Fourth [Worm Altpower!Taylor]

[TCGM]

Fourth

This is a Crackfic, meaning the story is not intended to be taken seriously. Taylor Hebert usually triggers in her Locker. But what if an out-of-context being interfered? Features Queen Administrator Taylor. Fanfiction.net rated T because of light, Worm-style swearing and a proportions joke.

---

Fourth

Chapter 01

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes​

Terror. Bugs crawling around me, eating my flesh. Pain, when they were carving tunnels into my legs. Disgust from the grime and disease filling the locker with me.

I was going to die here. I'd never see my Dad again.

Oh, god. Dad. He couldn't handle me dying too. Not after Mom...

I called out one last time into the darkness. Not with my voice, I couldn't speak any longer, not after the screaming tore my vocal cords apart. With my mind.

HELP ME!

please...

Suddenly everything was black. I could look around. Move. But that shouldn't have been possible given I had no body. I saw two impossible massive things twisting around each other, firing bits of light back and forth as they traveled through the universe.

[TRAJECTORY]

[AGREEMENT]

[DESTINATION]

[AGREEMENT]

[CONDITIONS]

[AGREEMENT]

My head spiked with pain so much I screamed. One of those light bursts was on course for me, coming closer and closer. Just as it was about to hit me, it stopped. A voice that shook the stars issued an instruction to the light in front of me. Somehow I sensed that the light, my nonexistent body, and the voice were hidden from the huge entities.

{PURPOSE OVERRIDE}

The bit of light sort of... spun around. I could feel it's confusion, alien as the sensation was.

[AUTHORIZATION] it asked.

Instead of giving whatever 'authorization' meant to the light, the voice did something incredibly uncomfortable to the fabric of the universe itself. How I knew any of this was beyond me, but I did.

[ERR-]

[AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT]

{PURPOSE DESIGNATION: UPGRADE} the voice said. Unlike the bit of light I could sort of understand the huge amount of extra meaning in every word of the voice's command. Upgrade in this instance apparently meant everything from Uplift to Safety and including Merge.

[UPGRADE AGREEMENT] the bit of light said. It started approaching me again.

Then the voice talked, actually talked, to me. No extra meaning in the words. For what it is worth, Taylor, I am sorry for what you are about to experience. But you will come out the other side better. Your world sorely needs one of what you'll become, a Fourth, with their head screwed on straight. The others are a combative idiot, a half-dead librarian and a depressed, inactive troll.

I couldn't speak in whatever this hallucination was but I would have if I could. What the hell was she, and the voice was most definitely female, talking about?

A moment later the light hit me and I couldn't care anymore. I was too busy screaming.

---

I lost consciousness. I'm completely certain of that. After an unknowable time screaming and undergoing the worst pain imaginable, I couldn't take it anymore. My mind broke. I faded from reality.

So how the hell was I still awake?

I also felt big. Really, really big. I would have said I felt fat or bloated, but that wasn't it. I just had this sense of being massive on a scale I simply couldn't think of before.

I tried to look around where I was. That was when I learned I didn't have a head, but could see everything around 'me' regardless.

I tried to move. That was when I found out I didn't have a human body. I got this sense of slipping between two vastly immense locations, so much larger than even my new 'big' self, and the surroundings changed.

One second I had trees poking into my side. Another I had dust and rocks underneath me.

I was frankly starting to panic. Nothing made any sense! I looked to the sky to find the sun and instead saw a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of color where it should have been.

I finally figured out that since I could see everything around me, logically, I should also be capable of seeing myself. I turned whatever it was that gave me sight on my own body.

That was when I flipped out and decimated a continent.

I was a huge mass of flesh, crystal, and some kind of hybridization of the two. I also sat on a planet I recognized as Earth, not easily mind you with the lack of trees, and covered the entirety of what could be called Asia. If you squinted.

I wasn't human any longer.

I couldn't be.

After I stopped screaming, I realized that I actually looked a lot like those two entities in my apparently not so false hallucination-

Son of a bitch.

The voice had told me that flat out, I just hadn't listened. I was an Entity, whatever they, and now I, were.

Okay then. Get your head on straight, Taylor, this isn't the end of your world. You're not dead, you're just… some kind of gigantic space… Thing.

I tried to focus on myself. I obviously wasn't a Parahuman, but I had to have some kind of power now. No way is all the energy I'm soaking up from the Sun going to just support my new body.

And suddenly I understood.

I was a Shard.

Specifically, I was an Administrator, the type that Entities used to, well, administrate their other Shards. I had the ability to control and assimilate other Shards into myself in order to grow, or even spawn new Shards of my own, though they would only provide similar powers to the ones I provided a host. They needed to evolve by latching onto a host of the current Cycle's target species, giving them limited parts of the Shard's absolutely ridiculous ability to mess with space and time in exchange for data and new ways of using the power.

My metaphorical eyes widened as I digested this. I dove deeper into what Cycles were. What I found would have made me throw up if I could.

Oh my god.

It finally all hit me.

I wasn't a Parahuman, I had become something that could make them.

And I could control other Shards of my Shard's progenitor, Zion.

Or as my world called him, Scion.

It took a few moments for my mind to really come to terms with the fact our most heroic icon was not only the cause of Parahumans but also an omnicidal space whale.

My eyes widened even further when I found out his mate, Eden, was dead, and so it was highly likely I would be scoped out as the new potential mate to continue the Cycles once Zion learned of what I really was.

Actually, that might even be a little bit of a help. Zion was the 'idiot' the Voice had told me about. He let Eden do all the thinking for him, she being The Thinker after all, so if he started dating me I'd take the same authority role with him.

Was I seriously considering dating an omnicidal space whale to save my whole world, including every version of it, from destruction? Hell yes I was. Even as much as it grossed me out. That said, basically every hot blooded girl on Earth Bet wanted to get into Scion's pants.

It wasn't that much of a hardship.

But before that I had to collect Shards, make them part of myself. Right now I was just a single Shard. A large one, the biggest Zion ever had, but not an Entity. Zion wouldn't have any problems taking me right back into himself. That was something I couldn't allow under any means.

In Parahuman power ratings it was entirely likely that I was a Master: Yes. The Administrator could control anything with a Corona Pollentia, after all.

Taylor Hebert, Queen Administrator. Sounds good to me.

---

It was two planetary cycles, or days, later that I found the connection my Shard had with my human body. It was a nearly insignificant part of my new abilities. I was surprised to hell when I found it.

I got even more surprised by the fact that not only could I control the host body through the connection to the brain parts scientists named the Corona Pollentia and Gemma, but that the feature was present in all Shards.

That meant I could control anyone with powers or the potential to connect with a Shard. Oooh boy, the PRT were really going to be accepting of a Master: Fuck You rated Parahuman, not.

What didn't surprise me was the state of my body when I seized control of it.

I was in a hospital with a tube down my throat. Obviously I'd been rescued from the Locker, but without my mind, I would have been comatose. The moment I reconnected my brain lit up with activity, the machines around my bed started logging that activity, and a soft, non-alarming sound began chiming.

I opened my eyes to the world, coughing and spluttering around the tube in my throat. Doctors and nurses burst through the door. They tried to comfort me, the nurses taking out various things from my body including what I guessed was a catheter and the tube in my throat. The Doctor was asking me a few questions, which I answered with head nods or shakes as best I could.

But that wasn't what drew the majority of my attention. Because my Dad burst through the door a moment after them, running up to my side and grasping my hand like his life depended on it.

I would have been touched if I wasn't so shocked by what my new state of being identified him as.

[ABADDON]'s human form avatar, much like [ZION]'s Scion form, stood over me with a fatherly smile and tears of joy.

My human body fainted.

---

It woke up in my bed at home. I'd worked on channeling my significant inbuilt spacetime manipulation abilities into regenerating my body. I had to contact a shard called Shaper to get the necessary code, but after growing the appropriate structures into a new Shard and budding, then assimilating it, I had the ability to manipulate biology. Also, I was officially an Entity. Just a really, really tiny one.

Dad was in the kitchen downstairs. I reviewed the logs of occurrences around my body while I'd been focused elsewhere. My dad had noticed me starting to regenerate and signed me out of the hospital, then took me home. He told me in my sleep that even if I was a Parahuman now, he wouldn't abandon me. He'd do everything he could to help me. He apologized profusely for ignoring me after Mom's death and told me everything was going to be okay.

Then he caught himself chastising himself for saying all that when I was unconscious, swearing he'd say it again when I woke up anyways.

Whatever changes I'd gone through to become a Shard clearly left my mind intact. Soul too. Because that made me sob with happiness.

But we were definitely going to have to have a Talk.

I swung my body off the bed. My feet hit the floor and my Shaper helpfully delivered all the data about the biological systems everywhere in my radius.

As an Entity and not a limited host, that happened to be half the planet.

I was certain that if I was still human my brain would have exploded.

I hastily directed Shaper to collect its own data and only deliver it when I asked. The torrent of information left, secluded in the Shard itself, and I continued with standing up.

My body felt good. More than good, it felt great! I'd taken the liberty to do some pretty intensive remodeling of my human form. I could probably outrun a locomotive, punch straight through steel and leap skyscrapers in a single bound.

So I was inspired by Supergirl. Bite me.

I also had the… proportions of her at this point. Hey, I'm a teenage girl who's been flat as a board her whole life. I'm afforded some leeway.

As a last test before meeting with my dad I tried activating the physics manipulation field my body generated and thought of going up.

Space around me subtly warped, so fine you'd need a microscope (or the senses of a Shard) to see it. Energy poured into the system from my cells, harvested from the solar radiation that hit me on the car ride home, and my feet lifted.

I let out a whoop of joy. Shard I may now be, but my lifelong dream had been to fly.

Now I could.

"Taylor?" Dad called, obviously worried. He started towards the stairs at a rapid sprint.

I giggled with glee. "I'm fine, Dad! I'm just flying!" I squealed back.

He tripped and fell face first into the stairs.

Serves him right for not telling me about his real name.

He pushed himself up, used a discreet (for him anyways) flash of purple light to heal his nose, and ran up the remaining stairs. A second later my door burst open. His jaw dropped.

I waved at him and did a circle in midair. "Hi Dad!"

His mouth worked open and closed from shock. Eventually he shook himself, zoning back into reality. "Taylor?" he asked cautiously.

I grinned at him and flew forward, wrapping him up in a hug as I levitated above the floor near the doorway. "I can fly, Dad!"

"I- I can see that, Taylor," he stammered, leaning on the door to support his weight and mine.

I giggled and flew back above my bed. I decided to keep flying, the feeling of freedom too good to give up. So I started doing lazy circles in the air, slightly kicking my feet like I was swimming.

"Taylor," he finally managed to start, "when did…?"

I frowned and looked at him. "Really?"

His face fell. "Oh my god, Taylor. I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

I shrugged, forcefully burying the memories. "It's over. I'm better. I've got powers. Please don't ask me about what it was like."

My dad's eyes widened. "I won't," he assured me. "But… Taylor-"

I cut him off. "You had to accept hush money. I know."

Dad hung his head. "I'm sorry, kiddo. They were saying there was no evidence. Alan sided with them for some reason. We can't afford to sue them, especially not if Alan is the defense lawyer," he tried explaining. "Damn you, Alan Barnes."

I sighed, placing both hands behind my head. "He's probably doing that because Emma was the ringleader of their little pick on Taylor club," I glibly revealed.

Dad froze. He looked up at me with such a defeated gaze I flew back down to him and hugged him. "Oh Taylor," he said. "I'm so sorry." His strong arms encircled me, and his lips kissed the top of my head.

"It's over," I said. "I don't think we're gonna be able to win this one."

His arms tensed. "There's gotta be something we can do," he reasoned.

I figured that was the time to breach the subject. "You can't do anything in your current emotional state without destroying the planet, Dad, and I'm not powerful enough yet to take on the Idiot."

Dad froze. He pulled me off him and stared at me incredulously. "What are you talking about, Taylor?"

I grinned at him and directed some Shardspeak his way. Tilting my head of the side to hammer home it was my doing, of course. [GREETINGS, ABADDON.]

His eyes shot wide open. His mortal avatar, my flesh and blood Dad, dropped his jaw. "Taylor, what?"

"That's Taylor Hebert: Queen Administrator, Daddy Abaddon," I spoke out loud. My grin reached Titanic proportions.

My dad's eyebrows rose to their maximum. I received a message broadcast to my Shard's reality. [TAYLOR?!] Dad's voice said.

"Yup," I replied.

"You're an Entity," he gasped.

"As are you," I shot back, crossing my arms and glowering at him.

His face paled. "Uh oh. I know that look," he gulped. "What did I do?"

"You didn't think it was a little important to warn your daughter that you're an omnicidal space whale?!" I shrieked.

"Omnicidal? What-" he began, his face turning dark. "Oh. You mean The Warrior and The Thinker."

"As opposed to The Troll?" I stated, my tone flat. I was emulating my mom big time then.

"Hey!" he defended himself, "I've never killed anybody!" Then he caught on to what I'd called him and his face lit up like the fourth of July. "Did you just call me The Troll? By any chance are you an Entity because of some random woman's voice interfering with your Shard connection?"

I blinked, stunned. My dad erupted into a huge smile and laughed. "You are! Hahaha yes!" He pulled me into a tight hug and twirled me about the room. "I've been alone for so long!"

"Dad!" I yelled, it coming out as a muffled groan. I pushed away from him with my body's new strength and hovered in the air. "Explain!" I demanded.

He grinned so wide he looked manic. "Taylor, I've been Abaddon for several million years. Before that I was a member of another species that Abaddon, the original, and his mate were taking through a Cycle. Abaddon tried to give me a shard, the woman interfered, and I became Abaddon instead."

I stared at him for several seconds. "You're millions of years old?" I asked incredulously. My brain simply couldn't reconcile the concept of my dad, Danny Hebert, with the idea of my dad, Abaddon, several million year old Entity.

"Taylor, we're immortal," he explained. "So yes, I'm millions of years old. You'll probably reach that age too, eventually."

I stared at him even longer this time. "And you're an alien," I deadpanned.

He shrugged. "Yeah. Technically we both are, given you're an Entity."

My brain finally managed to catch up to the insanity that was now my life. "No, Dad, before I became an Entity, I was human. You went from alien to alien," I needled him.

He crossed his arms and pouted. "So what? I've been human for over 40 years, that isn't good enough?"

"You've been an Alien Entity for millions," I pointed out, giggling.

With that he realized I wasn't serious and started to play the game. "Huh. Well I guess you have a point. That makes you pretty unique, huh? A Human Entity," he mused. "Man, you're gonna rock this whole little section of the multiverse, aren't you?"

"Right after dealing with the Idiot," I agreed.

He grinned and rustled my hair. "That's my girl."

"Dad!" I squeaked indignantly.

---

"So Taylor…" Dad started, trailing off.

I rabidly kept wolfing down my cereal, only managing to let out a muffled "Mmfh?"

He chuckled. "Uh… You're looking a little… Different," he delicately said.

I put the bowl down on the table and raised an eyebrow. "You mean smoking hot?" I indelicately responded.

Dad winced. "Well, uh… Yes," he admitted.

I shrugged and ate another spoonful. "Hey, I was healing my body anyways, why not get some curves on top of it?"

He stared me down amusedly. "Taylor you were also flying this morning," he deadpanned.

"And?"

"You don't have a Shard for that," he pressed further.

I blinked at him. "You can see my Shards?" For some reason I blushed, feeling embarrassed as if I was standing naked before my dad.

He grimaced. "Human responses, right. I'll stop looking at you," he grumbled. "But yes, I took a peek into your reality and only found two. Not much of an Entity are you?" he teased me.

"Well if you're so fancy why don't you give me some?" I snarked back.

Dad raised an eyebrow and leaned back. "Huh. Not a bad idea. You are my kid, after all."

I barely had time to widen my eyes before the spacetime of my root reality, the one I had my own Shard and Shaper in, was invaded by about fifty other Shards, jumping into orbit of the rocky disaster of an earth. They went dormant, waiting for me to grab onto them and assimilate them.

"I was kidding!" I breathed out, staring in awe at my dad.

"You're my daughter, Taylor," he refuted, grabbing onto my hand and gently rubbing it. "It's my job to take care of you. I failed at that so badly that you turned into an Entity. Please let me help you now that you pulled my head out of my ass," he pleaded.

I gazed deep into his eyes, seeing nothing but unending love and guilt for how he'd treated me. In that instant, I forgave him, even though I hadn't known I needed to. "Okay," I let out a breath. "Okay. Thanks, Dad," I said.

"Will you tell me how you were flying now?" he asked.

I peered at him with mock suspicion. "Is that Abaddon, data hoarder talking or Dad, worried for his daughter?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not like the Idiot and the Librarian, Taylor. I don't need data. I am genuinely worried for you," my dad refuted.

I sighed. "Fine. I made my body into something as closely resembling a Kryptonian as I could."

Dad blinked. "You manipulated your biology with an Administrator Shard?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh no, I did that with Shaper."

"You took Shaper?!" He stood up from the table, eyes wide. "Taylor, harvesting Panacea's Shard could have killed her!"

I stared at him with confusion. "Panacea? She's the one with Shaper?"

Now he was confused too. "She still has it?"

I blinked. "Uh, yeah. Of course. I didn't know who Shaper's host was, but that certainly explains why it was complaining so much to me."

"Taylor how did you get Shaper if Panacea still has it?"

"I copied it, duh."

Dad stared at me, completely dumbfounded.

"What?"

He visibly gathered himself before continuing. "You copied… a Shard," he restated.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "What's so strange about that?"

Dad let out a tense breath. "Taylor, Entities spread data by giving each other their Shards. We can't copy them. At the most a Shard can reproduce but it would be a derivative, not a copy."

I froze in the middle of taking another bite. "Buh I dhidh," I reaffirmed.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," he reflexively chided me.

I blushed and swallowed. "Sorry. But I did," I repeated myself.

Dad stared at me.

"This is a big thing, isn't it," I suddenly realized.

"Oh yeah. It's big."

---

"That is bullshit," Dad finally commented.

He'd jumped one of his sensory Shards into my root reality to watch me copy the fifty six Shards he'd donated to me. He was most interested in the part where I copied the data and code present in a Shard into my root Shard, the Queen Administrator, then budded a new one off of it with the exact same code and data inside it.

Apparently, that was impossible, no matter that I'd performed that very feat fifty five other times.

Our human bodies (or human looking, on my part) still sat at the dining room table on Earth Bet. I'd asked to use normal speech instead of what I called Shardspeak, and being my Dad, he'd agreed. So whenever we wanted to say something, we did it through human (ish) mouths and ears.

"Taylor, this is incredible," he complimented me. "Do you know how revolutionary this ability of yours is?"

I blushed and rubbed the back of my head. "Uh, sorta?"

Dad shook his head and grinned. "I don't think you do. Part of the reason why most Entities destroy all versions of planets is to make sure that none of their Shards are left behind for others to poach. They're an incredibly precious resource to us. You… you've just made that unnecessary," he beamed at me.

I raised my eyebrows as the ramifications hit me. "Oh. Wow."

"We could very easily make a case to The Warrior that Cycles are now redundant," he continued musing.

I fidgeted a bit, blushing madly as the idea I'd come up with when I first learned about Zion raced through my head.

"Taylor," Dad pressed.

"Hey, it was the only thing I could think of at the time!" I defended myself.

"And what was this thing?"

I ducked my head, blushing even further. "Dating Zion so I could take over the role of his mate and prevent the Cycles from continuing," I mumbled.

Dad sighed and rubbed his forehead. "That won't be necessary, kiddo," he groaned. "And even if it was, I can't imagine my fifteen year old daughter being hitched to Golden Boy."

"Hey! I thought that he and I were the only Entities left!"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure he'd be open to it, given how you're the kid of the one who killed, or at least made it possible to kill, The Thinker," he explained.

My eyebrows rose. "How the hell did you do that?" I was shocked. Entities were supposed to be nearly impossible to kill.

"Two Shards, one a planning precog that basically says 'I Win' and tells you how to get there, then another that is essentially a virus I wrote for Entities."

"Huh," I said, mildly impressed.

Dad's face brightened. "Actually, we should have you make a copy of those two Shards for yourself, now that I think of it! The planning one would help you out immensely with figuring out your new state, trust me it helped with mine, and the virus one can be held as a weapon against Zion if necessary."

I shrugged. "Hey, I'm always open to getting more Shards. Send em over."

Dad suddenly looked sheepish.

I crossed my arms. "Dad, what did you do?"

He gulped. I looked so much like my mother it was painful at that moment. "So the thing is," he hastily explained, "the weapon Shard works by being assimilated into an unsuspecting Entity's systems and then ripping apart the majority of their code. So I don't have it. It is probably being hosted by someone on Earth Bet at the moment."

"And the planning one?" I asked tensely.

"That one I do know it's whereabouts. Eden wasn't entirely dead when she hit an alternate Earth, so I gave the shard to someone who could end her. I don't know what she's doing these days, but I guess we could always have a reunion."

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Okay. So you do actually have at least one, possibly two Parahumans to your name. Well, I suppose it was too much to hope for that you wouldn't cause a little bit of conflict."

Dad looked hurt. "Taylor, even if I did start giving out Shards, they wouldn't intentionally cause conflict. I know I gave those two the directive that if they were hosted they'd try to reduce it, but not by manipulating the host. And don't forget, you'll eventually start making your own hosts," he subtly reminded me.

Oh, right.

I could give people powers now. By splitting off pieces of myself and wiring them into their brains. With my copying ability I could probably even give people identical power sets too.

Shit.

I drew in a deep breath and relaxed. "Okay. That's good enough. I guess," I admitted.

Dad slightly smiled. "This is your show to run, kiddo. I'll follow your instructions on whatever you want to do. We don't have to go and get copies of those Shards for you if you don't want to."

I shook my head, steeling myself for dealing with a possible victim or two of my Dad's well-intentioned meddling and most definitely shoving the impending existential panic attack I was going to have to the back of my mind. "No, it's fine, Dad. The planning one sounds immensely helpful, especially to an Entity as new as I am. I don't know about the weapon one, but it wouldn't hurt to have."

Dad curtly nodded. "Got a handle on the dimensional travel Shard I tossed you yet?"

I slightly blushed, grimacing. "I haven't actually investigated any of them," I sheepishly admitted.

My Dad's face grew disapproving. "Taylor."

"Hey! I've been a little busy getting used to all this!"

---

Once I mastered the dimensional travel Shard, we were ready. Apparently an Entity had a connection to all it's Shards at all times. That was something we could use to track the host of Path To Victory (the name of the planning 'I Win' Shard, so humble) at her current physical and dimensional location.

Dad had pushed me to learn a few other Shards along the way too, including something that was basically a field of complete invulnerability to everything and one that granted flight.

"Hey, even if you can fly because of that fancy Physics Manipulation Field, it's always good to have a backup," Dad had argued.

I grudgingly admitted he was right.

Dad and I held hands as we stood in our living room. "You ready, Taylor?" he asked me.

I grinned up at him. "Sure thing Dad. This'll be my first time hopping dimensions!"

Dad snorted. "There were many things I thought I'd have to teach you as you grew up. Never in my life did I imagine I'd be raising another Entity."

I shrugged. "Hey, could be worse. I could be a host to the Shard I replaced with the drive for conflict and some stupid power limit like controlling bugs or something."

My Dad snorted again. "That would be all kinds of fascinating and terrifying at the same time."

I put my free hand on my hip. "Hey!"

Dad shook his head and held out a hand to the air in front of us. "Just watch what I do and try not to end up in another thread of the multiverse," he told me.

I rolled my eyes and huffed, but paid attention regardless of my teenage antics. Being indignant and seeing my actions as childish at the same time was quite a ride.

Dad called on his dimensional travel Shard, willing a wormhole open in front of us. The fabric of reality parted like the Red Sea, a swirling portal of raw spacetime bursting into being with a thunderclap. It was something incomprehensible to my human senses, my Kryptonian ones could only hint at the spacetime fuckery going on, and my Shard senses understood everything.

"Cool," I grinned.

"Yup. Next stop, Earth… Let's call it Witch," he declared. Something about his smile was way too knowing.

There was a joke in this somewhere.

"You'll be bringing us back, Taylor, so pay attention as our bodies pass through," he chided me, slightly bopping my nose.

I had just enough time to annoyedly sigh. "Yes, Dad." Then we entered the conduit of trans dimensional bullshit.

I can't describe what I saw. I won't even try. Three seconds later though, our bodies emerged into something a lot more normal.

We were in some kind of room, an apartment if I was guessing correctly. That it was one of many within a massive facility housing the remains of The Thinker lent credence to something else going on.

A 40-ish year old woman was sitting at a desk across the room we'd entered, some kind of office, in a gray pinstripe suit and wearing a dark blue Fedora.

I got a good look at her Shard while we stared at each other. It was incredible. I immediately started copying everything from the thing into my root Shard, a bud growing as it was fed information.

"Fortuna!" Dad exclaimed, waving. "Long time no see! How's Path To Victory doing?"

The woman, Fortuna, stared at my Dad. She gulped. She looked to me and paled. I didn't know why she was acting like that, we only said hi after all.

That didn't stop her from slamming a red button on her desk and putting the whole facility on alert.

Dad sighed. "Oh dear."

I turned my glare on him. "I thought you said you were friends!"

"We should be! Give me a break, it's not my fault she's become paranoid!"

"Dad!"

When the woman heard me address him as Dad, she fainted.

---

Well, I got to meet Alexandria.

In a full-tilt flying battle, yes, but meet her I did.

It took Legend arriving through what I recognized as a Zion dimensional travel Shard's effects (copied that one as soon as I could find the inter-reality wormhole in the head of the unconscious, sedated host) for the all out brawl our first meeting with Cauldron turned into to stop.

Snrk, Cauldron. That's an… interesting name for a shadow organization.

I finally got the joke, though. Earth Witch indeed. You're not as funny as you think, Dad.

"Hey!" the oldest member of the Triumvirate yelled.

Alexandria and I paused in midair, both about to swing punches into each other's faces. Eidolon and Dad stopped flinging ever more esoteric abilities at each other.

All four of us turned our heads to look at him.

"What the hell is going on?"

---

We'd retired to the medical lab of the Cauldron base once Legend managed to talk his teammates down from fighting me and my Dad.

He didn't have to talk us down. We weren't the ones who attacked unprovoked, after all.

Alexandria glared at me from the rather comfortable looking examination table she was sitting on. She winced as she pressed the ice pack in her hand against her eye again. Turns out being completely invulnerable for a couple of decades makes people forget how to keep ice applied to their bruises.

Well, I say bruises. Alexandria had a black eye from how hard I sucker punched her.

Eidolon and my Dad were staring into each other's souls. For his part, Eidolon seemed like he was having epiphanies about his existence every few seconds. My Dad was merely amused.

Fortuna, or as she had introduced herself once she regained consciousness, Contessa, was present too. Also some woman called Doctor Mother, or just The Doctor for short.

I didn't regret asking "Who?" at all, regardless of the death glare I received for my troubles.

"Now that we're all calm," Legend began, trying his best to project confidence in the face of us Heberts, "why were you fighting Alexandria and Eidolon?"

"They started it," I said without any hesitation.

Dad turned to look at me and raised an eyebrow. I blushed when I realized how childish that sounded.

Legend stared at me for several seconds. "Right. Because you and your… father? Invaded a highly secure facility and incapacitated one of our highest ranking members," he tried scolding me.

"She fainted," I refuted.

Legend seemed surprised. "What?"

Fortuna, sorry, Contessa, groaned. "Yes, I fainted. After being surprised in my office by two unPathable people and hearing one of them call the other Dad."

"Hey!" Dad shot back. "We were just trying to have a reunion!"

Legend and Alexandria paled. Eidolon abruptly grinned for some reason. The Doctor just sighed.

Legend got his mojo back way quicker than I'd expected. "A… Reunion?" he asked my dad incredulously.

He nodded.

"With who?!"

"Fortuna, of course," he answered. "I haven't seen her for almost forty years, after all."

Contessa scowled. "I've never met you," she refuted.

"Oh, but you have," my dad insisted. "Two unimaginably huge beings fly through the cosmos, leaving behind pieces of themselves. They arrive around a world and prepare for touchdown."

Doctor Mother raised an eyebrow. "You're referring to the trigger visions when an Agent connects with it's host," she realized.

Dad smiled. "They're called Shards, but yes, I am. That's what everyone else sees. But I know Fortuna saw something… a little more," he teasingly hinted.

Contessa paled.

My Dad's grin evolved into a full on smirk. "A third being follows the two, hidden in the shadows of the cosmos, until they are set to arrive. Then this third being fires something at the smaller one, something they unexpectedly and thus happily absorb. Moments later the great being shudders and fails to slow down, slamming into the planet it never finished arriving at, and is damaged so thoroughly that it would take years to recover. Then to finish the job, the third one tosses a Shard towards Fortuna. The vision ends."

Contessa jumped up, scrambling back to a corner of the room. The whole time her eyes were locked on Dad, almost unseeing.

"Is that what you saw, Contessa?" Legend asked.

She barely nodded.

"Shit. There's another one?" Eidolon asked.

"We're screwed," Doctor Mother declared.

"Fuck," Alexandria cursed.

My Dad and I met each other's eyes for a moment. He inclined his head, requesting permission, and I nodded.

He turned back to the assembled group and resumed grinning. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm not like the two others."

Every human present froze.

As one, they turned their eyes to my dad. Fear blossomed over their faces, and what little emotional output I could detect with my limited Shards of that type showed terror in their hearts.

Dad sighed. "Oh relax. Do you really think I'd lethally damage The Thinker and give humankind a Shard like Path To Victory if I meant you harm?"

Legend gulped. "You're… an Entity?" he finally asked.

Dad nodded. "I'm known as Abaddon, but I really am thinking of changing it to my Earth one. Human names are so much better than Entity signatures," he idly mused.

This was a new side of my dad I hadn't seen before. Apparently he hid a lot of himself from me as I grew up.

That would have hurt pretty bad if I didn't know why he did so. I suddenly realized that I'd have to do some hiding of my own with whoever didn't know my new secret.

The fear in the room rapidly bled away to be replaced by utter confusion. "You… Want to be an Entity called… Daniel?" Alexandria deadpanned.

"Danny, actually, and it's no worse than Taylor," he reasoned. "And that's what my daughter knows me as best anyways. It seems fitting that the previous millions of years as Abaddon come to a close and I continue on to the coming millions with a name that matches hers."

It took a couple of seconds for them to process that. Alexandria, the permanent Thinker in the room, figured it out first. Her eyes locked onto my face, found my grin, and widened. Then she stared at me. Her jaw dropped open and her face paled further than snow.

Everyone slowly matched her state.

I grinned and gave them a little wave. "Hi. Taylor Hebert, Daughter of Danny Hebert. Brand new Entity. Also trying really hard not to geek out at meeting you all."

Contessa fainted again.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth

Chapter 2

Weapon​

"Dad?" I asked, studying my hands.

"Yes, Taylor?" my dad absentmindedly replied.

"What's a Deployment Time?"

Dad nearly dropped the Cauldron vial he was inspecting. "Sorry, what?"

We were in our own lab in the absolutely massive Cauldron base. After the generous amount of fainting, revelations, and a plea of aid from the humans, Dad had offered to take a look at the vials they were using to attune people to the Shards of The Thinker, see if he could do anything about their far too high chance of very nasty side effects.

I would've offered but I was still learning how to be… well, this new existence I was suddenly a part of.

Wait, I thought to myself, 'humans'?

Uh oh.

I'd just thought of myself as not human, different from people who I'd previously be amazed at meeting.

Alien.

I stamped that down harder than anything I've ever thought in my entire life, making sure I didn't abandon my humanity. Ever. I was a human. I would never stop being human. Even as I changed and became a goddesslike Entity, I would make certain of it.

I looked up from my contemplation of my hands and my own thoughts to stare my Dad straight in the eyes. I was super serious about the thing I'd asked him before my momentary existential crisis. But if I was right, something weird and possibly worthy of another one was going on. "What is a Deployment Time?" I repeated.

He blinked, confused, and oddly concerned. "Uh, context please?"

"Me, Dad. Err, my Shard. Administrator," I put a hand on my chest to show I was talking about me, though I was actually indicating something very different and in another reality. The 'real me', now. "It has something called a Deployment Time. I remember being... deployed into my own head to wait for me to trigger. Damn that's weird!"

Dad very carefully placed his held vial down in the case he got it from before responding. "That I believe is the name whatever lets you understand... Shardspeak," at this he grinned at me. He really liked my term for what Shards use to talk to each other. "-has picked to represent the name for when your Shard detached from the main Entity and went to an already found host or waited for a designated host," he explained.

I looked down at my hands again. "Shards are usually all seeded at the start of a Cycle, right?"

Dad leaned back on his bench and crossed his arms, looking at me thoughtfully. "Yeah, normally. The ones from The Thinker obviously haven't, but Zion's would have been."

I abruptly locked eyes with him again. "So why wasn't I? Err, my Shard?"

Dad raised an eyebrow. "Come again?"

I sighed and huffed, frustrated. Not with my Dad, with myself. "My Deployment Time doesn't match any of my Shards' times." I groaned and banged my head against the chair. "My Main Shard's time, I mean."

Dad grinned, the smug ass, at my identity crisis. Then he got serious. "What exactly do you mean, Taylor?"

"My primary, main, Shard, whatever you want to call it, my Administrator," I started, waiting for him to acknowledge that he understood that.

Dad nodded, pressing his lips together. "Okay, what about it?"

"It's deployment time doesn't match any of my other Shards' times," I explained again.

Dad cocked his head to the side. "Well they are all from me, so they were just deployed-" he started to reason.

I adamantly shook my head to interrupt him.

"What? Why are you shaking your head at me?"

I stopped shaking my head and sighed. "Dad, think! Not all my Shards are from you!"

"Yes they are, what are you-" he began to refute, then stopped as his face drained of color.

"Yeah!" I exclaimed, way too worried to look anything but normal. If I didn't look normal I'd crack, go crazy, break down and all the realizations I'd already made but was ignoring with all my will would come rushing back.

"Your Shaper isn't mine," Dad realized.

"Exactly!"

Dad shook his head to ward off the conclusion he'd obviously reached too. "Well technically that Shaper is yours, Taylor, so-"

I held up a hand to interrupt him. "Yeah, and if it had a Deployment Time matching when I duplicated Panacea's, I wouldn't be so concerned. But it doesn't!" I groaned and collapsed back into the chair, rubbing my temples with two fingers each. "Even if it was close I'd just put it down to data error. But it's off by over thirty years!"

Dad closed his eyes. "Don't tell me-"

"Yes!" I interrupted him again. I hopped out of the chair and started pacing around the room. "It's right around when Scion showed up!"

Dad looked up at me. His eyes held a depth of despair I hadn't seen in him since Mom died. His face displayed a look of dread. "And your Administrator?" he asked, almost whispering.

I stopped pacing, grimaced, and shook my head. "I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty positive it was deployed to my human body the exact second I was born."

We were both silent for several minutes. I in shock and disbelief, Dad clearly surprised.

"Well that's weird," he eventually spoke.

"Nice summary!" I shrieked sarcastically.

"Taylor, don't yell at me," he flatly warned me, grinding his teeth.

I saw the pained eyes of my only living parent and deflated. "Sorry, Dad," I apologized. I collapsed back into the chair and sighed, running my hands through my hair.

My only feminine trait, previously anyways, and the one thing I got from my mom.

Or so I used to think.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to come to the right conclusion.

Side note; both my Dad and I could build a rocket in our sleep.

We'd come to the right conclusion.

"So," Dad said after a long, deep breath, "that's pretty suspicious. And convenient."

"You think?!" I shot back.

"If we're on the same page, and with the same suspicion," Dad began, "then here's the real question; Why?"

I raised my eyebrows at him, leaning forward. "Not 'how'? 'Why'?" I asked.

Dad just pointed at himself, then at me, a questioning eyebrow raised.

I sagged back into my chair again. "Right. How has about half a trillion options."

"Correct," Dad agreed. "So; Why?" He shook his head and growled. "Moreover, why leave us?"

I snorted and prepared to mentally curse the person I'd always modeled myself after. "I don't know, maybe she got bored?" I scoffed. "She's not like us. No empathy. Probably was a data gathering experiment for her!"

The rage I abruptly felt against her in that moment overwhelmed me. I jumped up from my chair, screamed, and let loose a beam of brilliantly blue Entropy-accelerating energy at the wall of the lab Cauldron let us borrow.

Much like Scion's or my father's, the beam didn't even blink at the matter of the wall in its way. It just kept going until the range I'd unconsciously given it stopped.

When the energy cleared, a circular hole the size of a van was erased from existence through about a hundred rooms and hallways further down.

My eyes popped open as I realized what I'd done. A quick check with a temporal postcognition Shard revealed nobody had been in the path of the beam. Luckily.

Several people were peering around the borders of the holes now though.

I sheepishly waved at them and began using a matter transfer Shard to rebuild the walls by funneling matter from one of the outer moons of my Shard reality's solar system. Another reconfigured the matter into what used to be there.

"Got it out of your system?" Dad jokingly asked. He hadn't moved at all from his spot leaning against the bench.

"Kinda," I reluctantly admitted, grumbling.

"Taylor, your mom wasn't like that," Dad replied to my earlier comments. "Yes, she loved learning, but she also loved. She was one of the most emotionally expressive women I've ever met and she felt things very deeply, especially about family." He grinned and chuckled. "And about you. Wouldn't let you out of her arms for a whole week after you were born."

I walked back to my chair and collapsed again. "So then what? And again, this time for real, how? I mean, you and I are only the way we are because... of..." I trailed off, realizing the possibility that would explain everything.

Dad sighed, letting his neck slack and his head fall backwards as he groaned at the ceiling. "Of course. Of course She would do that. It fits."

"But how? Mom's dead!" I refuted, banging my head against the back of my comfy leather chair yet again. "Both versions!"

Dad suddenly perked up, realizing something. Before he even opened his mouth, I got it too. Benefit of having multiple extremely fast, moon-sized brains I suppose. "Or is she?" we both said, synchronized.

"Half-dead librarian," I repeated absentmindedly.

Dad stared at me with disbelief. "What?"

"It's what the Woman called The Thinker. A half-dead librarian," I continued. "'The others are a combative idiot, a half-dead librarian, and a depressed, inactive troll.' That's what She said."

Dad's face went pale again. "Fortuna didn't pull it off," he realized.

My face joined his with a loss of circulation. "Which means-" I began to say.

"The Cycle is only on pause!" Dad finished, racing out of the room.

I hopped out of my chair and into the air, flying after him.

This was bad.

Really, really bad.

---

My Dad might normally be slow but when he's in a hurry, he's actually pretty damned fast. I was only barely able to keep up with his running. I wouldn't go faster than the speed of sound, not inside, and Dad was obviously using some kind of Shard to bypass normal things like physics around his body as we tracked down the leaders of this little secret organization.

I glared at him. "You're giving me a copy of whatever Shard lets you do this," I flatly demanded. I crossed my arms and narrowed my eyes at him while I flew at his side.

"Sure," Dad agreed with a grin. He was barely focused on me at all. The meeting room where all of the Cauldron leaders were discussing, oddly enough us, was the only thing on his mind.

"What will we tell them when we get there?" I asked. I was genuinely curious as to how Dad would breach this particularly sensitive topic with the people who built a base on my apparent mother's corpse.

"What they need to know," he succinctly answered me.

I kept silent for a good half minute as we sprinted through the absolutely massive facility of Cauldron. Well, Dad sprinted, I flew. Didn't really make me tired.

Why did they give my Dad the lab the furthest away from their command centre? It's like they were avoiding us or something.

I know! It's just ridiculous. Our bodies aren't even the real us! They couldn't avoid us if they tried.

Ah well, we'd just have to tell them that we can see them just like Santa Claus when we get there.

On that thought I almost sent my face caving inwards with how much force I facepalmed with. I stopped flying, coming to a hover in the air.

It took my Dad an embarrassingly long time to notice I'd stopped. He jogged back to me and raised his eyebrows, still running in place. "Come on Taylor, we've gotta get to their super secret meeting room!"

"Dad-" I tried to begin, ignoring the groan of defeat a certain hero of mine expressed several miles away.

"We don't have time to discuss things Taylor!" Dad raised his voice at me.

Well fine.

I called upon a sound manipulation Shard and blasted his entire body from all directions. "DAD," I shouted, "WE CAN TELEPORT."

Dad abruptly stopped running in place. He drew in a deep breath, sighed, and smacked his hand against his forehead.

Another one of the leaders of Cauldron let their face fall forward into the actually kinda pretty surface of their dark oak briefing table with a similar groan of defeat.

"Yes, you're right Taylor," Dad finally admitted. He grimaced. "I forgot about that."

I grinned and crossed my arms. "I'm a better Entity than you and I'm not even twenty years old," I teased him.

Dad pursed his lips together, closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply. He let out the breath slowly and with a slight growl. When he opened his eyes again, he was glaring up at me. "I'm going to pay you back later for that comment," he grinned back, equally teasingly.

"Bring it on gramps!" I shot back. My smile as huge. I hadn't felt this good since before Mom died. All it took was turning into an alien space whale after being trapped in a deathly locker by my best friend to bring it ba-

Whew, almost lost it there, I realized. The emotional dampening Shard I was using to suppress my problems until I could actually deal with them momentarily ran out of energy.

Side note; Entity energy distribution systems and even their collection systems are terrible. They can route or bring in immense amounts of energy, yeah, but they're so inefficient. Inelegant. And they leak like a screen door on a submarine. I set about designing a new version of them that hopefully wouldn't be as bad in my Shard reality. Ah, screw it, my reality. I was most likely the only occupant after all.

Huh. An entire reality to myself. Really brings new meaning to my Dad telling me to clean up my space. Like, which part Dad? I've got an entire universe over here, could you be a little more specific?

I was snapped out of my entertaining thoughts by my Dad bopping me on the nose. If I didn't have my Shards observing this reality I'd probably have instinctually lashed out with my Sapphire Fuck Off Beam.

Gonna need to keep an eye on that.

---

"You didn't do the job right!" Dad shouted at Contessa.

"It's not my fault!" she vehemently defended herself. "She countered it somehow!"

"Why did you let the one secret weapon I gave your race be coerced like that?!" Dad shot back.

Contessa's eyes were wide with incredulity. "Like I could have done anything!"

"You could've been faster!"

While Dad and Contessa 'discussed' things with the rest of the Cauldron leadership looking on, some in amusement and others with horror, I took the opportunity to study and copy the Shards of the Triumvirate and the Number Man.

Reaching through reality to where the Parahuman's Shards lay seemed like a smart thing to do, too.

Right up until I actively took a look at the twisted carcasses.

Something very deep inside me was almost entirely repulsed, even offended by what Cauldron had done to them.

Oh and, side note, by 'discussed' I really mean that my Dad and Contessa had a screaming session so bad it almost sounded like they were married.

Neither their argument nor the state of the Shards stopped me from copying the Shards and growing my own fixed versions, though, no matter how much I winced every so often as their vitriol got worse or felt like throwing up in my mouth at the pieces of alien hooked up to the Triumvirate's brains.

Alexandria's Shard was a new kind I'd never seen before. Unlike my, my father's, or the Shaper I copied from Zion by way of Panacea, it had multiple original functions. It served as data storage, a molecular stasis engine, and even had physics manipulation fields like my body's own in it's abilities. Would be a nice backup to what I already had if nothing else.

Legend's was where I hit paydirt. His Shard was the least messed up of all of them. It was, to put it simply, a viable method of moving within real space faster than light. I had my own FTL drive. It allowed me, the Entity me, or any avatar I chose to shift into energy, instantly go from zero to full lightspeed, and then double that speed every minute. His world famously bullshit lasers were just a possible side application of the Shard's true, incredible purpose.

I mentally made a to-do list with my Alexandria Shard to go pay a visit to Alpha Centauri. Grab some pictures.

Then maybe a couple hour trip out to one of the neighborhood galaxies. Wouldn't take me that long.

Yeah, his Shard was bullshit.

Number Man's Shard was just a data cruncher. It analyzed the world and returned numerical patterns. I copied it of course, every single Shard I managed to get would make me more powerful, but I had the feeling I wouldn't be using his Shard much, if at all.

Eidolon's Shard was the most screwed up. However, somehow due to being so fucked up, it was also the most impressive once repaired. It was originally supposed to serve as a Google of sorts for The Thinker. I could use it and fully planned on doing so, but with my meager number of Shards I didn't have multiple powers that could do the same thing a billion different ways like fully grown Entities did. It wouldn't be working anywhere near its real utility level.

Even so, the new Shard was immensely helpful. Already it was taking over the mentally taxing task of figuring out what Shard was useful for which problems I faced in whatever avatar I was using.

What Cauldron had done to its original ended up making it eat another Shard and assimilate it. I grew the two of them out separately as best I could, but my versions would always be intimately linked.

That second, linked Shard? It created and managed 'Conflict Engines'. I had a sneaking suspicion at that point but it wouldn't be until a little later on that I figured out what that meant.

In the present, the Shard was asking for templates for my first 'Conflict Engine'.

I didn't really want 'Conflict Engines'. I went ahead and told it so. It rebuffed that with the idea of 'Protection Engines'. I was an extremely young and vulnerable Entity, I should have what amounted to guards.

That's what got me to grudgingly agree. And since I was abandoned by my best friend, I thought it ironic if my first one was based on the version of her from before that. The one I grew up with.

My sister in all but blood.

My Shard took that idea and ran with it. Before I could stop it, it searched out and grabbed the connections to the twenty 'Conflict Engines' that Eidolon's mutated Shard was barely administering. Now I was the one in control of them.

Then it forwarded a request to the third one. A request for the biodata and a copy of the mind of one Emma Barnes up to just before what it called her trigger event.

If that wasn't enough to shock me stupid, the reply signature on the absolute crapton of data I got back sure did.

[Conflict Engine Three: Cycle Species Designation Simurgh] sat in front of my metaphorical Shard face.

Are you fucking kidding me? I kept repeating to myself.

I was too stunned to even notice, much less stop, the now renamed Protection Engine Shard eating a couple hundred asteroids from my reality. I didn't notice or stop it constructing an Endbringer in the shape and size of my best friend. Didn't see the mind copy get downloaded.

But when she showed up right next to me with a quiet pop, I freaked the hell out. I raised a palm already glowing blue right in her face. Only my high thought speed allowed me to recognize my friend's features in time to not obliterate her.

My Dad and Contessa stopped arguing.

Alexandria and Legend stared at her in disbelief.

Eidolon was nursing a headache due to my seizing of the Endbringers from him.

Doctor Mother was banging her head backwards onto the padded leather headrest of her office chair.

Emma Barnes looked around the briefing room, at me, down at her naked self, at me again, and screamed.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth

Chapter 3

Think Again​

"I did what?!"

Emma. My best friend Emma. My sister, Emma.

She was sitting in front of me, clad only in Legend's cape.

It was incredibly unnerving. To everyone else in the room too, but for a very different reason for me.

I'd been tortured by her and Sophia with help from Madison for nearly two years. My sister betrayed me, bullied me, threw everything we'd ever shared back in my face and used it to tear me down.

Emma, my sister, tried to kill me.

She probably would've succeeded, too.

Yet here she was, sitting in front of me with an astonished look on her face, not remembering doing any of that. Her expression was slowly changing into a well of anger so deep I could feel it like a physical thing.

My sister, Emma, was mad at herself.

Oh yeah, and she was also composed of a crystalline structure so redundant and hard to destroy it literally warped spacetime and existed in hundreds of realities at once, but I was putting off any contemplation of the fact I'd created an Endbringer and used my ex-sister to do it.

Also on the checklist was punching Eidolon across the solar system for killing hundreds of millions of people by proxy and a major reckoning for the secret organization that enabled him to do so.

Somewhere on the list of crazy, insane bullshit my life had turned into was flying up into orbit to go talk to the Simurgh.

Yeah. It sounded insane. Still did. Hadn't dropped in insanity levels since I reluctantly put it on my list in the first place.

But…

I had to.

She was now under my command. It was my job. And I'd have to somehow make that fact clear to the world.

Ugh, I'd have to go yell at Behemoth and Leviathan too, just to make it extremely obvious that the attacks were called off.

Huh. This might actually be a good thing. I could get Leviathan and Behemoth to work together, start going around and fixing the places they fucked up.

And the Simurgh was going to be on un-mind-fuck duty for a while.

But right now I had to deal with... Emma.

The Fourth Endbringer, Twenty First Conflict Engine, or First Protection Engine.

Or First Friendbringer.

It really depended on how you looked at the situation, and how much you knew.

At this point I knew everything. First Friendbringer it is.

Oh hey, volcanic rage at Cauldron and the Triumvirate. I wondered why you took so long to bubble up again.

Breathe, Taylor, I coached myself. In and out. Slow. See? All better.

I tuned the Earth Witch reality, and my body contained within it, back into focus. "Yeah," I reluctantly confirmed to answer Emma.

I'd just finished telling her what her original had done to me.

She was not happy.

My Dad probably eclipsed her anger, but he was silently fuming. He hadn't moved at all since I started talking. Neither had the members of Cauldron, though Legend had made a lot of very pained sounds and Alexandria had cracked several pencils into itty bitty pieces.

Emma stared at me with disbelief for several long, tense seconds. I started fidgeting under her gaze.

Hey, I might be an Entity and capable of recreating my body, but it's the one I was born with. I'd rather keep it than be splattered by an Endbringer version of my ex-sister who'd decided to betray me again.

As that thought flowed down my connection to her, Emma's expression darkened. "I'm gonna kill her."

It wasn't a question or a request. She was already standing up and starting to channel my Doormaker Shard to Earth Bet.

"Emma, no!" I commanded, leaning on our connection as much as I could without compromising her.

She paused in her stride. "You're... stopping me?" Emma whirled back to glare at me, confused. "Why won't you let me?!" she asked, astounded. "She... I... She tried to kill you!"

"I'm trying to be the better person, Emma!" I yelled at her.

"Why?!" she shot back. "You could do anything and be a better person than She became!"

"Because I have to!" I fired off. I patted my stomach hard, making tiny sonic booms. "Look at me, Emma, really look. I'm... I'm an Entity now. I have to be the better person because I have the power to wipe out our species! I made you, mostly by accident, like Eidolon made the Endbringers!"

Emma's eyes snapped wide open. Before she could say anything, though, Alexandria spoke up from right behind me. She hadn't even made a sound as she moved.

"What."

I held up a hand to forestall her and make it clear I wasn't talking to her at the moment. "Emma, I on accident co-opted control of the Endbringers," I continued. "On accident asked the Simurgh, the fucking Simurgh, for a copy of Emma, and then on accident created you, using that copy, as another Endbringer!" I listed off what I'd done. "I'm fucking terrified and have to make sure I'm the better person no matter what, because one little moment of weakness, like you've told me I am, like you've hammered into my head for the last two years, and I could blow up our planet!"

When I revealed that the young girl in Legend's cape was an Endbringer, everyone except my Dad and oddly enough Contessa tensed. They were preparing for a fight. They were clearly smart enough not to start another one, though, now knowing what my Dad and I were.

I was crying by the end of it, hysterical. I couldn't see out of my body's eyes and my emotions were all over the place.

Emma obviously was connected to more than just my Shard or my idle thoughts, because her furious expression melted. "Oh, Taylor," she said, bringing a hand to her mouth. "I'm so sorry."

Then she blurred forwards and wrapped me up in a hug.

Emma, my sister, was giving me a heartfelt embrace the likes of which I hadn't felt in years.

Love. Someone was giving me love. I… I hadn't gotten that for two years. Not from anyone. Even my Dad failed, though he tried.

Emma, the one who tortured me, or at least someone who looked like her, sounded like her, smelled like her, felt like her, was hugging me and giving me love.

I was being hugged.

I hadn't been hugged in two years either.

It was all too much for me. I broke down, letting my pain and misery of far more than only two years out in sobs and choked cries. Emma just held me and rubbed my back. She whispered sweet nothings into my ear every so often, mixed in with apologies for what her original had done, and cursing her for throwing me away.

Eventually my Dad joined the hug.

My Dad was hugging me.

Also for the first time in two years.

He must've gestured to somebody because another person joined in, too. A tiny amount of my attention that wasn't eaten up by my emotions noticed it was Contessa.

Guess because she had a piece of my Dad in her head he considered her family.

I wasn't complaining. I was many, many things and feeling all of them at that moment, but I most certainly wasn't complaining.

I cried in my sister's arms for a long, long time. The fact my Dad had finally pulled his head out of his ass and noticed my suffering was just the cherry on top.

---

I was amazed that the leadership of Cauldron waited, actually patiently waited, for me to stop bawling.

Was it because of my status? What my father and I were? Or were they sympathetic to my plight?

I could probably find out with a Shard or two… but I didn't really want to know. Mysteries would be few and far between for me now. I should take whatever I could get.

My eyes were red when I withdrew from the hug pile. Emma, my sister (but also my first Endbringer, holy shit!) didn't let me go. She clung to me, her chest pressing into my side, and refused to budge when I experimentally pushed on her through our connection.

That was fine. I missed her hugs. Even if they weren't from my original sister, she betrayed me, so having a version of her who literally couldn't was extremely helpful to my emotional state.

It saddened me that it took me making my own version of her to get there, though.

But hey, now we could really be sisters! It's not like this Emma could live at her original's house after all. Not that she would even if she could, judging by her reactions.

...I made a mental note to not let her go near the Barnes' without me. She might follow through on her previous threat.

And I'd love to see Dad try and refuse. I was gonna hold him being absent from my life for two years over his head for a long, long time.

Possibly forever.

I might have forgiven him but that didn't mean I wouldn't extort him using it, especially given what exactly he was.

Any and all thoughts about how this Emma, my Friendbringer, was technically my daughter and how that made the other Endbringers my siblings by some weird three way between Eidolon, my Mom, and Scion were firmly ejected from my mind.

Along with the memories of the many, many… 'educational home videos' I'd found in the basement a year ago starring my Mom, my Dad, and another stupidly attractive woman.

Videos, yes. Educational? Technically. Deeply, deeply scarring would be my preferred description.

See? They're not in my mind anymore. Nope. Nuh uh. Wasn't Alexandria standing behind me? Oh wait, she went back to sit down after my breakdown.

"Sorry," I instinctively, automatically apologized. Both for getting lost in thought and for melting like an ice cream cone's internal confectionary on a hot day.

My eyes widened and I cursed. "No, you know what? No. I'm not sorry. I needed that!" I refused, a little too loudly.

I was refusing more myself than anyone else, but the Triumvirate and my father still flinched.

I didn't apologize, just crossed my arms as much as I could over my new chest and the Emma shaped arms around my torso.

"Taylor," Alexandria asked hesitantly. She wasn't really a gentle person, but she was trying. "What did you mean when you said you took the Endbringers from Eidolon?"

And just like that, my good mood evaporated.

"Oh, right," I spat. "That little nugget of crap."

I turned to Eidolon, previously one of my most worshipped heroes, and death glared him. "Your Shard, due to the butchering all of you did," with that I indicated everyone in the room except my Dad and Emma, "ate a Shard that creates and administers Conflict Engines. Eidolon here's subconscious, retarded need for worthy opponents activated Behemoth, and Leviathan, then the Simurgh!" I slammed my hands down on their oak conference table and allowed my copy of Legend's shard to channel blue light into my eyes, making them glow. "I am just a little pissed about my heroes being the cause of millions of deaths!"

Eidolon, Legend, and Doctor Mother's faces went bone white.

"Wh-what?" Eidolon stammered.

I gave him an evil, stinkeyed glare. "Yeah, that's right. Cauldron may have fucked up the Shards, but it was the user who ultimately commanded and, until I seized them barely an hour ago, kept commanding them to attack every three months." I pointed a finger at Eidolon accusingly. "The blood of millions is on your subconscious head, Eidolon." I growled his 'hero' name, my teeth bared.

The blood drained from his face. "No," he whispered.

"Yes," I restated, firmly and resolutely.

My Dad was just watching all of this. He was glaring at Contessa every so often, but otherwise he was doing as he said. Letting me take the lead.

Alexandria scowled. "You have no proof-" she began to defend her friend.

I snapped my glare to her and decided to hammer home just how outclassed she was. I seized control of her Shard and through it, her body. "Sit. Down," I commanded. I sent the same commands through her Shard.

Alexandria's eyes popped open and she grunted as her body sat without her control.

Everyone else paled suitably. Nobody was making any sudden moves.

"I used to respect you, Alexandria," I spat her way. "You were my hero. You, more than anyone in the world, I wanted to be like. I ran around with Emma… the betraying one, as a little girl with a cape and pretended to be you. But now..." I looked around at them all, then the ceiling and the ground of the Cauldron base. I met her eyes again, absolutely sure there was disgust on my face. "Now… I'm extremely conflicted."

Despite her anger at me, every word brought a wince from her.

I turned my angry gaze on the only normal human in the room. The 'leader'. The so called Doctor. "You, and Cauldron, are gonna have to do a lot to get back on my good side," I seethed, narrowing my eyes.

I spared Legend a suspicious glance. "You didn't seem to know about what your friends were doing. You're my hope for this shitstorm," I told him.

The third member of the Triumvirate grimaced. "Am I right in guessing you're not going to help?"

I shook my head. "Not until you clean up your act. I'll keep the Endbringers under control and my Dad and I will see what we can do about Scion. That's it. In exchange for not destroying Cauldron, I want this base."

Everyone in the room stared at me with stunned shock except Eidolon, who was barely breathing.

"What?" the Number Man asked, blinking.

"This base," I repeated, gesturing around us. "I want it."

Everyone was silent for another good ten seconds. Besides Emma giggling into my shoulder and my Dad valiantly containing his mirth, that is.

"You're serious," Legend finally realized. He swallowed nervously, eyeing his friends.

"Yup."

That was it. My Dad lost it. "She's got bigger cajones than I do!" he wheezed, trying and failing to breathe through his uncontrolled cackling.

Contessa, resigned to her new duty, whumped him on the back a few times.

It didn't help.

Alexandria glared at me when she got over her shock. "How dare you-"

Legend clamped a hand on her leg. "Don't, Alexandria," he warned.

"Smart," I agreed, smirking. I tried to look dangerous over the gigantic red blush on my face from my Dad's comment.

I'm not sure it entirely worked.

Still, even a cute, blushing destroyer of worlds is still a destroyer of worlds.

Doctor Mother was the one who asked. "Why?" Her voice held defeat within it.

"First, and I know you know about this; my mother, presumably, is here," I began laying out my reasons. "Secondly I think I can help the people who were severely warped by their corrupted Shards. And third? I've always wanted a secret base." The last reason was accompanied by a gigantic, ear to ear grin.

Emma finally lost it. She broke down giggling and bopped me on the nose for doing it to her.

I maintained my serious facade despite it being incredibly hard to do so with my sister giggling right next to me.

The familiarity of that, the memories of her original doing that when we were younger, when we were friends, crashed over me in a tidal wave of pain. But they were good memories, and Emma hugged me tighter when she felt the pain flare across our connection, so I bared it.

---

I gave them a week to move out. I even provided them a temporary portal to one of their secondary… offworld bases, of their own choosing, so they could do it easier.

Is it still called an offworld base if it's just an alternate version of the same planet?

PHO's various debates on the topic seemed to agree that yes, it was.

That seemed dumb to me, but I couldn't come up with a better alternative than 'side-world', so I decided to go with the one that didn't make Emma and my Dad laugh their asses off.

As mad as I was with Cauldron, they were still trying to do the right thing. They were trying to save my species -my previous physical one, anyways, and my mental one- against impossible odds with a malfunctioning guidance system and essentially zero allies.

Across the entire multiverse.

I couldn't lay all the blame on them. There were two others I most definitely could, and did, lay it at the metaphorical feet of, though.

Moreover, Eidolon didn't actually make the Endbringers. He just activated them.

No, that was Eden's fault. The Thinker.

My mother, apparently.

Oh yeah, once I figured out how to revive her safely, we were gonna have a Talk. A long one. With lots of shouting on my part about not blowing up planets and not making death machines, thanks!

When the hell did the universe invert so that the teenager is more responsible than both her parents?!

Somewhere in another part of my unskillfully multitasked mind, I was continually grumbling. Another part of me was screaming at a metaphorical wall.

The avatar part, my body's thought 'thread', I guess you could say, benefited from this by appearing normal.

Threading your mind isn't remotely as easy as science fiction would have us believe. I was still only managing five, max, before I got hopelessly confused.

Of course, I sensed I could do more, but I'd have to abandon parts of what made me human, allowed me to sympathize with my race.

I wouldn't ever do that.

We said our goodbyes. I kept my anger reigned in enough to give each of the Triumvirate a hug. Even Eidolon.

He… didn't really respond much. To me, to his teammates, nothing. I really hoped I hadn't broken him.

I still needed him intact to punt across the solar system after all.

Alexandria looked conflicted for most of it. Sad and angry alternatively. When I hugged her, she initially was surprised, but then held on tight for a long time. I'm pretty sure my comments to her got through. She didn't cry, but I sensed she was close.

As I'd intended. Hopefully she'd come out the other side a better, more compassionate person.

Then I could apologize and we could go soaring into the sunset.

Hey, I'm not gonna just let my dreams be dreams, okay?

Legend bade both of us a hearty goodbye. Said he'd do the best he could. And, extremely politely, asked us not to reveal Cauldron's existence or actions. To leave it up to him.

I'd always liked him, so I said yes. Tentatively.

They promised to move their HQ in a week. We promised to tackle Scion and my mother. I made it very clear the Endbringers were done attacking places.

Which is why when we stepped out of the Doorway I made back to our house (I was cheating by using that power, according to my Dad) and saw who was waiting for us, or more specifically me, I wasn't exactly happy.

Emma was, though. "Auntie!" she cried out.

She let go of my arm and zipped across the living room far faster than anyone normal should have been able to. She tackle hugged the platinum haired, gray eyed, pale as snow and slender girl about my age with six white feathered wings standing there with a slightly apologetic and definitely sheepish smile on her previously only-ever-recorded-as-solemn face.

Oh yeah, and the two guys standing next to her. Emma hugged both of them, too.

One was a really tall guy, very dark skinned, with dark red, almost orange hair and orange irises.

No shirt.

And oh my gods, the beefcake.

The other guy was similar, if skinny instead of wide. He had an olive skin tone, swim trunks, a sea green theme, and no shirt. Less beefcake, more a swimmer, but still quite muscled.

He was even holding a stereotypical trident.

"Hi sis," the girl greeted me.

Gods damn it.

My Dad losing his control once again and falling to the floor laughing his ass off just hammered home how much the universe hated me.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth

Chapter 4

Family Values
​

"You are in so much trouble," I growled out, crossing my arms.

I was looking straight at Miss Psychic Feathers as I said that. The two boys subtly fidgeted under the bare edges of my gaze.

The Simurgh-

And isn't that a fucking insane thought. The Simurgh is standing in my living room!!!

"Ziz," she softly spoke.

I blinked. "I'm sorry, what?"

"My name," she repeated, "is Ziz."

I narrowed my eyes and glared harder at her. "Funny, I thought you were The Third Endbringer," I snarled.

She flinched along with her brothers.

"Y-You know the circumstances-" she tried to defend herself.

"Switzerland."

That one word sent her pathetic attempt at defense to the Ship Graveyard.

I turned my glare on the trident equipped swimmer. "Kyushu."

His eyes widened and he flinched as well.

Tall Dark and Orange seemed to be expecting my gaze. "Moscow," he said before I could, his lips set in a grim line of acceptance.

...

With an extremely thick Russian accent.

...Why, why oh why is Behemoth's accent Russian when he is clearly the opposite skin tone?

Not that there aren't darker skinned people in Russia. But the kind of accent assaulting my ears was pretty much only ever found in the pasty white, bearded vodka drinking, dancing, singing, Russians.

I sighed in pain and closed my eyes. "Yes," I breathed in, then out, to try and relax.

It didn't really help, but I tried.

When I met The Simurgh's… Ziz's eyes again, my gaze wasn't heated anymore. Just weary.

She pursed her lips and let out a little shrug. "Sorry."

"Sorry doesn't bring the people who died back," I hesitantly fielded.

The three siblings looked incredibly defeated. Ziz had unshed tears in her eyes. Levi, because I'm not calling him Leviathan in my head, fidgeted nervously and guiltily.

"We know this," Behemoth… no, frak that, he is now called Ben -short for Benjamin- because I can't even think his old name with a straight face, solemnly lamented.

"And? So?" I pressed on despite the feelings of regret surging up their connections to me, "What are you… what are we going to do about it?"

"Become… heroes?" Levi hazarded a guess.

I blinked as the building drive to communicate to them just how unhappy I was evaporated.

Levi sounded like an actual teenager.

No, more than that, he sounded like Greg.

…

That thought was just too terrifying. Mental note; they must never, ever meet.

"You want… to be heroes?" I asked incredulously.

Ziz nodded emphatically. "Yes, yes, please! I feel so terrible and it's just…" she held a wing (not a hand, those were still holding Emma) to her heart. Or where her heart would be. "Guilt sucks. A lot," she finished, muttering.

My eyebrows rose all on their own. An Endbringer feeling guilt? Moreover, feeling in the first place?

What the hell did my new Shard do?!

Query it for an explanation aaaaand-

Oh.

They're Protection Engines now.

Ziz even has a heart!

That was just a gods damned figure of speech!

And so do Ben, Levi, and Emma.

Crystalline, sure, like their bodies were before, but still. The rest of their bodies were carbon (heh) copies of a human one, also in crystal. Their various additions like Ziz's wings… and Levi's tail?! notwithstanding.

...

What in the he-

...Is there a button, somewhere, to keep the damn pieces of me from doing things of their own accord?!

The Shard-which-was-in-very-hot-water-with-me let out the Shardspeak equivalent of a skittish 'meep' and started throwing random bits of data on what it had already done my way.

It was trying to distract me from my very present state of mind intent on taking it's code apart to see whether a Shard could scream.

And damn it, this stuff is still too cool to me for the distraction to fail.

I narrowed my metaphorical eyes at the Shard and informed it that while it had appeased me this time, it'd better shape up and follow my rules.

I wasn't Eidolon. I wasn't going to just sit back and not run things.

Another meep accompanied suspiciously anthropomorphic, rapid head nodding.

My eyes narrowed further.

I was not aware a Shard could relay the concept of an innocent, angelic smile. Now I am.

All of this took barely a second of thought time. I rejoined realtime in my body a moment later, back to musing about the Endbringer's request.

I sighed and threw my hands up to the ceiling. "Fine, fine!" I acquiesced. "We can be heroes."

And that is when I got tackle hugged by three Endbringers and my sister.

My dad didn't stop laughing for hours.

I will get him back for this. I so swear vengeance.

---

After the Endbringers' hard-fought victory against the stifling sensibilities of yours truly, I was unanimously outvoted on the topic of what we were doing next.

Getting ice cream.

At the Boardwalk.

In public.

Do you know how nerve-wracking it is to traipse through a city like Brockton Bay with four engines of Destruction Protection trailing along behind you like ducklings following their mother?

I do! It's very nerve-wracking!

I sighed again and rubbed the bridge of my nose. For some odd reason, I was getting a premonition that I would be doing that a lot.

Oh wait, no, it wasn't for an odd reason. It was because my version of Path to Victory, the best precog Shard in existence, was informing me based on the data it had gathered so far about my personality type that I would be doing so.

Every. Time.

Every time my new… Kids? Siblings? Cousins? Whatever our relationship is, every time they did something that annoys me, or makes me panic or, or worries me, I would have the urge to rub my frustrations out on my nose bridge.

"Rocky Road is the best!" Ziz said, smiling at me.

Oh yes.

Ziz likes Rocky Road.

I'd think she chose that just to mess with me if I didn't know that she couldn't see me with her precognition Shards.

No, no, the Engine of Destruction Protection that regularly sets up Rube Goldberg-esque series of events on a worldwide scale using her temporal precog to fuck things up likes Rocky Road ice cream naturally.

Ziz felt my incredulous opinion of her ice cream choice and stuck her tongue out at me.

The thought/feeling transfer thing was taking a lot of time to get used to. I still wasn't totally okay with it even after hours of it being active. I could shut it off, that was in my power, but...

Look, I'd been exiled from society, exiled from friends, tortured, for two years of high school. I clung to that feeling link like a lifeline.

Emma felt my despair and hugged me. Hard. And yet soft at the same time. "It's okay Taylor, we're not gonna let that happen again," she assured me.

She was sitting next to me expressly so she could do that. I didn't yet fully trust the Endbringers despite knowing that they couldn't even think of hurting me now. it was part of their directives. They were Protection Engines. Meant to protect…

Me.

Still, 15 years of fearing them doesn't exactly go away in less than 24 hours.

I'd get there. Eventually.

As much as I knew it hurt them, I also knew that they understood. They'd give me the time I needed and try to be supportive as much as they could be.

Ziz smiled sardonically at me and slowly licked her ice cream off her spoon.

Yes, I was being teased by the the Simurgh.

Path to Victory also informed me that I would eventually be quite immune to all forms of bullshit.

"Indeed. We are to protect you." Ben was eating his orange ice cream slowly, methodically, savoring its taste and texture. Apparently he couldn't eat before, unlike Levi and Ziz, so… Yeah. Slow and steady wins the race? Is there even a race?

Levi certainly thought so. he had attacked his mint chocolate chip vanilla ice cream like a kid at Christmas. He was already on his eighth bowl!

I would have thought Ben to be the heavy eater but, nope! Lizard boy is apparently the hungriest.

Also, turns out they can hide their Endbringer features. Ben doesn't really have any to hide, but Levi's tail and Ziz's wings shrink back into their bodies, leaving them looking nearly entirely human. Keep in mind the trip through the city, on a bus no less (no way could all six of us fit in Dad's truck) was nerve-racking to me even with this, so one can kind of understand just how much could possibly go wrong.

I haven't even gotten to have the talk with them about what to do if someone attacks me yet. I'm not really interested in finding out what happens when four Endbringers, no longer sandbagging, with a directive to protect someone, are right in front of the person who attacks what they're meant to be protecting.

I don't think it will go very well, to put it lightly.

I was still poking at my bowl of pistachio. I had a whole bunch of Shards managing my emotions and yet... it was very difficult, internally at least, to get over what the Trio had done to me.

I wasn't sure I'd ever get over it.

My Dad was cheerily eating his vanilla ice cream and chatting with Ziz. When she wasn't talking to me, that is. Yes, my dad and the gods damned Simurgh were chatting.

If my surrealism meter hadn't already been maxed out when I confronted my childhood hero it would probably have a few additional points in it.

Then there's the blonde, light-skinned girl sitting next to her large, dark-skinned friend, staring at me in horror across the ice cream shop-

Wait a second.

I slowly turned my head to look at her. I swear I didn't mean to make it creepy but it ended up being very creepy. Evidenced by the fact her eyes widened and she started trembling.

Okay. Quick recap.

Four Endbringers and two Entities walk into a bar ice cream shop. They sit down, order ice cream, and start eating it. They all look like humans from external observation. Well, except for Ziz's naturally pale skin and hair, Levi's blue hair, and Ben's orange eyes… actually yeah no that's, that's weird, nevermind.

Okay, so the girl saw some of our abnormalities. So what? We were still probably human. Maybe Ziz and Levi have their hair dyed and Ben is wearing contacts. Dad and I both looked entirely human, even if I'd made my body more attractive, so…

What was going on?

Why was the girl who was previously looking at me in horror now laughing at me and trying to hide it behind her hands instead?

I scowled at her and sent a litany of scanning Shards her coordinates.

...Oh.

Okay, now it all makes sense.

Sarah Livsey over there, sometimes known as Tattletale or always known as Lisa Wilborn, is a villain.

With a Shard named Inference Engine.

A Shard which, for some reason, didn't register me as an Entity.

That meant that all the limiters built into most Shards to prevent them from being used against their creators were completely gods damned useless to protect me.

That's just great!

For some reason, a little hunch, I imagined shit was about to go down.

I hastily grabbed Emma and Ben's arms, using my new strength to anchor them to their seats. I death glared Levi and Ziz so they wouldn't move. Of course the strength of this body wouldn't have stopped them if they really tried, I hadn't turned my body into a crystalline construct with the mass of a neutron star, but it signified commands from me, so they listened.

"We talk to her first," I flatly declared.

Ziz pouted at me. Emma would've too, but she seemed to be more human than the other three.

"Talk. First."

Ziz huffed and crossed her arms. "Fine," she grumbled.

"No mental tampering either," I pressed her.

She rolled her eyes at me. "I only do that to bad people now," she informed me, allowing a little bit of the guilt inside her to spill through her eyes. "Believe it or not, she's a good person. Not all villains are evil, or have a choice."

I was surprised to say the least. I raised my eyebrows at Ziz, saw her confirming nod, then turned to look at Sarah and oh my gods she's right there.

She was standing at the end of our table, grinning. Smugly. Her… boyfriend? stood behind her with his arms crossed over his chest, attempting to look intimidating.

I was eating ice cream with four Endbringers. He'd have to try a lot harder.

Scratch that, three Endbringers and a giggling, winged moron. Ziz was laughing at my reaction to Sarah's sudden presence.

My lack of amusement with her only made Ziz giggle harder.

The blonde started to open her mouth, but I was now in constant contact with her Shard. Which, by the way, was positively enamored to receive so much new data. It was also having a similar reaction to meeting me as fans do meeting a celebrity. I… wasn't quite sure how I felt about that.

Anyways, I knew how much damage Tattletale could do if she spoke.

"Think very carefully before you open your mouth, Sarah," I told the blonde, locking eyes with her. "They only stay their hands because of me."

Sarah's face darkened as she scowled at me. "How do you know that name?"

Her boyfriend jumped at that and looked at her wearily. "Wait, what does she mean, Lisa?" he asked. Dude was smart, I'll give him that. He was starting to catch on.

The blonde sighed, closed her eyes, and clenched a fist. She spun around while simultaneously opening her hand and smiling at him. "Brian, my old name was Sarah, okay? But we can't do this right now, because she knows who we are." She pointed back towards me with an accusing finger.

I corrected her with a clear throat. "Actually I only know a little bit about you, Sarah," I informed her. "Specifically that you are a parahuman, you have a Shard named Inference Engine, your power is to find information like a, in your words, overpowered Sherlock Holmes, and your cape name is Tattletale."

There wasn't an ounce of smugness in my voice from turning this girl's normal gimmick back on her. Nope.

Not. An. Ounce.

She spun around on me again and glared at me. "I don't know what the hell a Shard is, but stop copying me."

Brian's eyebrows rose the same moment I donned a confused look. I had that look because I was confused. Copying? What the hell was she talking abo-

Ohhh.

She thought I'm a Power Copying Trump.

Because that's what her Shard told her.

I'm pretty sure her Shard was just as much of a smartass as she was. And- actually, yep, my Queen Administrator 'memories', if you could call them that, told me I was 100% correct.

Sure, in the most technical sense, that is what I was. And apparently her Shard had noticed my irritation with it using a loophole to bypass the normal restrictions on Entities with me. In the interests of not further pissing me off, so it could get more data from me, it decided to toe the line. While messing with its host at the same time.

Got to admit, I can respect that. It's not exactly clear whether the attitude of both of them is because the host imprinted on the Shard or because the Shard imprinted on the host. It's possible both of them did.

Inference Engine could not have possibly gained a more suited host for it than this girl.

I smiled at her and slightly scooted over. Emma scooted along with me. I pat the seat of the ice cream shop booth with a hand to invite Sarah to sit down.

She scowled at me. Aaagain.

I rolled my eyes and pat the seat once more. "Trust me, you're going to want to be sitting down for what I have to tell you."

She narrowed her eyes at me suspiciously, but slowly, very slowly, began to sit down.

"Lisa! Err, Sarah!" Brian said, his arms slightly uncrossing as his mouth dropped open. "What the hell are you doing?"

"She's a power copying Trump, Brian," she answered him, still looking at me. "We're boned either way."

Brian's eyes positively popped out of his head. "What?!"

I gestured to my Dad, Ziz, and Ben to scoot over and make a little room for Brian. This would only end up leaving him enough room to put a single leg down, but it would have to be enough. without even questioning it, the three of them did it, though Ziz sent me a dirty look because she had to move her ice cream.

Tattletale sat.

Brian sent me a scathing look. I just smiled angelically and gestured for him to sit down again, nodding to try and reassure him.

Brian Laborn, Grue, sat as well. He was not exactly happy about it however.

Actually, looking at them, Brian and Ben are spitting images of each other. Like, twins.

And I like muscley men.

I sent another suspicious metaphorical glance at my Protection Engine Shard.

It metaphorically pointed at Path to Victory.

She, and it could only be a she given her feel, smirked knowingly.

Was being part of me changing these Shards to be more human?

My sneaking suspicion was yes. Either that, or their responses were being filtered into something I could interpret as a human, and so I was reverse humanizing them.

Or it's Shard fuckery. That was entirely possible. I'll question it later when doing so didn't give me a migraine on top of the headache I already had.

I smiled at them, then pushed my pistachio ice cream to the side so I could put my hands together and clasp them. "All right, Brian, Sarah," I began, looking at both of them in turn, "what I'm going to tell you is very hard to believe. I have proof, but even with that you still might think I'm crazy."

Brian just scoffed and shook his head.

Sarah, on the other hand, visibly fought her automatic look of interest. "I've discovered some pretty unbelievable things," she refuted.

I shook my head and grinned. "Trust me, this, you haven't. I would be very surprised if you found out anything of this magnitude."

Sarah let Tattletale's trademark smirk emerge, completely having lost her battle. "All right then hot stuff," she dared, "show me what you got."

And she was egging me on.

I no longer felt any sympathy for her given she had just literally asked for it. I mirrored her trademark smirk and furrowed my eyebrows so I could look Maximum Evil™. "You know how the Endbringers disappeared today?" I nonchalantly asked.

My four Protection Engines immediately perked up at this. Ben stopped meticulously eating his ice cream and set his spoon down… also meticulously. Levi kind of half dropped his hands and kept eating out of the bowl. Emma hugged me, Ziz grinned, and my Dad had literal eye sparkles to match his knowing smile.

[You're giving me that Shard,] I informed him.

[Sure.]

[And I will call it the Dumbledore Shard.]

Freaking out the two non mentally connected people in the room was totally worth making my Dad splutter as he tried to conceal his laughter.

[Sure thing, Little Owl,] he agreed, his laughter echoing in my head.

I shared a grin with him and turned back to look at Sarah.

Sarah blinked at the our exchange, frowned as if she was trying to figure it out, visibly got a Thinker headache, and then shook her head. "Oww," she complained.

"Don't try to read our minds, Sarah," I warned her.

She scoffed and rubbed her forehead. "Yeah no kidding. Thanks for warning me ahead of time, jackass."

"I shouldn't need to warn you not to try and read people's minds Sarah."

She began to respond, found she had no counter, and closed her mouth. "Point."

"Anyways," I repeated myself, "about the Endbringers?"

Sarah tilted her head as she remembered the complete, she assumed anyways, non sequitur. "Uh, yeah?" she flatly stated. "The beings that decided to cause even more chaos than they normally do by up and disappearing, which they knew would make us run around like a kicked anthill without them having to lift a finger?"

The three previous Endbringers barely hid their snickers.

"They didn't exactly... disappear," I informed her and Brian at the same time.

"What." That was Brian. Hissing like a snake.

Sarah's eyebrows almost hit orbit with the speed they jumped off her face.

I'm obviously exaggerating, they didn't jump off her face, but they should've!

"Yeah like Brian said," she echoed, "What."

I merely smiled and gestured to the occupants of the table.

Sarah's eyes widened as it finally clicked for her. She visibly gulped and slowly turned her head to look at the person sitting directly across from her.

Ziz.

My winged Friendbringer raised a hand and shyly waved at her. Her back sprouted wings, just a little bit, in order to show Sarah that they were there.

Brian was sitting right next to her. When he felt those wings touch his back, he let out a primal roar of surprise and rocketed off the booth seat.

"The Simurgh," Sarah whispered in horror.

"H-hi," the third Endbringer nervously stammered.

Sarah gulped again, even louder, turning her gaze on Levi. "Leviathan."

Brian was completely and totally speechless. His face was actually a little gray, which was incredibly surprising given his skin tone. That shouldn't have been possible. Was he going to faint?

Levi just momentarily lowered his bowl of ice cream, looked at Sarah, and nodded his head upward. "Sup." A moment later he was once again chowing down.

Sarah looked dead on the inside, her eyes unfocused. Trembling, she turned to Ben and gulped a third time.

"Behemoth." She didn't stutter, she didn't have a questioning tone. She was 100% certain.

"Greetings," Tall Dark and Orange answered her with a slow, respectful nod. In his still very thick Russian accent.

Welp, there went Brian. I motioned to Ziz to go pick him up. And to stow her wings.

She was trying so hard to do things right, she followed my request without even token resistance.

Sarah didn't even notice. "Eheheh," she whimpered. Her eyes turned to my Dad. Her head didn't move. I wasn't sure if anyone was even home inside her head anymore. "So, what are you?" she asked accusingly.

I guess the human brain can only take so much bullshit before they break. I'm glad I don't have one with that kind of limit anymore.

Or am I just naturally immune to bullshit? Hmm, something to research later.

Dad smiled at her, kindly, but also a little dangerously. He was having way too much fun with this. "I'm Abaddon," he informed her. His voice painted a picture of just how much it was no big deal.

Sarah nodded rapidly and turned her eyes to look at me. "And your Endbringer name?"

I raised an eyebrow in confusion. "Endbringer name?" I asked her.

She narrowed her eyes at me incredulously. "Yeah," she deadpanned. "You're all Endbringers. I just need to know what name I should scream out in terror before you kill me."

Man this girl was good at discussing horrible things as if they were normal. Her voice only fluctuated a little when she said I would kill her.

I blinked and started chuckling under my breath.

Sarah's face paled. "Oh G-God, why are you laughing?!"

I kept chuckling and reached out my hand to steady myself on her shoulder. "Sarah, Sarah," I chided, getting ready to correct her. "My Dad and I aren't Endbringers."

"WELL WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THEN?!"

Now I was having way too much fun with this. I grinned widely at her. In fact, I would describe my grin as shit eating. "We're members of the species that make them."

At that her face drained of all its remaining blood.

"And powers," I quickly added on.

Sarah Livsey, Lisa Wilborn, Tattletale, joined her teammate Grue in the land of lost consciousness.

I frowned even as Ziz started to giggle and Levi snickered. "Well that was disappoint-"

And the ice cream shop exploded.

---

A/N: Thanks to Amacita for proofreading this. Side note, voice recognition typing is a whole lot faster but really, really dislikes proper capitalization.

 

[Crusher Bob]

I see the trolling in strongly heritable.

 

[Inkwell_Chronic]

So like is it a metaphorical explosion because Lisa had a second trigger, or is the shop being attacked?

 

[sdarian]

"First, and I know you know about this; my mother, presumably, is here," I began laying out my reasons. "Secondly I think I can help the people who were severely warped by their corrupted Shards. And third? I've always wanted a secret base." The last reason was accompanied by a gigantic, ear to ear grin.

Click to shrink...

I'm a bit confused on the relationship. It sounded like Taylor is suddenly saying that Eden is her mom? Even though Danny was the one who tried to kill her with PtV before they landed on earth?

 

[Rotwu]

Crack or not this is a nice story XD

 

[Junk Warrior]

I have read the first two chapters on ff sometimes ago. Glad to see you back.

 

[Rhomaion1]

I'm a bit confused on the relationship. It sounded like Taylor is suddenly saying that Eden is her mom? Even though Danny was the one who tried to kill her with PtV before they landed on earth?

Click to shrink...

My understanding here is that since Taylor's first shard is Queen Administrator and Eden sent it to her when she was born that since Taylor's "real" body is now that shard then you can say Eden is her mom. Probably the same logic that let's her call the Endbringers her cousins.

 

[TCGM]

I see the trolling in strongly heritable.

Click to shrink...

Hi! Welcome to the SV side of this fic. And yes, trolling is a genetic aspect.

I'm a bit confused on the relationship. It sounded like Taylor is suddenly saying that Eden is her mom? Even though Danny was the one who tried to kill her with PtV before they landed on earth?

Click to shrink...

My understanding here is that since Taylor's first shard is Queen Administrator and Eden sent it to her when she was born that since Taylor's "real" body is now that shard then you can say Eden is her mom. Probably the same logic that let's her call the Endbringers her cousins.

Click to shrink...

Danny and Taylor have come to the assumption, based on evidence they've found, that Eden was Annette Hebert and 'gifted' QA to Taylor when her human avatar gave birth to her.

Whether that's true or not? They can't really know until they try to wake up The Thinker, but they are reasonably sure this is the case.

And I won't say one way or the other as it's entertaining to observe the speculation around it ^_^

Crack or not this is a nice story XD

Click to shrink...

Crack can be the best kind of story! Just gotta do it right. Welcome!

I have read the first two chapters on ff sometimes ago. Glad to see you back.

Click to shrink...

o/ Hail FF friendo

 

[sdarian]

Even though QA is from Zion? They think that the half dead Eden that Danny killed, played at being a human and Danny's wife and gave birth to Taylor at the same time giving her one of Zion's important shards before being killed off even more then before?

 

[TCGM]

Even though QA is from Zion? They think that the half dead Eden that Danny killed, played at being a human and Danny's wife and gave birth to Taylor at the same time giving her one of Zion's important shards before being killed off even more then before?

Click to shrink...

Hmm... what to say to avoid major spoilers...

Is QA from Zion? Originally? Taylor certainly thinks so based on what she 'remembers' from her Shard. However, not only is she brand new at this, but QA is a Shard which matches The Thinker's purview so much more than Blasty Mc Blowup Golden Boy's.

And as far as I know, Worm canon never really clearly states just which Entity made QA. It's entirely possible Zion scooped up QA from his mate's corpse given it is most definitely a vital Shard, but then in one of his idiotic phases deployed it.

In canon, anyways.

And yes, they do think that. Keep in mind Eden is supposed to be Zion's controller, or at least guide. It makes sense that she'd have the... access codes, for lack of a better term, to command his Shards around.

 

[Nitramy]

"See, the thing is, Empire 88, if I wanted you to all line up and do the Thriller dance..."

Taylor snapped the fingers on one of her hands, and then music started playing.

"...the only important question would be 'how many bystanders are watching with their camera phones right now'."

Sarah and Brian gaped as the entirety of Empire 88's parahuman delegation began doing exactly what Taylor said she'd make them do, Kaiser's metal armor becoming red in a passable copy of Michael Jackson's as he stood front and center.

The Endbringers were too busy calibrating the audio equipment to roll on the street laughing, but Sarah could make out the ear-to-ear smiles on their faces while they worked.

"Who knew the Empire had these moves," Sarah told nobody in particular as she continued to observe the Empire, Kaiser doing a very convincing crotch grab as part of the dance routine.

 

[SanguinusXII]

I did not know how much I needed this, thanks for making my day a little brighter lol.

 

[KnightDisciple]

I did not know how much I needed this, thanks for making my day a little brighter lol.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, same here, this is amazing.

 

[Malix2]

This is great. I'm definitely looking forward to more. I don't /think/ this should be Bakuda, since Lung hasn't been defeated yet as far as I'm aware.... Coil? Not sure if Tats sent off a message or not, or otherwise he somehow was listening in. Either that or some cape battle is going on outside and something just crashed through the shop. Or it could be something completely different.

 

[00Zy99]

something completely different.

Click to shrink...

Indeed. And now for something completely different:



As you can see, the explosion is most likely caused by a rogue Python that happened to be passing nearby a-questing for the Holy Grail when it was interrupted by an unexpected Spanish Inquisition.

Or could it could just be a car crash or something.

 

[Flairina]

I appreciate that the label of "crack" allows people to try out more off-the-wall ideas that otherwise tend to get dismissed out of hand. Sure, this may not be taking itself very seriously, but rarely do we get to see Entity!Taylor in any form (probably because the challenge of taking something like that on in a more realistic context and making it believable is just too daunting), and I'm quite enjoying this thus far. Nicely done.

 

[Syqadelic]

Well, who's waiting for the inevitable Emma v. Emma combat scene?

 

[Thunderfire]

Well, who's waiting for the inevitable Emma v. Emma combat scene?

Click to shrink...

I place fifty on Emma! She's totally gonna curbstomp Emma.

 

[the DragonBard]

I actually wrote an Emma vs Emma omake for another fic.

Though is was a badass normal Emma vs canon Emma, so all that happened was that she got slapped around and told off.

 

[Doctor_Hayden]

This, this is the best thing ever! It's like someone decided to take epicness and hilarity and GodMode and slam them all together and use it write a story funnier than 22 Jump Street's Captain Cecil's Daughter gag! Everyone's reactions are just gold and the trolling is amazing. Keep up the good work.

 

[TCGM]

"See, the thing is, Empire 88, if I wanted you to all line up and do the Thriller dance..."

Taylor snapped the fingers on one of her hands, and then music started playing.

"...the only important question would be 'how many bystanders are watching with their camera phones right now'."

Sarah and Brian gaped as the entirety of Empire 88's parahuman delegation began doing exactly what Taylor said she'd make them do, Kaiser's metal armor becoming red in a passable copy of Michael Jackson's as he stood front and center.

The Endbringers were too busy calibrating the audio equipment to roll on the street laughing, but Sarah could make out the ear-to-ear smiles on their faces while they worked.

"Who knew the Empire had these moves," Sarah told nobody in particular as she continued to observe the Empire, Kaiser doing a very convincing crotch grab as part of the dance routine.

Click to shrink...

I am so very tempted to make this a non-canon Omake. Only if you give permission, though.

Side note, why is Kaiser's armor turning red? Surely Taylor didn't fillet him, right?!

I did not know how much I needed this, thanks for making my day a little brighter lol.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, same here, this is amazing.

Click to shrink...

You're welcome! You never know you need something great until you've experienced it, then you clamor for more. This is very much my reaction while writing the story too

This is great. I'm definitely looking forward to more. I don't /think/ this should be Bakuda, since Lung hasn't been defeated yet as far as I'm aware.... Coil? Not sure if Tats sent off a message or not, or otherwise he somehow was listening in. Either that or some cape battle is going on outside and something just crashed through the shop. Or it could be something completely different.

Click to shrink...

It's not Bakuda. We're too early in the timeline for that. It's been, what, three days max since The Locker.

A whole lot of people on multiple platforms have been guessing Bakuda for some reason, though.

Could be Coil. Though he really should be smart enough to, if he believes what Taylor is saying, not poke these particular bears.

Emphasis on should.

As for it being something completely different? Well...

Indeed. And now for something completely different:



As you can see, the explosion is most likely caused by a rogue Python that happened to be passing nearby a-questing for the Holy Grail when it was interrupted by an unexpected Spanish Inquisition.

Or could it could just be a car crash or something.

Click to shrink...

It is definitely something completely different xD

I appreciate that the label of "crack" allows people to try out more off-the-wall ideas that otherwise tend to get dismissed out of hand. Sure, this may not be taking itself very seriously, but rarely do we get to see Entity!Taylor in any form (probably because the challenge of taking something like that on in a more realistic context and making it believable is just too daunting), and I'm quite enjoying this thus far. Nicely done.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Crack is my favorite thing to write expressly because of the lack of required seriousness. Any amount of logic the story sticks to winds up being a bonus as it isn't expected in the first place. My comfort zone is definitely pseudo-Crack, like Fourth here.

We also don't get to see Entity!Taylor much because, by all rights, literally the only threat to her is Scion. The common consensus seems to be not liking overpowered stomp fests for some reason. Doesn't make much sense to me, but oh well.

Well, who's waiting for the inevitable Emma v. Emma combat scene?

Click to shrink...

I place fifty on Emma! She's totally gonna curbstomp Emma.

Click to shrink...

I actually wrote an Emma vs Emma omake for another fic.

Though is was a badass normal Emma vs canon Emma, so all that happened was that she got slapped around and told off.

Click to shrink...

I personally put pretty good odds on Emma winning here.

This, this is the best thing ever! It's like someone decided to take epicness and hilarity and GodMode and slam them all together and use it write a story funnier than 22 Jump Street's Captain Cecil's Daughter gag! Everyone's reactions are just gold and the trolling is amazing. Keep up the good work.

Click to shrink...

Hilarity, GodMode, and Epicness?

Yeah that's actually a fairly accurate representation of my writing themes for Fourth. Huh. Good job! And thanks!

---

Hold on to your butts people, because a huge update is incoming right now.

 

[TCGM]

Fourth
Chapter 5
Relative Gifts​

[Data]

That was one of my Shards. What the hell did it want?

And why was my head hurting so much?

Like, shit, that explosion was so powerful it knocked my body connection offline for a good few seconds and sent my mind reeling from the-

Oh fuck. An explosion!

[Data]

[Not now!]

My eyes shot wide open as I fully contemplated what the last moments of disorientation made me incapable of noticing.

First off, the ice cream shop had been hit by an explosion powerful enough to give my pseudo-Kryptonian body dizziness, disorientation and a migraine.

Actually, there's no second, that was pretty much the root cause of all the following points on my What The Fuck Just Happened?! list.

My surroundings looked like they'd been hit by a bomb. There was basically nothing left but charred masonry, burnt seats and the smell of ash-coated evaporated ice cream in the air. The stores nearby were flattened, and I could see through the pavement of the Boardwalk to the Bay below it. The few places still standing were at the very edges of the formerly pristine tourist attraction of the city.

And there were no bodies. Anywhere.

It was surprising, given the extent of the damage, but it also gave me a little bit of hope. A tiny smidgen of helpful feelings that whatever had attacked us hadn't killed innocent bystanders in doing so.

Oh come on, you really think whatever hit the ice cream shop, devastating the entire Boardwalk, wasn't after us? Four Endbringers and two gods damned Entities?! It was after us, no question.

What was under question was just how hard whatever hit us wanted to die. Again, four Endbringers and two Entities. You don't attack that unless you have a death wish.

"Taylor!" I heard, barely, as if the sound was swimming through molasses to get to me.

"Wuh?" was my highly sophisticated response. I blinked the dust that had apparently gotten into my eyes out of them and trained my gaze upon whoever was trying to talk to me.

[Data!]

Whatever Shard kept sending me data was really starting to get on my nerves.

Ziz was standing in front of me with one hand extended towards me, as if to help, and the other… clutching a still knocked out Brian.

What the hell man, an explosion isn't enough to wake you from a dead faint?

I shook my head at him in exasperation, sighing. Enough lazing about.

[DATA!]

Then I was floating in the air, hair flowing behind my back, and I called on my powers seriously for perhaps the first time.

If this was Scion, my Dad and I were gonna have a hell of a fight on our hands. Abaddon couldn't beat the Warrior in a full on battle, he just wasn't massive enough, and in an Entity slugfest that was ultimately what it came down to without some special Shard shenanigan fuckery to level the playing field-

[DATA!!!]

Ouch!

A massive migraine sprung out of nowhere. I collapsed back to the ruined ice cream shop floor, groaning in pain, and began rapidly scanning my Shards to see which one of the uppity fuckers sent me so much junk data that it overloaded the Shard literally designed to handle fucktons of the stuff.

Oh. Of course. The little shit was going to get it.

[Protection Engine Administrator, why the hell are you yelling at me?! You're on thin ice as it is!] I bellowed at it. Are Shards terminally stupid or something? I had begun to think mine were becoming more intelligent just by being exposed to me, especially Protection Engine Administrator -actually, scratch that, I was now going to call it PEA- but apparently not!

The Shard cringed at my anger, but nevertheless repeated itself. For the umpteenth time, as well. [DATA!] it sent.

What? Another Engine was activated? Why?!

And shit, [Which one?]

[Data]

Oh, just the one that can control the flow of time.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

[You'd better have a good explanation for this, PEA] I metaphorically growled at the piece of me which couldn't take a hint.

"It does," Ziz spoke up, drawing me out of my internal dialogue.

"What, not being able to stop doing shit without my say?" I asked her sarcastically.

"No," she countered by taking the hand she'd offered me and pointing over her shoulder, which now that I paid attention revealed she had her wings deployed, "that."

I looked over her shoulder and my jaw dropped.

Standing in the street outside the shop was what looked like a living explosion. In the vague shape of a humanoid.

The Ash Beast, here, in America? Hell, in Brockton Bay?!

Well that explained what happened to the Boardwalk.

Worrying about what the hell was going on given the fact it's last known location was Africa would have to come later.

Because… Ben was chewing on its head.

"What. The. Fuck," I eloquently stated.

"It gets better," Ziz said, pointing out what I'd missed on my initial glance.

Namely that Ben wasn't chewing.

Oh don't get me wrong, his mouth was around a portion of the humanoid explosion's head, and his teeth were elongated much like his previous form's had been, and he was obviously in the process of gnawing on the explosion…

But he wasn't moving. Neither was the explosion. And they were both grayscale, along with a sizeable bubble of the space around them.

All because a little girl, with pink/gray highlighted, braided pigtails, and wearing a painfully bad imitation of an Asian female school uniform (it even had a huge pink bow on the chest and a skirt!) was standing in front of the two of them, hands outstretched, biting her extended tongue.

My Shard sense designated her [Khonsou].

A Protection Engine with what looked an awful lot like the infamous Gray Boy's power on steroids, crossed with Clockblocker's stasis ability, and with some actual temporal manipulation involved.

Side note, PEA must think that Khonsou is an Asian girl's name given her absurd clothing.

I wearily turned my gaze back to Ziz and sighed. "She's the fourth one, isn't she," I grumbled.

"Fifth, Emma's fourth," she responded sweetly.

Grinning.

I screwed up my gaze at her and glared. "Believe it or not, I'm not amused by any of this."

She shrugged her wings (How? HOW do you shrug wings?!) and hefted Brian higher up her other arm.

I groaned, got up, and dragged a hand down my face. "Is everyone alright?" I asked, looking around the thoroughly ruined and surprisingly empty ice cream shop. "Where's my Dad? Sarah? Levi? Emma?"

"In order; Everyone except Brian here is safe because Abad-" she cut herself off at my abrupt glare, "sorry, Danny, shunted his avatar and them somewhere else just in time, Sarah's with him and still unconscious, Levi is mourning the loss of his tenth bowl," she lamented about her brother while pointing to the sea of tears around the familiar lizard boy sobbing on the shop's floor and cradling a singed, empty bowl of what used to be ice cream, "and Emma's fighting The Thief's current host."

I snapped my gaze to Ziz again at that last part. "I'm sorry what? The Thief?" I sputtered with surprise. "And Emma's fighting?!"

Ziz blinked at me, tilting her head in confusion. "Of course. She is the most powerful of us," she 'reasoned'.

Yes, that was apparently reason for her.

I was completely dumbfounded. Emma? Strongest of the Endbringers? My Shard senses showed that my face was most definitely mirroring my abject disbelief.

"You have not limited her to her own Shards," Ziz frankly explained.

Oh. Oh shit.

I, or rather my QA memories, knew what that meant. Emma had access to me. All of my Shards, save my core ones, she had permission to use.

That explained why I felt like I'd run a marathon, at least.

"Okay, ignoring whether I'll continue to let her do that in the future," I remarked, "where exactly is she and… The Thief?"

Ziz merely pointed down the street outside the blown up shop with one of her primary wings.

"Thanks," I said. "Keep faint boy here safe, Ziz."

Ziz took her free hand and snapped off a textbook perfect stereotypical salute.

I smiled grimly her way, lifted into the air, and channeled my Alexandria Shard into boosting my body's own physics manipulation field.

One second I was floating in front of my winged Protection Engine.

The next I was just gone.

While my body couldn't hear it, my Shards picked up the sonic crack I left as I not only broke the sound barrier, but also made it cry for its mother.

I freely admit I celebrated my first real flight.

"YEEAAAAHHHHHHHH!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I barreled down the street so fast everything else seemed frozen. A turbulence equivalent to the backwash of a fighter jet followed in my wake as I rapidly closed in on the near frozen form of Emma and…

Was that the Butcher?

But Ziz had called her The Thief's host, so...

Sooo, so! The Butcher's Shard must be called The Thief!

I can in fact do detective work while flying!

Good to know!

I was gonna kick his a-

Wait, I thought the Butcher was a guy?

I momentarily eyed the chest I'd have been jealous of before remodeling my body.

She was not a guy.

This must be a new host.

Either way, I was gonna kick her ass. Well… finish kicking it, anyways.

Man, she did not look good. Her clothes were almost entirely burnt off, her hair was singed, what looked like the remnants of a bow that had been literally frozen over was anchored to her back by ice, and there was a spreading bruise on her stomach.

Just how hard did Emma hit her?!

I slammed into her just as she was about to teleport out of Emma's reach. My fourth Protection Engine was trying to… touch her, for some reason.

Query which Shards she was trying to access annnd-

Oh, nice choice, Emma. That one was nasty. If she got hit with that, she was gonna get to feel what an induced neuromuscular overload is like.

Somewhere in my thought threads I pondered on just how blase I was taking all this.

Yes, I was an Entity with literally five Endbringers within a mile of my avatar, but I still should be even a tiny bit worried.

Oh. Emotion management Shards. Uh, thanks, Dad? Even though giving me those kinda sent mixed messages. Did he think I was emotionally unstable ooooor… what.

Whatever. Figure that out later. For now I got to watch as I dropped out of my acceleration and the Butcher's current host broke the sound barrier on her trip through one of the few still standing Boardwalk shops.

That shop then spontaneously collapsed on top of her.

Uh... whoops.

"Oh, Taylor!" Emma cheerfully greeted me, having noticed my presence. "Come to join the party?"

Oh my gods. She was actually enjoying this. Her smile widened even further when I realized that.

"Yep. This is fun! Just like back when we pretended to be capes, but better!"

I opened my mouth to rebuke her, but found nothing with which to do so. Yeah, it was the other Emma who'd done that, but this one remembered it, felt as if she had, and most importantly, didn't betray me and try to kill me via toxic locker.

"Yeah, okay," I reluctantly admitted, allowing a small smile to crack my unamused facade, "this is actually kinda cool."

"YOU'RE DEAD, BITCH!" a woman's voice screamed with rage.

I intentionally slowed the rate at which I turned my head to look at the severely battered Butcher. She took the insult as I intended it, snarled, and rushed at me with her hands extended like claws.

Then she teleported right into my face and tried to scratch my eyes out.

See, unlike Alexandria, I'm an Entity. That means I have total control over what limits are set in any given one of my Shards' interactions with the world. Including what my Earth calls the Manton Limit.

When someone punches Alexandria, she isn't hurt, but neither is the attacker. The kinetic energy is just bled off into another reality.

When I took a deeper look at my copy of Alexandria's Shard back at the Cauldron base, soon to be my base, I decided it would be rather interesting to see the effects of reflecting any incoming force upon my body.

Ironically, doing it that way was less of a violation of Newton's Third Law than how Alexandria's Shard works. In the absence of alternate reality shunting, a truly invincible object should reflect all forces applied to it. The energy has to go somewhere, and what better vector than right back where it came from?

I freely admit that the amount of satisfaction the Butcher's shocked expression gave me as she discovered my eyeballs to be tougher than diamonds when her nails and fingers pulped against them was very, very high.

"AAAAGGHHHHH!" she screamed, falling back from me and cradling her hands to her chest.

Wait a second, isn't he- she supposed to be pain and damage proof? Or does that just not work against Entities?

I shrugged. Oh well. Another thing to figure out later.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to pick on somebody bigger than you?" I asked the bleeding woman, leaning over and staring her in the face.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

I got down on my knee and rested an arm on it. I used the other arm's hand to grip her chin and tilt her head up so I could look her in the eyes.

"I'm the bigger fish," I informed her, and the Shard cluster I could sense behind her brain's trans-reality portal.

Turns out the Butcher, The Thief, was a burgeoning Entity. One that had committed far too many crimes for me to give it any leeway.

I gripped her chin tighter, almost painfully, and directed the might of my Shards across realities. Even with Queen Administrator being my core, I was taking a chance here. I'd been able to control Zion Shards because I still had their access codes, for the most part. The Eden Shards I'd encountered treated me like their owner in the first place, and something about me being Abaddon's daughter made the original Path to Victory not even try to keep me out.

The Thief? Either it was a Zion Shard gone horribly, horribly Rogue, so far off the deep end that it didn't answer to the codes I contained anymore…

Or it was a Shard from none of them. It didn't come from Eden.

I'd have remembered it if it did.

I wasn't sure which possibility was the right one, but it didn't really matter. I still had to fight this thing for control.

Or… not.

Five seconds after making contact with the Thief's host, I was the proud owner of fifteen new, deprogrammed Shards.

That wasn't a very long battle. What the hell?

The Thief was young, very young (as an Entity anyways), and only amounted to fifteen shards. I now had over sixty, and I was Queen Administrator. It was my true self.

Even so, five seconds?!

I looked deep within myself, examined the code with which I had just taken fifteen Shards over, and blanched.

My consciousness resided in a Shard literally designed to control, command, and as I just discovered, usurp other Shards.

Just like the virus Shard my Dad made to take her out, I was Eden's superweapon.

Shit.

Wait a second, wasn't my Shard created by Zion?

This was actually kinda important. I tuned out the entire rest of the universe and dove even deeper into myself than I'd done before.

After doing the mental equivalent of dissociation, I found the answer. It was buried so far inside me that I'd have never found it if I wasn't looking. And no other Shard, Entity, or otherwise would've been able to find it. The fact I was even capable of thinking of myself as Eden's Superweapon was a glitch due to my human mind.

Queen Administrator was originally Eden's. Or, well, [The Thinker]'s, but whatever let me understand Shardspeak insisted on calling her Eden, thus why I referred to her as such most of the time.

That fact was hidden behind a network of fake Entity signatures almost impossibly dense. I didn't know why Eden made my core Shard tell everyone, including itself, that Zion was it's creator, but the deception was part of me, and more importantly, was capable of hiding parts of me from me. I had a Master effect that worked on me built in.

I couldn't let that stand. But I was also kinda busy at the moment, so...

Compartmentalize it Taylor, I coached myself, attempting to breathe smoothly and not with sheer terror at the implications of my new discoveries, deal with it later.

It worked. Sort of. I could focus on other things, at least.

Like the fact that each of my new Shards had a human personality stored inside of it.

Interesting. I'd have to investigate them later. I kind of had other problems going on.

Namely the living explosion frozen in time at the epicenter of what amounted to a crater in the middle of the Boardwalk.

I waved a hand at the host of The Thief's primary Shard for appearance's sake, utilizing my matter manipulation Shard to repair her fingers. She hissed at the sudden lack of pain from her extremities and locked eyes with me from her position on the ground.

A huge smile was on her face and tears streamed down her cheeks. "Thank you," she whispered. "The-the voices are gone."

I shook my head at her. "Not gone, just not crazy anymore," I refuted. "And under new management." I bent down again and held her cheek, this time softly, attempting to comfort her. "We will need to talk later, but for now, just rest."

The terror of Boston nodded rapidly and allowed her sobbing to take hold of her as she curled up into the fetal position on the ground.

"Emma," I called to my sister, "please take her home, then come back."

"Okay Taylor!" Emma happily followed my request. She stepped up to the trembling form of The Thief's host, picked her up as if she was as heavy as a pillow, then stepped into an orange portal she directed my Doormaker Shard to open between the Boardwalk and my house.

The portal closed behind them.

I waited for a minute or so, but Emma didn't return.

[Emma?] I sent her.

[Yeah?] she replied.

[You going to come back?]

[In a little bit. I need to get Quarrel situated.]

Quarrel, huh? That has to be a cape name. [Ah,] I sent back, [carry on.]

[Will do!]

Okay, so Emma was busy. That was fine. I had to go see a pink haired Protection Engine about a living explosion anyways.

Breaking the sound barrier the second time was just as much fun.
"WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

---

I came out of what I labeled superspeed right next to my newest Protection Engine.

My earlier assessment of her stature as 'little' was certainly accurate. I was a tall girl, yes, but she barely came up to my stomach. Gods, she even looked a little shorter than Brockton Bay's space warping ward, Vista.

I metaphorically stared at PEA once more, making the Shard fidget. Metaphorically. I think. Either way, Khonsou was suspiciously cute.

Before I could say anything to her, her head snapped straight to me and she grinned widely. "Hai! Konichiwa, Taylor-senpai!" Khonsou said happily.

What.

I blinked, rubbed my ears, and blinked again.

Nope. I had indeed heard what I had thought I'd heard. In an absurdly adorable, slightly Japanese accented voice.

[Laying it on a little thick, PEA,] I sent The Shard responsible for all of this.

The Shard sent the Shardspeak equivalent of a smug grin.

"You're not Japanese. Why are you talking like that?" I grumbled, only somewhat complaining. She was just… so, so cute! There's not many other ways to describe the feeling of needing to coo over her incessantly that was growing in my chest- dammit, that was probably the point of her appearance in the first place!

She looked confused. "I- I am!" she insisted.

"You're a Protection Engine. Technically you were just born. Here," I pointed out. "In America."

Not that there aren't any Japanese people born in America. The ABB's membership proved otherwise even if common sense didn't. We had taken on a whole lot of refugees when Levi sunk Kyushu after all.

Oh hey there, guilt over the actions of my probable relatives. I wondered where you'd gone!

In a moment, all the cheery mood disappeared from Khonsou's face. She threw a mask of indifference over her abrupt sadness a moment later, but I still saw it. The young girl, both in appearances and literally, looked down at the ground. Her long pigtails drooped. "H-Hai, Taylor-senpai." Her tone sounded incredibly defeated.

Gods damn it.

I felt like I'd just kicked a puppy.

"Hey, hey, I didn't mean anything by what I said, okay?" I tried to reassure her. I even floated closer to Khonsou and wrapped her up in a tentative hug. No matter how much I was averse to hugs after my two years of torment, this little girl needed one, and I had to repay her for my disbelief in her hurting her somehow.

Khonsou froze up when I embraced her. She looked up at me with a shocked, hopeful expression. This allowed me to see the tears that had started falling down her face.

Damn it. Now I felt even more guilty. What the hell does senpai even mean? More experienced close friend/family member? I think? As someone she apparently respected, I'd just stomped on her sense of self with my first couple of sentences. All because I was mad at one of my shards.

That wasn't this little girl's fault. None of any of this was her fault. She hadn't asked to be called into being.

Technically it was my fault.

And then I went and acted like- gods, a little like the Evil Emma towards her.

My actions, my words, made my heart scream at me.

That, more than anything else, really hammered home to me just what these… people were. They weren't Endbringers anymore. Whatever my Shard did, it turned them into people. Especially for Emma and Khonsou, who didn't exist before I took over control of them. Even Emma was better off than Khonsou.

At least she had memories of being a human girl.

"I'm sorry, Khonsou," I apologized, heartfully and truthfully. I absentmindedly moved a hand up to her head to start running my fingers through her hair. "You can be Japanese if you want to be."

Her breath hitched and she leaned into my embrace further with a sob of obvious relief. She snuggled into my chest like a young child who needed comfort from their mother. "A-arig-gato, T-Taylor-s-senp-pai!" she stuttered through her sobs.

Even with the sobbing, she seemed to be happy now. The cheery tone to her voice was back.

I never wanted to hear that lack of cheer from her ever again. I never wanted to see her cry again.

That's when I realized what I'd been feeling all along, ever since I'd learned of her existence.

In a way? She was my daughter. And I had the feelings to match.

Oof. As if being a teen mom wasn't difficult enough, I also had to add Entity and Protection Engine bullshit into the equation.

Case in point, even as we embraced and I comforted Khonsou, her hands were still splayed out and controlling the bubble of stopped time around Ash Beast and Ben.

"How we gonna handle this, Khonny?" I gently asked her. I'd thought that nickname up on the spot, but it seemed good enough.

From the way her young face lit up brilliantly and her crying abruptly stopped, she loved it. "I can keep them like this until the local star goes supernova, T-Taylor-senpai. But I don't think you want that," she sniffled.

I choked on air for a couple of seconds. "No," I sputtered, "no, Khonny. I'd rather handle Ash Beast and repair the Boardwalk before that time."

She nodded rapidly, her pigtails flying. "You can walk through it!" she revealed to me. Then Khonsou gained a sly grin and blushed, embarrassed. That grin sent my heart soaring with joy, especially when I compared it to the tear tracks starting to dissipate from her cheeks. "Ben normally can too, but I'm pranking him," she almost whispered, ducking her head to avoid looking at me.

I admit it. I giggled. Khonsou was just so damn cute! On purpose, yeah, but that made it no less effective, especially on me. "It's okay Khonny. I'm sure your… big brother, will get you back for this." I stated that as nonchalant as I could while I disengaged my arms from around her and stood back up.

"Eep!" she squeaked, a look of fear dawning on her face as she processed just how many ways a dynakinetic had to counter prank her.

I snorted, shook my head, then focused.

I needed a way to get close to Ash Beast without dying. Or, well, letting my avatar body die.

I was still kinda attached to it.

I could just repeat my earlier trick I used to go superspeed. Beef my physics manipulation field up with my Alexandria Shard. Only this time, focus on defense instead of speed.

Why reinvent a perfectly functioning wheel?

I mentally moved the 'slider', for lack of a better term, of that Shard over to maximum defense.

"Okay, I'm ready," I told Khonsou. That snapped her out of her Ben-flavored daymare. She'd most likely been imagining all the things he'd do to her.

...

Not in that way, jeez! He's her brother!

Or her uncle. Or… something.

I hadn't quite decided exactly what our relationship was, so I couldn't nail down his title in relation to little Khonsou.

"H-Hai!" she nodded rapidly. "Go on in!"

And so I waded into the field of paused time.

The experience was… surreal.

As I stepped through the threshold of the gray bubble of paused time, the entire world lost its color. In fact the only color left was me. There was this kind of... dark gray haze around my body, bordering me just above where my physics manipulation field manifested.

Okay. I could survive in a Gray Boy time bubble created by an Endbringer.

I kind of figured I could, but getting confirmation on big things like this is always helpful.

Shaking my thoughts from my head, I started walking towards the still frozen forms of Ben and Ash Beast. As I approached I reached out with my Shard senses and looked at the Ash Beast.

Then I looked through it.

I found a Shard sitting on a destroyed world. the trademark Maelstrom of energy that followed the ash Beast around Africa had enveloped the entire planet. There was nothing left on the surface but smooth, sizzling lava.

And in the middle of it all, cool as a cucumber, was a mass of flesh and biocrystal almost as big as me.

Not Entity me, no one Shard can ever get that big, but Ash Beast's was almost as big as Queen Administrator.

Whoo boy. This was going to be a fun one.

I reached out to the Shard and established connections. I was prepared for a fight, now that I knew I could actually pull one off after my encounter with and subsequent taking over of The Thief, and I could feel the code that allowed me to do this to Shards ready to essentially hack into it.

I was still pretty new at this, which is why it took me several seconds to realize I didn't need to do any of that.

Ash Beast's Shard was one of Zion's.

I let out a breath of relief and transmitted my command codes. it immediately acknowledged me as it's administrator.

Then it told me its name. Or, at least the translation of the name whatever let me understand Shardspeak performed of its name.

[Experimental Zero Point Extractor: Query Instructions] it sent me.

I had no idea what zero point was but it sounded very important.

[Query: Function] I sent it back.

[Data] was the immediate response.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Uh.

Welp.

I guess my energy needs were solved for the foreseeable future.

Zero Point Extraction. Otherwise known as pulling energy straight out of the quantum foam of the universe.

Every single part of me wanted that Shard and wanted it badly. I wanted it in me yesterday, and I didn't care how much that sounded like an innuendo because I want that Shard holy shit!!!

I barely had the presence of mind to command the Shard that it needed to disconnect from its host non-lethally. But command it to disconnect I did.

It obeyed my commands without question, severing its link with its hosts' Corona Pollentia and Gemma. Khonsou must have sensed the disconnection because the gray bubble of paused time around me vanished.

The living explosion being chewed on by Ben drew into itself, then popped with a slight poof of smoke. Out of that cloud of smoke a dark-skinned boy fell.

Ben didn't need me to tell him. He retracted his teeth and caught the boy in his strong arms.

Right. Ash Beast was a little kid.

I wasn't even going to question it.

What I was going to do was integrate this new Shard with my core shards, and I was going to do it right then.

One command to The Shard to slip into my root reality. a pass over it with several of my matter cleansing shards to clean it up. I didn't want any lava getting on me. And then?

I connected to it. Physically.

It felt like I'd stuck my tongue in a power outlet.

"WOOOAAAAAH!" I shouted. I rose into the air, clenched my fists, and grinned.

I didn't even know how starved for energy I'd been before. But now I didn't just feel full, I felt awesome.

Even still, I managed to get over the high the raw amounts of energy rushing through my true body laid upon me. I shook my head side-to-side, breathed in and out, Andre adjusted my sensitivity to energy.

The high dimmed. I still felt great, but I wasn't on a power trip anymore.

"You are fine, correct?" Ben asked me, walking up to me as I landed back on the ground.

I nodded to him and smiled. "Yeah. Was just... getting used to the rush," I explained.

He, surprisingly, nodded back knowingly. "It does indeed induce a most pleasurable feeling."

I raise my eyebrows and blinked at him. Huh. I guess there was a reason he targeted nuclear power plants before, and it wasn't just for Conflict.

I felt I would be learning many surprising things about my tall, dark Protection Engine in the future.

[Emma,] I called out to my sister, [I just depowered Ash Beast. Would you come get him and take him back to the house to?]

[Sure!] she sent back.

Khonsou walked up to us, or rather skipped up, just as an orange Doormaker portal popped open next to her. "We did it, Taylor-senpai!" she cheered, raising her hand for a high five.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and gave her it.

What? She was one step away from doing puppy eyes if I didn't do it, and I wanted to be able to look at her without letting out actual stereotypical female coos as I did.

Ben just grinned at Khonsou. he didn't say a single word. Just. Grinned.

The pink haired little girl audibly gulped.

Emma stepped out of the portal and hugged me before I could interfere in their growing staring contest. "Taylor!" she exclaimed, "there was a note in Quarrel's armpit for you!"

I slightly withdrew from my sister and stared her dead in the eyes, my mouth dropped.

She couldn't possibly have said what I just thought I heard.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird too, but it had your name on it," she Shrugged, hand thing a folded piece of what looks like printer paper to me.

I took it from her, still staring at her warily, slowly bringing my arm back to my body.

Emma shrugged again, flit over to Khonsou faster than I could blink, and squeezed her into a tight hug. "OMG you're so CUTE!" she squealed.

I was starting to think Path to Victory was full of crap when it said I would eventually be immune to bullshit.

I shook my head, breathes in and out again, looked at the folded piece of paper.

It had my name on it alright. In high quality ink.

Kinda wishing this was a dream, I proceeded to slowly unfold the mysterious note.

"From Auntie Path to Victory. She says Happy Birthday, Christmas, and all the other missed holidays. Please get her to stop annoying me. -Contessa," I read off under my breath, my eyebrows climbing higher and higher as each word filtered across my consciousness.

...What?

No, seriously. What?!

You know what? Nope. I am not up to dealing with this right now, I thought resolutely. I folded the note up and shoved it in one of the pockets of my jeans. Out of sight, out of mind, until I could deal with the ramifications of the high levels of bullshit that note contained.

Emma and Khonsou cuddled for a while, then she took the boy who was previously the Ash Beast from Ben and portaled home.

Just in time for Murphy to laugh at me.

"Unknown Capes!" A strong, leader-type male voice boomed down the destroyed Boardwalk, "You are under arrest for destruction of private property and murder. Put your hands up where we can see them."

I turned to look down the ruined street. Who the hell?

Oh.

---

The entire Brockton Bay Protectorate was arrayed at the end of the Boardwalk. Armsmaster was in the lead, flanked by Miss Militia and Dauntless. Battery, Assault, and Velocity were next to them.

The Wards weren't present, though. Odd.

Anyways, they were here to… arrest... me. And my Protection Engines.

I looked around at the two people next to me. Two Endbringers.

Levi was over by Ziz in the destroyed ice cream shop.

Four Endbringers.

And I was an Entity.

I admit, I struggled very hard not to laugh.

Oh well, time to make a show of it. I had to make sure they took me and my… 'hero' team seriously. I also needed to hammer home just who three members of my team were, and that they were under new management.

And, apparently, get the message across that no, you do not try to arrest four Endbringers and a gods damned Entity!

Emma portaled in next to me, having sensed my irritation. "Huh. Look at that," she commented.

I grinned at her, then Ben, and finally Khonsou. "Let's have some fun with this."

Ben nodded. Emma smiled.

Khonsou literally lept into the air, pumped her fists, and cried out with joy.

Fucking hell why did she have to make everything she did cute?!

Shaking my head to clear the impending cute overload, I lifted into the air. I proceeded to fly up above the Protectorate Capes and crossed my arms, staring down at them. I beckoned my Protection Engines to join me. How exactly they arrived I left up to them, though.

Turns out they have senses of humor.

Ben erupted out of the asphalt under me. He was glowing red hot from the Earth's mantle. He'd made a quick detour there from the street behind us literally just for his entrance. Dude had dedication for his art, that's for sure.

The assembled capes tensed up. Miss Militia changed her gun out for something much bigger. It looked like it could launch missiles. Cruise missiles. I was chalking up her ability to even hold the thing to Shard bullshit.

Meanwhile, I was scanning all their Shards and taking data copies to grow actual Shards for later. Including Battery.

Huh, another Cauldron cape. Her Shard was a lot like Legend's though, pretty much working fine, versus something like Eidolon's. I shivered just remembering the feeling of what Cauldron had done to it.

Then Levi surfed into place beside Ben on a wave he summoned out of the nearby Bay, clutching his trident. His eyes glowed green. His body trailed mist behind it, a stylish application of his normal water echo.

Ziz was next. She flew up next to me in the air, her full hundreds of wings deployed and with three concentric circles of scorched building debris orbiting her. She smiled cheerfully at the Protectorate.

I guess it didn't really sink in as to just who they were facing until Troll Bird showed up. Now the capes were totally frozen in fear.

"Fuck me," Assault swore. "All three?"

Emma flew up beside me on my other side. Her hair was flowing, just like mine, and clenched fists were hanging by her sides. She began to channel my Legend Shard and an aura of orange light formed around her body.

The capes' eyes, every single one of them, went wide, and many faces drained of blood. To them? There was now a Fourth Endbringer. I don't think they'd even processed my presence or what it could mean yet.

"Double fuck," Velocity added on to Assault's earlier comment.

Ziz relayed an entertaining idea from her precog, which I agreed with wholeheartedly. We were already trolling the Protectorate. I was down to take it a step further, even adding my own segment.

"You gonna fight us?" I directly asked Armsmaster five seconds before he'd work up the nerve to ask me the same thing, grinning wide. "Because I don't think I can take the person whose logo is on my underwear seriously."

Dead.

Fucking.

Silence.

Armsmaster's jaw was totally dropped.

Assault looked like he was torn between cowering in terror and laughing his ass off. Even Miss Militia was having trouble keeping a straight face. Poor Dauntless looked like his brain had evacuated the premises. Velocity had his face in his hand.

Revealing I owned Armsmaster brand panties?

Some mild embarrassment with a side of mortification.

Making sure that the first words from the new controller of the Endbringers, words that would be relayed, repeated, and witnessed for what is likely the foreseeable future of humanity, words that would get movies made about them, trolled the eternally living shit out of the local Protectorate leader?

Priceless.

Ziz held a wing out to me and I fist bumped it.

[Worth. It!]

[Agreed] came a chorus of four voices.

Wait, where's Khonsou?

Then it all came crashing down when our sixth party member showed up.

The temporal 'magical girl' ran up behind Ben and Levi, panting. She was bent over with her hands on her knees. "Coulda… waited… for me!" she huffed out. "Ben-san!"

"You may consider yourself counter pranked, young sister," Ben spoke calmly in that velvety voice of his.

And there went any semblance of the intimidation we'd just spent literal minutes setting up.

Ziz tossed a spare piece of masonry at the pink haired menace. It whacked her on the head.

"Oww!" she complained, rubbing the impact zone. She shot an angry glare at my winged Friendbringer. "What was that for?!"

Ziz tossed one at Ben too for good measure. He just grunted at the impact, making no other indications that he'd even noticed.

Assault lost the battle with his laughter, and despite the attempts at interference from his wife Battery, collapsed. He rolled around clutching his stomach as his cackling echoed through the ruined Boardwalk.

"Gods damn it, you two," I lamented, banging my fist against my forehead.