Lunch was over, and since we had some time, I just broke out the cards, allocated a pile of silver coins to everyone, and telekinetically dealt out hands for a quick game of poker to everyone.

Wrench had the luck of the table, and cleaned up the most, Lygaete and Kismet getting the worst of it.

The game finished and I left the silver coins behind when Mimi got all her Templates back. She chose to lock in Kismet’s Template for now and leaving Callie to pretend not to be so uber. Mimi had cloaked us from the eyes of anyone coming in just for that reason, and now was three inches taller, golden-skinned and purple-haired. Kismet promptly glommed onto her as a new big sister happily, and Mimi was totally capable of playing the part.

Doc Bronze proposed some rules about tying future poker games to decisions on who to give some charitable funds to, which received general acceptance. The High Guard was both paid well by the United Nations and had their own revenue streams from multiple sources, including aliens docking here for various reasons.

The Xandarans moving in had started changing everything. After all, they were one of the most-admired races around, with extremely high-end tech. With them backing the station, more races were confident in using the station as a way-stop or temporary storehouse for cargoes.

As for the inevitable alien invaders, they would have to deal with Xandaran defensive technology as well as the High Guard. There had already been sabotage and slow-down attempts from various incidents, likely Skrull-sourced, although pirate groups naturally had a bone to pick here, too.

------

I took my speed all the way up as I headed for the sun. I didn’t have the tech to make a hyperspace jump, although Specs could do so, or I could use magic to exceed lightspeed. But I wasn’t going to do that without need.

Took me ten minutes, nothing to worry about. Cosmic Awareness gave me the best course and destination, Red Eyes assured me of no danger, and I just moved.

Stacking invulnerability levels, radiation immunity, heat immunity, and devasight dealt with most of the problems I was facing. I headed up for the poles, where the greatest variety of energies was present.

I hadn’t replicated Kismet’s powers. I’d instead stuck with the taciturn and withdrawn Atom.

Why? Because he could grow big. Growing bigger allowed more energy absorption!

Around me fluttered magnetic waves which should have ripped any metal atoms out of my body. Lightning bolts thicker than Manhattan Island tore across the skies as plasma fields raced hither and yon, and the constant nuclear inferno spilled out endless amounts of fire and light and pumping rads.

With a bit of care, I triggered Energy Absorption, Growth, and Flux’s Reality Warping to enhance the former.

I grew, and I grew, and I grew.

Of course, it was still nothing compared to the sun, and the Atom’s full power let him reach thousands of miles in height if he wanted to, albeit at cost of a lot of materiality.

It’s kind of funny when you swell to a thousand miles tall, and your perception of the energies around you doesn’t change in their power, even as the planet-scarring lightning bolts look closer to their old size.

The whole inferno of the entire EM spectrum and some of the crazy cosmic energies that exist in a supersverse were slamming into me, even as I was using the Reality Warping to double the area of Absorption in a vortex-effect all around me, as well as reaching out and touching the trails of the lightning snapping across the surface of the sun.

Energy poured into me, shockwaves of nuclear fury thousands of miles wide. Heat, light, microwaves, magnetic fluxes, gravitational pulses, colossal lightning bolts, x-rays, gamma rays, and weirder cosmic energies derived from crushing quarks and dimensional interactions probably not present in a more mundane realm, the colossal pressure of the solar wind at its source...

I drew all them in, and sent them right into my Ultra Core.

I was glad I’d gone downstairs to my gold stash and done my +5 Inherents to Constitution. Even with the resistance boost from Primus, which promptly started increasing my resistance to all the pain and pressure swelling inside me, tempering the Ultra Core more rapidly than it would do on its own, this fricking hurt!

I popped the Wrecker Buff, purely for the Constitution and Fortitude boost. It bounced off Karnilla and added some Divine-level physique Buffs to me. I popped on my Crystal Bones, and grit my teeth to Focus.

I was taking in enough energy to sterilize the planet Earth instantly. I could only be a bit shocked at the capacity of the Core to take in energy... but that only meant it could sustain more power, and what were those limits at the higher end?

I blew into Seven almost instantly, the cracking and reformation of the Core to a denser state unchanged despite my increased size... except maybe it hurt like holyhellsunuvabitch, razored radiating glass shards tearing in every direction before reforming under continued pressure. Even as the M’Kraan dump from behind came out of the Pocket at the limits of what the Core could draw into itself, I was dumping this torrent of unrestrained wild energies from the other direction with Comet’s Energy Absorption, and it was all swirling madly together, prodded by my own magic and will.

With a sliver of concentration, I let enough energy accumulate to Flare, and let Comet’s white hole power source open inside of me... and promptly unload into the Ultra Core, too. Another jet of cosmic fury, pure energy from shattered matter, dumped into the Ultra Core before it could hit reality and separate into more mundane, non-cosmic power.

It was surreal, watching the Seven Core filling up so quickly, months of absorption condensed down to minutes as energies that should have blown me to stray atoms and less flowed through me and into the Ultra Core.

Truly a place where science and magic had puppy-kittens together. This was about as alchemical as things could get, when it came right down to it.

A Centurion Prime was going to be at Seven for a long time, even if he went Sunbathing every day diligently... or was using the M’Kraan Crystal, which I was sure was what Lygaete was doing. Unless someone was gifted enough Nova Force to form the shell of a Ten Core, this whole thing was not a quick process, and the reason why Great Centurions, Star Centurions, and Star Centurions Supreme were so rare. It would truly take years of commitment to get their Nova Cores to this level, or a major investment of Nova Force.

An hour of this, and my Seven Core shattered in Ahgwhatdafuggodzntotemsdathurt and promptly reformed as it consumed the energy of the Core entirely, bigger and badder than ever, and started rebuilding the energy inside.

Mmm, uunngh, okay, wow. Instead of enhance as you go, it had totally depleted the Core, which meant a new Eight-Core bearer would suddenly be weak until they could re-power their Core to previous Levels, probably through immediate and massive energy absorption. It would normally take a solid week at this newly enhanced draw just to get back to initial Seven Levels, and then a hundred times that would be needed to finish Eight.

So that meant about another twelve hours of this ahead of me to finish off Core Eight and advance to Nine. If the same pattern repeated, that meant it would all be consumed, and I’d be starting over from next to nil, albeit with an increased rate of Absorption... which, if this was holding steady, still meant dozens of times the amount of energy required to fill Eight.

I could see why they called it the Nova Corps now. These guys at the high levels were basically carrying around small suns inside of themselves, and when they died, so did a star.

Novas, indeed.

-------

I watched and screamed politely in respect for the utter agony when the howling inferno inside me was torn apart as the Ultra Core broke, reorganized, siphoned all that energy away, and reformed itself harder, stronger, and more powerful than ever.

It also left me with nothing behind, starting over from scratch. That was a truly horrible feeling, going from having a razor-edged hydrogen bomb inside you, to a yawning empty void with nothing there, and no power at all. Just, ungh. Total willpower moment, looking into that gargantuan empty hole inside me, and realizing I had to fill it all AGAIN...

One more hour of this would get me effectively back to a near-full Seven, the equivalent of fourteen hours or so of terrifyingly fast growth in an Ultra Core.

I hadn’t needed to go beg for a M’Kraan session to do this, which was important. The M’Kraan Crystal was ultimately used with the permission of the Phoenix, and I was already in possession of enough energy from it to get all the way to a Core Ten... although not enough to fill such a thing, now that I looked more closely at the supply of energy.

Wow, how perspectives change. That massive amount of energy had seemed so immense before. Still was, but everything in scale...

My method was not going to be replicated easily, but that was fine. It showed that an alternative still existed, and if we could set up a secondary means of Energy Absorption, we could cut down on the time needed to advance a Nova or Ultra Core considerably.

Operationally, Six or Seven was going to be the limit for a great many people, but that was fine. If it took an exceptional person to get higher, so be it. As long as they could all hope to reach a Six or Seven Core, that was good enough.

Specs was humming happily. The Tier Nine energy running through it was the most wonderful sensation it had ever experienced, and only helping its own powers harmonize with those of my Ultra Core.

It happily informed me that it could keep two power-sets active on me now, or one enhanced set, as I desired.

I defaulted to Enhanced Invulnerability, and spent the time returning to Terra going over possible configurations with him. Basically, it was safety first, and rarely would I have a need for Enhanced single configurations with the Ultra Core here and my other capabilities... although that hardly meant I wasn’t going to test out Specs’ enhanced visual capabilities and explore the limits of the other Enhanced abilities of speed, strength, and optical blasts.

Just something for someone else who hit a Nine Core to look forwards to.

It was time to reunite with my most errant Duplicates, and then update everyone else again. I couldn’t transfer over any Ultra Core energy, but I could Duplicate over the constructed Core itself. All their progress since I was last updated would be momentarily transferred back into the Pocket, then brought back forward into the new Core for them. The fact they were all specializing in different types of Cores would definitely slow things down as far as their advancing went, but none of them really cared.

They’d be able to take advantage of my higher Core’s absorption speed, so it wasn’t like they were losing time to me, only filling up whatever my most recent tier was for their own benefit.

Ding ting! Briiinnng...

I sighed as I hooked Specs over to my Vaccine. “Yeah, Sama? Please don’t tell me you’ve got something already...”

“I always have things ready. It’s whether anyone else is ready,” was her prompt reply. “So, no go on the Mimicking?”

“Got the Ultra Core first. Not gonna work on a permanent basis, although if Calli is present I can do a basic tie-off and keep the templates around on an active basis.”

“Mmm. Well, Primus relayed that you were a bloody thousand miles tall as you were doing your sundive. How’d it go?”

“I have learned that when you hit Eight and Nine, your entire Core of energy is consumed to power and form the upgraded Core, which might be important if you don’t have time to refuel it.”

“Noted. Shoot me the absorption rates. I never pressed the Xandarans about how their high-Level Core process works.”

“I can probably give you a rough joules count. It’s decent.” But it didn’t hold a candle to Comet’s raw power. “Filling a Seven was probably a gigaton or more of energy. All that M’Kraan energy you gave me? It would get me to Ten... with an empty Core.”

“That’s a lot of energy,” she agreed. “Okay, how would you like an Xandaran uniform?”

“Good lord, how did you swing that?” I had to ask. Nova Corps uniforms were very high-end Xandaran tech. They didn’t just give those away.

“Funny things going on.” She paused meaningfully as I was coming down over Brazil. “So, I gather you went and talked to Tony Stark, eh?”