“Oh!” Wanda’s cheeks colored despite herself, and she grasped Morgan’s hand, smiling slightly. “I would get to feel your magic from within...”

“Teaching moments!” Morgan winked. “As for the rest... we would have to confirm what your true mutant gift is, and how you want to pursue it.

“As for your magical ability, it will actually still be there, but it will not be bent to the Scarlet Witchery, it will simply be standard magical power, and you will no longer be the incredibly gifted Scarlet Witch. We will have to make a choice on how to use Psychic Reformation once again for you, and how you want to address both of the roads before you.” Morgan paused significantly. “The Scarlet Witch bears a considerable amount of your magical power, Wanda. Without it, you are basically at par talent-wise with Jennifer, perhaps even worse.”

Wanda’s eyes flashed once. “But I will have my mutant power, yes? The heritage of my father? I could be as powerful as Lorna, or more?”

“Indeed. You are older, and I’ve been beating some mental discipline into that thick head of yours for years, you know...” Morgan rolled her eyes, and Wanda grinned despite herself. “Maybe you’ll make a new road, combining both, which could be, mmm, even more powerful than Chaos Magic if done well, leveraging Magnetic Mastery to use magic.” Her emerald eyes narrowed. “But it would take a LOT of work.”

“As opposed to just falling down the ever-wider hole Scarlet Witchery opens up for me,” Wanda sighed, clasping her forehead. “Still hating you, Morgan!”

“Excessive competency is SO reprehensible,” Morgan agreed without batting an eye. “Foolishness and idiocy while relying on my good looks to woo a man so he can do all this irritating smart stuff for me would be a lot more stylish, I know.”

Wanda giggled despite herself. “I have seen you dance! You could totally do it, and spare the rest of us!”

“Yes, yes, stealing all the husbands so they can slave for me while leaving raising your kids to you,” Morgan sniffed grandly. “Mmm, not my style, I guess. I’ll have to go with excessive competency after further review, I’m sorry.”

“Total spoilsport. You are SO easy to hate.”

“Cultivating hate is the proper duty of those who are naturally superior, is it not?”

“Hating you even more, Morgan!” Wanda shook her fist at the other threateningly.

“Ah, my loving audience endorses my grandeur!” Morgan replied without blinking an eye. “How would you like to proceed?”

==========

Several days later...

“I don’t know if I have just greatly lowered expectations, or after going through Sersi’s stuff I’m just innured,” I sighed, running through over two more millennia of history from three more ruthless perspectives.

“Death didn’t mind seeing them. They were hardly positive forces, although they did a good job killing off other negative ones,” Nimue murmured. She was dressed the most conservatively of us right now, having inherited a bunch of fashion consciousness from Agatha Harkness and deciding to roll with it. Rocked those skirts pretty well, too.

“Can’t believe you just gave us a Strontian to Uni-Merge,” Circe muttered, looking at her hands. “On top of an Ultra Core, no less!”

“It’s not like having ten of them was doing me any good,” I pointed out. “Besides, who in their right minds is going to expect you all to be Epsilon-grade Paramounts?”

“True, true,” all three of them nodded. “It’s like running magic off an Arcane Core just wasn’t enough!” Morgan said, flexing once. “Although the physical Buffs on the non-standard Cores aren’t as good as the general one,” she acknowledged with a nod at me.

It turned out specialized Cores were actually specialized, and actually missed out on some of the big physical enhancements of the generic Core that I had in favor of more powerful energy manipulation. Who’da thunk things were balanced like that?

“One of us had to be the brute,” I sighed theatrically, and they all nodded and made reassuring sounds for my benefit.

I had Duplicated out the ten Strontians into Doubles of myself, naturally sans all the upgraded stuff. That had left their bodies behind inside me, which would eventually dissolve without minds and spirits in them and fully merge with me.

They weren’t at the enhanced Gladiator level, as the handful of women who’d gone through that process had all been hard Sapphire-Aura types and I’d avoided choosing them for more empathic Silvers. But even a normal Strontian was at least as strong as a Celestial Eternal, if not moreso. Parceling them out among the Duplicates and Clones was a no-brainer, as their abilities wouldn’t stack, and it would make up for some of the physical Buffs lost to their specialized Cores.

I’d’ve done more of them, even taking another Timejump to do so, but I would’ve triggered a Causality Event in so doing and created a false timeline. So, useless. I couldn’t save more Strontians, even if I wanted to.

The ones I had saved were total M’kraan addicts, already up to Centurion/6 and increasing rapidly. It helped tons having the absorption rate of a Centurion/10, of course. There’d be no worries about them protecting the next generations of Strontians, and all the other inhabitants of Venus and Mercury.

Dealer was off hosting a party on the Colosseum with Chef Julia, and at least forty Elders of the Universe were in attendance for it.

Combicha was naturally on the menu.

Circe, Nimue, and Morgan were with me in my quarters. The rest of the Dupes all had busy lives getting things done or pursuing their goals with the single-mindedness of personality aspects doing what they loved, leaving us to work on the overall stuff and more open-ended goals, as we were the lucky 21’s.

Anning was down doing alchemy stuff. She knew her job and often forgot about anything else but the cross-disciplinary wonders of True Alchemy for days at a time. It was good the rest of us could look out for her!

We had to set up the Legendary Crafting and Infusions, which generally meant Burning a lot of goldweight. Comps equal to one hundred pounds of goldweight per day, each of us, happening in our own little spell chamber on the station here, checked on every day to keep things stable and in motion.

Of course, that also meant we could do Naming Karma for our own Gear to that limit, so doing Big Things for Big Karma was something we were also keeping in mind.

Wanda was moving to New Israel to be nearer her father for lessons in magnetic manipulation. When the things being manipulated were magical devices that could enhance, channel, form, and manipulate magic, well, multiplier effects all around, right? After all, Seals and Sigils that were solid always had more force than those that were merely represented. Being able to form and manipulate those at a thought was tremendously powerful.

Anning had thought up the basics of Magnetic Magic for her, and was still working on it as Wanda sent us feedback.

It had to be done non-magically, too, so our Rings couldn’t do it for us. Wanda’s power after losing the Scarlet Witch was not going to go down at all, and if she had started wearing red armor and carrying around Compressed metal gear she could spin up into instant Magic Circles and Seals and whatnot, well, too bad for the other guy.

Morgan’s hair was much redder now after taking the Title. Contrary to what she’d told Wanda, she had puh-lenty of experience wielding Chaos Magic via Wanda’s mother’s skills. Fortunately, that experience was all mixed in with bucketloads of Dark Magic and some really sinister intentions, so when that stuff hit our Silver Magic, it kind of hissed and bubbled and Burned and didn’t do anything for squat, so it was useless and easy to ignore. Morgan’s magic almost always had vivic energies falling from them from excess Chaos magic Burning away now.

Morgan had no Levels devoted to Scarlet Witchcraft, and the Masteries we’d inherited and would use were all on the control side, reducing and controlling the effects, which would apply to any kind of Chaos Magic on a generic basis. The Boosts, Buffs, and Bonuses of being the Scarlet Witch were indeed impressive... if you weren’t a Cosmic Sublime Chord Underweb Caster abusing Ur-Priest Theurgic synergies, that is.

“Intentions?” I asked Circe, who tossed her lavender hair meaningfully.

“I’m going to start thinning out the Dragon Mages so we don’t have to put up with all the damn Magic Events they keep arranging,” she stated firmly. “The Winding Way is a good start, and... I’m going to take down New Salem.”

Margali knew a lot of the practitioners of the Winding Way Tradition, and was effectively the Sorceress Supreme of that path... which meant Circe was now, if she wanted to bother following it.

The adherents of the Winding Way fluctuated between massive levels of power and incredible lows on their path, and were renowned for their ruthlessness to one another, assaulting those ahead of them on the Way and stealing their knowledge for themselves.

They were also habitual body-stealers of others in addition to being mind and soul rapists, and were hardly above manipulating and killing normal mortals to provide for themselves on their long road to power.

Those of them who had dealt with the Dragon were now also obsessed about gaining its strength and power, and scarcely a day went by without some fruitcake Caster setting up a Ritual somewhere to transform the area, bring in otherplanars, call upon Great Power Is Mine!, exert mass mind-control, Animate the dead, or otherwise just be total shits somewhere on the planet.

Yeah, they knocked over banks and stuff, too, often in some very inventive ways, given the tools at their disposal. Karma for local heroes!

New Salem was both a town and a teaching location for new Sorcerers and Witches, but it had fallen a long, long way. Removing it at this point, and excising the rot at its core, would only help magic, and new students could be sent over to the Tribes, or the new Academy Arcane that was being put together in Europe under the radar of the superstitious and overly religious sots there.

All such fun keeping a lot of Tribal folk busy around the world, and a lot of Crystal Vaccines ringing.

“Anything special about Strange?” I inquired of Morgan, who had basically taken over as Strange’s librarian/apprentice/back-up/researcher/housemaid, since Wong was increasingly off doing stuff with Dealer and Chef Julia, getting his own reputation as an awesome magical cook going.

Wong’s stir-fries and hot pots were mmm-mmm-tasty!

“He’s starting to talk things out and listen more, especially when I started tearing into him for some of his more, ah, extreme and rash courses of action, when subtler and less Strange-centered work-arounds existed.”

“Yay!” we all clapped for her. Strange’s arrogance and pride in his power, skill, and position were a given, but when your apprentice has a Caster Level twice as high as yours, and can leisurely whip out so many paths of magic you haven’t even bothered to pursue, well, ignoring her words was idiocy.

He’d hit Legendary himself after that dust-up a few years back with Dormammu and taking on rival Sorcerer Supremes of other worlds coming here eager for more power, as well as a lot of confrontations with netherlords and things grasping for power. There’d been something going on with a reincarnated Tibetan lama that was pretty interesting, too...

Maybe he’d start consulting her more, maybe not. After all, she still didn’t deal much with the Vishanti and the other Entities, by personal choice. Then again, she hadn’t really had to...

------

Nimue agreed to remain on magical back-up for everyone and everything, effectively becoming the Caster on Duty for the High Guard. They were all pleased as punch to have a Caster of their own to do stuff and not have to call for consultations to elsewhere. The fact she had an Arcane Core just helped her fit in with the many Corps members working around LaGrange.

No, I hadn’t told anyone she was my Duplicate. Since our abilities were nothing alike, and she dressed in a more conservative sorceress-style to impress with her curves and I did not, add in Nom de Guerre on top, and she definitely was not Dynamo, because she was standing right next to me talking to me.

Exotic Isotopes on demand was always nice, too, and if she could Copy/Mimic a High Guard powers configuration if needed, well, that wasn’t a bad thing, right?

Everybody took a breather, even as we went about our daily deeds of Brood-slaughtering, Badoon harassing, and Skrull-punching out in the stars, in between waiting for the next thing that was going to hit ol’ Terra.