That's stronger than she expected, but... still not worth it. Not when she's all but guaranteed that things will go as well as they could have if she'd taken it against her personal misgivings.

I was mostly leaning towards not taking it for those exact reasons you said, but thank you for warning me and for confirming my suspicions. One of the reasons I asked anyway is in case I take There's Another One and I meet someone who took the power. And of course just to do my due diligence in case there's something I'm profoundly mistaken about in my understanding.

She writes down "0" opposite My Ears Are Burning. She's not going to pointlessly waffle about giving it a negative score.

She keeps going.

Name: Well Endowed - Cost: 1 ☐
You have a generous figure, whether that's a classic hourglass or more of a well-rounded look; you can choose the details. Your endowments maintain a state of perfect grace and beauty at all times, never troubling you with uncomfortable bounces or uninvited jiggles.

Name: Hollow Leg - Cost: 1 ☐
(Requires Well Endowed)
Regardless of your diet and exercise habits, your body maintains the physique and silhouette you prefer. Lack of visible muscle never impairs your strength or endurance. As your preferences change, so will your body; you are no longer bound to the generous figure stipulated by Well Endowed.

Skip. She already has these.

Name: Inner Strength - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg)
You are implausibly, superhumanly strong, with endurance and toughness to match. You might have to strain a little to lift and carry at the same level as construction equipment, or deal with lightly scraped knuckles if you punch as hard as a battering ram.

And now that is interesting. She noticed this the first readthrough, so she's already has her question ready and is writing it out.

Taken literally, this makes me weaker and less tough than I already am. I can only assume that's not what will actually happen, given everything else I know about these powers and the Spirit. So my question is if this will do nothing, or will give a marginal increase in my strength, or give a significant (even proportional) increase in my strength? And similar for toughness. For reference, I regularly throw around objects weighing over 20 tons (e.g. fire trucks) more or less effortlessly, and it takes hundreds of tons to begin to strain me. I know of no physical amount of externally applied force that can damage me, but powers which directly erase material, override physics, teleport material, effect dimensional displacement, or do other exotic things have been known to injure me; it's hit or miss.

What "strain" means for her is not exactly the same as what it means for normal humans, since she doesn't experience muscular fatigue in the same way, but the meaning carries across.

Those parts of the description say 'might' because they're examples, not constraints. On someone who is already very strong and tough, or who finds powers elsewhere for being very strong and tough, Inner Strength should offer noticeably increased strength and toughness over what you would have without it. It might not be as much of a proportional increase as someone of ordinary strength and toughness would get by taking Inner Strength normally, but it definitely won't be marginal.

For a point cost of five in total. Proportional increase was going to be a stretch, but it's still worth considering. Though she also needs to look at

Name: Lightfoot - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Hollow Leg)
You are perfectly, superhumanly graceful, with reflexes and agility to match. You can cross a field of snow without leaving a footprint, or stand on a slender branch without bending it, or jump so lightly that you soar through the air instead of falling.

which presumably goes with the same rules as Inner Strength, and might be more useful, since she doesn't think most of her problems are because she doesn't punch hard enough. Most aren't because she's not fast enough either, but if she's having trouble in combat, more likely she needs to dodge something than she needs to hit harder. Her mental enhancements, decades of experience and careful training already make her far harder to hit than she has any business being, but it's still not the supernatural grace that capes like Flamenco dance around bullets with.

It didn't save her from the Siberian.

Could you group Well Endowed, Hollow Leg, Inner Strength and Lightfoot under one row in the table as "Inner Strength + Lightfoot" and mark it down as cost 8, score 200?

And then there's this.

Name: Battle Angel - Cost: 1 ☐
Somehow, you never get significantly injured in a fight, unless it's a very dramatic and plot-relevant fight in which case you might be glamorously wounded and pick up a cool new scar.

Name: Battle Demon - Cost: 1 ☐
You have an unerring intuition for gaps in an opponent's defenses, though it may be beyond your power to exploit them.

Name: Battle Maiden - Cost: 3 ☐
(Requires Battle Angel and Battle Demon)
No matter what kind of fight you're getting in, you're always a match for even the most skilled opponent.

Never getting injured costs one point. Never losing a fight costs four more.

Of course, her victory condition isn't that simple.

Her first question pales in comparison to the stakes here, but she wants to know nonetheless. She writes across Battle Angel,

Would I be correct in guessing that if I don't think scars are glamorous and strongly disprefer them by my personal aesthetic, I won't receive them during dramatic and plot-relevant fights? I'm fine getting wounded if it's temporary and heals without a mark.

She supposes she's managed to manifest preferences about her physical appearance she wants to enforce via metanarrative power after all.

What comes next is the important one. Across Battle Maiden:

By "always a match for", does it just mean losing won't be a foregone conclusion as a matter of raw capabilities?

• Can I still be defeated if I make a mistake?
• Can I "be a match for" in combat, while still being insufficint to achieve my strategic objectives or defend what I care about?

Yes, I can do that!

Yes, that's right. You would only pick up scars that you personally found aesthetically compelling.

The way Battle Maiden arranges for you to be a match for an opponent is sort of complicated, but the short answer is that yes, it just means losing won't be a foregone conclusion, yes, you can still be defeated while fighting with Battle Maiden, and yes, being a match for someone can sometimes mean just enough of a match to hold them off and not enough to fully overpower them, so it won't always mean you get everything you want out of a fight.

(She hasn't been looking at the table.)

She reads the confirmations and takes a deep breath.

She hasn't really explained the situation to the notebook. It's been clear since before today that the notebook doesn't know much if anything about Earth Bet, let alone what Scion is. She's been putting it off long enough.

I want to provide more context about me and my world so understand what problem I'm trying to solve.

On this Earth, people can get superpowers more-or-less randomly when under sufficient stress. What I'm about to say is a simplification, but those powers are granted by an extraterrestrial being. It's unclear what specific purpose the being was aiming for, but its goal was to targetedly foment war on Earth by spreading powers, and eventually destroy every Earth across our multiverse (in the narrow local sense of the term, as I've mentioned).

Due to events I'm not going to write here because there's always a chance of someone spying on us, that original plan was derailed. It's unclear what the being's goals are now, if it has any specific ones. However, while the social engineering part was largely averted, precognition still predicts that Earths across the multiverse will be destroyed.

We need to prevent that from coming to pass. Before you came, our plan was to gather the empowered peoples of the world to attempt to destroy the being. It wasn't a very good plan.

And oh, it stings to write that down. They all knew, of course. They couched it in odds and margins, but they knew. Admitting it this way feels worse.

The problem is we don't know enough. The being might be able to turn off all our powers with a thought, since they came from him. We have reason to believe that's not true, but we're not sure. The being might just be stronger than all of us put together. We have methods we believe might hurt him, but we're not sure. The being might be able to instantly transmute the entire Earth and everyone on it into neutrinos once it detects us building to an attack, killing us immediately before we can do anything.

Right now, I see are three paths that you open up to us with the offer from the Spirit.

The first is to take Somewhere In Mind or Isekai Roulette, explore the greater multiverse and search for a better way to take down the being or avert the apocalypse. I would need to put together some guarantee that the world won't end while I'm away; I'm hoping the metanarrative will give to me for free, but I'd be willing to use points for a concrete custom power for it if I had to.

The second is to use the Power of Friendship powers to turn the being to the side of humanity. There are a few implementations I believe might work for doing that, depending on the details of how the powers work. The barrier I foresee is that the being might not be sufficiently a person for the powers to work. There's also the potential problem of mispredicting what the being will do, or causing it to notice an external influence on it, and inducing it to destroy the Earth in a preemptive strike, in panic, or in retaliation before the Friendship powers take effect.

The final way I'm considering is the powers we're looking at now. Battle Maiden may give me the capabilities to destroy the being, Battle Demon the knowledge of how to do it, and Battle Angel the ability to not be instantly obliterated by them. The problem is, as you confirmed, that doing battle in this way could easily destroy the Earth or many Earths as collateral damage, while still satisfying the effect of power. If the being attempts to transmute the entire Earth and everything on it into neutrinos, but my Spirit-given powers prevent me from so being destroyed, but everything else is still transmuted into neutrinos, that's not a victory.

There are some other long shots, such as Dragon Fairy Elf Witch possibly giving me the ability to suborn the being's control over our powers or even the being itself outright. But I'm disinclined to roll the dice like that.

My suspicion based on what I've learned is that the first path of Isekai Roulette is the most likely to result in a positive outcome due to the latitude it provides metanarrative and the Spirit, the second of Power of Friendship is more risky and may require sacrificing things or values important to me, and the third of Battle Maiden is unlikely to work well naively without a lot of other things going right.

What do you think, and am I missing anything? If you have any questions about what I said, you can ask.

Oh, wow, that's really scary...

I think, from what you've said, Isekai Roulette has the best chance of working. If you could be sure that the being is enough of a person for I Can Fix Them to work, then I would say I Can Fix Them would have the best chance, except that I'm nervous about recommending that you try to Fix a being like that because it sounds like the sort of thing that would be really scary and upsetting for a lot of people, and that not many people would find to be part of their best life, and I don't want to recommend that you do something that would be scary or upsetting or turn your life down a path that you wouldn't want by itself and are only taking because of the scary upsetting things that will happen if you don't.

I think you're right that Battle Maiden won't solve the problem, and trying to use the Spirit's power to fight the being directly without gathering resources elsewhere first would probably turn out really badly.

I think... if the thing you care the most about here is making sure the people of your world are safe from this being, then what you should do is take Isekai Roulette, which under the circumstances I'm sure will send you somewhere that doesn't let time pass in this world while you're out of it, and if you think you would be okay with taking I Can Fix Them (or I Can Help Them) and the life paths it implies, then take one of those and There's Another One, and maybe I can design a more specific power for you that guarantees you'll meet people who can help you solve your really big important problems, and then you can be sure that if I Can Fix Them is the best chance, you will meet someone who can use it on the being, and if not, you will meet someone who can help you do whatever else will be best.

If you don't think you would be okay with taking I Can Fix Them, then taking There's Another One is less safe because you might meet someone with the Spirit's power who uses it in not-nice ways before you meet someone who can help you, and that could be a problem. (I Can Fix Them always wins in conflicts between the Spirit's chosen, so taking it means that if you meet another vessel of the Spirit who isn't very nice, you'll be able to convince them to start being nice instead.) Taking It Gets Better would also protect you enough to make sure you could come back to your original plan eventually if something like that happened, but it would take longer and might be more upsetting.

Reading the response feels like a weight off her chest. It technically makes things more complicated that the easy way out doesn't work, but—

I think that you're right that I Can Fix Them would be unpleasant to me and probably anyone, even if it worked. And I suspect that even if the being counts as a person, it's in a way where "redeeming them" is closer to installing a personality on a blank agent lacking any concept of morality, than in any meaningful way causing an "evil" person to repent to "good".

What I want to do, as the version of me living my best life as my best self, is take Isekai Roulette for the novelty of it, separate from whether it'll help me prevent the apocalypse. The reason I was considering the other options was to discharge the responsibility of exploring all possibilities which might produce better public outcomes. If Isekai Roulette has the best change of preventing the apocalypse, then I'm relieved to take that. I suppose it's as you said earlier, that "the Spirit makes it so that living your best life as your best self is at least as good a way to fix your problems as the best way you could manage by not doing that".

Writing that she wants to make a major decision with drastic strategic implications "for the novelty of it" feels dirty, but she can be honest to herself about it. And that's the whole idea of this, isn't it? To unearth the her that could be instead of the her that is. Aligning the incentives, in a way. She's been strung around by precognitives her entire life; this time the process at least cares about her, in whatever sense the Spirit does.

Thank you again for helping me work through this.

 

That said, Battle Maiden still sounds extremely useful even if I'm taking Isekai Roulette. Could you group it and its prerequisites as one row with cost 5 and score 600?

The description in I Can Fix Them is sort of an oversimplification, and redeeming people in a way that meaningfully preserves their personality is often more possible that it looks, but it does sound like this being might be an especially thorny case and there might not be anyone out there whose best life would involve Fixing it.

I'm really glad I can help! You're in a really difficult situation and I want you to be okay.

Of course! There, done.

It's reassuring to hear that about I Can Fix Them even if I don't end up taking it.

It's bits and pieces of evidence that the Spirit actually cares about things that humans care about, instead of vaguely trying to ape their patterns and construct a proxy which says the right things.

Next to the notebook's last sentence, she hesitates a bit before drawing a tiny ":)".

She keeps reading.

Name: Making Ends Meet - Cost: 1 ☐
You have enough money to sustain a comfortable lifestyle. It comes from a source you don't have to pay much attention to, like a job with almost no responsibilities, a large inheritance, or a noble title.

Name: Motherlode - Cost: 2 ☐
(Requires Making Ends Meet)
You have enough money to sustain a fairly extravagant lifestyle. It doesn't come from anywhere, you just have it.

Name: Four Star Daydream - Cost: 4 ☐
(Requires Motherlode)
The answer to 'can I afford that' is 'yes'.

These seem straightforward. After a pause to think, she marks them down as "30", "10" and "50".

If I take Isekai Roulette, does Making Ends Meet still give me the money in an accessible and ongoing way? In destinations where such things are applicable, do I get a legal identity with it, like you would need to have a bank account here receiving a continuous cash flow? (Conversely, do I not get an identity automatically if I don't take powers which require that?)

You won't automatically get a legal identity in new worlds by default, but the money powers often provide legal identities or smooth the way to acquiring them in worlds where that's relevant. The money powers operate primarily in whichever world you happen to be in at a given time, though if you're in a specific world for only a very short amount of time you might not encounter whatever source of funds the money power would have given you if you had stayed longer.

Understood! Is it alright if I use a little checkmark, like ✔, to indicate acknowledgement here on? I would normally nod, but I know you can't see that, and I don't want to just ignore your response.

Yes, that sounds very sensible!

She puts a ✔ next to the line.

And now there's this.

Name: Dragon Fairy Elf Witch - Cost: 5 ☐
You can at any time discover previously unknown heritage from any type of being you encounter, even if this makes no sense or contradicts previously established descriptions of your family tree. You always get their powers without their drawbacks, unless the drawbacks are cool and dramatic. Any visible features of this heritage will appear at narratively appropriate moments and be cute, pretty, beautiful, or striking rather than awkward, weird, gross, or scary. This ability works even if the beings in question cannot reproduce with humans, or at all.

Dragon Fairy Elf Witch is so outsizedly powerful and extensible compared to most of everything else on this list that it stumps her a little bit. The odd way it's pharsed doesn't help.

This is an incredibly interesting power.

Do I have to do this at the time I see them, or can I use it on people I've seen before? And I'm taking "discover previously unknown heritage" to be closer to flavor text; is that right? It's not going to retroactively change history to insert additional contributors in my ancestry?

And would I be right in expecting that any changes which could be considered neutral, but which I wouldn't prefer—for example changing my mental architecture towards the origin species—would count relevantly as drawbacks and won't happen?

If I took Stay Put I'd definitely use this on the being I mentioned before, but I'm wondering, since I'm likely taking Isekai Roulette, if there could be a way to still use it on the aspect of the being (we call it an "agent") which provides my own powers. Which of course depends on what we come up with for how to handle that link if I leave the universe. If I take Dragon Fairy Elf Witch, is there a hybrid solution where I trigger DFEW on my agent somehow, before I leave or retroactively after I'm transported, and regain a copy of my old powers as the expression of DFEW for my agent?

From the descriptions you've given I'm not totally sure that DFEW would work on the being or its agents. I think there's a very good chance it might, but it's hard to be sure. DFEW normally only works on beings that have... something it is like to be them? A perspective on the world and an experience of it? And I don't know if that being has one of those. (If it doesn't, I Can Fix Them also won't work, unless something especially weird is going on.)

DFEW does work on any being you've personally encountered, though, even if you aren't looking at them when you try it. And you're right that "discovering heritage" is sort of an oversimplification and it won't change history or shuffle around your family tree (though it will make you count as really having the kinds of heritage you take, to magic that cares about that sort of thing), and you're right that the definition of drawbacks (and the definition of drawbacks cool and dramatic enough to be allowed) depends on your preferences and aesthetics.

So DFEW doesn't work on plants, for example? What about animals? Do you know what species of animals people have had it work on, just to calibrate my scale?

I think the being probably does something which can be described as "thinking". I suspect the being might not have any motivational system, or desires, or introspection, or contiguous personality. That's what I meant before of it not being a person: there is nothing to interact with or relate to on a personal level, and hence no vector for the Friendship powers to work through, or so I interpreted the Friendship powers as working; but it sounds like I might be wrong about that?

The question of whether there is something it is like to be them I haven't given much thought to, but the answer might be "no", or it might be "yes, what it feels like is nothing" (if that makes sense?), or it might be "yes, but it's deeply alien and lacks anything humans think of when they think of experiences".

It is likely not productive to dwell on this as neither of us have the information needed to make the determination, and since you're saying it works retroactively. I'm almost certainly going to take it so it won't affect my decision.

She puts down 600 as the score for Dragon Fairy Elf Witch. It might be a lowball, but as she told the notebook, it's unlikely it matters.

I think I have heard of it working on cats and birds and cephalopods, but my memories of other vessels of the Spirit I've met are vague for privacy reasons, so it's hard to be sure.

✔.

Name: Omniglot - Cost: 3 ☐
You learn languages insanely, ludicrously fast. You know exactly what any word said to you means, and you make strangely accurate guesses about how to phrase things you're trying to say. You never forget any grammar or vocabulary you learn.

Name: Anything You Can Do - Cost: 6 ☐
You learn implausibly quickly from friends, rivals, and love interests. If you have a personal connection to someone with a certain skill, talent, or expertise, you'll learn it five times faster than they did, or twenty times faster if they're actively trying to teach you. This applies even to forms of magic that you ordinarily shouldn't be able to learn.

More powers she already has.

My mind is already enhanced, so I already learn things very quickly. I'm guessing Omniglot is a boost on top of that, similar to Inner Strength and Lightfoot, but AYCD is explicit about being 5x or 20x faster. If by default, I would learn more than 5x faster than a friend did, then does AYCD do anything (when they're not acively teaching me)?

Omniglot is specifically most useful when learning a language without the help of any normal source of translation; it will give you accurate intuitions for what people mean when they say things, and how to say what you mean back to them, even in situations where you ordinarily wouldn't have any way of knowing that. It should also boost your language learning speed outside that scenario, though!

Anything You Can Do should work as a boost on top of how fast you already learn things, and will still let you learn forms of magic that would ordinarily be impossible for someone in your position to learn.