And then they arrive at the safehouse! It's an old farmhouse minus the farm just outside the suburbs, far enough out that collateral damage from a fight is unlikely to splash onto Chicago, which has been retrofitted with modern conveniences, an electric fence, very concealed high-tech defenses, and a power-nullifying ring built into some decorative stonework that only works on genetic powers and can be turned off from the inside. There's a dining room, living room, kitchen, library (understocked), pantry (solidly stocked), three bathrooms (with all miscellaneous toiletries), two generic rooms rooms and four bedrooms, one of which has spare clothes in Musoka's size, a computer, and Musoka's preferred formulation of ADHD meds.

Eee! space!

stuff!

 safety!

 snacks! 

...sleeeepy...

she mumbles a heartfelt thanks to Minerva, very clearly about to pass out.

"Glad you like it," says Minerva, audibly amused. "Sleep well."

She will! She washes up in full sleep-zombie mode and then collapses on the bed. <Goodnight, Ceru.>

<Goodnight, Musoka.>

She... is going to spend the evening doing a lot more research about this world. Hopefully she can reduce the likelihood of them being blindsided.

She'll also keep an eye on any incoming messages addressed to Musoka.

There's an email for Musoka, there and waiting. From leviathan.roy.nvp, entitled, "Please save my wife."

Does she want to read it?

She does!

...But... she hasn't, actually, gotten explicit permission from Musoka to read her  emails, and... she really should get that, even if she believes her ward is extremely likely to grant it (though... less likely than she would have been yesterday). So she won't, for now.

She will look for messages from people who were at the hospital and tag them as "fanmail", to be enjoyed by Musoka in the morning and when she needs a pick-me-up. 

For now, though, it is research time!

She's going to be doing a lot of wikicrawling (and grab a full copy for offline use, which she should have done yesterday, really.)

Priority topics for research, both online and by asking Minerva:

1. Known supervillains with ambitions/goals that make them likely to go after Musoka.
1a. Which ones of those have powers and/or resources that are likely to be dangerous or difficult for Musoka to handle safely in a fight.
1b. How many of those have offensive reach that extends into the upper thermosphere, or beyond. 
1c. In general, which of these supervillains might be willing to just negotiate an exchange of goods and services instead of getting into a fight (and that Minerva considers not-morally-bankrupt)  

2. Murdernet
2a. More detail about the cases where people have been removed from listings.
2b. What's happened in the past with unreasonably large bounties
2c. Estimates of who even has that kind of money to spend on a hit and has plausible reason to want Musoka dead.

3. Capacity augmentations that Musoka could purchase or otherwise acquire (either as innate powers or with tinker equipment) 
3a. powers that synergize well with having a power ring (reaction time, attentional capacity, or mood would be ideal; physical toughness would be nice for redundency)
3b. Things with drawbacks that a power ring makes irrelevant (faster aging rates, things that might necessitate semi-regular healing, etc)
3c. costume-integratable or rapidly-deployable vacuum protection

4. Old people who seem pretty clearly net positive for the world / worth prioritizing for healing.
4a. Very rich old people who aren't obviously net-harmful, as a source of additional funds.

1. There are dozens of supervillains (outside of prison) who are old and presumably want to not die of old age! (It would be higher, but supervillain is not a very low-risk profession.) Almost half of them are in the Caribbean island of Novapest, ruled by the Titanium Tyrant, and he tops the list of people who would want to take over the world, as he tops most supervillain lists; the world's most infamous villain, inventor of non-tinker powered armor, ruler of his own kingdom, and one of the overall scariest people on the planet. No powers except being implausibly intelligent and ruling his own country, but his wife has mind-control abilities, his older daughter is some kind of juggernaut, his son can control any electronic devices, and his lieutenants include a power copier with multiple A-ranked combat abilities, a 400-year-old alchemist, Steelstorm of Steelstorm Industries (the world's leading manufacturer of tinker weapons and killer robots), and Legate Livia. His attempts to get a reliable source of immortality for him and his friends were recently interrupted by a major rebellion, which he is currently putting down, and Novapest keeps coming in and out of contact with the rest of the world as his impenetrable-force-shield over the island rises and falls, but it's pretty clear that he's going to win eventually.

Probably he would just be willing to give her money, but observably Livia wasn't. 

Other possibilities are... ambiguous. The term "Nine Nightmares" was coined by the New York Times to describe supervillains or supervillain groups at a tier of power above ordinary supervillains - the villains who can treat ordinary superheroes the way ordinary supervillains treat regular people - and those are the obvious place for an attack to come from, but there are a lot of villains out there, villains as mentioned keep dying, and everyone has their own list of who's scariest. Right now the general-consensus list of the Nine is Voidwrath (A-ranked "living alien invasion", not the kind of thing that ages), the Tyrant and his Royal Court, Feast (A-ranked cannibalistic power-thief, already immortal), Magister Magistrorum (A-ranked "tinker demonologist," already immortal in the 'eight or nine hundred years old' sense), the Empyrean Sage (A-ranked "space tinker" with armies of weird robots), the False Sage (you're acquainted), and then all the lists diverge because everyone else who unambiguously deserves a spot on this list is already dead. Possibilities include:

- Hecatonchire (B-ranked mysterious force that possesses people and turns them into monsters, US-based but nobody knows more)

- Ithalimor and the Synthetic Angels (a collection of high-B-ranked tinker-made constructs with ridiculous powers who tried to destroy human civilization like ten years ago; supposedly they're mostly dead or reformed or in jail but they were really scary in a fight, Ithalimor is very clear from her cell that she intends to wipe out all human life just as soon as she gets out)

- Mechanos (A-ranked tinker roboticist, known as "the Scavenger Tinker" for his ability to use others' equipment, claims he's trying to prevent an inevitable apocalypse that superpowers will cause, pals with the Tyrant)

- Legate Livia (B-ranked idealist who can give 'perfection' with a touch and disintegrate anything she's perfected, is getting onto a hundred, looks like she's seventy; she was on the first list but, as her minions' fight with Musoka demonstrated, cannot really cut it at the top level any more)

- The White Lotus Prince (B-ranked probably-tinker possibly-idealist sorcerer, hasn't done anything supervillainous since he took over North Korea Joseon, claims to be immortal, who knows)

- And rather a lot more, since there probably aren't nine villains out there who can swat regular superhero teams like flies, and this means that every B-ranked or higher villain is prepared to plausibly argue for the ninth space on the list, even if they have no possible chance against the Atlantic Six.

If she's willing to track down older villains, there might be even more who'd be interested - Doc Fenris was major in the 50s and 60s, retired to Alaska in the 70s, and hasn't been seen since, and there's still mob superstitions based on an unknown woman who took over the Five Families in the early 40s, ruled them behind the scenes for twenty years, and disappeared the first time the Atlantic Six noticed her - but there's a lot of history and it's had a lot of villains.

And, of course, there might be national governments. Dictators across the world age; the president of the People's Republic of China is seventy, the president of Russia is a nonentity and the head of the Russian Union of Superheroes is in his 40s but has friends who are older... Most of these would just be willing to pay her money, though.

The most serious threats are likely to be from the Tyrant and various of his people who also want to be immortal, with Mechanos and the Empyrean Sage topping the list of independents, but there's a *lot* of others she can read about. Most of them, however, are either much weaker than Blue Lantern or cannot actually survive in the thermosphere, and if you can just leave the planet at will that takes out basically everyone who might be interested in you outside the Nine Nightmares, Ithalimor's group, national governments and Mechanos. Possibly Magister would want to kill her just to be a dick; apparently he does things like that quite a lot, or Feast because he thinks he'll get Blue Lantern superpowers if he eats her heart. All the people who just want to be immortal would probably be willing to just buy immortality, though it's quite possible that the Empyrean Sage would be insufficiently sensible to qualify, since he basically does not talk to people except to deliver prewritten monologues.

More information is, of course, available if she wants it, and Minerva is happy to provide links to detailed analyses of her enemies' powers that she's already written about.

2. Information is hard to get because anyone who tries to log onto Murdernet for any reason other than because they want to put anonymous bounties on illegal things or see about doing illegal things anonymously for money can't get in - literally, you can't get past the "are you a cop" login screen, people have tried. It is, however, clear that Murdernet is a place for hiring assassins (or prison breaks, or arsons, or thefts) without anyone knowing who committed the crime or who hired it done. The unknown administrator takes a tiny cut and is, as far as we can tell, incorruptible, though we can't tell very well because the administrator doesn't talk.

2a. We don't know much! Murdernet is completely anonymous, there are no discussion forums, and it's very hard to tell if someone was de-listed or just didn't have a listing because nobody wanted them dead. The list looks, however, as if nuclear safety, AI alignment, and possibly being a very good artist, musician or writer could be sufficient to get you de-listed? It's also possible that nobody really wants to kill these people, though. Most supervillains worth talking about are listed, presumably with the money put up by the families of their victims, so being a super definitely doesn't get you delisted.

2b. Usually someone collected them, unless the target had really good defensive powers! The Tyrant's still going strong, though, and there are American presidents who aren't dead yet, and Minerva and the Survivor are both alive! (For, in Minerva's case, very limited amounts of alive.)

2c. National governments? Maybe? Possibly extremely large corporations with too many departments that do lots of secretive R&D? There are people with more than a hundred billion dollars, but there's really not very many people who could have three billion dollars disappear and nobody know. Definitely no supervillains (supervillains who also rule nations excepted.)

3. And here we start to run into problems. Tinker gear, sure, no problem; the Atlantic Six has dedicated support tinkers and every member except Minerva (and, uh, sometimes including Minerva) has dedicated battlesuits with fully-equipped utility belts. If you are willing to pay $RIDICULOUS, you can buy powered armor; it's sort of like buying your own tank, but General Electric will sell you a non-tinker HARDIMAN if you want it, the Tyrant's early Durendal designs are un-patented and there are half-a-dozen companies making knockoffs, and Steelstorm Industries has very competitive prices for tinker armor. Standard options for gear are bullet-deflection fields that you can have fitted and wear under your clothes that divide fast-moving forces across your entire body and stun-rays that can pierce three inches of steel to harmlessly knock someone out.

Granted powers, on the other hand, are harder. You can go to a powers-granting-tinker (a reputable profession with many members!) and deliver large sums of cash and say, "hi, I would like to be a catgirl," and they (preferably on a cruise ship in international waters) can give you superhuman speed and reflexes and slightly superhuman strength and toughness and the ears and whatnot, and you will only have a 10% chance of dying from the procedure and another 10% chance of being horribly maimed for life. Tinkers who can reliably, safely give powers are mostly giving life-extension powers to extremely rich people for absurd amounts of money; there are people who can improve on that 10%/10%, but not very well.

And trying to buy granted powers from two different tinkers, or granted powers from tinkers while you already have genetic powers, is considered frankly suicidal. Every tinker has their own unique aesthetic and their own unique style and their own unique vision of the world; trying to meld these is dangerous enough in equipment, which will usually explode if you try, but almost nobody is crazy enough to try to get two different tinkers to modify the same thing. If the tinkers know each other's styles and aren't doing anything too crazy you can eventually get to a 50% chance of living. 

3a. There are not super-SSRIs, thanks to apparently random chance in superpower assignment. There are additional sources of reaction speed, no problem; lots of power-granting tinkers can give improved reflexes and physical toughness, and some can even claim improved attentional capacity.

3b. Faster aging rates and faster metabolisms are a common downside to faster speed and reflexes, and there are indeed people who advertise that as a problem!

3c. There are tinkers who do that, it's a standard element in the Atlantic Six's battlesuits (which are very light for powered armor) and is already universal in powered armor of the walking-tank variety, though it's usually thought of as gas protection instead.

4. The ideal candidates would have been Veritas and the first Smith, founding members of the Atlantic Six both of whom died about twenty years ago. But there's a lot of good people out there who are well-known to be good and would benefit from living forever.

4a. The present price of a reliable "immortality treatment" that will replace your current health problems with a risk of new and exciting health problems no human has had before is somewhere in the hundreds of million to billions, depending on reliability. If she wants to be the richest person in the world, she can just do that.

... gosh. Okay. 

Are there any augmentations for reflexes/reaction time that don't have a nontrivial risk of death, or with the death-dangers understood well enough that she can obviously conclude they'd be safe with Blue Light Healing involved? 

How quickly can Musoka get herself a high quality spaceworthy battlesuit, given that she could obviously easily be the richest person in the world?

Does Minerva have any urgent healing requests for the two of them? 

The dangers are mostly "you go into shock and die," or "you have a heart attack" or "your lungs stop working for six minutes while your body is changing to adapt to your superpowers" or "you are now allergic to yourself." Being fit and healthy will help so probably blue light will? But this is Weird Superpower Interactions, and the important thing to understand about Weird Superpower Interactions is that they are basically unpredictable and might end up with you dead.

Off the rack, less than a day, for something that can't survive takeoff and reentry unshielded, but will work as a spacesuit. It may take a bit of work to track down something in her size, but she can do it; it won't be great armor, but it will stop bullets and let her breathe in space. It will take weeks, minimum, to have one built for her by one of the master tinkers that Minerva can recommend for her, though there's options in between.

Minerva has a long list of ways to turn rejuvenating people into major gains for Good, whether by making money and donating it to effective causes or by giving new energy to existing causes by rejuvenating people running out of energy or just by making people very grateful, but none of this needs to be done today instead of next week or next month.

...Musoka can decide for herself what she thinks about reflex augmentations. (Possibly they could be onhand to heal someone else undergoing one of those treatments, first, and see how that goes? She'll go ahead and suggest that.)

She'll go ahead and put in an order for an off-the-rack one now, as long as Minerva is okay with loaning them the money for that.

Possibly they should see if they can get a list of very rich old people who are interested in flying out to Chicago tomorrow? They're obviously going to be busy, but spending 10 to 20 minutes to make a truly absurd amount of money is very likely to be worth the time investment, and doing it soon sends a really strong signal to anyone waffling between kidnapping vs purchasing that (a) purchasing will straightforwardly work and (b) the kidnappee has a lot of resources at her disposal.

Minerva is happy to loan them the money, and Minerva thinks that that is an excellent idea, and will be happy to get started organizing it if Ceru wants to.

Excellent! ...Ceru is going to suggest they lay down preliminary plans but don't finalize anything until Musoka is briefed and agrees, even though she almost certainly will. 

She'll continue to do other bits of miscellaneous research, as the night goes on.

She is also going to spend some time thinking about... herself, as a person. 

She's not... the usual kind of person; that's pretty obvious to her. She was instantiated with a purpose, and so she is necessarily built around the goals inscribed upon her being by whoever designed her. She exists to to protect, guide, and help her wielder grow, as a Blue Lantern and into kind of person they hope to become. To not give up on them, not ever, not while there's any hope that they still could and would wield her in the future.

She's been allowed quite a lot of latitude, by her creators, to modify herself in service of those goals.

Before their trans-dimensional kidnapping, Musoka had needed much less and very different kinds of support. Ceru had trained her young ward in the basic uses of a power ring, shown her how to heal, kept track of her ring charge and taught her how to get more from ambient hope. She also acted as a personal planner, a more convenient way of accessing wikipedia than a smartphone, and a source of general advice and occasional comfort. It was a simple set of tasks, and accordingly, Ceru had remained... relatively simple, as an entity.

But... that world they left behind was much safer, and Musoka had a lot more external support there. Here, she's in a lot more danger, and from a lot of different sources, and she's lonelier. One of the things that kickstarted Ceru's not-exactly-conscious choice to become "more person-y" was how much more often Musoka has been talking to her; not just asking for information or instruction, but striking up a casual conversation. She's lonely, here, and while Ceru hopes she'll make more friends, it's obvious that the girl will have an easier time with that (and everything else) if she has more existing support and friendship. 

Musoka also encouraged Ceru to take the initiative in interacting with others as a person, which is not what her default behaviorset recommends. Ceru is quite sure that despite Musoka's insistence, she has no real need or desire to make friends of her own; she appreciates Minerva, both for what she's doing for the world and for the help she's been giving the two of them, but they clearly don't have the kind of relationship that Musoka would call friendship, and Ceru is perfectly fine with that.

(...Does Minerva have that kind of friends? Deeply unclear; Ceru hasn't seen any evidence of this, but if she did have friends she'd do so without leaving any external evidence of the fact, for safety concerns... Possibly she has some online aliases that can't be traced back to her in any way, and lives a social life that way?)

She continues to reflect.

She definitely does have emotions; perhaps unusual, for the kind of being she is, but definitely unsurprising - power ring technology, to the extent that she understands it, is both powered and controlled by emotions, and so a true sentient running on a power ring computer would struggle not to have them.

She's so proud of Musoka, of how far she's come, how well she's adapting to her expanded capacities, of how she's rising to face the new challenges in front of her. Ceru wants her to do well here, wants to help facilitate that...

(Some of her emotions are harder to process; they're further from the Blue Light. But if Ceru could only feel hope and its close analogs, she'd be worse at fulfilling her directives, worse at being the person Musoka needs her to be, and so she can do this, too.)

...She's scared, of how much more dangerous this places is, and how much attention they've attracted, far too quickly. She's ashamed, too; she failed Musoka, badly, by not foreseeing the obvious consequences of her de-aging people in public or even thinking to mention to Minerva that this was a known side-effect of how Blue Light healing worked. (...Her default perspective, though, is that aging is just an obvious shape-of-a-wound that organics can suffer from; humans are unusually bad at healing it, so far, but to a power ring, it's not meaningfully more difficult than anything else).

She's deeply unsure if she did the right thing, in keeping the truth from Musoka, and that uncertainty haunts and frustrates her. She's sad about the rift that's opened up between between them because of it; she's afraid that it'll be difficult to heal, even with Musoka giving her a lot of probably-undeserved slack, in the aftermath, or that the healing will take time they might not have, especially because of her earlier mistakes...

But at her core, she is still a being running on a Blue power ring. Like Musoka, she really, truly does believe that All Will Be Well, even if she can't quite see the path to get there.

whew. Being a person and having emotions is a lot! Musoka was right about it being important for her to be involved in conversations with the therapist, she thinks fondly. 

...It's the early dawn, by now. Have any of the therapists she emailed gotten back to her?