The Power of Ten Book Four: Dynamo

“Well, huh.” An Eternal mindset before becoming Eternal. I had to admit that could be pretty useful. “Conflict with the mortal side?”

“No,” Morgan said, as they all shook their heads. “It’s a thoughtstream we can expand to cover the rest of us, or just look on from the side. Having it active slows down Karma gain by a factor of ten or more, since you simply don’t adapt much mentally to things that are happening. As we accumulate more and more experience and years, it will probably become more and more prevalent and necessary in order to stay sane, but for now, it’s simply an additional buffer for Thinking Big.”

Made sense. Gods had big egos, and didn’t care if stuff was bigger than they were. They were still gods, and could go toe-to-toe with Other Big Things. Even if they were finite, most gods were Living Tropes in and of themselves.

“I’m willing to do that, and I should be enough. We keep current enough on Karma-sharing between us that anything to be gained is going to be small.” Dealer considered me a moment, then leaned forwards. “Waaaaaait a minute. You can still go Deep...”

Everyone else hissed in a breath. “Ho, gods, and you’re a Sixteen already. If you want to spread out and advance all those Levels...” Morgan murmured.

“If you’re giving me a Psionic Core, that’s nine Levels each in Psion and Psionic Warrior, five each in Archpsion and Archmindblade or whatever equivalent, five in Psionic Theurgy, and then five Levels each in Godmind, Worldmind, Cerebramancer, Spark Theurge, Astral Theurge, Harmonic Theurge, and Akashic Theurgy, plus any advised Advanced Classes-?” I glanced Kwannon’s way.

“Metamind, Battlemind, Mind Hunter, Apporter, Kineticist, Ergakinetic Specialist, Astral Sculptors, Temporalist, Occult Seers, and Crown Telepaths are some of the Advanced Psionic Classes, Aelryinth,” Kwannon ticked off faintly. “Although the latter seven are mutually exclusive.”

“Eighty-eight Levels at Sixteen, then. In addition to the twenty-ish I’m already taking normally.” I laughed under my breath. “Well, I probably could have made Twenty a long time ago if I’d not kept staying Deep, as it were. The Karma scale is fairly fluid about such matters, if the stuff you are taking is overlapping, but I’m still going to be needing monstrous amounts of Karma. Even if I stick just to the Core Theurgic Classes so I can meld them to Master Archtheurge, that’s Thirty-three Levels of just a psionic base, thirty-five other Theurgies with magic, and not taking Metamind sounds dumb on the face of it, so let’s say seventy-three Levels at a minimum.”

“A Psychic Reformation would make that much easier,” Morgan proposed. “You’d be able to allocate them at the lower Karma Levels, instead of at Sixteen?”

“That would definitely help. It would take the Levels down to the equivalent of, oh, about two levels at Sixteen for the main Classes, and then basically a Ten-equivalent for most of the rest, I’m guessing?” I hummed to myself. “So we’re in the equivalent of somewhere between six and ten Levels at Sixteen, I’m guessing. If how well we harmonize determines Karmic Sharing, that might be enough, might not.”

“It should wait until you have been exposed to the Captain’s Comet and have a Psionic Core, or you may lose out on being able to take Psionic Class Levels,” Kwannon recommended crisply.

“Patience is a virtue,” I acknowledged. “Now, do you want to show me around as me and create a LOT of questions, or as just another member of the family?”

They all arched eyebrows in exactly the same way at me. “Ah, yes, Shapechanging 102,” Nimue remembered aloud for them. “Can you pull off the body language?”

“Effortlessly.” I snapped a finger, and the shift washed across me with barely a ripple. They just watched in interest as I took off my glasses, and they all blinked at the blank space where eyes should have been.

My Mask came down and painted the empty spots with a half-cartoonish, half-Runish serious mask with exaggerated eye-spots and eyebrows on it, more expressive than any human face could possibly be. My rather short and quite magical white hair of Sylune’s Grace flowed out to full waist-length without me doing anything, while my attire magically refit itself perfectly from fairly straight to curves not too far off from theirs.

They all craned over to look at my feet. “You sure you still need boots with that lilitu face?” Dealer asked archly for all of them.

“I only bring out the hooves if I bring out the tail, and that means I’m killing something dangerous and might need to kick it,” I replied haughtily, and they all blinked, and smiled together.

“You’ve got one Bound and Sealed,” Storm judged, and I inclined my head in her direction. “Whyever for?”

“She’s trying to Rise on my Pactspace and the Words,” I sighed knowingly. “I can’t just throw her away, right?”

They all looked at one another and sort of nodded agreement at that. Helping a Demon Climb was like one of the textbook Great Good Deeds.

“You definitely are going to fit right in,” Circe said for the Munroes, and Storm and Dealer both nodded. I turned to look at Dealer with an elevated raised eyebrow.

“Whoops!” she smiled once. She glanced around once to be sure for some reason, then reached up and took her Mask off her face.

Her I-hate-the-sun pale skin went deep brown, raven-black hair went silken white, and she smirked at me as she held her Mask away from herself.

She was still totally gorgeous, of course, but giving a VERY different impression just with the change in skin and hair color.

“Yes, yes, you fit in wonderfully, but they’ll probably recognize your voice, so just go back to the other side of the aisle, dear,” I told her calmly. They all laughed as Dealer put her Mask back on, and her ‘normal’ look was restored.

“We definitely aren’t going to have any difficulty showing her around,” Felicia opined, and the others nodded agreement. “What name do you use like that?” she asked me.

“Fell.” They kind of blinked at me. “You sniveling demons think you command fell powers? I AM THAT POWER!” I announced in my best sneering bombastic fashion.

They all applauded in approval. I bowed to all of them politely for the praise.

“One last thing.” I pointed at Feature, currently being stroked by Storm, who tilted his big head in curiosity, and everyone turned to look at him. “You’ve all got Valence IX Casting, right? I haven’t been able to afford the price for Inherents for him. Think you could do that for me?” It would be a nice improvement for him, and really put him a notch above others like him.

They all nodded, I verbally agreed, and our course was set.

------------

I took something of a grand tour of the place, just another Munroe sister/daughter/cousin from wherever they were trained being shown around. I toured LaGrange Station, the Pentad Alliance, the Alternity Watch HQ, and the Reality Guard’s Nexus Station; got to see the sights on Venus and New Venus; met tons of heroes and even a couple of villains along the way; was introduced to Mr. Hill and his family, and all those of everyone who worked in the Baxter Building and its adjuncts.

I even got to meet Uncle Ben and Aunt May Parker, the new Molecule Man and his wife. Just too cool on the face of it.

A half-dozen of the Dynamic Family got together and started on a Pyramid on New Venus. I wouldn’t be using it to actually leave this time, but I might be using it to come back. There was talk about locking in the other two in-multiversal causeways that existed to it, helping keep those things under control. The Nexus of Worlds and Stairway to Infinity were holes in their defenses, after all.

Visiting the Captain’s Comet wasn’t all that revolutionary. The opening of a Psionic Core was gratifying, as I wasn’t going to refuse another source of power, but I wasn’t really affected in any other way. More versatility was good, and I certainly hadn’t turned it down, but the new power all came with use, practice, Karma, Feats, Masteries, and Levels, not just having the potential.

Just another thing to spend lots of time and rep counts on.

The Unimerge with Dealer there at the end was all kinds of educational, however.

It was a lot of shared memories across a lot of Clones and Duplicates, shared easily between them and kept current with Valence exchanges whenever they happened to meet. There were too many to make it a constant thing without doing anything else BUT visit one another all the time, so occasional it was, but with literally tens of thousands of them out there, nobody minded.

Having a few goddesses and Celestial-made Eternals thrown into the mix to add that extra two million years and Timelessness on top of everything else was certainly educational, although the Celestial Eternals were a bit amusing at how much they forgot about themselves, how boring and repetitive their lives were, and how little they actually contributed to mankind overall, when they could have done so much more.

Just, eh.

The gender difference was virtually a non-issue at our level, something to enjoy or change as desired, Shapechanging 102. They hadn’t bothered to do so because they were all Casters and it made no difference thereon, except not being in a natural form stuck out to a Caster. Even Sersi had swapped genders a few times over her lifespan, as had pretty much all of the Celestial Eternals. Not upgrading their minds with Timelessness basically made it a necessity to change their experiences and stop them from going mad from sheer banal repetition of behavior for too long...

Then came the Psychic Reformation, and fitting in a ton of psionic Class Levels with all the new Karma.

Pointedly, I was the only one on the planet with ALL the Psionic Theurgies after that, and nobody born here could pursue Akashic Theurgy, regardless.

The Moondragon Mysteries were going to lose a lot of power outside this Supersverse; I was aware of that instantly, especially for telepathic attack. They’d be great for communication and telepathic defense, but not on mental domination, which would require actual expenditures of psionic energy. The requirements on mental abilities and spiritual reserves weren’t small, either, but at least they were there. If you were an actual Psion, however, they worked just fine on all levels...

The Mind Hunter was actually designed to hunt mind-controllers and telepaths, not random Psions, which made it quite useful against phrenics and a lot of Mythos creatures.

Metaminds were a way to increase psionic power after reaching the Twenty cap, and gain some ‘free’ uses of psi-powers per day, and increasingly effective psionic reserves. Good enough for what they did.

Of the various specialist psi-Classes, I could only pick one, if any, as doing so aligned my Psionic Core with the fundamental energies the Class worked with.

Perhaps unusually, I went with the Temporalist, as I was already decent with spatial magic, but temporal stuff I didn’t have a lot of exposure to. Chronopsi could really complement chronomancy, and both were among the esoteric of magical and psionic concepts, which I’d take advantage of with the Cerebral Theurgy....

In keeping with my magical talents, and not wanting my brains to be blown out of my head when I returned home, I Burned the Sixth through Eighth Spheres of Psionic Valences, infusing them into the first Five and making my fundamentals stronger. I would have to use Raising mechanics and natural evolution of the powers to advance my understanding of psi, just like I was doing with magic.

Happily, with Theurgy all the magic Feats mirrored over to the psychic ones, so I didn’t have to duplicate that range of stuff. There were still a ton of Focus Feats and Psychic Masteries to take, but that was a different problem...