Carol turned around to see another Duplicate standing next to Dynamo, also looking at her own hands in satisfaction. She had a smooth Oriental complexion, maroon hair, a knuckle-biting figure, and a satisfied expression on her face, looking like DiDi and Kwannon had a daughter.

“Starfire, right?” Carol said, feeling the link and identifying her instantly. The imprinted Skrull was no longer a Skrull... or maybe was a lot more than a Skrull, depending on how you looked at it.

Carol saw another window open in her head, and she was looking out Starfire’s eyes effortlessly at herself, and saw Starfire was doing the same back. Carol’s eyebrows went up as she looked up and down despite herself, flexed, and posed, Starfire grinning and mirroring her.

“Ssss!” Cara promptly judged, flicking up a finger to mark the air. “Too hawt, both of you!”

“I haven’t forgotten you’re a head taller and built like that!” Carol warned her. Actually, right now she was taller than Dynamo, who was in ‘short form’.

“Yes, yes, yes,” Cara waved it off airily. “Let’s go outside and get the two of you ignited into Flare form. One of the big things with getting the Core in place is that it should be able to drive your Flare form instantly once it is established.”

“That will be so nice!” Carol agreed happily. The Portal went up between them, stars on the other side. She went in one side, Starfire and Dynamo the other, and came out in orbit near Venus, with its planetary rings, salvage lines, and astrofactories tirelessly at work all the time.

Carol looked around, finding her Cosmic Awareness reaching out with more spatial sensitivity than she’d ever had before, gravimetric awareness layering on temporal sensitivity to give her a massive perception field of everything around her for thousands of miles and more, especially anything whose temporal presence was going to come close to interacting with her own.

It felt like her mind had just exploded open, and Flare formed across her eyes to complement what she was aware of with multi-spectrum sight, all of which she could now also process effortlessly.

“Oh, this enhanced brainpower is really nice,” she murmured to nobody in particular.

A presence moved in the back of her head. No, two of them.

We live to serve!, and gave Carol the equivalent of a warm mental hug.

The soul was hers. She was in charge. They were part of her, there to help deal with the extended mental power and awareness on all the levels, heaping on top of her delight at having such awareness with sudden veteran experience in using it all.

It was just so cool...!

“Absorption up!” Cara announced, raising gauntleted hands, which glowed ominously to life. Starfire glided over next to Carol, and they both braced as Dynamo lit them up.

It was a lot of juice, Carol intimately familiar with it on both a subtle and raw power level, having been Boosted to Flare mode by Dynamo many, many times. It took less than a minute of bombardment to power up her White Hole power source, her skin to turn crimson, and her hair to become a corona of starfire. Her Flare state was active.

Dynamo had craptons of experience dumping Flare energy into her Core, and the entire process was laid out for Carol as if she had gone through it all before. Her Core was already at Ten, just empty, tied into her body and existing powers, and the full intensity of her Flare, hotter and harder than she’d felt it in all but the most drastic moments of her life, roared and dumped its power into her new Comet Core.

She could do the calculations instantly, marveling at the ability to process the math. Yes, her first few Core Levels were going to take only minutes, as the thoughtstreams in the back of her head coolly rolled and compressed her Flare power down and into her Comet Core, she didn’t even need to do anything.

She could feel the tingles on her fingertips almost instantly, however. Flare zipped through a diagnosis for her, the Ultraspecs delighting in the energy upgrade its peers had gotten, now its time to indulge.

She could either stack physical Buffs with her Comet powers, or stack pure energy projection, switching back and forth as she liked. An Ultra Core was basically 50/50 as far as energy allocation went, but her existing physical enhancements meant it didn’t need to allocate anything there if she didn’t want it to, and so she could put it all towards energy projection in various forms as she liked.

“Like this,” Cara said, and reached out with Matter Manipulation. Carol had always had a degree of that, although it had been restricted to her uniform, and her thoughtstreams fluidly grabbed it and applied it, borrowing some Flare power to make it as she was precisely re-clad in a custom Nova-Ten uniform equivalent.

The full capabilities of the uniform and what she would be able to do with it once she was fully charged were instantly apparent to her, as if she had been using one for years. She just needed to build her Core up to power the full capabilities of the suit.

She’d be able to spin up gravimetric wormholes and pop all around the universe, she wouldn’t have to wait for others to do so!

She was also aware she could now petition for a Nova Corps helmet and its Mentor link to the Xandaran Worldmind and the enhanced communication, information resources, and computational abilities it had, which would synch wonderfully with Flare and her own new abilities.

Her eyes roved to Dynamo’s forearms, and the gleaming layers of metal there. The Nega-bands were something she couldn’t get, but the rest? “Give!” she smiled, holding out her hands, knowing her meaning wouldn’t be misconstrued.

---

Blonde hair reverted back to auburn, white-tipped as I was pumping volts. “We’re gonna need some raw material, and you need to be at least a Core Five to maintain the hammerspace for your ammo, you know.”

Carol nodded as the three of us flitted over to the refuse station for one of the solar recyclers. Most matter could be transmuted to something useful, so there wasn’t actually much in the way of waste material. Even if it had some unfortunately hostile Isotopes in it, it could just be neutralized, unmade, and transmuted back into some more useful basic element.

Also, there were still massive amounts of sulfur we’d taken out of Venus just sitting around in hundreds of kilometer-sized spheres, waiting to be turned into something useful.

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That’s where we went, stopping by one of the sulfur spheres currently being chopped down in sections as raw material for transmutation was needed here and there, generally into something we had massive need of, like durasteel or adamantine. If it was a 10:1 or higher conversion ratio, nobody minded. We had lots of energy to use, and nobody cared if there was less sulfur sitting around from the massive quantities we had available.

Making Carol and Starfire up a set of gauntlets was intricate, but not difficult. The energy rifling and rail gun options were both going to be very useful to them, the ammunition being stored in hammerspace Xandaran-style, and Compressed on top of it. The Nova Corps uniform had no problems converting the energies of their Cores into something that could power the gauntlet systems.

Yeah, we carried around a LOT of ammunition. It was pretty easy to make non-explosive ammunition at Core Seven and higher, too. You really only needed Matter Manipulation for the explosive or tracking stuff.

“Sama has a Function Rod waiting for each of you, and Briggs a Shield,” I informed them both. “You’ve got Cores, so you’re Ultra Corps members by fiat, and that means you have to be capable of functioning as them.” Nova and the other Corps’ Centurions all received full Shields, while the lesser members were issued basic non-magical Shieldium shields to help protect them. The Function Rods were famous within the Corps for their utility.

“Figure out how you’re going to display your gear between High Guard and Ultra Corps activities. Your uniform, bracers, and Specs can alter your energy signature enough to make it seem like you are two different people, so you’ll be able to engage in Ultra Corps operations. Since you’ve your Comet powers and an empty Ten Core, you’ll also have a big boost in how fast you can start up compared to a normal Corpsman.”

“The Negative Zone?” Carol asked in a cold voice, raising the new Tempered adamantium fists covering her hands and forearms. She knew exactly what those things could do, and was looking forwards to using them!

“Core Five first, and Core Seven is safest.” Centurion-level was the least I was going to tolerate with Core powers and stacking invulnerabilities. I had too much experience with the weapons and stuff over there. I pointed over my back. “First test of speed. How fast can you make it back to LaGrange?”

Starfire and Carol looked at one another, and then with a whoop, they were off in trails of light and fire, heading for light speed REALLY quickly.

I watched them go, Cara’s relief flowing through me at finally having Carol on board.

It meant Carol was going to be busier than ever, as she’d soon move into an official Ultra Corps officer position with her military experience, and be splitting duties between High Guard and military operations.

My Dupes and I were the main figures running sabotage and distractions in the Negative Zone right now, although Callie, Mimi, and Primus were pulling off operations as well. The scale of the invasion was too broad for the Zoners to have absolute security, and the nature of their alliance without the Cosmic Control Rod’s domination too loose to have absolute coordination.

Ambushing incoming convoys of troops and materials was one thing. Laying the blame on another force was being clever. Inspiring other races to do some opportunistic raiding and blaming it on us was even more clever, and all of it helped hurt the cohesion of the force, delay the accumulation of fighting strength, and give us more edges. Fewer ships made, ships with lesser armaments, defenses, and hull strengths, inferior constructs and drones both mechanical and biological... everything added up in small numbers.

They were techno-barbarians in a horde, not a true alliance. The only real authorities were those powers who could actually open up the Crunch, expending yet more of their universe’s remaining life to bring its doom closer to those not daring to go beyond and be delivered to a new, younger universe... which they hadn’t been told had almost died itself numerous times from alternate sources, but hey, that’s what a supersverse was about.

Karnak-sense was helping me worry at the stress points, make some cracks, stir up some interspecies conflicts... but the scale was too big to stop it all. It was still going forward, and there was nothing we could do to stop it without a full-bore invasion of our own, which we’d lose, too.

I was sorely tempted to steal all of the Warskrulls, convert them, and head into the Negative Zone to raise some real havoc. There was no way what they were doing in the Skrull Empire could match what having unlimited military targets could accomplish, but no. If they knew the Warskrulls were not under their control, they’d stop making them, and I had to admit that all the resources they were pouring into doing that was totally worth it, as those Warskrulls were going to be utterly terrifying when it became time to fight.

It wouldn’t be enough to save the Skrulls, but it would be their strongest fighting force, pound for pound, without a doubt.

I suppose we were all lucky they couldn’t imitate any Strontians. The only ones left that anyone knew of were Kallark and his son, and they were nigh-impossible to scan. Since their power relied on belief in themselves, getting Imprinted would also mean overwriting any Skrull who wanted to tap into their Imprints’ willpower. Too bad, so sad...

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Comet of the High Guard (Carol Danvers), Prime of the Carol Corps

Lawful Good Female Hybrid (Kree/Human Eternal Mutant + Skrull)/5, Base Spider Totem Template

Archer/17; Scout/12; Martial Artist/10, Warshifter/5

Strength: 15 ->34* [61+1**] Height: 5’11

Dexterity: 18->35* [+1]** Weight: 155 lbs.

Constitution: 18->38* [58, +1**, Mark ] Hair: Blonde

Intelligence: 14->23 (32 Persona) Eyes: Blue

Wisdom: 12->23 (31 Persona) Age: 42

Charisma: 15->28

Health: 143

Soak: 580

Movement: 130’ (Superspeed)

**Ultra Comet Core Rank/Mutant Core: 10 (01%)/ 204 PP (fixed, integrated)

Notable Talents/Traits: Natural Pilot, Determined, Soldier, Officer, Gutsy, Devoted; Slayer: Skrulls, Kree, Brood, N-Zoners, Mutates, Constructs (robots), Gene-born (acquired); High Guardian; Independent Dynamo Duplicate

*Templated Powers: Poison Resistance and Acquired Immunity; Radiation Immunity; Perfect Balance; Enhanced Speed and Jumping; Impact Resistance; Enhanced Climbing; Enhanced base Physical ability (base Physical Stats +15); Enhanced Reflexes

#Mutant Core Power: Superspeed, Flight, Enhanced Reflexes at Speed; Increased Invulnerability at Speed

Ultra Comet Core Powers** (1/10): Enhanced Strength I, Enhanced Invulnerability I, Enhanced Energy Absorption I, Enhanced Flight I, Enhanced Energy Projection I, Enhanced Vitality I, Enhanced Reflex Speed I

Hybrid Racial Powers: Marvelous Strength (60 Str); Marvelous Vitality (50 Con); Marvelous Flight; Marvelous Invulnerability; Marvelous Energy Projection; Marvelous Energy Absorption; Marvelous Cosmic Awareness (Spatial/Energy/Danger to Self); Binary Transformative Power State (Flare form); Polymorphic Shapechanging; Eternal Longevity

Acquired Powers: Immune to Fire and Cold extremes, Crystal Rune-Carved Bones (Unbreakable); Ultra Comet Core; Beaubier Core (integrated)#; Marked (Con+4)