[Sama in the MU] Part 10
Added 2025-03-30 04:04:43 +0000 UTC“You seem to have something on your mind,” Natasha Romanova said as she joined me in watching the others.
Iceman was currently hurling iceballs at Angel as the latter flitted around, gradually increasing the numbers of snowballs and the area covered to make it more challenging. The Juggernaut was doing the 100 Meter Ice Crawl, testing how long it would take him to walk through a simply massive block of ice a hundred meters long, learning how to grind and scrape and channel the broken ice away so as to move with more speed. Yeah, he was unstoppable, but he was slooooow unstoppable.
Blaze and Hercules were doing unusual things for both of them. Blaze was hurling endless hellfire, which could actually hurt the demigod, and Hercules’ job was to tuck and roll and avoid him. Being the agile warrior wasn’t Hercules’ normal thing, but I brought him in for his skill and ability to assess and instruct with all that experience, not to be a dumb brute. My expectations meant he could be a big goof on his time, but when training, he was very serious.
There’s nothing like two thousand years of combat experience to get a guy who wants to learn how to fight to shut up and listen.
“Those recorders in your ears and bracelets off?” I asked her archly.
She barely flinched, but she did look down at her bracelets thoughtfully. She reached up, touched the studs in her ears and took them off, then held up the bracelets in my direction.
I manifested a claw on my forefinger, turned the bracelets over, and punched into the brass, crimp, crimp.
“I just received the upgrades yesterday,” she informed me. “I hadn’t gone over them yet.”
I just nodded. “How would you like to have superpowers?” I asked her archly.
Her eyes narrowed instantly. “You can grant superpowers?”
“There’s a very specific set that I can transfer over. It isn’t something I ‘learned’, more like it was given to me and doesn’t do anything for me.”
“What powers?”
“Those of Spider-woman.”
A slight widening of the eyes was her only tell. “You are Spider-woman?”
“Jessica Drew died over a year ago. She was killed by Hydra. You may remember an old Hydra base that blew up over in Fernando Valley at that time. It was a trap for her.”
She nodded slowly. “And you have been portraying her.” Her eyes flickered. “You have accumulated quite a tally against them,” she complimented me.
“And so will you, since you will also be able to pretend to be her. I’m not going to stop until Madame Hydra, Viper, is dead, and probably not even then. All those Nazi fucks deserve to die.”
“That is very true.” Her voice was in cold agreement. “How can you transfer powers?”
“Jessica’s powers are an aspect of the Spider Totem, triggered by the radioactive spider cocktail her father gave her to survive radiation poisoning. I’ve told you all how power is power, and can come from different sources? Well, part of Jessica’s powers are actualized psionics, and part is a direct tie to the Spider Totem, similar to, but different from Marko.”
She digested that calmly. “I see. Does this come with obligations?”
“Technically no. Realistically, something is going to come up involving saving the multiverse, and off you’ll go to fulfill your responsibilities. It’s not like they phone you up, either. You’ll just realize there’s a problem, and it’s time to do something.”
“An interesting price to pay.” She smiled slightly. “Is it passed on the same as your Mark?”
“No. You’ll put your hand on my back where the Totem Tat is, I’ll give you a blood injection, and the link that doesn’t work on me will get transferred to you. The Black Widow will suddenly become a real Black Widow.” I glanced at her. “And you don’t even have to tell anyone, as the equipment you wear basically fakes her powers for the most part, anyways. Specifically, don’t tell anyone Jessica is dead. She makes an excellent cover identity for the two of us.”
She nodded slowly. “That... is not a difficult choice to make. Why are you offering this?”
“You’re on a team with superhumans. As a massively highly trained combatant, you know just what level of danger you are in dealing with superhumans. One wrong blow, one missed dodge, and you could just die, as if you aren’t one of the most formidable fighters on the planet. The power level is just too high. In return, your offensive ability is neutered against them, simply because their basic defenses are so high. While you can try to exploit weaknesses... your enemies aren’t all idiots, and will only get smarter with time.”
I nodded at Hercules. “He’s the actual Greek demi-god, a walking myth. If he gets off his high horse, you literally don’t have a chance against him if he takes you seriously. He may not know modern martial arts, but he doesn’t need to. He can punch faster than the speed of sound, and blow right through steel. If he hits you seriously, you will explode.”
Her face was grim. “I am aware,” she agreed faintly.
“You know what it’s like to be human, and those are the best people to have superhuman powers. In addition, you are already Powered, so you can disguise the gradual improvement as coming from what I taught you.”
She flicked her hand, to where the azure-silver knife, hard and sharp, winked up dangerously, and dissipated just as quickly. “There has been great pressure from my superiors to pass this knowledge on to them,” she informed me, as the knife disappeared.
“They must be very unhappy that you cannot do so, and they could not learn it, anyways.”
“Yes. They refuse to believe it... and I am sure they, and many others, have been attempting to find out the secrets of it.”
“You have no idea. The sums of money some of them have been willing to pay have been exceedingly generous, especially from the criminal organizations who want all their foot soldiers to be psions.”
“That is not surprising.” She took a deep breath. “How long would this process take?”
“About ten seconds.”
She blinked in surprise despite herself. “That is rather quick,” she noted wryly. Just like the mindblades.
“It’ll take about twenty-four hours for the internal changes to spread through you. You’re going to have to be careful about people taking your vitals or blood, but other than that, not much change. Oh, you’ll be defying gravity more easily.” I jiggled once.
She eyed my impressive set, and her own equally inspiring pair. “Certainly not unwelcome,” she admitted with a straight face. “What do I need to do?”
“There’s a big ol’ spider Tat on my back I’ve never shown anyone. It’s of a black widow.” Her eyes flashed. “Put your hand on the hourglass, while I,” I jabbed a syringe into my neck, pulled out some crimson stuff, “inject this into you. Totem link will transfer over.”
She turned to look behind us, and then calmly moved her hand behind my back, going up my spine, under my shirt, and suddenly pausing when she reached a warm spot.
My hair coiled over, the syringe plunged into her aorta, and emptied very smoothly.
There was a pulse and a surge, and she tensed up, swaying for a moment as something flushed through her whole body. I felt the Brand on my back starting to unwind, and her hand fell away.
“That... is a strange feeling,” she admitted.
“The core of Jessica’s powers are that she is a bioelectric dynamo.” Sparks crackled around me, which she eyed sharply. “However, you are Powered. You’ll actually be able to toss and control the electricity you generate... or focus it through those bracelets, which are going to seem much, much lighter very soon. Also, you’ll be able to take the batteries out, as you will be the battery.”
She smiled slightly. “They are rather heavy,” she agreed. “What level of strength?”
“You’ll be able to lift somewhere between seven and nine tons, I think. Note that it doesn’t stack on top of your super-soldier enhancements from the Red Room.” She shot me a sharp look. “It’s a total override and replacement, and pretty much superior across the board. Your reflexes will go up to about fifteen times standard. Muscle and connective tissue elasticity will exceed human norms, and combined with the strength multiplier, you’ll be able to move with incredible speed. Your muscle control, balance, and coordination will be perfect.
“Given that you’ve trained yourself to almost those levels already, such things won’t be readily noticeable unless you want them to be, except the strength. You’ll be able to jump ten stories, run a hundred miles an hour, and take blunt damage impacts that would pulp a normal person without much trouble. Your healing factor isn’t instantaneous, but a non-vital stab wound will disappear within an hour, a broken bone will mend within a day if set right, and bruises will disappear almost as they are forming.
“Also, you’re basically immune to poisons. There’ll be some weakness on initial exposure, then you’ll adapt and be immune thereafter. So, expose yourself to a bunch of toxins. Lastly, radiation damage won’t affect you at all. You’ll just metabolize it and be done. Tanning becomes a little difficult.”
She looked down at her hands. “And the wall-crawling?” she had to ask. “And flying?”
“They are the same thing. Here, you should be able to feel this.” I held out my hand, and she put hers in it. I cemented them together, and her eyes narrowed. I repelled them softly, and pushed hers away. Pull, push, pull, push. “You can feel it, yes?” She nodded. “And you can tell that you’ll be able to do the same, soon.” She nodded again.
“Now, again, you’re Powered, you have range with this. So, you’ll be able to affect a wider area with the pull and push. For instance, in a wide or narrow area, if you send out a push from the floor, you’ll knock people on their keisters. I can’t do that.
“Likewise, if you expand the area to a whole section of a brick wall, you could pull out a big chunk all at once by literally grabbing a whole five-foot section at the same time. I also cannot do that.”
She seemed intrigued by the possibilities and my admissions. “But what you can do... is very strong, I feel.”
“Yes. Within my four inches, you won’t be able to beat me. Now, Jessica didn’t fly, she glided, using the repulsion power. You’ve a basic physics background?”
“Of course.”
“What she did is repel away the air above her. Air pressure from below pushed her up.” I pantomimed the effect. “So, she flew like a bird, but she was pushed up from below, glided down to pick up velocity, pushed herself up again.” I made an up and down motion. “If you see pictures of her flying, she always starts with a flying leap to gain forward momentum. She could repel more softly below her to glide somewhat more levelly for a distance, but her forward flight was always up and down, up and down.”
“Intriguing. The web-wings? Maneuverability?”
“Yes, just like a bird. When you pull on them with the strength of spider, they are quite rigid, and you can alternately push in different directions to help you turn. The webwings increased surface area. Granted, they could use a tech upgrade, but for simple purposes and low tech, they worked just fine.”
“And if some form of forward thrust could be added, with no need for lift, I imagine one could move quite quickly...”
“Yes, but still subject to wind resistance, you still have to breathe, and so forth. Muscling up some invulnerability or armor would help... and armor weighs a lot less with spider-strength.”
She smiled despite herself. “Power armor... and I am a... dynamo...” she said softly.
“Effective range of what she called a ‘venom blast’, and is really just an electric jolt, is about sixty feet tops, with aim getting increasingly erratic as you approach that. Using the energy to power something with longer range, penetrating force, and accuracy would be a very good idea.”
“Is this not something you can do?” she inquired curiously.
“Oh, it definitely is. But letting people know you have some really bitching trump cards when they think they’ve identified your weakness is too much fun not to do, you know?”
Her eyes flickered to my Masspack knowingly. “Ah.”
“You have that ‘I want one’ look on your face,” I informed her with a grin.
“You have a magical... bag of holding, I think it is called?” She smiled despite herself. “Who would not want such a thing?”
“Technically, it’s a bag of Pym Particle-esque dimension-shifting, i.e. it shrinks stuff that is put into it. A Bag of Holding is something that is bigger inside than outside. Carrying around pocket dimensions, however small, is not a wise course of action. Remember that, please.”
She nodded slowly. “I shall. Merely shrunken? The weight?”
“The effect is called Compressing, it’s not the same as Pym particles. So, there’s actually no weight let-off. Now, you can build that into the Masspack, and I did, to a degree, but if I turned it off, you’d find I’ve actually got about two thousand pounds of stuff in there.”
She blinked despite herself. “A great number of surprises, I see.”
“Techno-geeks and their toys run headlong into even more toys,” I sniffed, and she smiled again. “A proper warrior should have at least access to five ranges of combat, and seven or eight should be on the table, just to cope with the crap we are dealing with.”
“What are your first five?” she inquired with a fighter’s interest.
“Wrestling range. Fist range. Hand-held weapon range. Spear range, or reach. Short throwing weapon range. Close archery range, or long throwing weapon range. Then comes long archery range, firearm long range, and artillery range. If you want to go longer range that that, mmm, you are talking major artillery, generally not the kind of thing you are toting around, unless you’ve got a magic mallet empowered by Odin or something.”
“That Hammer of his is VERY useful,” she agreed.
“And it helps it’s being wielded by someone who can toss a tank like a baseball with centuries of experience at using it!”
“You’ve got something in there with artillery range?” she had to ask.
“Yeah, although it takes a lot of juice to charge up. I’d probably have to hook it into the city’s power grid if I wanted to be able to use it in a timely manner.”
“Hmm.” She nodded shortly. “Forgive me for asking... but this ability of yours to gain super powers... I confess that I do not understand why you are not far more powerful than you are. Are you concealing your power?”
“A very real concern, and yes, and no. There are things I am capable of doing that I have not shown anyone, but no, I don’t have the level of power of everyone whose powers I have. Hmm, how to say it.” I looked up at the sky. “I can duplicate the gun, but not the power charging the gun. And by power, I mean psionic, divine, elemental, magic, whatever. What raw power I have is my own, my dynamo, if you will. There is a limit in the breadth of power I can put out... let’s use a number and say 1000, for example.” She nodded. “Likewise, there is a limit in the quantity of power I can put into any one ability. Let’s say that is, oh, 100.”
“Understood?”
“Hercules’ kit of strength, invulnerability, and such works out to about 400 on that scale.”
“Ahhh...” She nodded slowly. “So, taking Hercules’ ability doesn’t mean you have his godly power to fuel it. You simply have... the potential?”
“Correct. And I can grow into it. Also, abilities rise exponentially as they get stronger. So, Hercules is at least a Class 100 on the muscle rating, I’m a Class 50. But it takes four times the power to be a Class 100 that it does to be a 50. And even if I had the total power to do the job, I have an inner limit of 100, so it’s moot.”
“I see. And the Spider-woman kit?”
“That works out to about 200 in multiple sectors, so I can afford it all. You don’t have the power of your own to afford that, but because it’s a Totem, that’s not an issue. They’ll feed you the juice, just like Marko.” The boom and crash of the two doing heavy takedowns was like buildings falling. The two were enjoying themselves. “Your super-soldier abilities are in the 20-40 range, by comparison.”
“Can you not stack similar abilities?” she inquired. “For instance, the strength of the spider totem, and that of Hercules... or the Amigos?” She had a fair knowledge of some of the people whose powers I had.
“Potentially, but they have to come from different styles. A magical increase to strength and a psionic increase to strength basically all do the same thing. Now, getting taller and having more muscle might do some of the job. Likewise, some abilities add strength in lots – you can now bench ten tons! – and some are multipliers, i.e. you have the proportionate strength of a spider, and can now lift fifty times your normal amount!
“So, basically everything in the Amigos kit is subsumed and done by the Hercules kit. They don’t stack up, even though one is powered by godly magic, and the other by psionics. Now, if I were to take the She-Hulk kit, and assuming I wasn’t immune to radiation, gaining a foot of height and two hundred pounds of mass would probably increase my strength off a different vector, and I’d be much stronger. However, I don’t want to walk around seven foot tall and green, so there’s that.”
“Green Dynamo. You could extend your name,” she offered with a straight face.
“There’s already people who wanna call me Black Lightning. Dynamo works just fine, and the nature of the word indicates power. However I publicly develop in the future, Dynamo will still be fine.” A smile tugged at my lips. “The Incredible She-Hulkules, while also accurate, just doesn’t ring good, either.”
She almost laughed. “No, no it does not.” She eyed me again. “So, Hercules gave you his blood?”
“He seemed most interested in what would happen. I think he wants a lover he doesn’t have to be so gentle with and afraid he might break in bed.”
Now she did laugh softly. “So, how does the blood of a god feel?”
“Hmm. I’m not sure how to answer that. If you are asking if I can hear prayers or my name or anything, no, I’m a Null, can’t do that. That’s a province of the divine.”
Now she looked startled, eyes flickering back and forth between me and Hercules. “He can hear prayers?” she asked softly.
“He’s a god, of course he can. But, he’s a demi-god.” I cracked my neck. “He’s very limited in what he can do, and the skyfathers of the pantheons have put strict limits on divine intervention in humanity. Plus, there’s so many prayers or people saying his name, that unless there’s something very distinctive, he can’t really make much out. The reason prayer services exist in the first place is to get a lot of people saying the same prayer so a god can actually pay attention to what they are praying for and asking.”
She sucked in a breath. This was definitely going into new territory for her. “So, he could potentially answer prayers?” She found the concept strange and wondrous, despite herself.
“No. He’s a demi-god. The most he could do is divert the power of the faith of his people back to others, and concentrate it on them, if they follow the right rituals so that it can be done automatically in his name. Otherwise, all he can do is walk down there and lend a hand in person. Also, he’s a god of strength, and so very limited in even the Rituals he could grant.”
“So, it would actually be possible to call on the strength of Hercules, if he could understand you and you were in need?” she pressed.
“You, maybe. But the problem with Hercules is that he doesn’t have a lot of followers or faithful. Oh, there’s sure to be some, hidden away here and there, probably descendants of his over the centuries. But if he decided to answer that prayer, and you were Powered, hey!, he could share his power with you. But without the faith of others, he’d actually be sharing HIS power with you, and so he’d be weaker while you were using it. If there were enough faithful, he could share THEIR power with you, and not draw on his own, instead.”
She was studying me again. “You seem to have thought on this topic?”
I nodded. “I talked with Hercules over possibly becoming a divine sponsor of the Powered enclave we are building. We went over a lot of the implications, and he has some very nuanced and deep understandings of the subject, as you might guess. It came down to... we could do it. But doing so would attract attention and jealousy from other deities. He could get away with it because he’s a demigod and half-mortal, and this is his home. But what that would mean is encouraging the gods to suddenly have a bunch of demigods, all of them get busy building religions to the pantheons, while they stay on the planet as the representatives of the gods.
“The main reason he, and even Thor, are being allowed to wander around the mortal world is that there are trans-pantheonic forces acting here that think the gods not being able to intervene is an opportunity, and they have been very active of late. Despite them running around, modern humans are just taking them with a grain of salt. Not many of them are really sitting down to think there’s an actual god in play on the planet, and the implications of what that means in the big scheme of things.”
It was a moment before she replied, “Their view of the universe is small...”
“And then you read about what philanderers Odin and Zeus were, and they are perfectly good staying up there in their realms, thank you.”
“Amen?” Natasha agreed, and we both laughed.
“Ah, one final power of Jessica’s you are going to very subtly useful. She has potentially intense pheromone projection.”
Natasha narrowed her eyes in thought. “Like the Purple Man?” she got quickly.
“No. Purple’s shit is more like a psionically-charged invasive poison. Get yourself exposed to it in safe conditions so something similar can’t happen to you by surprise, you’ll be immunized.” She nodded once. “Pheromones are pretty primal, so, fight, flight, mating, territorialism, and lack of hostility are the big ones you can broadcast. Naturally, most people are not going to know what you are doing to them. So, you can be very intimidating or make them ready to fight, they will think you are weak or be scared themselves, you can seduce them, you can make them very aware they are pissing you off, or you can broadcast no harmful intentions.” I glanced at her and away with a sly smile. “I’m sure the world’s best covert agent won’t find any of that of use.”
“Mmm,” she agreed, with only a shadow of a smile. “I have to say this... kit of abilities is very suitable for me...”
“It would not surprise me at all if you were to gain the attention of one of the actual Totems. I understand the Widow is considered the deadliest of them, and I’m not sure what obligations you would be under if you were to develop a relationship with any of them, either. They obviously wanted me, but literally can’t hook me, because I’m a Null.
“Also, they rarely seem to empower someone who has prior combat training of a sophisticated nature. I don’t know if they just want to give average people opportunities, or are just dumb.”
She rolled her eyes again. “They can call me, I won’t call them.”
“What, you don’t want to be taking orders from metaphysical spider Totems? Dunno why,” I sniffed. “Of course, it will come and bite you at some point, so just be aware it’s there and don’t be surprised when shit happens related to it.”
She glanced at me. “And will they be calling for you?” she asked archly.
“Probably, but I won’t hear it. Drop me a line when they reach for you, if you need me. But they’re getting a professional Totem agent, who happens to be one of the deadliest women in the world. If they need me, sheesh!” I cracked my neck once. “Still, you’ll be able to tell I’ve got some spider Totem ties when things finish up with you tomorrow.”
“Anyone else with a Totem?”
“Spider-man. Some old fart who got made a spider Totem a generation ago. Maybe a couple others. And from other dimensions, anything goes. Spider-man probably doesn’t know; he hasn’t got the magical awareness to realize it’s there, and nobody has bothered to tell him. The old fart went to the Spider Temple in Africa, and so he’s aware of more things, but he tries hard to stay out of the game.”
“Should I visit?”
“Not unless you want to start stirring up things. If you like to, go for it.”
“Mmm. Perhaps I shall wait for them to call on me.”
“The main threat for Spider Totems seems to be an interdimensional bunch of dipshit hunters who like to prey on them. They leech out the Totem energy like vampires and kill you. I suggest if they come for you that kill them with maximum prejudice... or call me; I will, and happily.”
“Well, since you foisted this off on me...” she half-laughed ironically.
“They couldn’t sense or feed on me, anyways. I’m just being really nice, and they’re a bunch of murdering vampires.” I flexed my hands, and my knuckles popped and crackled. “And if you get in a situation where you find out where they came from, I’ll be happy to come along. They are not going to like me at all.”
“You sound very confident?”
“They are used to killing normal people who became Totems. Not super-powered covert agents, and not super-powered personal combat specialists immune to their life-sucking.”
“Your fighting skills are superlative, although you do not display them overmuch,” she agreed.
I smiled slightly. “No need to with high enough strength and speed. When they find out I actually know how to fight inhumanly well... it is one of life’s little surprises.”
“We have investigated your background, you know,” she told me.
“Well, of course you have. How did trying to figure out the past of someone capable of subtle shapechanging go?”
“Not very well. Your not seeming to have a civilian identity doesn’t help.”
“Pity that. You know your Mark?”
“Yes?”
“That white aura around it. Have you been charging it up?”
“Yes. Is there a use for it?”
“Is the primary Mark fully charged? You should have noticed the effect on your strength.”
“Yes. I am indeed nearly twice as strong as before.” She didn’t hide her satisfaction.
“That will also apply to the Totem boost. So, whatever base the Totem puts you at, and then increase it eighty percent, when we finally do the tests.”
Her smile grew wider. “I do not believe I will object to that...”
“The white aura will allow you to take on the form of Jessica Drew.”
Now she did glance at me sharply. “Truly? That... is much better than merely donning a more colorful costume...”
“I can do the same. And I can also look mostly like you. There’s some problem with the bone structure, but I can definitely match hair and skin color, eyes, fingerprints, and everything else. With some practice, I can probably imitate your accent, and in any event, through the Mark I could let you see everything I was doing, in case you need me to cover for you in an emergency.”
Her expression became quite thoughtful. “Of course, you could also abuse that...”
“Very true. Of course, you’ll know who I am the instant you lay eyes on me regardless of form, due to the Marks, so not very wise on my end. Likewise, someone pretending to be you just isn’t going to get away with it.” I had to smile. “Now, from a voyeuristic standpoint, I admit to being interested in the possibilities.”
She rolled her eyes, but smiled despite herself. “And we can both be Jessica Drew? Certainly, we will not have any fun with that...”
“Certainly not!”
