-Fuck me, got past the first one.- she /sighed, as the Silver Surfer sped away on a gradual course change, getting no nearer to Earth.
When Galactus actually arrived in a couple days or so, the Celestials would not have time to sabotage or ruin the Celestial Seed. If they chose to enter a fight with Galactus Himself, well, that was their problem.
She had absolutely no faith in this Watcher intervening, nor did she want him to, nor allow knowledge of the Ultimate Nullifier to leak out. Universe-wiping toys were something that could be employed at a later time, to the dismay of those targeted by them at that point.
The deal was beneficial to Galactus, and in good faith, as opposed to the extortion/theft of the very first encounter with the Fantastic Four in the original books, albeit making use of knowledge they hadn’t had. Acknowledging His status, playing to His desires, knowing His strength... and being able to enforce the alternative.
It gave Him a reason to hold up His end of the bargain, as opposed to finding multiple ways to subvert it.
There was no way to hide His coming, and no need to. The planet needed to wake up and realize it was a very small place in a very big universe, and a tiny player. Even multiple alien invasions, half-hearted as they were, hadn’t changed that viewpoint. They’d won, after all...
Ugh. Short-sighted people...
-I have some REALLY good vodka,- came the quiet /rumble from the other end.
-Yeah. I got some brandy. See ya soon, Fuzzy.-
===============
DEAL ACCEPTED BY GALACTUS.
I eyed the message Dealer was looking at, and sighed. I didn’t know how they’d done it, but obviously they had.
This was what it felt like to be a noob in a video game on Patch Day, all this shit happening you couldn’t do anything about, while the cool kids got to play at the big games. Only, you know, with the fate of the planet at stake.
On the other hand, no Galactus walking down Park Avenue this time.
I wasn’t in the know because I didn’t need to be. She’d probably clue Stephen in shortly enough, and the High Guard would definitely know something.
The Fantastic Four and the Avengers? Who were they, now? Hmm, she could and would probably inform the Skyfathers...
I eyed my probability causality model in all its interwoven, interlocking wonder, beautiful and fantastically interwoven and mindbogglingly complex to anyone who would look upon it.
Of course, if they could actually start to understand what it was doing, they might look away before their eyes glazed over from mental overload and they knocked themselves out. Comprehending this in the wrong direction could mean Enlightenment to a sudden Higher State where you became a minnow in a sea full of sharks...
I only had three headaches right now. This fantastically ornate piece of art in front of me had given me peripheral understanding of the forces at work, and removed some of the mental stress from seeing and not knowing.
Sometimes a 40 working Int and multiple thoughtstreams was a total pain in the arse.
I imagine if Dr. Richards saw all this he’d probably trance out for as long as I worked on it. Then he’d grow his brain in the appropriate directions and understand where I was going faster than I did.
Gaining Ranks outside of Levels was tedious and tiresome, i.e., it was just like studying and practicing. Scholarly knowledge was actually the easiest to accumulate, as Crafting knowledge tended to require a lot of practice, even if you had a teacher to show you the way.
The extra Ranks I needed required DC 26 and 27 Intelligence checks, minimum 16 and 17 days to learn each Rank in turn, repeat if you didn’t make the checks every day.
Int 40, +15 to the check. Minstrel/4, +2 to all Lore checks. Take 10, I literally couldn’t fail at this as long as I stayed Focused.
Not many people had the raw, pure Intelligence to make those checks. Minstrel Levels with Bardic Lore, Bardic Lore Mastery, and the Scholar Feat all contributed to this kind of thing, but Skill Focus and Affinity Feats did not, nor the Mastery of the Skill itself. Those things were about using the Skill, not learning it.
I’m going to have to grab the Scholar Feat, too..., I sighed.
Dealer laughed at me as she kept up the magical part of what we were doing, and I dumped Valences at the end of the day before Meditating. It didn’t get rid of the head throbbing, but it did dampen it enough for me to remain functional long enough to get my stuff as Dynamo done.
Alchemistry waits for no supergenius, after all!
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
==============
“Got a moment, Dyna?”
Dr. Richards walked in right in the sweet spot between distillation and crystallization of the hydronium formation. “Sure, Doc. What’s up?” I asked him, my eyes not leaving the mix.
“I’ve been extended an invitation by Dr. Savage to witness an extraordinary event down at the South Pole. I was wondering if you might not want to come.”
Ding, ding! “What’s it about? Got anything to do with that big alert that Dr. Strange received?”
He hesitated a moment at finding out that he was a tier lower on the information circuit than Dr. Strange. Reality of hierarchy, a cruel mistress thou art! And the Watcher hadn’t cheated for him... “Apparently a colossally powerful alien entity is going to be performing some sort of ceremony or ritual down there, and he thought I might want to witness as much as possible with my own eyes.”
So, they put something down in Antarctica... Dealer hadn’t been invited, as there was no reason for her to be there, after all.
“Sure, why not? I can tell Stephen you’re invited, I’m sure he’ll want to go, and he has to have an invitation himself.”
“He alluded that the powers I would be witnessing would be greater than anything we had seen before. I admit that I am very curious as to what can be going on...”
“Well, according to Stephen Strange, the entity’s name is Galactus, and he’s a World-Eater known the length and breadth of the cosmos for devouring the lifeforce of fertile worlds to sustain himself.”
Dr. Richards looked at me, but I just glanced at him calmly. “This... sounds like it could be very important to the future of the whole planet,” he judged.
“Maybe?” I agreed. “I think you might want to grab Peter and Hank and Susan, and call up Tony Stark and Hank Pym right quick.”
“What for?” he asked curiously.
“I think you should make up the most bloody sensitive and exotic sensor suite you can imagine. The things you might learn when a cosmic-class World-Eater starts tossing energy around...”
His eyes popped comically, as they often did when a fantastically good idea came to him. “That sounds like a FANTASTIC idea, Dyna! Let me make some calls...”
I waved him off. “I can help you as soon as this run is done.”
-------
“So, is all this something I should be concerned about?” Ben Parker asked, sipping his tea that night.
“You can feel Him coming?” I asked archly, glancing at him.
“Yes. The whole planet is tensed up, waiting for Him.” He looked around and down. “The phone said he’s after a Seed down in the planet’s core...”
“Yes. That Seed is probably responsible for the mutagenic field which has been empowering humanity here. The Celestials also use the field to perform experiments on lower life forms.”
“And this... Galactus, is just going to eat it?”
“The Celestials are a profound class of entity that can actually survive past the death of a universe if they take the right precautions. The birth of one can destroy a chunk of a galaxy, draining the life from multiple suns to empower their ascension to transcendence. While Galactus isn’t restricted to eating worlds they’ve Seeded, He vastly prefers them, and He keeps the numbers of new Celestials in check.”
“Huh. I imagine they don’t much like that...”
“You can sense them, too?”
“Yes, wandering the world, looking at stuff behind their veils, going back to their base in Europe. I was advised to do nothing to disturb them, and they might not even be aware of me. It seems my power operates on a higher level than theirs...” Ben murmured, frowning.
“Beyonder power might be higher than Galactus Himself, it’s uncertain. If you were fully aware of and in control of your power, you could probably just chase Galactus away yourself, as He wouldn’t want to disturb an equal.
“As it is, what did Sama ask you to do?”
“If Galactus violates the agreement, the planet will break apart as He consumes it, and all life on it will be destroyed, including humanity. She wants me to move the water and the air to the moon, move the mass of the planet there to increase the gravity, and there are reserves of seeds and genestrains there that can be used to restart an ecology. I’ll probably have to put everyone in suspended animation until everything can be rebuilt, too. If I knew more, I could probably recreate a bunch of it with a wave of my hand.” He seemed somewhat depressed.
“Baby steps, Mr. Parker,” I half-laughed. He’d effectively be expanding the Blue Area of the Moon to the whole satellite. “Nobody is going to help you find Cosmic Awareness without something in return, although, hmm, that might not be a bad idea, come to think of it...”
“What’s that?” he asked at my expression.
“As I understand it, the grantor of Cosmic Awareness is called Eon. He’s a being that’s literally an astronomical unit in radius, perhaps the largest organic creature in existence. With his help, your view of the macroverse would open up, although it won’t help the microview all that much.”
“That lab you helped me set up in the basement has proven very interesting,” he confessed. “I had no idea there was so much crazy stuff around...”
Watching chemical and alchemical reactions was one of the best ways for him to learn about moving atoms, combining them, and taking them apart. Naturally there were zillions of experiments out there for him to do, and he and Peter had a great time bonding over them.
“Anything else she ask you to do?” I had to ask him.
“Atomize His ship, render inert any energies He’s consuming, and generally be a total pain in the arse if He breaks His word. She doesn’t seem to think He will. Also, make sure the energies in the mantle stay there after the Seed gets pulled out and He draws the energy out of the inner portion of the planet. He’s basically eating the good stuff and leaving us the rind, as she put it.”
Well, on a pure energy basis, it was probably true.
“Do you have to replace the Celestial Seed?” I asked calmly.
He nodded. “There’s a bit of stuff out in the Kuiper Belt I had to compress down. It’s waiting on the far side of the moon. I’ll put it in place after he pulls out the Seed.”
He could probably eradicate the Celestial Seed and piss off Galactus entirely. Beyonder-level power was nothing to laugh at. If he had the insight, he would be facing Galactus as an equal and more.
Yeah, the Earth had a crazy-powerful protector in the Molecule Man, that was sure, but all things in time.
“The entertaining thing is when she leaks the fact Galactus is coming.” I smiled thinly despite myself. “Every alien, dimensional or extra-terrestrial, is going to immediately attempt to vacate the planet. It should be an interesting time for those watching for them.”
Ben Parker sighed. “Too many aliens thinking the Earth is some grand Petri dish or something for their damn experiments.”
“To be fair, the crazy explosion of Cored, Psions, mutants, and mutates is totally interesting from a scientific perspective. From their standpoint, they are taking advantage of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study a primitive culture that suddenly has capabilities far beyond its level of sophistication.” Sluuuuurp...
“Yeah, yeah, cavemen with machine guns, I get it. Hell, I’m part of it...” he admitted with wry acknowledgement of reality’s weirdness.