Money

There'd been a firestorm of publicity after my press conference at the United Nations, but I'd largely been insulated from it. I'd spent mornings healing people across the world, and afternoons helping the scientists make sense of alien technology.

After two weeks, I'd healed 50,000 people around the world, some not due to war injuries, but in return for donations to help with the reconstruction.

There'd been arguments that I should have been helping the poor more, but a single wealthy person could pay enough to help 10,000 poor people who had lost their jobs due to the shocks to the economy by the attacks.

I was beginning to sympathize with Panacea; healing had begun as an exciting thing. Helping people was better than always killing. But it became routine after a time, and I was beginning to chafe and wanted to get back to gaining the power I'd need to kill Endbringers.

The Harvester Queen's story worried me somewhat; although she talked about a couple of golden gods, male and female and we only had Scion, the thought that he might have an agenda was worrying.

How strong would I have to be to defeat Scion? He was easily able to overpower the Endbringers, and where would I ever find the power to beat him?

Even if I hit him with a rock going at the speed of the galaxy, it was likely that would do more damage to the world than it would to him.

I needed counters to the Endbringers first.

Leviathan was able to manipulate water at a level able to destroy cities. What possible power could I get to counter that? I wasn't even sure that my damage resistance, one of my strongest powers other than teleportation would match a full-on attack from and Endbringer, much less Scion.

"No," I told Jeff. "The math goes like this."

I wrote quickly on the blackboard and he took pictures. I drew diagrams, and he asked questions. Jeff was the lead researcher, but there were others standing behind us.

Apparently, there was a waiting list for access to me, made more intense by my stated intention that I had to leave soon.

If the Harvester Queen had been right, there was an existential threat to my world, and as much as I generally enjoyed these people, I needed to continue to gain power if I was going to meet it.

Still, the time here had done me good. In the little off time I had, I'd visited some of the non-destroyed monuments- Big Ben, the Taj Mahal, the pyramids.

I'd done healings in every country I'd visited, and I'd been a little disconcerted by the crowds. People were treating me like I was a Beatle or something, and every country had pushed for me to visit, with the exception of China and Russia and Japan.

The enthusiasm from the people had been a little scary. I'd been reassured by the occasional conspiracy theorist.

One man in Germany had believed that I was a fake, designed to cover a United States Superweapon.

He'd shot me in the forehead; I'd had to move my head so he wouldn't hit my hat or the people behind me. I'd caught the bullet before it ricocheted into the crowd, and then I'd telekinetically removed his gun and then I'd lifted him telekinetically for the authorities to catch him.

It had reassured me; I'd been afraid that there was something wrong with these people, to be universally this nice. Or worse, what if planets with nice people were the norm, and it was my world that was fundamentally wrong?

Finally, I finished.

"Can't you stay any longer?" he asked.

"It's going to take time for you guys to disassemble the ships and reverse engineer things," I said. "And I have business back home. By the time I come back, I have no doubt that you'll have a lot more stuff for me."

They nodded reluctantly.

"The 3-D printer you designed is almost ready," he said hopefully.

"It'll speed things up," I said. "And so will the cell phones I left you guys to take apart. When I come back, I'll try to bring a database of what we've learned in my home dimension over the last fifteen years."

He nodded.

My watch beeped. It was a mechanical watch that would likely still work in space. I'd needed it when I'd helped launch a few satellites that had been almost ready for launch before.

My understanding was that the plan going forward was to use the fighters to tow smaller satellites into orbit. I didn't imagine it would take them long to get communications back fully.

"Well, I have to go say goodbye to the president," I said.

I switched back into my red outfit; I hadn't wanted to get chalk dust on it.

I appeared at the United Nations in front of the President and the other representatives of the various nations.

"I've been overwhelmed by the welcome I've had here," I said. "But it's time for me to go. I will be back, maybe in a month or two to see the progress you have made. I still have fights left to fight in other worlds."

President Whitmore smiled, and handed me a piece of paper. It had hundreds of signatures on it.

"What's this?" I asked blankly.

It took me a moment to read his intentions, and I stared at the paper.

"Taylor Hebert," he said. "I am proud to tell you that you have been granted citizenship, not just the United States, but in every country in the world."

There were two hundred and twenty-seven signatures on the page.

Even China, Russia and Japan had signed.

Whitmore didn't have to say that this was because they had decided that it was better to work with me than to be left behind as the rest of the world leapt forward technologically.

Considering that Europe, Africa and the American nations were already forming a bloc along with India, they were looking increasingly isolated.

"Does this mean I'm going to have to fill out 227 sets of taxes?" I asked.

There was a moment of shocked silence, and then the crowd began laughing as the translators finished translating.

It would take a hell of a lot of skill books to be able to figure out what kind of mess over two hundred sets of tax forms on the same income would create.

Well, they couldn't tax me on money they didn't know about. I'd just have to keep all my money in offworld accounts.

I handed my medal to the President. They'd awarded it to me last week with one hundred percent approval from Congress.

"Hold this for me," I said. "I'll be back for it."

I floated up in the air, and I spread my hands out.

"I shall return!" I said.

Then I shifted worlds.

I was back in the forest, standing over the boulder that had covered Alabaster.

Tossing it to the side was easy, and I telekinetically dug, until I found Alabaster.

He stared up at me in horror, coughing up the dirt that had been filling his lungs over and over and over again over the past few weeks.

His mind was…fractured.

"I'm not as angry anymore," I said dispassionately. "And it was wrong of me to stick you in here forever. I'll get my Dad back, and all of your friends are dead."

His mind was starting to clear.

"But I can't leave you here to keep doing what you've been doing."

I pushed deeper into his mind, and I saw his crimes, one after the other in horrifying detail. He hadn't killed nearly as many people as I had, but he'd taken a lot more pleasure in those he had.

"Blade storm," I said.

The blades started digging into his body, looking for his core, even as I began calling up my eyes with Phantom weapon and far strike.

It took me a while to find the combination that worked, but eventually I cut his head off, and pierced his body in multiple places, and he didn't regenerate.

Just in case, I blinked into space, and threw his head toward the sun even as I threw his body toward Jupiter. I didn't bother checking the math to see where they would end up. As long as he didn't revive, I didn't really care.

QUEST COMPLETE!

YOU HAVE DESTROYED THE EMPIRE!

YOU HAVE GAINED ONE LEVEL!

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 10!

200 HP!

NEW QUEST CREATED!

DESTROY THE HARVESTERS AND SAVE THE WORLD!

QUEST COMPLETED!

YOU ARE NOW LEVEL 11!

220 HP!

Why had that happened?

ONLY FOUR QUESTS MAY BE LISTED AT A TIME.

Great.

YOU HAVE 4 ABILITY POINTS TO ASSIGN. DO YOU WANT TO ASSIGN THEM NOW?

I thought for a moment.

I could level strength up by carrying things, if I ever bothered trying. I was overrepresented on dexterity.

+4 TO CONSTITUTION!

YOU NOW HAVE A CONSTITUTION OF 34!

YOU NOW HAVE 244 HP!

Extra hit points would never go to waste. Even a few of them would help against attacks that bypassed my resistances, and they would be effectively multiplied by attacks that didn't.

I'd just increased my hit points by more than a third. I was pleased.

Now all I had to do was kill Lung, and maybe I'd gain another level.

Finding him would be the problem, of course.

However, telepathy was going to make that a lot easier. I suspected that the smart thing to do would be not to tell anyone that I had it; that way they wouldn't be able to adjust to it.

I'd be able to see who was lying to me, or at least who believed what they were saying. If they knew I had the ability, then they'd make sure that the people around me believed everything they were saying, while the people who knew the things I wasn't supposed to know would stay far away from me.

The first step to finding Lung would be to find the remnants of the ABB. There weren't many of them, and the number had actually dropped in the two or three weeks I'd been gone.

Still, there had been so many of them, that all I had to do was start canvasing the Asian community; there was almost certainly someone who had an uncle, a cousin, or a nephew who was currently in the organization.

Of course, if I appeared in my current red outfit, I was likely going to get shot, and it was possible that someone might actually get it dirty with blood splatter.

My old hoodies were out too; I had a feeling those were well known in that part of town.

My only option was to get money, and I had the means to get it in my inventory.

Teleporting to Boston, I found the PRT headquarters there. I showed up in my red outfit; it was important to make a good first impression.

I didn't appear in the middle of the lobby; apparently some people considered that to be aggressive.

Instead, I appeared around a corner and walked casually to PRT headquarters.

"Tours aren't for another hour," the agent in charge said.

"I'm here to collect some bounties," I said.

Both men immediately tensed. They hadn't taken me for a parahuman despite my impeccable outfit. I looked like well over a thousand dollars, and that should have clued them in that I wasn't some sort of civilian.

Worse, most people who collected bounties were villains. Heroes tended to worry about their reputation if they went out killing people.

"You have multiple bounties to collect," I said.

"That's right," I said calmly.

Their hands rested on their weapons, and I said, "Isn't that how this is supposed to go, or should I have called ahead."

"On who?" the agent asked.

He wasn't really supposed to ask, but he assumed I wouldn't know the rules and he would get away with it.

"Jack Slash, Shatterbird, Burnscar, Crawler, Mannequin, the Siberian…they might contest Siberian, but I swear he's her."

Had there been anyone else? I couldn't remember. It was possible that I hadn't collected all the bodies when I'd gone back.

"You're her," the agent said. "Harvest. The one with the kill order?"

"You can legally try to shoot me, I guess," I said. "But it'd probably richochet and hit you in the face, and I probably wouldn't try to stop it, because…well, rude."

He called it in.

"If you are planning to attack me, I guess that Kill Orders aren't honored anymore. I guess I'd make sure that knowledge gets out, and then I'd probably cause enough damage that you could use the money to replace what I tear up. How much money do I have to work with?"

"Uh…thirty million," the other agent said. "Taxes are automatically withdrawn before you get the money at the highest tax bracket. You'd get eighteen million after taxes, more or less."

He wasn't as afraid of me as the other one. He had a cousin living in Brockton Bay, one that I'd healed twice.

I nodded.

"That's in cash?"

"It'll take a while to get that kind of money together," he said.

The other agent was stiff.

He had arthritis in his hip, and his left shoulder. He'd been told that he'd have to retire if he couldn't get it healed.

I inventoried his armor, leaving him standing in his boxers. I healed him, and then returned his armor so quickly that neither agent was entirely sure what had just happened.

"I took care of your shoulder and hip," I said. "Enjoy the next three days of quarantine; I'm a planeswalker and a potential source of contagion. I don't have anything, but I'm sure they won't be able to keep themselves from checking."

The other agent's armor had a sealed air system with tinkertech filtration; it was apparently required at PRT offices in all cities within four hundred miles of Brockton Bay.

Apparently, they were worried that some of the zombies had gotten free.

I waited ten minutes for the director himself to appear.

He was shorter than me, 5'6 at the most. He was slim, with a high forehead and a weirdly sharp jaw. He was in his late forties, and overweight. He was graying, with a receding hairline.

He was in a tinkertech suit that was completely transparent from the neck up. I could have told them how to build a biohazard suit that normal people could build, but nobody asked me.

"Miss Hebert," he said.

I plunged into his mind.

He was a rational man, and unlike Piggot, he seemed to actually like parahumans. He reminded me a lot of the scientists I'd met in Harvester world.

I nodded.

"I've got the bodies," I said. "where would you like me to put them?"

There were men in more conventional suits coming out with gurneys. The gurneys held what looked like plastic cylinders.

"Isn't that overkill?" I asked.

"From what I understand of your powers, you've had them in stasis this entire time," he said. "No one knows what sort of biological time bombs Bonesaw may have placed in them, perhaps set off by a timer, or possibly for the autopsy.

"Well, I left the bodies in outer space overnight," I said. "Past the orbit of the moon."

"Your powers work in space?" he asked. "Most parahuman abilities don't."

I shook my head.

He was suddenly wondering why I had felt the need to drop the bodies in space. I wouldn't have even needed to read his mind to read his expression.

"It's a long story. I can make the bodies appear in the cylinders, as long as the displaced air doesn't break the seal."

"They are built more strongly than that," Armstrong said. "We should have your money in four hours."

"So, should I wait in the waiting room?" I asked.

"We'd prefer that you go through decontamination," he said.

"I just got this outfit," I said. "It's Armani!"

"We have tinkertech processes that won't damage the fabric."

I scowled, but he really seemed to believe what he was saying.

"Even the hat?"

He nodded.

"You could just spray me with fire," I said hopefully. "I'm still not completely immune to it, and I'd like to be able to go swimming in the sun."

Maybe I would, someday, once I'd leveled up my Blinking and my resistance to blindness.

"I think I'd be in trouble for making someone with a kill order even stronger," he said.

Well, he was sincere, and if someone else was manipulating them to get me somewhere they could kill me, they'd get a nasty surprise.

Not only was I more powerful than I'd been, but I now knew how to drop a meteor on their heads at a level capable of destroying a small city.

I went through the decontamination process because Armstrong seemed sincere and had been nice about the whole thing.

They even gave me a PRT t-shirt and gray jogging pants while they took care of the three outfits I'd been given.

I questioned the scientists who had done the detoxing about whether anyone had put tracking devices in my outfit. None of them knew anything about that, and neither did anyone else.

Well, I had a fourth outfit if they had.

A lot of the local PRT came around to stare at me as I ate the food in their cafeteria.

I read some interesting secrets from their minds.

Bastion was apparently in hot water for making a racist comment when a fan had been too pushy. It didn't really represent underlying racism so much as an inability to express himself well, but he was intensely ashamed, and his family was upset with him.

Finally, the money came. Eighteen million in hundred-dollar bills was 180,000 bills. It weighed four hundred and eighteen pounds.

I was given eighteen briefcases of money; since money was placed separately from my other slots, I returned the briefcases; it wasn't like anyone needed eighteen of the things.

When I was finished collecting the money, I asked, "Does anyone know where Blasto is?"