She pauses. Conferring with the heroes, probably. "Fine. The other half is you make more of them by using any power that relies heavily on interdimensional shenanigans, I'm sure you've got plenty. I have no idea if you can move this end, but you can jump around until it's impossible to follow you if that's what you want."

"You have earned your companions' survival. But if any follow me, I will kill them." She selects a random world, and steps through.

There's no mechanism for actual random, but reaching for an arbitrary distance should have the same effect. The image shifts to the grassy hills. Empty. When she steps through, the window shows Earth Bet behind her. The girl in purple is turning to face the other factions, but no one looks like they're moving to cross through. After some discussion—hard to say what; air is flowing through but sound gets somewhat distorted—a wall of steel starts springing up to seal the portal off.

She leaves it open until it's completely cut off, just on the off-chance someone is foolish enough to follow anyway.

Nope.

Well, can't rule out strangers. But probably nope.

If there are any, they're about to be trapped, because she's switching the portal away from Earth Bet.

It doesn't go. She can see the worlds that she or Labyrinth has already explored/created, but not the ocean of earths from before.

She'll have to lay a trail, then.

Who's she got with exploitable interdimensionality?

A couple candidates, but the wizard-themed cape with a handful of pocket dimensions is the obvious bet.

She'll get him out and set up some portals, then.

There are lots of worlds. Many don't have people. A rare few don't even have Earth. Probably a bad idea to leave a portal open to those ones. Two of them are closer to the metaphorical surface, taking less reach before she can find them. One is Bet, one is Aleph, one isn't.

Are the portals geographically constrained? If she opens a new portal to Bet from here, will it still be in Brockton Bay?

Yes. She's moving sideways along an axis English doesn't usually bother with a word for, but it is purely sideways.

Then she won't make a portal home yet. Instead, a selection of three, to random destinations. At each of those, another three.

And then she goes back to the second branch, third option, and starts travelling west. So now she has a way to move between worlds. It's likely Cauldron has one as well. She wants to see the entity they have. She'll need to find where in the world they're hiding, and on which.

The obvious guess for which is the unidentified third world. Even if true that doesn't help with where.

Perhaps if she visits she'll find some clues. Portal.

Its Brockton Bay equivalent is inhabited, but not densely. Grassy hills and short, wide buildings. She can see the beach from here. Nothing screams "secret Cauldron base this way."

Does being here give her Thinkers more to work with?

In theory yes, but none of them have globe-spanning range. There's no obvious path to finding the shadiest people on a given planet.

Maybe she can just fly around until she finds one.

There are people. She draws a crowd whenever she lets herself be seen flying around, but there's no shared language. So there's no way to tell if anyone is saying "let me take you to the nearest secret society." They probably aren't.

No, that would be too convenient, wouldn't it.

She keeps looking. A longer-range teleporter would be nice, but she'll make do.

Before she finds any clues, someone finds her. She's not wearing a costume, just an ordinary suit and a fedora, but the threat detector is off the charts.

"Hello. I assume you're looking for Cauldron?"

Jack's out, with other defensive shades.

"You assume correctly. You people often do, it seems."

Still reading as scary, but Jack's shade doesn't think she's about to attack.

"I'm Contessa. I'm here because you'd probably find us eventually, so this way I can just ask. What would you do with the resource you're looking for if you had it?"