The meeting was set for after lunchtime, which gave us time to see the referred tailor and get a suit made up for Mr. Hill.
I had Weaving Ranks, as it was extremely useful for picturing my style of spellcasting, making the required gestures, and forming webs, in addition to its more mundane uses. It wasn’t tailoring per se, but I was completely familiar with the nomenclature, had a decent grasp of the materials involved now, and of course money wasn’t really an object.
They were tailors, so they immediately noticed how finely cut and well-made my Dealer attire was. Ergo, they actually paid attention when I started talking to them.
Seeing a client with the size and power of The Mountain was certainly a first for Mr. Hasbyrishov, but he and his crew got right to work with the measuring, having their first unique experience in poking someone who was literally harder than steel. I noted that Mr. Hill’s body hair could cut normal cloth and they should choose the lining material with that in mind. Texture and softness were much less important when dealing with someone with invulnerability... looking good and not falling apart when flexing was.
Watching all his muscles bulge as he flexed, they made some new measurements, just to be safe.
It was another thing I could have done, if I had access to the materials, and with magic I could have assembled a fine suit for him in literally minutes. I shrugged and let the experts do what they were doing, knowing that the very act of doing this was going to be driving a certain sector of people to their doors, which could be both good and bad.
Well, it was the Heroic Age. Let’s see what they did with it.
They didn’t have a mannequin anywhere near big enough to emulate him, but that was where decades of experience came in. Mr. Hasbyrishov announced with loud confidence that Mr. Hill’s suit would be ready before noon, and to return at that time.
We headed outside to walk around, see the sights, find a shop nearby that made custom shoes, and inhale the stink of the city. We’d also been recommended a haberdasher, but he was a couple miles away.
“I think they vote down air quality measures just because the Tribes call this ‘The Big Horse-Apple’,” Mr. Hill complained. “Seriously, the butcher towns smell better than this place!”
The ‘butcher towns’ were the meat-processing centers along the Mississippi that processed cattle and pigs and chickens raised further west. After the Tribes took Chicago, they’d broken up its meat-processing role and allocated it down the length of the Mississippi, closer to the sources of its stock, so the animals wouldn’t have to be shipped as far.
The move had done a lot for removing Chicago’s prominence in meat-packing and slowed down its growth tremendously, which was exactly what had been desired, even if it was still a major water and rail exchange location.
“You obviously have not developed the proper attitude to dwell in such a fine location as this,” I deadpanned back. “That is the smell of money!”
“Nobody in their right mind is gonna pay money to live here if they could live on the Coast,” he scoffed. “And that’s even without the weather. We got lucky getting a nice day.”
“There’s a few million folks in the local area that’ll say otherwise,” I reminded him, to which he shrugged magnificently, obviously not thinking much of their intelligence. “And a lot of money does go through this place, primary port of trade with Europe and everything.”
“Yeah, and we’ll see how much of that we can divert from the top dogs into our own pockets,” he nodded once.
I was getting looks for my Mask, and serenely ignoring them. It hadn’t taken long for cosplaying to start coming back in a rage among the New Yorkers, as tales about all the wonders and events on the Coast had finally been replaced with their own home-grown heroes.
Of course, Mr. Hill also got a bunch of attention, but I just looked like his daughter or something, so nobody was gonna do more than get out of his way.
If they didn’t get out of mine, they bounced off, too.
One guy noticed that, and decided to be clever, putting his hand somewhere it shouldn’t have gone.
He shouted as a mousetrap snapped shut on his hands, yanking it out of my pocket with a cry, freezing as he saw my amused expression, and then ran as fast as he could.
I fingered the wallet I’d removed from him in turn, took out the bills inside, eyed the ID, and then lifted it up as the guy paused forty yards behind me, patting himself down, eyes going wide as he saw it, and then he shouted in dismay as I dropped it down a storm drain.
“Hur hur!” rumbled Mr. Hill, seeing it all out of the corner of his eye and not breaking stride. “You looking for anything in particular?” he asked, watching me scan back and forth with rather more intensity than was required.
“For aliens.”
His eyes glittered darkly, given what had happened just yesterday. “Yeah?” he asked calmly, voice dangerously soft.
“Yes.” Which should have come as no surprise. Muricans didn’t have any real way of scanning their own population for infiltrators, and Skrulls and pink-skinned Kree were masters at the game.
“Huh.” He didn’t look around, betraying nothing. “And you’re not doing anything because them realizing someone can sense them means them taking countermeasures and making a target out of you.”
“That’s about the size of it.” But they were Scanned and painted as we moved along the river of humanity around Time’s Square, and I’d be able to come back and do something about them. “What’s funnier is there’s been at least four species go by.”
“Well, it ain’t been just the Kree and the Skrull coming here, as I understand it.”
“Absolutely, but it’s funny how so many can pass for human.” I shrugged. “At the very least, I’ll have some work to do. Be interesting if they are spies or just hiding.”
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“Too much shit coming to the Earth, and we dunno how long they been coming here. Amazing we ain’t been enslaved or something by now.” He glanced up at the sky. “Has something been protecting us?”
“My guess is the fact that The Phoenix is here scared a lot of them off. You know there’s been one here for a long time, right?”
“Eh, no... but is she really strong enough to scare off an empire of space aliens?” he asked.
“Oh, you aren’t aware. No, SHE is not. The Force that empowers her, however, is. It could eat the sun.”
He worked his jaw a moment, mulling that over. “She doesn’t display that level of power...”
“She can’t, only the Phoenix itself taking over can. And an uncaring cosmic force of rebirth and destruction taking over a mortal entirely is not something we want to happen.” I frowned at nothing in particular. “All Phoenixes go mad and end in fire.”
That made him do a double-take, and he glanced at me. “Are you sure?”
“I Summoned up a Lore Spirit and started asking about magical and cosmic history hereabouts. We had a good long chat on a lot of topics. The Phoenix being here was one of those.”
“She’s been around a good twenty, thirty years. What’s the lifespan of one?”
“We don’t actually know. The hosts progressively get more erratic, temperamental, lose control of themselves, start tossing around fire, and have to be put down. Then the Phoenix chooses another host, and the cycle goes on.” My nostrils flared. “Once the Phoenix is down, the Dragon rises and attempts to take control of the world, and he has to be put down. It’s a mystical cycle that has been going on a long time.”
“Dragon?” he frowned again, thinking. “Isn’t Locus associated with the Dragon?” The magician of the Champions was both mysterious and respected.
“There are a lot of people associated with the Dragon. So is the Mandarin, for instance.”
“The Rings of that guy are no joke,” The Mountain murmured. “Lots of power in those, and he’s a slick guy, knows how to fight.”
“Learn. Hit faster.”
His hand popped as he clenched his fist. “Working on it,” he rumbled. We came to a cross-street, and I nodded left, across traffic, people gawking at the pair of us as he loomed and I stood there Masked, all casual-like. The people in front of us astutely got out of the way.
“If it’s a cycle, who takes down the Dragon?”
“Historically, the Amazons.”
He blinked at me again. “The Greek warrior-women?”
“The Greeks made them famous, but the Amazons are born in every land and culture, they aren’t Greek or beholden to the Greek gods. They act against the Dragon and the Phoenix.”
“Huh.” He thought about that. “Are any of the active heroes or such Amazons?”
“Amazons are historically very skilled and able warrior-women, not Powered. I’m not sure what this Heroic Age would do for them, with Core Training and the like available.” I smiled slightly. “That being said, if you’ve seen one, in a manner of speaking you’ve seen them all. They all have perfect bodies, so they all have the exact same figure. Skin and looks can differ, but they are all attractive. Supposedly they are born into random families around the world, retaining their knowledge of their past lives, and run a lot of it from behind the scenes with their extended families.
“I haven’t seen anyone among the active heroes who would be an Amazon. That’s probably for their protection, as those tied to the Dragon tend to loathe Amazons on sight and try to kill them, especially if they know the history. They also whittle away the Amazon’s families, so they don’t have nearly the power they might.”
“Checks and balances. That’s a thing in magic, right?”
“Yes. The Phoenix has the power, but not the knowledge. The Dragons grab after mystical power, and supposedly the spirit of the Dragon confers massive knowledge... which to a mystic, IS power. The Amazons oppose with mundane power and the skill of multiple lives.”
“Different worlds we live in.”
“You might want to get more familiar with the mystic one. You’re an Earth Avatar, after all. Elemental forces definitely interact with the mystic world.
“Who knows, you might find some good paying gigs there. Lot of elemental forces are pretty mercenary about flexing their muscles.”
He scratched his jaw, eyes gleaming. “And I got bills to pay.”
“And you have bills to pay,” I agreed sagely.
“You a Caster, gonna develop contacts in that area?”
“The general way to do that is compete for stuff or be student to this or that faction. Actually, the Vishanti Sorcerer Supreme lives in Greenwich Village.”
Mr. Hill blinked. “What is he, an artist or something?”
“A Sorcerer?” I repeated, cocking my head at him.
“Weird place for... nevermind, weird people live there. Got it. That our shoe man?” he pointed.
“That is indeed where our corviser has hung his shingle.”
He gave me another look. “Corviser, huh?”
“You call him a cobbler, that’s an insult. A true maker of shoes and boots is a master corviser, no more, no less.”
“So I’m looking for a master corviser. Got it.”
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Author's Notes - Time Travel:
Time travel in Dynamoverse works as follows:
If you travel to the future, you can do whatever you like, you're just moving your timeline. If you then return to the past, you lose all knowledge and effects of what you did in the future, picking up exactly at the point you left. Your timelines CANNOT overlap (you cannot meet your past/future self), and you have no future knowledge.
If you reach that future point (say, jumping to tomorrow, and returning to today, then living to tomorrow), your memories of what you did in the future are regained, and your timeline jumps to the end of your future presence, skipping it entirely (coming in at the point you returned to the past). So your timelines never overlap, you regain your 'future knowledge', and skip the time you already spent there.
If you go to the past, UNLESS it's a very rare circumstance where it's woven into the timeline as a closed loop (possible, but very unlikely), you are instead shunted into an alternate/ephemeral timeline that has absolutely nothing to do with the current timeline. It will basically cease to exist as soon as you leave, affecting no one and nothing, and anything you bring out of it will vanish as you leave it, including unique knowledge (i.e., you go back in time to read the Book of the Vishanti. On returning to the present, you discover all the spells you read are absolute nonsense in the real timeline, and the Amulet of Agamotto you stole has vanished).
You thus can go back and meet yourself, but it's all an illusion, and you naturally won't remember meeting yourself. If it's a time in the last 140 years, a key indicator it is false is that you can't meet Briggs or Sama in it, although the timeline will act like they were there as it apes the 'real' one.
'Time travelers' in the Dynamoverse are just going into and out of alternate realities that have nothing to do with their home dimension at all. Indeed, the 'inviolable time' of the Dynamoverse means it is strenuously avoided by time-traveling powers and organizations as a place easy to get trapped and disappear in. So, no Time Variance Authority here, and Kang's multi-epoch empire doesn't exist here.
There are people that can summon time-duplicates of themselves backwards or forwards to aid themselves. However, these doubles never have future knowledge, so, for instance, they can't warn the one pulling them that he's going to pull one of them back and get them killed! Conversely, he can't pull someone from the past and get them killed, or he'd already be dead, but they won't know what they were pulled forward to fight, either.
Also, while he's technically 'meeting himself', the time spent still needs to be accounted for, so time-shifted are pulled out of their time for the same amount they spend in the future/past, before returning to exactly where they were, meaning they are prone to 'blipping out' at odd moments. Most such power-users probably have a set time of day they try to take their past/future selves from to avoid any problems that might occur from this.
It is also possible they are just pulling 'alternate duplicates' of themselves from non-existent timelines, who cease to exist as soon as they are unsummoned, effectively making it more like a Madrox power than anything.