Crystalized Munchkinry - Act IV - Chapter 49 (Patreon)

He was quite happy with how things had 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 would be golden there.

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

Watching Lung plan was fascinating.

And it would 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. However, he would leave their capture to the PRT, Dragon, or Taylor.

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

He couldn't wait for when Amy and Vicky confronted 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 had changed the most, but he could already see Fragile One whining if her host didn't get the same treatment as Shaper's host. There was only so much pouting he could resist.

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

They had, of course, removed her ability to affect brains (she could turn it back on if she wanted), and now she could heal herself. They removed her ability to shape biology and instead changed it into a 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. Along with it 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 area plant manipulation. She could manipulate already existing plants within an area. She could make them grow extremely fast or wither at the same speed. She could make them move or shape them into unnatural forms. As a remnant of her old power, she could still manipulate them on a microscale, making them stronger, healthier, and so on. However, it was not as fast as it had been with her old power.

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

That kind of biotinker would be much easier for the PRT and the general populace to accept 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 from her own body or from 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 for punching 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 would be extremely durable. They could take several hits and even get partially dismembered before the clone would cease functioning.

The material around her could be shaped into anything she wanted: giant spikes, walls, platforms, giant fists (Shaper was insistent on those), 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 a 78% chance of happening.

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

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

Apparently, allowing the Shards to freely communicate, 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 had seen something like this.

The ’couple’ was happy to comply, though they quickly took to poking him about allowing them to affect their hosts before everyone else.

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

There was even the beginning of a betting pool taking shape on a miscellaneous server that he had 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 improved ConFoam grenades was rather boring, but important for the PRT, so he didn't pay much attention to it. He simply made sure that none of Bombie's insane ideas made it through the filter.

But when Alice took up the task of doing 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 gain time manipulation as well, then he had several fascinating ideas.

However, reality was a cruel mistress.

While he was familiar with using gravitational effects to create areas of slowed time, he was genuinely interested in how Entities made true 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 them, he was immensely disappointed.

The bubbles were not time manipulation. The Shard simply took a copy of the person down to the quantum level, allowed the event to take place, and then used matter manipulation to recreate the saved state.

The same was true for Grey Boy's invulnerability. The Shard simply saved the state of the man when he triggered his power and returned him to it whenever he was injured. It was similar to Alabaster's power, just on a much higher level and with a few extra features added.

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

Apparently, the Shard's task was to experiment with how these resets affected 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 experiment was with 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 imperfections. While it was extremely compact and capable of extending into other dimensions to increase its capacity, there were still the usual gaps one could find between atoms and molecules.

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

Surprisingly, it went off without a hitch, and the module's size decreased by almost half. It seemed the crystalline material itself wasn't really affected by the shrinkage. The only problem was maintaining the effect, but with his current, ever-expanding power output, that 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 and refining the idea.

Using this power, he began shifting the parts inside the module around, making use of the shortened distances to make it even more efficient.

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

Using this data, he began running simulations 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, which was extended across several dimensions and planets, he would increase his physical capacity massively. Of course, as a downside, he would become 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, meaning he couldn't hide his intrusion from anyone.

But now that he had 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 dimensions were located, so he would go where the Entities would never think to look.

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

It took him some time to find the very thin and almost invisible boundary 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 eldritch monstrosity than himself.

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, then expanded its end into a globe and began increasing its size as if it were a balloon on the end of a straw.

At first, he simply kept increasing its size to see if it had any effect on the two dimensions he could observe, 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 had prepared and began building an observation post inside the space bubble he had created.

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

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

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

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

"That's good. I'm also happy that you're happy," he replied 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 setup created by Taylor, watching a lame action movie that, according to her dad, was a classic.

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

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

"Yeah. So, they are also staying home for the week to make sure nobody tries to hurt Amy a 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 her father worriedly, the movie in the background forgotten.

"And how long would it take for the therapist to leak my identity or for 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 had gone over that argument so many times that he already knew what she would say.

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

"That's a 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 affection, and then the two of them settled back down to watch the rest of the movie.