Narwhal noted Twilight's attendance and brought the group to order. "Right, now that we are all here, we need to touch base a bit."
Nightmare Moon sighed, her mostly human body shifting in her comfortable chair. "The new developer interfaces that Adam designed are amazing alone, and have simplified administration of the System, but I've been hearing a number of issues with the new 'Dungeon' feature regardless. My fans have been sending me messages and even actual prayers about issues, which I have been forwarding to the research department."
Twilight was already distracted on her side of the table, having also adopted human form over the last few months for their greatest achievement: Hands.
Sonia Lagarde had two aids bringing her needed paperwork even during this meeting, and was attending through holographic projection. "Adam's businesses are doing well enough, but the negotiated 'Quest Request Fee' has been a surprise income boost for this quarter, taxation for it will be a bit annoying but I've got my people on it."
She leaned forward. "That said, there is a large subsection similar to a trade network being set up interdimensionally now thanks to the Dungeon options. We've named it the 'Item Shop' and 'Auction House' for historical and cultural reasons. Or to be honest, some of my girls are geeks and thought it was an awesome idea."
Narwhal accepted the hard-light hologram documentation as Sonia continued. "There is an additional delivery fee to other Realms than ours, but it is negligible. I do want Adam to open up his Dungeon system to Remnant though, the RWBY Realm has a massive untapped market and Adam's 'Desert Garden Zoo' resort is the perfect place to set up as a Quest hub and commerce center."
Narwhal hummed. "And it would give our guild members training in combat, as I'm sure no one would mind our people killing Grimm over there. Especially since Adam took out some of the most dangerous and large ones."
CD tapped the table. "Sonia has asked Dragon and me if we could offer more products for Adam's business to manufacture. And we've had mixed results."
Dragon nodded. "We've been following the technological advancements being submitted from Remnant, since the upgrades to System allow messaging without having to bother Adam all the time. Robo and Boro. as well as the AI under them, have been talking about it a bit... but none of them have been able to duplicate Dust on their own yet despite the available schematics."
CD pulled up some reference charts. "Not too surprising for Robo's team or Shirley Temple's platforms, as the Star Wars Realm has MORE than enough high level energies already, but hopefully Boro's people will make some advancements now that Adam has helped Taylor convert her power into Dust."
Narwhal winced. "Just as a heads up, I don't want to send our people physically to the Star Wars Realm until we can protect them from the influence of the Force better." Not to mention any kids from there born in THIS Realm may infect this reality with the Force as well. "Right, Dragon, you've been helping Taylor adjust. How is she doing?"
The cyborg hologram sighed. "Not well. A lot of friends and coworkers died over the years and the poor thing had never really had down time to fully accept that. It doesn't help that many of them still exist in this reality, although apparently her local versions of her family have been VERY accepting of the situation."
She hummed. "So at least she will have some emotional support from them?"
Dragon chuckled. "Assuming that Annette leaves her extra-dimensional husband alone long enough. Little Taylor has been exchanging System messages with Taylor for hours now at least, and seems MORE than excited. The interactions seemed to help."
Narwhal paused. "Wait, how can Taylor be in the System? Wouldn't that convert Queen Administrator automatically?"
Twilight looked up from her work. "Ah, we were concerned too, but it turned out that Taylor has NOT joined the System." She went back to modifying the report she was reviewing. "Queen Administrator decided to join instead."
Narwhal felt her cyber twin body developing a twitch. What. The. Hell.
She sighed. "Moving on, Simmy, can you get Betty out of..."
The bright orange angel looked innocent. The bright blue angel looked smug.
Narwhal glared. "I can't call you both Simmy, and I won't put up with months of shenanigans where you two play up the confusion. Pick a name or I will make up silly ones for you."
Two slips of paper, one blue, one orange, fell to the table.
She picked them up. "Right, so Simurgh 'Simmy' Burns and Simurgh 'Sammy' Burns. Cause Simmy and Sammy won't get confusing." She sighed, the two nude beauties far too self satisfied. "EITHER of you, how do we get Betty out of Adam's Grid of Confinement without bothering the man or hurting her? He is far too tired to wake up for this, but we need to get the poor girl some supplies."
Simmy nodded, Sammy grinning in the background, and both held their arms out... and 'Transfer' pulsed as a blue skull faded into view. From the illusion of an open maw a confused cow Faunus stumbled into the room. "What!?"
Narwhal jumped from her seat and wrapped the unstable woman in a tight hug. "Betty! I'm so glad you are alright after that rough journey. How was your trip?"
Brown eyes blinked. "Narwhal?" She hesitantly returned the hug. "I... it was very confusing. For a while, I was in some field with grass everywhere, and... I mean, it felt dream like. I didn't get tired or hungry or thirsty... in a way it was soothing I guess."
Noticing the crowd over Narwhal's shoulder, she paused. "Uh. Hello everyone!"
Nightmare snorted. "At least Adam has good taste in women, I was not impressed by that Sienna Khan gal."
CD gently gave the Alicorn/Currently Human seductress a side hug. "Don't be like that, the poor girl had been in a leadership position during a massive crisis. I'm sure she had other sides to her personality than sexual aggression."
Betty giggled. "Not really, it's why she made a female harem to begin with. Not that we complained too much, mind you, but there is a reason why my former Boss hadn't passed the reins yet to the next generation."
Twilight was mentally out of it, but she absently tried to contribute anyway. "I don't really approve of reins because of how tricky they can be to use safely, there are better sexual aids honestly."
Narwhal held back a giggle. "Quite so." Leading Betty to a chair, she began introductions. "You've been roughly introduced from our messaging while you were back in your home realm, but just in case..."
It only took a few minutes to introduce each woman to the Faunus, although she did pause on one. "Sonia Lagarde you did not meet due to her own very busy schedule, but she is Adam's business woman and the boss of his financial, soon to be multidimensional empire."
Sonia's smile was wide. "I've been told you have contacts with the livestock market on Remnant? Because Adam very recently acquired a number of untenanted farms that also need quite a few animals and multiple types of plant life. Interested in getting some stable income and a bit of a political base in THIS reality as well?"
From Betty's wide grin, the two would get along swimmingly.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Taylor felt Queen Administrator analyzing the many creatures and electronics as she relaxed in her temporary guest quarters. Not commanding them at the moment, just learning from scratch how to 'Administrate' without the overwhelming support of an Entity incursion dimensional fracture web installation. The bugs came easily enough, she had the memories to help Queen cheat when doing the tests, but rats and so forth took much longer, especially because the provided facilities were surprisingly clean for a vary large radius.
Though connecting her mind to the router had been a hell of a drug trip. It took Queen hours to take the random screaming data and format it into something Taylor's mind could treat like using a computer, instead of seeing binary and tasting wireless interference.
So thanks to some messed up meta-shard clusters cobbled together by Queen, Taylor was now mentally browsing the local version of ParaHumans Online and the rest of the horrors the internet had to share. Dozens of Taylors, each mind exploring the vast expanse of the digital age. Which turned out to be mostly porn, but that seemed normal for any unregulated communication service.
ANOTHER message came in, through System. From little-girl-Taylor. And for the record, Taylor didn't remember being that adorable at ALL. Seriously, her little self had big anime eyes and everything.
With a deep sigh and an eager giggle from Queen, she opened it.
And could barely understand the message. Again.
[Ooh! I've never used that method of prioritizing lists of actions based on human limits of patience, resource availability, and threat rating! I mean, sure it is 0.312% less effective than my current policies, but then again I never took emotional turmoil into my calculations before. Your Little Human is so adorable!]
Sibling, they are called siblings. And I think dimensional versions of self are like step-siblings or something. Probably not cousins.
[Right, Type this to her, and maybe include some of my theories on how to allocate resources based on theoretical needs verses reported issues.]
Groaning, Taylor was half way into typing the letters into the System interface illusion showed by Queen when she paused. "Wait, YOU'RE the one directly connected to the System, why aren't YOU typing it!?"
Suspicious silence.
VERY suspicious.
With a growl, Taylor reached with her soul Avatar to shake Queen Administrator's shoulders in frustration... when she slipped slightly on the crystal surface of the planet.
And pulled.
Taylor was completely squished as Queen Administrator's Purity Dust Crystal Avatar form appeared over her own body, falling without style while squeaking in surprise.
Queen was confused.
[What the... How did you... Wait. Your real body is in my soul while this is your Avatar!? No, they are both real and I am both real and... No, neither of us is real any more. Or not. What did you DO!?]
Taylor was confused.
Taylor blinked, a surprisingly warm and attractive nude crystal representation of her powers holding her down. "I... I'm not sure?"
Gently pushing her partner off, the crystal angel vanished back into her soul.
Taylor nodded. "I am completely not sure."
But no matter what, she WAS sure that she wasn't going to be typing multiple page conversations to miniature versions of herself anymore. Especially if she could pull Queen Administrator out of her soul 'inventory' like a sandwich. Seriously, Taylor had nearly gone spar having to type up those very complicated AND very boring conversations.
[ACK! There was two of me in here and now we are one of me and I think I ate myself!]
Whatever, less typing for Taylor.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Ghira blinked at the message on his Scroll. "Why the hell does Betty want to buy so many animals?"
Kali shrugged, cuddling with little Blake who seemed distracted by nothing. "Probably another farm Adam is building. The guy got stuck in a loop after a while, we have more produce being grown in our various new cities than we can physically harvest at this point. Without his systems to keep the things from rotting I'm sure the nation would smell very funky by now."
Her husband grumbled. "Well, at least he came up with a fix for THAT issue. He has a bunch of people that are willing to travel here to accomplish various 'Quests' that we can submit. According to the email, the cost for transportation and the majority of the rewards will be handled by Adam for us, even if the other Kingdoms will have to include a bit of a fee."
She hummed, booping Blake's adorable nose. "He has been more than just a good friend to us and our people. Did Betty mention how she's settling in?"
Ghira sighed and forwarded the attached messages to the various people in Betty's circle. Apparently the communication method between wherever the heck Adam went and here made direct messaging a complicated affair. Well, whatever works.
~~~Broken Adventure~~~
Adam floated in sleep, the ever long arms of Squishy cradling his form as he recovered.
It would take time.
Her own small, pudgy Avatar was floating through the Crystal Castle, visiting the deepest region and the spark within.
Thankfully, it had begun to stabilize.
Best not to risk visiting a Realm so similar for a long while though, because towards the end Squishy had to begin allocating vital resources to suppressing the damage caused by the trip. It hadn't gotten too risky... but it had been approaching dangerous levels of concern.
Her motions paused as she carefully moved to the second concern, the Grid of Confinement.
Simmy and Sammy could enter and leave as desired, their cell unlocked by Adam back when Simmy was an only child, but once again Squishy carefully examined each prisoner.
Simmy had allocated the harvested Endbringer Crystal Clusters to each of the three, enhancing Behemoth and Leviathan to higher levels and raising their intelligence to something like animal level. It couldn't compare to the massive amounts hoarded for her and her sister of course, but just in case Squishy checked each cell to ensure that any soul instability caused by the recent events would not risk confinement compromise. Or in other words, unwanted escapes.
Thankfully, the improvements added to ensure Betty's safe transport had enhanced the general stability of the Grid as a whole. It all seemed secure.
She patted the cell with Mister G, the rumbling purr causing Adam's soul to slightly vibrate. At least he was doing well.
With her blue eye watching Adam's soul, she went back to directing his recovery process. As many advancements as he had made so far, on the most fundamental level he was still a bit on shaky ground. Too much progress in one area could actually cause further damage in others. They would have to discuss which area of advancement for him to work on in the future, at least until the risk was lower. Maybe helping out with the new DA Guild...
Yes, with certain limitations so that she could use those recovered resources to enhance healing, it would allow her to speed up his recovery process without forcing the poor boy to sit in a hospital somewhere for a few months.
Because letting Adam get bored had proven to be a bit problematic in the past. Best head it off early on.
Sending a System message to Narwhal and the girls, Squishy went back to work using power charges being generated to further stabilize his recovering mind and soul. They could find SOMETHING for him to do that didn't require redesigning planets, invading other Realms, or saving nations from being consumed by monsters. Probably.
