I spent the next month in the ordinary world, with occasional trips into time dilation to extract knowledge from all the experts Cecil could find. Unfortunately, it seemed that anyone who knew how to reliably induce superpowers was also operating under no fewer than five major misconceptions about what they were actually doing, and anyone who knew anything about extradimensionality only knew theory, and nothing terribly practical. There was a steady simmer of research going on in the background, piecing it all together into something that might, hopefully, produce usable results, but... well, I wasn't going to hold my breath.

"Hey, Octavia?" Eve asked, trudging into the workshop of Docbot #08, who had been named Octavia by the hypocritically-named Robot.

"Jesus, you look like hell," I said through the Docbot. "What happened?"

"Oh, y'know," Eve said, shrugging. "The people I trusted stabbed me in the back. Nothing big."

She collapsed face-first onto the couch and screamed into the leather.

"Is there... I'm going to get you a drink. What do you want?"

"Sprite," Eve said, muffled.

"Room temperature or cold?"

"Cold."

I stuck my arm through a portal and pulled out a can of sprite, which had been in the refrigerator of a convenience store within the Warehouse. They didn't really care about money, there, so I didn't feel too bad about taking the can. I placed it on the sofa next to Eve, and pulled up a chair.

"So... Rex cheated on me," Eve said, rolling onto her side, her eyes red and puffy. "He was mad about how much time I was spending with Invincible, apparently. Thought I was going to cheat on him, so." She cracked open her can and took a long pull. "Well, then I told my parents about it, against my better judgement, and... I just... Dad said I should forgive him, that men just make mistakes sometimes, and... And that he wouldn't let me keep being a hero if I wasn't dating Rex, because apparently it was Rex keeping me safe, and not my fucking superpowers!"

"Do you want me to kill them for you?" I offered.

"Tempting, but..." Eve sighed, closing her eyes. "I just... I can't do this anymore. I have got to get out of here. Out of that house, out of this life. Honestly, I don't even really want to be a hero anymore, it was just... a way to escape my parents, and to feel like I was helping people. But... Punching bad guys in the face isn't the best way to help people, so... is there... I know you're separate from the other Docbots, but can one of them...?"

"I'm less separate than you think," I said, pulling the curtain back just a little. "We talk to each other, constantly. They all know about you. They all want to meet my darling Evelyn in person. So, if you're about to ask if any Docbot can take you in as a ward, the answer is that they will fight each other over who gets to take you in."

"...You guys like me that much?" Eve asked.

"You're a kindred spirit, in the ways that matter," I said. "You want to help the world, in ways besides just punching danger in the face. Don't think I didn't notice you replacing that apartment building's lead pipes with PVC."

"Why would they make lead pipes, anyway?" Eve grumbled.

"Lead is a soft metal that's easy to work and doesn't rust, and is also quite cheap and abundant," I said with a shrug. "It'd be an excellent material for making pipes with, if it weren't for the fact that it causes brain damage."

Eve simply grunted.

"Also, you have a curiosity about you that we find genuinely endearing," I continued. "You seek not only to improve the world, but to understand why it is the way it is. As you might have guessed, a bunch of robots who were tasked with making the world a better place find those sorts of personality traits quite appealing."

"I thought the Docbots didn't experience emotion," Eve said.

"I never said that," I said. "I said we experience it differently than humans do." Which was, itself, a lie; the Docbots weren't separate existences, they were just robots that I was controlling with my multithreaded mind. "We are, in our own ways, capable of experiencing this human emotion called 'friendship.'"

Eve smiled a little at that, before taking a smaller, more relaxed sip of her drink.

"At any rate," I continued. "Docbot #05 is currently based in Nigeria, helping out with local infrastructure projects. If you're confident in your ability to turn scrap metal into power lines and railroads, then you can do a lot of good for a lot of people by going there. You interested?"

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"I... don't really speak Nigerian, but... if that's not going to be a problem..?"

"We do speak the local languages, so we can handle translation," I said. "Aside from that, plenty of Nigerians do speak English well enough, and we've got techniques for teaching you the local languages in short order."

"Then... I'm in," Eve said, nodding. "When... when do I leave?"

"You can fly around the world under your own power, but I can also open a portal over there whenever you're ready," I said. "Need some help packing your bags?"

"...I... may have left my laptop and printer back in my room. And, uh. I really don't wanna go back and get them."

"Not a problem," I said, opening a pair of portals and retrieving the aforementioned devices, before humming quietly and opening a bigger one to retrieve her whole dresser with. "There we are. Anything else?"

"...I had some stuff in my desk."

Another portal, and her desk was in the room with us.

"Have you considered opening a moving service?" Eve asked.

"I make more money doing this," I said. "Whenever you're ready, but only when you're ready; I've got all the time in the world."

"Thanks, Octavia."

"Any time, Evelyn."

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

"Atom Eve has quit her job, effective immediately," I said during my next meeting with Cecil. "Personality conflicts with both Rex Splode and her own parents. She's moved somewhere else."

"Do you know where she is?"

"Lagos, Nigeria. She's helping renovate the civic plumbing infrastructure, because her power lets her install pipelines underground without having to dig any holes."

Cecil blinked, slow and catlike.

"Did you kidnap a teenage superhero?" Cecil asked.

"It's more that I'm sheltering a runaway," I said. "She came to me asking for a place to stay that wasn't in Baltimore, and I gave her that place in Nigeria, because she likes feeling like she's doing good."

"Well," Cecil muttered. "...Hardly the worst choice you could've made."

"At some point, the Nolan situation is gonna go loud, and it's probably gonna erupt in America," I said. "I've grown attached to Eve, and I'd rather she wasn't on the continent when Nolan finally snaps. It wouldn't stop him if he was determined, but this way, she's less likely to be collateral damage."

"Should I get the adoption papers ready?" Cecil asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Nah," I said, shaking my head. "She's a good kid, but... I'm not cut out to be a mother, even to a kid who's almost an adult. When I leave this universe, I'm leaving her behind."

"Mm," Cecil grunted. "By the way, here are those papers about the circumstances of her birth that you specifically requested from my intelligence agency."

"Asshole," I said, accepting the stack of thick, three-ring binders from him. "Did they say how hard it was to get these?"

"Apparently these were backup copies that an intern was responsible for filing away, and then the intern was dismissed before they could actually get around to doing that," Cecil said. "They were sitting in a filing cabinet for the last two decades, with nobody knowing they were even there. All the original documentation was burned when the lead researcher pulled that switch with the stillborn."

I nodded. "Naturally, you're going to have some words with the people who did this shit."

"Naturally. Are you gonna assert you've got an interest in how that plays out?"

"Honestly, no." I skimmed through the papers, most of which were worthless business-talk. "As long as you make it abundantly clear to them that genetic experimentation on humans requires the oversight of an actual ethics committee, I'm not too bothered."

"I was thinking of just arresting them."

"Works for me."

"Aren't you a geneticist?" Cecil asked.

"I am, yes," I said. "Thing is, the closest thing to genetic experimentation on humans I've ever done was creating vat-grown clones of myself and my wife, which quite deliberately did not have fully-functional brains so we could use them as biological drones without ethical concerns. Still a bit iffy, but I've never done experiments that could plausibly lead to a person growing up with debilitating genetic illnesses that severely degrade their quality of life. Side note, Atom Eve is at a severely elevated risk of developing osteoporosis by the time she's thirty, and her eyesight is gonna start going to hell sometime in her 20s. I can treat that pretty quickly with some genetic therapy, but the state of the art on this planet hasn't really gotten to the point where anyone else can do that, so. Now you know why I'm pretty adamant about why genetic experimentation on humans is bad."

"And your genetic therapy doesn't count?" Cecil asked.

"Of course it doesn't count as experimentation," I said. "I already know it works. I'm not testing jack shit; I'm performing what is, in my own context, a very reliable and proven medical procedure."

"Well, maybe share that knowledge with some doctors before you leave," Cecil said. "You know, if you're still doing that 'valuing human life and health' thing."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll do some guest lectures at the University of Lagos," I said, still skimming the documentation. "Take a chillaxati- oh hey, there's some actual scientific insight. Let's see, what did they do... Ah. Oh, that is... oooooooh, this is gonna be good."

"Found something?" Cecil asked.

"I've found the missing puzzle piece to finally put together not just my own facsimile of Atom Eve's powers," I said, "but also to recreating Viltrumite powers, as well as destroying them."

"Lemme know when you've got something we can actually use," Cecil said. "If there's nothing else, then I've gotta get back to work."

I nodded wordlessly, and stepped through a portal into my most time-dilated workshop.

It was time to get cracking.