“By the Four Hosts!” Sersi blurted out, jumping to my feet. Being who she was, she promptly hopped over in front of the mirror, dispelling the minor shapechanging I was using, and stared at me in the mirror. “Dyna, you-!” she blurted out.
“Just saved your mental bacon, I know.” I buffed my knuckles against my chest as she stared at my rather-taller true form and the definitely golder skin I had. My hair was currently still black, but just a touch of effort from her started up my voltage, and it instantly shaded to auburn, tipped in white.
“But... this feels like me, even though you are built so different!” she exclaimed, stretching out experimentally.
“Call it a Uni-Body, if you want to.” I flexed once for her, showing her muscle control that despite her years she didn’t have. “You calmed right down, too. I’m told I can have that effect on people.”
She wanted to blink wildly, and I stopped that silliness. “Calm down. You’re hooked into my head. Your mental Stat line right now is synched to my own, and there’s some mental adjustments you’re receiving that are alleviating your mental pressure.
“Part of that involves me going back through and organizing your memories. I realize that is very personal, and I do apologize.”
“I can see Kronus...” she murmured, stiffening up slightly.
Ah, she’d hooked into my Cosmic Awareness, and she could see the Eternal whose accident had actually imbued them all with the cosmic energy that had made them more than simply unaging, perfect enhanced humans... and which fed a lot of their hubris.
Kronus’ atoms were scattered over tens of millions of cubic miles, yet were still held together by cosmic energy, so he hadn’t been reborn. He’d long since ascended past the mortal stage and touched on profound aspects of time and space, becoming one of the lesser cosmic entities associated with Infinity, the Incarnation of Space. He was still in the solar system, out around Neptune’s orbit, but above the orbital plane, just sort of drifting and regarding the universe with the timelessness of one of the cosmic.
I naturally had no problem perceiving him, nor the Uni-Mind that was slowly heading his way, obviously also able to perceive him. Joining him in a higher Enlightenment would be a good way to get rid of the lot of them...
“Sort of a useless do-nothing tool, but I suppose it’s a Nirvanic goal of sorts,” I mused, and felt her instant smirk at the short shrift I was giving the man who had literally uplifted the Eternals to the status of living gods. After all, that had been a total accident, not deliberate, and what had he contributed to anything or anyone since?
Not a bloody thing. Just another useless spirit wrapped up in their own enlightenment, to be completely disregarded... until they decided their enlightenment was worth more than the lives of others, and they needed a fresh enlightenment altogether.
-How long can you sustain this?- Sersi /asked mentally, giving up any semblance of physical control as she gazed around in my Cosmic Awareness, becoming extremely aware of how vast my mental capabilities were as she did so. She also became aware that I was insulating her from the true strength of my mind so as not to overwhelm her own, and I had subsumed the mental pressure she was under with ridiculous ease. It was a jarring moment for an Eternal.
She was leaning on my calm, focus, and fearlessness like a suit of power armor, bracing herself with me against herself.
The cost was that her memories were dumping into my own, as there was only one head here, and I was naturally reliving them, organizing them, and as I did so, buttressing her mind even further. The only issue there was I was doing so with literally parts of my own mind.
On the flip side of that, she was steadier and had more emotional control than she’d ever felt in her life, and her recent memories had a crystalline clarity to them she’d never known before.
“Indefinitely,” I said, tidying up her room with a wave of my hand before heading out of it, removing the golden sheen from my skin as I did so. “You are not trapped inside me. I can Duplicate you out of me at any time, sidestepping the Great Machine. If you die, as an Eternal Duplicate you will return to me, and I can simply make you anew, also sidestepping the Machine.”
She sighed in relief, much of her stress simply evaporating. Her fears losing all hold over her was a strange and marvelous feeling. However, she did /smile impishly. -You know that Primus and I have been lovers for decades, right?- she /asked slyly.
“Are you concerned I will be unable to perform inadequately? Be unappealing to him?” I replied in the exact same spirit.
-Oh, this fearlessness is going to be SUCH a good thing,- she /murmured back, just a little startled at my response.
“You have full access to your telepathy, if you wish to contact him and explain the situation. If you simply prefer to wait until I Duplicate you out, that will be simplicity.” I cracked my neck. “I am, however, as close to a physical equal as he likely has. You may wish to indulge.”
-You are very open about this!- she /exclaimed, delighted.
“Exactly as open as you are, actually.” She thought about that, and then /smiled even more widely, because it was totally true. We were linked, and her desires were mine. I totally had enough thoughtstreams that her being one of them didn’t interfere with the rest of me.
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-How much of this... enhanced physical ability will I retain if you Duplicate me off?- she /asked me directly, the novelty of this new experience definitely contributing to her ease of mind.
I directed her attention to my Ultra Core, which was directly digesting her Eternal energies and sublimating them into its shell. -Totally based on how you fill your Eternal Core,- I /replied to her, and her mental eyes had stars in them as she considered just how strong she might become. She watched the flows of energies flowing into my Core while I just walked around, no sign of the immense amounts of power constantly pouring into it on display.
-Will I retain this Cosmic Awareness of yours?- she also /asked. Such a thing would definitely make for instant distractions on demand. She was realizing quickly why Kronus never bothered to talk to the rest of the Eternals. I could see throughout infinity...
“No, I’m afraid not. That is something you would have to gain from Eon on your own.”
There were a bunch of things that didn’t Duplicate out. My Human/8 didn’t, staying at /6, the one I’d actually earned. Given Major and True Exemplar were definitely Legendary-class Templates, it didn’t surprise me.
The Golden Child Racial Levels hadn’t Duped out, either. The shell of my Core did, but nothing inside it, so my Dupes had to relocate their energy to the Pocket before re-merging with me, and reclaim it afterwards.
I’d only updated with Sunny so far, just to see what took and what did not. Even Dealer didn’t get a ‘full’ update from me, although I assumed if I were to be killed the transfer would bring along the other stuff as she became the Prime, although I’d lose my Core unless I Pocketed it in time.
Obviously, the truly Eternal/Legendary-class stuff couldn’t be Duped, Mimicked, or Copied, surprise, surprise. I didn’t know why the Golden Child stuff didn’t transfer, and could only assume that it was a universal harmonic that, like Exemplar, was not something Duplicated so easily, and actually required the permission of Reality/Eternity/some Higher Power to take effect.
So, Kismet and Warlock probably couldn’t be the parents of a new neo-Exemplar race, just for that reason. Idiot Enclave scientists...
My thoughts turned to Primus, who was up in the Observatory on monitor duty. “He is probably totally aware of your mental collapsing, and likely knows what it entails for an Eternal. I believe he was dreading having to put you down, just like the Phoenix. Perhaps we should address this sooner, rather than later.”
-Perhaps we should!- I /altered course for the Observatory, while Sersi reached out mentally with a /smile of anticipation.
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And you know it's coming...
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“Dynamo?”
“Hmm?”
“I must admit that was absolutely incredible.”
I ran my hands up and down him, feeling every muscle, voltage popping gently over his skin. His breath caught despite himself.
“Well, I was making VERY certain you enjoyed yourself,” I replied firmly.
We were swimming in the silk sheets of Primus’ bed. It wasn’t something he used much, because he didn’t need to sleep, so it was literally made for the only purpose we were using it for.
“How is Sersi?” he asked in a low voice.
“I fed the entire sexual response directly through her. She is in kind of a drooling sexual bliss state right now, completely overwhelmed by my physical responsiveness to sexual stimuli.”
He opened his blue eyes to look into mine, and I just arched an eyebrow at him. “Is she aware of us?” he asked after digesting that.
“She’s aware you are mumbling stuff to her, but she’s too caught up in feeling your body against me. She’ll remember it all when she comes out of it, of course.”
His hands came up around me, pressing in. They were not gentle, being capable of deforming steel, but that only meant I could appreciate the slow massage.
“And you are not so indulging because?” he asked, amused as I hummed, and the voltage began to increase, feeding back into his fingers, and he quivered under me, trying to hold himself back.
“One of us needs not to be drooling all over you. I chose me. Also, I’m better at dealing with this than she is. Callie and Mimi gave me some pretty explicit lessons on what it means to inherit half the libidos of three of you High Guards, and I’ve got all of Sersi and half of Kismet to deal with, too.” I hummed as I extended my hands up to his face, put my fingers down there, there, there, and his eyes almost rolled over when the voltage started pulsing.
“How are you doing that!” he breathed when I let up after five breaths, letting him talk instead of just clutch me even harder. “I can take a solar lightning bolt to the face!”
“That’s just lightning in quantity. You are dealing with quality with me. I am simply taking a specific frequency, applying Mercy and Holy qualities to it, and empowering it with Primal, Divine, and Cosmic energies. It is slicing through your resistances because it can’t really hurt you, and you wouldn’t even be feeling it normally, except for the very, very positive response it generates.” I moved my fingers back and down his face, slowly and leisurely. His eyes rolled up again. “And since it is a very, very positive response it is generating, your stimuli response is doing the exact opposite of resisting it, instead getting more and more sensitive to it.” I ran my fingers into his dark hair as he trembled under my fingers. “I am only using half the voltage I was before, and you are responding so very, very well, Master Primus.”
I let off the hands as I brought his lips up to mine. He had just enough time to inhale before there was a joyous thunderstorm going off in his mouth, and he grabbed me hard enough to make my bones creak. Oh, so relaxing. I purred despite myself.
“You are using my own resistance against me?” he gasped after I let his lips go, and his tongue could start working again as he inhaled the fresh aftermath of a storm.
“I thought it the best approach. I’ve got years of experience with you through Sersi, but she is more the beautiful older woman eager to see an energetic young student perform. I am afraid I am a bit more, mm, domineering?”
“I surrender,” he acknowledged, trying to relax and finding himself totally unable to. “I have never felt so helpless before a woman. Well played.”
“Why thank you, Piotr. Allow me to salve your wounded pride with this,” I said as I sat up, smiling craftily down at him as two fingers began their popping journey up his chest, and he gasped again, unable to resist. “The part of you that is in my head is watching all this, and laughing, and wishing he was feeling it, but also assuring me that regardless of how much you are enjoying all this, what I got out of it all out there in the sun was much, much better.”
My fingers paused at the hollow of his throat, separated to follow his collar bones as he was trying to knead my kidneys into clay. I followed his hands around, leaving linked arcs behind, and his muscles pulsed and firmed under my touch...