"So, I'm the result of an attempt at cloning Viltrumites," Karasuba said, after I shared my own story. "Since the Viltrumites are so few in number, one of their client species who somehow have actual loyalty to them decided to try cloning Viltrumites, to alleviate some of the problems of their overseers."
"And what was the reaction to that?" I asked.
"Well, the Viltrumite that they attempted to impress with their prototype, an adult grown in a tube, was too busy committing genocide to notice I was escaping, and declared me anathema to Viltrum for my weakness- apparently running from a fight and not unthinkingly joining in on the slaughter means I'm weak."
"Huh," I said, nodding slowly. "Okay, bit of a weird reaction. I was kinda expecting the Viltrumites hating you to come from, like, something you actually did."
"Nope. They just think I'm an abomination born of weakness."
"Mhm. And the Coalition of Planets..."
"Thinks I'm just a young Viltrumite, and that Viltrumites in general are the devil. Not strictly wrong, but it's going to be annoying to deal with nonetheless," Karasuba said. "Oh, by the way. Since I was born as an adult in a lab- for the second time- I had an opportunity to snag this." She reached into a cargo pocket on her hip, and pulled out a rectangular prism made of some blue, cubic crystal, roughly five by ten by twenty centimeters, with a thin metal frame around the shorter edges and corners, connecting one end to the other by four tiny wires along the longest edges.
"A rock," I observed. "My favorite."
"A data crystal, jackass," Karasuba said. "In here is a very compressed database of everything the Viltrumites and their imperial subjects have ever learned about science and engineering."
"Okay, that's pretty useful," I said. "Wait. This is the Viltrumite database item from the Jump Doc?"
"The one I said I was purchasing, yes," Karasuba said. "Since it's an item, I'm guessing I can just give it to you?"
"You can, and I will thank you in whatever manner you will allow me to," I said. "In what precise manner would you like to deflower that new body of yours?"
"I'll think about it," Karasuba said, smirking. "The question we should address first is, what are you going to tell them about me?"
"Riiiight, the Earth government that knows Viltrumites exist, but has been misled about nearly everything else," I said. "And who would very likely tell Nolan, who will likely know exactly what's going on with you and have a normal-for-a-Viltrumite response to you."
"That one, yes," Karasuba said, nodding patiently.
"I think... we just tell them you're a Sekirei."
Karasuba blinked. "...Okay?"
"See, here's the thing," I continued. "Space is fucking big, right? There is just... no way anyone can know of every single alien species out there. If we introduce you as Karasuba, an exiled alien from another species that happens to look exactly like humans do, well. Viltrumites have already demonstrated that such things exist, and there's a Viltrumite out there in space who also passed himself off as not-a-Viltrumite, so 'aliens who aren't Viltrumites who still look almost exactly like Viltrumites' isn't an outlandish concept to anyone."
"Alright," Karasuba said, nodding slowly. "I do follow your thought process, here, but I think you might be missing a trick."
"What?"
"We don't have to tell anyone I'm an alien to begin with," Karasuba said. "I look human, remember? Just tell them I am human, just like you, and these powers are just..." She shrugged. "Well, humans sometimes get superpowers, don't they?"
"Okay, point," I said. "Thank you, Karasuba, for demonstrating that super-intelligence Perks do not actually make me any smarter."
"I'm always willing to point out the ways you're a horny dumbass," Karasuba said affectionately. "Now, let's revisit the question of how we're going to break in this new body of mine, because I, for one, would really like an excuse to never have to wear this alien fascist jumpsuit again."
"As you wish, darling."
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Getting back in contact with Robot the next morning was a bit tense, but ultimately pretty easy, once he realized I was knocking on his door.
"Who's the other chick?" Rex Splode asked as Karasuba and I walked into the base.
"My wife," Karasuba said dryly, lifting up my hand to highlight a wedding ring that hadn't been there yesterday.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Karasuba and I had discussed the human cover story a bit, and came to the conclusion that, if we weren't going to be introducing her as a Sekirei- and also bringing in the psychic bullshit that was winging- then it'd probably be the simplest to simply refer to ourselves as a married couple. From there, the two of us each settled on a wedding ring to wear that matched our personal aesthetic- both of us ended up picking simple metal bands devoid of adornment, but while I'd gone with silver, she'd gone with glossy, black-anodized titanium, because my little raven was goth as fuck.
As for her outfit, she'd decided she was feeling a little nostalgic, and commissioned a modified version of her outfit from Sekirei, which had been the uniform of the paramilitary squad she once belonged to. She removed the iconography altogether, wanting no reason at all for either of us to be tricked into explaining Sekirei bullshit, and additionally had replaced the long sleeves of her dress with fingerless opera gloves, bringing it more in line with the general template of the mini-dress it so clearly was.
"Good morning, Robot," I said, waving with my other hand at the brass automaton. Artifice implied an artificer, and if I didn't know who'd built Robot, I'd still know that someone did, and be awful curious as to who. However... I did know who'd built Robot: a man named Rudolph Connors, whose many, many birth defects had left him with a weird, quasi-fetus-like body that could only survive in a specially-formulated liquid environment inside a sophisticated life-support tube.
He just absolutely had to be the result of more unethical experimentation, I knew it. No way in hell he survived long enough to put himself in that tube.
"I'd like to introduce you to my wife, Thronebreaker," I continued, gesturing once more at Karasuba. It would've felt odd to use her real name, but not my real name- these people still only knew me as Doctor Ophiuchus. "Her powers have developed along different lines to my own, focusing more on her physical prowess than her mental prowess. Nonetheless, I assure you she's still smarter than most people you'll ever meet, just as I am by no means a physical pushover."
"A pleasure to meet you," Robot said, inclining his head towards Karasuba. "I take it the both of you would like to speak to my superiors about the possibility of a job offer?"
"We would, yes," I said, nodding. "Oh, and Rex, if we don't see them today, tell Eve and Kate we said hi."
"Yeah, alright," Rex said, already wandering off to go find something else to do. Unlike the rest of Teen Team, he did not attend high school, probably due to having spent a significant part of his childhood and adolescence in a lab. What the hell he did do all day was a mystery to me, though; did they really think it was better to just let him fart around doing whatever he wanted all day? How the hell was he going to meet new people and make friends, and acquire anything at all like a normal human socialization?
"This way, if you would?" Robot asked, gesturing towards another doorway.
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"So... Doctor Ophiuchus and Thronebreaker," the man in the suit on the other end of the video call said. He seemed far too normal to be Cecil Stedman, the chief spook running the government hero shit. "You two are from an alternate reality, and plan to reside here for a year or so before leaving, is that correct?"
"That is, yes," I said, nodding. "And, well, 'here' is a bit of a loose term. We have a pocket universe that follows us around, between realities, and we often go there for a lot of different reasons; it's our home, pretty much, and where we keep most of our stuff."
"I see, I see... So, while a physical residence on this planet might be nice, you don't desperately need one?"
"We do not," Karasuba said dryly. "Why, are houses one of the standard benefits for the Federal Bureau of Heroes?"
"We're called the Global Defense Agency, actually," the man in black explained. "As for what benefits we're prepared to offer you... well. From the sounds of things, there isn't much, materially, that we can offer you, that you don't already have plenty of."
"True enough," I said, nodding. "Health insurance? Our pocket universe has better doctors than anywhere on this planet, and we've got plenty already on retainer. Money? What would we buy with it? Any discrete thing we want, we probably already have more of it than we know what to do with."
"We'd be annoyingly hard to hire if we didn't already want to work with you," Karasuba added.
"Thank goodness for your civic-mindedness, then. What, precisely, are you interested in doing for the Global Defense Agency?"
"Should be standard fare, really," I said. "Emergency response, disaster relief- the sort of thing heroes do all the time, when they're operating on a scale larger than beating up pickpockets. In addition, I've got some damn good engineering skills, and a knack for teaching those, so if your R&D department has room for another super with a big ego..."
"I'll have to ask about the R&D, but the first-responder disaster relief work... well, that's what the Guardians of the Globe do, and as it so happens, their leader, Darkwing, has already noticed you, and offered you a spot as a probationary member. Specifically you, Ophiuchus, but I'm sure that he could be persuaded to make room for Thronebreaker as well, if the two of you are a package deal."
I nodded. Perfect. Step one to defeating the Viltrumites was to defeat Nolan, the one Viltrumite on Earth; by taking him down, not only would we have a better chance of the Viltrumites not noticing what we're doing until it's too late, it'd also be a good trial run in terms of figuring out what does and doesn't work to beat a Viltrumite in a fight.
And since soon, Nolan was going to try to massacre the Guardians of the Globe? Well, if I was in the Guardians of the Globe, I could use my foreknowledge, my technology, and Karasuba's earthshattering power to stop him from killing my coworkers.
"It'd be an honor," I said. "Is there anywhere he'd like to meet us?"
"Salt Lake City, Utah, on top of the Wells Fargo tower- tallest building in the city. He'll meet you there, although you may have to wait a few minutes."
"Eh, we'll live."