Mr. Hill had schooled the moloids proper on the fact that Terra didn’t like extradimensional invaders coming in, tossed the priest into the lava with his assistants, torn a bunch of demons apart, and found himself promptly anointed the tribe’s king and ruler.

He’d had to bring Dealer in to translate and get everything set up, but now we had an interesting source of Earth and Fire-Energized stuff coming in, which we were trading for food and stuff to make that deep tribe of moloids’ lives more comfortable. The ‘lava boys’ were damn happy to have him.

So, very sudden calls to battle, and compensation in one form or another. Go to another planet that maybe didn’t have Avatars running around, and who knew how much shit would be built up for him to do?

“You want to send somebody along? It’ll have to be someone they know. I know you had some things you were working on at that party.”

“Lemme give Marko a call and see if he’s got his forward-thinking hat on yet. He’s a bit of a live-for-the-moment guy, takin’ orders from Black Tom. I’ll see if he’s willing to step out a bit.”

Getting the Avatar of Cyttorak off the planet wouldn’t be a bad thing, either. I was sure other alien gods would enjoy his presence.

“Well, then, we’ll wrap it up with the Richards’ stuff. How much more do you have to do, Norbert?” I asked him calmly.

He half-grinned, digging out a small drive and handing it over. “Check the math, and run it off if it holds.” He was more nervous than he let on, but that was cool. I’d been doing that at regular intervals right along, and only had to correct him in a couple places.

“Prototype?” I nodded as I accepted it.

“If it holds, I can make it up with Jenkins here in under a week.”

“Your name is going on this as primary you know, right?” I waved the drive once before stowing it away.

He looked like his mouth was a little dry. “Uh, sure...”

“You want some academic recognition for your work on it?” I looked at him calmly.

“Academic?” he repeated, almost as if it was a dirty word. “Why would I want that?”

“What’s harder to get, a doctorate or an honorary doctorate?” I asked instead of answering.

“Well... an honorary doctorate, I suppose. They have to award those, while you just get churned through their system to get a piece of paper...”

“I’ll have McCoy draw up the necessary forms and give you guidelines on how to write the underlying theory here up. Where would you like to submit it to for consideration and recognition?”

He looked a little stunned. “Uh...”

“Stay in the States for now,” I added, as he got that look in his eye.

“Oh. Uh, MIT, then?” he proposed, crazy thoughts of getting real Russian recognition carefully set aside for now.

“Make sure you choose the field you want to submit it under. Go with your strength.” I turned to Jenkins. “You should do the same for Electrical Engineering for the Antenna tech. Empire State would be an excellent choice. Talk to McCoy about how to go about it, again. I know you don’t understand the underlying theory yet, but that’s because we haven’t really looked into it. Pick apart what you don’t know and we’ll get on that with you.”

“Oh. Uh, sure.” He looked a bit startled.

“Just imagine the look on his face when Octavius has to address you as Dr. Jenkins.”

Despite himself, Jenkins had to grin at the very idea. “He’s such an arrogant prick. Man, I think I’d do that just to piss him off!”

“I know you’ve no time or patience for school, Ebersol, but I expect you to get a wall full of honorary degrees in at least six different disciplines, and browbeat anyone down who says you aren’t recognized formally for your genius. You got that?” I wagged a finger at him.

“Uh, yeah!” He was startled he was being given such a weird mission, but the more he rolled it over in his head, the more it appealed to him. Then the thought struck him, “Hey, shouldn’t you be doing the same thing?” he pointed out, challenging me.

“Uh, I do.” I waved back in the direction of the Baxter Building. “I’ve got ten. Twelve? A couple could be construed as bribes if you’re an ass about it, I guess, since I signed over the licensing rights to the tech as a donation to the universities involved.”

“You’ve got twelve doctorates?” Even Mr. Hill was stunned to find that out.

“McCoy and Doc Richards started submitting them without my knowing, and just kept it up after the first couple came through. Man, that was annoying, getting told I was being awarded an honorary degree tonight and I was the keynote speaker, go get ready now!

“Of course, I had to start doing the same to them, and for a couple of the other Baxter people (Parker is a complete ditz about those things). The Peer Review process is at once totally irritating and completely rewarding. The egotistical sots can’t understand half of what is going on, and they whine and they complain, and then it all works out and they can’t do more than sulk and retreat into their little academic corners complaining about the irrelevancy of it all.”

“Peer review?” Mr. Hill spoke up. “That has to mean Stark, right?”

“Oh, that arsehole somehow finds out about every one of mine getting submitted, and does he pick nits just because he can. Frak, he roped in Pym, Octavius, Banner, and a couple others to try and tear into my stuff. MIT called it the most energized tear-down of a submission that they’d ever seen.”

“Wait, the Ouilette paper? The Bug Bands?” blurted out Fixer. “The one that set up Quantum Alchemy?!”

“Oh, you heard of it? Thought it was totally academic. Monstrously dry and boring stuff.” I waved my hands as I scrunched up my nose. “Man, the stench of the egos raging over that thing. I think you can still smell them!”

“That... I... “ Ebersol’s hands twitched, and Jenkins had a weird look on his face. “I use that stuff all the time!”

“It’s like the foundation of any theory we’d have to set up for the Antenna tech!” Jenkins blurted out. “The Bug Bands are used in all the core tech!”

“One of the Bands is used in the core tech,” I corrected him mildly, holding up a finger. “Pym uses four, occasionally five; Parker uses another two; Octavius generally works in three of them, and Stark’s range of a dozen includes three unique ones in the Bug Bands. When you start ranging out, there’s Bug Bands used by the Tribes, Russia, Wakanda, and a score of other people around the globe, as well as Bands outside it.”

“That’s why they tore into that paper so hard. You were revealing some of their tech foundations!” Ebersol blurted out, and began to laugh. “What a bunch of hypocrites! You just know they were diving into trying to find out more about the other Bands even as they were trying to insist that no, no, theirs weren’t a part of your theory!”

“Huh.” Mr. Hill spoke up. “That were some entertainin’ reading, make no doubt about it. I couldn’t understand half the crap they were talking about, but it was a damn soap opera, all them Schmot Guys going at it.” He gave Ebersol a peery eyeball, and the Fixer grimaced. “They had all that stuff on the Dark Lore sites. I seem ta remember a certain Repairman raging up and down the forums there.”

I just raised an eyebrow at Ebersol, and he shrugged. “Doc Apoc, Mechanar, Doom, Octavius, Wittman, Modok, the Leader, Hogitsu, Computo, Raddiant, Glitch, the Mentat... you had everybody commenting about that paper!”

“And you think I don’t know the Bands you like to use for Fixertech, just because they weren’t in the paper?” I inquired, and he got that look of having been caught at something again. “You’ve used one of the Bug Bands for years, and four others outside it. The Tinker doesn’t use any of the Bug Bands, but he’s still got three markers in his own tech.”

“Hur hur hur!” Mr. Hill smiled, looking at Ebersol’s expression. “Weren’t that a crazy forum for a couple months there. Never seen so many death threats bandied around, even on the Dark Lore. It’s like you stole from all their cookie jars at once. Did they ever do anything about it?” he asked curiously.

“Once they realized who I actually was? Most of them pissed off. Mechanar and Computo tried to get fancy, and we had to invent a whole new computer technology and operating system just to deal with them trying to infiltrate our systems. Then we got real fancy back at them in return. I think someone ended up calling it the Web Wars, or something.”

Even Mr. Hill was startled by that. “That whole mess was fallout from that?” He laughed from his belly again. “Schmot Guys getting schooled by Schmoter Guys. Made some good money off that, got to trash two of Mechanar’s bases for pay!” he recalled fondly.

“I was on the Server Hunt!” blurted out Jenkins, all wide-eyed.

“Yeah, you took out six of them,” I nodded at him, startling him by knowing that, and waved at Fixer. “He wrote some of the attack code, took out a third of Computo’s systems with it in a mighty slagfest. Oh, and we paid you out of their money, too.”

All three of the guys had peculiar looks on their faces at realizing they’d been paid to take out other supervillains by superheroes. Mr. Hill just laughed at it all, and despite themselves, Jenkins and Ebersol joined him eventually. “Girl, you had half the mastermind-types in the world tearing at one another. Did they ever find out you were behind it all?”

“Oh, Dr. Richards let some of them know he wasn’t happy with them. I’m sure they figured it out. The man doesn’t like to go on the offensive, but when he does, shit happens. Academic criticism stayed on the boards after that.”

“How much you figure you cost ‘em?” Mr. Hill asked, always curious about the money.

“Rounded out? Maybe ten billion?” They all whistled. “It’s more the residual effects plaguing them as reminders. There’s still killcode floating out there that randomly blows apart Computo’s programs, Doom’s doombots have a bad habit of seeing one another as usurpers and blowing each other apart if they get outside Latveria, and if Mechanar doesn’t make ongoing contributions to the Lost to Mines charity for war injuries (which we set up, just for him!) in both money and prosthetics, his cyborgs start having control issues. The others have other nuisances. I think McCoy hacked Modok’s nutrient feed to give him constant indigestion or constipation...”

“Doc Richards don’t play around,” Mr. Hill said in grave admiration. “Computo must be going crazy, he’s a total control freak.” Jenkins and Ebersol nodded agreement, having some grudging respect for that kind of serious, ballsy move.

“Computo’s not even on The List. He wants to be an AI and immortal. He’s freaking lucky he’s not dead yet,” I sniffed, thinking about how both Briggs and Sama had proven to be very negative on computer AI’s. “I think he nearly died the first time he tried to hack Doc Bronze, and he raves about his hacking skills while not going anywhere near the Big Three’s core systems, ‘cause they are psi and magic-backed. The Hag probably has a killsat fixed on him all the time, and he doesn’t even know it.”

“Why would she keep the prick around, then?” Fixer asked, knowing none of this information was going to leave this room. Having Computo trying to get into his systems for revenge would also be annoying.

“Because he inspires hundreds, if not thousands or more, coders around the world with his ranting and raving and showing off what he can do. Coding and hacking is very high order, brain-intensive stuff. Having a fruitcake on top you can try to surpass, or to defend against, is more useful than the harm he does. He’s one of the major athletes of the cyberset, and what havoc he wreaks is effectively his pay.

“At some point his ego is going to surpass his sense of restraint, and he’ll be put down, probably totally shocked when it happens.”

“Huh. One of the athletes of the Schmot Guys. I like it!” Mr. Hill nodded. “That means I got my own sports team here, right? I get to be the fatcat owner-manager!” He sounded quite smug at the idea.

“Now shee hieh, Hill. Ah gots bones tah pick with youz. Wheez tahkin’ dishtribushun, weez talkin’ influence. Ahl thahse thahngs, they cawst mahney, y’knowz,” Jenkins drawled immediately in a pretty good send-up of a Boston gangster, waving around an air cigar to punctuate his points. “If yahz wants tah play in the big leagues, thehza gohna be a prahce.”

Even Mr. Hill was shocked by that. Then the laugh came right out of his belly, and everyone else joined in.