There are a slightly worrying number of supervillains at large.

Examples include everything from "monster of the week" type cryptids, through muggers with a gimmick, up to skilled professionals who chose to put on a brightly colored costume instead of writing grant applications. There's an "interdimensional imp" who occasionally fights Superman. There's something called the "League of Shadows" which allegedly offers assassination services. There are not one, not two, but three different swamp-related super-zombies that come up in her search. There are some kind of mantis creatures that keep showing up in Nevada.

The regent of Vlatava is, quite possibly, a vampire. He's known to hypnotize people and get away with it due to diplomatic immunity, at least. Jane Goodall discovered a city of intelligent apes in Africa and then went missing, and since then there has been suspiciously gorilla-like violence done to anyone who proposes sending an expedition to that area of the jungle. There's a man who dresses up as a penguin and runs organized crime. There's a shocking number of villainous robots. There are at least two separate people called "Doctor Sivana", relationship unknown, who occasionally pop out of the woodwork to terrorize the American midwest.

If there's some common thread that links all of these, it is not obvious from her research.

Her eyebrows creep progressively higher up her face as she looks at the ridiculousness. 

Really? Really?! 

Could she make say, some sort of long range tracking power based on having someone's dna, say? Actually, do they take biometrics from criminals in this world? It seems like a good few of these people have escaped prisons before, and having some way to make that harder to get away with would probably be good, and would be relatively bright-liney. 

Beyond that... some of these people have weird exotic energies, and that's another angle to go and track things, perhaps? Heck, she can already kind of sense the green (and presumably blue) lights right now, so she's pretty sure she could get a power that would be able to track an active yellow lantern if one popped up again, and it's not like that's the only one. 

Mind controlling political leaders are really really not okay!! 

Honestly that seems kind of stop halt and catch fire-y!

So! 

Can she get something to make her power generate more of that sapphire to merge with it? She's not too picky what that looks like, though of course color synergy or other utility would be nice - maybe a particular crystal that's more willpower aligned that she can generate more quickly that she can merge with it for improved volume, or something like that?  And then maybe... the multiple object attention power that it mentioned earlier would be good, too, though she's not too sure what would merge well with that. And gosh darn it, she might as well nab that object similarity enhancement power while she's at it. 

She pinches her hand a bit, feeling the pumping of her heart and the heaving of her chest. 

No, no. 

She should be sensible about this. The material generation power is fine, but the rest... 

She takes a deep long steadying breath, and goes fetches herself a glass of water. 

She can get a power for tracking people based on having a connection to them at long range, but tracking people based on DNA is a bit more dubious. Tracking particular kinds of energy is definitely possible, depending on the energy in question, though.

She can have a power to generate emeralds! That seems to synergize with the sapphire-generation power pretty well.

Okay, okay. 

If she's going to go for a crystal generating power for the moment... Can she make 'zeta crystals', whatever those are? They sound like they're potentially pretty valuable and even if batman was being a bit evasive, it's not like that's something that wouldn't be valuable. If so, that's probably worth making. 

She does in fact still not want to get into complicated magic things, but the ability to make more of these is in fact, good. 

She was thinking... that power the gift mentioned earlier about doing the same mental motions across objects, and then something else in that space. A fully general multitasking boost would technically work, but what she's more thinking is something that helps her sort of... 'automate' the task of enchantment in her head, a little? Having something that makes it steadier and easier to avoid her thoughts wandering, or just helping it take up less of her thoughts so she can focus more on the feelings she has to put behind them. 

The iron power was faster than the crystal powers for a good reason that doesn't come across well in her mental link to the gift. Something about spark geometry. Zeta crystals would be one step further in that 'direction' in spark-space, and therefore out of reach for a single spark. Can she break the concept down or find something just a little simpler to ask for?

It could do a power that prevents her emotions from distracting her from her thoughts, or maybe one to increase her focus, or to let her learn mental habits more quickly. Are any of those the thing that she wants?

She tilts her head to the side in thought. 

That's awkward... But ideally merging three different crystal generation powers would generate some sort of relatively generic crystal generation power? It might just make a list or only generalize a little, though, so... can it just give her the nearest neighbor crystal generation power that is valid? If not, she might as well try just say, a quartz generation power and see if that works for what she's thinking of. 

The mental habit power sounds good! 

Well, which one does she want first? The mental habit power or the unnamed energetic zeta-like crystal power? She only has space for one, right now.

(The gift isn't the kind of thing that can prioritize to reach the obvious answer, here.)

Aww! 

Yeah, she should be more mindful there. 

The unnamed energetic zeta-like crystal blooms to life inside her. It doesn't orbit quite as closely to the sapphire and emerald as they do each other, but all three still clearly resonate with one another.

Merge them all, please! 

And then the mental habit forming power and the multiple object attention power. 

The crystal generation powers click together into a 'slowly generate crystals that interact with esoteric energies' power. The two mental powers also seem to like one another.

The gift is pretty tired — it can maybe do one more if she really needs it, but it wants to rest now.

Aww that's totally fair! 

She merges the two mergeables, and then sets off to work. 

She makes a half-dozen disks, each the size of a quarter, green emerald forming the green lantern logo on one side, with the interior detailing made of a green sapphire, with the reverse side made of blue sapphire, with pale blue emerald forming the base, with little streams of runic script etched by lantern's light. She grows a slight stem from the top of each - fit for threading in a small wire to turn them into pendants, if so desired. She spends a good half hour on each of three pairs - a mental ward, a physical ward, and a mix of the two. 

For them, the hope is to impress batman, to see him approving, to have something tangible and brilliant and colorful, to make something by her own will unique in all the world that makes people light up with glee, and to give people a steadiness and surety that they never really had, in a world with so many bizzare things that can make invalidate their choices and their strength. No more, she hopes. No more, she wills. 

She makes a replacement ring of emerald, for simple will, in much the same design as her old one, doing her best to channel out the steady strength she imbued into the replacement. She keeps the function as general as she can, but takes her time to refine the shield it projects away from the blurry fuzz into a sliver-thin barrier, trying to make sure it can protect her from more ills then simple physical force - the green lanterns seem to be able to survive in environments that no ordinary human would, so she tries her best to include that. The focus is on her will to live, her will to conquer and steady the world, to be the shore and a sailor both, and the strength of her resolution and her old talents in meditation. 

She forges a ring of blue, a solid sapphire polished to a silvery sheen, laced with little impurities that form sigils inside the shining blue gem. Her hopes are wider, looser, and her meditations reflect that - the hope to see the stars, to bring hope to others, to get to dance and fly and sing, to see the grateful look on people's faces as she forges something new and precious, the rush of relief and the satisfaction of a task completed that caps off the pursuit of a forlorn dream. In so much as she focuses on anything, she focuses on keeping her hopes safe and free inside her soul. 

She forges a combined ring, too, the materials intermingling like the disks, the two sigils pressed together like two sides of an infinity. She presses her hope that she can be a hero and the resolve she needs to be one nestled softly together to form an incredible strength inside the iridescent ring. She lets her wordless hopes and wordless will pour into it, too, feeling them more beneath her fingers as she forges it, accumulating the layers one at a time, blue and green streaming and splashing against each other before they twine into place and steady. She doesn't have a full suite of skills, so there's so much left to feel, so much left to put inside, but for now, she puts in the patterns for the weaving of barriers and constructs - the safety and salvation of others, the gift she can give, with her own self a little more assured, now. 

She makes untouched samples of each material - the zeta quartz, the green emerald, and the blue sapphire she used for his examination, later, before remembering the kryptonian fascination with crystals, and looks for a while to see if there's anything of interest she can make there, as of yet. 

It's... oddly intimate and exposing, to work through feeling so much, so she won't poke M'gann quite yet. Still, she has to eat, and she has to take care of herself - she takes a shower just to unwind from the reverie of it all. She plans a little, too, letting her half-verbal thoughts wander as she thinks of exactly what she wants to say to Batman. 

She finds herself a room to have the meeting in - it would be good to have a whiteboard or something, but anywhere with chairs is ultimately okay - and sets herself up there fifteen minutes before in a nice blue dress, her charms laid out before her on the table. 

The zeta quartz noticeably tarnishes in air, beginning to crumble into a mustard-colored powder after only a few minutes. Other than that, her crafting goes well, even if working the crystal and the emotion are time-consuming. Her multiple-attention power means that the identical disks are actually a good deal further along than the rings, even if the rings seem like they might be able to contain more emotional energy overall. The rings will definitely need a few more hours of work before they're completely full, but they are already having little effects — the blue ring makes her feel lighter, her steps having a peculiar kind of bounce to them, as though she's in arrears on her gravity bill.

Batman is not late, nor is he early. Instead, he is somehow directly behind her at the appointed time.

"Topaz," he states, swooping dramatically around the table and seating himself in a chair opposite her. He manages to make the greeting sound like a pronouncement.

"How are you settling in?"

She startles a little, before settling back down. 

"I like to think I'm doing reasonably well? There's just... so much on my mind, just because of how big a difference superpowers makes to the world and me." 

Batman nods.

"That's perfectly understandable. I've been working in this area for years, and I still spend a lot of my time coming up with contingencies," he agrees. "But it's good to hear that you're well. I have a few things I wanted to cover—"

He produces a manila folder full of documents from under his cape and sets it between them.

"— but it looks like you have something to show me first?"

He peers inquiringly at the crystals laid out on the table.

She nods firmly. 

"I do." 

She pauses, and looks into his eyes a little more. It's - hard, to get a sense of him - she's sure that he could run circles around her in intrigue, but... 

"But first..." 

"You're something between 'first among equals' and the 'ops and intel guy' for the Justice League, yes? The public picture of the league's operational structure is... muddy at best, and what I've seen so far hasn't been too clarifying, but Martian Manhunter and the Flash do seem to defer to you." 

Batman leans back in his chair and steeples his fingers.

"Superheros have the same natural tendency toward organization that tornadoes do," he remarks. "First among equals is an ... interesting way to put it. I am not the leader of the League, because we have no leader. The Leauge is a voluntary association of like-minded individuals. The only real formal rules we have are the processes for membership laid out in our UN charter. But the other members do tend to listen to my plans and recommendations, because I have a track record of, as you put it, having the right intel and sensible judgement. I can't run faster than light, or even faster than a bullet. I can't lift a falling bridge, or fly. So I work to combat crime in other ways — primarily overseeing the League's routine operations, contingency planning, information gathering, and so on. Combined with my status as one of the founders of the League, I have a certain amount of soft power, it's true. But if I ever suggested to the Flash or to Martian Manhunter that they do something stupid, they would doubtlessly refuse."

"Does that answer your question?"

She suppresses a chuckle at his opening remark, a small bright smile dawning on her face. 

"It does, yes." 

She hums lightly. 

"There's really a lot to get into, but probably the first, most foundational thing to say is just what my powers are." 

It doesn't feel quite real saying that yet, but it is hers, isn't it? 

"As best I can tell from interacting with it, it's some sort of... well-concealed higher dimensional magical thing - some odd hybrid of a spell, an expert system, and symbiote. It gives me four 'slots' for sub-powers. They can be pretty much anything, so long as they're not too too complex for it to implement, though it has a harsher restriction on the amount of raw power involved. When I tried, I wasn't able to copy Kid Flash's power, but I was able to do... this." 

She waves her hands over the crystals indicatively. 

"I was able to - using a system of 'merging' of sub-powers that I can get into later - make a power that could make these from thin air. The rings are... very roughly ersatz replicas of what Green Lantern uses - though the blue one and the blue-green one use the blue light of hope, which I was able to discover after poking around with the power creation system - and the pendants are warding charms using the sample principle. Two mental, two physical, and two mental and physical." 

She points them out in turn. 

"As part of trying to make the first draft of these as good as I can, I got a power that can make these esoteric materials - and I think other crystals that interact with exotic energies too, though that will take some figuring out. The emerald is resonant with the green light, the sapphire with the blue light, and I can make zeta quartz, too - though I'd need to make a vacuum ward first to be able to demonstrate that properly. Feel free to put them and the warding charms through whatever battery of tests you want - they're just demonstration pieces, for now." 

Batman leans forward to examine one of the pendants, and then carefully picks it up and turns it over in his fingers.

"What tests have you run on them so far?" he inquires. "You said they were modeled after Green Lantern rings, but their rings are recharged by a larger portable power source — what powers these?"

"I haven't run too many tests, honestly?" 

She frowns, then shakes her head. 

"No, I've run plenty of tests, but they were generally about the feasibility of design elements and power selection, rather than about performance of the items I've made. As for the rings... I can give them charge personally through my power. I haven't tested it, but in theory, I'd expect it'd be possible for a lantern of an appropriate color or a magician with the right skillset to recharge it as well. The items with a blue component can recharge off of ambient hope, too. Potentially worth noting is that even without an additional power, I'm pretty sure I could create a 'converter' that would be able to charge a 'pure' green charm or ring - and possibly the other colors too." 

"Part of the power gives me an intuition for how powerful items like these are and what they do, but it doesn't convert cleanly into a numerical performance metric.  They are intrinsically empathic, so they'll work best when the person using them is feeling the emotion(s) that I used to make it - though it should in principle always work."  

He nods.

"Magic is always a bit tricky to quantify," he agrees.

He sweeps the crystals into a small, bat-themed black bag which he then secrets somewhere about his person.

"I'll take them to the Batcave for a crystallographic scan, and then ask Zatara and the Green Lanterns to examine them, and see about field testing. You mentioned having control over individual design elements — would you say that you understand how these work? It's not the power just 'making' them, there's an actual design? And if so, what do you think you would need in order to prepare a better design?"

If they work at all, they'll be useful for discrete protection in people's civilian lives; very few pieces of personal protective equipment have such a small profile. But he privately suspects that something turned out in less than 24 hours, by someone apparently completely new to not only their powers but also the entire design of protective talismans, is going to be near the lower limits of what's possible with the technique.

"It's.. weird? I'm making them myself, according to articulable principles, but that doesn't mean that if I turned off the power I could give you a sufficiently extensive description of how to do it to do it completely synthetically, or anything even close to that. I could tell you that there's a certain series of thoughts and geometric images that represent how a construct extends, or how you can shift a formless reserve of will into one aligned with defense, but the - tacticit knowledge of what steps to do and how is mainly located in the power, not in me. It's... Imagine you were playing a really complicated video game, with a walkthrough and a wiki open on another monitor, and an expansive in-game 'hint' system, and maybe even savestates on top of that. There's a lot that you could do in that scenario that you don't necessarily really understand, even if you could give someone an accurate idea of what was going on and you have everything there in front of you you would need to learn how to do it normally. It's still an intuition though, not a mathematically perfect solver, and it's pretty lazy about suggesting additional ideas for what I could do 'better'."

She snorts a little at the second part. 

"These aren't even fully 'charged', and I haven't gotten the opportunity between playing around with everything to even max out the power that makes it, so there's a lot of performance to gain there. They're just proofs of concept I made in two hours. Beyond that... I would love to have a sample or at least a scan or specification of whatever the Guardians use to make Green Lantern rings, since I'm really doubt they use this. I'm sure there's someone out there with magical skills that I don't have that could apply to this - another big part of why I haven't done more here is that I haven't talked to a professional here about the "Dos and don'ts" of magical experimentation and practice so I've been skipping out on doing magic qua magic directly myself for now - really magic in general has a lot of unknown unknowns. I could probably get something out of seeing how the green lanterns do their thing, too, since the expertise I get out of my power isn't anything like perfectly comprehensive. I'm pretty sure just finding a deeper understanding or greater source of hope and will would make my creations better, too. In theory, there's probably more synergies with more colors that could make it better, so if you have any sort of emotional light artifacts around somewhere, I might be able to do something with those after some looking around? And that's just off the top of my head - I'm sure if I thought more about it or I knew more about what metahuman powers existed I would be able to list another half-dozen things that could plausibly help."  

He frowns in thought.

"Those all make sense. I doubt the Guardians will be willing to share — it's a big Universe and they tend to leave things up to their Lanterns — but you could ask the Lanterns to relay a message."

A short, blue man with stark white hair appears through a tear in space.

"No need. It's been nearly four millennia since someone else successfully struck a ring from the Green Glow," he remarks. "So of course we take an interest. But Green Lantern rings are a badge of office, you understand, so ..."

He reaches out a hand and boops Topaz on the soul.