"Power dreams come in any flavor from Allah to Zeus to interdimensional FBI to eldritch things to the power was within you all along to comprehending the pure math of the universe. I don't quite know which to favor, myself. Swimming powers are niche. But damned useful for rescue, I'll say. C'mon, into the lab?"

"Yeah, uh, I did not get someone I recognized."  Sure, she can follow along into the lab.  Entirely silently, apparently.

"I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours."

There are wide hallways. Then there is a large room with a gym-looking area except with weirder equipment, and a raised platform with controls.

"Sure, seems fair.  ...Did I actually remember to write it down?  ...Uh, give me a minute, gotta get my thoughts in order here..."

"...It smelled like a devil deal of some sort that I was quite conveniently not going to find the 'catch' of, to be a catch.  Being as I was, in fact, already a girl, and the catch was, significantly, implied to be - well, specifically I was told it was a cost, I believe - well, that the only transformations I'd get were feminine.  ...Anyway.  Uh.  Quote, 'This is an interesting little situation', 'Normally, I wouldn't be able to do this at all, but this world has opened to my influence a tiny bit', 'Here and now, tonight, I can make you an offer' - emphasis mine.  I imagine I could have refused, but who the hell would do that?  Oh, and she specifically said 'Best to think of this as a dream', implying that it was not, in some meaningful way - which, well, I was lucid, and not just the sort of pseudo-lucidity I recall having ever experienced where I'm aware that I remember a dream like the dream I'm presently having.  I've never had that happen in a novel dream like this.  And it came complete with a sort of fade out, with specific instructions to 'go back to dreaming'.  ...Which I do think I did do.  I don't normally have recollection of my dreams stick even half this well except while I'm dreaming the same thing I have at some other time dreamt.  And that's only valid while I'm dreaming, for that matter!  It goes whoosh when I actually wake up after!"

"...I didn't even describe the environment, did I.  Or what the hypothetical agent of powers-giving was actually like, beyond how the conversation went.  That was another odd thing, because it was decidedly not the same sort of environment my brain will hallucinate left to its own devices, I've never had it do some bland infinite expanse, it usually tends more towards geometries that wouldn't be physically possible - turning a corner into a room that's not even the same building, for example - but are internally consistent - let alone the - when there are people in my dreams, they are usually fully rendered?  But this one was...abstract.  I'd know the sound of her voice if I heard it again - and, come to think of it, that's completely backwards because I normally couldn't fucking tell you what people sound like, like, it's just all sort of ...dubbed over in the internal monologue voice, but I couldn't tell you anything else about her - and I was somehow...there-but-not, too.  Not in the usual sort of...operating a third person camera...way.  Just a sort of abstraction of...presence?  No real proprioception but a surprising amount of other, non-physically-consonant, sensation.  ...If I've ever slept somewhere that feels like floating in an infinitely extended cloud, like, off to the horizon except there is no horizon, there is just...infinity... it is not my bed at home."

Stella Sky nods slowly, thoughtfully.

"Thorough. I'll be likewise. Well... Don't spread it around too much but near as I can tell, I was one of, if not the, first. I spent years building things secretly and figuring myself out before I made a few quiet deals and... The shuttle as my big go-public. So I was one of the first. Maybe the first. Earlier than any others I could confirm, at least. December 31, 1999."

Stella... Takes off her mask. She doesn't look supermodel pretty. She looks like a soccer mom.

"Got a guess where this is going? But no. Not midnight. Four thirty-seven PM. Mine felt like it lasted forever. I know what you're talking about, I think. That sense of unreality. More a feeling than a specific sensory event. I had the impression I was standing on a tiny platform like Atlas, with something unfathomably huge in front of me. Weighing on me with its presence. It was black, like rough obsidian. Tiny cracks bled silver and gold and and colorless light that felt like the sky. I felt like I was there for hours, looking at a whole planet and wondering if I was dying, if I was insane, dreaming... But it felt too real to be a dream. I was having thoughts and tracking them. I was following patterns in the cracks as they slowly grew. Still, hours and hours. Maybe days. I don't rightly know. I didn't see anything around except this... Wall or planet. But it got closer and closer and I knew, just knew it was gonna crush me for real. I was already pinned by its presence. Moving wasn't a thing that could happen. Trying to run was like trying to draw a five-sided triangle. So I fretted and fretted about it, and I decided I hoped for the sky color to be what washed over me. Gold looked like lava, and the silver was sharp and splintery. I though the colorless sky would be least painful. And wouldn't you know it, that uncolor bloomed and bloomed and washed over me. Filled my head up to burst and then kept going. I heard lots and lots of voices then. Gods choosing me. My parents lecturing. My own voice claiming to be from the future. Other people. Woke up in the hospital a week later."

"Damn.  That's..."

"That's."

"That's."  She can't find the words.

"If some of that dream is not itself somewhat revelatory of why the unknown figure in mine was able to make her offer I will eat my hat.  ...Notwithstanding the complete absence of my wearing a hat.  But...It makes sense.

"...And of course I'll keep this quiet.  ...Did the voice that was possibly future you leave any testable predictions...?"

"Nothin' that couldn't have been... Prescience under stress. Or I'd be keeping it a lot closer to my chest. I told myself that the internet was the future, that we'd get a black President, that America would go back to Iraq, that I'd go to the moon, that some idiot's gonna set off nukes, China's economy will collapse, there'll be a nuclear accident in India... Russia would invade Ukraine... Sure doesn't seem specific enough to be time travel, eh? I'm still not sure whether to think it's my own brain making predictions, making sense of whatever random cosmic ray changed me, or something... Real. Most days, I think it doesn't really matter, day to day."

"True enough.  Most of them seem to have been right though.  Have you ever thought about how you might...?"

Oh, by the way - is she, uh, growing or gathering or whatevering, another roll on the gacha?

Shrug. "I've thought about it. Never come up with anything that seems like it might work. So your power dream was a goddess type, you got transformations. And mine was an eldritch type... I got my deliberately obfuscated tinker-type stuff. Some people say the power dreams are reflections of who you are on some level. You got made an offer? Maybe you think there's no such thing as a free lunch. The price was turning into a pretty lady? Lots of people want to be pretty ladies. But too often it's a stretch. It's like tarot, or horoscopes. You can find meaning in anything if you let your brain do it. Let's move on to actual testing. No good to linger on this stuff. Can you change back to your archer form?"

(...It doesn't really feel like she's progressing? It was a subtle thing, before, like a bit of muscle strain, unclear and non-obvious.)

"I got a giant closet that can accumulate transformations based on some unclear metric."

...Uh.  Can she change back.  "...And there is sort of a 'cooldown' that triggers when I transform into any given shape, which is kind of odd because - well, it's kind of backwards of how most video games handle it, and I'm getting that kind of vibe from the whole thing."

It's too soon to change back! It's only been a few minutes!

"I keep saying it because it's true, everything about powers is odd. You should try and time it, then optimize over it. That's what I'd do. Let's head to the pool test chamber instead, then."

It's just two doors down on the same hallway. Bigger than Olympic. More tile than steel and concrete. The water looks very deep, and there are a lot of odd props and machines around. Smells like pool chemicals.

"I think there's a nebulous activity component stacked atop a regular timer, if I had to hazard a guess.  Incidentally.  But that doesn't really cut down the timer much over, ha, time."

Time to go swimming!  ...Gods it's been a while since she's done that.

...Even the splash of her jumping in the pool is utterly silent.

Swimming is easy, and she can see very clearly through the water. This pool is deep. It must be sixty meters or more. There are props of concrete buildings and pipes and caves and rubble down there; Something about these twisty spaces in deep water seems comforting and safe. She cuts through the water like it's barely there, almost easier than slithering along the surface was. And her swimming is silent to a degree that can be measured. That's interesting.

There's a tiny bit of noise from the eddy currents the splashes leave, and a bit of flow noise that Stella puzzles over before deciding is from the toga. Stella reports this when Diana surfaces.

"And I can't keep calling you 'Cupid' in my head, unless you're fine with that. Doesn't really fit a shifter who expects to get even more powers. But then, maybe you want a separate identity for each form, as long as you can maintain it."

"Goodness knows I've no better ideas.  I suppose Wildcard would fit for the overall aesthetic if someone hasn't already taken it."

The report that the clothes are interfering with her noise cancellation has her - well, first, seeing if it holds if she takes, like, a skintight glove, and slaps the surface of the water, and second, muttering "the catch is being a girl my ass, the catch is being mandatorily sexy -" when that produces a noise that the equivalent action with her hand does not..

"...It bothers me that I can't immediately think of something to disprove or discount that. My word. Wildcard, then. Perhaps my little present can be some Y-6 as a bodysuit. Stealth fabric."

"Powers are weird."  She can't help but laugh at the echo of Stella's earlier comments, her expression rather wry.  "I really probably could use proper costume support if I'm going to be out in the field - and I expect I will need to do something active if I want to keep finding new transformations in my back pocket, as was."

....Has she done anything, in her various bits of splashing around (or rather specifically Not doing that,) that has generated pull-strength?

"Mmh. I don't know if I can commit to doing that full time. I have a few people helping out- None of whom you're seeing today for opsec type reasons mostly- Well, I'm not really in the business of actively equipping big teams. I coordinate and deal with big issues. You also didn't need air. Or suffer negative effects from the pressure at all. And I think you're stronger and tougher than mere flesh and blood- The brute effect. These are all things we can measure, if you wish. Maybe every form will have a baseline level of enhancement."

(She does not have a pending roll, and can't tell if she has progressed towards it. She only noticed it last night when it was heavily built up already.)

"Yeah, I wasn't really expecting you to handle that, I just wondered if you knew Edna Mode.  ...Well, presumably there isn't anyone who has literally become Edna Mode, but.  You know.  Someone who saw the emerging supers and thought 'They're gonna need costumes'.  I don't exactly trust my ability to improvise remotely as far as that."

"I don't know any Edna Modes, sad to say. I know some supers have people they use and could maybe get you some phone numbers, but your best bet may be cosplayers plus tinker materials. Or someone who does custom tailoring plus tinker materials."

"...Well, that makes sense, and is also kind of terrifying."

"...Also, the question of names has been rattling around in the back of my head, and apparently my subconscious has decided only now to inform me that I probably have a better claim to the name 'Eidolon', from a linguistic and powers-mechanics perspective, than the miserable human being that has the most prevalent fictional claim thereunto.  Alas that it would probably confuse a bunch of people if I tried, like if someone just up and called themself Superman in real life."

"Most people don't have transforming to deal with... If you want to call yourself Eidolon, do it. Ignore the haters. It'll catch on if you get much done. I, for example, have never heard of whatever you're referencing."