The last month had been… hectic. The System’s activation had thrown everything out of whack, all around the world. Blackreach wasn’t the only prison that suffered a mass breakout, as superprisons around the world found their normal measures insufficient to keep the inmates in line. While countermeasures were quickly designed and distributed through the network of gadgeteer heroes, that still took time.

Meanwhile, heroes and villains alike found themselves having to relearn how to use powers that had been wholly instinctual before. This led to more than one fight where supposedly invincible supers found that they weren’t quite so untouchable as they’d once been. It also meant that there was a spree of villainous escapades, as villains decided that on-the-job testing was the best way to figure out their abilities.

For my sister and me, however, things were even more complicated. After all, we were the System Administrators for Earth. The only two people managing a planet of almost eight billion. Sure, the System mostly ran itself, and we were mostly there for debugging, or fixing problems, but that still meant we were putting in work.

Fortunately, the System acknowledged our work, since fixing errors and dealing with problems and complaints gradually gave us XP. Basically, a compensation prize for all the work. Since that XP directly translated into increased power on our part, I wasn’t going to complain.

As it stood, we had each earned a total of 10 XP since the Initialization, on top of the 15 ‘bonus’ XP that came with the System Administrator package. But that wasn’t the only thing. Using her programming knowledge, Crystal managed to edit and min-max our sheets, reworking everything to try and squeeze more benefits out of them than the System had initially given us.

She kept the alterations strictly to our powers, since neither of us were quite sure what would happen if we started ‘editing’ our bodies directly. Would putting more Strength on make us bulk out? Would increasing our base running speed make our legs longer? There were a lot of questions that we wanted to wait a while before trying to find the answers to.

Part of the reason for even risking edits with our powers was so that we could take advantage of one of the bits of ‘debugging’ we had to do. The System was obviously being iterated on, so there were powers and abilities that were in the system files, but were not unlocked, for whatever reason. Well, the reason was obvious for most of them: they were potentially reality breaking, or were still half-written. However, there was one power that was pretty much ready to go. We just had to do a check, and turn it on.

Extradimensional Space

Type: Special Power

Duration: Persistent

Target: Self Only

Range: Self

Costs END: No

Cost: 5 CP for up to 1 cubic meter of extradimensional storage space. +5 CP for each x2 volume

This was basically a power that allowed you to have a Bag of Holding out of fantasy stories, or an extradimensional inventory space, like in video games. Before the Initialization, there had been items and powers with that kind of ability, including my own blade, but the System didn’t recognize them, and kicked back errors. Those errors had led Crystal to her discovery of the locked Extradimensional Space power, and reinitializing it.

Getting this unlocked and added in to our suite of abilities would give us a major edge in the field. Simply being able to store any goods that we wished to steal, and not needing to deal with finding a way to haul it all? That was a huge gain, and, because we were working on the System to make it happen, there would be no red flags if a higher-level administrator ever looked at it.

For me, the edits meant that the recharge time on my Recall Device had dropped from a week to charging overnight, and my blade gained two new abilities: the storage space, which gave me a whopping 512 cubic meters to fill, and a regenerative effect, which would slowly heal me over time. It would only be of limited use in the middle of a fight, but if I could get away and hide, then it would eventually change what would have been months of hospital care and bed rest to heal into something that would be gone in minutes.

The biggest change to me, personally, however, was with the Incubus Ring. Of course, I told Crystal about my adventures on the flight down to Atlanta. She was less than impressed with the way that the ring had handled itself. The fact that the ring’s power alerted Starsinger to my attempt to control her, allowing her to fight back, at least somewhat, was a critical weakness, in her mind.

So, she set about editing the ring’s abilities with all the skill of a hardcore gamer maximizing their build. She found a way to make the ring itself cheaper, and the mind control power changed from something I needed to actively use, to something that just happened, whenever I touched a woman. There were some other shakeups to things, as well. The side effect of the mind control shifted to simply giving the woman a nudge to touch me again, and had no effect on me. And while someone would still know that someone had attempted to control them, at least until it took, they’d no longer be able to tell that it was me.

She’d also made it easier for the ring to affect people, and for it to have a permanent effect. The mind control would bypass any extra mental defenses a person had, and work against their will alone, while at the same time the ring also caused me to emit pheromones which suppressed the woman’s will. If I wanted to make the effect of the mind control permanent, well, that was an option. If I came in her, then the ring would corrupt the woman’s mind until she was permanently changed.

Honestly, I didn’t know what my sister was thinking with that one. Best I could figure, it probably had something to do with the contents of the folder on her laptop marked ‘Private’ that totally wasn’t porn. (The fact that she had a laptop while her head connected to the internet could be explained best by saying she didn’t want to be concentrating on her connection when she was ‘busy’.) Either way, that combination was powerful enough that even I thought it was cheating. It wouldn’t stop me from using it, obviously, but I could admit that it was cheating.

Of course, this brought up a different question. How did we keep the ring from making Crystal a drooling, lovestruck mess just from being in the same room with me? The answer she came up with was an inoculation. Potion making wasn’t really my strong suit, but my sister used her Inventor skill to come up with a simple concoction that she could take on a weekly basis, and be immune to my ring’s effects. Best not to talk about the specifics of the process, though.

My lair, or rather our lair, once Crystal moved in with me, was upgraded as well, slightly increasing the defenses. She also managed to get a healing station set up, using one of Doctor Ubuntu’s Restoration Pods that I had acquired as a trophy, after taking down the doctor when he tried to avoid paying me for work done. It hadn’t worked since the Initialization, so that would be a great benefit, if she, or any others we chose to bring here, needed healing.

Crystal, like I said, moved into the lair with me, and we began working as a team. She didn’t always go out in the field with me, though. She wasn’t much of a fighter, after all. But with her hacking into a building’s computers, she could turn off alarms, loop cameras, erase logs, and so on, which made my life much easier, allowing me to focus on the more active components of our heists.

Because, obviously, we weren’t going to sit out on the spree of supervillain heists that were causing teams to go running around all over! We had to get our teamwork down, and all that. OK, so that was just an excuse for some family bonding over ill-gotten goods.

The first week, we went to Paris. The Louvre, to be precise. I’d visited the museum once before, after I’d hit it big, and was looking to cement my reputation as one of the premiere thieves in the world. The multilayered security system the Rouge clan put in was insanely well-developed, and I’d been the first to pull off a successful heist in over a hundred years.

I’d walked away that night with twelve works of art. Eight I sold on the black market, but I still had two Rembrandts, a Monet, and the Mona Lisa in storage. The security system had been the most formidable one I’d ever seen, and I’d broken into the Pentagon before. But there had been a chink in the armor, and I’d exploited it. Obviously, the museum had worked feverishly since then to make sure there were no other exploits that could be used against them.

Which was why it was not just Iceblade on the hunt this night, but Web Mistress, as well. And it all started with one of the key abilities she had: Digital World. Basically, she could take herself, and others, into the world of zeroes and ones, made manifest. Traveling around the globe was as easy as going to different web sites, as data flowed through connections.

Getting to the Louvre was child’s play. While they did make sure that the defenses were on a stand-alone system, they still needed to have some connection to the outside, or they wouldn’t be able to call for help when alarms went off. That data connection was our way in. Once we were inside the building’s virtual footprint, and the external firewall was crushed beneath her digital heel, all Web Mistress needed to do was find the control room.

It wasn’t the guards’ fault, honestly. They hadn’t made any mistakes, like plugging their personal phones into the stand-alone machines, or anything like that. All they did was have a connection to the external network in the room, so that they could contact the police if the alarm went off. But that was enough for my sister.

Segment 1:

Web Mistress’s Attack Roll (Computers), ECV 10: 3d6 = 5 (Hits DECV 16)

Web Mistress’s Remote Control: 10d6 = 27

Web Mistress 28/34 END

Segment 2:

Web Mistress’s Attack Roll (Computers),ECV 10: 3d6 = 11 (Hits DECV 10)

Remote Control: 10d6 = 43

Web Mistress 22/34 END

Iceblade’s Attack Roll (Guard 1), OCV 10: 3d6 = 14 (Hits DCV 7)

Iceblade’s Hypothermia: 14d6 = 55 (STUN only) (Knocked Out)

Iceblade 33/40 END

With a screeching sound of a dialup connection, we appeared in the security office, next to two very surprised guards. Web Mistress was already ‘moving’. Before I could even act, I saw her symbol appear on all the security monitors, telling me quite plainly that she now owned the system.

Not wanting to be left behind, I placed a hand on the guard in front of me, and sent a wave of frigid cold through him. It was, effectively, the same as being out in the icy snow in your birthday suit for a few hours, but without the chance of death. He collapsed, as the shock was too much for him.

Segment 3:

Web Mistress’s Computer Programming roll (20-): 3d6 = 16 (Success)

Web Mistress just smiled as she further manipulated the computers with her mind. Behind the guards, I could see the security console show the security systems deactivating. Clearly, my sister was already keeping up her end.

Segment 4:

Iceblade’s Attack Roll (Guard 1), OCV 10: 3d6 = 14 (Hits DCV 7)

Iceblade’s Hypothermia: 14d6 = 53 (STUN only) (Knocked Out)

Iceblade 26/40 END

I took a breath as the last guard slumped over, unconscious. “Well, that went about as well as expected. But I think we’ve found another weak spot to shore up, when we get some points.”

“Affirmative,” Web Mistress said, in that cold, slightly robotic tone she used whenever she was splitting her focus between the computers she was controlling in her mind and the world around her. “The burn-through on Endurance is quicker than I would like. We should take steps to either reduce consumption with our powers, or increase the resources available to us.”

She paused for a moment, and then looked my way. “All guards have been taken care of. I rewrote the Identify Friend or Foe systems, so the stasis generators caught them all. They’re all frozen in place. So, what first? You can’t steal the Mona Lisa, after all, since it isn’t here.”

I grinned. “Sure, but there are a few choice pieces that I’d like to have. The Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory are both said to be two of the three female forms most associated with the Louvre, with the third being the Mona Lisa. I figured I could go for the hat trick.”

“Fine, I can’t argue with that. But our next heist will be in Akihabara. There are some limited-edition figurines that they won’t ship to the US, and I WILL have them!”

“Hai, hai, otaku-sama. We’ll get your anime figures.”

“Don’t worry, brother. I know what your search history is like. There will plenty of things there that are right up your alley.”

“Ugh, sisters. So annoying!” I joked, causing Web Mistress to stick her tongue out at me, before we both laughed, heading out of the security office so we could go steal priceless works of art.