Adam winced slightly, his skin trying to burn as he pushed Taylor's hip (The most PG area in reach) to shove her further away from the molten rock below.
Her floating shtick was cool and all, but her white cloud of energy thing was trying to melt everything nearby. Giving her the data crystals had stung pretty badly, even with his enhanced body.
But he couldn't just leave her floating over an ever deepening pit of way too hot rock.
As she floated over a relatively non-melted section of earth, he focused on the ground.
"Conversion."
There, a massive amount of high heat conducting metal. It would distribute the issue so at best she could warm up the ground a bit and not make a surprise lava bath.
Hissing, Adam pulled his arm out of danger and blew what cool air he could over his fingers. Taylor's conversion process was WAY exothermic. Her outfit had dissolved an hour ago.
Pausing, Adam winced. Right, just because she was glowing white and therefore impossible to see, did NOT mean she would appreciate being nude in 'public', even if he was the only one here. And in retrospect, it was a good thing he hit her outer hip when moving her. Best not to mention any of that.
With a wave of 'Manipulation', the layer of energy closest to her skin wove itself into micro-mesh cloth like his flame clothing of yesterday, back when 'Flame Manipulation' was all the rage.
Except he had far more practice now.
Still hidden by her massive glow, his power could feel her new shoes, pants, shirt, and massive ten-gallon cowboy hat.
Hopefully her questions about 'WHY AM I WEARING A HAT!?' would distract her from 'Why am I not wearing my old clothes!?'.
Either way, this should be less awkward than her falling nude into a puddle of lava.
Using 'Conversion' and 'Manipulation', he cleaned up the area, got rid of the trail of molten earth and stone leading to Taylor's new location, and (For the third or fourth time) tried to set up some snacks and drinks.
Note to self, his stock of snack food from Boro was running a tad low.
Leaning back in his chair, he absently began opening secured 'Transfer' portals to various Earths nearby. 'Research' would check them for radio, WiFi, or network data. He would make some notes on the place, and move on to the next.
After all, this Realm had been more than a little damaged, getting around needed a bit of exploration and mapping to ensure he and Taylor didn't land somewhere on fire or with acid air or whatever.
Sipping on his hot chocolate (It was a bit late for tea, he felt), he watched with relaxation as a multitude of worlds were slowly categorized, beside him a glowing woman pulsed while slowly converting her power into magical prayer crystals.
Good times.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Queen Administrator was having a blast!
Large sections of her clusters were busy researching the new data of course, and still importing in more from her Avatar's delicious snack, and only barely touching the extrapolation of new theories and stuff...
But the interesting stuff was the new protocols and cluster designs!
The crystal structures Adam provided to allow her to heal her human were simple to recreate, a small hill over there was already reforming in fact, but the design was so much more efficient and simple than her existing ones that her analysis clusters were going nuts!
Most of her crystals had already converted to this 'Purification' Dust stuff, but the progress had slowed now that she had a whole new design example for potential Cluster growth.
So of course, like any true Administrator, she had focused on enhancing and improving the most important clusters first: The ones for analysis, research, enhancement, and refinement.
Because the better she could analyze the examples, the better she could research how it operates. The better that research went, the more enhancing to existing clusters she could do... and the more she could strip away excess and refine the end product.
Which made analysis easier and more productive.
It was a loop of improvement, one Queen was running as fast as possible even as the implementation of the improvements were causing her planetary self to shift and reform from the changes.
This cycle of advancement would likely never end now, not that she wanted it to. After all, she was gaining far more benefits making her ability to improve herself better than if she wasted time on each individual ability she owned first.
Thankfully, she knew how to multitask.
Right, those protocols.
Radio waves, ranging from 65.8-108.0 MegaHertZ with interval frequencies of 30 KiloHertZ depending on region and policy, and can very more on various worlds based on this data... Normally people would make compromises in detection to save in space and resources, but Queen restructured an area on the northern hemisphere of her surface into a series of clusters, each one focused on an individual KiloHertZ of the radio spectrum.
Most of which were doomed to never carry relevant data, but she had space and storage abilities to record that empty silence without issue.
The WiFi protocols were going to be useful with those detection clusters, as it used the radio frequencies of 900 MegaHertZ and 2.4, 5, 5.9, and 60 GigaHertZ bands. At least it did on Adam's Earth Bet, so it should here as well... probably. If not, she would figure it out.
Just in case, better run the feeds of data from the many radio receivers even now being constructed through the analysis and research clusters. There could be all kinds of unknown protocols and frequencies used, especially considering the many tinkers out there.
Of course, radio waves and light waves are both electromagnetic waves, so the same clusters detecting strange data would ALSO give Taylor a 360 degree high definition visual input ability, not that she would thrust all that raw data at her Human. That would be annoying.
It should ALSO help detect gravimetric abnormalities, thanks to how those waves interacted... which should help detect certain types of camouflage, some bizarre devices, and so forth.
Queen Administrator hummed along, enjoying the buzz of her Improvement Cycle even as she would spare a cycle to examine her core Crystal Clusters and instigate another restructuring. And she hadn't even examined the 'Remote Access Dimensional Transfer' crystal pattern that would allow her to interact with distant mechanical devices! How well would that work with her organic species manipulation clusters after a few enhancements? Maybe she could merge them!
It felt like a good scratch when you hadn't even known you were needing one. An itch addressed that had been annoying for SO LONG that you got used to ignoring it.
It was glorious!
Absently, she twirled her tongue over the red shard in her avatar's hand, examining one of the larger databases of biological research data Adam had just casually handed over, her face flushed with pleasure and eyes half lidded with the surge of info.
She ignored Taylor awkwardly shuffling away as her mouth exploded in delicious, succulent data.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam paused when Taylor suddenly began absorbing all signals. Her area of influence went from brilliant bright light to absolute absence, an ellipsis of nothingness.
...Huh.
After a bit, he formed another Crystal with details on how to duplicate electromagnetic waves for examination without sucking them all directly into Taylor's soul. Cause that wasn't safe. And she was currently looking like some kind of demon/reality rift thing.
And with only barely a pause, he decided to just toss the thing at the girl. She was absorbing everything at the moment anyway, it would... ah, there it goes.
He blinked, eyes watering as the hole in reality flashed back into a bright white sun. So... progress was made.
At this point, he was really glad he hadn't included the really bizarre stuff, like how to spawn small drones or insects or whatever directly with Aura or who knows what. Or granted her access to Faith abilities or Magic directly.
Because she took a 'Self-Repair' kit and data on how to talk to people and has turned into a super-data-harvesting-hub thing. Which was neat.
So... plans.
He needed to get home for a bit. Aside from them expecting his arrival, he noticed that traveling from one reality to another without stopping by his home base made his mind... a bit flighty. Destabilized.
Adam needed the grounding that his 'home' reality granted. Something about that specific Realm made his soul settle and his mind clear. Probably because he was formed there.
He reviewed the inherited memories he got from showing up here.
Life was currently... a bit rough for the people of this timeline.
Death everywhere, of course, and yet there were still Villains with powers running around being dicks. Some of these planets people had been shoved to had monsters and such, others had people in danger, there were areas that needed support REALLY soon or things would get bad...
It was a lot of work.
...And he didn't want to do it. Not alone. He could spend thirty or forty years easily trying to fix all the problems here, no doubt.
He hummed. That felt like the 'Work Harder' option, not the 'Work Smarter' one.
So how could he help out this Taylor. Aside from 'Come to my side, we got cookies! And living versions of your family. And you can have a little sister!' which was more than a little tempting.
Adam tapped his hand against his chair, not noticing his body transforming more and more into his Variance skeleton form. He didn't have the time nor the inclination to either act as a doorway between places for the rest of his life OR to rebuild each planet of an entire Realm to a more stable form.
His skeletal hand paused mid tap.
A series of dangerous planets, filled with desperate people. Monsters, Villains, and... yes, rare resources, trade opportunity... loot.
A dark smirk spread over his skull as he looked up at the dark.
Sounds like some people need to give out some Quests.
And he had a System that could use some places filled with danger and reward, where the idea of never ending work is both expected and appreciated. With Loot. A portal leading one to another land, a doorway to another region...
He began to chuckle.
It seemed like a good time to introduce 'Dungeons' to his people.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor sighed as she ignored the moaning crystal angel behind her. Honestly, have some decency.
It wasn't that she was a prude. She wasn't.
She was just... busy a lot. And didn't have a lot of experience with people in a sexual context.
All that fighting for her life and to protect those she cared for didn't leave a lot of time for sexual exploration anyway, even IF the girl she treasured as a sister or more hadn't betrayed her and hurt her as much as she could over the course of years. And it wasn't like she didn't appreciate a man with rock hard abs or something, Brian was a damn fine example of that, but a girl could only be so attractive before even Taylor had to admit she was sexy as hell.
Ignoring the sounds as best she could, she focused on her powers at they changed.
And they WERE changing.
Every moment she could feel... new feeds of data. Like the armies of insects she used to possess, she could feel something that wasn't physical slowly fade into understanding. Like colors she had never seen, or flavors never tasted... these 'signal receivers' were oddly fascinating to examine as her minds explored them.
[Oh Shards, he included even MORE historical data WITH the healthcare database! Mmm... Queen likes... Oh yes...]
Ignore. Repress. Ignore.
Her ability to split focus had actually been enhanced over four times now by Queen Administrator as she continued this strange 'Improvement Cycle' of hers, where whole sections of her body were being enhanced and refined. Her range for SELF administration had somehow gone up... if her body was bisected, she could artificially restrict her blood vessels and control each half of her body individually if they were within a city block or two of each other. Which was great for 'pulling herself back together' and horrifying from a 'Oh God, Taylor was a zombie the whole time!' point of view.
Some things were MUCH better now. With direct communication between herself and her power, they had agreed to set up a list of what could be controlled by her 'Master' abilities. True, she had to use different methods now that the Entity network connecting so many people and creatures through minute dimensional rifts was decaying with both the Thinker and the Warrior dead, but Queen had assured her that she could cobble something together using the 'Remote Access Dimensional Transfer' crystal clusters Adam provided, even if it would take slightly longer to access creatures when in a new area.
Plus side, she could theoretically use her ability in places no Entity had ever traveled to! Downside, taking control of creatures would take longer now. Which wasn't a huge issue, it just meant that Queen Administrator had to figure out HOW each individual species needed to be Administrated before it was back to good ole 'I control the Swarm' territory.
Taylor wasn't sure how to feel about basically having THE master ability of any master who ever mastered, but then again she didn't know how to feel about every creature large and small on nearly all Earths being connected via dimensional rifts in an Entity designed network for power shards to hook into. Both were more than a little horrifying.
At least she wasn't accidentally enslaving everyone who got too close to her body now, driving them with no emotional understanding into a slaughter-fest to defeat a golden god.
So, progress.
To be honest, now that she could interact in a more understandable way with her partner... a lot of fears had faded. Oh, Queen wasn't human, and if it didn't involve Taylor directly she would care nothing about watching orphans burn or whatever, but she was honest, loyal, and a happy shard of an unknowable massive Entity of absent minded genocidal powers. Eugh.
Point was, Queen Administrator had no problems ensuring that Taylor COULDN'T use her powers in ways that Taylor explained were unacceptable. Or unethical. Oh, she could and would let Taylor dominate any living (and possibly mechanical?) thing to be a new part of her existence, but it would be a choice by HER, the HOST, Taylor alone. Not some uncontrollable mad decent into psychosis or a whim by Queen when bored.
And her personal fear of some Master or mechanical tool somehow forcing her into acting against her will or loved ones? Well, she now had someone with her personal interests as number one priority in a location no Parahuman could access who had a strong opinion on someone trying to control HER human.
It wouldn't go well for them.
That said, the biggest improvement to her situation was from a short conversation she managed to have with the shiny flier power BEFORE they met Adam, literally hours ago.
Because apparently, a standard side effect of controlling a species was a mental change... one that let Taylor treat the swarm as tools or extra sensory devices. Easily disposable minions. Which was fine with bugs and fish or whatever, but horrifying when used on sentient creatures. At least, it was horrifying to Taylor.
Fixing that single issue made Taylor's personal happiness levels skyrocket, even if Queen Administrator was apparently unsure why such a change was to be made. Still, her power Avatar had no issue disabling the mental conditioning effect when operating on sophont (Human level intelligence) creatures. Not like cockroaches cared if they were smashed into things, no reason to feel guilt over them.
[Ooh! Social context on inter-species relations in relation to possible issues during childbirth? Oh my! Look Taylor, there's pictures!]
Oh God, Queen was still talking. Ignore!
Somehow having thousands of copies of herself available did NOT make this situation less embarrassing.
