Mountain, meet Endbringer | Glowfic Constellation

Yeah she was told to expect that.

She'll distract herself reading electrical engineering during the flight so she doesn't accidentally pay attention to the nearby geography.

And eventually they arrive. It's night, there, and it's... well, a mountain.

And some work has already started, there. There is a cave, coming from the top of the mountain into it.

For such a secretive and well-paid project she follows the blueprints exactingly, leaving no trace that she in particular was involved except by the methods used. She makes several suggestions - things she honestly thinks would better secure the place against earthquakes etc, though she doesn't know enough about the area to be sure about what's needed.

Earthquakes are unheard of here, but her suggestions are accepted. The blueprints are in fact very specific about several things, and there are some parts that require as seamless and firm as possible an integration between certain metal structures and the walls of the mountain.

It takes a decent amount of effort, but she can tie the metal to the rock wall on the molecular level by turning the mountain wall into a steadily decreasing not-quite-an-alloy that fades to stone as it gets further away. The two things are as close as she can get them to being a single object by the time she's done.

That's fantastic.

And eventually they're done with what they needed her for—a rather strange metal structure suspended in the middle of quite a lot of empty space—and the aircraft is there to take her back.

She keeps reading that textbook on the flight back. She pulls out a notebook and telekinetically sketches some circuit designs (graphite counts as from the earth, barely).

When they're back and the payment from someone-probably-affiliated-with-the-Protectorate clears she can finally pay the bank back for the rest of that big loan and speed up turning her mountain into a proper base/home.

She'll make a house/apartment building and fancy office area for Laura and any more people she might decide to hire with the budget - which would stretch to hiring someone, if barely - somewhere on the mountain if she wants.

Here's a thought... If she makes beaches and hotels, would tourists come? Probably not - she's not famous and even if a parahuman built it, from the outside her mountain looks like little more than a pretty pile of rock in the middle of the ocean.

Well, if she made something pretty out of it, maybe, but she would have to jump through quite a few bureaucratic hoops in order to get permission for that.

More bureaucracy, she's so surprised.

The point would be to have a stream of income that doesn't involve her constantly doing jobs. Are there better ways to achieve that?

Well, owning property that she isn't using for tourism—and entertainment-related activities can be a good source of income, especially since she's already cleared to use her powers to build things.

Alright. Laura can handle most of the setup for that right? That's what she's getting paid a high-but-not-obscene amount for after all.

Yes, that is among the things she can do. Still a thing that is possible, she quite enjoys being only required to do things that are possible.

Excellent! Back to work they go.

Can she get New York to help recommend her publicity-boosting disaster cleanup services to other cities? Or possibly to hire her for future infrastructure projects like subway or sewer expansions? Municipal work, infrastructure stuff remains mostly her favorite kind of work.

Well, she can get some people to do that, and Laura herself offers to have this info reach other people. The government is definitely up for more infrastructure stuff in the future, when it does need to happen.

What about other governments? Canada? Europe? Central and South America, discount rates because they kinda need it?

Maybe take a tour of Africa and dig wells and make roads. Even if she'll probably be attacked it might leave the average person better off. Or maybe it'd just invite retaliation. She's not sure about that one.

Most of them are tentative about accepting and worry about a suddenly helpful parahuman willing to just fix their stuff at the scale she suggests, even if she is in fact charging them—and especially if she isn't.

As for a lot of Africa, it might come to her attention that people aren't in enough agreement about what the best thing to do with it for them to have actually done anything. She may interpret that information however she likes.

Hopefully as she continues to build things and they continue to not suddenly collapse some of them will accept eventually. There's plenty of private companies that want things built cheaply and just take out a lot of insurance.

Time passes. Behemoth's going to show up soon. One day Mountain tries to find Glam, to remind them about making her something sharp enough to hurt it.

Glam

mxglam

"Like what? Giant stalactite? You know my stuff disappears half an hour after I stop paying attention to it, right?"

"I was assuming you can pay attention through cameras. If you're not going to be there yourself, that is. You said you hurt Leviathan after all. Wouldn't blame you for staying far away from the monsters, though."

Glam

mxglam

They open and close their mouth a few times. "I'm—probably going."

"You're powerful enough that you'll surely be welcome. Especially with the whole truce thing. But nobody ought to feel like they must fight. No humans, at least. I... May have noticed something along these lines when we had that fight in the last of the rubble. The resemblance wasn't intentional."

Glam

mxglam

He pauses, then sighs. "I'm kinda terrified of him."

"Reasonable. I am not really good at social things, so tell me if I should drop something, okay? That said, if you decide not to or just don't work up the nerve, you can always arm me for the first few minutes 'till it expires, and fly away. Help me strike some small blow. Better than nothing."

Glam

mxglam

"Mm. Yeah. But physical things and solid objects tend to not be very effective against them."