I didn’t hide the fact I had a Nova Core from Rich and Jessica. That would have just been cruel and rather humiliating if and when I suddenly revealed it.

Nope, I leveled with them as soon as they came back onboard and Mentor was plugged back into Starholder. No angsty personal conflicts for me!

Rich’s reaction was remarkably ambivalent. “The Xandarans don’t really seem to have mutants or Powered or anything like humans do. That’s a really crazy effect, Dyna,” he said, shaking his head after I told him about my effective capacitor.

It was basically running in reverse now with the M’Kraan and cosmic energy, bringing out all that the Nova Core could eat 24/7. I was powering up as if I was plugged in, all the time.

I’d hit Core 4 before they were done dumping everything into me. I’d be Core 5 within a week, Centurion level, and soon pass Rich, as he couldn’t possibly stay plugged in at 100% efficiency all the time like me.

“Still the first Nova from Terra,” I pointed to him, and then at Jessica. “Still the first Terran Nova.” They both smiled despite themselves. “I’ve got a cheat, yeah, but I’m not going anywhere the two of you aren’t. You take it slow and steady, and your Core foundation is going to be much, much better than mine. I’ll have the raw juice, but you’ll have all the tricks and skills and techniques that go with it, so you’re going to be doing things with it that I can’t.”

“You’re planning on keeping this concealed,” Jessica said shrewdly.

I nodded slowly. “I’ve displayed enough breadth of ability that everything it gives me, except the invulnerability, is masked by what else I can do.” I held up my Bite Bracers and sighed. “However, these things totally can’t handle the juice I can put through them now. That suit of yours is a treasure, Rich.”

“Yeah, I went over the specs on it with Spidey a few times. The way it integrates with the Nova Force exceeds anything he could devise... but without it, wow, do I waste a lot of power,” he agreed.

Jessica and I glanced at one another. “It’s a control system,” she murmured, and I nodded. She was at Core Four too, which meant she had energy blasts she was eager to try out. Without a Corps uniform and Mentor helping with the gravimetrics, she simply wouldn’t be able to perform to Richard’s level.

“Don’t forget you’ve a natural Core, and your inbuilt harmony with it remains,” I pointed at her. “You shouldn’t need the suit for strength, invulnerability, healing, or flight at ALL.” Her eyebrows lifted at the thought, and she nodded once, considering that. “They have some weapons in the armory meant to focus Nova blasts, big guns and the like that can build up power so they can glass cannon above their levels.

“Also, you should totally be able to power up some additional gear now, or really tone down on the power core for your own armor, since you’re basically a dynamo, too. We’re gonna have to rework your armor and loadout based on what you can do now, and upgrade as your Core does.

“You focus on what you are good at for now, Jess, that shouldn’t have changed, except you should be faster, tougher, and stronger.” I turned to Richard. “You’re plowing the road on Nova Corps tricks for everyone. Keep at it. We should probably add some Terran tricks to your load-out, just to keep the Xandarans on their toes.”

He smiled despite himself. “So, what do you have in mind?”

“They have Hammerspace tech, right?”

========

The present...

Kismet fit in remarkably well, especially after she started moving around multi-ton units of equipment like sacks of potatoes, accidentally rent some steel modules and doors, and demonstrated her ability to send Ben Grimm flying with an energy blast.

She was used to being looked at, and mostly ignored it, dressing conservatively. I just said she was along as a high-Delta/low-Epsilon paramount sent along by The Hag, and nobody protested. It was hardly going to be bad having someone along at the level of Comet or Fury, right?

As for where she came from, well, the Tribes and Russia had all sorts of secrets.

I had a golden sunburst emblazoned high on my temple, not likely to be seen unless I shaved my hair really high. Within it was a miniature version of one of Sama’s Marks, this one connected directly to Kismet in a private Markspace.

Yeah, she was a kid. A high-order, intelligent kid, her brain forcibly opened to concepts she couldn’t really understand or properly digest, as she didn’t have the intellectual foundation to do so. It was just like introducing higher math to kids who were too young, and just couldn’t understand the concepts.

Naturally, shoving all that ‘mother of a perfect race’ stuff into the head of a kid completely fantasized and abstracted it, as it was absent the social interactions, family bonding, hormonal adjustments, sexual attraction, and all the other stuff as it was put in. Sama had to show her how to shut off her own hormones, or she would have started really focusing on that stuff, driven by her programming.

And, of course, since she was a cosmic-powered kid with expanded senses, she had questions, lots of emotions, and it was hard for her to focus on things.

“Eeep!” was her reaction when Sama finished the Tat, and she stared at me. “You’re like Sister Kwannon, only worse!”

I reflected that my Wisdom thoughtstream was going to be working overtime with her, but that one had plenty of patience and understanding. I arched an eyebrow as fourteen different thoughtstreams Looked at her for a moment, and she kind of shrank back and looked away as if she’d been caught doing something naughty. “And you’re like Momma, too!”

I glanced at Sama, who just smiled knowingly. “It will be fine,” I said reassuringly, and knew I wouldn’t have any real discipline problems with her.

------

We played around a bit in the asteroid belt, testing the ship’s maneuverability and some light shooting with the weapon systems that came with it. Yeah, we wanted to try out the new cannon arrays, but those were going to be a surprise for some folks...

The ship’s replicators were back online after some tinkering, and wasn’t there a whole lot of wishing that Terra had the tech to do that sort of thing. Nevertheless, feed in raw materials, get pre-programmed useful stuff out.

Like, oh, the missile tech that the Xandarans didn’t seem to like with all their rampant energy usage. They had some really nice explosives to tip the things with, too. Getting some railgun launchers into place hadn’t been all that hard.

After all, lots of extra room, lots of extra power. Actually, we probably got a little crazy on the excessive ammo, to the point we had to have internal shields in place just to guard against an internal explosion if the magazines were hit.

It helped to know that we were going to be spending a lot of it shortly.

Director Carter ran everyone through weapon drills, with Mentor supplying scenarios for us to take a crack at as we played around in Jupiter’s moons and rings for a while before truly heading to Titan.

We were actually bringing some trade materials to Titan, who had heard a lot about Earth’s current cuisines after the Contest of Champion, and wanted to sample some themselves. LaGrange was also a waypoint for dropping off loads back and forth, and normally Titan sent their own freighters over to pick up and drop off trade items if needed. Terra itself had precious little other than raw materials to offer in that area, but that was increasing as basic Energization of materials was starting to pick up, especially among the Tribes and Russia.

The fact I could also generate some EXTREMELY rare and specialized stuff for trade, since we didn’t know how to use most of it, was certainly not a factor, nope, nope. Dumping Valences for making alchemical stuff was a good use of my time, after all, and one of my constant downtime tasks. Grimm Materials, a subcompany under Grimm Engineering, quietly purchased the raw materials for doing so.

Dealer and I were literally the only suppliers for some of those Isotopes on Terra. Naturally the money flowed in...

---

Titan was the home of a branch of the Terran Eternals, their long-deceased human servants, and their mixed-blood descendants. A’lars, the Elder of Titan, had fundamental disagreements with Zuras, head of Terra’s Eternals when younger, and had chosen self-exile rather than starting a civil war. He and his followers had settled on Titan, and they had actually become the main representatives for peaceful contact with the Sol System, although they were far from being defenders of Terra.

There were other Eternals, gods, mystics, and even Celestials mucking around on Terra. Aliens restrained themselves there, or battled against the natives Eternals or Deviants, who had surprisingly high tech levels. Sometimes they messed around with the population, trying to play God with what the Celestials had done, and thus the Inhumans were created by the Kree, or odd bloodlines were left behind to dilute and spread through the human population over the years.

Thus, Titan was a society with Eternal levels of tech, derived from Celestial technology, and had been around for tens of thousands of years. Naturally we were the newcomers to space and stuff, and if they were slightly patronizing about it all, they were still polite, especially when they realized a bona fide Nova Corpsman was helming an Xandaran ship on the way home.

Director Carter took over diplomatic relations on behalf of SHIELD, talking about formal relationships. McCoy, the blue-furred mode he’d been slowly evolving into actually a very positive thing here as it made him look less human and thus he was treated more equitably, started talking trade matters and science exchanges. He was helped along by Ben Grimm, who could not have had a more different personality, and yet who was damn familiar with superscience... and also much more famous, being a member of the Fantastic Four and one of the top members of the Contest of Champion.

Fixer and Ebersol headed down to the stardocks and certain other kinds of people and things that could be found there. Arriving on a prim and proper Xandaran vessel and definitely not being Xandarans made them almost reactionary celebrities among the aliens and spacers there.

They were also pretty sure they were vetted several times by informers for the pirates, and scammers naturally tried to sell them some ‘cool alien technology’ that were basically household consumer goods...

Nova was naturally taken on a guided tour, and the rest of us Baxter types trundled along with the native Titan guide... A’lars’ older son, Eros.

He took one look at all the young women, and turned on the charm. The next second, he slammed into the wall, his hair fratzed and smoking, bleeding out his eyes and nose.

It was very quick, and everyone was staring at me as a halo of lightning popped and sizzled around my head.

“Eros, the Starfox,” I said in a very calm voice as my Reprisal sizzled around my head. “Your reputation precedes you. You are a sociopathic womanizer of interstellar repute, armed with the psionic ability to influence the emotions of those around you, essentially psi-drugging the targets of your lust and raping them.

“If you try that again on any of us, I am literally going to burn out your brain, and then inquire of your father as to why his mass mind-fucker of a son wasn’t killed long ago.

“Please, continue with your tour.”

He tried to put on a charming smile, and failed, for a moment the emotionless manipulator below his fine manners on display. “You are too kind in your warnings, my lady Dynamo,” he managed, as he picked himself out of the wall and slowly brushed himself off. With only a little difficulty, his smile returned, but the pheromones in the air had shifted to us all watching him like a snake.

======

Author Note: There was a whole section in either She-Hulk or the Avengers about Eros tasping women to have sex with him, basically. Dyna’s having none of it.