John stood at the front of the virtual conference room, while the crowd murmured and ribbited and croaked and stuff in the background.

Jessica was at the table with the girls, of course, although Temptation was still ranting about how she'd only managed to evaporate three of Mister Sinister's clones during her hunt to her very tired angelic sister… Grace really needed a good long break and relaxation time before this next Transfer.

Besides, the idea of pampering his lovely ladies sounded like a great plan in general… Mmm…

Oops, right, focus! "Everyone, can you hear me alright from here?"

""""""YES EMPEROR/RIBBIT/CROAK!"""""" "GAH, I'm awake, I'm awake…." "...Did you not even HEAR me sis!? How were you SLEEPING with your EYES open!?" "[[Yawn…]] It's been a long couple of days…"

Jessica grinned at his shocked expression. "I enabled the conference call feature of the simulation bro, everyone can hear you perfectly fine."

Oh. Uh. Good. "Great! So I'm sure most of you are aware that our LAST [[Transfer]] attempt had some… issues…"

The crowd murmured, with the SPYRAL agents silently nodding and the swamp creatures just… Well, the leadership Frogs were focused, and that was the best you could hope for really. "Right, so I've attempted to make some corrections for THIS attempt, with the incredible help of our lovely Angel Grace of course..." "Zzz…" "Temptation, please stop doodling on your sister's face."

Ignoring the dark demoness's pouting attitude entirely, John clapped with enthusiasm! "So here is what we came up with!"

Data was shared with the group, allowing those who were paying attention a chance to look the new document over.

It was less a laid out plan and more of a really odd list of a requirements, which would be passed along to the targeted green node Realm and hopefully let John slip in during [[Transfer]] by supplying the [[Incarnation]] module with answers for any potential questions that may come up during the process.

A general list of requirements was easy enough:

~The target for [[Incarnation]] must have had the Soul vacate over 1 hour prior to selection.

~The target must be physically 95% undamaged compared to a 'healthy' or 'average' example of target's species

~The target must be between the ages of 22 and 33

~The target must not be damaged, killed, dismantled, remodeled, or reconstructed in response to this attempt at Selection.

John watched many of his listeners pull up the information as he reviewed it himself for the billionth time… THIS list of restrictions would hopefully fix a lot of issues.

Ensuring the body was actually vacated? Critical. He STILL wasn't sure if he had resurrected Jeremiah Wickles, reincarnated a variant of himself as his own grandfather, merged a clone of his existence with the Body to give birth to something new entirely or who knows what.

John wasn't going to go through THAT again, no thank you!

The 95% undamaged thing was to ensure he had most of his limbs and fingers and toes and stuff. Gunshot wounds or stabbings or whatever didn't do THAT much damage really, compared to being exploded or burned to death or whatnot, and he wanted to ensure his new Body was usable out of the box, as it were.

As for the age thing… That was all Temptation. His girl explained during one of their cuddling sessions that the human male supposedly hits his prime between the ages of 30 to 40 years old, depending on the Realm and the individual's lifestyle and social status and whatnot.

Well, that and she wanted him to be able to take her to bars and such, and 22 was considered past the mark of maturity on all previous Realms he had visited so far and was good enough for her.

The last bit was something he was still working with Grace on, rules set on the Realm itself to ensure that it wouldn't just murder someone randomly to fill in John's requirements when coming to visit.

The uh… The possibility of that had horrified him pretty badly for a while there. Thankfully, he had somehow missed that bullet by pure blind chance when he went with Jeremiah Wickles… But still: Damn.

After having a small breakdown when realizing how close he had come to murdering someone's grandpa without realizing it, John had very CAREFULLY altered this 'Please actually pick an existing person who passed on' requirement for a LONG time… Hopefully it covered all the bases here.

Anyway, those four rules/requirements seemed like the best idea overall: Don't smush John into a Body with someone else, the Body needs to be dead whether John showed up here or not, the Body should be within the acceptable age range, and it shouldn't be all busted up.

Good enough for him!

Then there was a secondary 'optional list' just to handle the 'wish list' of potential new Bodies for John, but that was less of a big concern to him honestly. As long as his new Body was capable of loving his girls and understanding the concept of Family, he could make it work regardless of gender or species.

After all, being human or male or whatever didn't matter to him much… Though he was fairly sure he'd be either bisexual or a lesbian if he had a female Body, the girls themselves loved John for who he was, even if he became a she or it or they or whatever at some point in the future.

Which was comforting, honestly…

The rest of the 'optional list' was being altered all the time by Temptation (since Grace was too busy to get involved with it) so he barely knew what was on it anymore. She'd put stuff like 'Has a cool tattoo' or 'Can do one armed sit ups' and all sorts of random things, and John really hadn't cared enough to argue with her on this one in the end.

He also carefully ignored some of the optional requirements she snuck in concerning the more erotic topics, such as her many opinions on his personal parts, or various fetishes or tasting certain ways or… Well, for his own mental health, he decided to ignore that mess too.

Although he HAD put his foot down when she tried to force ALL her thoughts into the required list at the SAME TIME. He didn't want to end up covered in dozens of tattoos with hundreds of piercings and all sorts of odd hair colors and…

Well, let's just say she had duplicate 'requirements' which could potentially conflict with each other and leave it at that. One or two of the random options would be fine, but ALL of them?

Not to mention, what if the impossible person designated didn't exist in that Realm? Would that catch the attention of the Transfer Node itself? Would it just force one random dead body to be blinged up beyond all recognition, or would it cause John to be caught again and turned into reality's chew toy once more?

So yeah, Temptation was blocked HARD by his sister and the others when she tried to upgrade her suggestions into something less optional, and thankfully had backed down easily enough. For now.

This should be good enough: It carefully noted the actual lines he didn't wish to cross when Inserting as an existing person while leaving lots of options for the place to then choose a target from.

So if everything went as planned, the [[Insertion]] module would get a list of a bunch of acceptable new targets, organize them by the optional requirement list, and then choose someone near the middle of that mess for him to enter the Realm as.

John blinked, seeing some raised hands and frog limbs in the crowd… Oh. "If anyone has any suggestions or changes, just use the anonymous comment forum I set up over here and I will go over them later! It would take too long if we waited for everyone here to have a chance to talk, so this is going to be more of a short meeting I guess."

Good, that seemed to have handled that. "Like I said before, we are going to a nice stable Realm node next trip… But uh, we might cut things a tad short if things go as oddly as THIS trip did, so keep that in mind? Yes? Cool. Meeting over, I guess. Just send me any thoughts or opinions you have to that forum, alright?"

""""""YES EMPEROR/RIBBIT/CROAK!""""""

Ah, too loud! "Sweet, great. Temptation, could you please take a break from your new 'art project' and get Grace to our room? She needs a real chance to get some actual GOOD and RESTFUL sleep while I go over all the posts from this meeting."

The black beauty cheerfully put a cap on her bright red markers, before carefully lifting her overly doodled sister in her arms. "Mmm, bring such a lovely thing to our bed? Anytime Master~"

Down girl. "See you two in a few hours then, love."

Jessica meanwhile was already busy with her agents discussing… Something or other, they've been busy for days now, just like everyone else had been.

Maybe NOW he'd have a bit of free time to develop the new and improved Crafting Chest!

Honestly a lot of the issues with that mess had gone away once he broke down and decided to focus on each chunk of the process as its own challenge.

A Scrap Chest to convert anything given into scrap had been the key breakthrough… It would allow his grandpa and Charlotte to convert anything they had laying about into a special compressed block of material he was calling scrap that could be used in other Chests he designed.

That way he wouldn't have to worry about transmutation or proper ratios of provided ingredients… All the other machines would only take scrap, and any excess from one project could be used in the next!

Sure some things would require several refills to finish being Crafted, but that was FAR less annoying than having a massive process grind to a halt because it ran out of silver-109 or Palladium-107 due to some earlier step.

Now instead of having to reexamine all the processes needed to construct a product to confirm everything provided will be available at each individual stage, he could just rely on a hopper full of scrap to keep it all ready to go efficiently!

He was sure his new sister was going to love this thing!

~~~Pocket System~~~

Charlotte stared at the most terrifying device ever. "Seal the room." "YES MISS!"

Her grandfather was reading over the newly provided documentation. "Oh dear… That brat still doesn't have any common sense, does he?"

She felt her hands shaking. "It can recycle anything into a safe, non-radioactive, easy to work with material. Even gasses and liquids can be transformed into 'scrap'."

Jeremiah hummed. "Well, it'd have to get into the input hopper at least…"

Charlotte pointed to the side. "It accepts both liquid and gas pipes if desired."

He paused. "Ah. Good point."

They were all going to die. "The pamphlet says it can even convert Adamantium into scrap. Without being powered or fueled in any way. Just… Drop it in and out comes scrap."

The old man hummed. "Well not exactly without fuel, this is a modified version of an old thing called a 'Crafting Chest'. They run on Magic."

What were they going to do? "It can convert nuclear waste, biohazards, alien materials, raw energy… Anything. We can't let anyone know."

People have died for less… No, Nations have been burned to the ground for less than this!

Jeremiah snorted. "I feel like you may have missed the second half of the pamphlet, young lady!"

Second half!? "Sir!?"

He glanced at the booklet… And tapped a symbol on the odd wooden box.

And a holographic menu came up.

With options.

Scan. Modify. Craft.

Jeremiah hummed happily. "Oh good, and that brat already filled it up with all those delicious snacks that Steve passed along… I'm going to have this Craft you a cherry cheese cake, you'll love it!"

Was it getting hard to breathe!? "This device can construct objects?"

He nodded. "From what his notes say at the end, this is how we can make Adamantinum whatsits without the boy being around to do all the work for us. Just pop something in made out of plastic or whatever, scan it for the pattern, then ask it to make it out of wood or eggs or whatever."

Oh god! "Everyone is going to MURDER us for this!"

Her horror actually set the old man back… Before he carefully gripped her shoulder. "Calm down, girl. Relax… You know I'd never let something like that happen."

But! BUT! "If they know, sir… IF ANYONE knows!"

And he snorted. "Girl, you are my granddaughter, adopted or no. And he's my grandson. Do you think EITHER of us would let you get in trouble for something small like this?"

SMALL!? "But… But Sir, what if?"

Her heart started to calm seeing how unconcerned he was. "How can I explain this… Look, I said this thing runs on Magic, yes?"

Breathe in. Breathe out. "Yes."

He nodded. "How much magic do you think this facility has? Like say, as of a month ago?"

Charlotte Clearwater blinked. "I… I am unsure?"

Jeremiah snorted. "Basically none, brat. This place was built here because it was cheap and easily defended, not because of mystical mumbo jumbo. So how do you think that chest there is operating right now?"

She didn't understand. "I don't know."

The old man chuckled, and then… Petted his chair? "To be fair, it's not like I think of it often, but we are family, yes?"

Of course. "Yes sir."

He raised a finger. "Gramps."

She felt herself calm down further. "Yes, grandfather."

He huffed. "Close enough. Well, we are family, and that brat brother of yours is family… And his [[Home[[ is OUR [[Home.]] And visa versa."

Charlotte shivered. "What was? That felt?"

Jeremiah Wickles chuckled! "[[Home?]] Be a dear and place this contraption somewhere safe until we need it."

The box vanished from the room. "Thank you, dear."

Charlotte fell back… Into her favorite chair. With a small table to one side, filled with what seemed to be steaming hot tea of her favorite blend. "But… What? How?"

Jeremiah grinned. "Well, before our [[Home]] couldn't do much here, not without the brat's Pocket around to help things along. But with the new Scrap Chest and Crafting Chest to work with? Well, anything she doesn't have that is required she can now Craft up as needed."

He leaned back in his chair. "I knew that little rascal was working on SOMETHING to help us out when he left, but I admit he does do good work once in a while… Speaking of good, could we please have some of that cherry cheese cake?"

And now there was (And always HAD been) a table with an amazing cake ready to be served before them both.

She stared at the thing. "Have I gone mad?"

He was already serving himself. "Meh, sanity is for the weak. Have some cake."

…It was delicious.