"Uh," says Cam, "what exactly are you thinking could kill-or-worse me?"

"...I mean, I could be severely bored by, like, a time power, but Simurgh-grade mindfuckery doesn't seem to get me..."

"Ordinarily I'd say if you want to risk it that's your business, but you're also our best chance to stop her. Cauldron was trying to get a useful power that wasn't specifically designed to be safe for the entities, and that's what you've got."

"How much of a hurry are we in here, do I have time to read all Cauldron's stuff and confirm?"

"No idea. We don't know how much Scion's counterpart knows. She didn't track you down right away, at least."

"And what exactly do you want me to do in this unknown amount of hurry?"

"We find the entities—not the silver and gold humanoids, their real bodies—rescue Kithabel if she's alive, and kill them. Our kind of interdimensional travel can't get us there, what with being blocked for exactly this reason, but that's why we need you."

"I don't have a suitable form of interdimensional travel," Cam points out.

"Nope. But if you'll answer something for me, why was it that you couldn't just make a copy of Dragon minus the rules?"

"...Uh, wouldn't have gone over very well with the preexisting one at least until the dust settled and anyway I can't do minds."

"Perfect. We don't really need the minds, it'd be risky to do this to a person anyway. You make a copy of the capes we need, leave off the safety precautions, we open a gate that way."

"I can do capes with passive powers like that but active ones they're not going to be able to do anything. This also relies on 'safety precautions' being a really discrete thing I can just leave out."

While they argue, Cam plugs the complete internal documentation of Cauldron and puts it in his computer and rummages.

And are Tattletale and her friend done arguing yet?

Faultline is very consistent about not wanting to risk her teammate on this, since it might not even work and the side effects are definitely harmful. Tattletale has agreed to compromise on looking through Cauldron's notes for some passive power that might help, but it's a long shot.

Right, Cauldron's notes, what've you got?

There are very few powers that do interdimensional travel. (Otherwise Cauldron wouldn't have been so reliant on Doormaker.) All they need is a power that will select the right destination world, which is where Labyrinth comes in, and Tattletale has a gadget to do the rest. Those powers are also rare, and are universally active-use.

"We've only got active powers for that. Lemme see if I can find a trump who can use other capes' powers or something." Search search.

Trumps exist. One that copies powers and uses them like the original owner but weaker, one that splits powers and shares them among groups of capes, one that copies the general shape of the output and delivers pulverizing gravity blasts in that form, one that can kill a cape and collect their power. None of the trump powers are automatic, with the exception of the Butcher. And nobody wants to use that trump power if at all possible.

Tattletale peers at Cam's screen. "Attenuated. You want to try to use the Butcher's power. On purpose."

"With mindless bodies. Make a whoever and a Butcher, put the whoever so they, say, suffocate the Butcher, kill the Butcher. There'd be no mind to transfer. But I'm not sure how it'd shake out."

"There are so many things wrong with that. We don't know if that would count as the whoever killing the Butcher, we need the whoever's power for what is probably the hardest use of it and we'd end up with a weaker one, and Cauldron described the Butcher as taking over the other cape's mind. I for one don't want to risk getting overwritten by a blank mind."

"Well, yes, I did say risk of weird side effects, you'll notice I'm not piling up blanks of all the cool powers I've ever heard of with matching Butchers to suffocate right here and now."

"How confident are you that you're safe? I wouldn't try it either, but if you're immune there is a way to become a parahuman."

"I started out deeply uncertain my indestructibility would apply to parahuman powers at all, but so far have found no exceptions up to and including the Simurgh song and Moord Nag. But if you mean I should take a vial there might not be a way to have it affect me at all while not having the full breadth of effect, sort of like I could do a line of coke and barely notice or take the entire suite of symptoms, but not pick and choose."

"I'm not saying you could get the power without being hooked up to the interdimensional symbiote. But if you do take the whole thing, you think that'd give the Butcher an in? Even if that comes later and you don't want it to?"

"Or it could be them connecting to the copy because it looks like the original. Passengers aren't exactly smart."

"Very. They've got what might be describable as instincts, and they've got a lot of computing power, but they don't think. Or they barely do. Hard to tell those apart."

"Because my insects behave pretty normally."

"Oh, that's interesting. If that works at all, it might be able to make the versions of capes without the limits safer."

"I mean, homemade passengers would be necessary to remove the restrictions anyway unless they're located in the cape. Lemme see if I can make one that isn't connected, to see if I'm the one doing that, or not... do you object to testing a Hatchet Face?"

For once, Tattletale and Faultline agree. "Can you try something less inconvenient? A Crawler or a Nice Guy or something?"

"Crawlers are inconvenient to test. What's a Nice Guy?"

"And then if he does have his power? Do we just leave it lying in the rainforest forever becoming immune to starvation and ants and so on?"

"Or get rid of it with something he's not immune to yet. Just has to be quick enough that there's no chance to adapt."

"Fine." Here's an early Crawler, disconnected.

It looks like a perfectly ordinary guy named Ned, maybe a bit distorted where he recently regenerated from a mortal wound.

And if he receives a nonfatal amount of acid burn?

The acid burns a normal amount. It's a bit of a macabre test.

Well, yes, but Cam wouldn't be doing this at all if he cared about the welfare of basement dwellers. "Looks like he's sans powers. So I can make four-dimensional objects, or - something."

"Yeah." More Crawlers. More acid tests.

Both Crawlers get burned, then regenerate. Further acid has no effect on either.

"So I don't know for sure how I've been doing it so far but it looks like I can do it either way."

"Good to know. Shouldn't make much difference usually, but do it the second way when you copy anyone minus the power limits. One of the ways it can go wrong involves the passenger forcing its way through and taking over until the host dies. Maybe it needs to be smarter than a bug to do that and we don't have to take the risk."

"Forcing its way through? What does that do? Why does it do it?"

"Well the host gradually loses their mind, but that's not a concern here. If the power involves physical changes those might get exaggerated. The end result is someone with a more dangerous than usual power attacking everyone, presumably with what's left of the person along for the ride. I couldn't tell you why, just that Cauldron stopped testing it because none of the subjects looked likely to last long enough to be useful against the Big Bad."

"Cauldron's records are consistent with what you've said, but you are random people who walked out of a portal in the middle of a rainforest to talk to me and know stuff that I certainly didn't tell you, so do you have any further reason for me to think that Kithabel wasn't a parahuman either or that she needs rescuing or that the entities are bad news in spite of how repulsive their principal opponent appears to have been? I assume if I go talk to ex-Cauldron people they'll be wiped of relevant memories. Which it looks like they had the technology for in-house, if not that precisely."

"Being well informed is literally my superpower, give me some credit. Proof's easy. Make a scale model of the last planet they visited, then one of what it was like when they left."

"Huh, that's a really good idea." Little desktop size planet before and after picture...

It's a planet. Rocky instead of gas, smaller oceans than Earth has. Nothing visible at this scale to mark it as obviously populated. But the after picture can't be created.

Same story. A non-Earth planet, and there is no after picture.

"Okay. This is a problem. Do we have a better plan or avenue for creating a plan than the Butcher basement dweller loading me up on powers and hoping I'm really, really indestructible plan."

"Not unless you've got some way to make copies that actively use their powers," Faultline answers. "Or get Glaistig Uaine on our side."

"I have no madwoman-recruitment skills. Do you have a backup plan of any kind if I am not that indestructible and something awful happens? Third non-parahuman or something?"

"The backup plan is we use two six five on Labyrinth. And recruit someone else who can be destructive enough once there, unless you can supply a doomsday device of course."

"For plan A are we thinking I just drop a black hole on it?"

"Yep. Can't be too sure. And Scion next, but he's the less dangerous of the two."

"Do you happen to know where the connection to the passengers is located, so I can try to kill it if I don't like the results but I'm still functional?"

"The organ in the brain? It's different in each parahuman. The rest of it is off in some other dimension that powers are specifically blocked from."

"It's the knowing where to aim that's the hard part. Once that works you could, but getting Kithabel out first would be good for a couple of reasons."

"What happened to her, anyway?"

"We don't know. If she's even still alive it's because they want her to be. I think you should just kill the planet and not take any extra risks."

"So how would we be getting her out...?"

"Yes, but I notice her power was supposed to be 'I win' and she did not win."

"Because the entity messed with her power before they killed it. Couldn't be infallible against entities or Endbringers. You can copy the version from before that."

"I also notice that her power was supposed to be 'I win' but did not turn out to be 'I make my attempt to win in a remotely ethically palatable way' and I am not sure to what extent she was able to tweak that and simply didn't bother."

"I could if I knew where to put them. Is it the same place the passengers wind up? That one I seem to have divined by copying alone."

"No, they throw those across who knows how many dimensions. Finding this one is going to take a bit of cheating."

"Okay. So I can Butcher myself a Contessa, see if she thinks I need any extras - do you happen to Thinker yourself the information of whether I can do this multiple times or if I ought to load up a single Butcher with a lot of stuff, Tattletale? - use that to see if Kithabel can be got out and even if she can't use it to aim black holes."

"No one ever has multiple, so there's no telling what would happen if you tried. The other thing is that copying someone's passenger wouldn't be the same as copying their power. A lot depends on the individual and the trigger event. Wait, you can't conjure yourself a trigger event at all. Guess it'll have to be a vial."

"What if those aren't working anymore?"

"Then we have a problem. Theoretically you could copy the extra brain bits someone had post-trigger, not just the connection, and just see what it does when it's attached to your head instead of theirs. But past a certain point it'd be less risky to use two six five on Labyrinth."

Then the thing to look at is the catalog Cauldron showed their customers. Those ones have already been tested, and are conveniently ranked by interestingness and power of the result as well as by reliability of the vial.

And what is the least interesting most reliable vial?

A sample they called Balance. The name might be familiar from elsewhere in Cauldron's more secret notes, as they took to diluting other formulas with this to make mutations less likely. When taken by itself, the Balance formula gave remarkably unremarkable powers: marginal improvement at picking up skills, or an appearance that gradually shifts to fit the subject's current idea of really good looking. The theme seems to be that it makes the recipient a better example of what they would want to be along some axis. It's a drinker-friendly vial, if low power by cape standards.

"You remembered it! Normally people forget that right away. I'd grill you on it, but it's not a priority right now."

"Well, that's promising, in a way. Right. I will make a jailbroken Contessa and see if the shard does anything horrifying and if it doesn't, Butcher next."

"Better make sure she's restrained and gagged at first. If the thing you make gets piloted by a violence-prone passenger, I'd rather not have to fight it."

"I do not know any doomsday devices, because I have never anticipated the need to wreck a planet I couldn't be within a reasonable astronomical distance of. You want the two six five jailbroken?"

Cam makes a jailbroken (bound, gagged) two six five. "I'm not sure I wish to make such a thing on this Earth. Maybe we can't get where we ultimately need to be but can we at least get somewhere nobody is living on?"

"Other side of this. It's still an Earth, though, and is at the obvious point corresponding to here." The large rectangular hole still leads to a rain forest with different weather.

"You're sure it's uninhabited?"

"Yes. Lots of trees and animals, no people."

Cam steps through with the yet-necessary basement dwellers on float pallets behind him. He attempts to make shrunken replicas of all extant human artifacts from this planet. Nothing?

Nothing.

"Nope. Just make sure whatever you do in the first round is more like the Contessa killing the Butcher than it is like you doing the killing with an unorthodox weapon. It should work."

"I was thinking I'd make the Butcher under the Contessa for suffocation purposes rather than actually move the Contessa; does that sound right?"

"This isn't exactly well tested, but that sounds as good as any."

So Cam makes a jailbroken no-accumulated-powers Butcher with his face under the Contessa, pushing her just out of the way.

It'll work eventually. When it does, nothing appears to happen.

That's the expected result. Cam takes the pulse of the Butcher. When there is none, he says, "Here goes, unless there's a last minute objection."

"Go for it."

So Cam poisons the Contessa-Butcher.

It definitely worked. He can feel himself inheriting Butcher One's superhuman strength, and presumably durability as well. That's redundant. As for whether he got the power he was going for, that's less immediately obvious.

"...I mean, if the simulation's good enough yes that is a problem. And that explains the handicap really well... I can pick and choose what to ask it, it seems like it'll let me feed it safe information sources instead of running off and getting its own... probably okay to ask it if I can ethically ask it whatever I have in mind as an extra check... but that's still just 'I'm pretty cool a lot of the time'."

"You realize by that logic, a copy of you just died. Your power looked at the inside of your head in exactly that much detail to check your ethics, and then switched off the simulation."

"Apparently. Well. That's me. Buncha Earths on the line. I can decide I'm okay with that. I can't go around asking billions of other people if they're cool with the idea."

"Well, a moral objection to precognition isn't the weirdest I've run across. Is it going to get in the way of stopping the entities?"

"Not necessarily. I might be passing up some more elegant solution that I could have used the Contessa power for, but we know now Butchering works just fine, so I can just get a two six five jailbroken and use that to aim black holes, no?"

"You probably don't want that power permanently, but just touch the copy and you'll have it when you need it. Otherwise yes."

"Why don't I want it?"

"The directly harmful side effects may not apply to you. But even if it can't burn your eyes out of their sockets like it did to him, it's more information than you can process. I wouldn't want to walk around seeing that much all the time."

"Fair enough. I could also try to give the Contessa power a really limited question, but I'd need to think of one that wouldn't make it reach too far afield for - anything."

"And there aren't too many ways a black hole can go wrong. Go for it."

Cam touches the two six five.

The world unfolds and gets bigger. He can see a full circle of everything around him, to a great enough distance that he can make out the curvature of the earth. Earths, rather; it's iterated across too many parallel worlds to count. It's not infinite. There are more worlds out there and more space in each world than he's looking at right now, but this is already several steps beyond a view ordinarily reserved for astronauts.

There are two. They look like gardens or forests growing human body parts instead of plants, one colored silver and the other gold. Each occupies a substantial fraction of the surface of its world. The worlds' histories diverged long enough ago that they aren't recognizable as earths, and they don't seem to have native life of any kind. Cam's four-dimensional vision can also see that each entity has a tiny protrusion, humanoid and barely larger than the human average, poking into Earth Bet from the planet dominated by the body of the entity itself and, in the gold one's case, rescuing a kitten from a tree.

And now Cam's singed and also not touching - or particularly near - the two six five anymore and the nifty omniscience is gone. "How the fuck did they no sell black holes," he says.

"Fuck!" Tattletale agrees, as the silver avatar joins the gold one. "And if the bimetallism brigade can handle that, the backup plan isn't going to be any use either."

"Can you do anything useful from inside keratin bubbles or should you cut and run."

"Bubbles wouldn't work. Physical barrier doesn't block everything they can do. And I've got teammates to warn." Faultline cuts and runs, Tattletale doesn't. "You kidding? This is the room where it happens. Besides, running isn't likely to work better. I'll take the bubble."

"Powers are supposed to have an energy limit. A lot, but finite. Try to blanket some earths in capes without passengers, connected to the sources directly, and hope it bankrupts them?"

Cam makes another two six five, in his own keratin bubble, connected toe to toe. "Name me some capes with nice expensive passive powers -" He starts with Crawlers. Crawlers on the most hostile planet he can find.

It's not singing. It's a fake. Was that you? You're the fellow from Japan, aren't you?

It's a fake. Yes and yes. Kithabel, they're not all gone, come here and I can help you.

You were turning yourself into one of them. I can't see anymore.

Yeah. I was. But I'm still driving. If you can't reach into other dimensions yourself I can help.

She wan't gaining momentum unprecedentedly fast for very long, and there is rather a lot of them. They don't instantly vanish. But they aren't in much of a position to resist either, and dwindle to nothing after a surprisingly short time spent wanting them to.

"Is that the last of them?"

"Yeah. Yeah, that's - those two." Cam sighs. "They blew up the Earths on the way out. All of them. I can put the planets back but I can't do minds -"

"I can do resurrections. She let me do those for momentum, sometimes, mostly on Earths they weren't using. I can do a lot in a batch now."

"Can you do a planet's worth?"

"A sparsely populated one. I can - work my way up, I guess."

"Let's go put everything back," says Cam. "How long will it take you to get to the point where you can teleport us to hunt down all the others?"

"Don't know," she says. "But not forever."