There was some politeness, and there had to be a feast despite all the deaths, with dancing and fine music and gorgeous clothes and all the frittery stuff that Lady Roma seemed to really enjoy.

There wasn’t anything I could do that the Corps of Captains couldn’t also do, they were stronger and faster than I was, and the local mages were on the job as well, plenty good at the whole reconstruction thing. I wasn’t going to show off my magic and get drafted by a curious and delighted Lady Roma and her father.

Huh. If this was the Marvel universe and divergent paths, it struck me that the point of true divergence might be when I killed Morgan le Fey... mmm, no. It would have been when le Fey in the distant past found out she couldn’t make any alterations to the future timeline, only do what was predestined, or she’d forget it all. She likely had tried all sorts of things and completely forgotten them as they were unmade or never actually happened, only able to do what she was destined to do, and that was it.

Eventually I was able to beg off the social stuff and all the handsome men (and women) who wanted to dance with me, and head for the Portal back to my Terra-1832, not wanting to make it obvious I could spin such a thing up myself.

Brian Cumberland and Meggan were going to stay a couple extra days to help with the rebuilding, as well as the services for the dead. The Portal was easy enough to open; I’d watched and felt him do it, and someone connected to the Underweb could likely do it instinctively.

The Captain had also assured me that the tower’s magic had ways of cleaning up messes, so I shouldn’t be finding any bodies laying around, and members of the Corps had already retrieved Sat-r-nyn’s flunkies.

I’d naturally memorized the path to get there, and the tower’s interior wasn’t that complex, although it could be shifted around with time and effort. I wandered around enough to get the layout on all three levels, just in case I needed it in the future, and then stepped outside.

London was right over there.

I brought up the Commune. Britannia was quite smug when She came online.

“Otherworlder Sat-r-nyn. Should have a signature almost identical to one native Courtney Ross,” I informed the Land, as I murmured the spell to locate her. They were all alternate versions of the same person, and I’d just seen and met Satyrnyne herself, who doubtless considered herself the prime version of them, unable to see that she was just the one alternate among many who’d gotten luckier.

The scrying magic went out, and located both signatures quickly.

One was leaving a nice flat in a decent part of the city, finely dressed in a business suit and on her way to the bank she worked at.

The other one was moving in the direction of that home.

This Sat-r-nyn I was tracking came from one of the myriad worlds where the Nazis had survived World War Two in some form or another, be it by miraculous conquest or some other means of defying all the enemies it had made... or perhaps not making an enemy of Russia at all, as ours had foolishly done, and so the Nazis had managed to fight the Allies to a standstill, retaining control of Europe as the Russians made moves into Afghanistan and Iraq opportunistically. It had even threatened America at one point as a warning not to get involved.

Naturally the fighting there went on a lot longer without Germany having to fight on two fronts, and Russia’s attacks splitting the Allies’ efforts even more, in the end.

Sat-r-nyn had either been married to Hauptman Briton or was his lover, hard to say, after Briton fell to German invading forces armed with more Weird Science war engines than they could deal with. The Hauptman had been stupid enough to come here and attack Brian’s sister Betsy, who had promptly burned out his mind and killed him. Massive reversals in the Briton on the other side had cost Sat-r-nyn everything, and she had to flee to another world to escape the angry people looking for her, giving up wealth, power, status, and her mighty lover together.

And now she was here, and heading for the home of her counterpart who lived here.

I smiled, shook my head, and flitted off in that direction, getting there ahead of her. While there were many ways I could address this, the simplest one was simply to be there when the woman arrived, and dispose of her. I highly doubted she was going to be there to form a partnership with the Courtney Ross of this world.

---

I was right, of course. She had a soul as red as Hell, murder on her mind and obsession with reclaiming what she’d lost driving everything with absolute ruthlessness.

She was not prepared to deal with a superhuman after she picked the door with a high-tech skeleton key and walked inside, looking around to assess it, as if she was already the owner of it.

In the next second I severed her spinal cord, True Death sent her off to the afterlife without her knowing how she died, and vivus began to dispose of the rest. I redirected the vivic flow so that it wouldn’t stain the area, and accelerated it fast enough that the alternity-version of Miss Ross went up like tinder.

In ten minutes, only her garments and weapons were left, and I absconded with them as I headed off to my next destination.

I could only hope another alternate-world version wouldn’t pop in and try to do a slay-and-replace...

----------

Muir Island had a long and storied history in the comics history I knew. That had become somewhat more complicated later on, when it was revealed that Moria McTaggert herself was a mutant with a very special power: she relived multiple lives in alternate timelines, all starting at the same place and only differentiating themselves by the actions she took, and the resulting ripple effects that had extended off of her choices.

She still existed in this reality. I could only imagine what had happened when she had been reborn and suddenly all the knowledge of her previous lives was rendered mostly invalid, the world so massively changed from all those before.

All in all, I wasn’t too worried about her or her actions. She had somehow managed to prove herself singularly inept in all her tasks, not managing to improve herself or her abilities despite having ten lifetimes to do so, even after associating with some of the world’s most powerful and skilled people.

I instead wanted to meet one of the people working there: Jamie Madrox.

The Multiple Man.

One of the great truisms of the Power of Ten was that there was very little odd stuff that could be done by monsters and things that couldn’t be duplicated by Cast magic. Sure, there might be odious pre-reqs and qualifiers, Stat reqs and the like, but many spells were assumed to be first duplicated from the innate abilities of various magical creatures, once we were able to see the powers they used.

Sure, magic and psi-based stuff ‘felt’ different, but Dispels specifically bridged that gap, and magic was assumed to be transpsionic itself.

Thus, I wanted to see how Jamie Madrox did his stuff.

Since he was here, the main reason was that he hadn’t managed to figure out to control his own ability yet, the ability to convert force into creating more Duplicates of himself. These Dupes were effectively different aspects of his own personality, fully existent, not time-line tricks, and could even Dupe themselves. When he pulled them back into himself, he regained all their experiences and knowledge fully.

It was an extraordinarily valuable and useful power, and, well, I wanted to Duplicate it!

Now, I didn’t think I would ‘gain’ his power, as mutant powers frequently broke physics in insane ways. Just creating a Duplicate out of nothing in real terms involved atomic bomb levels of energy. On the other hand, this reality was unbelievably supportive of such reality-breaking things, and I was an Ur-Priest with access to IX Slots, which included Wish spells and literal Divine Miracles, the latter of which I could actually Cast if I wanted to (and didn’t because it would probably upset some gods)...

And, uh, Ur-Priests at Ten had the once-a-day ability to mimic the spell-like abilities of other creatures.

Mutant powers easily counted as SLA’s by any measure.

Using a IX Slot to create a Dupe, in comparison, was pretty tame to what Madrox did naturally. Mystic Theurgy meant I didn’t have to steal some god’s tribute of Faith to do this, I could totally just use arcane energy from the Underweb as a substitute.

Did I want people to know I had IX Slots and could pull off this kind of stuff, especially with the magnifier effects of this world? And le Fey’s raw power backing it all?

No. I was indeed totally and unseemly powerful, and totally misdirecting everyone as to how powerful I was. How powerful I actually was hereabouts I wouldn’t find out until I pressed my limits... and doing that would definitely be an Event. I was plenty happy ‘growing’ my power in ways more obvious and believable to people.

I was going to go into the Muir Island laboratory, Charm a Dupe to basically ignore me, and then tap him a few times to observe him pop a few new Doubles of himself while I watched the effect, copied it, figured out how to do the same thing, and then headed on out of there, my work done...

-------------

I popped up in my room, loudly announced my presence with a “Blargh!” and actually hopped onto my very stiff bed.

She heard it from the next room and wandered over with a raised eyebrow.

I’d popped one Clone some time ago. It took a VIII Slot, ten pounds of Life Gold (vivaurum), and I could only have one at a time, but she was basically a total duplicate of me who could act completely independently of me.

She was also a completely magical creation, and someone sufficiently powerful could totally see it and unmake her, which annoyed both of us (Astral Ward at IX+1, thank you). We could use the Marks to maintain a complete telepathic link, and so keep ourselves ‘current’ with one another on all the important stuff.

She had first subbed for me if I needed to be in two places at once, usually as Dealer since then she could be expected to have a magical Aura, and if something did happen to her, it was just magic doing weird stuff. In addition, she didn’t actually have a Totem Pact, so no Pact-derived powers, and only the basic starting physical enhancements... which were already huge, but that meant she was physically inferior to me, making me the better Dynamo.

Over time, she had basically taken over Dealer’s life, and did the Artificing and magical support stuff. She could accumulate Karma and transfer it to me, enabling me to make mental updates and improve, but she couldn’t do such things on her own as a spell creation ‘fixed’ at the moment of her creation.

I regularly spent a VIII Slot to ‘update’ her and keep her current with me, so it was all fine.

She also didn’t have all my Gear, surprise, surprise, so she had to rely on spells to remain Astral Warded, among other things. We were working on it, however. Since she wasn’t as adventurous as me, she basically was doing magical support stuff all the time, spending lots of Valences every day to that effect.

Making lots of Energized Isotopes was a big part of it.

Amusingly enough, if she had the Dealer Mask on, which she basically did all the time, even Mr. Hill forgot that we were the same person, because ‘proof’ was right in front of him, and Nom de Guerre sold it. Not that he’d care that I could be two people, it just didn’t occur to him that we were the same person any more, and he’d just chalk it up to magic.

Our link flickered up, memories exchanged, and she made a face. “Oh, I’m definitely leaving the math on that to you!” she informed me.

“Thank you. You are too kind.”

“You made me change outfits three times!”

“I was testing your l33t fashion skillz.”

“Now you just have to get down to the Nexus of All Realities and get a good look at that one, and I’m sure our brains will explode.”

“You are critiquing my fabulously clever and insightful method of accessing multiversal constants and self-perpetuating cosmic-class transition effects between dimensions?” I sniffed haughtily.

“I am noting that you have FOUR growing headaches as you try to comprehend what you saw,” she replied simply enough.