Time Passes...

“You want me to do what?” DiDi wasn’t sure she’d heard right.

Taking over Dyna’s work was simplicity, of course. There was precious little to emulate that she couldn’t do.

Wrath? Lightning from her Lightning Core subbed for it easily, especially with how rapidly she had hit Seven in it. Her Lightning Core’s output was quite a bit higher than the Widow Pact.

Sticking to stuff? That was basically electron sharing, and the Lightning Core made her an electrokinetic, finally, instead of just a hard gravimetric manipulator via the suit. The Red Eyes? Foresight subbed just fine.

She lost some of the agility, but her Core exceeded the toughness and strength, and her Dexterity was already inhuman, so it mattered little. If the Spider Totems were more agile than she was, that was fine. She wasn’t a Totem.

She was Doctor Dyna, promptly shortened to DiDi by everyone who had been informed she was a Duplicate of Dynamo, who had been promoted to the High Guard, and Dynamo being visibly over six feet tall and built like that in Wrecker Mode, it was very easy to believe they were different people.

Especially since the whole no-media applied to herself, as well.

While she could and did engage in fisticuffs when it was needed, she also rapidly had an entire floor for herself and her Sims in the Baxter Building. That was where she ran the Baxter finances, the Future Foundation, the Rand-Meachum enterprises, and basically the income for all the geniuses who worked out of there.

Leadership had many facets, after all, and ignoring the power of money was NOT one of them.

“I want you to run Ferrus Technology... or Stark Enterprises, the United States division,” Tony Stark told her cheerfully.

“What brought this on?” she asked calmly, analyzing the potential of the choice. “Sounds like you already sold out to your father, Stark.”

“I’m going to Xandar. I’m going to be doing things with the Worldmind there they haven’t thought about in thousands of years. When that invasion comes, they are going to pay a horrific price to take out Xandar.” His eyes looked away. “Dynamo said I could take Terra’s technology decades, even centuries ahead by studying there, instead of just trying to reinvent the wheel here. I want to take advantage of the chance.”

DiDi considered the implications. Ferrus was considerably bigger than the Foundation or Rand-Meachum. The former was largely a charitable organization dispersing funds to support innovations and education with billions in passive investments, as well as supplying the Richards family with their income. Rand-Meachum had built its fortune up on real estate, which was a wonderful, if subtle, vector for introducing new technology and upping the standard of living of the area.

Dynamo had already led R-M into being one of the biggest real estate holders in the Tri-State area, and Grimm Materials had expanded into demolition and shell construction of the new buildings being put up for it... as well as industrial clean-up of contaminated properties abandoned by their polluters and purchased for a song. Reed had made up some extremely effective decontamination devices that he had not released to the public... and had been using the increasing pressure from ecological activists to raise the ongoing fines up to untenable levels so those owning the lands didn’t keep a deathgrip on them and sell them for inflated prices now that someone could actually make something out of the locations.

Midas was one of the people trying to pull that trick. It didn’t work as well away from Boston, where he didn’t own all the politicians, but his attempts to misdirect or sabotage the ecological groups were running into the fact some very savvy people were working for them. They had a bad habit of identifying his agents and getting them arrested in the middle of some shenanigans, with a money trail leading back to certain interested parties NOT part of a clean-up movement...

DiDi tapped her fingers together. As a Leader, she had stepped away from entering front-line combat as often, instead focusing on preparing others for that job, directing their studies and training in usable directions.

Also, burning up to 1300 pounds of gold at a time administering Inherents by Stat, as well as allocating Marks.

+5 to all Stats was a game-changer, and an additional +4 to one of them was just mind-boggling. It was also tying together the heroic community here ever closer in a coordinated teamwork dynamic.

“Are you asking me to take your place on the Avengers, too?” DiDi asked specifically.

Stark grinned widely. “Big shoes to fill, I know. Think you can do it?”

“Easily.” His cocky smile faded somewhat. “I am merely working it into my time calculations. Is Pepper going with you?” she asked calmly, fully aware that Pepper ran the company’s day-to-day operations for him.

“Yes. Sama wouldn’t let me go without bringing her along.”

“And marrying her and starting a family?”

“Are you talking to her or something?” he had to ask, shocked she was so direct.

DiDi flicked her hand, held out a Crystal Vaccine, watched him blink, and stowed it away. “I hear things. I will have to be discussing things with Pepper at length as far as daily operations go. Have you anything special you want to accomplish on the technology side before or after you go?”

“So, you’ll do it?” He seemed somewhat surprised. “Are you sure that this won’t be a bit overwhelming?”

“It will be a minor use of a couple of thoughtstreams to manage the company actively. However, your company made its name as a conduit of your genius. I am fully aware of my gifts, and being a creative genius is not among them. I am a Refining Genius: I can take an idea or technology and make it sing and dance in ways the original simply cannot, within the limits of its technology.

“I am not the person to introduce the new generation of technology... although, to be fair, Stark Enterprises is two or three generations ahead of Ferrus, and you can simply introduce their tech in series for the time you are gone, and I can re-brand it with little trouble.” He had a certain expression on his face as she said that, albeit more resigned than before.

“You can Portal in some updates on releases, and I can put a personal spin on stuff, then. Anything you want to work on, refine, or update, sure, more power to you. Just license it to us,” he agreed readily, eying her strangely at the whole idea of running his company as being a minor effort.

Well, it was. “I set my own compensation,” she stated firmly.

He pursed his lips as he looked at her, stopped himself twice from commenting, and thought stuff over. “I probably can’t pay you what you are worth, can I?” he finally admitted.

“No.” Not a prayer of a chance. “I expect the immediate plays against your company to explode as soon as someone realizes you are off-world. We can have some Life Model Decoys subbing for you and Pepper, but that’s a short-term solution. You have too many tech-savvy opponents who will realize you aren’t here. Who will you have piloting the Iron Man armor while you aren’t around?”

He drummed the table. “I was thinking of Rhodey,” he finally admitted.

“That’s a good choice. Happy is going with you?” DiDi inquired.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to leave him behind in kind of an oversight role?” he asked hesitantly.

“He does not have anywhere near the capabilities to actually oversee what I will be doing, you realize.”

He winced. “Yeah, well, I at least have to make an effort.”

“Put him in your place on the Board of Directors. Also, I’d like to see Steve Rogers on the board.”

He blinked. “Really? Why?”

“Because he’s a super-soldier with thirty years of intelligence analysis behind him, and when Midas and his fat cat cronies start making moves, he’s going to see them coming a goddamn mile away.”

“Oh. OH, that’s a really good idea,” he admitted. “Sure, do that.”

“Let’s start going over the specifics of what you want to happen, and I’ll tell you up front the changes I am likely to make. Do you have the paperwork?”

He hit a button, and the table in front of them inverted, the top retracted, and the electronics within rose up, completely not a surprise to her. “Sure. Let’s go over basic financials and then move on to who we’re doing a lot of business with...”

---------------

Time Passes as people go here and there, and a doofus returns...

“- and I declare another Contest of Champions! I and my competitor shall choose our champions to contest in our names! If you do not obey and strive to your mightiest to compete in our contest, I shall destroy your entire-urk!”

The oversized, blue-skinned, white-haired alien with the large head and scheming eyes froze in place on the screen, a large golden hand-claw visible about his throat. A second one stole around his face and settled across it.

The hauteur and arrogance he’d held evaporated as he stared at the golden claws just above his eyeballs. Where the blades touched his skin, he began to bleed blue blood.

“En. Dwi. Gast.” The voice was unmistakable to anyone who had heard it before. “Were you about to threaten my world?” she purred in great anticipation.

“N-no! No I was not, Lady Rantha!” the Grandmaster blurted out hastily. “I was just, just about to set the terms of compensation for this tournament!” he corrected himself quickly.

“+2 to the lowest Stat of any who are chosen to compete, permanent and Inherent, by the Core Disciplines. The winning team gets another +2 to their next-lowest Stat. If there is a tie, it is split among them.” The golden claw lifted his neck. “I know who you are playing with. She concurs.”

His smile only looked slightly forced. “Well, far be it from me to be ungracious. I also agree to these terms!” he said quickly.

The golden claws lifted away from his throat and eyes, caressing his blue skin in the most delicate of wisping scars, ruffling his hair as they pulled back behind him. He swallowed and turned to look behind him, completely ignoring the fact that all this was being broadcast to certain powerful individuals around the planet.

There was nobody behind him...

----

-Ass.- Sama’s eyes glittered. -Twice he’s pulled this shit already. Does he think we wouldn’t be prepared again?- One of those times had gotten Daredevil and King Namor killed, although he had returned them to life when his team won in the end.

-I’ve already spoken to Death. She knows his goal. Whether or not she cares is another matter.- Briggs’ /voice was cold. -I am against him. Winning a bet against Death is not new, but an Elder of the Universe doing so sets a dangerous precedent.-

-And she has another Courtier who has already killed someone who thought he was immortal,- Sama /sniffed. -Well, it’s out of our hands.-

---

The contests were indeed more energetic than I remembered from the primary storyline, as many of the candidates were Core-powered, had psionics, or were simply far more skilled than in comics canon. Daredevil was a fully qualified psychic martial artist, Iron Fist was studying his third Dragon, the Ocean; Darkstar was one of the most accomplished heroines of the Euroforce, and so forth and so on.