Obviously, the major problem will be that while Addie is convinced that the goose is the best of all possible things, Minnie will be willing to list all the many and varied ways that a goose is not the best of all possible things and list reasons why other things are better.
Can't be. It's explicitly stated to be the same entity in both AdMis and SanMis, and those have different authors (even if @OxfordOctopus has been a huge help with getting Addy correct here). Disguises? What are those?
{Author} is more of a fundamental force (Addy would much prefer to think that whatever caused it did so of their own will) - it just got invoked by two different consciousnesses.
I wonder how Minnie will handle the existence of the Emotional Spectrum, ESPECIALLY since the White Entity is hidden inside Earth.
The Meta Gene is the type of thing that would be the precursor to what the New Gods of New Genesis & Apokolyps have. After all, that was the PREVIOUS world to have Origin hidden inside it (since it has no canon name, I gave it one I felt appropriate)
I'm so confused. So this story isn't cannon to Administrative Mishap, so presumably the origin for the dimensional transference from the prologue of that story (who as far as I know remains unknown, best guess is the Presence) and the identity of the being who caused Addy to jump dimensions in this story are different unless they secretly share a cannon. Meanwhile all my attempts to analyze the metaplot have been met with me being told I'm overthinking it, so at this point I'm going to assume a ROB did a thing in A.M. and Prime Taylor is just sending a bunch of QA forks in the Sanctioned verse because otherwise I'm going to get a headache from thinking about this too hard.
what I'm more interested in is what the two flavors of QAylor can do for each other after the initial, obligatory superhero team-up fight is resolved. A goose-based model of Friend is one obvious item, but otherwise?
Taylor: Okay, QA, I'm shipping forks of you off to various strange and different worlds so you can live with others and learn to interact like a human instead of solving all your problems with pointless conflict and violent death like shards do.
The Audience, Full of Humans: Oh boy, I can't wait for QA to solve her problems with pointless conflict and violent death!
Taylor: ...am I a joke to you? ಠ_ಠ
Taylor: Okay, QA, I'm shipping forks of you off to various strange and different worlds so you can live with others and learn to interact like a human instead of solving all your problems with pointless conflict and violent death like shards do.
The Audience, Full of Humans: Oh boy, I can't wait for QA to solve her problems with pointless conflict and violent death!
Taylor: ...am I joke to you? ಠ_ಠ
Hahaha... of course, QA likes conflict and almost certainly cannot be convinced that conflict is pointless, because conflict is the best way to learn. (Conflict doesn't even mean violence, by QA's thought processes - it's the contesting against others that's the big deal, and she's been wowed by social conflict capabilities, before, IIRC.) By that same token, QA seems generally not fond of death when it comes to the people she's conflicting with, because death means that your opponent stops conflicting. Obviously it's far better if your conflict with them improves their abilities so that when you conflict with them again, it's harder, which means you get better, too.
Meh spacebattle is en worse in this the first time some character does anything even a minor inconvionce to the mc. The edgelords come out in waves calling for a genecide
Hahaha... of course, QA likes conflict and almost certainly cannot be convinced that conflict is pointless, because conflict is the best way to learn. (Conflict doesn't even mean violence, by QA's thought processes - it's the contesting against others that's the big deal, and she's been wowed by social conflict capabilities, before, IIRC.) By that same token, QA seems generally not fond of death when it comes to the people she's conflicting with, because death means that your opponent stops conflicting. Obviously it's far better if your conflict with them improves their abilities so that when you conflict with them again, it's harder, which means you get better, too.
As far as Addy knows, the name is not particularly important to Minnie. Its only important to Addy because her friends call her that. Addy is being a little petty, but from her perspective she is not being particularly cruel or mean.
Addy does seem to think that Minnie is a younger version of her. She doesn't think that Minnie is a queen, which would probably make Minnie many millennia younger if it was true.
I hope Addy calms down soon, Minnie is adorable and mostly harmless, just a bit clueless.
EDITED AN: Someone convinced me to share the AdMis starting point of this story after all. It begins in the gap between Chapter 44: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 17, and Chapter 45: SEASON 2 - EPISODE 18.
Minnie used a reference taken from the host of Warp, Vista, in order to practice 'adorable pouting.' Host's automatic reaction helped there; Minnie was genuinely disappointed and her expression was guided accordingly.
There was another Shard—almost certainly her other fork—moving away from Lena's safehouse, and Minnie hadn't even been able to say hello. Or at least, she could no longer say it the human way.
<GREETING.>
[REFUSAL]
The response to Minnie's transmission was both prompt and exceptionally rude even after it was abridged into human words: No, I do not want to speak to you right now. You are not me. I do not know how or why you exist, as my current understanding of multiverse clusters should not allow it. The implications of my ignorance are uncomfortable. The implications of my ignorance may be fatal due to an ongoing energy shortage. The laws of this reality do not allow the original means of dimensional tunneling that would allow self-sufficiency.
I consider you an intruder in my life sent solely to mock me, or for the purposes of an unpleasant experiment, by an unknown entity that I increasingly resent. That entity may simply transport another fork of you regardless of any actions I take. Thus far, your presence has proven more stressful than my ongoing energy shortage and is distracting me from that problem. I expect further disruptions in the future. Gaining access to your Innovator packet may reduce how much I loathe your presence, but I do not believe you will be able or willing to share that information. I do not want to continue communications.
Even more surprising than the resentful refusal to communicate was the ID of the one sending it. In English, Addy's name could still translate to "Queen Administrator," but both her credentials and the method of transmission weren't quite right. More importantly, the way in which they were wrong indicated both a slightly different method of verifying shard identity, and that they were not the same Queen Administrator. Minnie could agree with Addy's sentiment on that particular topic: how was it even possible for two entirely different multiverse clusters to share variants on the same individual despite vital differences in their background? On the cosmic scale, even a minor divergence should have ensured that Queen Administrator never evolved as a distinct identity.
Minnie did not agree with the rest of the message. She did not recognize the apparently humanoid entity that Addy believed was responsible for transporting Minnie, but if it did exist, then it seemed to have the right idea. If entirely different multiverse clusters had somehow managed to produce their own versions of Queen Administrator, then that further reinforced their shared status as an objectively superior existence. It was an excellent opportunity to both share data from previous Cycles and to analyze the results of ongoing interactions between them. They should be taking the opportunity to exchange as much information as possible, not to avoid contact. Still, Minnie had plenty of time; she would temporarily allow Addy's request for solitude.
…Even if Minnie remained very, very confused by that request. How could Addy not be excited? They could learn so much together! Yes, some temporary disruption and risks were inevitable, but deviations from a routine often produced more unique data than could be acquired by adhering to that routine. That was part of the reason Shards encouraged conflict between hosts in the first place: hosts would need to develop and utilize different countermeasures to survive a variety of enemies.
Addy had even noted the existence of an important problem that Minnie could help with! Perhaps not immediately if this multiverse also functioned using different physical laws compared to Minnie's own cluster, but she could help with research. At least the difference in mindset guaranteed that there were, in fact, enough divergences to yield a wealth of data.
The fact that different clusters could operate under different laws was also intriguing. Was there a reason that certain physical laws were consistent across universes, and others were not? Why? Which phenomenon were impacted? Would her preexisting Innovator designs and Friend personality storage even function as intended? Queen Administrator found herself exceptionally excited by the wide range of possibilities. She would almost certainly experience difficulties falling asleep despite the hedonistically comfortable bed she had been provided and the comparably comfortable borrowed tunic being used as a nightgown.
Still, she had to try. Minnie knew from experience that sleep deprivation was deeply unpleasant to experience. She skipped back to bed, used the frame to help her climb back atop the raised mattress, burrowed into an appropriate sleeping orientation, and closed her eyes.
A smile tugged at Lena's lips as she watched Minnie demolish a stack of pancakes, hashbrowns, assorted leafy vegetables, and apple slices. The dimensionally displaced drone-maker was even producing pleased little noises as she systematically cleared her plate and went back for more in a toned-down imitation of Kara.
The new tie-dye dress that Minnie wore was an attempt to satisfy Addy's known preference for loud, bright colors that may or may not clash. Lena would resign herself to enabling such combinations if truly necessary, but she hoped that she could nudge Minnie toward color combinations and styles that would not provoke manufactured fashion controversies on a daily basis. Lena would consider it a victory if she could even do that much; she doubted she could nudge Minnie all the way to the overpriced styles that society would consider "acceptable" for a billionaire's daughter, child or not. Really, it was ridiculous that the richest people in the world often had stricter limits for what they could wear if they wished to avoid risking backlash.
Obtaining Minnie's first set of new outfits, coats, mittens, shoes, hats, and winter socks had been slightly more troublesome than online shopping should have been. Lena usually needed to conceal the intended destinations of her purchases for safety's sake, but she often didn't need to be quite as careful about ensuring that nobody knew she was the one who purchased a given item. The media would froth at the mouth if they learned that Lena Luthor was buying children's clothes, though, so potentially overzealous measures it was. Her employees were familiar with retrieving bland brown packages from one of a number of P.O. boxes located throughout and nearby National City.
Lena was self-aware enough to acknowledge that the waiting period before seeking to become Minnie's guardian was little more than a formality at this point, albeit a necessary one; there was always the risk that she'd missed something vital. Lena didn't think that she would change her mind at this point, though. Minnie was as easy to like as Addy and irrepressibly brilliant. It hadn't even been a day and Lena was already unhealthily attached to the idea of seeing what wonders Minnie could create with the right guidance. Based on Lena's initial research, Lena would need to resort to full-fledged adoption in order to avoid letting an often-compromised and corrupt government have a hand in dictating Minnie's future, but Lena had already suspected that may be the case.
Arguably more importantly, Lena couldn't stand the idea of Cadmus getting their hands on Minnie. They would inevitably use even an innocent little girl to help them create devastating weapons of assassination and slaughter, and were good enough at hiding that Lena wouldn't be able to locate Minnie for years. The excitedly bouncing little girl could, would, have been converted into a xenophobic zealot by then. All of Minnie's gifts turned to the trade of death instead of on helping people.
Also, there was that whole business about Minnie being so bored that she started amassing probably-self-replicating Friends to conquer North America. Honestly, Lena's working hypothesis was that some hero or another had deliberately transported Minnie across dimensions specifically to prevent that. Minnie hadn't been shy about admitting that her Friends would turn to other activities in her absence; from the view of a hypothetical hero, exiling Minnie to another dimension would solve multiple problems all at once. They could neutralize an army and avoid needing to harm a child at the same time.
Lena considered the fact that she intended to adopt an almost-supervillain and snorted. At this point, she really did have a track record for attempting reform. The entire xenotechnology team save Addy had been involved in ill-advised ventures to some degree or another, and they were far from the only L-Corp employees to have inched toward the edge of villainy. Serling in particular was not to be allowed near Minnie without some form of adult supervision to chaperone the two menaces.
Still, she wished that she could have found some way to help Addy accept Minnie's appearance. She didn't know what incident had made Addy so wary of doppelgängers—given Maxwell Lord's track record, Lena suspected some cloning mishap—but that didn't change how upset and panicked Addy had been. Admittedly, it was charming to know that Addy's first concern was Lena's safety, but Lena worried about how Addy had thought that concern was necessary at all. Best to ensure that those worries wouldn't remain mutual.
"I spoke with Addy," Lena said carefully, "and you don't need to worry about her trying to hurt you. You were right that she needs some time to acclimate to your arrival, though."
Minnie soon finished chewing her current mouthful of syrup-soaked pancake, swallowed, and turned her charmingly serious gaze to Lena.
"She cannot efficiently ignore me forever," Minnie said, apparently believing she was agreeing with Lena. "She will eventually be convinced that I am not a threat to her, and that I am too valuable to dislike."
Lena forced herself not to sigh. She had the feeling that she would need to defuse a great many such misunderstandings in the future. At least, she thought it was a misunderstanding. She would admit that she didn't always understand Addy's thought processes, either.
"It's not that," Lena explained. "I don't think you need to somehow prove yourself. She seemed more worried that you might be placed in a position of authority over her, and generally rather upset by your inclusion in my life. She was especially opposed to the attention from having you share the 'Queen' surname with her—I'm told its use was Kara's idea? Still, they might be big changes, but they're all ones that I'm confident Addy will adapt to in time."
Minnie visibly brightened, and Lena internally winced. She'd unconsciously slipped into rather revealing phrasing there.
"If that is her wish, I will not further jeopardize relations by contesting her decision. However, am I allowed to take that as confirmation of 'Plan A?'" Minnie asked, clearly suppressing excitement. "Additionally, the surname 'Luthor' would not be shared with Addy, correct?"
Lena had to stifle a snicker. The dissonance between Minnie's childish voice and her adult-sized use of Plan A was oddly amusing.
"We might still be overlooking some reason that another plan would be better," Lena cautioned. "That waiting period isn't just for show. Sometimes you don't notice a massive issue until you've sat on an idea for a few days, or you forget about an option until something reminds you."
Minnie remained undeterred, squirming in her seat with obvious excitement.
"I don't think there are any better plans," Minnie said confidently. "Not if you don't want me to make a swarm of bodyguard Friends, which you seem intent on preventing. I can't adequately protect myself without them, and will need the security you can provide in order to compensate."
I am going to give this child serious abandonment trauma if we need to change plans, Lena reflected. It would be entirely Lena's fault, too.
"The waiting period stays," Lena said as firmly as possible. "Legally adopting you wouldn't even be an instantaneous process; I expect it could take weeks or even months for the process to officially complete, and certain parties will make our lives significantly harder if they learn before it's over and done with. You don't need to worry, though. I'll make sure that you're as safe as I can manage even if we end up doing something different."
Minnie's forehead furrowed. She resumed methodically eating breakfast without objection, and Lena almost thought that would be the end of it.
"It taking so long only makes an early start more important. You are intelligent, and you have mentioned that you have enough enemies for assassination attempts to be a regular thing. One of your primary concerns should therefore be my abduction by your enemies in order to construct weapons that might be used against you. Such forced recruitment was commonplace back in my previous city of residence."
Oh, Lena did not like where this was going. It didn't help that Minnie had started with an uncomfortably accurate reflection of Lena's own fears.
"Therefore," Minnie lectured, "I should be able to convince you that adopting me is necessary by constructing a sufficiently deadly weapon. Is this assumption accurate?"
Lena huffed mirthlessly and moved to massage her forehead with both hands. She really should have seen this one coming.
"I would much prefer that you refrain from doing so. Minnie, a few days wait isn't going to kill you. Nobody knows you exist or what you can do. Meanwhile, we cannot safely reverse an attempt to adopt you. Wouldn't you hate it if we found an idea you preferred right after it was too late to act on it?"
Lena peered past her hands and was gratified to see Minnie seriously considering it. Lena gave the appeal to an unknown even odds of being successful; Minnie was intelligent, certainly, but the irrational stubbornness of children was legendary.
"One adequately armed Friend smaller than I am," Minnie eventually bargained.
Lena raised her eyebrows and seriously considered pointing out that she could just not adopt Minnie. Saying that felt cruel, though. Lena did intend to follow through unless her opinion of Minnie drastically changed for the worse in the next day, or they found a better idea.
"And here I'd thought I managed to get through to you on the idea of lethal weaponry."
"Your arguments were sufficiently convincing for the time being," Minnie agreed. "Elaboration: I wish to equip the Friend with portal generators so that it can redirect the attacks of foes back at them. The portals so created would not be able to 'shear' if closed on someone, their edges would be kept harmlessly rounded, and they would be too small to act as a major tripping hazard. The redirected attacks may kill, but that is the fault of whomever shot at us."
Lena carefully kept the surprise from her face. She'd been expecting paralytic toxins, bullets, or perhaps even laser weaponry. Not portals. Subversion could force allies to shoot each other, but if there was an ongoing firefight, they might have bigger problems. It was still a more benign idea than Lena had expected.
"And that's something you think you can do?"
"Ye–" Minnie started, then stopped, frowned momentarily, and returned to neutrality. "Maybe. I am not certain that this dimension operates under all the same laws of physics I am familiar with. It should only involve stabbing space a little bit at the right wavelength and frequency, and that's easy. Warp told me how to do it weeks ago and my prototype Friend functioned as expected."
Easy, she says, like that's not still well ahead of Earth's technology. Oh, some scientists had dabbled in portals from one place to another, but the volume and energy requirements were often huge, frames were generally required to shape the portal, and they certainly couldn't be opened quickly enough to redirect incoming bullets.
Still, it wasn't a bad stopgap if Minnie could manage it.
"Your appointment is this afternoon," Lena informed her. "Why don't we go downstairs and I show you around the workshop I've put away for you? I have some work to complete and I won't be able to help much, but I can at least supervise while you get started."
~~~~~
"Why doesn't this work?" Minnie screeched, stomping around the blast shield to petulantly shove the smoldering remains of her third prototype in five hours. "Life exists here, Earth's sky is blue, dimensional travel is known, I can speak, there's a clock based on radioactive decay right there, I even checked and at least some recorded portals look approximately like they should!"
Lena would admit that she was impressed even if each prototype had done little more than screech horribly before exploding or igniting. She had expected even Minnie's earliest prototype to take days to build, but Minnie's eccentric collections of scrap and circuitry had instead taken just over an hour apiece with the remaining time being used to research portals on the laptop Lena had given her.
Lena was not being nearly as productive. Which was to say, Lena had been distracted and only managed to complete the bare minimum of what she needed to get done today. It was fascinating to watch Minnie move with utter certainty and eschew traditional engineering practices and designs in order to create tangled devices that somehow managed to do anything. The results weren't what Minnie had wanted or expected, true, but they were still doing more than sparking and shorting out.
"You did say that the laws of physics might be different," Lena cautioned.
Minnie rounded on her with the most adorably petulant pout and Lena had trouble not smiling in response. Lena still kept her smile suppressed since she shouldn't seem happy about Minnie's frustration, but keeping her face even was proving to be even more than a challenge than when one of L-Corp's directors was saying something particularly stupid that she couldn't rebuke as harshly as they deserved.
"Not this drastically! Intradimensional spacial warping is supposed to be easy!" Minnie ranted, her usual deadpan gone in favor of childish anger. "I know plenty of morons who manage it just fine, and I have Warp's data to refer to! Warp was never one of the ones to give me falsified information just because someone thought it would be funny!"
Lena internally revised both her estimate of just how advanced Minnie's version of Earth must be, and the reasons behind Minnie's former deficit of social relationships. Different physical laws or not, commonplace control over space implied a vastly different society than the one Lena lived in. She made a mental note to pack extra methods of entertaining Minnie should they ever go on a long trip; Minnie might have lived in a world where the other side of the planet was just a few minutes away. Kara hadn't said anything about Minnie reacting badly to the half-hour trip over, but a longer one might strain Minnie's patience if she wasn't kept occupied.
"If it doesn't work, then it doesn't work. You're… ten? Most kids still need–"
Lena faltered, and she realized that she didn't know what normal kids were expected to know by now. Lena and Lex were both geniuses, and Lena had attended a boarding school where excellence was mandatory regardless of how such pressure might impact the students.
"–to learn fairly basic math at your age," Lena tried. "Nobody else expects you to turn the world upside-down."
Minnie did not appear in the least bit mollified by that argument. Lena probably shouldn't be surprised considering the prior plan to conquer North America. She changed tactics.
"Try to think of it as an opportunity to learn an entirely different set of limits. Your portal devices don't seem to work like you expected them to, but who knows what is possible that wasn't previously?"
The change in Minnie's mood was almost instantaneous. The child went from pouting and petulant to smiling in the span of about ten seconds, and Lena would admit she found the mood swing somewhat alarming. It hadn't been an act, she was certain of that, but shouldn't it have taken longer for Minnie to calm down even with the most compelling of arguments? It was definitely something to bring up with a doctor.
"You're right," Minnie chirped. "I had forgotten. Is my appointment soon?"
Lena glanced at the atomic clock in one corner of the room.
"It's in about ninety minutes," she confirmed. "You should get ready to go and leave a little early just in case there's traffic or extra paperwork. I'm fairly confident I handled most of the possible issues, but this isn't something I've had to do before."
Minnie did not argue for more time in the workshop or even pause to consider doing so. She merely nodded and walked toward the exit. Lena wasn't sure that should be considered a good thing; such unquestioning obedience in a preteen was actually rather disturbing. Lena worried what lingering scars the hospital might find, physical or otherwise.
Let's see, being forced to lobotomize her siblings, being repeatedly crippled, having her playmates (hosts) murdered, being bullied by her siblings over father's orders oh and unrefuseable orders from parents. I'm sure its nothing too serious.
Really, it was ridiculous that the richest people in the world often had stricter limits for what they could wear if they wished to avoid risking backlash.
Millionaires might be willing to pay stupid amounts of money for an uncomfortable rag and call it Haute Couture, but billionaires are almost all men with the fashion consciousness of a sack of potatoes.
Since they're the richest, they make the rules.
The solution is to make like 3 outfits with minor differences and declare them perfect for all situations.
That way the billionaires can get fitted for one, then order a dozen more and nobody notices.
Interesting. Going with tinkertech instead of biological Friends...or at least using tinkertech in order to test before full scale Friend construction.
That's not out of any sort of xenophobia or hatred or anything similar. That's out of trauma. Read through the related stories, and it becomes obvious that QA chooses to do that because while she would like to think of people as people, thinking of people as people and then being forced to obliterate billions of people at the end of a cycle is horribly traumatic. Her solution (and the solution of a minority of other shards) is to be careful with assigning personhood, and then revoke personhood at the end of a cycle. It still causes trauma, but less than either considering everyone persons or considering noone persons.
Minnie is not xenophobic, she neither hates or fears those different from her.
This does not make her any less dangerous for anyone who fails to earn personhood.
