I was somehow not surprised when my Crystal Vaccine rang in that special tone when I was working on putting in the cloaking modules later. I looked at it, made a face, and called out, “Fixer, I’ve got a nasty important call.”

“Taking X,” Norbert answered from where he was working, stopping the harmonizing and walking away, bringing up a feed of the latest Murican news without looking back.

I answered it, muttering, “I’m not even on the planet right now!”

“You would be surprised how often that does not matter,” came the cool voice of the Golden Hag on the other end. “Peggy Carter already has a diplomatic mission to the Xandarans to open relations, but your idea of settling some in the Blue Area is a good idea.

“There is another negotiating consideration, however. The M’Kraan crystal is currently located there.”

“Ummm.” Well, shit. I suppose it made sense to put it next to where the Phoenix Force frequently hung out. But, damn! “I ain’t gonna ask how it got there, but I am gonna ask... what the heck did you plan to do with a supragalactic mass of megastars?”

“Tap it for energy for various purposes?” She sounded amused.

“Ugh.” I slapped my head. “D’Ken was considered nuts for doing so, and you’re trying the same thing?”

“There is the slight difference that we can talk directly to the entity who controls it and ask how to tap into it without threatening all of existence and everything.”

“And have you done so?” I had to ask.

“Yes.”

Gkk. Sama and Briggs could talk to the Phoenix Force. Oy vey. “Well, that’s certainly a few steps above my pay grade, yes’m. I probably don’t need to know what you are working on, but I’m assuming it’s cosmic-class stuff, in addition to free power for the Blue Area until the end of the universe. What would you like me to do?”

“I’ve already spoken with Peggy about this matter. There IS another matter that you brought up, so we’re going to test something. Send Richard Ryder down to the Blue Area. We’ll get him to Centurion. Oh, and send Jessica Jones with him.”

My smile was definitely forced. “You’re going to power him up with the M’Kraan Crystal, and somehow you’re going to give Jessica a Nova Core...”

“The Nova Force is a wonderful tool that the Xandarans are very lucky to have learned how to tap. However, it is not really sentient as it stands, it is merely attuned to the Xandaran people. I think showing up with another individual with a Nova Core they didn’t open will have an interesting effect on their psychology, and open them up to notions they may not have explored before.”

“You’re killing me here.” Manipulating the Nova Force was TL 21+ tech. Of course, they didn’t have to rely on tech to do this. Magic, psi, and tech together did wonderful things, and they were already Legends. Mucking about with cosmic powers was in the job description.

“Peggy passed on that Dealer has done some Readings concerning the future?”

“Yes?” Which she totally had, because Cards, massive Caster Level, and Divination expertise just kind of went hand in hand with Timesighting for fun and profit and universal disaster avoidance.

“Do I need to call her, or are you going to explain?”

“Ummmm...” Okay, she knew my Spellcraft was at 20 Ranks, and nothing I could say was going to convince her I couldn’t understand this stuff. “Galactus coming here kicked off a lot of things, like that last snowflake on the mountain triggering the avalanche. It’s just all building...”

“The Avengers are in Kree space right now with Rick Jones.”

I winced. “That was like several galactic mini-waves after the Dire Wraiths hitting some place called Galador, and getting their asses kicked.” The Supreme Intelligence would stop the all-out war by stimulating Rick Jones’ latent psi-powers. If he didn’t, it was likely the whole galaxy was going to burn.

“The Magus?”

“There’s a temporal-alternate stray halfway across the galaxy starting something ominous there, yes.” I glanced at my Visual File. “I’ve got about twenty things that pop up, and they all culminate in a massive invasion from the Negative Zone, of all places, which is literally a galactic-plus-level threat. Past that... nothing to read, as the scale of that Event Wave was too big.”

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

“Nothing trans-temporal?”

“Errr... I’m pretty sure that something that can destroy time is outside the divination ability of non-Legendary magic? Especially from within said timestream?”

“The Beyonder. I know about the book you gave Ben Parker.”

“He’s not trans-temporal, he’s linear. Uh, yeah, he’s one of the Events, but the reverbs from it are outside the spell and past the Big Event...”

“So, she can’t predict the time of a Universal Reset?”

“Um, no. Pretty sure she’d need to be post-Twenty, and probably looking at it from Outside the timestream, the universe, and, uh, maybe the multiverse itself?”

“Not someplace you’ve been yet, I trust,” she murmured dryly.

“I’ll let you know when I can get there,” I agreed, conveniently sidestepping the fact that yes, I’d come from Out There. “Uh, has one of these resets happened?” I had to ask.

“Tried to. Dormammu and his sister.”

My thoughts flashed back to that encounter those two had had about a year ago with Doc Strange. He’d told me the Hag had turned up, and both Faltinians had fled screaming, totally interrupting whatever Ritual they were using to try and steal the power of Eternity.

Sama had gone after them as Strange had cleaned up their mess and released Eternity, and... I hadn’t heard of anything happening in the Dark Dimension, even though Clea had headed home recently to take a look, her training under Strange largely done.

Better have Dealer inquire after her.

That was one down, who knew how many to go. Sources, Nulls, and Voids did NOT like Reality Resets, nor would anyone affected by their lived-lines, which was basically the whole damn planet at this point.

“The Beyonder is going to emerge in about eighteen months. Uh, the Grandmaster is going to do something knuckle-headed before then...”

The Contest of Champions a) couldn’t possibly happen if Sama and Briggs didn’t want it to and b) the primary cause of it was Korvac, which was a time-traveling thing and so nominally impossible unless the putz came here from another timeline. That hadn’t happened yet, so likely it wasn’t going to?...

“The Collector was killed by Korvac not long ago. The Grandmaster is probably going to gamble with Death Itself to get him back.”

Well, that answered that. “Oh, how nice of him to use us in a game against the Avatar of a Primal Force,” I muttered. “Can you stop him?”

“Him, yes. Death, no. The problem isn’t the contest itself, which is inconsequential to us. The problem is the precedent it sets.”

“Mmm. Gambling with Death by an Elder of the Universe.” How wonderful. “And using heroes of Terra to do so...”

“Anything on Thanos?” she asked, very specifically.

“The Head of the Black Order?!” I replied instantly. Hey, I was reading up on interstellar marauders for some reason recently. I hadn’t actually known the name of his organization until I did. “He’s one of the threats coming at Xandar...” He was literally a genocidal murderer, a planet-wiper, and infamous across the galaxy, multiple galaxies, for his worship of Death.

“Death is going to be present in the Sol System,” she reminded me.

Ah, fuck. He’d come here just in pilgrimage! “I’ll ask Dealer to do another reading, but I have the impression whatever he’s planning would run into the High Guard and get totally screwed, and so it wasn’t a major issue. Perhaps he shows up without his fleet?”

“He’s one of the sons of the Mentor of Titan, too.”

“He’s the kid of an Eternal?! Mother of...” I knew that, of course, but hey. “Is there a reason you haven’t killed him?”

“He moves around a lot, and I’m a busy person.”

Well, that was true... “Rich is thinking about swinging over to the Shi’ar Coronation with the ship first. Any thoughts on that?”

“That is a little bit out of his way back to Xandar, but an entertaining thought. You are probably going to get attacked while underway, and end up somewhere while undergoing repairs.”

Didn’t that have all kinds of tropish excitement attached to it. “Well, we’re putting a lot of surprises onto the ship. I know Zorr has built up his fleet again...”

“Have fun with him. Also, good job pulling Jenkins and Ebersol out of the death spiral. That should work out pretty good for you.”

“They are pulling their weight.”

“If this thing with Xandar and Ryder works out, we could be expanding the Nova Corps exponentially.” Her emphasis on the word was pretty strong. “Don’t fuck this up, Dynamo.”

“I leave that to Fate, Chance, and the universe,” I muttered fatalistically, and she chortled at me.

“Bastards that they are. Back to work!” And she hung up with a faint diiiiing...

“Nasty phone call over!” I announced, and Ebersol came wandering back a few minutes later, a Dealer’s Light in his hand. She got everybody addicted to her brews pretty quick, surprise, surprise.

“Hey, Dynamo.” His eyes were serious as he looked at me, pausing before we got back to work. I eyed him as he continued carefully, “I don’t want to be rude and pry, but... that crystal phone there. I seen Mr. Hill has one, and I think Dealer does. I’ve never seen anyone else use one, so, um, what’s so special about them?”

I weighed my words a moment, and shrugged. “It means you have been personally acknowledged by the Golden Hag or the Great Bear as someone who can get to where they need you Right Now and get something done... or you have other means and methods they can use to solve a problem.

“In other words, you’re one of the people she calls to take care of a problem she isn’t going to take care of herself. If you don’t want to take care of things, that’s fine. She’ll take your name off the List.”

He pursed his lips. “That... sounds ominous.”

“Pretty sure there’s half a dozen supervillains within the last decade who got themselves removed from the List. Pretty sure Mechanar and Max Midas both have phones, and don’t dare get rid of them.”

“Oh.” He paused just to think. “It’s kinda a list that means you’ve arrived, and yet you don’t really want to be on it, right?” he judged.

“You know much about Midas and Mechanar?” I asked him.

“Midas only works through others. Mechanar’s a fruitcake with his cyborg supremacy shit, but there’s a lot of people who buy into it. Never worked with him, but I’ve run across his tech a few times.”

“They both have phones. They both can’t get rid of them. Now you imagine what it’s like for men like them to have those phones.”