-Sama’s sticking him on D’bari. It’s believed to be a primary path for the incoming track of the N-Zone wave there. And she’s putting me there to help him!-

I smirked at Cleo’s comment. -Ah, right. I wondered why Bella had to send a sim over to Madripoor. Really, Cleo, one little city-state wasn’t going to be your limit. You were basically trying to restrain your desire to fight, and now you’re going all the way up the scale.-

-He’s got puppy-dog eyes when he looks at me!-

-Like that’s something new. Did you forget to look in a mirror lately and remember how hawt you are?-

-He’s an interdimensional planetary conqueror with a Sapphire soul! I want to beat him up and liberate every world under his thumb!-

-Perhaps after ninety-five percent of the troops with him die defending a dimension not their own?-

-Their loyalty to him blinding them to the immorality of their actions is not a reason for me to forgive them for ignoring their own consciences!... And yes, afterwards,- she /conceded.

-You all know we’re expecting an utterly terrifying defense of the planet. Unsuccessful, but terrifying,- I /reminded her.

Her hmmph carried through nicely. -The difference between here and Xandar is these people actually love to fight. The other difference is that I don’t want to give them any new tricks to use to go a-conquering more. My first move should be to stick Sama at the top of the tower and tell her to cut through every ship she sees. Defense solved, mostly.-

-But it doesn’t teach a lesson to a certain Khan about ambitions getting him into hot water, and expand his mind on what is really out there. None of his little pocket empires across those nineteen alternities would be capable of standing up to what is coming, nor could he move enough troops from any of them to withstand and assist, right?-

-Ah, you’re teaching him that he hasn’t diversified across dimensions and rendered himself less vulnerable, he’s opened himself up to the same kind of threats on multiple borders! Fine, we’ll go with that in the story of administering a lesson to a techno-barbarian who loves war,- she /sniffed.

-He’s not bad looking.-

-He’s fragile and he’s Sapphire. His Harem is full of hawtness, too, but they’re all Sapphire and Aquamarine with cow eyes for him.- I could easily /sense her tongue sticking out.

-Well, sure, their loyalty to him is what earned them the position, in addition to brains and looks. What was the explanation for why he was in our dimension?-

-All the displacement indicators were shifted onto a new curve mid-transit, which automatically reverted once the Tower materialized. Something had pre-bent the course, so the sensors didn’t pick up any additional feedback, resistance, or signs of extra or unexpected energy consumption for the transfer. It basically was carried out exactly like the proper transfer, and it wasn’t until Sama told them and they double-checked their current coordinates against interdimensional norms that they realized they weren’t in the right place.-

-Ah, ha!-

-First solid proof of an intelligent hand pulling this shit off?- Cleo /asked knowingly. -Good to know. Any leads?-

-They are either a cosmic power with multiversal interests or one of the temporal empires or its equivalents if they have access to tech or powers that can pull off a stunt like that. The bigwigs are now matching up the universes the interlopers are coming from and seeing what matches up with areas of interest and the like.-

Sama and Briggs were VERY interested in who was heaping shit up on them. They also had a LOT of datapoints to use, and that started narrowing down the variables very quickly.

Once they found out, there would be actions taken. There was a reason the Time Variance Authority didn’t mess around with 1832. Someone else had obviously not taken that to heart, and they were going to pay for it.

-That won’t take very long, will it?- she /asked knowingly.

-No. And then there’s going to be trouble for someone,- I /sighed in agreement, having the impression I was going to get dragged into that stuff, too. Briggs was likely to be the more active one there. He’d find them, or the people who worked for him would, and then he’d tell Sama, and together they’d figure out what they wanted to do.

I imagined the two of them were going to be as sympathetic for the ones responsible as they were for our reality.

-------

The Brood slave-raiders were pretty much dead and dying, their skysharks sliced open and the vermin getting to taste the hard vacuum their dead rides had protected them from. I eyed the four ships and shook my head.

Really, it was an egg implant raid, one of the drones working as a carrier for the queen. No way they could remove a decent amount of slaves with just four sharks, so this was more like a test for how wide the net we were casting for them was.

If they thought I didn’t know that there were multiple Brood enclaves outside the primary one between the Shi’ar and Milky Way, they were as dense as I thought. What the Acanti knew they’d happily filled me in on, and my Cosmic Awareness had happily dumped tons of new information on them in return.

I monitored a lot of different things, both all at once and in succession. There was never a lack of stuff for my thoughtstreams to look at.

I hadn’t done this, of course. This was minor stuff that could be handled by tons of different parties, but Cerise had volunteered to handle it, as she’d been in the area.

She was one of the Ultra Force liaisons to the Shi’ar, given her default appearance and native knowledge of the Empire. Some people recognized her as a former Shi’ar Imperial Handmaiden and were dismissive of her changes in loyalty. Smarter people wondered why an Imperial Handmaiden was now working for Terra, especially directly after we had visited for the wedding, to the point where she was entrusted with an Ultra Core.

Lilandra, Xavier, and Gladiator knew she was actually a Dire Wraith who’d killed both a Terran and the original Cerise, and whose soul I had fed into a neo-rat and then fried.

So, one alien who looked like another alien, commanded by a Terran. Superverses are fun places.

Her quiet request that I meet her out here if it wasn’t too much of an imposition was surprising. Her pink feathers were hugely cute and I wasn’t at all scared of her innate abilities or anything, but it didn’t sound like that sort of invitation.

I looked around at her good work, and just nodded. There were no Brood presences within ten light years, and an Acanti junior was about ten minutes out, ready to sweep up everything out here and make them vanish for munchies.

“I’m presuming you aren’t here for a work review and assessment,” I said as she flew up to me. She was a very conscientious Core-user, receiving her M’Kraan allotments during most of her down time, and filling the rest of it up with either training or the hobbies and diversions of someone with a dozen souls and their interests which could be assuaged.

It was also the way she dealt with a heavy work load. Revolving the work among a dozen personalities really helped with mental stress.

“You are so unflappable,” she smiled, without hesitation coming right in for an embrace and a full kiss. I was technically her superior as a High Guard, but I didn’t have an actual Ultra Corps Ranking, only recognition of having a Ten Core. Power is a ranking all its own.

“You mean the sexy furry ears, that gloriously fluffy pink Mephitsoid tail, the improved crumb shelf, the downy white fur, and the burning atavistic Shi’ar arm-wings?” I murmured right through some very skilled oral action. The wings and tail, lit up with pinkish M’kraan flames, were wrapping around me, so I did the same to her with my hair. We both had figures very worthy of close embraces, too, and her thrumming purr went right up my tongue and down my throat when it started.

She was still the one drooling when we parted, rolling her forehead against my cheek. “You have always been so easy to talk to. Thank you, Dynamo.”

A lock of hair lifted up her tufted chin, large golden slitted eyes meeting mine. “Obviously this isn’t an affection. Did the Majestrix put you up to something?”

“You didn’t go looking?” she asked, an interesting expression playing on her lips, which were still incredible and very mobile.

“I can if you don’t want to tell me.”

“Your little lover here is responsible for my sudden disappearance from the Imperial Palace.”

I recognized the voice and the shift to pupilless white eyes, although her grasp didn’t change at all.

“Caly’see Neramani. Your Highness, you should have announced yourself earlier. I would surely have comported myself differently in the presence of royalty!” I informed her, and promptly silenced her rebuttal with another kiss.

The slight struggle with her mouth contrasted the total willingness of the rest of her quite well. When I let her go, she gasped for control for a moment, but couldn’t let me go, so I didn’t bother to, either, caressing her face as some of the markings of a royal Shi’ar settled into place on the now-golden skin there, although Cerise’s face hadn’t changed.

“You are impudent,” she tried to snarl, but it had no force, trying to draw her head back as I merely smiled slightly and looked at her lips. “You do not seem surprised.”

“Your sister’s lack of concern over your disappearance, and the non-coincidental vanishing of what looked like a private intelligence network, as well as over five dozen known supporters of yours, led me to believe that you had been planning something violent and untimely in the face of what is coming, and had been removed.

“I see that I was correct, only in the wrong way.” I leaned my head into hers again, and she couldn’t draw back, our eyes only inches apart. “So, tell me, just out of curiosity. Do you not believe what is coming, or were you seeking to claim this as the moment of war you were born for and lead the Shi’ar to an impossible victory and cement your role as Majestrix forever? After deposing Lilandra, of course.”

“I...” she trailed off, flushing hotly.

“You look incredibly cute when you do that, you realize.” I gave her another kiss, ignoring her protests, and she couldn’t help it when everyone else responded for her.

“This, this punishment was not necessary!” she told me as my hair caressed her cheeks and tweaked her feathers just so, and she shuddered in anticipation.

“Please, the punishment has just begun,” I assured her, and her breath caught despite herself. “As you say, you are my little lover here. Did you think I would be repelled by what Cerise had done to you? Please. Your little insurrection at this time would have disrupted the Empire, and cost the lives of millions. The draconian measures you would have set into place would have crushed the morale of your servant worlds, started rebellions, and at a time when cohesion is most important, you would have been riding herd on panic and anarchy.

“The Shi’ar Sanctuary is already in place, the evacuations of civilian populations have already begun. Production of wartime munitions and supplies has reached an all-time high, and is only going higher. The unprecedented severity with which the Shi’ar have been preparing for war has already filtered out to all your dominions.

“The clever among your client races have realized that this level of expenditure is going to cripple the Empire. The truly intelligent have realized that you would only be taking such matters if the expenditures did not, in the end, matter a whit. The disappearance of billions of citizens is only underscoring the severity of what you face.

“This is not a winnable war. If the Phoenix itself were to come to this war, it would die. Those who are coming know how to kill cosmic powers.

“The only thing this war is designed to do is cost the enemy so much that they do not pursue your remnants and render you all extinct.

“You were a violent and ambitious fool, you have paid the price for it, and are now going to be a loyal warrior with good friends, wonderful lovers, noble commanders, and valiant comrades. If it is too horrible an existence, I am sure Cerise will let you go into True Death, and you can see what the afterlife holds for you.”

Her expression was warring as her all-white eyes closed. Spite, anger, scorn, disdain, defeat, pride, humiliation, resignation, ambition, interest, competitiveness, unwillingness... “I want you so badly, and I don’t even know you...” she whispered unwillingly.

Lightning danced over her, and she gasped as I laughed lightly. “Ah, there is a reason for that...”