In Wake of the Memorial (II)
"-. 16 April, 1989 .-"
[You have slept in a bed. Energy and homeostasis fully restored.]
Richard stared up at the notification screen. And when it didn't disappear at his sleepy attempt at mental prompting, he waved his hand through it to dispel it. Thankfully, that worked. Taking a moment to gauge his mood, he was vaguely surprised to feel something approaching outright euphoria.
Seemed like good old regular life qualified as sheer heaven compared to his latest experience. Even without actually suffering through it as he should have, were the Worldmind not there. He could practically feel his subtle body recharge just from the sheer relief and delight in normalcy just by lying there.
[New Mission Created: Explore your surroundings.]
Removing his covers and sitting up on the side of the bed, he took the chance to actually look at his surroundings, rather than the cursory glance he settled for the prior evening when he was too exhausted for more. Surprisingly, he seemed to have been hosted in the master bedroom. Or, well, explicitly not hosted because, something something, it might prove more useful to let him operate without the constraints of hospitality. For a while. The man of the house had notably evaded specifying for whom it would be useful though. Another thing he could chalk up to his exhaustion.
Floor to ceiling balcony doors and windows. Clean white curtains. Gold and crimson drapes over them and around the four-poster bed. A good and sturdy one that strangely didn't seem to have been slept in much recently.
[Through repeated actions, a new skill |Inspect| has been created. Would you like to rename this skill?]
"… No?"
[Skill command |Inspect| registered successfully. Access |Skill Description| for details.]
Richard blinked slowly and said. "Skill description?"
[Inspect: Used to gather information through observation and inference of sensory data. Mastery 6/100. Activation: verbal/mental recitation (may evolve to intent). Current level: Basic information collated on subject of interest, range 3 meters.]
Richard blinked. "Alright then."
The man stood from the [Antique Marriage Bed: Quality 10. Durability: 10] and reached for his [Freshly laundered clothing: Quality 2. Durability: 1] while his eyebrows climbed ever higher at the sudden flood of on-'screen' notifications. Someone was still unwilling to drop the vain hope that they might one day achieve comedy.
In the end it had come to another soul surgery. To share his senses with the Worldmind and give it direct control over all his processes and development he wasn't actively asserting himself over. Though he still had full veto power to go with the overriding control over his conscious actions. For communication, they'd decided on a simple replica of the Centurion helmet HUD. Except it inevitably stopped being 'simple' the moment they tossed in their varied forms of 'inspiration.' Which mostly came from board games Richard played in school and college. And the on-screen menus from video games that Robbie showed him sometimes in those timelines when Richard made it back to Earth just around the time when people finally got into augmented reality. None of which Richard remembered personally, much to his hopefully temporary displeasure. This, incidentally, meant that he couldn't have been the one who decided to treat this as if he'd become a character in a video game. It could only mean the Worldmind was the one who wound up doing it, which was actually rather galling.
"Auxiliary functions, eh Pi?" He muttered as he pulled on his shirt. "Let's see how many we can fit in, is that it?"
[For mechanical information, please access the |Tutorial| section.]
Yeah, no.
[A Mission has been Created! Tutorial - Explore base mechanics! Objectives: Experiment with your new abilities! Use a skill; create a skill; complete a mission. Reward: 100 XP!]
Richard glared at the screen until it disappeared along with the new objective trackers in the corner of his field of vision. If this was Prime's idea of inducing the fulfilment and self-actualisation that they both so desperately needed, he was doing a terrible job.
[Mission Postponed! Note: Certain missions can be taken at any time, completed incidentally even if not explicitly accepted, or are repeatable. Further details can be accessed via the |Mission Control| section of the System Menu.]
With that to confirm that he did have the same level of control over the functions controlling his life as a certain wannabe comedian, and specifically those things that might qualify as, dare he say it, [Self-development meaningful enough for the Astral body to grow in power] experience, the man headed for the door, ignoring the passive aggressive cant of the pop-ups as best he could.
Then he detoured towards the full-size mirror next to the vanity that clearly belonged to the woman of the house.
Richard Rider studied himself in the mirror. More specifically, the floating boxes above his head.
[NOVA]
[Level: 12]
[Richard Rider]
Right. Alright then.
[For More information, access |Status| or use the |Inspect| skill on self.]
"Status."
The augmented reality pop-up window that emerged this time took up almost his entire field of vision.
|Name: Richard Rider
|Title: Nova
|Race: Terran
|Level: 12
|Health: 100% (+0.2% per minute)
|Stamina: 100% (+2% per minute)
|Vril: 100% (10%*) (+1% per minute)
|Intellect: 2 (6**)
|Strength: 7
|Dexterity: 3
|Speed: 7
|Durability: 7
|Force Projection: 1
|*Effective Vril cap -90%, remaining astral flow currently allocated to Xandarian Worldmind
|** Heightened intelligence when deferring control to Xandarian Worldmind
Richard's thousands of hours playing role-playing board games with school friends were just barely showing, but neither of them had managed to think of a better way than mathematical abstracts to comprehensively render their situation. The numbers felt fairly on point to Richard even without thinking too hard about what scale they functioned on. They estimated a stat score of 10 to be peak human potential, but there was no Captain America on hand to really compare. Not that he would be terribly shocked for that to change after the last couple of days. The only thing that really challenged his world view in wake of the quality time spent feeding bad vibes to Cthulhu's unlovely offspring was that last category.
Force projection. And it wasn't zero.
He looked around the room. The World Mind might not have the mumbo jumbo [conceptual weight] needed to do anything fancy itself at the moment. But he should still have his own mind over matter potential if that force projection score was any indication. How to test it out though? His eyes fell on the bookshelf on the other side of the room. And on the small tea table near it.
Eight absolutely ancient tomes rested on it. Which was strange on its own considering the almost total lack of wear. Really, their condition was implausibly close to pristine. In front of them was a handwritten sign saying 'Mandatory Reading – perusal by guests strongly advised.'
Well, he was sort of a guest even though he had explicitly been denied formal hospitality, whatever that meant. Hopefully no one will mind if he skimmed through them a bit. Upon walking over to pick the first up, though, Richard Rider froze in disbelief and astonishment at the title.
[Oresteia. Quality 100. Durability: 5]
"… Inspect." Richard said, mouth dry.
[The Epic Cycle I: Oresteia. The first entry of Ἐπικὸς Κύκλος, (Greek, Epikos Kyklos), the collection of Ancient Greek epic poems composed in dactylic hexameter and related to the story of the Trojan War. Heretofore presumed lost in the burning of the Library of Alexandria.]
The man just stood there, reading and re-reading the title. He then very carefully placed the book back on the table and reverently laid out side by side the other seven. He could only be more amazed at what he'd just confirmed.
Suddenly, a pop-up appeared above the first volume.
[Assimilate Contents Y/N]
Blinking and feeling much like he could feel the space a foot around him like a second skin all of a sudden, he picked up the book again and thought 'Yes.'
His astral body visibly – though only to him? – poured up, over and down his arms, coalescing in his hands in a rectangular veil that superimposed the book, for a moment. Then it flowed back and settled into its normal, invisible state.
The events leading up to the Trojan War and the first nine years of the conflict unfolded in Richard Rider's mind with crisp, perfect clarity.
In dactylic hexameter verse.
[Skill Gained: Poetry 8/100]
[Skill Improved: Orator 27->34]
[New Skill |Written Content Assimilation| created. Would you like to rename this skill?]
"Scholar's Touch."
[Skill Registered: Scholar's Touch. Mastery 1/100. Range: Touch. Cost: 1% Vril]
Brown eyes gazed down at an immeasurable fortune in cultural heritage.
Oresteia. Illiad. Aethiopis. Little Iliad. Ilious Persis. Nostoi. Odyssey. Telegony.
One by one he assimilated them all.
The Epic Cycle of which only the Illiad and the Odyssey were supposed to still exist. And they were all here, in the home of some backwoods hippie. Then again, the father of said backwoods hippie could apparently bring people back from the dead. Who's to say he couldn't do the same to other things? Unless he just had them because they'd survived all the way since antiquity and reached his hands without history finding out about them in the time since. But then, how did that happen? And what kind of book maintenance had been done on these things to keep them in such pristine condition anyway? They were done fully in parchment.
Despite the inconsistencies, though, he was sure they were genuine. Their conceptual weight resonated even in the darkest depths of the Chaos Serpent with uru-clad authenticity.
It was actually rather strange because Richard was sure there should have been seven or eight different authors involved in their making. And yet these ones all claimed the same joint authorship: Odysseus of Ithaca and Medea of Colchis.
[New Mission Created: The Epic Cycle. Objective: Unravel the mysteries surrounding the chronicle of the Trojan War.]
"This, I think, I just might do," Richard said lowly. "We'll learn together."
[Mission Accepted: The Epic Cycle.]
[Mission |Explore Your Surroundings| Complete! Reward: 10 XP.]
[Mission |Tutorial| Complete! Reward: 100XP.]
Richard Rider smiled wryly. He literally felt it as his feeling of accomplishment rose up within him and left his greater self just that tiny bit more than before. Faintly, but it was there. Good as a measuring stick for the future, if nothing else. Self-fulfilment, just as they had inferred, really was the only way to make use of that currency known as actionable experience.
[Level Progression Assayed: 110 of 2000 XP. Personal Status updated.]
Self-fulfilment apparently made a measurable difference for determining how far off the next stage of self-actualisation was too. Richard had been dubious about the Worldmind's ability to assign any numerical value to something so nebulous, but maybe he shouldn't have been.
Assuming Pi wasn't talking out of its ass in a bid at some self-fulfilment of its own anyway.
[Skill Registered: Artless Temerity. Mastery 44/100. Range: Verbal. Effects: Chance to inflict various psychological status effects on target, audience and the surrounding area.]
Touche.
He moved to the door and exited the room.
As he expected, they were on the upper floor. The only reason the staircase at the far end wasn't the first thing he noticed was due to the person that caught his attention, standing in the open balcony across from it.
[Peter Quill |Star-Lord| Level: ?]
Inspect.
|Name: Peter Jason Quill
|Title: Star-Lord
|Race: Terran/Spartoi Hybrid*
|Level: ?**
|Health: 100%
|Stamina: 100%
|Mood: Reserved. Pensive. Expectant.
|*Information potentially obsolete in light of abilities recently displayed
|** Unable to quantify threat level with current inputs and knowledge base
Abilities recently displayed. That was one way to describe this Peter Quill's skill set. Flight, teleportation, super strength and durability, energy projection, the ability to open interdimensional gates. If not for the reality warping he did to trap the sentinels in a small box on the reverse side of the world, Richard would be genuinely concerned about a rival for his title. It was almost like seeing the Nova Force on full display.
Peter Quill glanced at him briefly as he approached, but returned his gaze to whatever he could see down in the yard.
How to approach this, he wondered.
Well, considering how things had gone over the past day and eternity in the belly of the beast, maybe direct was the way to go even here.
"Star-Lord."
"Nova. Worldmind."
Well, that answered that. [Greetings.]
"I understand my father granted you lodging without first making you pledge to Xenia."
"That's right."
"Given what I am now witnessing, I believe he thought you could be trusted not to go too far in exploiting the resulting lack of constraints on conduct relative to all other guests."
Blinking, Richard looked from Peter Quill to whatever seemed to hold his attention, which turned out to be Howard Stark. And the limo pulling up in front of the gate he was heading towards, from which a pair of burly bodyguards and a third man [Edwin Jarvis |Butler|] were emerging in anticipation of receiving their boss and driving away.
There was no one else in sight. Not their host. Not any of the X-men. Not Tony.
The euphoria that had been carrying him through the morning as if on a cloud suddenly became a type of cloud entirely different.
"Star-Lord," Richard said as [Skill Activated: Clear Mind] the flare of indignant rage seeped out of him like so much gibbering over the past night and age. "Where is Tony now?"
"Still sleeping off his post-death experience. No, he hasn't awoken once since you last saw him."
[Skill Downloaded: Parkour. Source: Millennian Josh Atwater. Mastery: MAX. Synchronisation: 15%]
Richard Rider jumped on the balcony railing, leapt off and forward as far as he could, landed on his feet well clear of the porch below [Parkour Synchronisation: 15->25%] and went slack just so. He fell, rolled three times to bleed off the excess downward momentum, flowed to his feet without losing any of his non-excess momentum [25->33%], dashed at the ledgestone wall, ran up it and vaulted off the top just in time to ride that last bust of conserved motion.
[New Mission Created: Aggressive Family Therapy. Objective: Avert the Irreconcilable Breakdown of the Stark Family. Accept Y/N]
He landed on top of the first startled bodyguard just badly enough to leave him groaningly incapacitated instead of crippled. He wrestled the second one until he grappled him the way he needed to bash his head into unconsciousness against the car's side. Then he took down Edwin Jarvis with an ease just barely short of contemptuous. Which was strange because he seemed to have the best-honed combat style of the bunch even if he wasn't any faster pulling a gun and his instincts were all over the place. Inspect.
[Edwin Jarvis. Level 2. Butler. Terran. Status: Unconscious. Threat Level: 1. Combat style ill-suited to frame. Agility and grappling-based approach aimed at bigger targets but likely practiced only against smaller ones. Used to being in high-pressure situations but not as active participant. No experience engaging above own weight class. Sub-standard striking power. Conclusion: trainer was poor teacher, inconstant, and female.]
Nova shook his head. Howard Stark really needed specialist help.
[Boxing: 68->70%] [Pankration: 76->77%.] [Glima: 81->82%]
[Parkour Synchronisation: 44%]
[Note: Synchronised skills will become eligible for assimilation upon 100% synchronisation. Only one skill can be synched at any one time. Swapping will reset the synchronisation progress. Access |Skill Synchronisation| for details.]
Notifications flashed one after another near the bottom of his field of view before minimising to the small status bar in the lower left corner, but he ignored them.
Instead, he stormed up to the gaping Howard Stark and got in his face like the devil's own henchman. "You piece of shit!"
"Wha-"
"You dumb piece of dogshit!" Richard Rider snarled, grabbed him by the collar and proceeded to drag the billionaire back to the house, up the stairs and down the hall to his kid's guestroom. "Your kid died, he got to be aware of everything while that was going on, he got a front-row seat when you sold him to who might as well have been Satan for all you knew, and your solution to all that is to make off the very next day before he even wakes up!? Fuck that!"
"Ack! Gah! Get off me-!"
"No."
"Unhand me!
"No."
"I'm war-"
"I DON"T WANT TO HEAR IT!" Richard roared as they barged into Tony's room. He was distantly aware that [Clear Mind] had well and truly ben de-assigned at some point or other but he only felt glad of it. "Tony, you awake yet? No? THEN WAKE THE FUCK UP!"
"BUH!?"
Tony Stark squawked, flailed and balked in bewilderment at waking up to find his outraged, embarrassed and disheveled father being literally thrown on top of him on the bed.
"Welcome back among the land of the living," Richard growled. "Are you coherent or do I need to dump a jug of coffee on you as well?"
"Wha? Richard? DAD!?"
"Yes. Me. Your father, who was just about to drive off in his fancy limo with his substandard minions and only barely less substandard chauffeur without even waiting for you to awake so he could say a measly goodbye!"
"Wha-?"
"Neither of you will step a toe out of this room until you DISCUSS YOUR FUCKING PROBLEMS!"
The words rung damningly through the house even over the sound of the bedroom door slamming shut behind him.
Richard Rider promptly returned to his room and proceeded to spend the next few hours in and out of the attached balcony, fuming, exercising, meditating, and mentally preparing himself in case Stark's butler or bodyguards barged in for round two through five. When that didn't happen, he pondered on the insight his Inspect skill had given him when he used it on people. Even Tony, in the heat of the moment.
[Anthony Edward Stark. Level 1. Terran. Health 75%. Stamina 30%. Mood: Weary. Angry. Depressed.]
His HUD seemed to display things whenever some achievement or insight was owed more to the Worldmind than his own ability or skill. There had been many of them. Granted, it wasn't easy to discern emotion when the other guy was sleeping, but he should have been able to see more when Tony did burst awake, even in that chaos. Especially when half of Richard's own angry mood was actually fabricated because he thought the display would have a stronger effect on things. Influence the situation in the way he wanted. Righteous anger tended to be useful that way. At least if the super-rich elitist didn't dismiss it and him because he was a working class nobody.
But that was secondary to his other concerns now. He had a lot of work to do. A lot of ability and skill to catch up to, if he had to be told in writing that Tony was depressed. Unless the Worldmind was playing smartass, but it wasn't like the Prime Computer didn't have bigger concerns of its own to pursue.
To say nothing of the things Richard aimed to do that the Worldmind didn't have any intent to pursue on account of being completely demoralized.
[New Mission Created: Make the Xandarian Worldmind Great Again. Objectives: Find a physical platform for the Xandarian Worldmind. Restore the lost nodes of the Xandarian Worldmind. Restore the Nova Force. Failure Outcomes: Nova Force is not recreated. Nova Corps remain reliant on conventional technology. Nova Empire continues to decline. Possible death of Tanak Valt and Queen Adora of Xandar. Eventual Death of the Xandarian Worldmind.]
Richard sighed at the passive-aggressive cant of the notification and accessed quest details. There was a lot of information, but most of it was about what he expected. The only thing that caught his eye was one entry under the 'Restore the lost nodes' objective.
"Deconvolution techniques?"
[Closest approximation: the deconvolution techniques used to reconstitute a person's DNA base-pair sequence from traces left on injectors.]
"Current processing platform computational capacity insufficient," Richard read aloud, resting his head in his hand as he thought. "So you could restore your lost nodes based on the connections and patterns and records of last computations. But you don't have enough nodes for it left. You're a supercomputer, only without the super."
[Alternative platforms may be used to offload parallel processing, but none are currently known that have sufficient capacity and reliability relative to the physical plane, let alone others.]
"What, you mean like the Mind Stone?"
[… Objective updated.]
Huh. He could have sworn he felt the entire system glitch for a moment there.
Seems they might still be underestimating the impact on Prime's cognitive abilities from having his brains gorged on by Cthulhu and his friends. And whatever else may have happened that he couldn't remember along with everything else he forgot because of it. The Worldmind really should have considered that option long before it occurred to him.
Richard Rider noticed something out of the corner of his eye and went to look out the window. Without stepping out on the balcony on account of the storm that had sprung out of nowhere again.
He squinted as he stared in the distance and through rain. Was that a Blackbird?
What kind of resources did the X-Men have, seriously?
Over the next ten minutes, Nova watched the woods that stretched into the distance from the back of the property for the return of [Anna-Marie |Rogue| Level 3 (~)], [James Howlett / Logan |Wolverine| Level 15 (35)] and [Jason Quill |J'Son of Spartax| Level ? - Readings Negated].
Mysterious host was mysterious and hurray for handicaps, Richard mused as he thought back to his victory in the cage fighting matchup.
That was when Tony barged into his room.
"He sold me!" The kid raved in an attempt to bury his grief and depression in rage again. "My own dad sold me. Pawned me off like last year's trash! The guy could have been Satan! Hell, I still haven't seen proof he isn't! The fact that dad went along with it just on the words of a pretty face that happened to be the guy's daughter isn't any better!"
Richard turned away from the window, though not before he caught Howard Stark headed for the limo at the gates again in the corner of his eye, if with slightly more of a slump around the shoulders.
"And he has the balls to say it was all for me! As if he cares any about me instead of having a way out of dealing with the consequences of his fuckup!" Tony carried on, hoarse and voice thick with feelings he must have been bottling up all morning. Even though he and his old man had spent half the time screaming at each other loud enough to be heard all the way to Richard's room. "He's never been impressed with anything I did! And he should have been! I've always been ahead of everybody, outdoing some of his own engineers by the time I was at MIT. I was fifteen when I designed Dum-E, and I did it behind his back with his spare parts! Got an award and everything. Dad's response? 'Make sure to clean up the lab before the reporters get here.' He's always more worried about how Stark Industries will look like in the paper than the fact that half the time they're only there because of what I create. He doesn't care. He's never impressed! Even you've shown more appreciation for me than he does." Tony's voice wavered terribly and he vainly tried to backtrack and check himself. "Fuck, and now I'm insulting you too! I mean sure, you never really jumped at the chance to meet me, but you never pretended not to love the designs I tinkered with. Hell, eventually you even starting acting like you'd like to get to know me!"
Richard walked up to him while refraining from commenting on how sad it was that Tony had legitimate cause to think himself no more than his father's problem. Not that Tony wasn't overdramatising things. Or putting his foot in his mouth with every other sentence.
"Can we do something?" Tony said. Whimpered, almost. "Anything. You can pick. I don't want to think about him."
"Tony-"
"You're not my rebound guy, I swear!" Tony blurted as if he weren't the straightest womaniser on the face of the planet. "No, really! I love spending time with you! You drive around in a shitty car just half a dozen cage matches away from being a vintage collectible, you have a mind you can actually keep up with, and you're the best rules lawyer I've ever met!"
Richard Rider gazed at Tony Stark until the shorter man's bluster drained out of him like everything else had up to then. Only then did he speak. He even kept his voice almost casual. That was always the best way with Tony, he'd learned. Experience had taught him well. "I really have trouble feeling anything by utter disdain for you father, you know. For whatever he's done to make you think something is so wrong with you that everyone including me will inevitably abandon you." Tony's breath hitched. Carrot proffered, now the stick. "That said, you might be overdramatising everything a wee bit considering that the man saw you murdered next to him and carried your dead body around for the entire drive from Columbia to here, seeped in your blood and… other things."
Tony tried to speak, but his voice cracked. So in the end he didn't say anything at all.
"Come on, kid," Richard said, holding out an arm entreatingly. "Come over here and get it out of your system."
"…Yeah okay,"
So he did. Even while pretending or maybe genuinely feeling humiliated by the weakness he was showing, he let Richard hug him.
Just like Robbie. Just like that.
"Why doesn't he want me, man?" Tony sniffled after crying himself out half an hour later.
Many replies went through Richard's mind. 'He does. He wants you to live at all costs. He has trouble showing it. He might have his own trauma. He's autistic as fuck.' That last one might even have been on the mark. But he didn't give voice to any of them. He could read the mood enough to know that's not what Tony needed, even without the Worldmind's ever so helpful notifications.
The last of the morning drifted by on the backs tears, muffled sniffles, bonding via shared incredulity at the books on the table – Richard being smug the entire time over having read something that Tony hadn't for the first time ever – and the occasional notification from the Avatar System.
[Mission |Aggressive Family Therapy| Complete! Reward: 1000 XP.]
Then their one and only host finally sent his daughter over with an invitation to long-awaited discussions over lunch that ended up lasting all through dinner.