Kismet was watching all this with wide eyes, still keeping me upright without moving. “Momma, that looks dangerous!”
“She’s a power-gamer. It’s perfectly safe for her,” Sama Rantha informed her.
“Is that a new power you’ve not told me of?” Kismet asked eagerly, smiling at me as my eyes jiggled around and my feet were inventing new dance moves, complete with arcs of electricity in new and unusual colors. Kaleidoscopes of some very crazy energies were pouring through me like a waterfall into a black hole leading into the Underweb.
With an internal popping, my Core upgraded to Two, completely full already, condensing the energies down in a swirl of madly rotating power, and the Core Walls pulsed happily as they crystallized and firmed up, ready for more.
“It means you’re very clever, sometimes too much for your own good. This one is really good at it, however, so she’s fine,” the Golden Hag assured the glamazon.
“Oh. Well, Miss Dynamo, we wanted to know if it was okay for me to go with you on your big trip!”
Your mom runs the world, what am I gonna do, say no?! “Shuuuuurrrrrr,” I buzzed back. “Zooorrrreee. Haaaarrrrd t taaaawwwwk.”
“Kismet’s about three years old,” Sama informed me calmly as she finished up. “We sweep the Blue Area regularly, a fact that was unknown to some Russians who decided that their experiments in human genetic manipulation were more important than some prudish moral guidelines set down by the father of their homeland. They managed to get a one-way teleport up here with some resources they stole from their colleagues, and found some functioning living areas on one of the deeper levels where they could put together some experiments.
“She’s the twenty-sixth and only viable subject left. Twenty of the others died, and the other four we found had to be put down after we discovered the place.”
“The memories they gave me say they loved me very much, but mother assures me they were total rat bastards,” Kismet informed me very seriously.
“Geeeeeeeene-t-rrrrippppeeeerrrz,” I contributed in a healthy manner, cocking my head at Briggs and looking back and forth between him and Kismet. The Great Bear just shook his head once, and then turned his thumb over.
Okay, so they hadn’t raped her for a sex toy, and they were now dead. Well, that was something.
I didn’t miss that one of the others was missing, either. Gee, wonder who THAT was?
Sama came over to stand in front of me as my jitterbugging continued. “Kismet has had to invalidate a lot of her own artificial memories.”
“They programmed me to be a breeding sow!” she said with spirit, shaking her other fist. “I had to completely re-educate myself! And I didn’t get a childhood at all! I want to know what it’s like to be so small...”
“She’s mostly been educated in Markspace. We had to limit her physical contacts, as she has some rather exceptional abilities that had to be trained up before she killed someone,” Sama sighed.
“I destroyed so many walls and floors,” Kismet blurted out in embarrassment, and leaned in closer to me for a moment. “Having to screw in the doors again every time was the worst!” she whispered.
“Zmaaaaallll hooooolllzzz,” I agreed sagely, and she nodded with me.
“You might have noticed she’s pretty strong.” Sama swung up onto Kismet’s right shoulder as easily as a monkey, perching there without affecting the golden glamazon at all. “Might rating of 63 or so.”
“Wuuuuurrrrllld ovvvvv klllaaaaay.”
“Basically, yeah. Also, she’s a full-blown cosmic energy convertor at the level of an elite Eternal. Energy blasts, flying, invulnerability, regeneration, healing others, and even molecular conversion.” Sama reached over and mussed Kismet’s golden hair, Kismet ducking helplessly at the attention... but the arm holding me up still didn’t move. “Unfortunately, her brain and mind are maturing at the rate of a normal human, another programmed control factor. Being connected to Markspace and having a Mark helps, but mentally she’s nowhere near as mature as her body is.” Glittering golden claws came out and combed through Kismet’s gleaming hair gently, and Kismet sighed and closed her eyes to receive it.
A pre-teen in a heavenly mature body. Huh.
“They say I’m at the level of a very smart nine-year old.” Kismet didn’t look too happy about that, but the thing was, in Markspace she could easily meet up and compare herself to some very smart nine-year-olds, and so she didn’t refute it.
“They tried to plant an impulse in her that she’s genetically perfect and going to be the mother of a master race, but what they really did is cap her evolutionary potential and set her up to be the mother of either a conqueror race or an easily-dominated race of servants. She has no psionic potential, magical ability, chi, or even ki use, and I can’t even put some Soul Tats on her, her cosmic energy disrupts them all.” The Hag planted a loving kiss on top of Kismet’s head, which chased away most of Kismet’s frustrated expression. “Her Mark stuck, but that’s the only thing, and it has really helped her deal with the situation.”
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“It’s just taking so LONG to grow up!” she complained.
“Says the three-year-old,” Sama smiled gently, dinging her ear.
“But they are so little! It is an unfair comparison!” Kismet protested, shaking her head. So cute!
“It is perspective, dear,” Sama corrected her softly.
“Perspective gets so sad, though, Momma,” she murmured softly, clearly remembering something else.
“Yes. Yes, it does. Dealing with it is how we grow up, dear.”
Kismet sighed heavily. “Yes, Momma.”
I just lifted an eyebrow at all this. Obviously, Adam Warlock was at play and out there in the stars, and this was his female counterpart, getting shorn of her default destiny and getting some humanity out of things, instead of being thrown into life with preprogrammed fake memories.
Also, her makers were asshats and wouldn’t be coming back. They had a bad habit of making more trouble.
I bounced my head Sama’s way. “Hoooooowww loooonnnng?”
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She just looked at Briggs. “Looks like 4.3 hours,” the Great Bear said indifferently.
“Mmm, that’s a long time to be standing here holding you up,” Sama smiled in just the wrong way. “Would you like to speed it up, or just lay down and twitch wildly?”
There was an internal popping, and blood dripped down from my nose at the pulsing as vibratory reverberations destroyed the compressed Two Core energies, and they repacked themselves even more densely.
Core Three was already here. That had taken Richard over a year to reach...
“J-J-juuuuuze iiit.”
Briggs grunted over at the side, smiling, and turned the dial. Core Three could process ten times the input of Core Two, but the limit was really on how much the person could handle. It had taken Richard months to slowly raise his absorption cap and speed up the process. That was really not an issue here, as the energies coming in were so smooth that the pain aspect was being minimized, but the Core upgrade was basically so small compared to the energies roaring through it that it really made no difference.
The differences were in the Webway down to the Pocket, which under the flow of this much power was firming up and straightening out, working out the kinks and slowdowns that I hadn’t paid attention to because they were irrelevant with the amount of energy I was inputting before.
The Nova Core could open wider and pass more through, and so that’s what I did. The dribbling fallout was more than enough to maximize my Core building.
Briggs slowly kept the dial turning up, paying attention to my Kirlian Aura. As my Core was building happily, if much more slowly now, he’d tick it up to stay current with the power going down through me.
“Could I add to this, Momma?” Kismet asked, watching all this in fascination.
“Sure,” grinned Sama, ignoring my dirty look. “Be careful and try to harmonize with her, don’t force anything. She’s not sucking the power away, you have to push it into her, so it’s not a Drain attack. You’ve nothing to worry about there.”
“Oh, good.” She took her free hand and placed it just above the harness, on the top of my breastbone.
I felt her power rise, but it was discordant and domineering, pushing everything away around it. High-order stuff, nearly on a level with the Silver Surfer, definitely on that with the Eternals, ‘cosmic’ energy that was like a combination of chi, psi, and magic together in some ways.
She was trying to attune it, but she lacked both control and experience. I sighed and made it a teaching moment.
Four different flavors of electricity rose about her hand, so suddenly tingling on her that she snatched her fingers back in shock. I just stared at her, slowly raised an eyebrow, and totally embarrassed, she slowly put her hand back where it had been.
Sama was watching attentively as first bio-electricity, then Reserve lightning, then Soul Tat power, and finally Elemental lightning gathered and layered together, harmonizing together around her fingers as Kismet stared at it all, a mixture of rapture and concentration as she tried to do the same thing.
Then I wrapped it in the Sacred energies, which were a higher Order than her own energies, and she gasped in shock... and did so once again when the Primal energies followed.
I slowly folded in all the I and II Metas that I could, letting them flow in together, over her cosmic energy, and mesh smoothly into my own power... which, I will note, had never stopped flowing into the Web Pocket this whole time, one lightning bolt in the current crashing thunderstorm driving over and past my soul.
“Oh.” There was something like a twist, and her cosmic energies bent and shifted, the raw power and aggressive strength that was being beaten back and suppressed by Heavenly and Primal energies both bending and advancing at the same time, reclaiming its ground without defying them, realizing that it could coexist with them even as they coexisted with one another and lesser powers.
Lightning danced in fifty hues around her fingers, and golden light ignited as cosmic power joined the flow.
She was pulling power from the existential background energy of the universe, a step or two below that of the Underweb itself, but it definitely showed that she was a powerhouse as it began to pour into me, into the Nova Core (which lit up in fascination and promptly started leeching all of it that it could), and down into the Web Pocket.
Also, it hummed against the backdrop of the M’Kraan energy, which stopped jangling on my nerves so hard, sort of serving as a bridge between my own energies and those of the crystal.
“Weeeeeeeelllllll ddduuuuuuunnn,” I told her, my eyes closed as I watched the whole process inside, the wasted power dimming and my jitterbug feet almost standing still. “Noooowwwww, liiiiizzzzeeennnn.”
I began to hum in the Sublime Chord, and the background energies of Creation began to light up around me in response.
She gasped as her power fluctuated and began to vibrate in response to it. Cosmic energy could respond just like magic if it was suitable, and that’s what the Chord did. I was actually reaching out and modifying her own power, something she had never felt happen before.
First times for everything in life, right?
Briggs began to hum a deep bass, and Source power swirled on an existential level. Sama’s clear alto rose and fell effortlessly across four octaves, reinforcing every Chord.
Spellbound, Kismet felt the heart of her power Singing along with us in a way she couldn’t understand, only watch and pour out the power that was dancing to the Sublime Chord...