Sovereign Territory
“So, uh, my parents want to meet you guys.” Andrew announced awkwardly.
Greg paused in the middle of decorating their new home/fort with depictions of their various accomplishments. He glanced between Andrew and the depiction of him with his arm buried in the sharkman's chest. “Really?”
Andrew sighed. “Believe me, I tried to talk them out of it, but they said you're too big a part of my life for them not to meet you.”
Tori nodded. “That makes sense. If I had kids and I found out they were hanging out with strange people they met in what basically amounts to a dream, I'd want to check these strangers out too.”
Chris cocked his head. “Should I invite my parents too, then?”
Tori paused. “That- isn't a terrible idea, actually… In fact, it may be a good idea to get all the important people in our lives together. It isn't like we're going to be getting any less involved in each other's lives at this point. I mean, we're connected across realities! It isn't like we can just ignore each other. Plus, if we're going to keep getting involved in each others’ crap, it's probably best to get everyone acquainted with us before we pop in out of nowhere.”
“Aw, but blindsiding people with Multiversal bullshit is so much fun!” Greg complained, grinning slightly. “But seriously, that's not a bad idea. Though it does kinda suck that the only place where everyone can meet is basically all cave.”
“We could focus on getting stronger in one of the other realities and fix that.” Chris pointed out. “But some people seem to have an issue with that.”
Tori rolled her eyes. “Look, even if we did expand the territory in my reality, it's in the middle of a building! We wouldn't be able to use it anyway!”
“I was actually referring to Andrew's reality. The Beast one.” Chris replied. “That way we'd get an actual house instead of whatever Greg is doing.”
“What, you don't like murals?” Greg asked.
Chris shrugged. “I don't mind the murals, I just don't think anything you've done is exactly presentable. Which is fine for us, but other people tend to care about that sort of thing. Particularly since you seem to be going out of your way to represent everything in the most disturbing way possible.”
“Well then why didn't you stop me!” Greg protested. “I've been waiting for someone to at least say something for the past hour now, but all y'all did was ignore me!”
Tori rolled her eyes. “You made it, so you can decorate it however you want in my opinion.”
“I actually thought they were kinda neat.” Andrew commented. “But Chris is right, they're definitely not for everyone.”
Greg just stared at them for a moment, before letting out a sigh. “Man, we need to get some normal people over here. I need reactions when I pull my bullshit! Otherwise what's the point?”
“You could go hang out with the guards up top.” Andrew offered. “I'm sure they'd give you some reactions.”
“They're busy though.” Greg retorted. “I'm just trying to entertain myself, not get someone hurt because they weren't focusing on their job.”
“Right, didn't think about that.” Andrew nodded. It was hard to take the danger seriously when anything that came through could be crushed like a particularly juicy bug. “Well, I guess you can focus on figuring out how to put this… family gathering together?”
Greg cocked his head. “I suppose… Well, first, can we grow the territory in your reality? It would pretty much solve the issue.”
Andrew grimaced slightly. “I- guess, but just enough to cover the house, alright?”
“Sure, sure.” Greg nodded, grinning. “So… how are we doing this then?”
Andrew sighed. “We have to go to the Outside.”
*
The Andrew from Beast world returned briefly to get connected to Chris's space before heading to the Outside with Cathryn and Li Jing, since he couldn't go without Cathryn and they had to fill their quota for Supply and Demand anyway. “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Cathryn asked nervously.
“No, but we really do need a good place to actually meet with people, and none of the other realities will work.” Andrew sighed.
“And having the territory covering our house isn't much different than just having it in our dining room.” Li Jing pointed out. “Either way we can't exactly use it ourselves anymore.”
“True…” Cathryn agreed tentatively. “Where are we going to sleep, actually? Your parents' house?”
Andrew frowned. “We could sleep in Chris's space? We're going to expand it right now, and the only person we'd have to share it with is Vera.”
“Vera?” Cathryn asked hesitantly.
“The foxkin Chris converted to our reality?” Andrew elaborated. “Though I suppose she doesn't even need to be there, does she? She could literally convert to any of the realities, no consequences. Though… she'd probably appreciate some company. She's been through a lot recently.” The four of them had had a lot of time to talk in the territory and they'd mostly focused on recent events. “She pretty much just lost everyone she knew and loved because of Chris. Not that Chris was wrong to do what he did, but still.”
“I think it depends on how big the space ends up being, but as long as we still have our privacy, I don't mind sharing.” Li Jing commented.
“I guess I don't mind either.” Cathryn agreed grumpily, though it was less about Vera and more about the fact that their life had become so complicated. Or more accurately, the fact that she couldn't figure out what to do about anything. All she could do was wait and hope things got better and she hated it.
Andrew snorted. “Yeah, I get that.”
Cathryn flushed slightly as she realized she'd been ranting internally. “Sorry, I just- I'm frustrated.”
Andrew wrapped an arm around her. “I know. I really do. You remember how I used to be, right?”
“Used?” Li Jing interjected, giving him a poke.
“Hey, I've gotten better!” Andrew protested. “I think…”
Li Jing smiled. “You have. I'm just teasing.”
Cathryn groaned. “But that was different! You just needed to realize you could change things! But what the hell am I supposed to do about colliding realities?!?”
“Nothing?” Andrew replied. “But you don't have to do anything about it, do you? Or at least, you don't have to fix it… you just have to make the best of it? Like, if you had to deal with… I don't know, a hurricane, there's nothing you can do to fix the hurricane, right? It's going to happen and your house is going to get fucked, so you just have to deal with it. Sure, it sucks, but life is never going to be perfect, you know? You just have to make the best of what you have and keep moving forward.”
Cathryn glared at him. “You know, sometimes it pisses me off that you can only be this insightful when it comes to other people.”
Andrew shrugged. “Introspection is not my strong suit. I blame my cores.”
Li Jing frowned. “Explain.”
“Well, see, because I have all these cores, I always have like a dozen different factors playing with my motivations, from the Monkey desire to just chill and play to the Tiger instinct to claim and defend to the Lizard urge to breed and feed and so on, all of which get all twisted up together until I have no idea what I want.” Andrew explained. “I mean, I can still logic it all out, but it makes it hard to figure out what's going on in there sometimes, particularly since it isn't really conscious, so there's no real thought process to it. I just sort of find myself going down a path until someone stops me and points out I'm being an idiot. Usually the two of you, though Greg has been freaking beating me recently.”
Cathryn blinked at him. “When did you figure that out?”
“Just now?” Andrew shrugged. “Or… well, okay, so it turns out I actually don't have any cores when I enter a new reality, so I've been going from zero influence to a crap ton as I picked them up and it sort of just clicked. Like the information was there I just hadn't put it together until just now.”
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“So… you'd be better if you got rid of all your cores?” Li Jing asked tentatively.
Andrew paused. “Maybe? But- well, first, I'm honestly not sure how to get rid of my cores… not without ending up in a different reality at least. And second, my cores are me… at least in a way. Different expressions of me, sure, but ultimately still me, and if I got rid of all of them… I'm not sure I'd still be me? I mean, I would, because the real me is just aura, but I'd be… lesser. Not as motivated, maybe?”
“But you just said your other selves didn't have any cores and I know you would have mentioned it if they were having issues like that.” Cathryn pointed out.
“Well yeah, but they were still connected to me.” Andrew replied slowly as he thought through it. “It isn't like I stop being me just because I'm in a different reality, and I think the cores are a part of that. They just aren't as present emotionally because of the separation. Or I'm just wrong about all of this, because Multiversal bullshit is fucked and who knows what's happening here.”
“And this is why I get frustrated.” Cathryn grumbled.
*
Once they got to the base camp Andrew headed out, getting a few miles away before opening a portal for the other three. Or at least he tried to open a portal for the other three. “Uh, Chris?” The Andrew still in the territory turned to him. “Why isn't your portal working?”
Chris blinked. “Uh… hm. Maybe because you're in a different- hold on, what do we call the places that are still part of the same reality but separate? Like Earth and Azza and… Earth and the Outside. We also need a way to distinguish between Earths.”
“How about dimensions for different sections?” Andrew offered. “We call Earth a pocket dimension in our reality. As for Earths, I've just been putting the defining characteristic of the reality in front of things, so yours would be Maze Earth, mine would be Beast Earth, and so on.”
Chris paused, then shrugged. “Sure, why not. As I was saying, it might be because you're in a different dimension. For example, I can't open portals directly between Azza and Maze Earth. Instead I have to open a portal to my space on Azza, then to my space on Maze Earth, and finally to Maze Earth. I don't have a space on- in? Connected to the Outside, so no portals. At least, that's my guess.”
Andrew frowned. “Shit, then how the hell are we supposed to grow the territory? I can't get you guys here and I still haven't figured out how to grow my aura!”
“Just bring back some of those ability crystals so I can grow my space a little, then I'll split off a section for the Outside.” Chris replied. “I'm pretty sure I can push it at you, so we probably don't need to worry about it connecting to some random dimension. I just can't seem to split it when it's this small.”
Andrew sighed. “Damn it. Alright, fine, I'll bring the crystals after we're done. You guys won't really be in a position to hunt with me anyway. Not as basically baseline humans.”
“Hey guys?” Greg asked a moment later as something occurred to him. “What if our territory crosses dimensions?”
“What do you mean?” Tori asked tentatively, eyeing him cautiously.
“Well… okay, so we know we merge realities, right?” Greg pointed out. “And that should definitely be harder than merging dimensions. So… what if we all end up in one of these dimensions and it merges too? I'm not saying it will, but it seems like something we should watch out for before we end up connecting to the Outside and letting in a flood of Beasts, you know?”
“That- would be bad.” Andrew agreed. “Can we test it first? Maybe with Maze Earth and Azza?”
Chris shook his head. “That would defeat the entire purpose of evacuating the City. The point is that the surface races can't reach Maze Earth. I'm not going to risk our only potential sanctuary for a test.”
Andrew grimaced. That was a fair point. Still, they needed to test it somehow, and the only other place they had was the Outside. “Maybe we could find another dimension in a different reality?”
“Possibly, but there's no guarantee it'd be any better than our current situation.” Chris pointed out. “Still worth the test though. For now, I just suggest we avoid ending up in the Outside or on Maze Earth all at once. Shouldn't be too hard, right?”
“I guess…” Andrew agreed noncommittally before shaking his head. “Anyway, gin.”
“Mother fucker!” Tori cursed, throwing down her cards. “Fuck luck based games!”
Chris chuckled. “You should never, ever play against Beth.”
*
“This is going to take more time than I thought…” Andrew muttered after they dumped a few ability crystals into Chris's space and the territory grew… slightly.
“Well maybe if you brought back more than four crystals.” Tori grumbled.
“That's all I could get!” Andrew exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “On average I can only find a Beast to kill every hour or so, and that's mostly due to my aura sense giving me a decent advantage in that department. So four hours of hunting is just four ability crystals. And it doesn't look like you guys are going to be in a position to join me any time soon either.”
“I'm pretty sure that by the time we're ready to help you, we'll already be done.” Chris commented. “I've been doing the math and the length of one side of my space, assuming it's a cube, is approximately equal to the radius of the territory if all of us are equal, which we will be in Andrew's reality, and we need the radius to be about ten meters to cover enough space for us to have our gathering, which is precisely the point where my space will be strong enough to face even the weakest Beast. Assuming your abilities grow at the same rate, we’re just going to have to rely on Andrew for this.”
Greg blinked at him. “You- did the math?”
Chris shrugged. “You aren't the only one who gets bored.”
Greg just looked even more lost at that. “You got bored… so you did math?!?”
“Yeah? I wanted to figure out how much it would take to grow our territory.” Chris replied.
“And how much is that?” Tori asked.
“Well, if you look at the territory in my reality, it seems like a pretty decent assumption that the volume of my space directly correlates to the volume of the territory it creates, and since the territory comes from all of us, then once we equalize the volume of the territory should be the volume of my space times four. So, since the volume of a sphere is four thirds pi r cubed, then you just divide the territory volume by four, which equals the volume of my space, multiply it by three divided by pi and take the cubed root of it all and that's the radius. So really the radius of the territory is one side of my space times the cubed root of three divided by pi, but that's basically one, so it isn't particularly useful to do.” Chris explained. “So now all we have to do is figure out how much whatever resource we're using grows my space and we can approximate how much it will take to reach our goal.”
Tori rolled her eyes. “And how are we supposed to do that?”
Chris paused. “Does anyone have a tape measure? Then we can just measure how much the volume of my space changes with one ability crystal. Though we'd also need another ability crystal…”
“Guys, I can feel my brain melting.” Greg groaned. “Why the hell do we care about calculating how long shit will take when we can just do it and it'll actually fucking happen!?!”
“Because we can't plan a get together if we have no idea when the get together is actually going to happen.” Tori retorted. “Timing is important sometimes! You can't just do everything on a whim!”
Greg hesitated. “That's- fair, I guess. But I feel like we could just give ourselves a week and be good, you know?”
“Except that the amount we need to grow our territory literally grows exponentially.” Andrew pointed out. “A week might not even be enough.”
Greg scowled. “Damn it… fine, let's get a freaking tape measure!”
“I'll pick one up the next time I go hunting.” Andrew agreed.
*
“So… we went from six hundred and four centimeters to six hundred and thirty-eight centimeters, which means the volume went from about two hundred and twenty cubic meters to two hundred and sixty. Our goal is a thousand cubic meters, so we have seven hundred and forty cubic meters to go, which would be… we'll go with nineteen more ability crystals, rounding up. Accounting for some variation, plus the reduction that will come from us catching up with Andrew, let's assume a safe twenty-five to go, which with the other eight Andrew brought, means we only need seventeen more, so two more full days of hunting or four since Andrew has school.” Chris summed up the results from their test.
“We should probably save it for the weekend anyway.” Andrew added. “So shoot for Saturday?”
“You realize you're the only one here who gives two shits about weekends, right?” Greg pointed out. “Why are you even going to school? Don't you have bigger concerns?”
“Because an education is the basic foundation of a well rounded individual?” Andrew offered, repeating the answer his dad had given him every time he'd asked. “Just because I'm Multiversal bullshit now, doesn't mean I shouldn't know things. If anything it just makes it even more important for me to be educated, because my decisions will be that much more impactful!”
Greg blinked. “Huh… should we be going to school? I mean, I didn't even get through my first semester of college.”
“Me either…” Tori muttered, frowning slightly.
“I went to boot camp, but I wouldn't exactly call that higher education.” Chris added.
A slow grin began to spread across Greg's face. “You know what would be a great place to get an education? The reality that specifically revolves around developing your skills!”
Andrew rolled his eyes. “Dude, no one is stopping you from going to system world. Just go.”
“See, you say that, but I don't have any kind of identity there, you know?” Greg pointed out. “I'm waiting for the system officials to show up so we can actually do something about that, and conditioning some things on a higher education sounds like a good idea, right?”
“We can just ask and see what they say.” Chris commented. “I don't think we should compromise Multiversal relations just because we want an education.”
Greg clicked his tongue. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Still, I feel like we should be getting some benefits from this thing, you know?”
Tori frowned at him. “You realize the territory causes way more problems than it solves, right? You're lucky no one is trying to prosecute us for it!”
“I mean, it's causing problems right now, but ultimately this is going to benefit everyone, right?” Greg retorted. “I mean, there's no way having access to more is going to be a bad thing in the long run, is there?”
They all paused for a moment, until Andrew eventually sighed. “This is why we need an education.”