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Musoka gets yoinked into the Survivorverse
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-but does nothing to the laser, which passes through both the shield and her construct armor before stopping at her costume. She can feel it warming up the fabric. 

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She puts her hands up in surrender, and floats slowly down to the rooftop, looking embarrassed. 

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"You are dead," says Minerva - and, warm and slightly amused, "and insufficiently paranoid. I hope your session went well?"

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She flops onto a couch made of hope.

"Man, I didn't even think about lasers... I hope the armor Ceru mentioned can deal with those."

"Therapy went well; we're getting along better now. I... didn't realize she was so young."

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"I don't really think age is a very useful way to model it. I'm not human or even biological; I don't have the same kinds of things going on."

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Minerva nods. "Synthetics are not all built to a human model, and human analogies often break down, there. I am glad your relationship is recovering."

She considers. "I do think that your main advantage is speed, though; the assumption that your shield could block the attack could have been wrong if I had had more raw power than I expect I do, but very few people have any ability to harm you if you are moving as fast as I have seen you move. Do you know if there are upper limits on that?"

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"I suppose the actual word I meant is 'inexperienced'? You're still learning about how to be a person and have feelings, and that was not how I was thinking of you!"

"...I don't actually know what my top speed is? Ceru said that "velocity" isn't quite the right way to measure what we're doing, anyways..."

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"Ring flight is... not really running off of displacement-via-applying-force? I'm not quite sure how to explain it; it's intuitive under my built-in model of physics, but my built-in model of physics diverges from the one used by your society in many ways. Her apparent velocity will scale with local conditions (inversely with air pressure, to a rather large degree) and also with the strength of her hope. At her maximum recorded hope output (which she hit last night, during her second batch of healing; a new record by about 15%) she's currently capable of hitting an apparent velocity of about Mach 23 (at 1 atmosphere of pressure), but that's not realistic to fighting conditions. In practice sessions, her hope output when stabilizing after being startled was enough for the Mach 3-5 range."

"My combat modeling indicates that the biggest limitation on her evasiveness is her reaction time and not her top speed; the augmented soldiers last night were able to hit her while she was going very fast, and she could have only dodged if she'd changed directions between when their rounds left their weapons and when they would have hit. Though, now that I'm thinking about how her flight interfaces with the ring's intent-interpretation subsystems, it may actually be possible for me to write up a flight-path assistance control that automates away individual decisions? There's existing code in here that's doing similar things for healing and complex construct generation; I can look into modifying it."

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Minerva nods. "Powers often work this way, yes... and that's very fast." The Atlantic Six's extremely streamlined tinker-made transport makes Mach 3, Mach 4 if you can afford to do repairs before you fly it anywhere else. 

And a moment of consideration. "Randomized dodging in a combat situation could work, and while the Perfetti are almost uniquely accurate, we already know that Livia has a grudge against you." And might equip her next force with Steelstorm Industries weapons.

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"Are they likely to be able to acquire high powered lasers at that frequency? That would be... pretty worrying, since a well-aimed laser is difficult to dodge."

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"Most likely not," she admits. "And good armor will have integrated defensive systems. But a large part of preparing for combat consists of attempting to deduce the weaknesses in your opponent's powers, and find a way to use yours to exploit them." It is something she is very good at; *something* in her sixfold blaster can almost always find a way. "To pit superhuman strength against human toughness."

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She nods, looking thoughtful.

"Ceru said she was getting me a spaceworthy powersuit, because in a lot of situations I can just... run away, really effectively, outside of basically anyone's effective reach."

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"When attacked by someone whose powers you do not know, in a situation where they thought they could win - which you know they did because they initiated the battle - that is usually the correct first move. It may not be the correct second move, but it is usually the correct first move if you can accomplish it."

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She nods again.

"I hadn't thought about it like that. Akumatized people don't act rationally..." she shakes her head, vigorously "...suppose that doesn't matter, now."

"So, what's next? Healing a bunch of old rich people?"

 

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"Supervillains are not necessarily rational, but they have reasons for taking the actions they take, and they expect these to lead to outcomes they desire." Even if they are usually insanely overly optimistic, in her defense so are all supers, her obviously included. "There are exceptions, but they are the minority." Especially since they usually don't live very long.

"And, yes, though if you would be willing to do the same for the older members of the Atlantic Six I'd appreciate it; I've set up an account for you - I hope you don't mind me handling the price negotiations for your second day - and of course the money is yours, though I have charity recommendations if you want any."

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"The Atlantic Six?" She's read enough local history this morning that she's well aware of the group's prestige, at this point. "Of course I'll heal them! Gosh, that's exciting." She vibrates excitedly. She's going to meet the most famous superheroes in the world!!!

"And yeah, I don't mind at all! I wouldn't have the first idea what kind of prices would be fair; thank you so much for getting us all of this set up. If you can send Ceru the charity recommendations, she and I can go over them together?"

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"Thank you. And - done."

Charity recommendations include a third-world-health section that is a long list of different policies to reduce mortality in very poor countries with varying confidence levels, a practical-research section that is mostly about researching life extension and intelligence boosting, an experimental-research section that is largely about space colonization and trying to figure out what's up with superpowers, an American-politics section that attempts to lobby for extremely finicky changes to details of tax and regulatory law that they swear will fix bad incentives, an international-coordination section that is mostly trying to achieve reductions in WMD numbers and increases in controls but also has recommendations for global warming charities and ways to make global plagues less likely, and just dumping cash on the Twentieth Century Foundation, which produced the report and mostly does this sort of thing and occasionally does weird Minerva stuff, like dropping lots of money and bodyguards on new extremely competent healers. All these have expected value estimates, confidence estimates, and a lot of citations.

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Yeah they're going to look at this later. 

(Ceru predicts that Musoka will want to give most of her money to the Twentieth Century Foundation.)

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(A surprising number of people do.)

So, lots and lots of healing?

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Yeah! Musoka is so excited to be Unambiguously Helpful without there being danger involved!! She loves healing people who aren't kidnapping her about it!!!

(Some of these people are Famous Superheroes, and she's definitely gawking a little. (Maybe a bit more than a little.))

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Yes! The Twentieth Century Foundation building that is hosting the event contains a moderate number of famous superheroes, famous inventors, famous tinkers, people who are really, really good at the stock market, people with important connections to national governments that Minerva doesn't dislike, philanthropists whose parents or grandparents earned their money but are donating it, and CEOs, all of whom can be de-aged.

(It also has a lot of Minerva-bodies guarding it. Like, a lot.)

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Once she's finished her initial gawking, Musoka is finding that it's... a bit harder to get the healing process started, than it was in the hospital.

An unhelpful part of her brain keeps pointing out that that person looks a bit like The False Sage and that person sounds like him and-

-and her mouth is too dry and her heart is pounding and suddenly everything in the room feels very far away and-

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Oh no <Take a deep breath, Musoka. You're safe here. It's okay.>

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-she shakes her head and takes in a deep, slow breath. Closes her eyes, and pushes the air out of her lungs methodically.

In... and out. In... and out. 

Ceru's right; she's safe here. The False Sage isn't here; she's surrounded by some of the most powerful and influential people in the world, and they're here because she can help them, and by helping them she'll be helping make this world a better place.

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And that is the thought that sends the blue light surging through her.

The network of blue lines blossoms outwards from her clasped hands; the patients (sitting in circles around her) are scanned, analyzed, and deaged.

(The process seems like it should be a bit unsettling, but it's completely painless, and the ambient blue light makes it hard to feel any emotion about what's happening besides a warm, pleasant hope; a bit of quiet certainty, that this is going to work and be great.)

And then, a few short minutes later, it's done.

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