In this case Minerva basically has all the ratings. Brute 8+ due to her shields and Knight Armour, Blaster 12+ for obvious reasons, Tinker YES again for obvious reasons, not too sure they'd slap a Thinker rating on her unless they knew about the multitasking, Changer is probably pretty high due to being seen to turn into a cat, Mover 10+ for flight and planetary range teleportation (that they know about anyway) and finally I'm not sure about Stranger as I'm not certain she's displayed any form of Invisibility or MYOB field etc. The only rating I actually doubt she has is Master since the PRT will likely think that any drones are at least semi-autonomous befitting a Tinker rather than a Master.
Just a quick question, the person who started this conversation mentioned they're on Chapter 61. Is any of this conversation relevant to that stage of the story?
They've obviously not hit the post-chapter 70/Interlude 7 sidestory entry covering some of her ratings with explanations. Followed by the grunt version.
They've obviously not hit the post-chapter 70/Interlude 7 sidestory entry covering some of her ratings with explanations. Followed by the grunt version.
Just a quick question, the person who started this conversation mentioned they're on Chapter 61. Is any of this conversation relevant to that stage of the story?
No offense to you, I would suggest waiting until 70 to look at the mentioned threat rating. I was mostly commenting that the conversation didn't seem particularly relevant to YOUR situation. That is all. And I remembered that my last readthrough was threadmarks only and didn't run into side elements that I remembered seeing.
Infinity in the above was used as an adjective and therefore is explictly referring to act of escalation an openent or your previous peak rather than established actual and completed objects or an infinite sequence of rational numbers. Taking this into account it means it can abstractly be described as a a non-terminating recursive process ( "add 1 to the opponents number if it is greater than your previous number or if the opponents number is lesser then your previous number then instead add 1 to your previous number") .
Since transfinite numbers are generally accepted to be a subset of Actual Infinity (Infinity which comprises of established actual and completed objects or an infinite sequence of rational numbers) this would make them explictly incompatible with the type of infinite tied to escalation aka Potential Infinity (a non-terminating process that produces a sequence with no last element, and where each individual result is finite or - as in this case - a defined Infinite Set and is achieved in a finite number of steps), as the later explictly exists to be contrasted with the former.
On the flipside this means if the type Type of Infinity described above is pitted against Actual Infinity it will always be greater due to the non-terminating nature of the recursive process meaning it will always be "the given set/subset of Actual Infinity +1".
Infinity in the above was used as an adjective and therefore is explictly referring to act of out escalating an openent or your previous peak rather than established actual and completed objects or an infinite sequence of rational numbers. Taking this into account it means it can abstractly be described as a a non-terminating recursive process ( "add 1 to the opponents number if it is greater than your previous number or if the opponents number is lesser then your previous number then instead add 1 to your previous number") .
A known number + 1 is not infinite, no matter how arbitrary said known number is, if you can define it and the amount it's increasing by, it can't be infinite. A known number + X is though. Infinite, at least in this type, is undefined. And Taylor doesn't merely one-up those who go against her, if they challenge her, she pulls more 'trying things' out, enough to deal with the problem, and goes back to what she she was doing + X.
But it isn't a known number, due to the recursive nature of everything coming after the OR command. It is actually Y+1 = X (where Y is your enemys number) until X > Y at which point X becomes redefined to X = X+1; an infinitely expanding unknown variable due to the infinitely recursive nature of its application to its previous state.
Taylor isn't just escalating against an enemy but also against her prior self.
But it isn't a known number, due to the recursive nature of everything coming after the OR command it is actuall X + 1 where X = X+1, an infinitely expanding unknown variable due to the infinitely recursive nature of its application to its previous state.
I did say that it didn't matter what that first number was. If it is defined, it isn't infinite, and if the amount that's added to it is defined, the result is also not infinite. But if the second bit is undefined, or unknown, then you can consider it infinite. And the way this was phrased, if an opponent brought out a defined amount of of resources and power against Minerva(Taylor), she would add + 1 to it and win. That is escalation, but that's not Infinite Escalation. For Infinite Escalation, her response has to be more than just a basic stronger response, it has to be unexpected and undefineable. And that's how this particular Taylor does things, her responses to viable threats are overwhelming and maddening.
Your basic description of the situation is fine, but the Y+1, where Y is a known quantity, is not infinite. While my suggested Y+X, where Y is a known quantity and X is unknown, can be, depending on other factors.
It quickly turned out that being a Goddess and being a known Goddess were two different things. She'd seemingly been picking up generic 'worship energy' pointed at healing and repair in general, coupled with people knowing she existed. Once known to be a Goddess she started getting actual prayers, with legitimate content.
Being prayed to was just bizarre, even if she was certain it had happened before. Now she just happened to be able to hear the prayers. Multitasking allowed her to pay attention to what was being asked for...and three quarters of what people wanted wasn't even theoretically within her remit. No wonder most deities apparently stopped listening to prayers eventually, given the signal-to-noise ratio she was already getting.
...and she wasn't exactly shrinking her following by dropping groups of security devices into homes where people prayed to her to get them away from abuse, with nurse devices waiting outside. She wasn't restricting herself to Earth there either, which was probably going to cause more people to worship her...and possibly make her more powerful. Except she wasn't sure how it worked if you were worshiped for something that didn't fall under what you were supposed to be a deity of.
On the things that were in theory in her remit, the vast majority were kind of stupid. The 'repair' side of things moreso, as the bulk of those were wanting things that nobody did regular maintenance on to suddenly work despite the lack of maintenance. She also wasn't exactly into the idea of 'miracle healing through prayer'...and hadn't actually checked if she could manage that. Those unwilling to use healing booths set up on Earth or elsewhere by the Coconuts were also being a bit stupid, in her opinion. They'll pray to a Goddess to ask for healing, but not take the free healing offered by said Goddess's technology?
Most of the rest were simply having their planets added to a list to be visited by the Coconuts.
"So how's our resident Goddess doing this morning?" Pepper asked as she sat down. The bulk of the Avengers had gone off to help Fury take care of a problem in California while Thor had taken Jane to Asgard a few days ago 'to help continue to acclimate Odin to the presence of humans'.
Frigga claimed that Jane could give as good as she got with some science and Odin was more than happy to watch her battle it out intellectually with the Asgardian scientists.
"Turns out that there are...problems with the area," Taylor replied. "The 'nine realms' were connected despite their distance, and the way that was done is unstable due to their motion through the universe. It started screaming at the back of my mind a few days ago as something that needed to be 'healed' before it caused problems in the near future, so I'm remotely controlling things to put some extra 'pivot points' into the connections."
Pepper shook her head after a moment. "I have no clue what you're talking about."
"Without the fixes it wouldn't be long before portals between the realms would open on their own as the connections forged between them twist just right to overlap with the realms themselves. With the fixes the connections will just rotate in conjunction with one another, though anyone used to using them without noticing the rotations might come out the other end sideways or upside-down until they get used to things."
"Oh."
"And figuring out what I was feeling involved using the stones, and those also showed me where to find a group that would've tried to claim one of the Infinity Stones to remake the universe into something most life couldn't handle. They're nearly the last of their species, with only three others outside of their group in the universe, and despite being long-lived they're reproductively extinct. I've separated them from their technology, which was interesting to examine if incredibly dangerous in some ways, and time will tell if therapy can help them be less omnicidal or not."
Really, some of their tech reminded Taylor of the shards, just with fewer safeties. Using a black hole's gravity gradient to travel at high speed was impressive, and stellar dust would just be pulled into the black hole, but it was by no means safe for even your own people if you mis-timed your arrival somewhere. Or your departure. Or any other number of things.
"So," Pepper said as she processed that. "You just prevented a major problem, maybe two?"
"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," Taylor said with a shrug. "Far easier to fix things before they explode on you, though I do have to decide what to do with the asshole that wants to try to kill me."
"...you're a Goddess."
"And he's got a God-killing sword. One he's had long enough that his life force is bound quite tightly to the sword itself. I...get the feeling I won't be able to do anything about that? He should've died centuries ago, but the sword has been keeping him alive. Right now I'm monitoring him as he seeks both information on where to find me as well as continues to hunt down other Gods that I'm helping to keep away from him."
"You're leading him on a wild goose chase?"
"I'm examining his abilities and tactics to the best of my ability to do so, as well as the sword, but I think I'm going to have to confront him directly. A couple of light attempts at grabbing the sword from him while he's using it have failed and his ability to use it to travel is proving to be difficult to block."
Pepper looked like she wanted to rant, but was holding herself back. "You're going to directly confront someone with a weapon that could possibly kill you?"
Taylor rolled her eyes. "I'm almost positive that he can't use the sword to kill me like he does with local Gods due to my origins being from outside of the multiverse. Maybe strip me of my status as a Goddess, but he'd have to get a much more solid hit on me to kill me and I keep myself well-protected there."
"But..."
"And there's a slim chance that the sword itself can slice open the edge of the multiverse and let me leave, so I want to check on that."
The woman sighed. "Just...don't let him actually kill you? Or cripple you, for that matter."
"I'm the Goddess of Healing."
"...point."
It had taken the better part of a month to properly fix the 'convergence' problem, but examinations of the connections between realms made it obvious that they were no longer twisting up such that they might overlap with the realms themselves. This would also prevent a 'post-convergence weakness' between the realms as the twisted-up connections recovered.
She was still waiting on one of the 'Celestial Emergences' to come to fruition so she could see her solution work and possibly deal with the complaining Celestials, but those didn't happen just because you wanted them to.
Since she seemed to have plenty of time, she'd outright told the 'Dark Shadow Lord' where and when he could find her if he really wanted to fail to kill her. Tony, Thor, and Hulk all wanted to be present to help her, even if Bruce was a bit less sure of things, but she insisted on doing so alone. Thor had then commented that there were very few places the Bifrost could not reach, so she would have backup.
He seemed to have forgotten that she had the Space Stone, the source of the Bifrost's power...and had rebuilt the stupid thing for Asgard. Just before she left, she remotely started an automatic maintenance cycle that would take a full day to complete and risked blowing the thing up if they interrupted it.
She'd arrived half an hour early, figuring that her opponent would also want to arrive early. In that regard she wasn't disappointed, though his attempt to sneak up on her was pitiful. A quick blink out of the way of his attempt to stab her as he came out of her shadow was easy enough.
"Hello there," she said. "I understand you want to kill me."
He seemed surprised that she'd vanished before he could land his blow, but eventually nodded. "Nothing personal."
"You're just on a crusade to end all Gods, right?"
"Yep."
"Can't let you continue that."
"Not like you can stop me."
Instead of giving her time to retort, he darted at her at surprisingly high speed. She dodged at an angle he couldn't spin to meet in time, but a shadow beast sprung from his back to lunge at her instead. She took that out with a bullet, then had to dodge shadow tentacles. Deciding that she'd had enough of the shadow tricks around her, she slapped a glowing layer onto her shields to remove having a shadow.
A few more shadow beasts were sent at her while he observed, obviously waiting for the 'perfect moment' to strike while the new obviously grappling-focused beasts distracted her. She took out a couple of the beasts, but realized that she'd probably gotten complacent in her training when shadow tentacles leapt from the shadows of the shadow beasts to try to grab her. The Dark Shadow Lord then came out of another of the shadows while she was dodging, swinging the sword, and though it shuddered on her Knight Armor it still managed to take off most of her left arm.
Before her arm was fully severed, she'd retaliated with a bullet to the man's face, the explosion and resistance of her Knight Armor causing him to loosen his grip on the sword. She grabbed the sword with telekinesis as the explosion was launching him back, and the sword stayed with her as he landed a distance away with a thud nearly in sync with her severed arm landing next to her. A moment later the shadow beasts and tentacles dissolved around her.
"Gah," she said, looking down at her arm. "I'm really slipping if I let you do that."
"At least I crippled you," he said.
She rolled her eyes and used another telekinesis spell to pull the severed arm off the ground and back into place, her in-core device quickly purging the dark energies from the cut and reattaching the limb without so much as a scar. "I'm the Goddess of Healing. As if I couldn't reattach an arm."
The shock of seeing her reattach the arm seemed to be what did the man in, so she sighed and turned to the sword itself. "So, are you focused on killing Gods because of him, or was he focused on killing Gods because of you?"
Unsurprisingly, she didn't get an answer. Another sigh was followed by bringing out the pair of Infinity Gauntlets, and she used one to shield her own life force while the other was used to reach into the sword. A pitiful attempt to bind to her life force was made, but failed before the Infinity Stones even got into the mix, and she learned that the sword was 'All-Black the Necrosword'. The current form it took had been the preferred form for the Dark Shadow Lord, but with a suitably powerful wielder it would take a form suited to them.
The crusade against the Gods did appear to originate with it, as it was created to kill Gods...but not 'personifications of universal concepts' like Death. In fact, it had seemingly hoped to be claimed by such a concept...and as she learned that, she realized that it had reversed course and started binding its own life force to her as the personification of the concept of Healing. She could tell it had always hoped that its crusade across the Gods would attract the attention of Death or Oblivion, but it seemed delighted to have a more 'permanently manifested' concept to bind to instead.
Having its shadow powers and ability to kill Gods flow into her was very weird, and the sword itself shifted into more of a black energy blade than the style it had previously held. Then it vanished...into her soul? And started watching what her multitasking instances were doing with prayers, of all things.
"You were supposed to destroy it," Death said from where she'd appeared in skeleton form. "Not tame it."
"Goddess of Healing," Taylor retorted.
"...and now Goddess of Shadows, as the sword wasn't destroyed to release that fragment of power back into the cosmos."
"I honestly think it's just a sword-focused symbiote that couldn't find someone it was able to bond to safely, so it functioned as more of a parasite while hoping you or Oblivion would take it up."
"We aren't really compatible with such things."
"I'm aware of that now."
"My other-dimension counterparts didn't say anything about you claiming a second domain. The rest of you just destroyed the sword if it happened to cross their paths."
"Claiming? I've not claimed a damned thing. Every universe I spend any time in keeps thrusting responsibility onto me and I have to adapt to it. I'm starting to think I'm cursed in some fashion as it didn't even start here. Just some multiversal plaything or something."
"Do be careful with those lines of thought. You don't want to go there."
"Go where?"
"Not explaining further or you will. Sadly for you, the sword won't help you leave. It's just as trapped here as you are, being tied to and powered by local concepts. In fact, now that it's bonded to you, it may make it harder for you to leave."
...Taylor's eye twitched at that, and she wondered if the fucking stones had convinced her to go after it to make it harder for her to 'abandon them' or something crazy like that.
Feeling the sword exert Godly power to grant a prayer to a girl hoping some other God would help her and her father, since the local God was being an asshole and no longer helping his people, just had her twitching more. A Coconut would need to visit the planet though, as the population was on the brink of extinction due to the neglect from their deity.
"What the fuck were you thinking?" Bruce asked, a week later looking like he was ready to 'Hulk out'. Which, given how much they'd been getting along, probably meant that the Hulk was feeling quite similarly.
"...are you just getting properly angry about me going after the Dark Shadow Lord alone?" Taylor asked, confused. She'd picked up more worshipers due to the Infinity Coconut live-streaming the whole thing, but she'd thought that she'd gotten the 'yell at her for being reckless' dance out of the way already.
"You were fighting thousands of attack drones in the middle of a category five hurricane!"
Taylor blinked a couple of times. "Er, yeah? That's just a training exercise. The Dark Shadow Lord shouldn't have been able to get the drop on me, so I've obviously slacked too much on my training."
"...a training exercise."
"Yes."
"You call that a training exercise?"
"A light one, honestly. I'm going to need to add drones trying to get the drop on me in various fashions to the next one, maybe arm a few with nukes too?"
"But..."
"You did see the videos from where I came from, right?"
The man shuddered, then stormed off, and she shrugged. Followed by checking how many of her training sessions the stupid Infinity Coconut had live streamed without warning her, and so far it was just the one.
"Minerva!" Tony called as he came in. "Why didn't you tell me you were going to train in a hurricane? I would've joined you!"
And that showed some of the differences between the mild-mannered, if frequently angry, scientist and the adrenaline-junky billionaire. Come to think of it, Thor was likely to be a little miffed that he'd not been invited either. Maybe she needed to set up some of the 'training games' that had been available back home?
"Hello, Hela," Taylor said, startling the woman. A necroblade formed from darkness and death energy and launched a moment later, but it was trivially deflected.
Being the Goddess of Shadows actually put those in Taylor's remit, on a higher level than Hela, and conferred immunity as a result.
"Who are you?" Hela asked after seeing the blade do nothing.
Taylor sighed. "Minerva, Lady Escalation, Goddess of Healing, Goddess of Shadows. Pile of other titles that don't matter here, the one who built you this little home."
"...oh."
"The therapists say that you're still power-drunk though, and they don't think they can solve that. So they asked me to step in directly."
That had the woman narrowing her eyes. "Power-drunk?"
"You're an asshole when you think you can use your phenomenal Asgard-granted power to get your way and still hope to eventually take over the universe when you get out of here."
"Asgard's rightful place is in charge."
"Nope. Thanks to how you ended up connected to Asgard, you're less mortal than your family, but you're still mortal and that kind of attitude just isn't acceptable." Taylor manifested All-Black. "This will only hurt a little, and I'll heal up your wounds when I'm done."
Hela attempted to form a wall of swords, but Taylor exerted her own power to stop it. That was enough to put the woman into a stupor long enough to be stabbed through the side of her chest, and All-Black 'ate' ninety percent of her connection to Asgard and her connection to shadows that allowed the forming of necroblades. Not enough to make her no longer an Asgardian Goddess, but she would be a much weaker Goddess now, and probably limited to keeping a single blade manifested at a time. It would also be a weaker blade.
True to what she'd said, Taylor healed the wound up afterwards, including 'healing' the connection to Asgard at the reduced power level so that it wouldn't recover over time to the previous level. With that done, and Hela now essentially 'safe', Taylor broke Odin's seal keeping Hela in Hel. The thing was stupidly fragile unless you were an Asgardian and she was reasonably certain that she could have broken it before being made a Goddess as it was. Dropping Hela at Frigga's feet a few minutes later was easy enough after that.
"Thank you," Frigga replied as she gestured for Hela to be taken by some attendants for a proper examination and fitting for a new wardrobe.
"Not a problem," Taylor replied. "She was a bit of a drain on resources and her mental improvements had basically stalled. Too full of herself, really."
"A side effect of her upbringing, sadly. But now we can work on it properly, though there will undoubtedly be conflict with Loki and she is going to want to bring back some of the old stories about the glory of conquest."
"But now Thor can probably slap her down if needed."
"Oh, I expect Loki to be plenty to keep her in line. He's been doing so much better since your arrival."
Taylor shrugged. That was family politics she saw no reason to get involved with.
Making the training areas had been reasonably simple, and then Taylor had reached out to various groups about using them. The Masters of the Mystic Arts, S.H.I.E.L.D., the Avengers, and the Asgardians to start with. She didn't expect this to turn into a competition, or for Pepper to get in on the mix when it came to the games and difficulty levels that didn't require superhuman abilities.
Also underestimated was how much time and effort would go into getting good at the DOOM recreation. The team-based games were getting a lot of play because everyone saw that as good training, but solo runs of DOOM drew far more people in than expected, to the point of needing to set up additional areas so that multiple runs could happen simultaneously. Luckily, the Mars-like planet she'd set that up on had plenty of room for additional areas.
When it came to the team-based games, the Avengers were in competition with teams from Asgard for the best score while S.H.I.E.L.D. was taking the Masters of the Mystic Arts having better scores than them as an insult. Likely without actually knowing what someone trained in the mystic arts could do, but the teamwork side of things was a bit lacking on the mystic arts side so they didn't have much of a lead.
Bruce and Hulk were also getting closer a lot faster thanks to throwing them into games that required brute strength and puzzle solving to get through. Hulk did not like losing, but also apparently detested the idea of cheating, which led to needing more of a balance with Bruce to complete the games. The therapist devices were absolutely thrilled about that as it had apparently significantly accelerated progress.
A run of 'train in a hurricane' with Loki, Thor, and Tony had also happened. Loki had underestimated how much 'can fly' would be needed, Thor had a great time, and when they were done Tony had spent three hours ranting that actively fighting in a hurricane should not have visibly weakened it like that. Doubly so when Thor seemed to constantly try to 'perk it up'. Taylor had shrugged and commented on it not being the first time she'd weakened a storm during training.
J.A.R.V.I.S. had simply asked for her sensor data to examine and Pepper had been visibly annoyed that Tony had been 'that reckless' even if she was confident that Taylor could keep the man alive.
Dropping out of dinner on short notice a month later had very obviously annoyed Pepper, with Tony seeming more understanding, but having one of the Celestials show signs that their Emergence was starting meant going out there. Apparently a ship full of medical tourists landing was enough to bump things up, as if having a reproductive stage that destroyed a planet being able to be triggered by tourists arriving wasn't a problem for a supposedly-intelligent species.
She was liking Celestials less every time she thought about them.
True to predictions, the Celestial was shunted from the inside of the planet through the easier exit path to appear further out in the star system. Also predicted was the arrival of another, significantly larger Celestial. Being in their presence, it quickly became obvious that the Celestials in general were somewhat like self-mobile Infinity Stones, more balanced than the individual stones yet more versatile alone as a result. But also unlikely to be able to stand up to the full set.
They were also, to her senses, likely easily killed with All-Black, if not a dozen or more other options she had before pulling on Godly might.
Taylor looked over the larger Celestial, then reached out with her magic to speak the Allspeak. "Arishem the Judge, I assume?
"You have crippled a Celestial," Arishem replied, looming over Taylor.
"Crippled?" Taylor replied.
"Jabrim the Fabricator is a fraction of the size they would have obtained had they absorbed much of the planet's mass."
"They don't feel any weaker despite that."
There was a pause as the two Celestials shared a look, but Arishem then turned back to her. "That may be, but there are many tasks that require larger sizes."
"Then find something else to consume that isn't going to kill an entire planet's worth of life."
"Who are you to decide that you can judge them worthy of life and a Celestial unworthy of proper growth?"
Taylor dumped some feed stock into matter-to-mana conversion and lashed out with a binding spell, catching Arishem with it around its neck and wrists, before bringing out the Infinity Gauntlets. "I am Minerva, Lady Escalation, Goddess of Healing, Goddess of Shadows, and right now? Your attitude means that now I'm going to judge if you are worthy to continue to exist."
The Celestial struggled against the binding while the newly-born one looked on, and then the Infinity Stones lit up and Taylor 'dove' into Arishem's mind with them. She did not like his attitude towards 'lesser species', seeing them more as tools than anything else, but at the same time she noted that only once in over a hundred failed Emergences had he destroyed the species protected anyway.
His treatment of the Deviants and Eternals he'd created was also...problematic, though the latter was essentially trying to clean up the former. Outside of managing Celestial births he largely kept out of the affairs of 'lesser species' entirely, allowing them to develop as they would. On that front, he didn't even control the Celestials themselves all that much, ensuring that they had basic lessons and an understanding of their overall purpose in the universe before letting them go off and do their own things.
She pulled out of his mind and glared at him. "You yourself already know that a large percentage of Celestials eventually shed matter from themselves to become more compact than their original sizes in order to better interact with life throughout the universe. Those who wish to grow larger can take in matter to do so, but they do not need to consume a planet holding life to manage it. I also don't appreciate you hiding the 'true purpose' of your Eternals from them. Sending synthetic intelligent beings to protect a planet for eons only to ensure that a Celestial Emergence destroys the planet is why you have to keep wiping their memories."
"You do not have the power to judge me," Arishem challenged.
Taylor pulled All-Black out of her soul. "Do you want to try me? I saw in your mind that you witnessed a previous wielder of this blade behead a Celestial. Do you wish to be the second Celestial thus killed?"
That had Arishem pausing, and feeling concerned, before nodding as much as he could. "I assume agreement to your terms is required?"
"Yes. You will inform your Eternals of their true purpose, assuming they do not already know, as well as that the situation has changed due to the shunts that I know you could have been using all along. That should remove the need to mind-wipe the Eternals between Emergences as well. I imagine you will have far fewer failed Celestial births as a result of the changes, but if I find you not putting the shunts in place when you seed planets then I will hunt you down."
Arishem again nodded. "I accept your terms."
Taylor released the binding spell. "Then go. Take Jabrim with you. If the Eternals on this planet wish to return to you then I will ensure they reach you."
The two Celestials vanished together a moment later, and she dismissed All-Black. The sword was a little annoyed that she'd not used it to kill the arrogant Celestial, but understood her reasoning. Instead, it flexed some of her power to grant a young kid a necrodagger to defend herself against a large animal, which she bit back a sigh over. She then returned to Earth, knowing without checking that the Infinity Coconut had live-streamed that whole thing to Earth and the planet Jabrim had been growing into at a minimum.
She checked anyway, finding that Asgard and Omnipotence City had been included as well, but blinked a couple of times when she finally realized that using the Infinity Gauntlets caused the Infinity Coconut to glow. Possibly because the stones in the gauntlets were small extensions of the real stones and she was technically drawing on them? It would certainly help explain how they could be in three places at once, anyway.
"It's kind of funny," Loki said one day as they sat in the tower after dinner.
"What's kind of funny?" Hela asked. She'd taken to visiting Earth while 'escorted' by Loki to get away from Thor...at least after carefully watching some of the videos of Taylor and deciding that being bested by a powerful Goddess 'favored by the Universal Death' wasn't an insult.
"Minerva here has spread her message further than any other God or Goddess, likely without even realizing she was doing so."
"I blame the Infinity Stones," Taylor retorted.
"Did they start you setting up physical and mental healing facilities on worlds across the universe?"
"...only through giving me the ability to build ships that could traverse it more quickly than I was able to before."
"Well, you've become the single most worshiped Goddess Asgard is aware of because of the healing pods and therapist devices alone."
Hela nodded. "Your power is very evident to those sensitive to it, and has grown significantly every time we meet. Allowing the followers of other Gods to file complaints against their deities has just made you more popular."
Loki shook his head. "She lets them file complaints against her as well. I understand that the most common response is that if you aren't willing to treat your equipment properly then you have to expect it to fail, though I don't know enough about the Goddess of Shadows side to know what might be valid there."
Taylor sighed. "Honestly? We don't get complaints to speak of because very few people pray for that side at all. Ninety percent of the time they do it's letting someone suddenly hold a blade to defend themselves with. The rest of the time it's allowing someone to see well enough in the dark to find their way home. All-Black grabs the former, usually before I notice them, and delights in coming up with the most vicious designs it can if an innocent is defending themselves against an abuser. Mostly because that's about the only time I won't complain about the designs of the blades or their innate ability to cause pain despite their designs."
"Huh. Well, word of missionaries spreading 'your word' has even reached Asgard."
"And at least seventeen ships that are doing 'healing runs' to planets that are reasonably well-off but don't see a lot of traffic."
Hela nodded after a moment. "Ferrying people to planets that you have set your equipment up on?"
"No, as soon as they were noticed I just stuck healing pods into the ships so they could land, let a bunch of people get healed, and move on without having to spend a pile of time going back and forth."
Loki snickered. "You gave up on the 'not going to be a Goddess' side of things, didn't you?"
"I've run out of ideas for leaving, so yes. And I'm not sure why Death went out of her way to tell me that she isn't looking for a relationship, likely ever."
I think it's about time this little excursion into the Marvel Cinematic Universe came to an end...mostly because it's hard writing in the MCU when I've only seen a few distinct scenes across various films and haven't picked up any comic books in 15+ years.
Yes, I've been winging it the entire time, not having seen more than a fraction of any single movie in the MCU.
Hopefully I left it on a good point for everyone anyway.
A lovely little sidestory ended that I quite liked a bit. Would love to see what you come up with next for the multiversal adventures of Minervas many splits.
Well, since she can't get out of this multiverse there's really not much higher she can reach anyway. Sure, there's a few people above her but those generally don't interfer with their creations.
At this point Taylor is technically the ruler of it all, mostly because the only people more powerful than her won't contest that claim. She's doing good work after all.
"I've run out of ideas for leaving, so yes. And I'm not sure why Death went out of her way to tell me that she isn't looking for a relationship, likely ever."
Yaaa it's what happens when you get a character capable of actually using the Entity approach with similar tools but with a goal smaller than infinite space and energy with which to continue making more Entities
If you are done with this side quest can we have a chapter where your different Taylor have a meeting or something like that ? It would be so much fun, it would be a type of apocalypse im willing to witness
