Altered plans.

I raised the vial up to the golden man, and asked.

"Deal?"

He didn't answer. The screen went black.

"Fucking bullshit." I said, removing the parallel timeline oculus, and threw it on the bed beside me.

So the negotiations plan is out.

89 times. Scion killed me 89 goddamn times.

Nothing worked. Nothing that was peaceful at least.

I thought Scion was just a dumb brutish entity that could be fooled into doing my bidding.

Clearly, I was wrong.

I tried building rapport with him, relating to him on the dead wife front.

Dead.

Offer to revive his wife.

Dead.

Shift blame to Abaddon and send Scion on a wild goose chase across the universe for revenge?

Dead.

Turn his attention to Cauldron and steal his wife's body while he's busy fighting Eidolon?

He finds me first. And then of course, death.

Offer negentropic shard.

Dead.

Try to shunt him into another dimension.

Dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead.

Looks like I have no choice. I will have to kill Scion. And here I wanted to go through this peacefully.

I looked at the vial containing the negentropic shard on the desk beside the bed.

Guess I should begin with improving this shard into a perfect one.

But for that I will need access to the more shard, strong ones too, ideally from Eden's corpse.

My original plan was to use the magnet to gather Scion's shards from the air and attract Scion at the same time, striking a deal with him to help me out.

But that plan clearly wasn't viable anymore. So I settled on using Eden's shards.

However they were locked up deep beneath the Cauldron secret base, guarded by literal monsters.

So....nah. not yet.

First, I will need to destroy the credibility of the Protectorate, the leading hero organization in the world.

They were the ones who would inevitably help Cauldron deal with me if I started a war with them.

Which means they need to be taken down first.

And the easiest way to do that is to kill the Slaughterhouse Nine, a group of serial killers that the Protectorate has allowed to roam unchecked in hopes that their massacres of entire towns will someday maybe trigger a parahuman with the power to take down Scion.

Stupid idea, even stupider execution.

The entities had already made sure that they kept all the good shards for themselves, meaning no matter how many people die, no one will trigger to be stronger than Scion. Of course, I don't expect them to understand that, given they are the guys whose idea of ruling the world from shadows relies on favors and word of mouth.

So I will have to take matters into my own hands.

I checked the date on my contacts.

June 4th.

It had been over a week now since that fateful day.

The ship had already been repaired.

I had cracked Dragon's code and stolen all of her and every other affiliated tinker's blueprints.

Then, I shut her off for good.

Just like that, Dragon was dead, with the press of a button, giving me more freedom of movement without her nipping on my heels like a bloodhound.

Aside form that, I had also finished tinkering with a couple of other items, including Project Phoenix being finally brought online.

Now that I have a respawn button, I feel so much safer.

Another thing I developed in this week after studying the shards I had is a method to extract shards from a host while keeping their powers intact. This way, I can then place the shard in another person, giving them the exact same powers.

This was a breakthrough for my plans.

And it also made me realise something else.

I was falling into a workaholic state again.

I had almost ignored Star for two days straight after the feast I had made, cooped up in my lab.

I remembered why I wanted to travel the multiverse in the first place.

To explore strange new worlds, to learn all I can, and most importantly, to have fun.

If Offee had been alive, we would have been in Arda right now, celebrating with the hobbits and running around Mirkwood. Dipping our feet int the many strems and lakes and climbing the tall Caradhras mountains to ski down them.

I looked Star through the surveillance screen.

I had fun with the Undersiders, and saving Paige.

But Star did not. He was cooped up on the ship, training his powers under the watchful eye of commando droids.

No child should live like that. As they say, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

And it won't do to have my Star be dull. He's a multiversal traveler dangit!

I smiled.

Yup.

Once I finish this world, let's go have some fun.

One piece sounds nice this time of the year. Maybe he'll even learn some new skills there, make new friends.

God knows he needs better socialization than this.

I stretched, cracking my joints with satisying pops.

Yup.

Tomorrow the Slaughterhouse Nine die in Brockton Bay.

Tomorrow, the Protectorate falls.

And the the day after, I'll kill Scion lickety split.

Then, One Piece, for some nice wholesome fun.

But today, I have a promise to keep.

To save a little girl from a big bad villain.

Amd get me some benefits along the the way.

And who better to save a girl from a cage than the Canary herself.

I opened a portal to the training chamber and stopped the droids, sending them away.

"Good morning Papa!" Star greeted me, with his big heartwarming smile, and I gave him a bear hug.

"Your beard hurts!" He cried struggling out of the hug, and falling on his butt.

"Haha, ok. Fine. I won't hug you." I laughed, sitting down beside him.

"Listen Star. Papa is going to earth for work today, okay? And you can't come along like you did last week. You could put us in danger."

"Did I do bad?" He asked, teary eyed.

"Of course not baby. You were afraid. It's okay to be afraid. You didn't do anything wrong." I said, patting his head, "But next time, call me first okay. Use the phone on the desk like I showed you. Then I will come to pick you up. Don't use the portal gun. It's only for emergency. Do you understand?"

Star nodded, and I wiped his tears, kissing him in the forehead, before calling the droids back in, storing them away.

"Take it easy today. You have a very important mission tomorrow. Ate you ready?"

"Uhun!" Star nodded.

"Good. Papa loves you." I said, opening a portal.

"Star loves Papa too!" He smiled, and waved.

I waved back as I entered the portal and left.

I arrived before the Undersiders hideout in the Bay and found it nearly empty.

Brian was gone, and so was Alec.

Taylor was moving out her stuff from the base too when I caught her.

"Hey there. Where's everyone else?" I asked.

"Gone. The Undersiders are a bust.

After you gave Brian custody of his sister, he left the city with her. They're headed for Maine, near some of their other relatives.

Bitch has to get her new dogs vaccinated.

And Alec left for Vegas. Something about doubling his money overnight." Taylor said.

"He's so going to blow it all and come crawling back." I laughed.

"Yeah. That's what I said too, but Tattletale told me to just let him go. And she's right. Better to let him leave. It's his life. He can do what he wants." Taylor shrugged.

"Oh, you're here?" Lisa said from the side.

"Yes. I promised to help free Dinah Alcott, didn't I?" I said.

Dinah Alcott. She was the city mayor's niece and a minor character in the story, a little girl with extremely powerful predictive powers.

Dinah has the ability to see the likelihood of something occurring in the future, which her power resolves into a percentage chance. She does this by perceiving trillions of possible universes and sorting them into groups based on a single event.

She could even pick a single timeline and elaborate on it further, allowing her to find out a timeline where she took the optimal actions to take to achieve any goal she wanted and then replicate it.

Coil had kidnapped her early in the story and kept her as his drugged up slave in his evil lair underneath the city.

And Taylor blamed herself for Dinah's predicament.

After all, she and the Undersiders had been ordered by Coil to rob a bank as a distraction while he kidnapled Dinah, so Taylor felt personally responsible for Dinah's suffering believing she had a hand in it.

And the guilt had eaten away at her knowing what the little girl must have been going through.

So when given the chance to redeem herself, Taylor had jumped headfirst into it, risking even her life for the girl.

Of course, I wasn't doing this out of the good will of my heart. I had something, or rather someone to gain from it too.

Because Dinah isn't the only girl Coil is holding hostage in his lair. And the other girl is a thousand times more valuable to me than Dinah Alcott could ever be.

"You mean it?" Taylor asked, her ears perking up.

"Of course." I replied, looking at Lisa, "Meanwhile, I'll get rid of Coil too. How fast can you be ready?"

"In a minute." Taylor said, dropping the bag in her hands and running to her room to get changed.

"By the way, where's Paige?" I asked.

"Up here." A voice came from the loft, and Paige popped her head out, slovenly, sporting a cowlick.

"You wanna come along?" I asked.

"I would have been angry of you hadn't invited me."

"Well, get ready then. Unless your cowlick is going to hide your identity." I teased.

"Oh don't tempt the mighty cowlick. It can hide even the gods!" She replied, with a jojo pose.

"Is that a jojo reference?" I asked, amused.

"What?" She asked.

"What?" I replied.

"Nevermind." I smiled, "Get ready. You'll be needed today."