Yue

 2nd January

20:15 GMT -5

Y.

The man moves his hands away immediately, then takes a couple of paces back just to make sure. The runes inscribed on the plinth shimmer faintly for a second, the brown mist rapidly eating through the sympathetic link generating segment, but…

The broken dial vanishes, and the intact one appears.

"Ha!" He grins, his head tilting back. "Hoo! And here we are!"

Here. H-ear. Hey-yah. Not hur.

Uh, really? He knew that occasional bursts of free association would be a problem with his neural augmentations, but flashing back to his early elocution lessons really isn't that big a deal.

Deal, not dilly or daal.

And hey (not hee), at least the language teacher had spotted the structural similarities quick enough (not enoo) that they didn't try teaching him English (not Engsh) as a new language.

"This is the device?"

Circe doesn't sound all that impressed, a pale purple layer of protective magic covering her as she steps towards it. He doesn't feel like he needs to chase her off his -and it is his- device. No, the wire-. No, line he fed her about losing all other powers when the dial is active will do that. Might even be true. And it's not like he has a problem with other people using it. Using it's fine. It's not using it that pisses him off.

He nods, peeling the gloves made from Robbie Reed's skin off as he does so. Cloned skin, obviously. Getting access to a potentially insane supervillain in a secure mental institution was possible but frankly far too obvious for something like this.

"Uh-huh."

"Such a…" She frowns as she picks it up. "Small device."

"So are power rings. Souls don't weigh all that much, either."

Not eith nor eez.

And wow wow that's a lot of penis jokes he just didn't make. Why had he spent all that time studying memes again?

Oh right. Boredom.

"And it can grant you any boon?"

"In theory. In actual fact, if you don't want a blunt instrument it's kinda hit-in-miss." No, no. He shrugs. "Hit-and-miss, hit-or-miss. You don't always get quite what cha' want."

She peers closer, the device shimmering faintly once more. Probably doing some sort of magic probe thing. He'd read up a whole lot on magic since his arrival, but… Ancient magic users like Circe didn't seem to operate within the usual limitations.

"Where did it come from?"

He throws his hands up in the air. "Pfffffff!"

A minor glare, hostility without effort. "Don't be a dullard, Nylor."

"I don't know." Not ownt. Not nuh. "My guess was that the Reach put a whole lotta metahuman genetic samples in there and pressed 'blend'. But that doesn't explain the robots."

Though given the madness generally associated with metahuman physiology, who was he to say that there couldn't be someone who spontaneously turned parts of themselves into mechanisms? Cybernetics, yes, power armour, certainly, integrated nanotechnology and flash-fabrication, sure. But flat out turning bits of themselves into machinery? No one immediately sprang to mind, but he'd be the first to admit that his records were decidedly incomplete.

"My magics can't detect any human tissue." She sets the H-Dial back on its plinth. "Though there are of course ways to shield such things from sorcery. And it would be such a waste to dis-."

No. "No." No. He picks it off the plinth with his left hand and gently strokes it with his right, careful not to actually turn the dial. "No."

"-assemble it." She actually smiles at his behaviour, a surprisingly genuine gesture that is still a rarity after he lured her away from her comfortable isolation.

"You want a dial, you can get one of the ones someone else uses."

Orange Lantern getting those two fascinatingly named 'Horror Dials' was… Nugh. At least he'd either use them or study them. Not as good as them coming here, but… A decent second place. But… Frustrating. Tracking down the few surviving Master-created supervillains had yielded… Interesting genetic samples, but…

Even with modern techniques. Even if the manumitted genomorphs were willing to mentally program a new generation of clones. Which they weren't. But even if they were… Faking years of life was hard. The truth would probably drive them to rebel, and… Denying them the mental flexibility they needed to do that would make them as useless as the Master's originals. Metahuman cloning was too expensive to be used for disposable weapons. Genetic editing of existing adults was a possibility, but not… Reliable. Get someone with the skills and loyalty required, and… Well, few people stayed loyal after being turned into monsters.

But a dial. A dial that could be turned off. And on. If someone got turned into a monster, who cares? Just turn the dial again, no more problem. And a little cloned skin resulted in remote activation and deactivation-.

Hm.

"You broke the link, right?"

Circe nods. "Entirely."

He doesn't put a glove back on, but wraps part of it around his right forefinger before dialling. Y-R-E-T-S-A-M. Reed, he actually respected. Kinda. The man-. The boy had used the dial to do a lot of good. Kept a lot of idiots from destroying valuable infrastructure. And he went crazy before he could realise that the cleverest thing he could do would be to study the dial, so he got a pass there.

Almost.

"I'm not convinced that I could not replicate the Dial's transformation effects with magic."

He didn't smile. Circe didn't tolerate men making jests at her expense. "Can you travel through time?"

Circe's gaze hardens, but she appears willing to take the question at face value. "A little, with difficulty. I accept that in that one regard the powers of the Dial's maker outstripped mine. Though of course I would not burn to a cinder by doing it."

"That was kinda my fault. Gotta a.. bunch a'… Not so great powers. Rigged the odds. Worked, but…"

"Is it completely random?"

"Maybe? Like I said, you get something useful. But, could be random."

"So it is less useful than my magic."

"Circe, if I could get you-in-a-box, if I could give someone magic like you? My first choice. This…" He holds up the dial. Not… Exactly as he remembers it, but a lot has happened. "You gotta admit, it beats your beastmen."

"I could beat my beastmen, if I had cause to. I simply haven't had a requirement for more than they can offer." She regards the dial curiously for a moment. "Do you intend to keep it for yourself?"

"Yah-huh." Close enough. "I wanna study it using decent equipment. An' I got a whole bunch a' volunteers."

Superpowered private security might be a grey area, legally speaking, but it was a highly profitable one. And asking security-vetted people to raise their hands if they're interested was far safer than grabbing people off the streets or something dumb like that.

"Not planning to use it yourself?"

"Please." He scoffs, with face and voice. "This hasn't ever been about me."

"Well said." The third member of their gathering suddenly comes to life, his blank gaze becoming piercing. "To paraphrase what a very wise man once said, ask not what your world can do for you, but ask what you can do for your world." Then he smiles, recruitment-poster-come-to-life inhumanity becoming notably more human. "But if you can get rich at the same time, then why not?"