"Look, in my defense," I said, afterwards, "the both of us are still in a bit of a honeymoon period, and it's not our fault Darkwing took twenty minutes to get there."

"It very much is your fault that you're that uninhibited," Immortal said, with just enough grin to make it clear he didn't hold it against us.

"There are laws against public indecency," Darkwing said, in the tone of a man who didn't want to walk in on what he'd walked in on and very much would be holding it against us. "See to it that you follow them, from now on."

"The wind did detract from the experience," Karasuba said idly. "Especially in that city; how anyone breathes that stuff is a mystery."

Salt Lake City, an arid location in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains, got a lot of wind blowing in from the Great Salt Lake and the Great Basin, and given the abundance of sand from the desert, and also particulate pollution from factories that extracted magnesium from the Great Salt Lake, being naked on top of a tall building would get you a bit sandblasted. Karasuba and I were physically tough enough that we could in fact just ignore it, but, well... it was still itchy.

"Moving on," I said. "Hey guys, I'm Ophiuchus and she's Thronebreaker, and we're from another reality. We won't be staying in yours for all that long, but we do intend to leave it better than we found it, so... we look forward to working with you all towards that end."

Out north, further from civilization, the Guardians of the Globe made their secret headquarters, in a hollowed-out mountain that, hopefully, had not been sacred to anyone beforehand. Inside that mountain, on a suspended steel platform within the central chamber, the existing Guardians had gathered to meet their newest members.

"What do you do?" Red Rush asked, tapping his foot impatiently.

"I do gadgets, she's Omni-Woman," I said.

He smiled a little and nodded at me.

"To be a little less laconic, though," I said, turning to address the others. "The both of us have a shared base power that enhances our normal human capabilities, both physical and mental, to a startling degree. Recently, we had a spike in growth, as well as a... divergence. My growth went all towards mental improvement, making me inhumanly intelligent and capable of solving any engineering problem in the universe, and her growth went all towards physical improvement, making her an impossibly strong, durable, and fast flying brick, on par with Immortal or Omni-Man."

"I see, I see," War Woman said, nodding carefully. "Was that... purposeful?"

"We're partners in all things," Karasuba said. "When we were presented with the opportunity... we chose to specialize, so we could cover each other's weaknesses. We don't intend on getting separated ever again."

"That, and it complements our personalities," I added. "A woman of quiet contemplation, my wife is not."

Karasuba slugged me in the shoulder, and I tumbled over sideways in cartwheels- which was not enough to bleed off all the impact, and still shattered my shoulder. Thank god for the Regeneration Perk from EBM, otherwise I'd be having to try way harder to hide that injury.

"Maybe don't play that rough with the others," I said, rubbing at my still-sore shoulder as I came to a stop. "Ow."

----------------------------------------

One of the first things I did after that meeting was get some cloning vats set up in our basement. One of the Drop-In Perks let me multithread my mind, with an initial maximum of 10 that could be increased through experience and time at a rate described as 'exponential.' And yet, none of that mental multithreading would matter if those other threads didn't have any real way to interact with reality. Cloning vats were a long-term solution to the problem, though, so the thing I did after getting those built and primed was build some short-term solutions: telepresence robots.

Once that was accomplished, though, the sailing was much smoother over the next month or so. Karasuba was intermittently busy, being exclusively on emergency-response duty, and if it weren't for my multiple bodies, I'd be always busy, because there was always something to research and develop, and so Karasuba's downtime would mostly be spent lounging around like a housecat, waiting for me to stop being so busy so I could spend time with her. This way, though, there was always a version of me with time for Karasuba, and my fleshy body never had to leave her side.

So while Karasuba and Rose Prime went off to fight kaiju or supervillains or whatever other bullshit was going on this week, the Docbots- as I termed them- stayed in the various labs, working on various projects with various teams. A super-soldier serum here, an improved teleporter there, starship propulsion over yonder, and three teams dedicated to imparting as much bullshit superintelligence slash superengineering as I possibly could to others. The initial results were promising, but it was too early to call it just yet.

One Docbot ended up as a sort of liason to Teen Team, mostly working with Robot- who, naturally, was very interested to learn that I had a legitimate (well, Rose Khar'cair did, but I was she as she was me, whenever it was convenient for me) doctorate in Genetics and Cloning, but was, for the moment, going to be very, very squirrelly about why he's so interested.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

But, well, then the Mauler Twins' attack on the White House came and went, burnishing my and Karasuba's credentials a little further, and informing us that the time limit was running out on Mark Grayson getting his powers, and Nolan Grayson going berserk.

I wasn't too worried, though. Karasuba was strong, and I'd been developing some pretty nasty weapons of my own.

We could take him.

----------------------------------------

Our Guardians-issue communicator beeped out an emergency alert, so naturally, we teleported to headquarters, waiting for everyone else to show up.

"So, where's the fire?" I asked once Darkwing arrived. "Why are we here?"

"You didn't sound the alarm yourself?" Darkwing asked.

"No, I..." I trailed off, and looked up. "Shit!"

I jumped backwards out of the way, just in time to avoid Omni-Man splattering Rose-flavored chunky salsa all over the wall.

"Jesus, Omni-Man, be careful!" I said, pretending I didn't know exactly what was happening.

"Why are you here?" Darkwing demanded.

Nolan remained silent, looking around and surveying us.

"We have a fight on our hands," Karasuba said, sliding into a ready stance. I still remembered my own karate training with Musubi, and sharing that with Karasuba had taken no time at all- between my own teaching buff, and her own learning buff, an hour of tutelage made her the greatest karateka to ever live, with the equivalent of a million hours of mat time under her belt.

We didn't trust that terribly much, though. She'd practiced karate, and that was a martial art developed for people who couldn't fly. We hadn't yet gotten around to developing the stuff we'd need as a prerequisite to develop a fighting style that'd work for people who could fly.

Nolan went for Karasuba first, and ended up being very surprised when I intercepted him, superscience-enhanced lightsaber in hand, and managing to give him a few nasty burns, before he punched me in the chest hard enough to shatter my sternum and put bone splinters in my heart, flinging me back across the room at Mach 2, where I hit the wall and burst like a balloon full of spaghetti sauce.

I wasn't worried. I could cheat death, after all- that was one of the things all these clones in my basement were good for. And while the new body reinitialized, and geared up for a proper fight, I watched the rest of this fight through Karasuba's eyes.

She was Nolan's main target, and put up a hell of a fight. Our time doing karate wasn't a complete waste- Nolan was faster and stronger than she was, but she blocked, deflected, and dodged his blows masterfully, weaving in and out of the fight as the other Guardians tried to help take him down.

Unfortunately... their help kind of wasn't, in every case.

Red Rush landed hits of opportunity on Nolan, until Nolan managed to catch one of those, locking the speedster into a grapple that lasted barely half a second before Nolan crushed his head like a grape.

Darkwing, running out of explosives strong enough to give Nolan pause, closed the distance to try a nanotech knife I'd helped him develop, and got grabbed by the ankle before Nolan slammed him face-first into the floor, splattering his head everywhere as well.

Green Ghost, young and bright-eyed, also killed with a fist through the head after Nolan threw a corpse at her.

What was it with this guy and head wounds?

"Someone must be controlling him!" Immortal shouted, helping War Woman pick herself up after she got her own face-to-the-floor treatment. "He- He'd never do this!"

"He's doing it now," Karasuba said coldly, managing to land her first good hit on Nolan, bloodying his nose and sending him flying back. "Besides. It's him or us. He killed Rose." She snarled. "I vote him."

Aquarus hit Nolan with a geyser of water, managing to pin Nolan down long enough for War Woman to launch herself at him, mace swinging powerfully. She landed a good hit to his jaw, sending him reeling and spitting blood, but as she continued, he gathered himself, and her next swing whiffed, hitting nothing but the floor, leaving her open for a swift kick in the face.

He grabbed her mace, which hadn't gone with her when she went flying, and threw it at Aquarus, who wasn't fast enough to dodge it, catching a mace through the brain. Karasuba, who'd charged at him, got grabbed by the skull and impaled through the chest with his fist, before being thrown face-first into the floor with enough force to rip flesh.

The pod finally opened, and I slid out of it, hacking and wheezing for a moment, before... stopping.

What exactly was I going to do, here? Try to kill Nolan? I already tried that, and he killed me first. My weapon development efforts had all gone towards improving my lightsaber, and augmenting my own already-prodigious speed and strength, and yet all that'd done was give Nolan a few superficial burns.

I sat down, considering the problem carefully.

I needed more time, if I was gonna devise a weapon to kill Nolan. More than that, I needed a new approach; you can't get to the moon by climbing taller and taller trees.

And every time I failed to get to the moon, people would die.

So... I'd let Nolan think he'd successfully killed me. Pretend to be dead. Not because that was the best possible move for success, but because that was the least bad damage control option I had.

Mentally, I tapped into a secret security camera I'd put in the main chamber a few weeks ago, and watched as Nolan ripped Immortal's head off, before succumbing to his own wounds and collapsing in exhaustion.

Even in that weakened, immobile state... there just wasn't anything I could do to kill Nolan.

"It was all for nothing," I whispered to myself. "Nothing I did made a difference."