"You're ridiculous," Karasuba said, staring at my newest art installation.

"Yes, but do you like it?" I asked.

"...A little, yeah," Karasuba admitted.

I had taken a Perk to make me into a comic book supergenius capable of pulling any technology I wanted out of my ass, and while that turned out to be a little overblown when it came to the sort of technology that would actually help me address the problems this universe faced, I did still have the ability to use it with far greater success on far easier problems.

Such as, say, a growth ray that let me turn a six inch tall figurine into a six foot tall, life-sized statue.

From there, it had been a simple matter of assembling and posing a bunch of these things- thankfully, Karasuba's kit design leaned towards the simpler and easier-to-assemble end of the spectrum, and I could turn a sprue into a figurine in only ten minutes, with just a little practice- and staging them in a bunch of life-size dioramas.

"I figured you would."

Each and every one of the dioramas featured a figurine of Karasuba as its centerpiece, engaged in a variety of activities.

There was a diorama of Karasuba in a bathrobe (I'd convinced her to make nude variants of her figurines, claiming it was because I was horny but really because I wanted it to be easier to put the statues in different outfits) sitting on the couch next to me in a bathrobe, with Karasuba reading a book and the TV playing Mythbusters (a show that Karasuba had watched a few episodes of and decided wasn't really her thing, but was still willing to tolerate as background noise).

Next to it, there was Karasuba in a Conan The Barbarian-style loincloth and pose, a sword held high in burly arms (I'd sculpted on some additional muscle with white modeling clay (We had some absolutely fantastic modeling clay, by the by) just to sell the fact that the Karasuba in the diorama was a power fantasy you were intended to identify as, rather than as her boyfriend) while a statue of Miya, clad in the style of Conan The Barbarian's waifus, clung lustily to Karasuba's leg.

Next to that was a diorama of Karasuba in a sparkly black low-cut minidress, getting her wineglass refilled by Kazehana in a Playboy Bunny outfit, with statue-Karasuba's eyes pointed quite firmly at statue-Kazehana's cleavage, and statue-Kazehana's eyes pointed at statue-Karasuba's own cleavage. A statue-Musubi and statue-Tsukiumi were also present, with statue-Musubi dressed like statue-Kazehana and clearly paying eager attention to statue-Karasuba and statue-Tsukiumi, wearing the actual outfit I'd seen her wear everyday with the black overcoat and white minidress, being most obviously angry with her girlfriend and also, just under the surface, also being interested in statue-Karasuba, whose mouth was open as though she was saying something.

There were a bunch of others, but there were so goddamn many- Karasuba had decided that, if I was going to commission a model, there was no reason she shouldn't crank out a hundred casts of the goddamn thing, and I ran out of ideas before I ran out of kits- that it was impossible to describe them all.

"So that's what the starfighter kits were for," Karasuba said, her eyes drawn to a diorama of her leaping from her own starfighter, lightsaber in hand, clearly intending to cut another starfighter in half. "...I see you didn't let any of them go to waste."

"Well, y'know," I said, shrugging. "If I've got the kits to make like five hundred starfighters, and I'm trying to make a good-looking battle scene... why not put them all in there? Just, y'know. Shrunk down, so I don't have to make the diorama box the size of a planet on the inside."

Karasube huffed with amusement, nodding. "A worthy tribute. I see my efforts weren't misplaced."

"Anyhow," I continued. "How do you feel now?"

"Better, but... a little drained," Karasuba admitted. "Therapy's helped a lot, but... Fuck, Rose, it did not feel good admitting that I was traumatized. I always knew that my life had been pretty unfair and awful, that what MBI did to me was an atrocity, but... I just always felt like I was still above all that. That it didn't wound me, and make me worse."

"I'm sorry, angel," I said quietly.

"I'll... get better, with time," Karasuba said, shaking her head. "The therapist's given me some exercises to do- said I was at a point where I needed to do the maintenance myself, and that I probably wouldn't need her again unless something unexpected went wrong."

"That's good," I said, nodding. "The time difference between here and outside is pretty stark, so trying to continue weekly therapy sessions through that could've been... a little weird."

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Karasuba nodded back.

"So, what now?" Karasuba asked.

"Well, I was hoping to get your input on that," I said. "If you'll direct your attention to Diorama #87, you'll see my best guess at what you'd look like on a beach day. Buuuut, if you'd like, we can head back to the beach and see that for real."

"...You put me in one of those microbikinis made of dental floss and postage stamps."

"I believe I've made it abundantly clear that I am quite horny about you."

"Well, can't fault you there. Still... Lemme show you what I think I'd wear to the beach."

When Karasuba and I did return to the beach, it was with her wearing a full-body wetsuit, dive goggles, and a snorkel.

Joke's on her, though, I could still appreciate the raw sexual magnetism of a fully-clothed woman with curves her clothing couldn't fully suppress winning a fistfight with a giant shark and dragging it back onto the beach for me like a fucking housecat.

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

"So, Doc, what've you got?" Cecil asked.

"My pocket dimension has a pretty strong time dilation factor on it," I said, back in Cecil's office. "I've gotten a lot of research done in what you consider to be the last two days. But... it's not quite conclusive yet. I've figured out how Viltrumite powers work, kinda-sorta, but I haven't yet worked out how to replicate them, or how to disable them."

In the end, Karasuba and I had gone past our initial commitment of seventy three years in the Pax Jumperia pocketverse and ended up spending a full century there before giving up and leaving.

Despite the fact that I was now a full century older... I really did not feel it. There was just so much Jumpchain and Body Mod shit messing with my head, and in truth? I kinda felt like those hundred years just... hadn't happened. It felt like it'd only been a few months, because that was how long all the interesting parts lasted; not even a full one percent of the time I'd spent in there had had anything happen.

It was a little disconcerting, but I tried not to think about it.

Cecil grunted. "Progress is progress. What's blocking you?"

"The short version is? Viltrumites exist in four-dimensional space, and their powers are a bunch of biological machines that aren't on our three-dimensional slice of space. And while I've figured out how to see along that fourth axis, I still can't figure out how to move stuff along that axis. So, if you've got any eggheads in your back pocket who do stuff with dimensions... I'd like to pick their brains a little."

"I'll see what I can do. And where the hell is that task force of yours that you promised?"

"I had to get them ready, too, but they are now. Clover." I clapped my hands, and the elf stepped out from behind me silently. I wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up as the face of the Red Hand, but... well, here she was. Somehow.

She hadn't been trained as a field agent, at least not back on Hoth. When I'd first met her, she was just a technician, and trusted to manage the output of fabricators and the assembly of new fabricators from those parts.

"Hello, Mr. Stedman," Clover said, nodding. "Orders, sir?"

"How many of these am I getting?" Cecil asked.

"As many as you need, within reason," Clover said. "As for what we're capable of, I have a dossier here for our field agents' standard set of skills and powers."

Cecil grunted as he took the folder Clover offered him. "Paper, huh?"

"There's an SD card in there with all this information, too, but we figured you might be too paranoid to trust computers with sensitive information."

"There's more to it than that," Cecil said idly. "Computers are capable of encryption that humans just can't do themselves, and as long as they're properly airgapped, it's not an automatic insecurity. But for this, you bet your ass I'd rather have the printout."

"We can, incidentally, provide some computers of our own make that are basically un-hackable by anything on Earth, by virtue of being completely and actively incompatible with human technology," Clover added. "Just... don't let anyone you like try reverse-engineering them. The computers have ways of killing people who try that."

Cecil just grunted as he read.

"...You're kidding me," he said, after a few moments. "Fucking Star Wars?"

"Dead serious," I said. "I was the Sith Emperor."

"Right, well," Cecil said, closing the folder and pulling out a lighter. "I'm pretty sure the Red Hand's powers mean they can fill in for the Guardians on their own, if they really wanted to. That'll ease some pressure off recruitment efforts."

"Works for us," Clover said.

"I'll see about getting you those dimensional scientists," Cecil continued. "How fast do you need them?"

"Within the next two months," I said. "I also need whatever notes you've got on Atom Eve- I have it on good authority she was a genetic engineering experiment, got swapped at birth with a stillborn at the hospital by the lead researcher? If you can get me those research notes, I should be able to reverse-engineer Eve's power."

"I'll put the Red Hand on it," Cecil said. "I had no idea that's what happened, so clearly this wasn't one of our experiments, and whoever did this might know what our agents' attention looks like."

"We will be the picture of discretion," Clover said simply.

"Anything else you'd like to share?" Cecil asked.

"Nothing relevant, no."

"Dismissed."