50

Date

2011 February 9th - Wednesday - Earth Bet Time

Day 6089 - Wednesday - Administrator Network Time

He was quite happy with how things turned out with the Dallon family. Now he only had to solve Carol's crippling distrust towards her own daughter, Amy's insecurities, and Mark's depression and he was golden there.

The Merchants were gone, and thanks to taking over the Shards of the parahumans of the other gangs, he knew what they were planning.

Watching Lung plan was fascinating.

And it will be great to watch the Empire burn and fall.

He would make sure that no Empire parahuman would hurt innocents, and when they were around regular soldiers, he would reach out and adjust things so that even non-capes were ineffective, but he would leave their capture to the PRT or Dragon and Taylor.

Maybe he could direct Taylor at them because she could use more real-world experience.

He couldn't wait for when Amy and Vicky would confront her. He would make sure to record her face.

He also put together a virtual training plan for both Vicky and Amy and forwarded them to Shaper and Fragile One to administer.

It was more for Amy, whose power changed the most, but he could see Fragile One whining if her host didn't get the same as Shaper's host. There was only so much pouting he could resist.

The power he and Shaper put together for Amy, however, required extensive training.

They of course removed her ability to affect brains (she could turn it on if she wanted) and now she could heal herself. They removed her ability to shape biology and instead changed it into pure healing ability. Both he and Shaper knew that with the current political climate Amy could never use that power to its full extent.

Then they added a simple Brute package and the ability to temporarily strengthen herself even beyond that. With that came basic martial arts knowledge, and several ninja arts from a certain anime. Like sticking to or walking on surfaces.

Amy's power was then split in two.

The first one was an area plant manipulation. She could manipulate already existing plants in an area. She could make them grow extremely fast, or wither with the same speed. She could make them move or shape them into unnatural shapes. And as a remnant of her old power, she could manipulate them on a microscale, making them stronger, healthier, and so on. However, it was not as fast as it was with her old power.

The more modification she wanted to do, the more time it would take. So she could make an apple tree produce peach fruits, but it would take time and effort. But if she wanted to perfect the apple tree's ability to produce the best possible apple, it would take considerably less time.

That kind of biotinker would be much easier for the PRT and the populace to digest than her original capability. At least they hoped so…

The second part of her new power was designed purely for combat.

She would be capable of growing a material that was extremely strong but looked like wood out of her own body or in the surrounding area.

On her body, she could use this to create insanely strong armor, gauntlets to increase her punching strength, and all manner of weapons to fight with. At first, Shaper only wanted to give her the gauntlets to punch things, but he convinced her to include weapons just in case.

Amy could also create clones from the material, similar to the ones Taylor could make, but instead of exploding, they were extremely durable. They could take several hits, even get partially dismembered before the clone would cease to work.

The material around her could be shaped into anything she wanted. Giant spikes, walls, platforms, giant fists (Shaper was insistent on this), and all kinds of shapes. The only limits were her imagination, which he hoped the virtual training would help awaken.

Though he took it as a fact that the first thing she would probably create was a giant wooden fist with a middle finger extended. His future simulations gave it around 78% chance.

His other project was the pair of Impetus and Altilium. They were as of now fully connected, sharing basically everything while managing to stay distinctly separate beings.

They even managed to refine their powers to higher levels, thanks to the knowledge and data he provided and the help of the other Shards on his Network.

Apparently allowing the Shards freely to communicate and share ideas and ask for help increased their development. Who knew?

He made sure everything was alright with them, running countless inspections and simulations because this was the first time he saw something like this.

The 'couple' was happy to comply, though they took to poking him to allow them to affect their hosts before everybody else.

Every other Shard on the Network was also eagerly awaiting the time he would allow them to translate the improvements into the real world and see how their hosts would use them.

There was even a beginning of a betting pool taking shape on a miscellaneous server that he set aside as a buffer for the Network.

He just sighed, designated the server as a betting pool server, added some rules, and let Über's Shard continue running it.

Alice's and Bombie's work on the better ConFoam grenades was rather boring, but important for the PRT so he didn't pay much attention to it, he just made sure that none of Bombie's insane ideas went through the filter.

But when Alice took up the task to do something about Grey Boy's bubbles, he was immediately interested.

He already had the knowledge to manipulate space thanks to Vista's Shard, and if he could get time manipulation also, then he had several fascinating ideas.

However, reality was a cruel mistress.

While he was familiar with the use of gravitational effects to create slower time in an area, he was really interested in how Entities made real-time manipulation work. Sadly, when Alice went to observe the bubbles in person to gain inspiration and he managed to find the Shard responsible for it, he was immensely disappointed.

The bubbles were not time manipulation, the Shard only took a copy of the person down to quantum levels, then allowed the event to take place, then using matter manipulation recreated the saved state.

Same for Grey Boy's invulnerability. The Shard just saved the state when the man triggered and returned him to it when he got hurt. Similar to Alabaster, just on a much higher level and with a few extras tacked on.

Despite the disappointment, he told Bombie to design something that looks fancy, and when it would go off, he would have the Shard cancel the loops.

Apparently, the Shard's task was to experiment with how these resets affect the host species. He once again cursed the sheer cruelty of the Entities and went to data-mine the Shard for anything useful.

After that disappointment, he spent some time experimenting just to get his mind off things.

The first one was the space manipulation powers.

He took an empty dimension and created a simple crystalline module that contained all sorts of things that could be found in a Shard, just to make sure all his bases were covered.

He then went to town on it with space manipulation.

He first examined the structure for gaps and such. And while it was extremely compact and capable of extending into other dimensions to increase capacity, there were still the usual gaps one could find between atoms and molecules.

So he used space manipulation to select all these gaps and reduce them as much as possible, making the structure even more compact, and thus efficient.

Surprisingly, it went off without a hitch and the module's size decreased by almost half. It seemed the crystalline material wasn't really affected by the shrinkage. The only problem was maintaining the effect, but with his current, ever-expanding power output, it was nothing.

Still, halving the size would allow him to double everything, so that was already an awesome result. And thanks to this data, he could start running simulations about it and start refining the idea.

Using this power, he began to shift the parts in the module around, making use of the shortened distance to make it more efficient.

What he ended up with was a globe of crystalline material third of the size of the original module and almost three times more efficient and more powerful.

Using this data, he began to use his simulators to see how this transformation would affect the rest of his body and how the entire thing would fit together.

If he could transform his entire body that was extended to several dimensions and planets, he would increase his body massively. Of course, as a downside, he would be extremely dependent on the space manipulation power.

Still, if his next idea worked, then it wouldn't matter.

As of now, he only made use of empty dimensions to extend his power and didn't approach other populated dimensions because he had nothing on the other side, so he couldn't hide his intrusion from anybody.

But now that he acquired several Shards' knowledge about how to manipulate certain aspects of the universe, he had an off-the-wall idea.

Shards and thus Entities were multidimensional beings, able to naturally move between nearby dimensions that allowed them to develop their current powers.

And thanks to this they were intimately aware of where the boundaries between the dimensions were located, so he would go where the Entities would never think to go.

He would see what could be found between the dimensions.

Popular culture in his original dimension held that the space between dimensions was some kind of mysterious not-empty empty space where everything and nothing happened. Or it was home to beings better left alone.

So poking it could certainly be called risky, but sue him, he wanted to see what was there.

He began by setting up a crystalline module in a distant dimension, to minimize damage in case something happened.

His next step was opening a very stable portal between and then directed all of his instruments at the edge of the portal itself.

It took him some time to find the very thin and almost invisible edge where the two dimensions met, but the results were promising.

He used all of his collected powers and knowledge to create a thin spear of space and thrust it exactly between the two dimensions.

Luckily, nothing catastrophic happened, and he wasn't annihilated by some kind of even more of an eldritch monstrosity than he was.

It was rather anti-climactic. The needle of space found nothing there. No matter. No Vacuum. Nothing whatsoever.

The only thing existing there was his spear of space.

So he widened the needle into a small channel and its end into a globe and began to increase its size as if it was a balloon on the end of a straw.

At first just kept increasing its size, to see if it had any effect on the two dimensions he could see, but even when the balloon of space reached the size of a skyscraper nothing happened in the actual world.

Seeing that, he anchored the opening to the module he prepared and began to build an observation post in the space bubble he created.

He would need to run an insanely extensive amount of tests and experiments, but he could already see so many possibilities.

Date

2011 February 10th - Thursday - Earth Bet Time

Taylor sat down for dinner with her dad and marveled at how much things changed with them. A few months ago they barely talked, and now they made sure to have dinner together every day and talked about their day. Sure, it was mostly small talk, but they talked today more than probably last year altogether.

She watched as her father dug into the chili she made with gusto and smiled. Danny noticed it and smiled back. "What is it, honey?"

"Nothing, dad. I'm just happy," she answered.

"That's good. I'm also happy that you are happy," he answered while patting her hand. "I love you, Taylor."

She blushed a little but still answered. "I love you too, Dad."

They were sitting on the sofa enjoying the futuristic television set up created by Taylor, watching a lame action movie that, according to her dad, was a classic.

"So, Dad. I was talking with Vicky…" she spoke, glancing at her dad from the corner of her eye.

"That would be Victoria Dallon, the one and only Glory Girl, right?" his father replied with a bemused face.

"Yeah. So they are also staying home for the week to make sure nobody tries to hurt Amy the second time, and she was wondering if they could come over for a board game night."

"I don't see why not?" said Danny carelessly, but then he smirked. "As long as there are no boys…"

"Daaad!"

"Just joking, honey! But yeah, they can come over, just make sure you hide everything that is tinker-tech." he continued happily. "If you want, I can even go over to visit Kurt and leave you guys alone. I know how teenagers are…"

"Hmm, well, I don't really need you to go away, but hanging out with your friends would do you good, Dad," said Taylor.

"Have you been reading psychology books?"

"Yeah, and some self-help ones."

"Oh. Any good?"

She waved her hand in answer. "Some of it, yeah, but meditation and talking with you and Tess helped more."

"That's good. But I still think you should also get some therapy." said his father worriedly, the movie in the background forgotten.

"And how long would it take for the therapist to leak my identity or someone to force it out of them?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

Danny just sighed, knowing there was no brilliant answer to that one. He could have brought up the Wards, but they went over that argument so many times, so he already knew what she would say.

"Okay, honey. But promise me as soon as we find the strongest therapist you will arrange for a meeting!"

"That's given, Dad. I saw how much therapy helped you, so I'm curious how it would help me.

He gave her a loving smile and a hug. "That's nice to hear."

She returned his affections, and then the two of them settled back to watch the rest of the movie.