowd as Survey made my position clear. Slowly they began to huddle together in an attempt to work out who would end up with what most people would consider a rather prestigious position.

"I get where you're coming from on this, but are you sure this isn't more about your hangups than what the little green guys want?" Aisha asked.

"I'm not denying my hangups, but this is about more than me." I said. "At some point the Kerbals are going to leave the workshop. We can stay quiet and let people think they're engineered minions, or we can present them as representatives of their own nation."

She nodded. "Yeah, I see why you'd want to go that way." The Matrix had stepped up, generating simple equipment to facilitate the drawing of lots. The Kerbals seemed to be happy to leave things to chance as there had been a complete absence of volunteers. They approached the task with the air of someone being led to their execution and the eventual selection of an engineer named Edwin R. Kerman triggered a round of sympathy and condolences.

I felt more than a little bad about things as I met with Edwin in my office. Despite his complete lack of enthusiasm for his new role, he accepted the necessity of it, at least after a fashion. I explained things to Ambassador Edwin, walking him through the broader situation beyond just being dumped into what was essentially a space testing playground with a magic nanotech robot who could generate any parts or facilities you needed.

Looking at it that way, it was easy to see how they had gotten so caught up in things.

Survey had broadly explained the 'Alternate Earths' situation, leading me to focus on the exact dynamics of my personal reality and as much of the outsider situation as I could cover in very broad strokes. That led to the core question, what did the Kerbals want?

Unexpectedly, the answer was space. As if that hadn't been obvious, the Kerbals wanted to develop their own space vehicle and launch it into orbit. Well, orbit, then to the moon, then to other locations in the solar system and even beyond. It seemed space was something of a core cultural aspiration for Kerbals, one they were just as happy to pursue on another planet as on their own.

It was probably why they had been so enamored with details of the early days of NASA and the development of rockets. The fact that I already had space worthy vehicles didn't interest them. They wanted to develop their space program, not just be handed a completed vessel. In fact, they wanted to start with core principles before they took on the challenge of introducing any new technology, so even access to infinite amounts of element zero or antigravity pads wasn't going to seriously impact their planned early stage testing.

The facilities that the Matrix had set up for them were more than adequate for the construction and testing of rockets, but it was very clear that they wanted to launch into actual space, not the emulated environment I had in my workshop. I was forced to explain why I couldn't just set up a launch pad in the outside world and walk Edwin through the full history of Earth Bet's space program.

That meant explaining the Simurgh. Sphere's base hadn't been the only space launch site she had attacked, it was just the most prominent. After that, tinkers kept themselves entirely out of space development. Manned spaceflight had been scaled back, with only the occasional satellite launch. Even the Shuttle Program had seen its last flight back in 2009, two years earlier than its planned retirement date and with no replacement program in development.

The selected Ambassador took a moment to consider things, then requested a chance to speak with the other Kerbals. The discussions got fairly heated and they put in several requests to Survey for information, records, and analysis. Finally, Ambassador Edwin returned with full conviction and an updated set of requests.

The Kerbals wanted to develop their space program, and to kill the Simurgh. The apparently cheerful group had completely united under the cause of killing an Endbringer and were completely serious about their proposal. I honestly understood where they were coming from, and there was something refreshing about their determination, but I needed to explain that we couldn't just launch an attack that morning.

An agreement was hashed out, with the Celestial Forge providing support for the Kerbal's Space Flight and Endbringer Murder Development Program. I wasn't really asking anything in return, but the Kerbals believed in a fair exchange. At the very least they were happy to handle any construction projects handed off to them from my mental design space. Really, the main advantage of that was ensuring I could perfectly follow a design without bringing most of my powers into play. Handy, but something that the Matrix had already been handling.

Even with such a loose agreement there were formalities that needed to be observed. More specifically, there were formalities that Garment wanted to see observed and too many people in the Celestial Forge willing to indulge her. That was why instead of a rough agreement between me and Ambassador Edwin, a formal treaty was drawn up with all the pomp and ceremony that Garment could want.

It wasn't all pointless fluff. I had unnatural skill with ceremony and a treaty crafted and drawn up with the benefit of my divine perks had serious weight behind it. The agreement formally established the space center, authorized a lease for the land, and officially recognized the 'embassy' as Kerbin soil. With the amount of power being thrown into this agreement, in every way that mattered I now had a chunk of another world sitting in my Workshop.

I think most of the enthusiasm the Kerbals held for the idea came from the fact that they would technically be going to another planet every time they went to work.

After the red carpet had been cleared away, the flags had been taken down, the podium removed and the treaty formally framed and displayed for public viewing inside the space center we got down to the practicalities of how things were actually going to function, particularly with respect to the members of the Forge.

Unsurprisingly, the Matrix was very happy to work with the Kerbals. That was probably because their construction requests were significantly more extensive than mine. They weren't printing complete ships for the Kerbals, but they happily provided any parts they wanted to their exact specifications and even assisted with some of the assembly.

Which is where the less amusing side of Kerbal enthusiasm came into play. Kerbals were immortal. Not just in the sense of aging, but specifically, they could come back to life. That was probably an aspect of my power, rather than a natural characteristic of the species. The engineering team took a week to revive, but the four pilots basically had no delay. They could die in a fiery crash and be ready for the next launch before the wreckage was cleared.

The problem was they specifically knew that they could come back to life. It was something they took into account when making safety decisions. If I hadn't stressed the fact that death meant an entire week without being able to work on the space program, potentially missing dozens of launches, I probably wouldn't have been able to talk them out of some of their more poorly advised testing initiatives. Once I managed to get the basics across I handed things over to Fleet and the Matrix, hoping they could head off any major disasters for the time being.

I'd finally settled things enough to shift my attention to other matters when I saw Aisha approach me. Which was good, since she was involved in those other matters. A waved to her as my power missed a connection to the oversized mote in the Toolkits constellation that had come up several times before.

"Hey." She said before turning to look at the space center. "That was quite the thing, huh?"

"Not how I figured I'd be spending my morning." I admitted.

"Is this going to throw off the schedule?" She asked.

"Shouldn't." I said. There was a lot to do before the charity event, but things were fairly well optimized. Major improvements and initiatives had been put in place over the night, so it was mostly just monitoring and adjustment. "Unless you've had second thoughts about any of those augmentation?"

"No worries there." She said with a broad smile. "Considering I'm fully certified, it would be a shame to back out at this point."

"Aisha, the point of those courses was to make sure you understood what was involved in the augmentation process, not compel you to go through with it." I said. "Also, there's not really a certification standard for Psi Lab technicians or Valkyrur Augmentation."

"There is now." She said with another grin. "Survey wrote it up and your last set of copies made the certificates."

That would explain the two framed divinely enhanced documents hanging in Aisha's house on the Loft plateau, next to her unofficial GED diploma. I trusted my duplicates not to make anything that would be dangerous for Aisha, but it would be a good idea to check exactly what properties they had assigned to those certificates.

"I just wanted to be sure you knew what you were getting into. This is still genetic alteration." I said.

"Yeah, but that happens every time I put on my Goku training uniform." She said, indicating to the outfit in question. "Life fiber evolution and all that. At least this is precise changes, rather than the general thrust of enhancement you get from Tetra's stuff."

"Hi!" Tetra said, suddenly appearing between us. I don't think it was her intention, but it served as a demonstration of exactly how expansive her attention was.

"Hi Tetra. We're just getting ready for Aisha's procedure." I explained.

"I heard." She said, turning to Aisha. "I'm glad you decided on the Valkyrur augmentation. I think Survey's been upset that she's the only one who uses that." I couldn't help but feel like that was partially directed at me.

"Well, it's really more that there's no harm." She explained. "I'm not sure how much I'm going to end up using it."

"Do you want to try in the Arena? We could have a match after you're finished." Tetra asked. "So far I've only been able to fight Joe and Fleet and Tybalt and sort of Survey, but she gave up really fast."

Aisha gave her a weak smile. "I'm with Survey on this. I'm pretty sure you'd cream me, even with my armor and everything else."

"Even with Monarch?" Tetra asked. "The Matrix was telling me about upgrades they have planned."

"Um, Monarch isn't really with me on stuff like this…" Aisha began.

"But she said you're her pilot?" Tetra asked. She shifted her hand into a communicator and hologram projector and opened up a video call to the Titan Hangar. The screen showed an orange titan with blue highlights and a pair of mounted weapons that sat over its shoulders on elevated arms.

"Tetra, Pilot Aisha." The Monarch titan said, greeting each of them in turn. Aisha gave me a desperate look, but all I could do was shrug.

"Hey Monarch." Aisha said with a weak wave.

"Tetra informs me that you are considering combat training exercises. Will you require my assistance, Pilot Aisha?" She asked. The freshly constructed personality was still fairly wooden, but you could make out a hint of eagerness in her voice.

"Um, maybe later?" She said, "You sort out those upgrades with Fleet and the Matrix first, then will talk."

"Affirmative. I would appreciate your input as to preferred methods of ordinance, mobility, and defensive systems." Monarch said.

"Yeah, we'll talk later." Aisha said.

"I look forward to it." She said before Tetra disconnected the call leaving her grinning from ear to ear and Aisha considerably flustered. She gestured helplessly at me.

"You did kind of work with her." I said.

"The Titan Hanger spit her out during one of Tybalt's training sessions." She said defensively. "I was just trying to get five minutes to catch my breath. She's a giant robot! She's not supposed to latch onto the first person who talks to her like some baby chick."

"You made a really good impression. I think she likes you." Tetra said, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"Whatever." Aisha said, seeming both flattered and frustrated at the same time. "And even with my armor and Monarch and Orudios I doubt we'll last more than five seconds against you in the Arena."

"What about after the colors?" Tetra asked. "You need to try them out, right?"

The contrast between Tetra's enthusiasm and the severity of what she'd suggested was stark. The Arena had been an addition along with Central Control, the Robots, and a personal Gymnasium. It could both host and replay fights. Furthermore, it had a record of every fight I'd been involved in. Every one, going all the way back to shoving matches in pre-school. That had been illuminating as to the identities of certain opponents, but the more significant effects were its ability to emulate opponents, even merging their abilities into composite fighters, and an absolute guarantee that no fight in the arena would ever be fatal. The most titanically destructive effects could be deployed and there would be no permanent damage.

In theory that meant that the colors from the Prismatic Laboratory could be used liberally, but the degree of uncertainty around their effects made that a frightening prospect. There was visible discomfort from both Aisha and myself at the prospect.

"Work with the Prismatic Laboratory is still in the introductory stage." I explained. "We'll be figuring out applications, but it's probably best not to start with field tests."

"Yeah." Aisha said. "And we can still do a training match. For points." She didn't sound too excited about the prospect. Really, a point based fight was just about the only way to have a meaningful match, considering Tetra's ridiculous durability, even without my power making her actually invincible.

"Just go easy on me." Aisha added. "I don't think I can handle that giant drill thing you and Joe used against Tybalt."

"Don't worry, I can't do that without him. I mean, I can't do it yet, but I'm getting better." She smiled. "I'm going to tell Tybalt and make sure he's ready for the match later."

She was gone in less than a heartbeat, leaving Aisha muttering under her breath. "I thought you liked training with Tybalt?" I asked.

She huffed. "I liked learning ki control and all that ninja stuff."

She paused for a moment, then gracefully shifted through a series of well-practiced combat stances, miming weapon techniques as she moved. Through the Dragon's Pulse I could feel the internal cultivation of her ki as it built with every breath. It was internal energy control, the type that could be used to push your body well beyond human limits. Aisha wasn't at the level of throwing energy blasts, but over the course of a night she had taken her martial arts knowledge from basically non-existent to legitimately superhuman.

Aisha had been talked out of spending the entire night in the Spritron Computer, instead opting for a series of carefully structured lesson plans. I had worked with my duplicates to put those together, carefully structuring them to prevent Aisha from being overwhelmed and losing touch with the outside world. I was well aware of the risk of that kind of thing and the need to circle back and ground yourself.

The current situation and the state of the city was that grounding force, something that we always came back to during breaks or downtime. Thanks to careful management of the lesson plans Aisha had been able to avoid emerging as a completely different person than she started the night, despite the volume of time she'd spent studying and training.

Not completely different, but I could see the effect it had on her. It wasn't just the advanced scientific knowledge or the way advanced ki control allowed expanded awareness. That same effort to provide a foundation had an impact of its own. I was expecting her to merely tolerate those portions of the training and lesson plans, but it turns out that growing up in a city that was going to hell around you kind of makes you interested in exactly why it had been going to hell.

Aisha was more aware of the city than she'd ever been before. Efforts to make sure she didn't lose touch with the outside world had resulted in her learning just about every detail available on the situation the city was facing, who was managing it, how it had gotten this way, and what its chances of recovery were.

She was still Aisha, with the same personality and little quirks, but a significantly more civic aware Aisha. Given the mix of people expected at the charity event, I felt sorry for anyone who got into a conversation about local regulations, resource allocation, or the economic history of the city.

She finished the series of combat stances and fell back into a relaxed posture. There was no hint of the grace or deadliness she had just conveyed, which was something of a bonus when it came to ninjutsu. The focus on concealment meant you didn't walk around like a deadly weapon all the time. Aisha's high level of proficiency could be concealed with no apparent effort.

"That stuff was awesome, even if it's harder to use outside of the computer." She said.

I nodded. "Same with sleep and food. Energy requirements don't apply inside the serial phantasm. You can train without worrying about stamina, but outside…"

"Yeah, I got that. And unfortunately I've also got an insane war cat determined to address that problem." She said with another huff.

"You know, you can bail whenever you want. Tybalt's not going to hold it against you." I said.

"I know I can bail. That's the thing. Tybalt's fine with me stopping. He's not fine with me slacking off in training." She groused.

"If it's more than you can handle…" I trailed off as I saw the look on her face. "Unless you know you can handle it, and he knows you can handle it, and…"

"And it's hard to disappoint him." She said, furrowing her brow. "Fuck, this shit was a lot easier when nobody had any expectations for me. Or at least not any realistic expectations."

"Are you going to be alright?" I asked.

She let out a breath. "Yeah, I'm fine. Knew what I was getting into when I signed up for the training. Probably for the best that you talked me out of a full night."

"That could have been a bit much." I agreed.

"Yeah." A small smile crossed her face. "Would have been interesting, being older than my brother. At least technically."

"How are things with him?" I asked. She hadn't spoken about her brother, but she didn't really bring up family stuff in general. It was something I could relate to. From my understanding from the rumors at the gym, her relationship with her brother was at least slightly better than with her father, but the spike of emotion I felt from her at my question made me a bit worried.

Aisha took a breath and I could feel her calm herself. Another application of accelerated ninjutsu training. Emotional control was useful in general, but I was willing to bet she could also fool any commercially available polygraph without even trying.

"They're good." She said, "Dinner went pretty well last night, and he might be coming back to the gym soon."

"I'm sure your dad would like that, and it would be nice to meet him." I said. There was a slight stirring from the Dragon's Pulse, but no worrying spikes.

"Um, yeah." She said. It was a reminder of how weird things could get with family. Honestly, it would be best for me to keep my distance, but I'm sure the rest of the gym would be happy to see… her brother again.

Huh. Never got an introduction and never heard him mentioned by name. Asking always seemed like prying into either Aisha or Mr. Laborn's life. I mean, Aisha only knew my sisters' names because of accidental eavesdropping. Best to leave it alone until he actually showed up.

"Hey?" Aisha asked. She looked over to where the Matrix had finished printing out the official signage for the space center. The inclusion of "Endbringer Murder" in the name felt a little on the nose to me, but apparently the Kerbals wanted to make sure their intentions were clear. "The big secret project that I am definitely not asking about?" She indicated towards the sign. "Is that going to affect things?"

I followed her logic and considered her earlier behavior. Specifically the way she's been unusually quiet when the Kerbals were learning about the Simurgh. Given the caution I was extending to my handling of the Nine, it was a reasonable mistake to make.

"That's not directly involved." I said. Which was true, excluding Mannequin and the Siberian. "It's still something I need to be careful about, but I have the situation contained."

"Because of those ghost things?" She asked. "I know you didn't just send them to the hospitals."

"Shikigami." I said, pulling up a holographic video of one of the initial conjuring. "And yeah, that's part of it."

The talisman was considerably more elaborate than the ones I had created before and had a slightly unreal characteristic to it. The result of being formed from exotic energies rather than physical matter. That was only more apparent when the talisman was invoked.

There was no light show or spiritual manifestation. Instead, the talisman seemed to grow, swelling to a size larger than a man, and then sinking into the background of the video. It wasn't exactly a shadow, more like it was becoming a living distortion in reality. Which was kind of what was happening. At my command the shikigami shifted from nearly undetectable to completely invisible, something that was true on more levels than you could imagine, considering it was composed out of something that parahumans couldn't detect or even really interact with.

The use of shikigami was pretty much the highest level of talisman magic. It wasn't something I would have been able to manage with just the base abilities of Talisman Trained and Talisman Adept, but like so many of my other powers, they didn't work in isolation.

Talisman magic was basically a combo platter of Japanese spiritualism. Everything possible through that system was at least on the table, including the creation and binding of shikigami. For a practitioner, shikigami were practically a symbol of their power, evidence of being able to reach the highest level of the craft.

Shikigami were conjured beings, a kind of artificial kami that was given 'life' through ceremony. That life was actually an extension of the spiritual force of their creator, which was really the only reason I was comfortable using them. In their most ideal form, they existed as an extension of the caster's will, manifesting independently and carrying out difficult or dangerous tasks. Structurally, they were more like a very complicated spell rather than an independent creature, existing to carry out a specific task and then dissipating back into the spiritual energy they were formed from.

At least that was the ideal case, when they were created by a competent practitioner. In less ideal circumstances they could go out of control, manifesting their own consciousness or being corrupted by other forces. Careless use of Shikigami was an incredibly dangerous prospect and not something I would ever risk.

At my current level of skill, that risk didn't exist. To be honest, it probably hadn't for a while, but talisman magic wasn't something I had been liberal with. Talismans were powered by spiritual energy, a difficult resource for me to recover and one that was needed for far too many applications. In theory Fortune Energy could be used as a substitute of spiritual energy, but I hadn't quite mastered that technique yet. My duplicates had been successful in extracting and crafting with fortune energy, but mystical applications were something of an ongoing project. Initial experimentation was conducted during the night, but didn't exactly go the way we would have wanted.

"I'm glad you were able to help with the hospitals and stuff." Aisha said. "I mean, it was exhausting, but I kind of wish I could do another run like on Thursday night. Help clear the critical cases."

"That would be a very good way to freak out the PRT." I said, causing her to smile in response. "But yeah, it was good to be able to help like that."

I had possibly been excessively cautious in my precautions. Titan's Blood combined with Daedalus' Student to allow me to craft items directly out of energy. Following Synchronicity Event I had ample access to psionic forms of energy that were completely incomprehensible to parahuman analysis. A shikigami talisman crafted from psionic energy could act completely unnoticed, even by the strongest thinker powers. The effects of its actions could be noticed, but the mechanism would be completely unknown.

I had deployed a lot of shikigami. Psionic power, alloyed with life energy thanks to the combination of my Volcanic Forge and Exotic Compatibility power and crafted with divinely enhanced abilities were able to infiltrate the hospitals, clinics, and sickrooms of every person who had requested my help, or had help requested on their behalf.

There wasn't a wave of miraculous recoveries, but my shikigami had worked to ensure that none of the patients would pass away before I could act freely and offer proper medical aid. As a somewhat unexpected aside, they had extended that effect to other critical patients housed in the same locations. Funny, something existing as an extension of your will means it kind of responds the way you would. So if you would try to help critically ill or horrifically injured people, even if they weren't part of your plan, then a shikigami acting out your will would as well.

Basically, the divinely empowered spirits of healing that I had sent out hadn't stopped at the list of approved targets. They extended the same treatment to any critical case they came across, meaning there were dozens of hospitals who weren't going to be seeing any patient deaths at least for the next few days. Honestly, I was kind of proud of that, though it was the kind of thing that would raise red flags sooner rather than later.

Another thing that I'd have to deal with, but it was something I could deal with. People would notice, but all I had to do was stall the official response long enough to deal with my other problems. Having Survey intercept any reports highlighting the matter would be a good start, and alternate explanations could be presented wherever possible. In the most extreme situation I could turn to Aisha for help. If her parahuman abilities were sufficiently empowered and augmented she should be able to extend her ability to prevent anyone from finding the unusual survival rate odd.

The medical shikigami had been an excellent dry run for more advanced applications, specifically those relating to the topic of Aisha's original inquiry. Five completely undetectable psionic spirits were working to keep the Nine isolated from any civilians who might cross their path while also feeding me information and assisting with our countermeasures. On that topic, it would be a good idea for me to check in before I oversaw Aisha's procedure.

"I need to speak with Survey about that project. Meet me in the Psi Lab?" I asked.

"Sure." She said, then gazed out over the landscape to the north, with the central cluster of mountains just visible. "I mean, it's only two hundred and fifty miles away."

I cracked a smile. "I thought you liked flying?" I asked.

"Generally yes, but the armor handles like ass at supersonic speeds." She explained. "I know it can handle it, but you have to brute force the stabilizers. Makes me feel like I'm a millimeter away from a death spiral."

"You know you don't have to worry about that, right?" I asked. It might be a concern with conventional designs, but Aisha's armor was a named divine object. She wasn't going to lose control in midair, and even if she did she wouldn't be hurt from any crash.

She nodded. "I know the specs, but still, it takes the fun out of it."

"So what, you taking Orudios?" I asked.

"Nope." She said, "Figured I'd be lazy and take the direct route." A command to her upgraded watch opened a portal directly to the Psi Lab. "Don't know how this place would have functioned if you got it before the portal tech. I mean, the travel time alone…"

"It is convenient." I agreed.

"Yeah, and it will give me a chance to review things ahead of time. Check the normal procedure before you show up and do your impossibly perfect thing. Which I am grateful for." She added quickly. "Glad this isn't going to be months of treatments, but I like that I know how things are supposed to go." She smiled at me. "Makes it easier to appreciate the scale of the bullshit."

I let out a short laugh as she stepped through the portal. As the shimmering rectangle winked out of existence I focused on my wand, still on my finger in its ring form, and apparated to the front entrance.

I personally had more methods of instant transport than I needed, but Aisha had been right about the portals. I had technological means of teleportation, but none that were anywhere as convenient as that particular expression. Without it we probably would have needed to resort to Star Trek style beaming to get around a space this size. The rest were either too short range or too elaborate to be worthwhile. It was probably for the best that I didn't need to resort to a Cybertronian GroundBridge or Protoculture based Fold Travel just to move around my workshop.

Another benefit of the Central Control system was the ability to open the Workshop Entrance to any door that an access key had already been used on. It was something of a relief to know that people left inside the Workshop wouldn't be trapped if the keyholders happened to be outside. It was also an immense asset in terms of rapid deployment in the case of an emergency. All that was wonderful, but right now I was enjoying the simple advantage of not needing to fiddle with the access terminal to open the workshop door to Survey's scrying chamber.

The room was much larger and more elaborate than it had been the previous night, but the same was true for the majority of Garment's studio. Aisha's offhand comment about a kingdom in a teacup wasn't far off the mark in terms of what I could accomplish with my current level of enchanting and divine craftsmanship. The front rooms of the studio hadn't undergone any visible changes, but the back was practically a country unto itself.

A heavily warded country with the benefit of every defensive effect I could assemble. It was handy for any applications that needed to occur outside the protection of the Super Science privacy curtain, such as persistent scrying effects.

Survey's physical body was manning a series of incredibly advanced divination tools keeping a constant watch on the Slaughterhouse Nine and regular check ins on other threats. As I approached her I felt my power move again, connecting to a small mote from the Personal Reality constellation.

"Another addition to the workshop?" She asked.

I nodded, even as I felt my duplicates transmitting her updates on the situation. "Arsenal." I said. "Unlimited storage for weapons, armor, and equipment. Also cleans and performs minor repairs on anything placed there." It would have been a fairly minor power, but just like with Central Control, there was a synergy with one of my Personal Reality abilities. "I can also summon anything from the Arsenal through any portal I open."

Survey nodded. "It seems that Garment has become aware of that feature." She said, "Her possession of an access key imbues the ability to open portals of her own. She seems quite excited regarding the potential of infinite clothing storage with guaranteed perfect preservation conditions and the ability to freely retrieve any item at will."

I blinked. "Yes, I can see the appeal of that." Which meant that Garment was likely to go on even more of a crafting blitz than she already had. I just hoped that she didn't decide to show off that specific ability during the charity event, though it's unlikely most people would understand exactly what they were looking at. "Anyway, how are things going in the field?" I asked Survey.

"Crawler has melted the remains of the truck and buried the residue." Survey reported. "He declared it to be cursed, though I do believe he was speaking in general terms, rather than referencing the specific effects of your malediction."

I nodded as I skimmed through the recordings of the Nine's actions from earlier that morning. Much too early in my opinion. As if there was any doubt to the complete blackness of the man's soul, Jack Slash had woken the entirety of the Slaughterhouse Nine before sunrise to prepare for departure at first light. I mean, if there was anyone in the world who deserved that kind of treatment it was them, but there were some things you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy, just out of principle.

Of course, his insistence on an early departure just meant he ran into my little experiment earlier than expected. It was the result of a test run of newly acquired powers. In addition to the various Personal Reality items, over the course of the night I had received another iteration of both Minor Blessing and Unnatural Skill, and this time the blessing was granted by Zeus himself.

Despite the blessing coming directly from the king of the gods, it wasn't actually more powerful than my other Minor Blessings. It seemed they were scaled based on the effect, not the source. On the surface level the Blessing of Lightning gave me expanded awareness and control of electricity, but that control and awareness came from a very specific perspective. I had always thought about electricity in terms of its utility, not its power as a symbol, but Zeus wasn't the god of circuit diagrams and electrical engineering. He was a god of lightning, storms, and the wrath of nature.

To Zeus, lightning was divine. It was a symbol of absolute authority, judgment from on high and a power that none could replicate. On a practical level I might have minor electrokinesis and the ability to sense charges in motion, but on a metaphysical level I fully understood the significance of what I was working with. It was the kind of thing that made it so easy to enhance Dauntless's Arclance, and to take it to levels of Infusion quality that I would be hard pressed to replicate with any other element, save maybe shadow or flame.

Curses were another matter. A curse was an intention of harm made manifest. It was something unquestionable in its intention. That was something true even of curses that lacked mystical backing. No matter what, the intention was there and it was possibly the purest expression of anger, frustration, and malice available to mankind, which was probably why the concept was so universal across so many cultures.

The potential of supernatural curses extended beyond the common tropes of maladies and misfortunes. There was a good reason why nearly every offensive spell in Harry Potter was referred to as a curse. Magic intended to cause harm was fundamentally different from more general magic that happened to be turned towards destructive ends. Once again, intent mattered when it came to curses.

With Unnatural Skill in curses I could extend the concept to its very limit, particularly when enhanced by monstrous strength. More than just spells and abstract effects, I could make cursed items. Items with the intent of harm woven into their very structure. Harm for the bearer or harm in general. Cursed swords were well known to be bloody instruments, but often sought out for that exact reason. A location could be cursed in any number of ways, and curses could be extended to everything from family lines to words to concepts as abstract as specific types of knowledge.

To be clear, curses were horrible. They were the pure intention of harm made manifest. Curses could do horrible things, but they didn't need to be used horribly. It was important to remember what you were wielding and the meaning behind it. Treating curses like just another weapon in my arsenal badly undersold the significance of the power at work. It was a powerful tool, but one that needed to be treated with respect, particularly when it came to higher level applications.

As an example of those higher level applications, the power of curses resonated especially strongly with my divine abilities. Curses, banes, blights, and geas were staples of mythology the world over, and now they were available to me. Even outside of my crafting abilities, being a demigod presented possibilities, particularly when working with curses that fell within the scope of my divine powers.

Which was exactly what I had done. Divine powers didn't have detectable expressions and a carefully laid curse should be indistinguishable from bad fortune, so I had drawn on my strength as the demigod son of Hephaestus and laid a curse upon the Slaughterhouse Nine's truck.

Mostly, it was to see what would happen. With the amount of divinations Survey was maintaining it was trivial to direct the curse. A focused blight upon the technology they relied upon for transport. I wasn't sure exactly how that would play out and certainly hadn't expected the results to be so dramatic.

The Slaughterhouse Nine had loaded up, piled into their truck and prepared to move out, except they never made it out of the warehouse they had been hiding in. The instant they tried to drive out the door the truck's axle snapped. After a flurry of confusion from some very dangerous capes they disembarked to identify the problem.

An unlikely alignment of forces on the axel had caused cyclical stress to build up, leading the axel snapping under a trivial amount of pressure. Neither Bonesaw nor Mannequin were automotive tinkers, but the repair was well within their abilities. Of course, closer examination revealed some rather significant corrosion that had been overlooked. Jack made a comment regarding Mannequin specialization, causing the monstrous mockery of a tinker to slink off and sulk while the rest of the Slaughterhouse argued about who was at fault for the current situation.

Of all people Bonesaw tried to play peacemaker, rallying the other members while insisting that she would make the truck even better, even if she had to take apart her own toys to do it. She asked Crawler to lift the truck for her so she could work on the axel, which is when things really started going wrong.

The corroded metal of the bottom of the truck combined with Crawler's less than delicate handling nearly split the truck in half. This would have been bad enough without the split occuring right on the truck's gas tank. And that would have been bad enough without the rupture completely dousing Burnscar in highly flammable diesel.

I was well aware of how the volatility of Burnscar's personality shifted in relation to the quantity of fire in the area, so the complete ignition of a quantity of fuel that was meant to see the merry band of murderers to the next city caused her to become more than a little unhinged. It was additionally clear that most of the other members of the Nine were not in fact fireproof. Crawler, Mannequin, and the Siberian couldn't have cared less, but Shatterbird, Cherish, Bonesaw, and Jack weren't so lucky.

The Siberian's interference kept Jack and Bonesaw safe from the flames, but Cherish and Shatterbird ended up fleeing in a cloud of smoke, profanity, and Burnscar's manic laughter. This was followed by Crawler dropping the truck in a clear act of frustration. The edge of the vehicle dropped onto an unbothered Siberian, who was of course unharmed but sheared off a large section of side paneling. The impact also resulted in the other axle snapping. Since the ruined truck was now lying in a pool of burning diesel, Bonesaw began to panic and rushed to unload her spiders and experiments, causing more damage to the truck as a result. Shatterbird wound up trying to smother the active flames with shards of glass, to little effect, which wasn't helped when the heat from the fire started to cause the tires to explode, spraying burning diesel and motor oil across the warehouse. Through the chaos Jack mostly made snide comments about the situation rather than offering any actual leadership or coordination.

At that point I had needed to redirect my shikigami to obscure the signs of the building disaster, lest the local fire service arrive on the scene to find the most feared capes in the country acting out a scene from a Three Stooges short. It had taken the Nine an embarrassingly long time to contain the disaster, with three more dramatic collapses from the truck before Crawler made his declaration of its cursed nature, vomited acid over the remains, and buried the residue under a pile of shattered concrete.

"Well, at least we know we can contain them." I said, reviewing the insanity once again.

"Curses seem to be a highly effective measure, particularly when targeting secondary assets and logistical issues." Survey said. "There may be some merit to Fleet's suggestion."

I swallowed. "Yeah, I think some trials are in order before we try for anything as complicated as cursed backroads."

It was technically possible to curse a route to be impassable or curse a person to wander endlessly. I suppose there was some appeal in trapping the Slaughterhouse Nine in a twisted nightmare of desolate roads leading nowhere, isolating them for months or even years without escape or sight of another human soul, but I didn't have much interest in drawing things out more than that had to be. Particularly not after seeing this.

"With a display like this it hardly seems worth waiting for them to get to Brockton Bay." I said.

"It would be possible to accelerate the schedule for interception, though this would not be the opportune time for a direct confrontation." Survey advised. "Ideally, waiting until the Slaughterhouse Nine enters the state of New Hampshire would counter the majority of concerns that would be raised by a deviation from predicted thinker models, though not to the extent that a direct response to their approach to the city."

"I know." I said, shaking my head.

In the course of a day the Nine had gone from a massive challenge and moral conundrum to something closer to a set of rats in a maze. Their most powerful asset was the mystery surrounding them. Watching them bumble around a burning warehouse definitely stripped them of that mystique. It wasn't just the sight of them absent of their air of menace and threat, the secrets of their resources and abilities had been laid bare to me.

Well, most of their secrets. There were still two standouts. Despite Survey's analysis, the Siberian's master had yet to be identified. With the combination of a Case 53 and Simurgh victim tattoo it should have been easy to narrow down the possibilities, but even her most aggressive searches didn't produce anything. Information surrounding Endbringers tended to be spotty at best, so it was possible things were just overlooked, but not to this degree. Even attempts to resort to facial recognition were frustratingly difficult due to the man's thick beard and poor state of health.

The man's identity was a minor concern next to the real problem that we were contending with. Jack's power was still a massive unknown. My passenger advised caution and analysis of the behavior of capes backed up that prediction, but there was no clue to the mechanism behind the effect. At least there hadn't been until the previous night.

There were advantages to maintaining constant surveillance. It provided opportunities to match up events that would otherwise be impossible to connect. Events like Fleet demonstrating his transformation to Gregor the Snail and Jack immediately waking up and dragging Bonesaw into a strategy meeting for ways to counter Fleet's level of power, all because it apparently occurred to him that they should be 'prepared'.

The display effectively confirmed all my earlier concerns. Jack was getting information from other parahumans, not just influencing them. The problem was the mechanism through which he would have to have received that information. Fleet was equipped with the same magic sensors I used. They weren't enhanced to the level of Survey's, but they were more than capable of detecting expressions of parahuman powers, and in that moment, there hadn't been anything to detect.

Fleet was shielded from precognition and resistant to most thinker powers. Wide scanning thinker powers tended to be background noise in terms of magic detection, but the level of information that Jack had received would have been detectable if it were some tangible effect, but that wasn't what happened. No power had observed Fleet and Gregor's conversation. The only possible means for that kind of information to be conveyed was it coming directly from Gregor's passenger.

It was a theory my own passenger agreed with, and one that checked out based on what we had observed from the dynamics of passenger space. If Jack, or Jack's power, or even Jack's passenger, was working directly through the passenger network, that was an entirely new class of concern. That wasn't something we could disrupt with a simple ward. Disrupting and exposing it would be a major undertaking.

And I was going to expose Jack's power. That was crucial to destroying his legacy. He had built himself a reputation as an untouchable agent of chaos and slaughter, someone who needed to be taken seriously with weight and grandeur assigned to his actions. That reputation elevated the Slaughterhouse Nine beyond the level of murderous capes, and that was something I NEEDED to tear down.

Jack wasn't a genius. He wasn't a tactician or a planner or a philosopher. He was exactly what you would expect, a thug with a power that shielded him from the consequences of his actions. Exposing that, tearing down the legend of Jack Slash wouldn't just change the way the world saw the Slaughterhouse Nine, it might very well change the way villainous capes were regarded in general.

Which was why I had to play this out, on top of all the other reasons tying my hands.

"What's the Nine's current situation?" I asked.

"They are engaged in cleanup at the warehouse along with repair and recovery of what was able to be salvaged from the truck. Shatterbird and Cherish have been deployed in the car of 'Calvin Jordan' to seek a new vehicle for transporting the team." Survey explained, a note of pride in her voice as she mentioned the car.

That had been the result of the plan put into action the previous night. My commitment that the Slaughterhouse Nine was not going to kill anyone on their approach to Brockton Bay. It was easy enough to keep civilians away from them, but complete isolation would have raised suspicions. Enter the collaborative efforts of Fleet, Survey, and the Matrix and a series of perfect drones that even Cherish couldn't see through.

The idea of 'Calvin Jordan' had been manufactured by Survey. A down on his luck traveling salesman living out of his car who happened to find a quiet place to park and rest for the night. He had a complete history with every detail accounted for down to current employment and the legal registration of his car. That car and all of its contents, down to smudges, stains, and scraps of paper, had been assembled by the Matrix at the atomic level. What passed for Calvin Jordan himself was a digistructed human replica droid remotely operated by Fleet.

It was proper digistruct technology, created with proper equipment, not the emulation I could accomplish on my own. That meant it was stable enough to last much longer than we would actually need. Fleet had prepared extensively, with fully developed response trees and precise levels of emotional reactions calibrated in the event that the drone was captured. With the amount of prep work he had done, I think he was actually a bit disappointed when the Siberian had just dragged the drone out of the car and torn it in half. The digistruction was high enough quality to hold together, even in that state, though it was grimly amusing to see Bonesaw repurpose pieces of my drone into her projects while completely oblivious to their artificial nature.

Members of the Nine had callously picked through the meager possessions that had been prepared to sell the drone as authentic. There was no hint of suspicion, though plenty of mockery and derision at the quality of the possessions, the merchandise, and the car itself.

Now I watched through one of Survey's mirrors as Shatterbird and Cherish drove that car through the city looking for a replacement vehicle that could transport the Slaughterhouse Nine. They were in what probably passed as civilian wear, meaning Cherish was mostly covering her tattoos and Shatterbird wasn't wearing a collection of broken glass across her body and dress.

It was unlikely that anyone would recognize them, but I had my shikigami running interception regardless. Invisible, intangible spirits infused with powerful elemental natures nudging things just enough to ensure that everyone maintained a wide berth. "We're taking care of the replacement vehicle?" I asked Survey. She nodded.

"Another drone in an oversized U-haul truck, currently approaching from outside of Cherish's largest estimated range. Design is based on planned contingency 8C-D1A3A and 92-E19BE."

I nodded. A lot of preparation work had been done at an accelerated pace in the Spiritron Core. Mostly by Fleet, Survey, and the Matrix, but with me or my duplicates chipping in. 'Calvin Jordan' was far from the only drone backstory that had been prepared. There were hundreds of potential deployments ready for any number of contingencies.

"The drone possesses a complete history involving a cross state relocation of residence." Survey continued. "The current plan of operation involves diverting actions to isolate Shatterbird and Cherish from any other acceptable vehicles for a period of at least one and a half hours. After that point, Fleet will direct the drone towards them and ask for directions."

She pulled up a display of the truck's design while also highlighting the specific files in the Workshop data records. "Based on elements that were able to remain undetected in the 'Calvin Jordan' vehicle, expanded applications have been prepared for the offered truck. A complete range of analysis sensors and prototypes of the multidimensional probes are in place."

"And I've touched all of it, so I can be there if you need me." Tetra said, suddenly appearing between me and Survey.

"Thank you, Tetra. And you too, Survey. This is good work." It was. Every model of behavior suggested that Shatterbird and Cherish would take the bait, probably killing the drone in the process. If the Nine used that truck we'd be able to get detailed scans of their powers and activities while also monitoring for expressions of Jack's true power. And in the event the worst happened and we needed to interfere, Tetra would already effectively be there, ready to act.

I took a breath and allowed myself to relax. Things were in hand. They weren't progressing as quickly as I would have liked, but our position was getting stronger with time, while the Nine only became more contained. That horrible crisis of conscience from first becoming aware of the Nine's intentions had been resolved. They weren't a threat to anyone and they wouldn't become a threat to anyone. They were managed, contained, and would remain so until we were ready to stomp them out for good.

And if I could figure out how Jack's power worked and devise a way of countering it then maybe I wouldn't need to keep Aisha in the dark anymore. And maybe even reach out to other parahuman sources. People affected by or connected with the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Like a certain financial figure in the underworld. That revelation had been shocking, but it certainly made me grateful that I hadn't reached out earlier. It hadn't been hard to find out who the Numberman was, at least by reputation. Most criminals seemed happy to accept that things were just business and overlook his associations with their rivals and enemies. I hadn't been feeling so generous. He may have just been doing his job, but his expertise in protecting ABB assets directly facilitated the nightmare that hit Brockton Bay later that week.

That spiteful outlook had kept me from following up on what he probably thought of as a very courteous invitation in that lightly coded message. When I started digging into the Slaughterhouse Nine's past more details began to come to light. It had taken all of Survey's skills and my own passenger's input, but I had made the connection. I knew about his connection to Jack Slash and was fairly certain of what his identity had been before he took up financial management.

And he was connected to something more. Something bigger and more significant. Larger than the ABB's finances, though that was mostly a settled matter now that I had thrown Lost Garden at the last of their business leaders and their reserve manager. But the Numberman was bigger than local concerns. He was even bigger than the Slaughterhouse Nine. He was someone I needed to follow up on, but I couldn't. Not when every parahuman was a potential direct line to Jack Slash.

But that was a concern for later. For when we had more information and more ways to manage the final unknown aspects of the situation. I did my best to put the concerns out of my mind and turned to Survey.

"Please keep me updated on events as they progress." I said. "We can take this as a successful test of our capacity for intervention." Something of an understatement, really. "But we can't get complacent."

"Agreed." Survey said. "Assuming the provided vehicle is indeed seized by the Nine and used as their primary means of conveyance, the combination of sensors and quantum communicators will allow me to divest my attention towards other targets of interest." She explained, indicating to the wider range of scrying tools.

Measures had been put in place to monitor the growing factions of the city, but it wasn't possible to maintain the same level of attention that Survey was directing at the Slaughterhouse Nine. To be fair, they didn't really warrant it. Survey had used her detection tools to confirm locations of hideouts and team compositions, but wasn't maintaining constant observation. We were limited to passive monitoring through more general tools, and of course Tetra's new abilities.

Effectively, there was no need to monitor Blasto anymore, and the same would be true for any other cape that Tetra could connect to. The level of persistent awareness that Tetra could maintain through her divine connections was something even Survey was envious of, though direct contact was needed for a full connection to form. Introductions, observation, and even scans through the Dragon's Pulse could create connections, though each was weaker than the last. They were better than nothing, but not the complete control of the city's situation I would have preferred.

"We can circle back on that later." I said. "Particularly for the Teeth. The other gangs might take the safety of citizens as a priority," If just out of fear of our retaliation. "But I doubt the Teeth are going to be as courteous, especially if they're forced into a corner."

"With the current Teeth strongholds identified, it will be possible to closely monitor any engagement. Assuming the Empire mobilizes to take advantage of the timing of the charity event, specific vectors of attack are likely to be utilized." Survey explained, pulling up a set of analysis that Tybalt had assembled.

I nodded. "I would prefer to stay out of things for the sake of stability, but if they endanger anyone else…"

"Intervention will be launched immediately." Survey agreed. "While the majority of the Celestial Forge is involved in the operation of the event, our physical presence is not required and relocation or remote operation options are available."

"Good." I said. "It would probably be better if someone else stepped in. I have a feeling that an appearance from Apeiron would have a bit too much impact."

We had been lucky with Dauntless. I'd been prepared to tough out any level of response in order to complete that ritual, but fortunately Dauntless decided to be reasonable.

Specifically, it was fortunate. Between my E-rank Luck and abundant fortune energy I knew things were going to occasionally line up in my favor, I just didn't have any way to determine if an event was a happy coincidence or the result of my luck powers rewriting reality. Unless things started to reach outrageous levels I wasn't particularly concerned. After everything I'd gone through an abundance of good fortune wasn't something I was going to complain about.

"It will be interesting to see how the Butcher functions in any coming conflict." I said with a slight smile. Tetra nodded in agreement.

"We can expand upon the connection, right?" She asked excitedly.

I nodded. "Once we're sure of the effects. There are other rituals we can conduct now, and even if we do nothing, the Butcher should be less of a threat."

I didn't know how she'd handle it, but it felt good to take action. To follow up on my promise from the summit and remind people it wasn't an idle threat. People might not want me anywhere near the Butcher, but that didn't mean letting her run free. Particularly with access to unnatural curse skills, there were all manner of horrible fates just waiting for her.

"I need to get to the Psi Lab." I said. "Keep me posted on any developments, particularly if any direct intervention is needed."

Shikigami, at least ones on the level I created, could be directed remotely rather than sent on a mission with the caster hoping for the best. Their psionic nature allowed some level of feedback, but they weren't exactly in live contact. I could trust them to their task, but if anything more complicated was needed I'd have to use remote observation tools to create a more direct connection.

"I believe matters are in hand for the moment, but I will keep you apprised. Please let Aisha know I am pleased with her decision to revise her stance on Valkyrur Augmentation, and that I would be happy to provide assistance in the effective utilization of those abilities." She looked directly at me. "I would be happy to do so for anyone who wished to develop their proficiency."

That wasn't exactly subtle, even by Survey's standards. During the Chimeric Fission that had split me from Tetra, my duplicates had layered in every augmentation they had access to, including biotics and Valkyrur powers. Those had become signature abilities for Survey and had basically gone completely unused by me. That was mostly because I had much better options, but I knew Survey was a bit annoyed that I was completely ignoring significant options available to me.

"I'm sure she'll be happy to learn." Probably not, but for this I was willing to throw her under the bus. For Aisha, the ability to gain enhanced durability, regeneration, and deadly energy blasts was actually significant, whereas for me, it's basically one more thing for the pile.

"And we can spar in the Arena if she needs practice!" Tetra said.

"I do not believe the Arena is an appropriate venue for social bonding, at least not to the degree you seem to regard it." Survey said.

"But you can learn so much when you fight someone, and there's not even any risks." Tetra countered.

"The information gained and development of new techniques is valuable, but violent expression runs counter to the majority of established socializing techniques." Survey replied.

Well, at least they had mostly moved on from arguing about the material properties of cybertonium compared life fibers. "Right, I've got to go." I said, leaving them to their conversation which was already retreading old ground from the arrival of the Arena. They nodded to me as I was about to depart, then paused as I felt my power make another connection.

It was the Personal Reality constellation again, this time a pair of tiny motes called Basic Accommodations and Seeds and Seedlings. Basic Accommodations was incredibly straightforward. It provided simple amenities for everyone in the Workshop. Barracks levels of comfort consisting of a bunk, locker, and basic bathroom and shower facilities. My Housing Complex exceeded it to a ridiculous degree, but there was one specific feature of note.

The accommodations applied to anyone who entered my Workshop, not just people associated with my team. It was effectively automatic housing for as many people as I could fit into my workshop. Specifically, the limit was one person per four cubic meters in my storage area. Given the size of my Workshop that was several orders of magnitude more than the population of the Earth.

Not something I'd be planning to use any time soon, but at least I could function as an evacuation center without needing to manage every aspect of the lives of the people I was housing. Effectively, it was a fallback that might never come into play, compared to the other mote which was much more immediately relevant.

Seeds and Seedlings was an upgrade for my Greenhouse. Once per year, a delivery of seeds and seedlings arrived sufficient to fill half of my Greenhouse. That was significant enough considering the Greenhouse was currently about twenty five kilometers on a side, but that paled in importance compared to the source of the seeds.

The seeds and plants were all from the various realities that had provided my powers, with each item clearly labeled in terms of its related power and world. Thanks to Central Control I had a perfect accounting of everything that had arrived and thanks to the integration with the intranet so did Survey.

All the plants were 'relatively' normal by the standards of the world that provided them. Also, most of the worlds were just alternate versions of Earth, so effectively I had a range of conventional crops and other plants along with the occasional exotic offering. From what I could tell, nothing was particularly dangerous or unstable, but there would have to be careful examination of the offerings before any cultivation of otherworldly plants was attempted.

"This is a major development with respect to the source of your abilities, but does not require your direct attention." Survey said. "I have engaged the assistance of the workshop's new robots for the purpose of sorting and evaluation."

"Thank you." I said. "I'll check in after I take care of things with Aisha."

"Good luck!" Tetra called as I focused on my destination. An act of will and a slight pop later and I had apparated to the Psi Lab. Or the current state of the Psi Lab.

The facility had existed basically from the point when we had successfully transmuted Elerium, but it had been upgraded and rebuilt over and over again in an effort to cut the Psi Operative development time down from weeks to something manageable for our timeframe.

Managing to reduce that requirement to a handful of hours finally made the procedure practical enough to be seriously considered, but my power didn't stop at just 'practical'. The current lab was divinely crafted, enhanced by the additional properties of Craftsmen of the Gods and Titan's Blood boosted Daedalus' Student. Feel It Out had been used to upgrade the design with other upgrade powers and technology bases applied whenever possible. Hybridization directly boosted the power of the facility and Elven Enchantment took the combined quality powers to a new level. That was then further enhanced by the Glove of the East boosting the power, efficiency, and spiritual properties of the lab.

As a result, we were basically capable of 'outpatient' Psionic Operative treatment. It was a facility that could impart the full range of psionic abilities in less time than a typical dentist visit. Once again, it seemed we had somewhat lost touch with what we were actually creating. A Psi Lab was an impressive work to begin with, but it had been taken beyond any reasonable limits. The room could now be used to churn out the equivalent of high tier parahumans, except operating on a system of power that couldn't be detected or countered.

And after it was used on Aisha, it was basically going to be mothballed. I didn't exactly consider that a waste, but I was at least aware of the scale of what we were working with.

"Hey." Aisha said, looking up from the lab's control console. "You know, I think I'm going to have to take back that thing about being able to handle this myself."

"Design change?" I asked.

"Yeah. Kind of prepped on the standard model, not the super god-tier magic lab or reality warping." She explained.

Broadly, the upgraded lab had the same functionality as its conventional design. The isolation chamber, genetic sequencer, and Elerium infuser were all there, they were just a bit overbuilt. And overdesigned. You definitely had fewer stylistic flourishes in military projects.

"The upgraded equipment is actually easier to use than the normal stuff. You'd be fine." I said.

"Yeah, still glad to have you taking point on this." She said, then took a breath. "So this is it? Final upgrade?"

"Last non-training based power." I said. "Which also means that we can go to nanites without worrying about any compatibility issues."

She nodded. "Definitely prefer that idea to the other cybernetics stuff."

A full body nanite array wasn't actually less invasive that a brain implant, but I understood where the impression came from. The idea of having countless tiny robots in your body was less off-putting compared to a single very noticeable piece of computer equipment lodged in your head. Considering my own reaction to gaining an implant, I really couldn't fault her.

"I should be able to work Mantra technology into the nanites as well." I said. "It will let you use higher level applications without needing Godbody cybernetics."

"Yeah, I don't think that's really my look." She said, "And the Mantra stuff… I get that it's a big deal, but I'm still working on ki and internal energy."

"No rush." I said. "The nanites are going to be a major project. The Matrix is helping with their design, and we're looking at a few upgrade cycles at least."

"You sure I can handle a 'major project' like that?" She asked.

"You will." I assured her. "Same principle as your armor. Features will be slowly unlocked, so you don't need to worry about advanced EVO applications from the start. It will mostly be healing and computer interfaces to begin with, at least for you."

"For me?" She asked, leaning forward from the console. "Who else is slated for this?"

"Well, I'm going to be using one of my powers to multiply the results. Normally I underbuild and use the size increase, but that's kind of counterproductive with nanotech." She nodded. "So I'm going with the 'five copies' option." I explained. "Tetra and I can't use nanites because of our life fiber biology. Applications don't work for Fleet, Survey and obviously the Matrix, and of course Garment's not going to get use out of them."

"So Tybalt?" I nodded to Aisha. "Great, so I'm going to have personal tutoring on how to use this stuff from someone with firsthand knowledge." She didn't sound too excited about the prospect.

"It's not going to be that bad." I said.

"That's just what he wants you to think." Aisha said, gesturing emphatically. "He lures you in with the cute little kitty face, like the training session is going to be some kitten play time, then bam!" She slapped the side of the console. "Drill sergeant from hell."

"You know, you don't need to train with him. You can always turn him down." I replied.

"You'd think that, but then out comes the cute little kitty face again." She said, making a poor attempt to mimic the expression of a pouting cat. "I can't say no to that. Are you sure that stranger thing he has doesn't have a master component?"

I considered the mechanics of his obscurement effect. "Well, he can exaggerate certain traits…"

"I fucking knew it!" Aisha declared.

"I'm pretty sure he hasn't been doing that." I said in his defense.

"Oh, he's definitely doing that. Nobody could bring out the cute kitty act like that without some funny business backing them up." She said.

"Do you want to stop training with him?" I asked.

She let out a breath. "No. But I might have words for him during our next session." She scoffed. "Weaponized cuteness. Can you believe it?"

"Well, given his parentage, it kind of makes sense." I said in his defense.

"Yeah, whatever." She said, "So, three leftover sets of nanites. You can't use them, so who're they going to? The Avid Glove?"

"God, no!" I exclaimed. I didn't even want to think about that glove with EVO abilities. Even if I restricted them as much as possible I couldn't see that ending in anything less than a giant monster battle.

Of course, my actual plan wasn't that much better.

"Then who?" Aisha asked.

"Khepri." I said in a somewhat morose tone.

"What, seriously?" Aisha asked. "Even after… everything?"

"We still have that big threat on the horizon. Khepri might not be essential to defeating it anymore, but I can't take that chance. You also have Flechette and Panacea playing key roles in that mess." And also Bonesaw, but that was one point I was happy to sidestep. "Having all of them in the same city is risky enough to begin with. I'm going to lock the other nanite arrays down to healing and make the offer. At the very least it should keep them alive until the whatever happens."

"Wow. I mean, seriously?" I nodded. Handing out tech was a big deal, but so was the fate of every version of Earth across the multiverse. This wasn't something I could afford to take lightly. "And they'll take you up on that? I mean, Khepri probably will, but Flechette is a Ward, and Panacea's still in containment because of that whole thing."

"I don't know if they'll go for it, but I can at least make the offer." I said. "Weld is friends with Flechette, so he might be able to vouch for me. With Panacea, I don't know. Maybe she'll be happy with the power on offer…"

"Or maybe she'll tell you to go fuck yourself." Aisha said.

"A decent possibility." I said, "Regardless, it would probably be a good idea to try to reach out and apologize for how things turned out."

"Well, good luck with that." Aisha said.

It hadn't been my intention or even my fault, but that didn't change what she and her family had gone through. Of course, I didn't want to make the master concerns any worse, seeing as they were already dragging on excessively.

That was something I should ask Survey to look into. She had official reports, but once again recent developments were locked behind isolated systems, which was pretty much the only thing that could keep Survey out. At least it could until she knew about the system in question, and scrying was usually enough to take care of that. There were certain aspects of the situation in the city that the PRT had been concealing to an excessive degree. I was glad they were taking some aspects of information security seriously, but that didn't mean I trusted them to handle whatever it was they were keeping quiet.

"Right." I said, doing an unnecessary check on the Psi Lab's controls. "Psi Operative conditioning and Valkyrur augmentation. You ready? And still sure about this?"

"About this? Yeah. This I can handle. It's not like Star Trek genetic augments or that Kaiju Chimera thing where you have to rebuild all of the proteins in someone's body, or shoving nodes of reactive mass altering metals into someone's nerves." She said.

The fact that Aisha had a clear understanding of the types of enhancement I could offer and had made an informed selection went a long way in assuring me of her decision. She wasn't just taking everything offered and had specifically picked what she was comfortable with and what she could make use of. It was still a major procedure, but it was her decision.

"Alright. Need you in the isolation chamber. I'll handle the infusions and augmentation." I explained.

She nodded. "Hey, how was this when you did it?" She asked.

"It was fine." I said. "Really, I kind of went through it twice. Duplicate tested it, then I had the procedure. Mental link meant I knew what to expect. Actually, probably could have managed some of the effects just from that level of exposure."

"Synchronicity Event, right?" I nodded. She shifted slightly, looking at the chamber. "Hey, is that going to come into play here? I mean, the stuff with Alma?"

"It shouldn't." I said. I wished I could have offered more reassurance than that, but psionics were complicated. "It's not going to draw her to you, but if you have psionic abilities you will be more visible to her than other people, but only slightly. Psionics aren't common in this world. It's not power acting on the world to create an effect, you're changing the nature of reality to bring about specific results."

She cocked her head. "You know, that sounds a lot like how you described the Prismatic Laboratory colors."

"Sort of?" I said with a shrug. "I don't think those are psionic effects, but they seem to approach things from the same angle. They might be related or have some level of overlap, kind of the way you get similar expressions from magic and ki." I shook my head. "With the number of powers I'm balancing, the interactions get a bit complicated."

"I can imagine." She said, "So, that overlap? It the reason you wanted to do this before I start messing with the colors?"

"Probably won't hurt." I said. "Also, I'm not sure how well your powers will function on colors that aren't directly related to memory. There are a lot of mental effects that can come into play and I don't trust conventional defenses to hold out against them."

"So we're going for the unconventional stuff." She said with a nod. "Do you think Solace will be enough for that kind of thing?"

"I'm not sure. That power was designed to defend against other psionic abilities, not mental manipulation in general. It will help, but I wouldn't count on it as an absolute defense."

It would be nice if a mental defense field was enough to counter Jack Slash, but I wasn't willing to take that gamble. Solace would definitely help against mental effects that might slip by her armor's defenses, but parahuman powers were too varied to have a single universal defense without fiat strength effects.

The fact that Jack was likely accessing information directly through passenger connections was just another complication to deal with. The only way to block that kind of effect would be to compromise the connection that allowed Aisha's power to function in the first place, or actively interfere from within Passenger Space. I was just glad that the second option was actually a possibility for me.

"I get it. Layered defenses and all that." She said, "We ready to go?"

"All set." I said. Aisha moved into the chamber and lay back in the chair. I sealed the door behind her and got to work.

A normal set of treatments would take weeks to complete, even with constant monitoring and adjustment. The subject would need to live in a continued environment, slowly absorbing Elerium energy as gene mods inserted specific genetic markers that would resonate with the advanced isotope.

It was a slow process, but a consistent one. Anyone could undergo the conditioning and anyone with the right training could carry it out. The abilities gained functioned reliably, serving as an effective asset within military forces. They were less versatile than typical psionic abilities, but when you were building a strike team you wanted to be able to plan around specific abilities your psi operative had, not need to adjust every mission based on eccentric specializations.

There were effectively two 'schools' of abilities for Psi Operatives, Telepath and Resonant. There was a general theming to them, but it wasn't clearly defined or limited to specific abilities. Both paths had mental and energy attacks as well as defensive abilities. Once again, consistency was key. The focus was entirely on imparting the ability to generate very specific effects, specifically seven from each school.

Just mastering one ability would have been a major undertaking, but that was for normal versions of the facility. I was able to run through the complete range of powers in under half an hour, with time to spare for Valkyrur augmentation.

That was actually a simple matter. The research behind Valkyrur augmentations was based on technology that dated to the nineteen forties, at best. It would have been safer and easier with just modern technology, but a lab of this quality could basically do it as an afterthought.

Valkyrur abilities were powerful, but they required an emotional component. Protective instincts worked particularly well, but other mindsets were possible. It wouldn't be something that Aisha could just deploy at will the way Survey was able to. Her level of body control seemed to allow her to emulate a perfect mindset for Valkyrur expression whenever she wanted.

With the procedure complete I released the seal on the chamber. A flare of purple light washed through the Psi Lab as residual Elerium energy discharged from the chamber. It was the conclusion of a procedure that had altered the fundamental expression of reality, allowing a normal human to bend the universe to their will. Immense power granted over a span of time that defied belief. I cautiously approached the door, monitoring Aisha's condition and performing a final set of checks.

Which is when a drawn-out yawn sounded from inside the chamber. An extremely drawn out yawn, clearly being played up. I rolled my eyes at the theatrics, but at least it was an effective way for Aisha to communicate that she was alright.

"Did you have a nice nap?" I asked as she made her way out of the chamber. There was a fading glow of Elerium around her, but that was secondary to the change to her hair and eyes. Snow white hair and purple eyes were a universal side effect of both the gene therapy and energies involved.

"Very nice." She said with a grin, then saw my expression. "And my hair did the thing, didn't it?"

"Yeah." I said. "Eyes as well. I've prepared a countermeasure. We just need to…"

"Do you have a mirror? Can I get a view screen?" She asked. I nodded and drew up a holographic display to function as a mirror for her.

"Holy shit!" She cried on seeing her expression. She leaned towards the screen, checking her eye color, then leaned back and reached up to begin playing with her hair. The natural hair had shifted to white, but her purple streak had remained, and now stood out even more prominently.

"I know. It's significant, but harmless, and easy to-"

"This looks so fucking good!" She exclaimed. "Are you seeing this?" She asked, flipping her hair.

"Uh, yeah. I guess you like it?" I asked.

"Of course I do. This is awesome." She exclaimed.

Aisha had just gained power to shield herself from environmental damage, mental effects, and could even call upon temporal defenses. She could fire lances of null psionic energy or call down storms of psionic power. She had moderate strength telekinesis and the ability to completely dominate a person's mind, but the primary focus of her attention was an effect that could have been achieved with a salon visit and a pair of colored contacts. For some reason, that made me feel a good deal less concerned about the amount of power I had handed off to someone who was technically thirteen years old.

"So I can debut this at the charity show, right?" She asked.

"Um, probably not a good idea." I said. "People there will know enough about this kind of thing. Someone might notice it's a natural hair color, or realize you aren't wearing contacts."

"Really?" She looked back. "Well, that sucks. I need to cover this up?"

"I can reverse the specific protein expression. Exactly back to how you used to look." I explained. There was a tone as Survey reached out to the Psi Lab. "Yes, Survey?" I asked as she manifested her hologram.

"Aisha." She said with a nod. "I am pleased you are satisfied with the recent expansion of your abilities. While I agree with Apeiron's recommendation to reverse the immediate visual effects to avoid undue attention during the upcoming event, I feel I should highlight the fact that active expression of Valkyrur abilities results in a similar expression of hair color."

To my surprise Aisha actually seemed to be considering the idea. "Wait, are you selecting your superpower specialization entirely based on the aesthetic expression they're paired with?" I asked.

"Sure." Aisha said with a shrug. "I mean, why not?"

"I believe Garment would approve of such an approach." Survey said. "She already has a number of designs planned based on the exact expression of Aisha's abilities."

"Of course she has." I said. Aisha had just gained a terrifyingly powerful range of abilities, but was apparently electing to take a fashion first approach to developing them. Probably better than going mad with power, but considering I had been gearing up for a difficult conversation about responsible power use it kind of blindsided me.

"Just to check, the psionics did integrate properly, right?" I asked.

"Oh yeah." Aisha said, closing her eyes. Purple light flared around her as I felt her access and cycle through the range of abilities available to her. "It was really easy, actually. A lot easier than I thought it would be based on all the training and background information."

"This model of Psi Lab is significantly more advanced than standard expressions." Survey said with pride. Thankfully, she didn't list every ability that was included in its construction.

"I get that." She said, "Like, it wasn't just the structure of the power. It was like learning how to use abilities even as they were showing up."

"Craftsmen of the Gods and Daedalus' Student." I said. "High level divine crafting means extra features. Also a boost from the Glove of the East."

At least as much of one as I could afford. Spiritual energy was still my most limited resource. There had been hopes to replace it with fortune energy, now that I could mass produce it, but the three-mile-wide patch of four leafed clovers in the middle of the Workshop's desert was evidence of how well that attempt had gone.

On the surface it made sense. Gods used fortune energy and spiritual energy interchangeably without any of the complications that a human would face. I wasn't willing to take on that level of spiritual transformation, but if a duplicate could manage it, they could freely absorb and expend fortune energy for the remainder of their duration, covering all of the Eleven Enchanting, talisman creation, and Glove of the East upgrades we could want.

Unfortunately, even though my duplicates were basically physically indestructible, the transformation to a god was not a physical process. Overloading your soul with energy to the point of rupture was an entirely different kind of damage, and more than my duplicate could handle. For the first time in ages, I had lost a duplicate to damage, rather than expended duration.

I was just 'lucky' that our enhanced connection didn't dump all that fortune energy directly into me. Instead, the majority was absorbed by the environment, creating a rather incongruous high-fortune area in a remote section of the workshop. It's also a good thing that my workshop was big enough to handle that kind of dispersion. If I had tried that in my original setup of an entryway and metal shop I would have been looking at a divine realm for sure.

Until that little issue was addressed, spiritual energy was something I was being conservative with. The Psi Lab had gotten a boost from the glove to enhance its Elven Enchantments, but only a single small boost. Still, it was enough to make a difference, and worth it when you considered the benefits and time savings, for both of us.

Turning back to Aisha, I called up my own expressions of the Psi Operative abilities. Thanks to Synchronicity Event I had more power and control than Aisha, but still benefited from the expanded features of the Psi Lab. "It's not just the infusion. You get the benefit of training and experience with the abilities. Should be field ready with minimal training."

"Which I'm sure Tetra would love to help me with in the Arena." Aisha said, rolling her eyes.

"She is exceptionally enamored with that particular facility." Survey said, her phrasing clearly much more diplomatic than her actual opinion on the matter.

"Right." Aisha said. "So, before I get dragged out to a punching match with someone that can't be knocked out, we ready for the Impossible Color Laboratory?"

I cracked a smile. "I don't know if anyone can really be ready for that place, but regardless we should probably get moving…" I trailed off as I felt my power move again. The quality constellation swung forward and a connection formed to an exceptionally familiar cluster of motes. My reach had grown to greater heights than it had ever reached before, so I easily secured another set of connections to Minor Blessing and Unnatural Skill.

This blessing was from Poseidon, the Blessing of Water. An incredibly generic blessing that actually covered so much. Water as a force, a medium, a solvent or carrier. All of water's use in crafting and industry was open to me. At its core function it was minor hydrokinesis and a sense of the movement and properties of fluids, but like all blessings there was significance beyond the base ability. An insight into water as a medium, a force, and a symbol.

Water was universal. As an element it was all encompassing. It was essential for life, but also a force of death and destruction. It generated power and facilitated great work, but was also a vector of decay and rot. As a concept it was almost too broad, which coming from Poseidon was kind of the point.

The sea was vast. It encompassed more than any man could comprehend. It could be worked with, but not tamed or conquered. The blessing of water was as vast as the domain of the god who granted it, and granted roughly as much control. I couldn't bend water to my will the way I could with fire, but I could understand its nature and influence its flow. A simple blessing that vastly expanded my crafting abilities in any field that used or was affected by water in any way.

My newly acquired Unnatural Skill couldn't have been more different from the blessing it was paired with. Unnatural Skill Stoneworking unlocked the abilities of the creatures of earth and stone, and those who worked in that medium. Whether they were building a wall for the gods or carving a lair in the heart of a mountain, stone was known to them, and it was theirs to manipulate beyond the bounds of what should be possible in the natural world.

And like my other Unnatural Skills, this drew power from Monstrous Strength. A power that began with the ability to move beyond what was physically possible extended to works that would be seen as complete affronts to the natural order. Power and skill drawn from the depths of myth, not miracles of the gods or the works of human sorcery, but feats that stood beyond explanation.

Honestly, with the array of Unnatural Skills I'd received, it almost seemed like my power wanted me to build a doom fortress. Some towering edifice of stonework and smithed iron with firecraft empowered lava flows, standing on cursed land and built around a rune carved enchanted ritual chamber fed by unnatural alchemy where impossible transmutations could be undertaken. And I guess music would be mixed in there somehow, even if it's just a pipe organ for proper ambiance.

"New power?" Aisha asked. "New power." She repeated with confidence.

"Another blessing and skill. Poseidon and stonework." I explained.

"So is this one of those things that sounds simple but is going to turn out to be crazy?" Aisha asked. "Like, are you going to start building crazy cursed labyrinths or something?"

"I'm not planning to build any cursed labyrinths." I said in a level voice.

"See, that's deliberate phrasing if I ever heard it." Aisha said, "So, what kind of labyrinths are you going to build."

"That depends. Do you want one? Portable workshop plans are still being revised." I teased.

"Yeah, I'll bet." She huffed. "This is what I get for putting things off. Should have taken the offer back when it would have been a single room in a purse, rather than the current insanity."

"It's not that bad." I said in my defense.

"Sure." She said, giving me a level look. "One of your duplicates said he would have the design ready for me to review as soon as he sorted out the fluvial geomorphology."

That would probably have to be redone, now that we had Poseidon's blessing, but it was probably best not to bring that up. Really, the portable storage project for Aisha had kind of flown in the opposite direction of her armor and hairpin. The desire to avoid saddling her with something underpowered and basic had resulted in a little bit of overdevelopment. I mean, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing and the trial projects have worked well when integrated into the expansions of Garment's studio. Still, there was something to Aisha's concerns. It would be a good idea to just bite the bullet if she didn't want things to really get out of hand.

We elected to put those matters behind us and met Tybalt and Garment at the entrance to the Prismatic Laboratory. Garment was radiating a palpable sense of excitement, while Tybalt presented a much more serious front.

"I get Garment." Aisha said. Her hair and eyes had returned to their original color, though she was still slightly sulking about it. "But why's Tybalt here?" She turned to the Felyne. "You going to start weaponizing that stuff?"

He seriously seemed to be considering it, which I found a little concerning. The fact was, we didn't have any idea how bad the effects of the colors could be. I'm fairly certain that a Gant laser would mess someone up to a horrific degree, but there was no context for what to expect from that kind of thing. Even with Tybalt's inherent sense of weapons I wasn't ready to start throwing that kind of stuff around.

"Not just yet." I said. "So far the heretical adaptation from your hairpin is the only case we have of something directly affecting the expression of those colors." Mostly because I hadn't wanted to risk messing with something that actively changes the laws of nature as you worked with it. Considering the fact that anything utilizing those colors would kind of be based on those laws of nature, it was easy to see how badly things could go wrong. "Based on how this goes we might try more applications, but we're going to be careful at the start."

"Okay." She said, "So, why is he here?" Tybalt smiled up at her, but left things to me to explain.

Survey didn't like the Prismatic Laboratory since it functionally altered the physical constants she used to evaluate her environment. The Matrix didn't like the way it continually altered itself and compromised the rather precise physics needed for nanotech to function. Fleet didn't really care and was fine spending his time preparing the Kerbals' Mercury rocket for launch. And updating the "X Days Since The Last Workplace Accident' sign that he had installed in the space center. And then added a count for hours. And then minutes. And now seconds.

Personally, I think some of the Kerbals were taking it as a challenge. We would have to talk about medical options, or maybe personal force fields. Or cybernetics.

Anyway, of all of the remaining members of the Celestial Forge, Tybalt was here simply because he needed to be here.

"Tybalt is here because there's more in that laboratory than just the colors." I explained.

Aisha took a breath. "You mean those letters, right? The ones that Survey was so excited about when she got the library and found out it could make anything safe to read?" I nodded. "Well, shit."

"You okay?" I asked.

She looked at the door to the Prismatic Laboratory with clear apprehension. It was actually more imposing now that it stood outside the volcano. The full size of the building and its unique stylistic touches set it apart from the other scattered facilities that had been spread across the plains at the foot of the mountains.

"You know, when I said I didn't want to know about those letters I wasn't kidding, but since this whole thing got dumped in my lap I guess I better deal with it, right?" She turned back to me. "I mean, I don't have to read the letters or anything, right?"

"No, but Tybalt's not here because of the letters." I explained. "He's here because of what was sent along with the letters."

Aisha looked between Tybalt and the door then back again. Tybalt raised his hand to his stygian iron earring and caused it to expand back into its full helmet form. The metal glowed ominously and quite understandably the display did nothing to reassure Aisha.

"Fuck." She muttered. She raised a hand to her hairpin and ran a finger across the surface of the diamonds. "Let's just go before I talk myself out of this."

I nodded and opened the door to the Prismatic Laboratory. In contrast to what you'd expect from the name, the interior was murky, lit only by carefully controlled sources of light and spikes of concerning color. Through the gloom the elaborate Victorian styled architecture loomed around us. Complex latices of wrought iron wove back and forth, supporting walkways and arcane mechanisms that chugged away softly without human attention. There was a background of rustling and skittering from countless cages and tanks containing animals, fish, and insects that the dyes and pigments of the laboratory were derived from.

And it was bigger. Not substantially bigger, but it was constantly growing. The growth was paired with increased capacity. The Laboratory produced more complicated products and in larger volumes. For any other facility that would have been a blessing, but I was at a loss for how to utilize what had already been produced, much less any new products that the Laboratory might end up providing.

Aisha moved slowly through the room, taking in every detail with eyes that darted back and forth in an almost manic energy. In this place the Dragon's Pulse presented more information than anyone would really want, but I could feel Aisha's reaction and the layers of recently developed control that she was exerting. She was unsettled, but that was to be expected. Beyond that she was actually managing quite well.

"We'll get to the colors shortly, but there's something you need to see." I said.

"Oh boy." She said, edging her way through the complex machinery to follow after me. The layout of the Prismatic Laboratory was horribly unoptimized, but I wasn't about to start rearranging things for the sake of easier foot traffic. "Can't wait to see what you think is more serious than this."

"Okay, this is on me. I tempted fate. I get that." She muttered to herself. "Really, really need to stop thinking stuff like 'it can't get worse than this' or 'now I've seen everything'." She continued. She wasn't really speaking to me specifically. It was more like she was taking some time to process what she was seeing.

Racks and racks of glowing bottles spread out in front of us. Each seemed to contain a swirling green mist, but every now and then a face would form in the contained fog, just long enough to form an expression of confusion or mouth a few words that could barely be heard before fading back into amorphous fog.

As sad as the display was, it was still better than the condition in which I had received them. Mantic arrays enhanced by the Arcane Craft channeled reinforcement energies into the bottles, slowly reinforcing the degraded souls. There had been a marginal improvement from all the bottles, but a few had recovered to a far greater extent.

Tybalt approached those containers. The bottles that held the souls of soldiers and other members of militaries. They had responded to his dominion over dead warriors and regained more of themselves than the rest of the amassed souls. Their glow pulsed like the beat of a drum and seemed to grow imperceptibly stronger with each repetition.

But even their state contrasted sharply with the four gleaming bottles set above the rest of the racks. Souls that were the result of my duplicate's efforts to save both me and Tetra in the aftermath of my fight with Lung. A fifth bottle contained the soul that had been portioned to provide the raw materials for their construction. A fraction of a soul being sufficient to create five new and more powerful souls. Four of which watched over the array of soul vessels, with the fifth being expended for the alchemy that separated me from Tetra.

The weakened soul was recovering, but lagged behind the rest of the bottles. The four glowed as brightly as ever, their brilliance clashing against the gloom of the room. They were entities of light, hope, and healing, because that was the intention of their creation. It was almost enough to obscure the act that had been committed in order to bring them into existence.

"You got sent souls. From hell." Aisha said.

"From a hell." It was something of a meaningless clarification. "Whatever world this stuff comes from has a hell. I'm not sure there's an equivalent here, or on any of the other worlds that I'm connected to. I'm not even sure it matches up to the classical hell, but regardless, they trade in souls and send letters." I gestured towards the various messages from the Devils.

"Your power gave you pen pals?" She asked mutely. "Pen pals who send around souls like party favors?"

"Well, I can't write back, so it's more like commentary." I remembered some of the comments regarding my handling of the situation with the Undersiders. "Or maybe fan mail." Aisha gave me a very concerned look. "Half of it is from devils, the other half is from squid people."

She examined one of the barely legible letters that had been sent from the rubbery men. "And what do they send? I mean, it's not just the devils sending crazy stuff, right?"

"They send this." I said, holding up a piece of amber. It was one of the more heavily charged pieces, practically trembling in my hand. "It's a type of amber that absorbs life energy from people who handle it." She looked at me with concern. "Cyborg Godbody. I'm fine, and it's fractions of fractions at a time. I think it's meant to be passed around a lot, rather than taking a significant amount from any single source."

"Okay." She said, "And the life draining amber? That's the end of it, or does it get worse?"

She was catching on quickly. "The vital essence that the amber collects can be used to alter living creatures. Not like normal changes or surgeries. It affects fundamental nature, potentially even your place in the natural order." I shrugged. "It's kind of conceptual stuff. Not the kind of thing I wanted to get into."

It was at least an option now, even if it wasn't any more appealing. Unnatural Skill with transmutation, rituals, and now stonework all served to make the amber easier to use. By drawing on the full force of my Monstrous Strength power I could be able to warp and shape the very essence of life.

It would be an alteration on an absolutely fundamental level. It was hard to imagine cases that would call for alteration that severe. Maybe the most extreme of Case 53s or capes with powers that took them into uncontrolled breaker states. It was good to have a hold out option for extreme situations, but I was hoping most of those issues could be addressed without fundamental alterations of the natural order.

Aisha let out a breath. "Well, it's nice to know that the world where everything is horrible is happy to keep sending you horrible stuff. Though considering this was where that glove came from, I probably should have expected something like this."

She walked towards the stacks of devil letters with their neat copperplate handwriting and burning sigils drawn in the margins. Lifting a page she shook her head.

"My power may have been a pain at times, but at least I never had to deal with demons commenting on my personal life." She said.

"Devils." I said, taking the page. "They're very specific about that terminology. Also, the deliveries only show up every two weeks, so it's not like I get a running commentary."

"When's the next one due?" Aisha asked.

"Friday." I said in a tired voice. "And I'm sure they'll have plenty to comment on."

The first set of messages had mostly discussed my trigger, my family situation, and my prospects as a cape. It was uncomfortable to know those aspects of my life were on display, but the actual discussion had been fairly neutral.

The second set of letters had discussed my actions with the Undersiders and my decision to reach out to Amy. The general consensus was that I should have had the foresight to be aware of the problems that would be caused by my actions, though a few letters had taken the assumption that I was fully aware of the chaos that would ensue and was cultivating it towards my own ends. It was the kind of insight that could have been helpful if I had received it at the time, rather than a week later.

I skimmed over the message, which was neatly written and very politely calling me an idiot for not taking advantage of the situations and opportunities that had been presented to me. As usual, it was finished with a burning sigil that smoldered slightly while remaining completely incomprehensible-

A SHADOW CAST ACROSS A RARE CELESTIAL ALIGNMENT

I blinked. I had just read the sigil. It was still the same exotic burning mess, but it was a comprehensible exotic burning mess. Meaning was bound into the markings on a level that went beyond conventional forms of writing. And I could understand them.

I blinked again. Runes. Music. Firecraft. Ritual. Even Curses. The accumulation of my unnatural skills allowed me to pierce the veil obscuring the true meaning of the symbol before me. Because my skills were unnatural and weren't bound by natural law, which was exactly what I was looking at.

The symbols weren't just funny burning doodles from hell. They were expressions of natural law bound into language. They had meaning, but that meaning wasn't abstract. It was an expression of the very mechanics of nature. It was what was responsible for the mechanics of nature.

It was a language that permeated the universe, singing between the stars and binding planets to their courses, but it could be transcribed. Expressed through other mediums. This was the most basic expression possible, the equivalent of something that had been photocopied a dozen times to the point where it was just barely legible with all context and character lost.

But it still had meaning. More meaning than I'd wager even the writer of the letter realized. It was something copied as a quip, or an attempt to look sophisticated. The equivalent of someone dropping random Latin phrases into their writing, regardless of whether they were actually applicable to the subject at hand. Or had correct grammar. Or spelling.

Of course, for this metaphor to hold up, properly pronounced grammatically correct Latin would need to be able to alter the fabric of reality.

Looking closer, the symbols were clearly wrong. It wasn't just that they were sloppily written, though a properly written sigil would probably have incinerated the letter along with the person writing it. No, these were artifacts of the mechanics of another universe. Even with a perfect recreation of the language, under the properties of this universe it would just be a lightshow. A self-perpetuating conflagration driven by an impossible language.

Honestly, something like that could have its uses, but it was something of a letdown in comparison to the infinite potential I had glimpsed in the sigil. It might be possible to recreate that kind of fundamental effect, but that would be difficult, even for me. Divine crafting on a level I had never attempted, but with a potential I had never considered.

"You okay?" Aisha asked.

"Yeah." I said. "New powers let me figure out the burning symbols."

"Great. How bad are they?" She asked cheekily.

"Here they're no worse than any other supernatural fire source. Back where they came from they were probably more dangerous than the colors this place puts out." I said.

"Fun." She said, taking a breath. "Okay, I can roll with this. All of this, but I've got to ask." She gestured towards the racks of souls. "Are they going to be alright? I mean, you had the whole thing where dead people might show up in the workshop. I didn't realize the reason you were freaked out was because you'd already been dealing with that kind of thing." It was weak humor, but she clearly needed it. "What I mean is, you have some plan for this, right? You're not just keeping them bottled up or…"

She didn't finish that thought. The alternative to just keeping the souls was using the souls, something I had no intention of doing.

"I'm going to try to help them." I said. "Souls are complicated, on a lot of levels. They're immortal, but they can be diminished. I guess you could say some are naturally diminished. The ones that get sent to me are basically surplus. Extras that have gotten lost and aren't worth refiling." Aisha seemed as upset by the idea as I was. "In the state they're in there's not much I can do to help them."

"So what's the plan?" She asked. She looked up at the four bright souls.

"Not that." I said clearly. "Reforging isn't going to help the original soul, and the fact that my resource powers come into play makes things kind of complicated." Aisha nodded in the gloom. "I've got mantic arrays set up and empowerment focuses. It's helping them recover, but that's a slow process for most of them." We both looked over to where Tybalt was inspecting the gently pulsing shelves of souls. "Slow for most of them, anyway. Tybalt can help anyone connected to war, and I could do more if I got into necromancy, but that would take time to develop. For the moment I'm going for natural recovery until they have enough awareness to function as more than mist in a jar."

"What happens then?" She asked.

"Probably the same as anyone else who might show up. I can set up a realm in the spiritron core for them, or help them get a new body, or even pass on normally if that's what they want." I shrugged. "Once they have enough awareness to make their own decisions that's going to be the main thing. I'm just going to be providing options."

"Right." She said, "Guess we're going serious theology here."

I let out a breath. "Honestly, I'm kind of hoping that my power's done throwing this god stuff at me. I signed on to build stuff, not run a discount afterlife."

"Yeah, it's pretty clear you had no idea what you signed on for." She teased. "And I doubt any afterlife of yours is going to be bargain bin level."

"Don't you have nightmare colors you need to test out?" I asked. I pointed to the manufacturing room where Garment was waiting in clear anticipation.

"You realize you're throwing me to the wolves here, right?" Aisha asked in a flat voice.

"What? Just because you're Garment's only point of access to a completely new color palette? I'm sure you'll be fine." Aisha gave me a sour look. "Seriously, go see how you can handle the expressions of the colors. I'll work with Tybalt to make sure everything is as safe as possible and keep Garment from going crazy."

"See, I know the crazy stuff in this place is going to your head, because normally you'd know better than to promise the impossible." I wanted to argue with her, but as soon as she made her first move towards the dye room Garment practically swept her off her feet and began running her through a frighteningly large array of color samples.

The insight I had gained from reading the sigil actually went a long way in helping me understand the colors of the Prismatic Laboratory. That language was like a song that permeated all of reality, defining the interaction between forces and effects. The unbalanced nature of the Laboratory's colors could be viewed as a disruption of that song. Sour notes pulling things out of alignment, or a deafening silence that would drown out everything.

That was Gant. Gant may have been the most easily weaponized color, but it only took a moment of exposure to a small sample of the color for Aisha to decide she wanted no part of it. The other colors were less extreme, though that also made their applications more esoteric. Aisha took the challenge in stride, actually mustering enthusiasm when not faced with a color representing the horrible end of all things. Unsurprisingly, she took well to Irrigo, and in a way I never expected.

"It's not erasing memories." She explained. Garment was flourishing a freshly dyed Irrigo shawl. The color didn't affect me and Tybalt was strategically avoiding it with his eyes, but Aisha seemed completely fascinated by the display. The diamonds in her hairpin gleamed with Irrigo light as she followed the movements of the cloth.

"So what, it's suppressing them?" I asked. That didn't seem right based on my own rather extensive understanding of memory.

"No, it's absorbing them." She said, "With my power, it's like it pushes, forces thoughts out of people's heads. This is different, but with Ren I can feel the effect." She reached up to her hairpin. "It's pulling, and whatever it's taking is being stored."

I nodded. Functionally, that didn't make much difference in how color affected people, but the concept was completely different from what I had imagined. I expected something too horrible to be processed by the mind, but this was more of a conceptual vacuum, or perhaps a diode, if you were to look at things in terms of the background properties of the universe. One way flow of information combined with an established potential that forced the direction of movement…

There was potential there. Potential to completely rewrite reality in a confined space. To be fair, I did that fairly often, but that was through the use of divine crafting powers. It was the difference between working with a computer and deciding to start wiring up your own logic gates. Monstrously complex, horribly inefficient, but containing unlimited potential.

Examining the other colors only added to the potential applications. The Heretically Adapted hairpin combined with Aisha's frighteningly strong power was able to effectively manipulate a form of energy that could barely be understood and even discern possible applications. None of the colors responded to her as strongly as Irrigo had, though Violant was close. I watched as Aisha continued, feeling her way through the effects of Cosmogone, Apocyan, Viric, and Peligin.

There were no immediate applications, save for the fact that her hairpin could manipulate, store, and release light in any of the impossible colors. It was something even Garment struggled with despite her elemental affinity for light. Despite lagging in that particular area, Garment was beyond excited at the prospect of controlled expressions of the colors that could be worked directly into outfits.

"Won't you need my hairpin for that?" Aisha asked. "Or can you copy that into clothes and stuff?"

"The adaptation should be possible to replicate, but without your power backing it up I won't be able to achieve that level of versatility." I explained as Garment was happily sketching outfits using the pigments supplied by the Prismatic Laboratory. "I can copy a specific effect, which would be enough for a safe use of a specific expression of the color."

"So they can leave the lab now?" Aisha asked. Garment gestured excitedly at her question.

"Soon." I said. "I'm going to kick this over to my duplicates. Hopefully they should have something ready by the time we're done with the charity event. Once we're sure it's safe we can try out more uses and even integration of the colors into people's equipment."

The answer was enough to satisfy Garment, though I think she was secretly hoping to be able to premiere a line of impossible colored formal wear at the charity event. Given my own focus on the potential esoteric applications of the colors, I couldn't really criticize her. Not with the kind of project I was seriously considering.

Using not just the colors, but the effects they had on reality as a foundation for a system that would alter the very expression of physical properties. Writing or rewriting natural law through a manipulation of impossible color and the methodology hidden in the burning sigils.

It was something with unlimited potential, but a potential risk that made every other application of the colors seem trivial in comparison. Still, it felt like I was grasping the core mechanics behind the Prismatic Laboratory's impossibilities. I would have to approach this carefully, but I WAS going to approach this. It was too important to ignore.

I was pulled from my contemplation by another shift of the Celestial Forge. The vehicle's constellation swung towards me and the excessive amount of reach I had accumulated easily dislodged one of the major motes. The rest of the constellation swung away as I watched that burning nova of power descend upon me.

Technology is a statement. A statement of intent, a statement of capacity, a statement of power. Innovation exists as a process, spread out over generations, but great works stood on their own. Singular expressions of the capabilities of those with the will and resources to bring them to life. The significance of a project could only truly be judged by the impact it had on the world.

The power was called Superweapons and it lived up to its name. It could take any technology and elevate it to a level of significance that would leave the world reeling. It was the power to show the true capacity behind the principles and theories that other people would play with and restrain, allowing their true might to be unleashed.

It was the power of a supervillain. There was really no other way to frame it. And by that I meant a proper, classic supervillain, not a random villainous parahuman. This was something built for grandeur that practically begged for a dramatic speech before the final activation sequence was keyed in.

The power could take any form of technology and elevate it to the level of something that could only be described as a doomsday device. Applications that were limited to a single city were at the low end of what was possible. It was basically a factory for S-Class threats with things like exponential propagation and wide scale destruction being entry level features.

That kind of work wasn't unheard of. Megaprojects were a well known phenomena and tinkers like String Theory had built a career around excessively grandiose projects, but with Superweapons that was a standard feature that could be applied to anything. The power itself came with a solid grounding in a rather mad set of scientific principles, everything from mass teleportation to weather control, but the real strength was the synergy with my other powers. Any technology could be elevated to that level of insanity, regardless of how excessive the starting point already was.

It was the ability to take all my technology to stupid level, but with those crazy bullshit applications came crazy bullshit requirements. A project of that scale had the kind of requirements in resources and manpower that would be crippling for anyone without my powers and support base, but even I didn't get a free ride to ridiculous superpower.

As a core feature of every type of applied insanity, there was always some requirement that could not be fabricated in a lab or purchased commercially. Some specific esoteric resource or item that just happened to be the key to whatever you were trying to accomplish. Like turning a Star Trek transporter into something that could transport the moon halfway across the solar system, to pick a random example.

Some of those resources were easier to acquire than others, but it was always something rare, inconveniently located, or in the possession of another party. A feature of the power meant I always knew where to get the resource in question, but it was always something that would require an expedition, or heist, or other crazy mission. More crazy bullshit piled on top of the crazy bullshit, but there was no denying the power involved. The scale possible from the addition of Superweapons was significantly greater than anything I could accomplish from any other means.

Well, save the highest levels of Always a Bigger Robot. Of course, there was no reason that couldn't be combined with Superweapons to create a mad scientist empowered spiral fueled super giant robot.

It struck me that this kind of ability might not be the best thing for someone's mindset. It wasn't just the constant awareness of impossible applications of every form of technology in the world, or the drive to actually use the kind of insane devices that I was now capable of producing. This was a power that fundamentally drove conflict. Even if the resources and manpower could be supplied without doing anything illegal, there was still the absolute requirement of having to go out and somehow acquire that final crucial piece.

If you were really lucky it would only require a trip to a location that was probably both dangerous and inaccessible. Heavy water from a deep sea trench, a core sample from an unstable glacier, geodes from within the Earth's mantle, or mineral deposits from the dark side of the moon. If you were less fortunate the required material was in someone's possession or even regarded as a national treasure. I could think of at least a dozen insane pieces of technology that would specifically require the Hope Diamond in order to function.

It would have to be the actual diamond itself, not a similar stone or even an atomically perfect replica. There was no reason for any of those components to have special properties that couldn't be found in more accessible materials replicated under laboratory conditions, but there was always some crucial feature that facilitated the insane power of the superweapon. Half the time the justification was based on concepts that were pseudo-science at best, but that didn't change the fact that it worked. That it was possible to build something capable of controlling gravity on a global scale, but that would somehow require a priceless art piece or a portion of a specific national monument in order to function.

Like I said, this was a supervillain power. It was something that required both the resources of a villainous organization and most likely the direct proceeds of a major crime or international incident in order to function. It was not something that would be of any use to someone inclined to hole up in their workshop and prepare for the worst.

At least I was at a point where the power was actually usable. I could ignore the requirements in resources and manpower and was capable of acquiring some of the less contentious resources required to build exotic examples of super technology. Inconvenient and dangerous meant nothing to me, though I was probably going to have to set aside those applications that required famous gems or historic artifacts.

At the very least, it didn't change anything in terms of my immediate plans. Having a few superweapons at the ready was undoubtedly a good thing, but for the moment city scale applications of technology were likely to do more harm than good. It was another project to kick over to my duplicates, and at the very least we could prepare everything short of that final component.

Yeah, secret base with a bunch of doomsday weapons that were a single McGuffin away from being unleashed. No question, this was definitely a supervillain power.

"What is it this time?" Aisha asked as we were leaving the Prismatic Laboratory.

I cracked a smile as I mentally coordinated with my duplicates. "Remember back when I got that James Bond Q-branch power?" I asked.

"Yeah?" She said.

"Well, I think I just got the other side of that." I said. She gave me a confused look and I continued. "Superweapons."

"What, you got a power to make better weapons?" She asked.

"No. Superweapons. That's the actual name of the power, and exactly what it does." I explained. "Takes any technology and ramps it up to doomsday level, with a corresponding increase in cost and some crazy requirements."

"What kind of requirements?" She asked. I transmitted a list that my duplicates were already compiling to her watch. Aisha blinked in surprise, then pulled up a display screen and started scrolling. "The fuck? Seriously?" She looked at me. "Is this a joke? It's not a joke?"

"This kind of stuff typically has a global range and a target area the size of a city. There had to be some mitigating factor." I said.

"Right. That's why you need the crown jewels to calibrate an interdimensional resonance cascade, or… seriously? Mount Rushmore?"

"It's the specific composition of the granite in that part of the mountain." I explained. "It has a morphic resonance that under the right circumstances would allow control of global tectonic movement."

"Morphic resonance? Seriously? That's barely science, even by your standards." She exclaimed.

"This is barely science." I said, pointing at the list. "The principles behind most of the justifications make fifties science fiction look like a graduate physics lecture, but that doesn't change the fact that it works. Maybe it's pulling in principles from other universes, or maybe my power is just making fun of me, but even so, every one of these will work."

"Shit." She said, looking over the list again. "So what, are we jewel thieves now?"

I shook my head. "I think I can get decent use out of this power without resorting to grand larceny or desecration of national landmarks." Taking those out left a much smaller list, but it was still workable. "Anyway, it's not something we'll be breaking out right away."

"So another thing to kick to the duplicates?" She asked. I nodded. "Yeah, I guess we need to get ready for the charity event." Garment interest peaked at the mention of the event and she shuffled away her notes from the Prismatic Laboratory, thankfully devoid of impossible pigments, in favor of briefings and event plans for that afternoon.

"Any last minute stuff, or are things sorted?" Aisha asked.

"Mostly sorted." I said, browsing through Survey's reports and the event plans I had worked out with my duplicates. "Survey's sending a replica droid and maintaining watch from her scrying room, but everyone else is going in person. Well, except the Matrix, but only kind of for them." Aisha nodded. "The guest list is fully sorted. Had to do a hard cut off this morning."

"I saw." Aisha said. "Going to be busy in there."

She was right. We had capes, civic officials, some minor celebrities, business leaders, a couple of noted philanthropists and an extensive media presence. The civic officials were either going to include the Mayor or a direct representative of his, which added an extra layer of security concerns for Tybalt to deal with. Probably the sooner the better.

"Volunteers are handing the last of the setup, then it's event prep. We'll need to get you and Garment there soon. Tybalt as well." I said.

"Guess I better get ready." Aisha said, before turning to Garment. "I'm guessing you have a new outfit for me?"

Garment indicated that she had five new outfits for Aisha, any of which would be ideal for the event and all of which had been delivered to her house up on the plateau.

"Right. Better get going. Don't want to hold up the party." She said before summoning another portal. "Have I mentioned I love this thing?"

"Several times." I said, waving as she stepped through the portal into the living room of her house. After the portal closed Garment split off to her clothing workshop. Probably for the final touches on her dress for the event. Well, final, final, final touches, considering the number of revisions. After she left Tybalt looked up and meowed at me.

"No, just a final check on the streaming setup." I explained as we made our way through the collection of buildings at the base of the volcano. "I'll head up after you and Garment, then hand things over to the crew from WKMP-6. Shouldn't have much to do after that, at least until it's time to wrap things up, so I can stay on hand in case there's any trouble."

He raised an eyebrow and meowed again.

"I mean besides whatever's happening with the Empire." I said. "Best case they can keep that contained. Well, best-best case they drive out the Teeth, but…" Tybalt explained what he thought of the chance of that happening. "Yeah. Odds are someone is going to have to step in and deal with things, and it would be better if it wasn't the person a half inch away from being declared an S-class threat."

That category applied to more members of the Celestial Forge than not, but this was more about public perception than the actual facts of the matter. I was happy to hand off responsibility for managing the conflict to another member of the Forge and confident they could handle the situation, no matter how bad things got between the Empire and the Teeth. And the remaining members of the Protectorate. And any independent capes who joined in. And maybe the Merchants, if they didn't want to be left out. And Dragon. And the Dragonslayers.

Actually, maybe it would be a good idea to have two members of the team ready to step in, just to be safe.

"Anyway, I'm set for the rest of the morning, and the duplicates have things pretty well handled." The improved duplication potions helped considerably with both coordination and maintaining any skills and developments between cycles. "Are you dooring to the Regency Center, or do you want me to give you a lift-"

I stopped dead as a pulse rang out through the Workshop. It was an alert specifically set for the completion of my most critical project. Something that I knew was close to completion, but that I had no way to predict on an exact timescale. And it was earlier than I expected.

I vanished in a flicker of blue energy as I activated my fastest teleport ability. Dark Slayer was low range, but I only had to cover a couple of blocks to reach the spire of photonic crystals that composed the core of my Spiritron computer.

I could feel the progress without even accessing the system. The serial phantasm within the spiritron core had been steadily developing, adding more and more layers of complexity since its launch the previous morning. With every additional layer more aspects of reality could be emulated. From conventional physics to expression of internal energy, simple magical mechanics, multiversal dynamics all the way up to nearly incomprehensible aspects like psionics or the mechanics of the Prismatic Laboratory.

Working parallel to the serial phantasm was the most powerful computer ever built. It barely qualified as a computational system, but the broad similarities and ability to manage data made the comparison appropriate enough. As the serial phantasm had emulated reality the computer system had analyzed every aspect and permeation of it. A literally unfathomable amount of computational power, all directed to deciphering a coding mechanism that should be impossible to crack.

Honestly, without this level of effective cheating, it pretty much was. Nobody actually understood the full scope of Bakuda's code. The primary reason they thought it was impossible to solve was because it was impossible to actually perceive the entire structure at once. Literally impossible, as some parts were synchronized into mutually exclusive waveforms with other key components, and that was one of the more basic security measures.

The 'code' was an entirely new method of conveying data, utilizing aspects of signal dynamics that went beyond any single universe. In fact, they went beyond any conventional universe, getting into the realm of high energy exchanges in emulated universal spaces.

It was an aspect of reality that most people didn't even know about, much less understand. But I knew about it. I had been studying it since Saturday night, and my computer's serial phantasm had just reached a level of complexity sufficient to emulate the dynamics of that space. And with that emulation, low order infinite permutations of entangled signal dynamics could be fully analyzed, even in the absence of the foundational structure.

It had taken longer than it had any right to and required the near complete deconstruction of the fabric of the multiverse and the dynamics of passenger connections, but I had done it. I had beaten a chaos tinker's megaproject. I had cracked Bakuda's code. Her bombs, her detonation commands, and her failsafe, were all mine to control. Finally, the hostages were safe.

More than that, I had the complete structure of the signal, and all the multidimensional components. I could trace it back to its source, back to Bakuda. It would mean taking the long way, tracking the elements of the signal that intersected and utilized Passenger Space and dipped into other universes, but I could handle that now. I had Tetra to help me, and the carrier that was currently exploring Passenger Space. Dodge's pocket universes might be undetectable unless you could find the entrance point, but that assumed that nobody would try to kick down the back door.

Probably because nobody knew enough about dimensional physics to even know there was a back door to kick down.

There was work to do, measures to put in place, and I needed to make some calls. It looked like my morning was going to get a lot more interesting.

Jumpchain abilities this chapter:

Arsenal (Personal Reality) 200:

Placing your battle armor and sword right next to your wedding dress rarely appears all that practical, so with this purchase an armoury gets added to your Personal Reality, into which you can place your battle armors and your weapons, and same for your companions. Content placed into armoury will be sorted for easy access and will be kept in pristine condition, always cleaned when placed back and minor damages automatically repaired, although for bigger types of damages you'll have to figure out something by yourself. If you have Portals, you can summon your equipment through any portal you open.

Basic Accommodations (Personal Reality) 50:

This provides minimalist accommodations for you and each companion. Essentially the same thing you'd get in Basic Training in the military. A barracks with a bunk and a locker and a camp toilet. If you bought Plumbing, this improves to include a communal shower and toilets. In fact, someone need not be a companion for this to work. Anyone you allow into your Personal Reality will be allotted a similar level of basic living quarters, thus allowing you to turn your Personal Reality into a refugee center if you like. If you have Basic Nutrition, this will provide any such guests as you may invite into your Personal Reality with very basic food equal to 1200 Kcal a day, totally vegetarian. This can support up to a maximum of 1 person for every 4 cubic meters of space in your warehouse per day.

Seeds and Seedlings (Personal Reality) 50:

This Greenhouse Upgrade provides you with a package once a year that contains a random assortment of seeds and seedlings for you to plant in your Greenhouse. Has enough seeds and seedlings to fill half of your Greenhouse and they're chosen (and labeled) from all the Host Realities you've visited, though all are relatively normal plants for their Host Reality.

Minor Blessing Poseidon – Water (Percy Jackson) 100:

For one reason or another you've got a god who cares slightly about you and has seen fit to grant you some minor boon within their domains. Choose one god from any pantheon and gain a minor boon from them. The god will care slightly about you but unless you go on to further distinguish yourself it will be more of a minor interest in your affairs than someone they feel the need to help (Effectively think a diminished version of one ability a demigod might have, think minor ones are stuff along the lines of breathing water, lucid dreaming, or appropriate vague extra senses, useful but nothing especially major). This can be taken multiple times.

Unnatural Skill: Stoneworking (Percy Jackson) 200:

Whether from your heritage or just being that good you've got one particular mundane skill that your feats with border on supernatural. Whether you're a smith on the level of the Cyclopses, a near prescient tactician or a swordsman who is ny unstoppable with a blade your feats will be legendary. You are on a level within your skill such that only other beings of legend can hope to match you. This may be taken multiple times. You may not choose magic but you may choose a particular application of magic if you have it already (so curses, enchanting might work, more specific gets a bigger boost).

Superweapons (G.I. Joe) 600:

Your expertise covers the ever growing market of weapons of mass destruction. Giant beam weapons that can teloport people everywhere to controlling the weather, if its meant to bring a city to its knees, you know about it. All of these devices however will take a massive expenditure of manpower and resources. Among rare elements that are the cornerstone of the device. Good thing you always know where to get them, good luck with getting past those giant worms! G. I. Joe will never let you make one...unless they need it to stop Cobra's latest super weapon themselves... Your repertoire of doomsday devices increases with the technology you are familiar with, you learn how to apply specialties to new super weapons. Robotics could make giant robots that grow as they eat metal. To mutagenic spores that could mutate the planet.