Mr. Hill glanced at Ben, who just nodded slowly as everyone else headed inside. “Typical delivery trip,” the Rock confirmed, waving his beer. “You got a cigar?”

Mr. Hill brought out three of them, and without any hesitation at all, slowly lit all three of them off a steady blue flame coming off Dragon Man’s nose. He handed one to Ben, one to Dragon Man, and kept the last one for himself.

Ben took a long, contented draw as he watched the rest of the younger folks heading inside. Cerise and MJ would need the guest rooms, but they had plenty of those. He paused at the end, and took out the cigar to look at it. “Whoa. That’s pretty damn good.” He glanced at Dragon Man, who somehow looked incredibly smug.

“Yeah, that blue flame of his really gives a nice buzz to it,” Hill agreed, exhaling sparkling green fumes, where Ben’s were closer to steel and crystal, and Dragon Man’s swirled like ghostly purple flames.

“Any real problems?” Ben asked, putting the cigar back in for a good draw.

It was good to be home.

“Midas is making offers.”

Ben Grimm grunted at the casual words. “Sabotage?”

“Ebersol’s security is pretty good. Marko took care of them before they blew anything up. There was some pressure from uptown with the Richards and youz all gone, and even Stark on vacation with you. Then they kenned ta the fact the kid was here, and there were officials moping about, making sounds about locking him up.

“Dealer let him inside, making him promise not ta break anything. He’s been a good kid.” Hill reached up and gave his big purple skull a casual pat, and the construct beamed happily. “Dealer Waking him up did good things for him. Not had a temper tantrum since that Mordo bloke stopped by ta test himself against Dealer’s magic, and the idiot taunted the kid. He put the fool in traction.”

Ben hur-hurred, and held out his beer bottle for tinks all around. “Yeah, he’s a tough kid. We’ve tussled in the past. No hard feelings, kid.”

Dragon Man huffed gratefully.

“City Hall?” Ben asked.

“Called up Murdock. He mentioned something about a brothel over in the Bronx, and the pressure evaporated like rain in Libya. They sent over some inspectors to make noises, and he named each of the poozers and said things about jurisdiction and pensions, and they scampered off and gave us a clean bill of health... which we already had.”

“Well, it’s better than ya having to stroll through some of Midas’ properties and make sure he knows ya know, I guess.”

“That retainer you pay Murdock is worth it,” Hill agreed. “Man gets things done. He sent a couple hard luck cases my way. Hired ‘em on. Tough guys with tough luck. Should be able ta turn them around. Not bright, but we need a few drivers, an’ they’ll do the job.”

“Yeah, lots of dummies from down on Yancy Street.”

“And the farm,” Hill agreed knowingly.

“Huff!” Dragon Man contributed, and they tinked again.

-----------

“Congrats on yer trip and a safe return. Ain’t been out in space, save by way of fallin’ back ta the ground. Big step.”

Ebersol and Jenkins relaxed with cigars and a beer each. They hadn’t been smokers before, but you didn’t turn down The Mountain saying it was a man’s reward for a job well done, and the cigars Dealer treated up for them were fantastic, especially with one of her beers.

“Thanks, boss,” Jenkins said tiredly. “I don’t think we ever worked so hard in our lives. There was always more to do than we could get to, and it was all so bloody important.”

“I understand yer tired, and the serious stuff can wait until tomorrow when yer cooled off. Just casual stuff to think about tonight, you telling me what kind of wheels I can get into motion.”

Ebersol took a deep breath. “Saw a lot of things out there, Hill. Learned a lot of stuff faster than I thought I ever could, and that is saying something.” Hill nodded slowly. “I’ve got a hazy idea of what is needed, but I see some ways to get Terra into space within a generation. Having a system-wide presence in two.”

“Huh.” Hill’s eyes glittered. “That’s a lot of stuff ta make.”

“And I got ideas on how to do it,” Ebersol puffed slowly. “The tech side of things. The business end, not so clear. But expanding operations is going to be absolutely necessary, as you might recall.”

“Huh. Dealer mentioned there was a lot of talk in the UN about negotiating with space empires. That’s when Midas started leaning on us a bit harder.”

“Midas has a nose for money. We are among the top suppliers of some E-materials in the world, and those things are going to be direly needed for anything dealing with space travel,” Jenkins contributed, and waved at Ebersol. “We also have a genius here with a history of being bought. Midas wants to own him.”

“Midas can kiss my ass.” Ebersol blew out a plume of pink and yellow smoke with a harsh smile. “Even he doesn’t have enough money to push us into space, and what the fuck is he gonna pay me that I don’t have for myself? If he wants to resort to buying force... damn, Hill, you don’t have any idea of the shit Dynamo was doing up there, do you?”

“Not really. Dealer mentioned some space battles and stuff, and apparently she’s flying around like Comet and trashing stuff now,” the big man answered, unperturbed.

“That’s a good way of putting it. That woman is totally dangerous, Hill. And the best part of it is,” the Fixer’s eyes gleamed, “she’s way more dangerous than they think, because all that brute force is the least dangerous part of her!”

“Schmot Gurl,” Hill nodded. “Dealer is the same way, just inna different direction. I think they take pains not ta collaborate too often, or I think someone’s brains might explode.”

The Fixer thought about a spellcaster as smart as Dynamo, and winced. He’d found most spellflinger types supremely uninterested in mundane reality and basically out of touch with people, minds always on weird gods and spirits and things, or just bullshit imagining stuff into existence without having to work for it at all.

Could a Caster really be that smart? It was hard to believe, with no science to master, facts to accrue, Rules and Laws to figure out and then have to build and design for...

Unless... was learning magic really as hard and deep as science? That couldn’t be right, could it?...

-------

I actually laid down in my own bed, sighing as I got my whirling thoughts to slow down.

I routinely just ‘slept’ all the time, idling one or two thoughtstreams to rest them in series, never really going to sleep. Too much stuff to do all the time, as it were.

I was shutting a bunch down right now, going into virtually zombie mode for myself. Everything going quiet, stopping the conscious thoughts, letting the unconscious thoughts percolate.

It had been a very productive trip. The amount of tech we’d gotten to look at and bring home was literally worth trillions, if not quadrillions. Reverse-engineering it would represent the future of Humanity.

Sama was probably going to call me up and ‘ask’ me to share. That was fine, as the whole project would require the entire world to really do. I was aware of the value of stuff, but I wasn’t greedy. We’d get our share of the pie, but having the States take the lead in this probably wasn’t a good idea, if even possible with Briggs sitting up there.

The biggest thing to do this was going to be the resources and where to find them. Sure, Ben Parker could conjure up unlimited amounts of anything, but that wasn’t his job. Couldn’t lift up the human species on hand-outs, after all. Someone had to earn the stuff.

The Xandarans were coming. Having a super-science community right up there on the moon waiting for humanity to join them would be another thing spurring people along. Of course, there were going to be people thinking the Xandarans should just give us their technology, promptly get mad when they didn’t, and turn that all into anger and hatred and resentment that would prompt hostilities.

Superverse. Normal folks radicalized rapidly here. If Primus wasn’t here, was pretty sure someone would have tried to start a nuclear war by now.

The Richards were still several months out. Johnny should be coming home shortly. Ben had stuff to keep him busy.

The birth of their son Franklin, a mutant Reality Warper, was going to be an event. I was sure Briggs and Sama were watching.

I hadn’t totally resolved the situation with Morgan le Fey yet, and I wouldn’t until I hit Twenty. If I wanted to inherit the full power of her past, that meant doing a Souldive and reliving her life. I was absolutely certain that was trapped and she’d attempt to reverse the incarnation process if I tried to inherit her power properly.

Well, Dyna not dumb. I had about six different ways to fuck that process up, and I was going to use all of them. Technically, I didn’t need her power at all, as I could do things she simply couldn’t... but she could literally bend reality in ways I couldn’t, so it would be a net gain regardless.

Dealer was looking forwards to it, sort of. After all, she loved her cooking and dealing and wielding the magic that I openly couldn’t, even if she was the clone. Especially since she was the clone.

We’d already updated, so I was fully caught up on everything that had happened while I was gone. The States were still roiling under the Truth in Media that had grabbed the mass media, and being forced to confront the fact they’d been lied to long and hard by their own governments, and the ‘righteous patriot’ organizations many belonged to were in fact duping them even harder than the government they didn’t think was reactionary enough.

It was a violent time to be around in certain parts of the country. There was a whole swathe of people whose sense of superiority and power had been utterly crushed by the ‘mutant uprising’, and the ‘invasion of the United States’. Lied to once, they stopped believing anything official, and hate-mongering and rumors ruled the roost.

Killing of the ‘mutant scum who had tried to wipe out the human race’ was on the rise everywhere. SHIELD had been very busy rescuing kids from lynch mobs, stonings, and just plain executions by people who had just convinced themselves that the whole werewolves and vampires thing was mutants, coming to kill them all!

The Tribes were rescuing a lot of kids, and there were even some new towns that had sprung up overnight across the Mississippi where mutants were being brought after being saved. There was some effort by the government of the States to provide these kids some protection, as natural Powered were an asset to any nation... but the folks with guns and the desire to shoot something, anything, to prove they could defend themselves were acting energetic.

Half of people are below average intelligence. In a superverse, that lent itself to some extreme crap. And unfortunately, some people hit the too-high end of the scale and were emotional sinkholes, too.

That fact brought all my Dupes to mind in counterpoint, only one of whom, Sunny, I’d ever swapped in and out to consolidate us.

They all had differently centered mindsets from me, but the fact they were Duplicates meant they couldn’t depart too radically from my foundation. I was pretty sure they couldn’t take Ultra Cores individually, either.

I’d swapped VIII’s with Dealer, so we had updated and she had an Ultra Core. However, it didn’t start with anything in it. She was energetically pouring in all manner of Reserves, Ring effects, Soul Magic, and spare Valences to make it the most magical Ultra Core ever. With our Caster Level, she was going to make incredibly fast progress, although nothing like a M’Kraan dump. She didn’t have any inclinations to dilute her Magical Core with cosmic energy, either...