Chapter 25

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Author's Prequel:

Anyone who believes that women should be denied the right to dress pretty and do the things their intended likes when trying to attract a mate, has far worse problems than they think I have.

And anyone who feels that women are diminished or demeaned by my declaring that they have strengths that men do not, or believes they should be denied the freedom to use those strengths, ought to see a shrink.

I do not consider it a shame that women have strengths that men do not. Nor, by saying they have strengths, am I saying they should be restricted to doing nothing else.

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Story Day Twenty Nine, May 4th 2011, Wednesday - Mid-Morning

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Cherish came to in a wide open space, in the dark, standing on a platform with rings spinning around her, each one balanced precariously atop the other, always seeming like it ought to be on the very edge of falling off, but despite that remaining as solid as a rock.

The scene was instantly familiar.

She'd seen Superman The Movie.

"This is no fantasy," an unseen voice called out, echoing as if in a vast chamber. "No careless product of a wild imagination."

To Cherish's surprise, she could make out of the darkness several ghostly faces, each one larger than a man was tall, gazing down on her. Some small part of her even recognized them dimly, as people she might have met recently, somewhere...

"No, my good friends," the voice continued. "These indictments that I have brought to you today, the specific charges listed herein against the individual, are matters of undeniable fact. You have heard the evidence. I ask you now, to pronounce judgement on the accused."

"Guilty," spoke one large face that somehow reminded Cherish of dogs, before it vanished.

"Guilty," spoke another, that caused Cherish to think distantly of bugs.

"Guilty." "Guilty." "Guilty."

Three more spoke in rapid succession, each vanishing in turn. All were teens, the last two looking no older than thirteen at most, and reminding Cherish at last of those girlfriends she had inadvertently caused her present toy to dump.

Well, at least now she could guess what they were so angry about.

Casting her eyes about the chamber, not having sensed anyone via her power, Cherish was shocked to see Jared stood before her, white-haired and wearing a long black robe with the famous 'S' symbol glowing white on his chest.

Suddenly, she was not afraid at all. She'd been working on him so long, she knew the ins and outs of his mind better than anyone else could. He'd never denied her anything. And hey! General Zod had some great lines here. It would be a shame not to use them.

She smirked at him. "The vote must be unanimous, Jared. It has therefore now become your decision. You alone will condemn me if you wish, and you alone will be held responsible by me. Join me. You've argued and disagreed with those girls before. I can give you pleasures you've never imagined."

Jared wordlessly held upright the rod of clear crystal he'd been holding, causing a light to shine from the tip.

The response was immediate. Air pressure on her skin dropped precipitously, though somehow still leaving her unharmed and free to breathe normally as the ground rumbled below their feet and the massive dome overhead suddenly lifted on one end, rolling open, allowing natural light from the moonscape outside to flood the chamber while simultaneously revealing they were at the center of a city of white stone.

She had only a moment to appreciate it.

It took only a few seconds for a dome larger than many sports stadiums she had been in to roll back enough to dispel the darkness inside completely, revealing they were in the center of a black disk on a gleaming white floor, with the small platform she stood on at the center of a shaft of light that extended up past the boundaries of where the dome had once been above her.

She looked up, and saw the giant mirror that was The Phantom Zone slowly approaching her position.

Jared spoke up, reminding her that he had not left yet, and said, "We need to talk, and unfortunately, there is no time for pleasantries. So let's get down to the nub of it: Are you willing to do anything to get safety?"

She stared at him in disbelief, noting his robe had reversed and become now a gleaming white with the famous 'S' shield in black, and suddenly recalled this was the man that everyone regarded as The Amazing Doctor Whodunit, whose technology was already the terror of the entire world.

With a deep, sinking feeling in her stomach, she realized that if *anyone* could build a genuine Phantom Zone, it would be him. It certainly looked like he'd already built a duplicate of Krypton's capital city on Earth's moon!

"I don't consider being trapped for eternity in the Phantom Zone safe!" she shouted back at him.

He calmly explained, "That's one option. The other option is our accelerated rehabilitation program, which you will not enjoy."

She stared, wishing that she could feel him with her power. But he had somehow found a way to protect himself. "Does this program leave me dead, maimed, permanently crippled, or even more insane?" She glanced back up at the approaching zone. "Or last for eternity?"

He very calmly shook his head. "No, it's intent is to help you. The treatment is only minutes long. Unfortunately, it packs quite a lot of painful realizations into those minutes. There is no physical harm involved. At the end, you should actually be sane, but getting there is not an experience you would relish."

She stared at him. Cherish was not used to bargaining. Her experience in life was either being in control, or being controlled, and he had plainly escaped her control.

So, desperate not to enter the Zone, she tried bargaining, to prove herself useful so she could at least gain more time for the endless series of power struggles she was used to. "I can offer you money, sex, power and influence, an entire city worshiping you, anything you want."

He sighed. "By not choosing rehab, you have effectively chosen The Zone. I am sorry it has come to this. Goodbye." The end of the long, clear crystal he'd carried in his hand flared up brightly again, before he turned and began walking soberly away.

Jared was not actually Superman, nor related to him in any way, but he felt cosplaying it under these circumstances added to the gravity of the situation.

Which was important when you are bluffing.

Because he did not have a Phantom Zone either, just an illusion. Even the rumbling of the dome rolling back had just been a sense of touch added by the Tactile Illusion feat.

But it had made the whole experience pants-wettingly scary for its subject, which was the whole idea.

Cherish looked frantically between him and The Zone, trying to decide, and at the last second shouted, "REHAB!"

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As suddenly as she'd yelled it, Cherish found herself in a different place.

Though still bound in place by spinning rings around her. She'd touched them before, and found them, despite their appearance, to be an unbeatable barricade. She touched them again, just to make sure.

Yup! They remained so even now.

Air pressure that had dropped precipitously when the dome had rolled back was now restored. She could feel cool wisps of a breeze tickling her, and she breathed more easily as her doom seemed to have been averted for now.

Jared had a little trouble holding onto his poker face. However her power had bypassed his various immunities before, and he still could not be certain of its method, it would do him little good now to let her read his emotions from off his face, as she still knew a great deal about how his mind operated.

But it was amusing to see how she reacted to a simple set of Iron Bands of Bilarro, an ancient item of countless D&D editions, refluffed into a slightly different appearance to match a 1978 movie.

Also, as long as she was standing in the center of one of his illusions, he could change her apparent environment seamlessly, at his whim. The sensation of air pressure and a breeze was just another aspect of having a Tactile Illusion. Giant domes, vast cities, moonscapes and approaching mirrors were all a matter of perspective, and made it seem like very authentic super-science to have her go from one place to another with no feeling of motion.

Most people did not teleport, after all, so had no familiarity with what that effect actually felt like.

That lack of any sensation, along with a fair amount of showmanship, was disorienting and almost more dramatic than the real thing.

But he did not leave her much time to ponder about that.

There were certain paladins, who over the years had become renowned for their ability to bring even the most violent and corrupt criminals to their knees in remorse. Gaining that ability for himself had required considerable investment of time and resources, but now, by touching a target while channeling positive energy 'just so', Jared could do as they did and cause that individual to relive all of the evil and unjust things he or she has ever done - from the perspective of each of the target's victims.

It was an ability those of strong will could sometimes resist. But those that failed to throw it off were reduced to emotional ruin as their mind was filled with horrific visions of their own injustices. The broken hearts, the tearful sobs, every scrap of grief and pain and sorrow they'd ever dealt their victims coming back to their source so the doer of those deeds got to experience them all in a first person perspective as though they were themselves the victims they'd wronged.

The subject of that ability remained in that state for minutes, cowering and helpless.

It was called the Touch of Justice, and use of it had not expanded much past its world of origin, a planet called the Scarred Lands by its inhabitants. Jared considered that a pity, as the Touch of Justice was often enough to cause dramatic shifts in the target's alignment.

Cherie Vasil was actually a fairly good example of a proper target.

She was a classic sociopath, someone to whom others were not real, just objects, toys existing only for her to play with.

Now she was learning otherwise, learning from their own suffering that her victims were just as real, just as human, as she was.

That kind of perspective shift would either make her, or break her.

As Cherie collapsed, dead to the world, Jared held out a hand, the Iron Bands of Bilarro returning to him via telekinesis, automatically shrinking back into its storage form of a three inch iron ball. Collapsing the illusion, he then turned, gave a nod to Alec, then left the room in the back of Alec's personal hideout.

At the end, Cherie would be given a dose of Heart's Ease, and helped to bed. She would be exhausted, and would gratefully sleep the day and probably following night away while her mind corrected itself of all of its accumulated damage. Her brother, now immune to her power, would watch over her.

What happened after that was up to her.

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Jared sighed, steeling himself for this.

At his request, the girls he'd been calling his Sirens were now all seated on the soft sofas in one of the manor's more comfortable rooms. Sveta, at least, had taken her leave and was off in town visiting in-person one of the few friends she'd had online when she'd been an inmate at the Parahuman Asylum, Greg Veder, one of Taylor's classmates.

Greg would probably be overjoyed to have an actual girl-creature pay any attention to him. Poor kid was at that awkward stage that all guys try to pretend was never them... but honestly? Most of those claiming to hate Greg were actually pointing fingers at themselves. They'd just never admit to it.

Jared was thankful, as that gave him a moment of privacy to have this conversation alone.

The fundamental building block of any relationship is trust, and for that one must be honest.

Before going any further, the wizard faced the assembled Sirens and admitted, "Okay, time for me to come clean. You girls are afraid of Masters? I've probably got the most potent collection of Master powers this Earth has ever seen. Heartbreaker? He's peanuts. I can not only manipulate you via your emotions like he could, I can take away your will. I can do it *permanently*, I can do it in an assortment of different ways. I can do it all in ways too subtle for you to ever detect. I can do it, then take away all your memories of my ever having done it. I could use and abuse a person in ways that amount to slavery, and make them *like* it! There! Now you know that I am probably the scariest Master that ever lived. What do you want to do about it?"

Taylor was the first of many to get up, walk over to him, and kiss him, then confidently state, "You love us. You would never hurt us."

The entire line of girls passed in procession doing exactly the same thing.

And suddenly things were ok.

"You're not scared that I have Master powers?" he wanted to confirm.

Rachel snorted. "You also have a gun. You're not going to use that on us, either."

He gave a relieved chuckle, actually feeling something like clouds of sorrow departing from his mind. "No, I wouldn't. You're right about that, but if anyone does they'll find there is not much point - if you've all read those training manuals I'd left you, that is."

"Yeah, we read them. What was up with those?" Taylor, a confirmed bibliophile, had been concerned.

Those books had been *anything* but normal.

"Short answer? Skill books, like from a video game," he replied, knowing the full answer, that in a sidebar on page 128 of the Arms and Equipment Guide published by Wizards of the Coast, they had presented rules for magic items that grant feats, along with suggested pricing, was too much detail and would not actually help them.

Feats were arguably the most precious commodity of any character playing any variant of third edition D&D. They were rare, and hard to come by. Most starting characters would only have one, with many mid-level characters having only three, with seven total during your entire 20th level career more or less standard - and finding those few ways to scrape out an extra feat or two came as the most frequently sought after advice in those discussions between players.

But, sufficient wealth can solve most problems in D&D.

There were magic books already that could do important things, like improve your ability scores, or increase your level. It was a simple application of those item creation rules to make a book granting whoever reads it a bonus feat.

The book turning to dust after doing that just reduced the cost a bit.

But, Jared admitted, reading a magic book like that would have felt nothing like paging through a magazine, or spending time with one's nose buried in something like Tolkien.

Actual physical, spiritual and mental changes could occur via taking a feat - and those feats he'd chosen to give them in book form would have done all three!

Of *course* that would have felt weird.

"Those books magically granted you new abilities," he completed the answer in a form they should understand.

Lisa unthinkingly snorted.

He smiled towards her, knowing of the local disbelief in magic. "Here," he supplied, holding up a candy. "Pretend this Hershey's Kiss is an incoming bullet. You don't want it to hit you."

Faster than she would have thought possible, he had flicked it towards her.

Vwoom! Hiss!

All of those girls stared now in disbelief at the glowing blade of plasma in Lisa's hands, the slight smell of scorched chocolate filling the air.

"I..." she stumbled verbally, before rallying herself. "I blocked it?"

She looked wonderingly up at him.

Jared smiled back, before approaching and putting an arm around her. "Yes, it was a sad waste of a perfectly good Hershey's Kiss. But sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the Greater Good. If only I'd had a tomato on me. They deserve to die."

"Hey!" Dinah objected. "I like tomatoes!"

"Yes, yes," Jared disagreed. "But before we digress into a debate about the Death Fruit, whose sins can only be purified through being smoothly blended, then mixed with sugar and spices to emerge, reborn, as ketchup or spaghetti sauce, let me explain what happened. Those books trained you in several new abilities, some of them truly extraordinary, even supernatural. You can each now sense into the future far enough to detect incoming danger and react to it. If I was not an accomplished pickpocket, and planted a lightsaber on each of you when we'd hugged before, you would most probably have used that spoon to block it."

He paused, as if in fear. "I sense... something, a presence! Something inimical... Trademark Lawyers! So scratch that, it's definitely not a Lightsaber(TM), call it a photon cutlass... no, that's not right... Plasma blade works."

The whole group giggled.

Dinah piped up. "When can I get my ... uh, not a photon cutlass?"

Missy smoothly requested, "Can I get mine in green?"

Jared hammed it up. "Search your feelings... no, wait, your pockets. You know it to be true... or maybe, you know it to be blue? No, that's not right, you wanted it to be green. So green it is!"

They all searched their pockets, finding the lightsaber knock-offs as promised, and the room dissolved into geeking out over Star Wars quotes for several minutes.

One-use books magically training them in permanent, new feats had given them everything he'd used to defend himself from the drow during the race, including Combat Awareness, so they were never surprised, all five legally allowable Defensive Divination feats, granting the ability to see into the future, giving them a chance to react to things before they'd happened, Quick Draw for drawing a weapon as a free action, the three feats so they could actually block ranged attacks like bullets, Combat Reflexes and Hold the Line, so they could chop up enemies about to attack them but before they actually had, and finally Exotic Weapon Proficiency Bastard Sword, because he was an old softly and wanted them to enjoy his favorite weapon.

Along with Alertness, a fairly useless feat, but the prerequisite for Combat Awareness, that amounted to fourteen feats, more than most 20th level characters had.

Not bad. The PRT would definitely classify them as Combat Thinkers now... but since that was basically true, if unrelated to the local parahuman powers, he had no problem with that.

There were better ways to spend that many feats, but he was not worried about proper optimization for them right now, and this arrangement gave them a fair degree of safety in what was otherwise a very unsafe environment.

Besides, from the reactions, they enjoyed being Jedi impersonators as much as he did.

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Now that the emergencies were all dealt with, Jared's situational awareness began to fill in all sorts of details that were not directly pertinent to survival - either of him, or of relationships that were arguably just as important.

Aristotle was bang on the money when he'd said, "without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods".

Now, a flood of previously non-critical information came pouring in.

For one thing, the girls were *gorgeous!*

Their hair was perfect. Their makeup was perfect. Their dresses and clothes were perfect, and more!

They were all wearing rings and things and buttons and bows, frills and laces of every kind.

They had taken after Rachel, and were each wearing a full dress with a whole bunch of fancy trimmings, silks and satins and cotton in profusion, including plenty of ruffs and frills, with matching accessories, complete with a frilly parasol.

What he could not know, but would later be informed of, was that they had all been wearing equally fancy and frilly dresses and their matching accouterments ever since he'd left.

It was a look he found exceptionally drool-worthy.

Seeing his reaction to their attire, and how positive it was, soon had Rachel standing tall, as she proudly stated, "I train good bitches!" Then, dropping her voice somewhat, she quietly finished, "only some of which are dogs."

Jared was honestly impressed.

One of the major ways girls show love is to make things pretty.

Having returned, Jared now found the house all decorated and pretty. "We Missed You" banners hung over every entrance, surfaces sparkled, showing real effort had gone into keeping everything clean, no, not just clean but spotless; beautiful centerpieces sat on every table, flower arrangements, handmade heart-shaped pillows embroidered with personalized messages of love and affection, and other such things were everywhere, including a teddy bear bigger than him, shaped like him, and whose face was covered in kisses.

Crocheted stuff and ribbons and doilies, oh my!

In decorating they had delved deeply into things guys just don't understand. What is it about ribbons on things? He didn't know, but they were kinda nice, somehow. What was bunting, anyway? Apparently it's a whole lot of cloth hung like a really big ribbon.

They had each made, and put on cute little display stands, scrapbooks dedicated to his impressive deeds.

Laying on doilies next to them were photo albums of their training, and how dedicated they'd been to following his last commands, showing how they had practiced, even gone on a two short campouts, exploring and learning how to truly master their territory.

Just like he'd said they should.

How else do women show love? They are supportive. They'd wanted to show him they could carry forward the work on the last major thing he was working on before he left; which had been Panacea Park. They felt they had all of the skills necessary, due to him, to develop and manage a first-rate theme park around the Panacea Arch.

They mostly had to hire people to get the work done, but they had the skills and the money to do that.

So by the time he got back, that work was very well advanced, with portions of the park already open to support ongoing efforts.

All of them were very eager to report on the construction project they personally had been taking on.

Rachel had been handling animal attractions, petting zoos and rides for the most part. How many people got to ride on the back of an actual elephant?

Not many, that's who.

But Rachel had gotten loads of animals as donations out of a local zoo, who with the overall collapse in tourism following Panacea's apparent demise, could no longer afford to keep their doors open. Ironically, the zoo had been on the outskirts of Brockton Bay, on territory not far from bordering Panacea Park, so Rachel had bought them out, and the in-between land, and simply added that territory and facilities onto the park. She had also begun training the animals, so they now were beginning to have regular circuses performing there.

The animals were happier to have something to do beyond lazing around all day (even cats eventually got bored of that), the people were happier as she'd kept on most of the best zoo employees, and generally were a fine addition to the park.

Lisa had been handling restaurants and shops. Her success had been no less than Rachel's, as now all of the best eateries and shopping were centered around the park.

Taylor had taken on clothing boutiques, and done a magnificent job, but surprisingly had also set up overhead people-movers, using spun spiderwebs as cables.

Missy had enthusiastically dived in to designing the roller coasters, with Victor's help. She'd hired his assistance because she had tremendous depth of a few skills, but little breadth of skills. He had great breadth of skills, so could error-check her work (you wanted that very much on a life-or-death thing like a roller coaster), and could occasionally see things she had not considered.

He did not charge her much, as it turned out he had an actual love of amusement parks, and a secret desire to expand his design capabilities.

Dinah turned out to be a music lover and spent her time making the music stages, concert halls, and the like. Also to Jared's surprise she had partnered with Pyrotechnical from Toybox for amazing displays and pryo-fountains. With Pyrotechnical, a Tinker focusing on flame manipulation, special effects, and guns, those two had devised displays that made 4th of July fireworks look weak. Like the Bellagio fountains, but done with fire.

Some were already calling them the Flammagio Fountains.

Among Uber's skills, which Jared had downloaded into them via Cranial's device, had been modern Structural Engineering, as well as the ancient skill of Architecture and Engineering, plus Craft Art, so they'd had both the ancient and modern perspectives on how to build great buildings, making them both practical and gorgeous.

The result was the building styles they'd created would be endlessly imitated, and would kick off a new architectural craze.

The girls had all had the Profession Merchant skill among their first downloads, so they knew how to set up shops better than just about anyone alive; how to get people visiting them, how to set the prices so you're making money... everything was in the details, and they had a handle on those details better than anybody.

So their businesses were doing well, despite the economic downturn of Brockton Bay generally.

With many local construction firms collapsing, unable to complete contracts due to their employees leaving for better cities, the Sirens had employed a combination of Kaiser, and Big Rig from Toybox, to do the construction. Big Rig was a Tinker who built drones that built things in turn, particularly buildings. Modern construction could always use large amounts of high quality steel, which Kaiser could effortlessly produce. Provided those raw materials and the sets of very comprehensive and detailed plans drawn up by the Sirens, along with a place to build, and Big Rig had worked wonders.

Major portions of the park were nearly complete.

Of course, having employed Pyrotechnical and Big Rig, it was inevitable that they'd drawn notice from other Tinkers in Toybox as well, just as the first two shared how much they enjoyed the satisfying work they'd begun doing.

Hey, everybody had at least heard of Panacea and all of the charitable work she'd done. It was impossible not to respect that, and helping out in a park that bore her name? Doing something to honor her memory? Most people would be down for that.

It was even better that they were being well-paid.

So the Sirens had inadvertently drawn in the attentions of Toybox members they had not even intended to hire, but found them volunteering to add their services and specialties anyway.

The Tinker Bauble was one of those, a girl who specialized in glassworking and glassworking tools, including tools that could turn inorganic matter into glass, or at least transparent like glass.

Well, hey! All of those big shop windows that are so useful for displays, but tend to be the first thing broken when fights break out? They had discovered they could just have Kaiser grow inch thick steel plates, and let Bauble's processes turn those into windows - that still had the full strength of all of that tremendous thickness of steel, yet resisted elements like glass.

Luckily, that discovery had been made early on, because it had allowed them to armor the buildings of that park like battleships, only they looked like jewels, clad in different colors of transparent glass (or at least what looked like glass).

The glass box of modern architecture had all sorts of steel lines there to hold up all of that glass; lines that Panacea Park's buildings did not have, as their glass already had the strength of steel, so could hold themselves up without any extra supports. They also did not have to use flat planes or straight lines, as Kaiser could grow his steel in whatever shapes they'd desired.

So they'd desired to go somewhat fanciful in their architecture.

It was gorgeous.

Also, the addition of Bauble's glass, refracting prisms, mirrors, lenses, and the like, had added entirely new dimensions to Dinah and Pyrotechnical's flame displays.

Those shows were now the primary draw of that park, and were already garnering international attention.

Although, one of their personal favorite features of the work they had been doing had been a private joke Lisa had snuck in. With all of the times Lung had been dunked in the bay lately, she had built a Dunkin Donuts on the shore, and come out with a new Lung-themed doughnut, with four different dipping sauces.

There was also an anchor-shaped doughnut.

Both were already local favorites, and her store had lines outside of it most mornings.

Now, some would be disturbed, having all of these Tinkers involved, as everyone knows that Tinkertech required regular maintenance from the Tinker who'd built it. One of the things not generally known, however, was that a Tinker's shard only exerted itself in proportion to how far beyond the usual capabilities their creation was. So if Squealer, a vehicle Tinker, were to buy a regular car and simply repair it, it would not require any more maintenance than cars do usually, and that work could be performed by anyone qualified to work on one.

She'd probably have to restrain her power from adding rocket boosters, lasers, and perhaps transforming capability. But if she'd wanted to build a normal car, using normal parts and tools, she could do that, and it would follow the normal rules for cars.

Even if those rules included a thousand-mile-per-gallon carburetor.

Just because every major technology company had patents they would lock up and never allow to see the light of day, did not mean that technology did not exist, or that it would be unavailable to superpowers.

Already having Pyrotechnical involved, it was natural to consult with her over efficient furnaces. This was New England, after all. Reports were that, had the Pilgrims not landed there, the area would still be as sparsely populated as Iceland, and for many of the same reasons.

Extreme cold weather was a thing.

Now Brockton Bay had a better climate than most of New England, but that was a bit like reporting that one part of Bosnia sucked less than the rest of that country. A less extreme problem was still a problem. So good, efficient, heating systems were still a very good idea.

Pyrotechnical could do that. She could do that very well.

However, she was not the only Tinker in Toybox.

All of this work had also attracted the attention of Glace, a Tinker specialized in cryogenics and stasis. That cape got drawn in by the large and interesting projects the others had been working on, and partnered with Pyrotechnical, the duo of them managed to produce the very best HVAC systems the world had ever known.

But that actually wasn't enough to capture the attention of Glace for long.

Those powers were actually quite useful to another commercial venture, and that was...

Fresh food forever!

With the collapse of international shipping, fresh food was actually quite rare on Earth-Bet, as it required shipping thousands of tons in from another hemisphere daily to escape the cycle of seasons, and the natural restriction on fruit and vegetables and such only being available fresh during a few months of the year.

The rest of the year, it was canned or dried or otherwise preserved... or nothing at all.

This restriction had somehow mortally offended Glace, who as a child had been among the first wave of those struck by scurvy, a disease all but unknown in developed nations for over a century until the disruptions following the arrival of parahumans, and whose powers had triggered in response to that burning need for fresh food, granting her advanced refrigeration and stasis, powers she had never been allowed to USE to their fullest!

Somehow, everybody buying Tinkertech wanted guns, for some reason.

So it was a great relief to that Tinker for her to come on board a project where they'd needed her specialty as it was intended.

Ice cream!

Fresh fruit!

Steak so rare you could still hear it moo!

They'd thrown up great big stasis warehouses supplying Panacea Park, and while it would require some setup time, basically waiting until the time of year rolled around for fresh products to become available, soon the restaurants there would serve strawberries fresh-picked, and watermelons fresh-picked, even though they became ripe six months apart from each other.

They had the contracts going out to farmers, and everything they served there would be vine-riped for greatest flavor, since with stasis they did not have to be concerned about shelf-life. This would require a fully Tinkertech centralized stasis chamber, and the Tinker periodically coming out to maintain it, but the profits would definitely pay for that.

And with a stasis unit, they could avoid a problem that all restaurant have: the lunch and dinner rushes. Highly skilled chefs can only work so fast, and people's tendency to eat meals all at the same time made that difficult, cause the chefs got really busy during those times. So people had to wait.

People hate waiting.

And, because customers hate waiting, chefs hurry, and chefs who are hurrying don't do as good a job. But with the stasis unit, the chefs could take their time, do their best work, whenever was convenient for them, and then store it in stasis; so when it got served it came out as if it had just been completed.

This actually enabled them to hire chefs that were already committed to some of the best restaurants. Any who wanted a little extra income could come in to the Park whenever convenient for them to make a few of the more popular menu items, and store them in stasis.

Grocery stores running this technology also would not be throwing out meat, or milk, or produce that went past a certain expiration date, because nothing spoils under stasis! And most people would be shocked at just how much of those things grocery stores do have to throw out.

Lisa had already jumped on that fact, and was arranging to set up grocery stores that could out-compete anybody, as they'd have the best food at the best prices consistently.

Even the zoo benefited powerfully from having access to cryogenics and stasis, letting them breed up lots more animals than they needed, and not have to worry about feeding the extras, simply storing the extra offspring. Not having to feed the extra animals saved them money, while at the same time they did not have to worry about unexpectedly running out of animals, should disease or old age or whatever take one. In that event, you would just defrost a replacement and keep going.

But this in turn had led to the realization that their petting zoos could greatly benefit from the same animal storage technology. People loved baby animals even more than adult ones. But they don't stay babies long. Now they could stretch that time, by putting the infants in stasis outside of business hours, or by freezing some part of a litter, then thawing them out once their siblings had grown past a certain point.

The Sirens had been devoting themselves to that park, and it showed.

It was, he had to admit, a good use of their time.

He could teleport, so chasing him was pointless. He had said he was going to come back, and he'd always been trustworthy. So they had chosen to trust he would come back, and done their best to maximize their time with him when he did. Even if they'd only had seconds, they'd planned for a visual impact to prove to him their loyalty...

... but in a girly way. Their response to him declaring, "I don't care," was to show him how much *they* cared! Because caring is contagious. 'If we care, it may catch and reignite his caring', was the thought. At no point was there a moment when the house was not full of the scent of fresh, baked bread and other treats he liked.

For most of the two and a half weeks before he got back, the homeless shelters ate well.

The very girly Drill Sergeant Rachel had been keeping them on task for getting him back, but being girls they did it girl-style. Aimed at being supportive, nurturing, loyal and loving. Or at least those were the styles girls were inherently good at, and did when they were at their best.

So flower displays had been refreshed every day, in case that was the day.

He was, in all, very pleased with the report, and after all of the needed appreciation had been given, had been concluding with, "Well, it seems you've got everything very much under control..."

"There is one little thing we need your judgement for," Rachel told him straight out. He was the Alpha male, certain things were his job, and she was happy to leave them to him.

"Oh? What is it?" he paused in his congratulations, curious.

She told him, "Shortly after you'd gone, Rune showed up. She wants to speak with you about joining."

"Uhm..." he had not been expecting that.

His eyes went to Lisa for a more in-depth explanation.

The freckled blonde did not disappoint him, saying, "Since Victor confessed to having cheated on your bets about Menja and Fenja defeating Lung, Numberman paid out on those not just to you, but to Rune as well, who'd made the same wagers. Just a little after you'd left, Kaiser noticed that Rune had collected twenty million of what he'd considered to be 'his' money, and demanded it back. She refused. He insisted, and she left the Empire, coming back here to take shelter with us."

Rachel was apologetic. "I could not refuse her, since I did not know your position on the subject, whether you wanted her and arranged for this to happen, or not. So she has been here waiting for you to make that decision ever since."

Jared blinked, still mentally catching up to this surprise development.

"Come," Rachel declared, moving off. "Let me show you to her room."

She was eager to have this resolved, since before now she had not known how to treat the girl: as an outsider, or an insider. Either way had to be managed differently, and it was greatly perplexing to her, so something she was eager to have resolved.

The group automatically started moving off in her wake, carrying Jared with them.

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

Thanks for reading.