Eve woke up early, and immediately set about using her new power for the first time. She'd had time to think about it, and had decided to differentiate herself from Dauntless in what would, hopefully, be a pretty big way.
She'd talked to Rose about it a few times, and Rose had primed her to think about her power as an expression of the text in the document, and that text as being... incautiously edited.
The text said that Eve could spend charge to grant objects superpowers. The text stated that the powers would start out minor and get stronger and more versatile and multifaceted over time, but the text did not state anything regarding what constituted an acceptable object or an acceptable power, or how an object's power was determined.
Provided those ambiguities worked out in Eve's favor, then she had a plan.
She opened up her Inventory- she'd been given the full Essential Body Mod through a lengthy ritual ending in her symbolic (and actual!) death and rebirth, and Clover had helped her get to grips with all its myriad features- and pulled out a 3D printer, before setting it on her desk. She had a lot of different models in her inventory, but this one had been designed by Rose and fabricated by Clover (who was apparently an expert in flexible manufacturing) to be as fast and capable as it was possible to be without dedicated supernatural powers behind it.
And Eve would be giving it one of those.
Eve put both hands on top of the printer, and focused intently on what she wanted to it to be able to do. She wanted it to be able to grant powers to the objects it created, and she wanted to test that by having it make a belt buckle that made the wearer slightly more durable.
She felt a pool of energy deplete, by one tenth (Clover had idly mentioned the Supernatural Resource Recovery Perk as potentially being useful, as it could increase how much charge her power gained each day by an order of magnitude), and the printer now felt different, by her reckoning. She loaded up a simple belt buckle design, and told it to get to work.
It was always fascinating to watch this printer go to work. It had multiple distinct modes of operation, of varying levels of detail- it even had a copy of her original power in it, for the finest detail work. However, for this fabrication, it used one of its coarser methods, using telekinesis to instantly create a virtual mold for molten zinc to be poured into.
The zinc was then cooled down to room temperature through some sort of energy projection mumbo jumbo that Eve still didn't fully understand, but she did understand, as soon as she held the buckle in her hand, that it had in fact worked exactly as intended.
"Alright, let's see what else I can make," Eve muttered, tapping her chin. "How about... a cloak pin that makes the wearer harder to notice?"
She loaded up a penannular brooch design on the fabricator, and hit 'go.' Another pouring of molten zinc into a virtual mold, and then...
"...This has the same ability as the belt buckle," Eve noted, frowning. "Is this... oh. Okay, I think I get it. It's going to take more than just one charge to let this thing hand out more than this one specific power. Hrm... I mean, I get ten charges a day, and if I run out of them, then big deal, I have to wait until tomorrow to keep going. It's New Year's Day, and school doesn't start until the 4th, so..." Eve tapped her chin. "...Still, I don't want to blow everything all at once, and also, Rose is going to point out how I could've sidestepped the one limitation my power does have, if I don't get there first. So."
She reached into her Inventory once more- she couldn't imagine why Rose kept opening portals to the Warehouse to grab stuff instead of using her Inventory, because surely Rose knew she had that option, and simply wasn't using it- and pulled out a tiny bottle of energy drink.
"Let's give you a very, very simple power, huh?" Eve said. "Let's say... hrm... Okay, let's give the liquid itself a power separate from the bottle's power. Let's give the bottle the power to make endless amounts of whatever liquid is inside of it... and the liquid, the power to recharge expendable pools of energy."
She spent two charges on exactly those things, before cracking open the bottle and carefully pouring a small measure into her mouth.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"Oh, that's vile," she said, screwing the top back on. "Ohhhh, I'm gonna regret not using Sprite. But it worked! I had seven charges, now I've got seventeen, and I'm going to empower the fuck out of this 3D printer."
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An hour later, Eve had finished a suit of power armor that she would probably never wear- it was mainly to prove that she could, as well as incorporate a few dumb jokes that were funny for a minute and then more than a little cringe-worthy.
Even if she did go the patrolling hero route- which she didn't feel like doing- there was no way in hell they'd let her go out wearing a breastplate with plate breasts bigger than her head that would open up to reveal a pair of plasma cannons.
She was now... admittedly, bored of her creation, and left her room to see who else was awake.
"Eve," Karasuba said, sitting on the couch in the living room. "Where the hell is Rose?"
"Ah, good, you're both here," Rose said, appearing in the middle of the room.
"...Well, there the hell is Rose," Eve said, pointing at her adoptive mother.
"I'm not going to be here for long," Rose said. "I'm time traveling, and the time machine has a few bugs that still need to be worked out."
"Why not come back after you fixed the problems?" Eve asked.
"Because I don't feel like it," Rose said, shrugging. "Besides, you'll live. Now, listen, my importing process got overridden by some weird bullshit that I still don't fully understand, but was more of a psychosexual eidolon of my own unresolved trauma from high school, rather than anything to do with Jump-Chan. So, until further notice... this is the last you're going to see of me for a few months, and when you do see me again, it's probably going to be in the form of a mentally ill teenage boy suffering from some pretty powerful delusions. Be kind if you can, but respect the Prime Directive."
"Why a teenage-" Eve paused, as Rose disappeared in a flash of white light. "...Why a teenage boy?"
"Rose is transgender," Karasuba said with a shrug. "She was a boy the first time she was a teenager, too."
"...Huh," Eve said. "I... didn't know that."
"I guess it just never came up," Karasuba said, standing up. "Rose doesn't think it's something someone needs to know unless they're about to see her naked, and, well..."
"That'd do it, yeah," Eve said. "So, um... what... do we do with that?"
"With the fact Rose is transgender? Pretty much nothing. It's just a fact of life."
"No, I mean the part where she's mentally ill and suffering delusions right now."
"Oh, that part." Karasuba tapped her chin, and hummed. "...I still say, pretty much nothing. That's what the Prime Directive is about, and besides, she'll live."
"Aren't you two married?"
"We are not," Karasuba said. "We'll claim to be married, when it'd be inconvenient to let anyone know I'm not actually human, but the truth of our relationship is that we share a deep, indelible psychic bond, of which love is a major and necessary but by no means solitary component. I know what she's made of. Possibly even better than she does. And as that time traveler just demonstrated... she'll be fine."
Eve frowned. That... didn't sound super encouraging, but... Well, Karasuba had earned a little trust, hadn't she? And Rose was asking them to let it lie...
"Alright..."
"Anyhow, what are you planning to do?" Karasuba asked.
"Well, I just found out my power works on 3D printers, so I'm probably gonna join the Protectorate as a Tinker, and become the backbone of their manufacturing processes," Eve said. "See, I can give a 3D printer the power to produce objects that also have powers, so..."
"Rose would be proud," Karasuba said. "Well, good luck with that. I'm going to be hunting monsters. I wanted to start with whatever Nazi analogue this stupid superhero universe threw in because one of the writers couldn't be normal-"
"That's Empire 88, one of the major gangs in this city."
"-but I'm aware there are much bigger threats out there for me to tackle, so... I'm gonna go deal with those first."
"What, like the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Eve asked.
"I don't know what they're called," Karasuba said with a shrug. "I never read this stupid book, and nothing Rose has said has convinced me that's a mistake. I'm just listening to whatever the Force tells me."
"Uh..." Eve wondered, briefly, what kind of impression Karasuba was going to make on Earth Bet, considering her probable talent for violence and utter disregard for who she was fighting, as long as they deserved it. "...well, good luck with that. Or, wait, no, hang on. May the Force be with you."
"It always is," Karasuba said, before the shadows around her grew darker and deeper, before spreading to swallow her up in darkness, and finally disappearing, leaving Karasuba nowhere to be seen.
"...Having the Eidolon power would've been nice," Eve muttered. "Although... Actually, I bet I can make something like that."
Eve pulled out her phone, checked the time, and hummed quietly.
"...It can wait," she decided. "Might as well go down to the PRT and get started on whatever paperwork they've got."
She turned off the lights and locked the door on the way out. She had a feeling that her home was gonna be empty a lot, this year.