Mmmmmmmmm ice cream~ 

Ice cream is good and kind and doesn't require her to have big girl thoughts. She likes not having to have big girl thoughts. 

She's still getting used to this tongue and body and these lips, and there's something just... extra special about having them get coated by the milky bath of vanilla. 

Hi violet-blue power supply thing! Did you hear? He's inviting me in to his house and making it so I'll probably get to study under and with him and with her and it's so cool! Do you have any idea how metal 'shadowcrest' sounds! It sounds sooo metal! And that's just the start. I kind of want one of those dressy suits - I'm not normally one for going too far butch but they're snzzy and it'll just - be good to break bread with them, you know? There's so many ideas she has and she's sure she has plenty and it's going to be so good!!! She's getting fond of him already, honestly, and it's just - flattering that he's inviting her into his family like that, especially given how hung up about it he is... 

Her reverie clears, eventually, as it always does, but the glowiness (and the emotional wear from the ritual, too, yes) doesn't fade entirely. She... needs to clear her head. 

And one-two-three-four, nearly there... 

There's something refreshing about being good and warm and thoroughly, physically tired, for all that it's pushed her will a bunch. She flops back and pats her face with a towel, for a while, then schleps up for a proper post-workout shower. 

She should do something with her time, shouldn't she. The gift is so good to her and it would be a shame if she didn't do something with it. Hm... 

She has a few ideas, actually. She'll grab the green symbology power, and start working on making some crafting blanks for Joan - she can control it enough to put in the designs for a few simple things - storage, light emission, hardening, the broad idea of will itself, and deepen them a good bit to make them just a little bit easier to work with. They'll be - focused, and fit for purpose in a way that just something that she picks up randomly wouldn't be, and every little bit is going to help, she expects.  

She's a bit less sure what else to put in the mix - she just wants a knowledge for this, and that's always a little bonus tricky. Can she get a power for say... knowing how to make green light infusion tools? She'll want to make the blanks of those, either way. 

Probably? Can she be more specific about what she means by "green light infusion tools"? Are these tools for doing infusion made with green light, that work with green light, or both?

She's trying to teach Joan to infuse green light into things! Like this power you gave me. Something that helps facilitate that sort of thing. So she thinks the former, in as much as those two options are the right way to think about it? 

So ... a power for knowing how to make tools that assist with emotional-spectrum infusion out of green light? Yeah, it can do that!

Does she also want a teaching power, maybe?

a power for knowing how to make tools that assist with emotional-spectrum infusion out of green light?

Let's grab that, sure! 

She was thinking just the green symbology power? Because that seems like a natural fit for the more crafting side, and she doesn't have the brain to be thinking about socialling right now. But designing artifacts, that's fine on her books! 

Oh and - could you merge those two once you make them? 

Green symbology, merged up! It can definitely do that!

And for her last trick power - this is one that she feels like will either be a big fuss to make or something the designers built in that could be super native to the gift, so fingers crossed is...

Some sort of power for measuring her level of - soul adaption? - to her powers? The 'trellising' thing that Zatara mentioned, the thing where she gets better at the sort of things that her power makes her better at through having and using the power, that sort of thing. 

Ideally it'd give her like, a percentage score showing how much of the utility of having that power she's internalized, and how much she can internalize? She thinks the power designs are static enough for that to be the right way to think about it, but it's I guess possible that there's some sort of adaptive additivity to say, the intuition powers that means that's not the right way to think about it? Some sort of - gauge relative to meaningful checkpoints, like measuring based on the fraction of the utility of the original power she's getting out of it. Though some sort of generalized intuitive understanding of how the whole affair works or a 'gauge' could work too, even if something she can pin down firmly would probably be ideal? 

Hmm. It could do a percentage measure, but that might be misleading? Because related clusters of powers with high synergy adapt faster than isolated sparks ... but they're also bigger ... if it flattens the space by projecting along the primary component ...

Yes, it can do a power that lets her visualize the progress of her soul adapting to powers! It would be simplified but not actually wrong, although apparent progress might be a bit uneven because of "curves". Does that work?

Sure, she'll do the visualization one. 

How is she looking ^_^? 

Integration gauge: Identification --0%--> Interface

Green infusion tool symbology: Identification --0%--> Interface

Lantern design ensemble: Identification --26%--> Interface

Green-and-blue device and crystal creation ensemble: Interface --39%--> Integration

"Identification" means that her soul has felt out the shape of the power and understands how it relates to her. "Interface" means that her soul has started to shape itself to match the power, giving her more intuitive understanding and control over it. Only her blue spark has reached this level. "Integration", the next level her blue spark will hit if she keeps it, represents the point where the power actually becomes durably imprinted on her soul, and a faint echo of it remains available even when the gift swaps her active sparks out.

There's a feeling that there are more levels possible, but the power doesn't come with an intuition for them, since they don't appear on a measurement yet.

Guess who's a diligent notetaker~? 

She is! 

A 'faint echo', huh? Definitely doesn't sound like the last level. And she jumped pretty far on the lantern creation power by well. Creating a lantern. Food for thought, definitely. 

She wonders a little how it works with knowledge and habits of thought - she wouldn't be... suprised if it works better for helping habits of thought, but it's certainly possible that it works isomorphically to a power like the crystal generation stuff. 

Can she get a sense of other powers she's had that she doesn't currently? Probably not, right, at least without more integration then she's had? The only ones that she can think of that she might have a meaningful amount of integration with is some of the older green and blue powers she cycled out, or maybe the true body one? She'll have to check up on this occasionally, anyways, and she can rotate her powers to take a look, then. 

This power is about measuring how much her soul has adapted. She can also just learn knowledge the normal way, and then the knowledge is in her mind, not her soul.

The difference is ...

If she has a power that gives her an intuitive understanding of local geography, and then she uses it to learn the local geography the normal way, and then she swaps it out, she's not going to forget what she's learned about local geography. But if she then went to another planet, she wouldn't automatically know the local geography there, whereas if she had kept the power then she would. Knowledge powers are actually a kind of very specifically aimed active magical divination that filters through the gift's mind interface.

If she wants a power for measuring how well she's integrated knowledge and patterns of thought into her mind, that is a different thing. But the gift could also do that, if there were enough space?

No worries! 

This is plenty to start from. Really, she just wanted to try for five minutes at it so that she didn't have the thought stuck in her head. 

Can she swap that power out for a power for... not teaching, but technical writing? She's going to need to notetake a bunch and write up some reference material for this... 

Sure! It can do skill for technical writing!

Alright! 

She fistpumps a bit internally! 

She nervously double checks that the lantern is working fine with her own eyes - it is, of course, zatara would have said if it was otherwise - and gets started on making more things! 

She'll make some of the 'wire' for the blue-green bit, blending together some crystals to fit her sense of what how the power should flow, and make some quick throwaway wires fore the other colors - she can always blend it up in place a bit later, and she thinks the blue-violet system appreciates it :3

She sketches out then goes to make the basic design of a nice little green light 'etching' tool, to poke at more later and finalize when she has the brains for it. 

There's also some crystal blanks she has to make for her offerings - she knows that she wants a nice lil cozy tourmaline crystal for hestia's offering, at least, so she'll get started on that. 

But most of all! So! much! writing! She typity types up a bunch on the basic symbological mechanical structure, the little subcomponents that you can start to tile together to make a proper ward or ring or what have you. It's going to be kind of dense, inevitably, and there's only so much she can put into type about the 'true essence of will' in a dry reference paper, but that doesn't mean that she won't try to make it helpful! She'll write up a bit about her thought process - though that's the sort of thing that probably works best verbally and when you can have a conversation about it, muses a bit about what might be desireable in an autopilot and a configurable green light multitool for going about making this thing, and generally loses her self in her work a bit. 

Ooh and she also needs to make the blanks for the basic warding amulets, and she has some ideas about the basic crafting setup, how to wire up a plate so that she can transfer power smoothly between different units and sort of help equilibrate them a bit as the mind wanders between them and help them all grow together... Thankfully she still has the powerset for doing the ward amulets, so designing everything with that in mind isn't too too tricky... 

There's some ideas for what she can do with the lantern, too - spewing a bunch of power endlessly into the air has certain advantages, when you're trying to make things with that power, unsuprisingly! But that's probably too magicy and the end result would probably be kind of mind controlly without putting in a bunch of precision with tools that she... kind of doesn't have? She knows from working on the earrings that she can do some pretty precise stuff, but that was with some bonus extra powers.

The math behind the higher dimensional stuff gives her a bit of a headache, but theoretically she's sure she could do something there too? Oo, she can poke at the design for the dimensional key thingamajig - that's pretty simple, actually, given that all of the complexity is in the lantern itself, for the moment. 

Oo. She's going to get to make a batbelt sometime, isn't she? That's exciting! Though it'll probably glow neon blue every time he opens it up, which might not be um. Ideal for the hero with a reputation built up on fear and stealth. Still, it's such a big advantage that she's got to be able to do something there, even if it's just "punt it to see if she can get someone to do some fancy illusion thing" or just doing something with like, layered cases that'd blot out the light, though that could be restrictive in terms of maximum size... 

Thoughts are funnnnnnnnn. But what about this. not having thoughts: Also fun. 

(She runs over to bed and conks out for an hour's nap., and then makes very sure that the lantern is on zero spillover mode, please and thank you.)

She really needs a nice laptop, and she forgot how annoyingly bad screens can be at crisply rendering text and motion. It's honestly a lot better then it should be for like, 15 years ago, but it's still noticeable enough to be annoying. 

She pouts, checks the time - looks like it's... 5:30ish? - then eases her self back into relative normalcy doing some small little touches to the document for Joan, before sending her a message. 

Here's a start at writing up some notes for the green light imbuement process. I don't necessarily think that it'll be particularly helpful for you until you figure out how to properly start the imbuement process - that's something more philosophical, intuitive and internal, that I think will make a lot more sense when you can see me do it and i can talk it over with you while looking over your shoulder - but it might be interesting for you to read on, and I think that it's often easier to focus on something that you've studied up on advance and made every effort to acquaint yourself with in advance. 

- Do you know where the Justice Society Green Lantern('s equipment) ended up, by the way? If there's a spare green lantern and ring floating around, I'm sure I could make good use of that. 

Made a blue lantern today! It involved doing a bit of magic and lightwork that wore me out a bit and made my capacity for hope wobble around some, but I should be back to normal by tomorrow, zatara said. Less than a week into superheroics and I'm already starting to understand how busy they get. 

Got dinner with him and his daughter on the hour, so I think I'll make that the rest of my day, more or less. 

She quickly checks to see if there's anything pressing in the messages or league feed - hopefully things have settled down enough around the prisoner thing by now and all? She's not totally sure on her status re: batman things and making her nascent lightwork 'business' work and there's the whole thing with the altanteans...

Oh and star labs. She was working on the cold gun stuff, wasn't she? Theoretically she's probably done enough to get them started and figure out suppliers for at least most of the parts, but that's probably going to take a while to pay off, and frankly it just - doesn't feel like her personal responsibility, that much? And besides, she wouldn't be surprised if the best way to take advantage of those crystals is selling them to Atlantean elementalists, which would imply a rather different direction for their development. Probably the thing to do there is see if she can help them figure out some sort of manufacturing situation for the crystals? 

That might be a good way to poke at the development of the other side of her big ol' power... 

She shakes her head, and returns to quickly skimming for anything important - really she just sort of... wants to have things moving in the background, and she doesn't feel... all the way there, yet? 

Well, some things are happening in the background. In follow-up investigation of the Cadmus fire, Batman has noticed some shipments of experimental drugs going missing, and wants the team to investigate because he's focused on the alien spaceship right now.

Robin gave her that contact info for the Gotham jewel collector that she might be able to sell a piece to.

Tours of Atlantis (via Kaldur) and Themyscria (via Wonder Woman) have both been scheduled — they're just in the future.

Also, the alien prison ship situation seems to have been mostly cleared up. They've got ancient-energy-absorber-guy in an isolated medical facility in the Australian outback where he can absorb lots of sunlight without putting anyone else in danger. Since Topaz has a working lantern, maybe that would be a reasonable place to let a bunch of excess hope leak into the world?

Oh, thank you! I'll study them before we meet again.

Speaking of which — do you want to plan on doing green-light-equipment stuff during a "date" or during a "non-date"? I don't think it changes the actual actions we're planning on, here, but it changes the emotional valence associated with them. Which might actually matter, for working on empathic equipment. I've gotten pretty good at focusing willpower through distraction, but you're the expert here.

The Justice Society's Green Lantern has gone into a life of quiet retirement after his many years of dedicated service. I do have his phone number, though — I'll call him and ask if he wants to be put in touch with you. I'm also not certain he'll be willing to part with his ring and lamp, but he is quite heroically inclined, and if you can make a good case for it he probably would.

Making a lantern is seriously impressive. I'd love to see what a blue lantern looks like — did you base the design on the appearance of a green lantern, or was there some other design that was more suited to hope?

For my part, my schedule has been upended again, so I'm spending this evening getting caught up. Which currently means airlifting supplies to some isolated settlements, but that won't take too long, so most of my evening is going to be blitzing through miscellaneous errands like that until the next disaster comes up.

I think it depends a bit on how much you want to involve the other colors, but I think for a purely green approach the most important thing would be being something that you felt you could apply your full discipline to, so I'm leaning towards a non-date. Though... after a while, there's a certain benefit to being creative and feeling comfortable having things be more open ended, and having less conditions facilitating your focus? But imagine it will probably take a while to get yourself to a place where that's the dominant consideration. 

I think the main benefit would be the possibility of using it for some of my crafting and perhaps making my own lantern from the power in his? Shouldn't need to take it off his hands to get good use out of it, just borrow it for a few hours sometimes - if anything, I might look into repairing his ring, given that it doesn't seem to be as full featured as yours is, even if it probably came from the Guardians too. And having more people to talk to about lightwork is always good, if nothing else!

I based the basic design mostly off my symbology power and what felt right? There's a bunch of different designs I could have gone for, but the main idea was that I wanted something that could work well with the other colors and that would be adaptable to different output configurations. It's not just going to be in idle mode or charging one specific artifact in the way that I imagine a standard issue green lanterns would, so there's that to take into consideration, along with the fact that blue light tools benefit less from a focused design. Would be happy to show it (and my other work) to you sometime! 

She smiles shyly. 

Alright, she's honestly pretty booked up right now? She makes a mental note to not schedule anything too big without at least asking batman about it first or getting this all off her plate. 

She grabs herself some water, lets herself rest in bed for a few more minutes, then goes off to the zeta tube to shadowcrest, bringing along the violet core, the earrings and the anti-poison charm in her pockets - if nothing else, they should be a nice little conversation pieces if things drift the right way. 

The Zeta tube lets her out in a stylish foyer — for a value of 'stylish' dating to approximately 1830. There's a well-worn, but immaculately clean, red carpet running from the old oak front door up to a staircase to the upper levels. There's a subtly gilded grandfather clock, which seems to think that the current time is "light showers with wind from the northwest". There's an umbrella stand with a half-dozen forgotten umbrellas in it, and plenty of dark wooden paneling, miscellaneous tables, and soft lighting from gas lamps.

"Master, your guest is here!"

Zatara sticks his head out of a door to the left of the stairs. "Ah, Topaz! Right on time. Enter of your own free will and be welcome! The dining room is through here."

She smiles and follows along - this is fashionable and fun - it's all... saturated in the rustic atmosphere, and that gives it plenty of charm.

...Now she's wondering if he's trying to phrase it in a like, vampire impersonator resistant way. Probably not, given the separation of the naming and the invitation? But you never know! 

The dining room maintains the aesthetic — although the table is of a reasonable size for a meal with just a few people, rather than the comically long formal dining table that she might have expected. There's a basket of fresh rolls sitting in the center of the table, steam still rising off of them, and a wide, shallow bowl filled with salt sitting beside it.

"Dinner will be served in ten minutes. The tea service has been refreshed."

"Thank you, Shadowcrest."