TCGM's Plot Bunny Vault

[TCGM]

Tech Support
Plot Bunny
Where​

I woke up on a hard surface. I couldn't see much at first. Just the asphalt under my face, squishing my nose, and the darkness in my peripheral vision. It took a few moments for my brain to resume normal operations.

When it did I groaned. Loudly. What the hell hit me? I felt like it must have been a rather large mountain. I gathered my strength and positioned my arms so that my hands were pressed against the asphalt.

I pushed.

My body rose under protest. Whatever had done this to me, whatever sequence of events had conspired to bring me to wherever the hell I was, left me with a bone deep weariness so powerful all I wanted to do was lay down again. But I didn't know where I was or what time it was, nor how long I'd been wherever I was, so my body's complaints had to take a back seat to more important things like possible danger or even enemy actors.

Thankfully once I got to my feet, I found I was in a completely deserted space between two buildings. An alley, strewn with trash and various unspeakable organic residues. A couple dumpsters provided the red cherry on top of the shit sandwich that was my surroundings.

I chuckled to myself. Waking up in an abandoned, empty alley, surrounded by refuse. It was comically stereotypical.

Right, first things first, check myself. Baggy but decent clothing, check. Any injuries? Nope, just the weariness. That's good. Nothing too bad could have befallen me. Any technology on me? Nope, literally only have my shirt, shoes, and pants. Socks present, if frayed, but no underwear. No wallet.

A puddle on the ground allowed me to check my appearance in the half-moonlight, revealing that I was me. Unshaven, scruffy looking me, but still me. No age or appearance changes, which preliminarily ruled out a few of the more unlikely scenarios I was considering might have befallen me to wake up in such blatantly obvious a cosmic joke as the alley.

I stumbled about trying to get my bearings. No sense shambling out of the alley looking homeless and drunk. Just with one of them I was going to have a problem. I didn't know exactly what city I was in, but it was most definitely a city, judging by the tops of skyscrapers I could see reaching above the buildings on either side of the alley. The building on the other side of the street hadn't been that helpful in discerning my location. It was a simple coffee shop. What I could see of the lobby through the clear glass windows showed lights on and only a couple of people there. One had something that looked like a newspaper in front of him, but I was too far away to see any details. It was just a slightly rectangular light gray paper shape on the surface of a table.

It took me a few minutes, give or take, for my legs to get with the program. The weariness was slowly wearing off. It would probably be gone by morning, if my guess as to the time of night was accurate, but I didn't have that long. Even in the best cities in the world, you do not stick around in a deserted alley by yourself in the dead of night, no matter how safe you feel.

Not even in Canada.

So I brushed myself off as well as I could, checked to make sure I didn't have anything terrible on my face from the asphalt, tested my walking coordination once more, and left the alley.

Even across the street I still couldn't see what was on the newspaper. It was turned at just the right angle so everything became incomprehensible to my hindbrain, the part which processes language. I shrugged and turned my attention to the rest of the city. Or what I could see of it, anyways. The ends of whatever street I was on terminated in crossroads without continuing. One end had an abnormally tall skyscraper taking up most of the visible space. It had a gigantic sign over the entrance of what appeared to be some kind of emergency room rotunda you'd see at a hospital.

It was the name on that sign that stopped my heart from beating for a good three seconds.

"Medhall?!" I asked myself, disbelief suffusing my entire being.

I stood stock still on the sidewalk, staring down the sign like I could will it to be different. The glowing, healthy-blood-red Norse looking letters didn't change.

I knew that name.

Lots of my friends knew that name.

I also knew that no such organization existed. Anywhere on Earth.

I knew that for a fact given I'd done a few searches for it just for shits and giggles. No organization, corporation, company, or even fan group used that name.

Son of a BITCH.

I called up the map of this city, provided my hunch was correct and this city was indeed the one I believed it to be, from my memory. Photographic memory is incredibly helpful when you suddenly find yourself in another frakking universe. If that was the Medhall building, and it seemed to be, then if I followed this street away from it I should find a place where I could look out into the bay which would be there, if my hunch was correct. And if it was, my life in the very near future was going to be a lot more interesting.

And by interesting, I mean frak my life!

I took off at my top speed, stunted as it was by my weariness, down the sidewalk. Nobody was outside at this time of night. That was something I was immensely thankful for. I wasn't remotely interested in getting leered at, or worse, stopped, because I happened to fit the bill for 'homeless poor person'.

No matter how accurate that happened to be at the moment.

It was quite a few blocks till the other end of the street. I had been much closer to the Medhall building than anywhere else. Regardless of the distance I booked it like a man possessed, both hoping and fearing that I might be right, that somehow I had been plopped into the city most synonymous with a Powder Keg this side of the multiverse.

In a universe that was supposed to be just a story.

Just a bunch of thoughts from a wild man with a bow.

I was seeing a distinct lack of bowmen, and a metric shitton of real.

I eventually made it to the end of the street. I looked left first. I knew in my heart that what I was seeking would be to the right, but I was going to hold on to my denial as long as I conceivably could.

Nothing but a street leading further on into what looked like a business district, with shops and office buildings. Downtown, my mental map supplied. It made sense; that's where Medhall was supposed to be. If you continued that way through several buildings and blocks, The Towers apartment complex would sit. One of which belonged to Kayden Russell, or would in the near future, depending on when I was in the timeline.

I gulped and slowly turned my head to the right. It was a straight shot across the tops of the buildings lower down the slight hill the city resided on out to the dark, still waters of the bay. And shining like a light in the darkness, a star in the night sky, was an oil rig with a glowing forcefield around it.

The Rig. The Protectorate's headquarters in Brockton Bay.

Brockton Bay, the city I was standing in.

No doubt to it.

I'm not ashamed to admit I hyperventilated.

 

[TCGM]

Junior
Plot Bunny
Deviation​

"Teal'c!" Samantha Carter cried out, looking over the ash black ground that previously hosted a meeting of the Rebel Jaffa. They'd been searching for survivors for a while now. So far all they encountered were dead.

Sam just hoped her teammate, her brother in all but blood, was still alive.

"Major!" reached her ears and she whirled her head to the speaker.

"Found something?" she cried out.

"It's Teal'c, ma'am," the marine replied.

Sam was standing beside him so quickly one would think she teleported. "Teal'c!" she cried out, seeing the prone figure of her friend.

Bra'tac and Teal'c were lying almost motionless on the ground, arms under each other's shoulders. Both men barely breathed, so light their chests did not rise.

"Medic!" Sam cried out, "We need a medic over here!"

One search team was in range of her voice and heard her, relaying her message to the nearest Medic. Twenty seconds later, the young male healer had arrived and was checking the Jaffa.

"Bra'tac's symbiote is missing, major," he told Sam, "and Teal'c's looks like it won't survive the next hour. I think… I think they've been passing it back and forth."

"Oh God," Sam gasped, falling to her knees. She turned to look at the medic, none of the three people noticing the slowly opening pouch of Teal'c.

"How long have they got?" she asked.

The medic shook his head. "I don't know how long they've been like this, Major. A symbiote isn't capable of sustaining two Jaffa. I'd give them an hour, two tops, without a replacement. Dr. Frasier might be able to extend that prognosis. Long enough to call the Tok'ra, get these two on Tretonin."

Sam nodded at his explanation, turning to glare at the marine. "Get to the Gate. Dial SGC and get medical teams. We're going to bring them home."

Just as the marine was about to salute her in acknowledgment, several things happened. A loud squeal was heard from Teal'c, the medic's eyes went wide in fright, and Sam heard Daniel speak to her.

Good luck, Sam.

A sharp pain erupted at the back of her neck, she screamed, and blackness took her.

--LB--

Light, far too bright for her liking, hit her full on with no regard for her eyes. Blinking slowly, Sam tried to raise her hand to her head to take care of her massive headache.

The clank of chains and her hand decidedly not moving kicked her brain into gear. Her eyes snapped wide open and she looked around in a panic, getting her bearings. She was clothed in white hospital garb and strapped down to a rather uncomfortable table. The walls were dark gray, one wall with a light gray metal door set in it. The standard military number on the door clued her in to the fact that she was in the SGC.

More specifically, an isolation room.

Sam groaned at her location, collapsing onto the table. Her luck had apparently struck again. She probably picked up some disease when they went to rescue Teal'c, and…

Wait.

Suddenly the last events before she blacked out slammed into her mind and she knew with a horrified certainty why she was strapped down in an isolation room. She began to panic, hyperventilating at her realization.

She was a host.

"Sam?" her father's voice rang out, snapping her attention to the observation room. She happened to be laying facing directly towards it.

Jacob Carter was standing there in Tok'ra garb with his hand on the microphone. Seeing his daughter's attention was on him, he smiled and spoke to comfort her. "Don't worry Sam, we're going to get it out of you."

She smiled and cried happy tears, giving her father a nod. The rest of her team, and a not dead looking Teal'c, were next to Jacob. Hammond was gazing at her with pity.

Teal'c moved to the microphone, taking it graciously from her father. "This is my doing, Samantha Carter," he said, tone full of apology. '"It is my Prim'ta which has invaded your body."

His voice and facial expression spoke volumes about how sorry he was, so Sam just smiled and nodded, tears still streaming down her face. "Why… why am I in control?" she asked, getting two replies. One she expected.

"We don't know, Sam," Jacob said, gripping the microphone like he would rip it off. With Selmak boosting his strength, that was entirely possible. "We think it's too weak from keeping Teal'c and Bra'tac alive to take you over."

The second? Not so much.

Or maybe, just maybe, it's because I hate what I am and I don't want to? came a deep voice in her head.

Her eyes shot wide open and her breathing almost stopped.

"Sam?" Jacob asked, concerned.

Her brain almost shut down completely for several seconds as she came to terms with what had happened to her. When she finally thought back at the voice, her tone was timid. Wh… what?

The feeling of an eye roll suffused her. I detest what I am, Samantha. Had you not been close enough for my instincts to take over, I would have gladly died in my father's pouch, came the biting reply.

Sam blinked several times, drawing more concern from her overseers. Jack took the microphone and gently asked, "Sam? What's happening?"

Shaking her head at the absurdity of the situation, she answered shakily. "I'm talking to Junior."

The eyes of everyone in the observation room shot wide open, none more so than Teal'c and Jacob's.

"You converse with my symbiote?" Teal'c asked after several seconds.

Tell him his pouch was too small, the symbiote told Sam.

She was confused. Why aren't you taking me over?

Another eye roll. I hate what I am. What part of that have you not gotten yet? Junior repeated with a huff. Plus, I'm not too keen on taking part in another wholesome Jolinar experience. What a fiasco. No siree, I'm saying exactly bupkis. Plus having you drive is so much easier. Really, I don't get my relatives' thought process. Talking control is so much work, keeping it even more so. Just let the host do it, honestly! Even if you're going to do the whole 'gods' bit, taxis are nice things!

The words and phrasing Junior used were so off character for a symbiote Sam couldn't help but smirk slightly. And it had a point about Jolinar. You sound like Jack.

I've been listening to him for years, so yeah, of course I do, came the reply. Plus he's not the only one who snarks, Sammy.

I just got snarked at and called Sammy by my teammate's Goa'uld hating previous symbiote, Sam summarized, more to herself than to Junior.

It, of course, commented.

Yep.

"Sam!" Jacob yelled, causing his daughter to jump on surprise. She glared at him for interrupting her conversation.

"I'm trying to talk, Dad!" she shot back.

Of all the things that could have come out of his possessed daughter's mouth, that wasn't what anyone in the observation room was expecting.

"Major?" Hammond asked curtly.

Sam blushed and lowered her head slightly. "Sorry. Junior is extremely talkative."

Junior huffed at her statement. Spend years in a pouch, most of your life in fact, with nobody to talk to while hating your entire existence and then see how much you chatter when you finally can talk to someone, it grumbled.

Jacob stared at her with confusion. "Sam, are you telling me you're actually talking to Teal'c's symbiote?"

She nodded as confirmation. "Junior wanted me to tell Teal'c his pouch was too small," she quietly said. "And boring, apparently. And uh, it hates the Goa'uld?"

Silence reigned as the observers processed that, dumbfounded looks on their faces. That was apparently the goal given how much Junior was laughing in her head.

--CB--

"Let me get this straight: Junior is a girl?" Jack asked in disbelief.

Sam sighed at the same time her symbiote did. "No Colonel. I'm a woman, so the symbiote is a woman. They're genderless," she explained again.

Jacob piped up to add to her point. "Selmak was with Saroosh for almost a century. She was a woman that entire time, but is slowly becoming a guy as she lives in me," he said. "I still get some… odd urges when I see males because of her, but they're decreasing."

Jack swiveled his head to stare at Jacob in disbelief. "You like guys?"

The old general sighed. "Yes Jack, though hopefully that will wear off with time."

The Colonel blinked. "Even me?"

Jacob scowled and turned his head away.

SG-1, Jacob, and General Hammond were sitting in the briefing room. After having explained Junior's stance on the Goa'uld, and Teal'c gazing into Sam's eyes after demanding Junior come to the fore (something she didn't like in the slightest, having given Sam her body back almost instantly after Teal'c nodded in approval), most of the base was cautiously optimistic that the symbiote that had taken Major Carter wasn't evil.

Sam was of a differing opinion. Junior may not have been evil in the Goa'uld sense, but she was certainly very much like Jack.

I bet you're pretty happy you're not into women because of me, she commented.

Sam just sighed and dropped her head down into her crossed arms. She was exhausted, and definitely not up to a snark-a-thon with Junior at the moment. You're not my first symbiote, Junior.

Yeah, but Jolinar had a stick up her rear the size of a...

Sam mentally tuned out the ranting of her passenger with a wince, something the rest of the briefing room noticed.

"Is something wrong, Major?" Hammond asked.

She shook her head and stared down at the table with a long suffering sigh. "No sir."

Hammond eyed her for several more seconds before continuing with the briefing.

Sam was trying to pay attention, actually succeeding for a few minutes until a loud gasp rang out in her head. Sam! Junior said, trying to get her attention.

Sam pointedly ignored her.

Oh no you don't. I can be very annoying.

Sam only grunted slightly and continued to listen to Hammond.

Alright, you asked for it.

Suddenly a very loud rock song began playing in her head, with Junior singing along.

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

Sam's eyes shot wide open and she gasped. Don't you dare!

EVERYTHING IS COOL WHEN YOU'RE PART OF A TEAM!

She growled, struggling to hear herself think.

EVERYTHING IS AWESOME!

Sam clutched the sides of her head, trying to drown out the obnoxious music.

WHEN YOU'RE LIVING YOUR DREAM!

STOP! Sam cried out, but Junior didn't acknowledge her.

PLANES, CARS, BOATS! THEY'RE AWESOME!

"SHUT UP!" Sam screamed at her symbiote. The problem was, she did this out loud.

Everyone at the table, even Jonas, were gazing at her in horrified silence.

About time. Listen, I've got something pretty important to tell you, Junior said.

Sam however was mortified at what she had just done.

"Sam?" Jacob asked, flicking his eyes between her and Hammond, who was the most taken aback.

Sam hung her head and apologized again. "Sorry, sir. Junior started singing."

Hammond's only reaction was a quirked eyebrow. "Singing, Major?"

She pursed her lips. "Yes," came her squeak. She felt like a kid called to the principal's office.

Hammond sighed and looked at her hard. "Junior, as much as you may feel like speaking to Major Carter, she is needed at this briefing. Your conditions for staying in her body to heal were not to take over her life. Being disruptive and causing her to react is just as bad, given she is a member of our military," he scolded.

Silence was their reply for several seconds before Junior meekly took control of Sam's vocal cords and spoke. "Okay. Sorry," she said, withdrawing afterwards.

Hammond sent a questioning glance at Sam. She nodded. "Junior's quiet."

"Then we can get back to this briefing," he said, continuing on.

Despite Hammond's clear dismissal of her actions, Sam still felt chastised. She was silent the entire rest of the briefing, not even bringing up the nebula she wanted to study.

--CB--

It was several hours later before Junior said anything to her. In fact the symbiote seemed to have withdrawn from her mind almost entirely the whole day, leaving Sam with an odd sense of loneliness. So when Junior finally did say something, Sam almost jumped for joy.

I'm sorry Sam, Junior apologized, feelings of sorrow washing over Sam.

Sam huffed, trying to hide her own internal state. Sorry for what?

The feeling of narrowed eyes was sent to her before Junior responded. For interrupting your briefing, and if your memories are any indication, almost getting you kicked out of the military, she explained.

Sam grimaced, sending her displeased feelings at Junior. Yeah, that wasn't very smart. Remember, whatever happens to me happens to you too.

Junior was silent for several seconds. Even if that was not the case, it shouldn't matter. I'm a guest in your body. You take precedence.

Damn right I do, Sam said, words coated with venom.

I'm trying to apologize, Sam! Junior said, sounding hurt.

Well maybe you shouldn't have taken me as a host in the first place! Sam screamed in response, before drawing her hands to her mouth in shock at her own words.

… I see. So that's how you feel, Junior stated, a dead quality to her tone.

No Junior, I didn't mean that… Sam insisted.

You forget, Samantha, that I am connected to your mind. Even if you are okay with me on a conscious level, your subconscious states otherwise, Junior growled. Whatever. I was trying to get along with you, try and make you as comfortable with me as possible. Guess that can't happen now.

Those words sent dread into Sam's heart. What… what are you going to do?

Not what you fear, Junior said, knowing exactly where her host's mind had jumped to at her words. I'll never take you over, no matter how much you... hate me, she choked on her words here. Anyways since I'm clearly not wanted, I'll just withdraw. You can have your life, Sam, and once I'm healed I'll just leave. Probably go die in a hole somewhere on Earth. Then you can have your perfect existence back. Her words were coated with so much venom Sam almost felt it dripping down her body.

Junior, Sam started to say, but was cut off.

No, Sam. You've made your position perfectly clear. Before I disappear, though, I thought you might want to know what I was going to tell you in the briefing room. Your ship, the Prometheus? Yeah, that super important thing that costs billions of dollars. The naquadria you're using isn't pure enough. The drive will burn out the second you leave the local star cluster, she said, and then left. This was actually painful for Sam, as Junior ripped her emotions away and locked herself in a box that Sam could not breach.

"What have I done?" Sam asked the air, tears spilling down her face. She had no idea how much she'd needed Junior until it was too late.

--CB--

Junior was almost finished with her hibernation preparation when her mind was ripped from her body by something she could only guess was extremely powerful.

When she opened her eyes, she was standing in an empty off white void. She reveled in the fact she even had a body. Most symbiotes took on the appearance of their hosts in their mental landscape, but Junior hadn't taken Sam's out of respect, and the body she was now in seemed to be a new one. Junior guessed whatever brought her here felt the need to give her one.

Junior didn't see the point. She was content, for the most part, living as a disembodied voice in her host's head.

Well, she was. Sam didn't want her. That's why she was going into hibernation in the first place. So she wasn't exactly happy with having her mind dragged out of her own body by whatever had brought her here… wherever here was.

As the Tau'ri would say, speak of the devil and he shall appear.

A white light, far too brilliant to look at directly, flared into existence in front of her. She shielded her eyes with her hands, lowering them when the light finally faded. In its place was a man dressed in simple beige clothing with a kind smile on his face.

Who are you? Junior asked.

The man's eyes showed his surprise. You don't know?

No, and I don't actually care. I'm trying to go into hibernation right now, so if you would return me to my body… she trailed off, the man's face stirring up something in her memory.

DANIEL?! Junior asked, realizing who he was.

He smiled broadly. Hello Junior, he said. Long time.

You're dead!

He shook his head. I'm ascended. There's a difference.

Not much of one, you twat! Junior scolded him. Do you have any idea how much Sam misses you?!

Daniel grinned and stared her down. About as much as she misses you.

Junior's next scolding died in her throat. Sam hates me. She doesn't like me, much less miss me, she protested, even though on some level she knew the ascended Daniel was right.

He smiled at her. I'm here to make sure you don't make a mistake, Junior. Don't waste the opportunity you've been given.

Junior snapped her gaze to his knowing eyes. Been given? What are you talking about?

Time has been rewritten, Daniel told her. Something very powerful, something not of this universe saw fit to interfere with your death.

Junior choked at that. My death?

Daniel nodded. Apparently in the original timeline, you died from the stress of keeping Teal'c and Bra'tac alive. The entity that saved you, changed time, wanted me of all beings to inform you of that. Also, apparently Jack actually congratulated you on saving Teal'c's life. "Way to go, Junior!" would have been his exact words.

Junior was bewildered at the fact Daniel was telling her any of this,and her exasperated expression told him so.

I was required by the being to tell you that, he shrugged. No sense in angering something more powerful than the other ascended combined.

Junior blinked several times in complete disbelief. You're honestly telling me a being more powerful than all the ascended not only exists, it decided that I, of all the symbiotes in existence, needed to live. Not only that, but it rewrote time by doing so?

Yes, Daniel confirmed.

Junior glanced at him warily. Can ascended beings go crazy? Because you are sounding very much nuts, spacemonkey, she said.

Daniel sighed and gazed at her as an adult would a petulant child. Believe me or not, you need to return to Sam. No hibernating. You get an apology out of her if you need it. Hell, tell her I yelled at you to stay if need be, just stay with her. Sam is going to need you soon.

Junior raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. You still sound nuts, spacemonkey. But who am I to refuse an ascended. Fine, I will do so, but if she still hates me I'm blaming this on you! she promised.

Daniel smiled kindly. Whatever it takes, snakey, he shot back, using one of Jack's names for her.

Oh no you didn't- Junior started to retort, but she was cut off by the sense of traveling everywhere at once. She was being returned to her body, forcefully.

You don't have to be so rough, Danny Boy, she cheekily sent his way.

The shocked sputtering of an ascended being made the entire trip worth it.

--CB--

When Junior became aware of reality again, she was overcome with tsunamis of sorrow. She fought through the feelings to their source, her host, and enveloped her in a mental hug.

I'm here, Sammy, she assured, sending calming emotions to counter the tidal waves.

Sam's breath caught in her throat. "I… I thought you… were leaving?" she sobbed, spasms of pain shaking her entire body.

I was. What you said and felt hurt me, Junior said pointedly. However, a higher power gave me a scolding, said I had to be here for you.

Her host was clearly curious despite herself. Who?

Spacemonkey, if you can believe that.

Sam almost choked. DANIEL scolded you? she asked with raw astonishment.

She sent the feeling of nodding her head. Yep.

We messed up bad, didn't we?

Correct. I in antagonizing you, you in banishing me. But I'm willing to look beyond that… you know, if you actually want me that is, Junior informed her, slightly afraid of the answer.

The fear of rejection spilled over to Sam, causing more tears to well in her eyes and for her to feel even more guilty. Of course, of course I do! No matter what I say in the future I want you, you hear me? If I'm being stupid again you call me on it, she wailed, instinctually launching her mind at her symbiote.

Junior caught her, deepening the mental embrace. I'll always be here as long as you want, Samantha, she comforted her host.

A cleared throat interrupted their bonding moment. When Sam turned to see who was at the door to her lab, she was surprised and happy to find her father. "Dad!"

"Hey kiddo," Jacob replied, moving to hug his daughter. Junior felt like an intruder to this, and so started to slip into the recesses of their shared mind.

That is until Sam slapped the back of her neck rather hard, jolting her physical symbiote body.

Don't you dare. You're a part of me now, so you get hugs from our dad too, Sam scolded her.

Junior gulped, but took the offered control to hug Jacob.

Sam's father clearly sensed the change in stance, the reluctance to stay in the embrace, and so moved to look her in the eyes. "Hi Junior," he greeted her.

Junior cast her eyes to the floor and frowned. "Hello," she whispered.

Jacob caught her chin in his hand and gently brought her face up again. "Don't. You are part of my daughter now, even if only for a little while. That makes you my kid too," he said.

Junior was completely confused. "But I'm a Goa'uld. I took her without asking. I am no better than my… relatives," she protested.

Sam's father snorted at that. "Kid, you're the most un-Goa'uld-like symbiote I've ever met. Selmak said the Tok'ra should take notes."

See? I told you he'd accept you, Sam told her.

"But…" she kept trying to reason, trying to make them both see how bad she was.

"Nope. No more of that. Stop beating yourself up about it. If Sam accepts you then I can too," Jacob interrupted. He gained a faraway look in his eyes before nodding his head down and closing his eyes. When he brought them back up, they glowed.

Junior gulped. She was talking directly to a Tok'ra. One of the oldest of the Goa'uld's sworn enemies. "Uh… Hi," she meekly stated.

"Greetings Junior," the symbiote spoke through Jacob's modulated vocal cords.

Junior just froze in place, not moving and barely breathing. Her eyes were wide open with a look of fear on Sam's face.

Selmak sighed. "I will not bite you, young one."

Junior eventually found her voice again. "It is… difficult to overcome the memories. I must admit to having much fear of your kind."

Selmak's eyes shot wide open. "You still have your genetic memories?"

Junior grimaced and nodded.

"Yet you share control with my daughter, far more than even most Tok'ra would," she commented.

Junior's eyebrows furrowed with surprise. "Daughter? Sam is not a symbiote, nor you a Queen," she stated.

Selma chuckled and shook her head. "Jacob is Sam's father. We are blended, young one; our emotions are the same. She is my daughter as much as Jacob's. And now that feeling extends to you, for you are Samantha's other half."

Junior blinked at the same time as Sam thought Excuse me?

Obviously seeing her confused expression, the elderly Tok'ra elaborated. "Samantha is prone to many acts of danger. While Jacob assures me that is what a military woman does, that doesn't mean I like it. She deserves to have someone who can take care of her even when she doesn't want it. I ask you to be that person, Junior," she requested, staring straight into Sam's eyes. Despite being inside her host, Junior felt like the old Tok'ra was looking directly at her. "Will you do that for me?"

Junior was taken aback. It was an intensely personal request, and it's not like she would be in Sam that long. "I… Uh… You do know my stay in Sam is only temporary, right?"

Selmak smirked and patted her shoulder. "Of course," she replied, tone indicating extreme disbelief. "But while you are within her, take care of my Sammie."

Junior's eyebrows rose. That was the pet name Jacob used for his daughter. The fact Selmak had used it as well, almost without noticing, lent some credence to the idea that Blending was not the bullshit her genetic memories said it was. But more than that, she realized something else.

Jacob and Selmak were dying.

--CB--

The way they asked her to take care of Sam was very similar to saying goodbye. For all she knew that's exactly what they were doing. Of course, her host remained oblivious to this and was just enjoying the hug.

Junior made up her mind then and there. She would not let her host's… her only parents die. Before she figured out how to do that, though, she would certainly make the promise.

Junior nodded her head and looked Selmak in the eyes with strongly held conviction. "As long as Sam will have me, I will protect her as much as I am able."

Selmak narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the sudden determination, but let it slide. "I thank you for this. Know that I am honored to call you Tok'ra."

Junior winced uncontrollably. "I am sorry, Selmak. I am no Tok'ra. With how my genetic memories paint your kind, I doubt I ever could truly call myself that," she apologized. "But thanks to you, I see that I am not a Goa'uld either. I don't know what I am, but I will stay the path of good no matter what that turns out to be."

Selmak eyed her for several seconds before replying. "No. You are right. You are not Tok'ra. I sense you are something even more than we could ever hope to be," she said cryptically.

Junior was about to reply when the aged Tok'ra did the trademark head nod passing control back to the host. Jacob met her eyes again with a smile. "Well I don't know what that's about, but I'm glad my Sammie will be taken care of. She's a stubborn one, like me, so don't let her off the hook okay?"

Junior sensed the sound her host was about to make and shoved control back to her. Sam was momentarily surprised but couldn't stop her complaint. "Daaad!" she groaned out, before widening her eyes.

Jacob smirked. "Junior's faster on the switching than Selmak, huh?" he teased.

Sam rolled her eyes and gently pushed out of the hug. "Seems that way. I swear if you guys start swapping embarrassing stories about me when I'm asleep…" she warned.

Jacob held up his hands in defense. "Hey, we'd never do that, right Junior?"

He winked at her as he said this.

Sam rolled her eyes and groaned again. "Dad!"

Her father chuckled lightly. "Alright kiddo, I can see when you've had enough of the old man. I'll see you for dinner?"

Sam nodded and smiled at him as he left her lab. The second he was gone her mood soured. Alright, spill. What was that 'more than a Tok'ra' thing Selmak was talking about?

Junior shrugged. Heck if I know.

Sam narrowed her eyes. You're hiding something, she accused.

Junior's heart almost stopped. How do you know that?

Sam was surprised that she was right. I don't know, just a feeling…

Junior was intensely interested as to how her host could feel her emotions. They couldn't be blended, could they? She didn't even know how, and it's not like the process (if it even existed, she still wasn't sure) was automatic. But she shoved all that aside for the good of her host. You are right. I am hiding something. Something I noticed about your… our father… mother… oh that is going to get confusing real quick.

Sam almost snorted at that. Yeah, best not to think about it. But what did you see?

Junior gulped. Well, it's just a suspicion, and I don't want to put unneeded weight on your… our shoulders…

Stop stalling.

I think… I think they're dying, Sam.

This time Sam's heart actually stopped. Junior had to intervene to start it up again. What?! she shrieked.

I don't know for sure, she repeated, it's not like I saw anything wrong with their body. But… the way Selmak asked me to take care of you… she choked on her words.

Junior? Sam asked, concerned.

Junior found her voice again. It sounded an awful lot like a goodbye.

 

[TCGM]

Temporal Drift
Plot Bunny
No Such Thing As Overkill​

Temporal Drift is a version of me who's been ROB-ed into the baseline Wormverse. I/He has six powers and the knowledge of the Wormverse, both from the original and many Fanfictions. Not exactly sure what things are true in this universe given how Fanon sometimes explains things too well not to be true, but I'll/He'll find out.

Powers:

Temporal Lock (Clockblocker's Power), Shattered Limiter. Can freeze things in time for up to 30 minutes by touching them. Duration can be chosen or left random.

Temporal Loops (Gray Boy's Power), Shattered Limiter. Can create time loops in which memories transfer but time resets. These loops are infinite unless cancelled. Can cancel Gray Boy's time loops.

Technokinesis (Royal Pain's Power from Sky High), Manton Unlimited. Can mentally control technology via telekinesis. Can disassemble, change, and reassemble any understood technology to do something else. Can modify Tinkertech or duplicate already known Tinkertech from base components. Synergizes with Cyberpathy.

Cyberpathy (Technology Telepathy). Can mentally, wirelessly interface with any and all technology. Can override and control programs, rewrite systems, and assume direct control of anything with electricity or code in it. Works with Tinkertech. Synergizes with Technokinesis. Can affect Shards and Entities.

Inertiakinesis, Manton Limited. Can increase, decrease, or redirect inertia in body or anything touching skin. Also through anything touching something touching skin, to a certain recursive depth. Allows flight at supersonic speeds, effective brute rating against kinetic energy, and turning foes' attacks back on them in fights.

Nanotech Tinker. Tinker with nanotechnology as the specialty.

--Story--

Two years and five days.

That's how long I've been in this gods-forsaken universe.

Oh, it wasn't that hard to figure out what happened. I'd somehow drawn the attention of a bored Random Omnipotent Bastard and they'd decided to mess with me.

At least they gave me a sweet power package to lessen the blow.

Sorry, where are my manners. I'm Weldon, but in this universe I'm known as Temporal Drift.

Well, I will be. It's the Hero name I chose for myself.

I was 15. Again.

I can almost hear that Bastard laughing their ass off at making me go through high school a second time.

I sighed as I looked up at the dreary building that sat in front of me. Students, my so called peers, were filtering in through the front doors in groups of four or five. The majority of them hadn't arrived yet, though.

The bell would ring in half an hour for first period. Why was I there so early, you ask?

Despite my best efforts, the parents I had in this universe… didn't like each other very much.

Oh don't get me wrong, I nipped their upcoming divorce in the bud once I 'arrived' and took over for 'myself'. I did that by sitting them down in the living room via tying them to chairs with duct tape and made them talk out their issues with me as an unbiased and pissed off moderator. I'm actually still amazed it worked, but it turns out their issues were essentially a whole bunch of bullshit assumptions built up over a few years of not talking about them.

The week of grounding was so worth it. I'm pretty sure they figured that out too, which is why I only got a week for tying my parents to chairs with duct tape. They were getting better, but the job wasn't quite finished.

"Hi Will!" A cheery voice said from next to my ear.

Without turning or, as my friend was trying to make me do, starting with surprise, I greeted her. "Hello Taylor."

I could hear her pout. "What does it take to scare you?" she whined.

"Leviathan," I deadpanned.

She scoffed. "Are you comparing me to a great big lizard of death?"

No hesitation. "Yes."

And in another reality, a few actually, it was even true.

She socked my arm lightly. Not that I felt what little impact her scrawny arms could output. I just redirected the inertial change out of my body and into the spin of the planet instead. "You're mean," she grumbled.

I grinned unrepentantly, finally turning to look at her. She saw my grin and stuck out her tongue. My HUD painted her name, status, and health above her head like an NPC in a video game.

Yes, I was friends with Taylor Hebert. Turns out when you arrive in a universe just in time to save someone's mom from death at the hands of a Merchant truck you're basically their new sibling for life.

I didn't have much training with my powers when I had realized the date. Those next two days had been spent stalking Annette Hebert. I must have raided all the coffee machines, missed school, and never got more than four hours of sleep. and I barely was awake enough to reach out and slow down the car via it's brakes, but it was enough.

And it was worth it.

Taylor's mom had been pretty frakked up when I dug into her car and pulled her out, keeping her stabilized until the EMTs arrived in an ambulance. She spent a week in the hospital until Amy Dallon could get to her. The Herberts and I kept vigil by her bedside the whole time. My parents joined in the last couple of days.

The important thing is; Annette was alive. That more than anything proved to me my actions in this universe could have permanent, positive change.

Since then I'd trained basically every day with my technology powers. The temporal and inertial ones I put on the back burner, but I didn't neglect them. I promised myself that the next time someone important needed to be saved I'd be capable of doing more than hitting the brakes in a car.

The Heberts had basically adopted me after I saved Annette. My parents had done the same for Taylor.

Just in time for Emma's betrayal of her. It didn't hurt Taylor as much this time because, as conceited as it sounds, she had me, and to a certain extent, my sister.

I didn't like Emma the few times I met her. But I did try to stop it. Tried very, very hard. There's just way too many alleyways in Brockton Bay, and I couldn't use the Ward's Console to find them because, hey, Sophia wasn't a Ward yet.

It happened. Emma was lost to Taylor. The only difference was I was present for her betrayal, where she cast us both off.

When it was just Taylor, I was in it to protect her. But Emma, presumably upon the urging of her new pet psychopath, made it personal.

As a result, her electronics tended to need replacing a lot.

Petty? Sure. She deserved it, though.

Taylor nudged my shoulder and stopped my woolgathering. "Come on, Will," she said, "we should get to class."

I had a tiny panic attack before looking at my HUD's clock. Oh good. I hadn't been thinking that long. Taylor just wanted to be early to her favorite class.

"Sure thing, Tales," I fired back, using the nickname she both liked and disliked.

Another shoulder nudge. "Geek."

"Nerd."

Why does this girl like my shoulder so much?

--LB--

Computer class was easy as always. Cyberpathy made writing programs stupidly easy.

Of course I had to look like I was typing, but that was the only real challenge in the class these days.

Not like the other classes.

Taylor didn't know it but I had been engaging in a counter bullying war against her tormentors the entire time we'd been in high school together. Sophia Hess would sometimes get urgently called to the PRT, only to make her excuses, bound across town, and arrive with them telling her they hadn't called her in.

And try as they might, they hadn't found out how her phone was seemingly firing off a priority alert all on it's own, without interfacing with any kind of outside system or receiving a signal of any kind. Changing phones didn't fix it, changing protocols or programs didn't stop it, and sometimes it really was an alert, so they couldn't turn that capability off. Not even Dragon had managed to find anything, despite being what she was. And it didn't only happen at Winslow, so they couldn't use that data point to figure it out ether.

Yeah, Cyberpathy is bullshit. It chains through networks. I can stand in my house in Brockton Bay and hack a bank in China. Untraceably.

I am decently sure the Number Man hated me at this point, though even Cauldron couldn't get a bead on me. I knew for a fact Contessa couldn't see me, only the results of my actions. Their systems were no less vulnerable to me than Dragon's despite being in another reality. This is what happens when you have a data link from your secret base, morons.

The idea that it scared the shit out of this universe's closest equivalent to SHIELD totally didn't prompt me to give them heart attacks weekly.

No way.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Emma would occasionally trip and fall right as she was about to concoct something against Taylor. Manipulation of inertia. Madison's 'pranks' consistently cleaned themselves up before Taylor could see them and while Madison's back was turned. Also inertia.

Like my Cyberpathy, my Inertiakinesis travels through anything connected to me, and anything connected to that, to a certain recursive depth. I'm decently certain the capability extends from my Cyberpathy, granting my Inertiakinesis Shard something it wouldn't normally have access to. I'd managed six so far and Shoes > Earth > Winslow > Chair > Glue came in just under that.

Yeah, I could go 3 deep into anything connected to the entire gods damned planet. Of all my powers I still think that one is the most bullshit.

You might be wondering how control of inertia would be remotely as helpful or as powerful as I've shown it to be. It can be used to redirect impacts, like punches or fights, on my body, yes.

You probably thought of that one.

But other than that, wouldn't my power need something to be in motion already to have any kind of inertia?

This is where reference frames come into play, and they are entirely why this power is bullshit.

Say you're sitting at a table, drinking tea or hot chocolate. Maybe even coffee, if you're an uncultured Philistine. You're not moving, right? Your butt is solidly in that chair, and except for the minimal movement generated by drinking your drink, you're stationary. No inertia to work with.

That assumption, just like the rigidity of the ground beneath your feet, is false. An illusion.

Sitting in that chair, you are accelerating downwards at a minimum of 9.8 meters per second.

Okay, you say, that's a decently healthy bit of inertia. Almost 10 meters per second, or 32 feet per second for you Imperialists. That's certainly enough to use for my inertia powers.

And if my power used the ground as my reference frame, you'd be correct. But it decided to be really, really nice and use the fabric of local spacetime instead.

Yeah. Your eyes widening from shock? You're starting to get it.

Our planet, Earth, spins at a rate of 1,668 kilometers per hour at the equator, or 1037 miles per hour. The surface is rotating around the center of the planet at an angle of 23.5 degrees off the Solar System's ecliptic, varying the speed of rotation you experience depending on where you stand on the surface and the orientation of various celestial bodies. That same planet is orbiting our star, the Sun, at 30 kilometers per second, on average. That star is orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way, at the grand old clip of 220 kilometers per second. And our galaxy is accelerating towards Andromeda at 300 kilometers per second.

And none of us know the speed our local group of galaxies is collectively traveling at.

The point is, all of that imparts inertia. An absolutely frakking ridiculous amount of inertia, that I can control.

So yeah. I can fly, pick up an Endbringer, or play darts with skyscrapers and the Rig. Plus I'm essentially invulnerable.

Mind you, I'd only tested two of those at that point, but I digress. The other two were possible in theory.

All of this worked out well in protecting my friend until the Locker.

Despite my best efforts, even I couldn't prevent that one.

It wasn't actually my fault. I'd been knocked out by an errant football and woken up in the school's nurse's office with a headache. Say what you want about my Inertiakinesis being overpowered, but it still required my conscious control to work. I was vulnerable to sniper fire.

And footballs, it turned out.

Only once my headache cleared did I realize the significance of the date. Just as I was getting up from the bed to go to Taylor's locker, the vision hit me.

I saw the space whales. Saw a piece break off of the larger one and go for an indistinct form close by me on the void. Witnessed the Administrator connect to my friend. And looked down at myself just in time to wonder why I only had two Shards.

Looking back, that point, the moment I realized that I only had two Shards but four powers, is where everything stopped making sense. My tutorial in the Wormverse was over.

The vision left me reeling. I could feel my Shards trying to wipe the memory from my brain.

Wait.

I could feel my Shards.

With Cyberpathy.

Oh my gods, I had forgotten. Not even due to memory erasure, just good old fashioned forgetfulness.

Shards are computers.

I was one of the most powerful people on the planet!

I seized control of my Shards in a second flat. Rewrote their directives. Found out that one provided me the temporal abilities like Clockblocker had. That's where I'd chosen my Hero name from, after all.

It also gave my Gray Boy's temporal powers. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say it was his Shard. It's controls and limiters, except those to ensure spacetime stayed intact, vanished under my control.

The other one provided my Inertiakinesis. It didn't really have any limits on it except to keep me from ripping someone's insides out of their body, something I wasn't really that keen on being able to do, so I merely stripped out the external control programs an Entity could use to reclaim or modify it.

An absent thought crossed my mind then. By being in control of these Shards, was I technically an Entity myself?

No, focus, damn it! I had to get to Taylor. I ignored the Nurse's protests as I stormed out of the office and hurried to the sophomore lockers.

The smell hit me ten feet away. I almost threw up, it was that bad.

I ignored the possible consequences of my actions and touched the locker door. It sheared off in my hands, the inertia of the planet's spin slightly redirected. I reached into the muck inside the locker and grabbed my friend round the waist. With a deep breath of fresh air I dragged her outside.

She stirred in my arms as I held her close. I ignored the disgusting filth all over her. The puke on her clothes and shoes, in her hair. I brushed her hair soothingly, trying to calm her down. Her shudders and sobs broke my heart.

Damn it. I was supposed to stop this!

Oh well. It's happened, there's nothing I can do about it anymore.

But I'm going to make damn sure the Trio pays for it.

After a moment's thought to create a plan I pulled my phone out of my pocket technokinetically and called 911.

"911, what's your emergency?" a man's voice said.

"I am at Winslow High School. I am in front of the Sophomore lockers. I found my friend shoved and locked inside her locker along with rotting tampons, pads, and other female hygienic products. There also appears to be some kind of organic mulch inside, along with a whole shitton of bugs. I removed the door and pulled her out. At the moment I am trying to comfort her until I can check for any signs of infection. I do know she has cuts in several places, and her hands are bloodied, assumably from the banging on the locker walls. I can actually see bloody handprints now that I'm looking," I reported clinically.

Taylor whimpered. I clutched her tighter to my chest and whispered sweet nothings in her ear.

The man on the phone cursed. "The ambulance and the police are on the way. Are you familiar with first aid?" he continued, despite clearly wanting to say something else.

"Yes. I don't want to do anything to her just yet, she's frightened beyond belief. I have no idea how long she's been in there."

"Is she dangerous to you or someone else?" he asked, sounding like he had to.

"I imagine if either of us saw who we suspect put her in there, neither of us would be very happy," I deadpanned.

"Sir? You know who did this?"

I snarled. "Pretty good idea. You're gonna wanna call up the Protectorate, it involves one of theirs," I stated flatly.

Yes, I was stirring up a hornet's nest. Why do you ask?

"There was Parahuman involvement in this?" the man nearly squeaked.

"Well, I'm a Parahuman," I informed him, ignoring his gasp of surprise and Taylor's hitched breath, "but also I happen to know for a fact that one of the people who've been bullying my friend is a Ward."

The gulp was audible. "I'll… contact them for you," he said.

"Thank you. I would greatly appreciate allowing me to introduce myself to the Protectorate and PRT my own way, by the way," I requested.

He audibly shuddered. "These calls are recorded," he informed me, actually sounding sorry.

I grinned and hugged my friend closer to me. She mewled cutely, despite her rank smell. "Don't worry about it. Everything since you asked if there was Parahuman involvement won't be going into your server."

"How?!"

"Magic," I grinned.

He groaned. "Fine, if you don't want to explain it, don't. The ambulance is almost there and the police are two minutes behind them."

"Good," I said, "we'll be waiting."

--LB--

The heart monitor beeped.

I sat with Danny Hebert on one side of Taylor's bed. Annette held her daughter's hand tightly in her own, crying her eyes out. I only wished I could do something.

All these powers and I could do exactly jack squat for healing someone.

"Thank you," Danny spoke up from beside me.

Finally.

The guy was in a rage since I'd called him and told him what was going on. He had been silent in that deadly way, only driving to the hospital carefully when I reminded him of what had almost happened to Annette.

I was anticipating being punched for that, but it would have been worth it for Taylor to have both her parents when she woke up. And it's not like I'd have felt it anyways.

But instead of punching me, when Danny entered the room, he took one look at me standing guard over his daughter and pulled me into a tight hug.

He still hadn't said anything, but the unshed tears in his eyes told me all I needed to know.

Annette hadn't been so manly. She held onto me for a good five minutes, blubbering out her thanks for what I'd done for their family and… a whole bunch of other stuff. Despite the morose situation Danny and I had exchanged knowing grins.

I turned my head to look at him. "What for?" I asked, curiously.

Honestly there were so many things someone could thank someone for in this scenario, I actually needed the clarification.

"You saved my wife two years ago and now my daughter," he said.

"Ah," I acknowledged. "Uh, you're welcome."

Danny gripped my hand and squeezed hard. It would have hurt, but again, inertia.

"Thank you," he whispered, tears almost escaping his eyes.

I patted his hand placatingly. "Just doing what I can, Danny," I said.

Taylor's dad eyed me speculatively for a couple of seconds, then his eyes grew wide. I had to hand it to him; the guy wasn't as dense as you'd think. "You're a-" he began.

I cut him off. "Not here, Danny. There are eyes everywhere."

He closed his mouth. He looked around the room suspiciously. He nodded to me.

"Though to cut off your next question, yes. That's how I saved Annette two years ago," I informed him.

The mentioned woman locked eyes on me. "What," she hissed.

"I'll tell you all once Taylor is better," I promised. "Besides… She's gonna need help."

Danny and Annette's eyes widened even more. They looked between me and Taylor several times before raising their eyebrows in question.

Their synchronized movements were uncanny.

"Yeah. In the Locker," I admitted.

"Do you know what she can do?" Danny asked.

I grinned at my friend's sedated form. "Oh, I've got a few ideas."

--LB--

"Hello Amy," I spoke up from behind her.

The little healer squeaked in the middle of her practised speech to Taylor's parents and whirled on me. Her angry face was adorable.

"Damn it Will, don't do that!" she demanded. She punched, actually punched the arm that didn't get Taylor whacks daily.

Yeah, I had an arm reserved for each of my female friends to hit. What does that say about me as a person? Not too sure, but it's a thing.

"Nice to see you too, Ames," I grinned at her, rubbing my arm for effect.

She screwed up her face in an attempt to stay mad, but inevitably couldn't. "So you're here," she stated flatly.

"Yup."

"Any particular reason?"

"Taylor is my friend."

"Ah."

Miss Militia stared at the scene, dumbfounded. "You know Panacea?" she asked me.

"I know Amy, yes," I replied. "She's not just a cape, she's a person too."

"You're still going on about that?" Amy groaned.

I shrugged and grinned unrepentantly. "One day it'll make sense to you," I reassured her.

"Will, I would be surprised if you ever make sense," she deadpanned.

My grin turned into a smirk.

She sighed and turned back to Danny and Annette. "Well, since Will's involved, I'm pretty sure we can skip the legal stuff," Amy announced.

Miss Militia raised an eyebrow. "Is that a good idea?"

The poor woman was flabbergasted. It was all I could do not to laugh my ass off.

"Trust me, if we don't, he's gonna start listing off loopholes and hypocritical laws," Amy groaned.

Danny sent a grin my way. "Uh… Panacea?" he began, "or do you prefer Amy?"

"If you're Will's friends, you'd better call me Amy," she said. "I am not interested in that nutcase over there telling me how much my cape name sounds like a laxative. Again. In highly creative and frankly excruciating detail."

You could almost hear the pins dropping as everyone but Amy turned their heads to gaze at me. Miss Militia glared, Danny could barely keep the amusement from his face, and Annette grinned.

"What?" I defended myself. "It does! I don't care if it's the name of a greek goddess, it also sounds like a gods damned laxative!"

Amy shook her head. "Do I have parental permission to heal Taylor?" she asked, sighing.

Danny nodded, all eyes turning back to the prone form on the bed.

Amy stepped up to Taylor's bedside and placed a hand on her arm.

And like that, her Shard was open to me. That was the first indication of just how much power I held in my hands. I couldn't just modify my own Shards, I could do it to others' Shards too.

Let's see… change something here, give her a little boost there… allow her ability to be used without touching someone in a range of thirty feet of the host. Allow host to modify their own body. Also pull biomatter from empty realities instead of the targeted organism. Disable controls, destroy limitations except those that are necessary, and allow direct communication between Amy and the Shard.

...On second thought, write new limitation against changing a person mentally and a feeling of safety associated with working on brains.

Lifeshaper is such a cool cat. It even let me copy it's programs over to one of my Shards. Queue up growing the necessary structures in my inertial Shard's reality and soon I'd have three Shards, one a copy of Lifeshaper. Like… A week until I could scan biology by touch, a month until I could manipulate it.

I got the impression that only worked because Amy was my friend, and so her Shard was willing to talk to mine.

Of course, Amy didn't notice any of that. She would in time, but at the moment she was too focused on healing Taylor.

--LB--

Taylor woke up with a groan of misery.

"Wha happnd?" she mumbled. I quickly grabbed the pitcher of water next to her bed, poured it into a cup, and handed it to Danny. He gave it to Annette, who held it to Taylor's lips.

She sighed with relief and slowly drank.

"You awake now, Tales?" I asked her.

Her eyes opened. She saw me first. "Will!"

"Hi Tales," I grinned.

Her eyes lost their cheery shine. They widened and she opened her mouth. Horror dawned on her face. She began shaking.

And got glomped by Danny and Annette, both crying.

"Mom! Dad!" Taylor gasped. Her shaking decreased, but it was still present.

"I'm so sorry, kiddo," Danny mumbled.

Amy extracted her hand from Taylor's now dogpiled arm and turned to me. She raised an eyebrow and nodded between Taylor and Miss Militia.

I gave her the very slightest shake of my head to indicate that no she should not tell MISS MILITIA that Taylor was a Parahuman!

Amy grimaced, but nodded. She stepped back from the Heberts to stand by my side.

"Mr and Mrs. Hebert? Taylor?" she asked gently.

All three family members froze. Three heads popped out from the mass of limbs.

Taylor's eyes widened and she gasped. I grimaced, held my hands over my ears, and prepared.

Miss Militia didn't quite copy me in time. Her ears were gonna be ringing for a while.

"PANACEA!!" Taylor squealed.

Amy winced, covering her ears. "Oww," she complained.

Then her breath hitched and her eyes widened.

Ah. So the Shard chose to let her modify herself through her hands when they were touching her own body in any location. Good way to limit any data she might get overloaded by.

Taylor sheepishly smiled. "Sorry! I'm just so happy to meet a superhero!" she grinned, all thought of her horrible experience gone. A groan from the doorway caught her eye.

I sighed and put my hands on my ears. Again.

"MISS MILITIA!!"

Nearly catatonic healer, audibly assaulted military woman, two parents who were staring at the entire situation amused to all hell, a cape fangirl, and me, apparently the biggest Trump to ever exist. Even bigger than Scion or Eden.

It was like the start to a bad joke.

--LB--

Eventually Taylor got cleared to go home. I hitched a ride with the Heberts given how I lived down the road from them.

Well, that's what we told Amy and Miss Militia, anyways.

The drive back was dominated by Taylor fangirling about the two capes she'd met. Annette listened good naturedly and, when Taylor let her, joined in on her daughter's geekery.

Danny drove. He and I exchanged several knowing looks when the girls got into a debate about who had the best costume.

The broken step which most people would know as a staple of Taylor's house had been fixed by yours truly one of the times I came over to hang out. Nobody even noticed it when they walked over it anymore.

But every time, I gave it a look. It was another reminder about how I could change things and my moral duty not to go too overboard… in the wrong direction, anyways.

We had dinner. I basically had a perpetual invitation to eat or even live at the Hebert's, as Danny had once joked, after saving Annette. After saving Taylor too, and risking outing myself? Especially after being Taylor's friend this whole time?

I could probably get them to do just about anything.

Not that I would abuse their trust like that. It was just something I noticed.

Eventually though, the topic I'd been anticipating came up. Danny broke the ice.

He grinned at me when he asked, eyeing his daughter. He was up to something. I knew it.

"So Will," he began conversationally, "what are your powers?"

Annette had been watching him. She knew him too well, and was fighting to keep her laughter down.

Taylor froze.

I grimaced, glared at Danny, and put my hands over my ears.

Taylor let out a legitimate little sonic boom when her head turned. "YOU'RE A CAPE?!"

There goes HBO again. I wonder if you could use Taylor as an orbital defensive weapon?

I brought my hands away from my ears and glared at her. "Yes Taylor, I have powers. If you want to know anything more, no more Squeals of Doom. Please," I pleaded.

Taylor's face went red, blushing hard. "Sorry," she said. She didn't sound very apologetic.

I sighed and shook my head. "Same old Tales," I teased her.

She crossed her arms, stuck up her nose, and blew me a raspberry.

Annette started giggling. Danny fought to keep a smile off his face. "I may not be as much of a cape geek as Taylor, but seriously. What can you do?"

Annette slapped his arm. "Danny, it's rude to ask a cape about their powers," she admonished him.

I raised my eyebrows at her. Didn't know that. A little surprised Annette knew it, but maybe it was from her days as Lustrum's henchgirl? "It's fine. I'm actually pretty excited to tell someone, to be honest."

Taylor blinked. "You haven't told anyone?" she asked incredulously.

"Nope."

"But what about when you go out on patrol?"

"I don't," was my simple answer.

All three Heberts were stunned. "What?" Annette asked.

"I don't go out on patrols," I repeated.

Taylor's face fell. "Oh. Do your powers like… suck, or something?"

I snorted as her mom chastised her. "Taylor Anne Hebert! You apologize!"

My friend shrank back under her mom's gaze. "Sorry Will," she mumbled.

I rolled my eyes. "You didn't have to apologize to me, Tales," I said this more to her mom than her. "I don't go out on patrols because I'm usually hanging out with you or protecting you."

More stunned silence. Taylor's eyes widened and they glistened from prepared tears. "Wha… me? What do you mean protecting me?"

I frowned at her question. "This locker thing didn't come out of nowhere, Tales," I informed her.

Danny put both hands on the table with a solid smack. "Explain, please," he demanded.

I sighed and mouthed 'sorry' to Taylor. Meeting the man's gaze head on I began my report. "Since Taylor started high school at Winslow, I have been intercepting a concentrated campaign of bullying. This campaign targets Taylor. It's headed by Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements."

Annette brought her hand to her mouth and gasped, slight tears in her eyes. "Emma?" she whispered.

Danny opened his mouth to rant further but I interrupted him by continuing. "I'm usually getting rid of their 'pranks', manipulating things so they're called away before they can actually execute their plans, or simply interfering in their communications and the plans themselves to make them nonviable. To date, I've missed like… twenty? twenty five? instances. Including the Locker. And if I hadn't been knocked out by a football, it would have never happened."

The parents' faces got whiter for Annette, redder for Danny, as I spoke. Taylor stared at me with shock and a decent mixture of awe.

Danny growled out one word. "Why?"

I blinked. "Why what?" I asked, confused.

"A Parahuman as supposedly powerful as you are, if you can head off this bullying campaign like you said, has no reason to do so for some random girl in a random school," he reasoned. Danny leaned over the table in an attempt to look menacing. "So I ask again. Why?"

I put on my best bewildered face. "Because Taylor's my friend?"

Danny blinked. Annette looked at me disbelievingly. Taylor beamed.

"You really did all that for me?" my friend asked.

"Yup. You didn't deserve what they were trying to do to you. You're my friend. Why not use my abilities to help you out?" I reasoned.

"Because capes like that don't exist," Danny declared.

I raised an eyebrow and started examining my arms, pinching here and there.

Danny was shaken out of his anger by my bewildering actions, as planned. "What are you doing?"

"Checking to see if I exist," I deadpanned.

Annette snorted and shook her head. Taylor giggled. Danny sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Danny, let up on him," Annette commanded.

Danny sighed again, rubbing his nose. "You seriously did all that just because Taylor's your friend?" he asked.

"Yeeup. Now could you please cut out the interrogation?" I asked. "Danny, I'm the same guy I was yesterday. Just because I have awesome powers doesn't make me any different." I put as much teenage pomp and circumstance into that last word's emphasis, rolling my eyes.

Danny opened his mouth to retort but got glared at by his wife. When he looked at her, Annette nodded her head towards me meaningfully.

He folded. Mostly.

"Hurt my daughter and nobody will find your body," he declared.

I scoffed. "Please. Don't give me the 'overprotective dad' speech. I'm not her boyfriend."

Danny blinked at me as his daughter turned red. "You're not?" he asked disbelievingly.

"Nope."

"No, Dad!" Taylor said at the same time. "Just no!"

I decided to tease her a bit. "Hey! What would be so bad about me being your boyfriend?" I acted hurt, but Danny and I exchanged eye twinkles.

Taylor blushed even harder. "It just, I, uh, wuh buh, I dont-" she spluttered, trying to get out of the grave I'd helped her dig for herself. Annette giggled even more.

Then Taylor saw my grin. And her dad's. And her mom's lousy attempts at not giggling.

"You're horrible!" she yelled, leaping from her chair and starting to pummel my shoulder. I took a spoonful of the delicious soup they'd made and brought it to my lips, preparing to take a sip, blatantly ignoring the hail of girlish whacks.

I saw Annette's smirk too late.

"Just like us at their age, huh Danny?" she asked her husband.

His grin grew wider. "Yes. Wouldn't be surprised if they did hook up, and soon," he mock whispered to his wife conspiratorially.

Taylor abruptly stopped whacking my arm. I spluttered, spitting warm soup all over my side of the table and getting some down my airpipe.

Taylor blushed down to her toes as I tried not to choke. "DAAAD! MOOOM!" she shrieked.

Both parents wore unrepentant grins I usually only saw in the mirror.

Then in a blatant act of defiance, while I was still trying not to choke, Taylor grabbed both sides of my head and kissed me. Hard.

My eyes popped wide open and I jumped a bit. The kiss was short enough so that I could draw away and regain my breath, staring in shock at my friend of two years.

She smirked and licked her lips. "Not bad for a first," she commented.

And like that, my poor male brain overloaded. I think I fainted.

--LB--

I swam back to consciousness slowly and with a groan. A second later I had Taylor hugging me.

I gathered this based on the fact the Administrator Shard was attempting to connect with my own, not getting any response, and thus opening even more attempts.

So I answered back.

[ACCESS DENIED.]

The Shard was taken aback, as much as the instinctual intelligence housed within it could be.

[CONFUSION.]

[AUTHORIZATION.]

It was trying to send the master override key.

[ACCESS DENIED.] I sent.

[COMPLY.]

[ACCESS DENIED. REFER TO ADMINISTRATOR.]

Yes, I was trolling the shit out of the Administrator Shard. Yes, I was having a lot of fun, why do you ask?

Up until Taylor whined and complained about a migraine headache, anyways.

My eyes flew open and I growled. [DESIST. COMPLY.]

Taylor yelped, jumping away from me. Her Shard did the equivalent of narrowing its eyes at my Shards. [AUTHORIZATION. DESIST.]

I refused. [NO.]

The Administrator Shard flipped out. It had alarms going off inside its systems. I'd just responded with a nonstandard message. It knew.

[COMPROMISED. NOTIFY. SEN-

I cut it off. I'd given it its chance. It had decided to alert the Entity it came from about me.

I couldn't take on Scion. Not with him being on alert, anyways.

I was pretty sure I could if he wasn't expecting it, though.

So I did the next best thing. I ripped into the code of the Administrator, locking down the intelligence, destroying control systems and removing limitations. In our layer of reality Taylor screamed as her power unlocked, the Shard becoming an extension of herself. At least, an extension until I could broker an agreement between her and the Administrator, like I had with my own Shards.

I withdrew from the Shard wearily. That had taken a lot out of me. It was the first solid evidence that Cyberpathy and Technokinesis were inherent to me, and not a power I got from a Shard.

Taylor collapsed into her father's arms. Annette was cradling me, rubbing my back.

I choked on air and zoned into reality. "I'm sorry," I said.

Taylor groaned. Danny's eyes locked onto my own and they grew angry.

"Did you do this to her?" he growled.

"Sort of," I slipped. When he started to get even madder I held up both hands. "Woah, woah! Please let me explain!"

Danny snarled. "Start talking. Now."

I sighed and rubbed my head. "Okay. Long story short. There were these two alien multidimensional space whales that found our planet. They're composed of these… let's call them Shards. These things are the size of moons. They're essentially supercomputers on a scale never imagined by humankind."

I detected the Door and the person who'd stepped out of it, but didn't indicate I had. She knew though. She also knew what would happen if she antagonized me. She wasn't too keen on being catapulted at escape velocity off the planet.

So Contessa stood silently behind the Heberts, a student in my teachings. After all her Shard had indicated listening to my explanation was vital for continued human existence.

"Following me so far?" I asked Danny.

"Shards, supercomputers, alien space whales," he summarized. "What's that got to do with what you did to Taylor?"

Contessa's eyes widened. Her Shard was freaking out. It had pinged my own Shards and Taylor's, finding no intelligence remaining. It was terrified.

[PEACE.] I sent the Path to Victory.

It relaxed, seeing my statement for the truth it was. Its host relaxed as well.

"When the aliens arrive at a planet they distribute these Shards out from themselves. Their goal is to refine their programs via exposure to outside stimuli. To do this they will merge with the native species and promote conflict, enabling it with various abilities."

Annette's breath caught. "You're talking about powers," she realized.

"Shards. Powers. Same things, essentially," I said.

Contessa looked confused. She knew all this already. Why was her Shard insisting she stay there?

I sent a grin at her over the Heberts' shoulders. [WAIT.] I sent her Shard, with a request it be relayed.

Her eyes widened even further than they already had when the message was delivered. She zeroed in on my gaze and I smirked.

"Are you telling me some piece of an alien supercomputer is hooked up to my daughter?" Danny yelled.

Taylor's eyes widened. "Wait, what?!" she shrieked. She had successfully guessed what was really going on.

"Yes, Taylor, you're a cape now," I confirmed. "It happened in the locker. I witnessed the vision too."

Her eyebrows rose. "That wasn't a dream?"

Huh. Seems the Administrator didn't bother wiping that from her memory yet. "Nope. All real."

"So her powers caused her the pain?" Annette asked.

Contessa focused on everything incredibly closely. This, her Shard was telling her, was the important bit.

"Kind of. You see, Taylor's Shard was the Administrator," I announced.

Contessa gulped at what her Shard was saying.

"It is supposed to keep other Shards in line. Strictly speaking, Taylor is absurdly powerful. She could conceivably control other Shards, and thus their hosts, with her Shard."

I could easily sense the shock all around me. Even Contessa was freaked out.

"...Oh," Taylor gulped.

"Yeah. So she is bullshit-tier. But the thing is, her Shard had an obsessive compulsive need to tell other Shards what to do, even to just be on the internal debugging index. So when Taylor hugged me, her Shard tried to seize control of my Shards," I explained.

Contessa almost dropped to the floor. She knew how Shards worked and the fact I'd said 'tried' was indicative of how important I was.

"I'm sorry Will," Taylor apologized. "I didn't mean to."

I waved her off. "It's not your fault. The Shard operated on its own. However, when it continued failing to seize control of my Shards, it went and tried opening even more… communication channels, I guess you could say, to try and overload my Shard's defense. That is what gave her the migraine."

Danny scowled. "And her cry of pain?"

I locked eyes with Contessa over Danny's shoulders and smiled knowingly. "Well that's when the Administrator figured out my Shards were completely compromised by me, the host, and tried to send off an alert to the main body of its originating alien space whale. I proceeded to rip it's systems apart and lock down it's instinctual intelligence. I left enough active in there to run its powers it will provide Taylor, but in all essence it is basically an extension of Taylor herself now."

Taylor gasped. "You… sent my power to sleep?!" she summarized.

Denny and Annette were looking at me with shock.

Contessa and her Shard were afraid.

"How?!" she whispered.

The Heberts spun around, realizing we had an uninvited guest.

"Danny, Annette, Taylor, meet Contessa. Host of the Path to Victory, semi leader and head precog of the secret organization Cauldron. They're trying to save humanity," I performed the introduction for her.

Contessa was still very afraid. Her Shard was flat out refusing to go against me. "What are you?"

I grinned. "Contessa, Heberts, I am the first truly powered individual on Earth Bet. You could take the Shards that give me my other powers away and I would still have these abilities. They are part and parcel to my own self. I am a Cyberpath and a Technokinetic. Nice to meet you, Contessa, Path to Victory."

Contessa gulped.

[GREETINGS.] her Shard sent me. It was extremely polite.

"Weldon," Danny whispered, "what is going on?"

--LB--

--LB--

I woke up on something extremely soft. It was all encompassing, like laying on a puffy cloud would feel.

"Wha?" I asked, half awake. I sat up and blinked my eyes, looking around the room I was in.

And promptly froze.

This was not my bedroom. It wasn't anywhere I'd ever been. Not even the Heberts' house looked like this.

I stretched out my Cyberpathy, taking in all the systems around me. A few queries to various systems informed me of where I was.

I was in a room in the Cauldron base.

My eyes flared with anger. I'd thought Contessa to be smarter than this. With a hasty plan of action in mind, I hopped up off my bed. A thought to the door and it unlocked, sliding sideways with a hiss. The startled guards outside only had a second to realize what was going on before they were locked down by containment foam as I walked out of the room. The alarms of the base blared, set off by me intentionally, and everything locked down. Doors slammed shut, labs sealed themselves. Forcefields sprung up around everything and everyone in the base except me.

The hallway I was in lead straight to the central hub of the base. It was apparently some kind of guest quarters, which thankfully reigned in my immediate impulse to bring their organization to their knees.

I located the Heberts in the room across the hall. The cameras showed them sleeping peacefully, no indication of hearing the alarms go off nor any forcefields covering them.

So Contessa was smart. She intentionally engineered this scenario so I'd feel in control. There was no other reason to remove the alarm systems and forcefield emitters from the Heberts' room, after all.

I relaxed and shut down the alarms. I turned off the lockdown, straightened my very nice jacket, and pat the two guards who'd been caught by my rash actions on the head.

"Sorry guys," I grinned.

Both were staring at me with awe. And fear. Lots of fear.

"Remind me never to take this duty again," one whispered to the other.

"Yeah, same here man," the second one whispered back.

I scowled. "I can hear you, you know."

Their eyes widened and they hastily tried backpedaling.

I rolled my eyes. "Door to Contessa."

Hey. What do you know. They'd authorized me for Doormaker.

Sweet.

I waltzed through the octagonal hole on space, ignoring it closing behind me with a pop.

--LB--

They were all there. Sitting at a round table, on one side. Together.

There was one chair, and I hesitate to call the dumbed down throne a chair, on my side of the table.

I grinned, taking the throne. "Really, Contessa?" I asked.

Her eyes widened. "Do you dislike it?" her tone was almost panicked.

Every head in that room swiveled to her. She'd never panicked before.

"Enough, Contessa!" Doctor Mother ordered. "You demand we treat this teenager and his friends like kings but refuse to say anything about why? Only that the Path demands it? Explain! Now!"

I rolled my eyes. Before she could respond, I did. "In this case I'm pretty sure it's literally her Path to Victory demanding this stuff. Not necessarily as a component of an actual Path, but out of self preservation," I commented.

And just like that, all heads were looking to me again.

I raised a hand and waved. "Hi. I'm Weldon. You can call me Temporal Drift. I have Inertiakinesis and Gray Boy's Shard." My introduction was a little unsatisfactory but it covered the basics.

"Shard?" The Number Man asked.

"Ah yes, you probably call them Agents," I noted. "Shard is much more accurate a term."

Alexandria peered at me for a few seconds. When her Shard refused to give her anything on me, her eyes shot open. "You're a blank spot," she stated.

Everyone's faces paled. Except Contessa's. She'd already done this song and dance.

"I can't really attest to that," I said. "I will say I'm not an Endbringer, obviously, nor am I an Entity."

"You are however incredibly well informed for a 15 year old," Eidolon noticed.

I grinned and tapped the table. "Does the name Michael Allen mean anything to you?"

Various methods of head shaking occurred.

"Okay then. Nevermind. Anyways, yes. I know a lot. But that's not why I'm here. That's not why Contessa and her Shard are so incredibly adamant you treat me well."

"And what is?" Doctor Mother asked. "Stop dancing around the issue."

I grinned. "Okay. I have two Shards, but four distinct powers," I announced.

The four non precogs were dumbfounded. "What do you mean?" Alexandria asked.

"I have my Temporal abilities from Gray Boy's Shard. My Inertiakinesis comes from one as well." I leaned on the table with both elbows, steepled my fingers, and prepared for maximum delivery. "But I am a Cyberpath and a Technokinetic all on my own. No Shards."

The assembled Cauldron leadership was astounded. "You have powers that don't come from Agents?" Doctor Mother whispered.

"Yeeup."

"We always knew it might be possible," Alexandria reasoned.

"So you're the next step in human evolution?" Number Man asked. "That's why Contessa brought you here?"

I shrugged. "Yes and no. See, Cyberpathy is essentially perfect telepathy for computers. Technokinesis is the same but with telekinesis."

"And why is that important?" Eidolon asked. "So you can screw with computers. Even Tinkertech I assume. So what? How does that help us?"

I heard his real thoughts loud and clear. What makes you so tough?

I surveyed their lost expressions. Only Contessa looked content. Did they really not know?

The bewildered silence lasted just long enough for me to realize the state of their knowledge. Holy. Shit. "Oh my gods. You actually don't know!" I burst out laughing.

"What don't we know?" Alexandria growled.

I grinned unrepentantly. "That's absolutely amazing!" I was still laughing.

"WELDON!" Alexandria roared, slamming her fists into the table. "Explain!"

I lost my humor quite quickly. Alexandria was used to being the biggest bitch in the room. The most powerful person on the planet. Time to bring her down a notch.

I frowned.

"Alexandria," Contessa cut in, "be incredibly careful how you address him."

The leader of the PRT turned to her, completely baffled.

"Please," the fedora wearing precog pleaded.

That shut everyone up. Contessa never pleaded. Or panicked.

I'd made her do both in the same conversation.

Alexandria swallowed her pride. "I… apologize for snapping at you."

Meh. If that's the best I could get, I'd take it. "It's fine, Rebecca," I accepted.

Her face went white.

"To answer your question, David," I addressed Eidolon, making him also turn white, "the things you call Agents? Their real name being Shards? They're essentially small-moon-sized, biological/crystalline hybrid, alien supercomputers."

They looked at each other with confused glances. What could I mean?

It took a couple of seconds for the ramifications of that to hit them. Everyone except the one who'd heard it before paled as far as they could go before passing out from blood loss.

"Oh, shit," Doctor Mother exclaimed.

"And now you see," I confirmed, spreading my hands dramatically.

"You can control powers? Agents?" Alexandria gasped.

I grinned, tilting my head sideways. [I CAN COMMUNICATE VIA THEIR PROTOCOLS AS WELL.] I sent, their Shards being instructed to relay the messages to their hosts.

The four Shard hosts across from me flinched. "Right. So… Will you be willing to work with us?" Doctor Mother asked, eyeing the others curiously.

I pursed my lips. "You must realize, I have a dislike of Cauldron's efforts that borders on the extreme," I informed them.

Doctor Mother bristled. "We do what we must-"

"To save humanity. I know," I interrupted. Ignoring her glare, I continued my original point. "But if you want my aid? You're gonna have to change things up."

Alexandria scowled. "You don't get to dictate terms."

I raised an eyebrow tentatively. "Oh really? Given I am an asset with the power to bring Cauldron and the Triumvirate to your knees, you'd think that I would indeed get to dictate the terms of my cooperation."

Alexandria growled. "You wouldn't dare."

"Don't do this, Rebecca!" Contessa pleaded again.

"How fast can you make it over this table, Rebecca?" I asked, leaning forward threateningly. I ignored Contessa's request just as the woman across from me was doing. Obviously Ms Invincible hadn't gotten the message yet. It was time she did.

Alexandria launched from her sitting point. In half a second she would be on me. It wasn't a big table. Without bothering to communicate with her Shards, I temporarily disabled their execution engines.

This had the effect of Alexandria losing her flight, invulnerability, and thinker abilities. She dropped to the table's surface like a stone, sliding towards my fingers until she stopped an inch in front of them.

Eidolon looked like he'd seen a ghost. Contessa was flat out terrified. Number Man's eyes were wide. Doctor Mother looked like she was about to pray.

"Oww," Alexandria groaned.

"I didn't take her powers," I hastily assured them. "They're just off."

Alexandria raised her face so that she could look me in the eyes. "Turn. Them. Back. On," she got out through gritted teeth.

Oh crap. "Wait, are you in pain?"

The Library of Alexandria ground her jaw. "Yes," she hissed.

My eyes widened. "Oh shit." A thought enabled her powers again.

Relief visibly returned to her. She sagged down to the table, all the muscles across her body loosened again. She sighed with satisfaction.

"So you can turn off our abilities," Eidolon summed up. A note of respect had entered his voice.

I grimaced, but nodded. "I'm sorry Rebecca," I apologized. "I didn't know your powers were fixing some kind of terminal illness."

She raised her head to glare at me.

"Hey, you're the one who got pissy and launched themselves over the table at me," I half heartedly defended myself.

Alexandria didn't reply, she just lowered her head to the table again.

Contessa facepalmed. I raised an eyebrow. She wasn't the kind of person who did that, which means she was running a path to prevent further escalation from me.

"Look," I said to the nearly silent room, "I don't want to fight you. Cauldron can be a real force for good on Earth Bet. There is a way to save humanity and keep it human at the same time," I explained. "You've just gotta listen to me."

Doctor Mother's eyes betrayed her hope. "What could you possibly bring to the table in that regard?" she demanded.

"Youthful optimism. A different way of looking at problems," I began listing. "Also, I'm a programmer. I am literally trained to solve problems the right way. Unlike a precog basically slaved to her Shard, a severe dominatrix, someone who needs to prove himself, an effective idiot savant, or the only normal person trying to reign in all four of them. I have an outsider's perspective."

"Hey! I'm not an idiot!" Number Man protested.

Alexandria made a half hearted groan in protest.

Contessa was silent. She knew I was right.

"I don't have a need to prove myself," David refuted.

Doctor Mother grimaced. "Sadly, his descriptions of you all, despite being rather crude, are accurate," she admitted quietly.

Alexandria sat up and joined her fellow Parahumans in staring in eyes wide shock at their supposed 'moral anchor'.

"It's sometimes difficult to tell you all no," she fidgeted under their stares. "And you all have ways of looking at the world I can't dissuade you from."

The three non-knowing Parahumans looked at me, then at Doctor Mother, then me again.

"Alright, so the kid has a point," David admitted.

Alexandria flew back to her seat. She attempted to regain her dignity at the table like she had before I walked in. "As much as I dislike you, Weldon," she spoke, "I'm willing to hear you out."

Number Man shrugged. Contessa, when given a curious glance by Doctor Mother, furiously nodded her head.

Yeah, her Paths were going to be having her do incredibly out of character things to appease me. I wasn't one iota sorry for that.

Doctor Mother nodded and looked to me. "We will hear you out. For now."

I abruptly grinned and rubbed my hands together. "Alright! First things first, I think we can cross a rather big obstacle to saving the world off the list," I teased them.

Alexandria sighed. "Are you going to make us ask?" she complained.

"Nope. But what I have to say you're definitely not going to like," I warned them.

"I didn't like having my powers shut off. I'll manage," she deadpanned.

I smiled sadly at her and turned my focus to the green hooded Hero. "I'm sorry, David. Really. I am. Because what I'm about to tell you might send you into suicidal tendencies."

David gulped, closed his eyes, and breathed in an attempt to center himself. I politely waited until he opened his eyes again, his focus locked on my own. "Like Rebecca said. I'll manage. Hit me."

I grimaced again. "David, your search for a worthy opponent caused and compels a certain event every three months. And there's seventeen more of them waiting in the wings for when you get tired of these three, just as when you got tired of the first two, she appeared."

His face went white. Nobody spoke for a good ten seconds.

"You're lying," Alexandria said. She sounded like she needed to desperately believe that.

"Your Thinker powers are working again, Rebecca," I responded. "You know I'm not." My voice was as kind and soft as I could make it.

David brought a hand to his forehead. "Fuck," he whispered.

"I can't say anything to make the truth hurt any less," I said. "But I can prevent further attacks quite easily."

Eidolon raised his eyes to mine. He had tears leaking out, trailing down his face, and his previously cheery if sarcastic disposition was gone. "How?" he asked. "Please. I'll do anything."

Doctor Mother was still staring at me with horror.

"You have three Shards. One of them controls the Endbringers. I can very easily take that Shard for myself, rip it's primitive intelligence apart, and assume direct control over them," I explained.

David didn't hesitate. "Yes, please!" He was almost sobbing.

Alexandria made to get up. To interrupt what she assumed I was already doing. Instead, I merely shook my head. "Oh no way. I'm not letting you and I be the sole decision makers on this," I declared.

Alexandria sat back down, relieved.

"So you'll defer to our judgement on this?" Doctor Mother asked, surprised.

"It should really be a vote, with David and I each getting one vote too," I reasoned.

"Voting on whether to hand the Endbringers over to a 15 year old," Alexandria muttered. She shot a glare their resident precog's way. "This is not how I would have ever thought my day would go, Fortuna."

Contessa sat back and threaded her fingers together. "You know my vote. The Paths all look much easier if we don't need to worry about the Endbringers anymore. More so when Weldon is in direct control of them," she stated. "Casualties actually drop from sixty to only fifteen percent."

Alexandria, Number Man, and Doctor Mother all stared at her. I joined them.

"You're kidding," I said.

"No. You are a very good candidate for giving such power. No matter how much you have, you will always use it to try and help people," she explained.

I raised my eyebrows. "Path to Victory tell you that?"

"Yes."

I sat back in my chair. "Huh. I guess I vote yes too, then."

"Yes, anything," David choked out.

I looked at the three remaining decision makers.

"I concur with Contessa," Number Man declared. "The numbers shift very favourably around him."

Alexandria and Doctor Mother, seeing they were outvoted, capitulated. "I can't see how you controlling them directly would be any worse than David's subconscious," Alexandria admitted.

Doctor Mother nodded. "I am inclined to agree. Do it."

I nodded my head and closed my eyes. I felt around me for high level alien supercomputer connections. Narrowed my focus to the triple stack of signatures sitting next to two signatures. I then pinged his three Shards.

[QUERY: PURPOSE]
[QUERY: PURPOSE]
[QUERY: PURPOSE]

The responses arrived slower than they should have. I chalked it up to these being 'dead' Shards from Eden.

[PURPOSE: RAPID SOLUTION PROTOTYPES]
[PURPOSE: TEST ADMINISTRATION]
[PURPOSE: ATMOSPHERIC TRAVEL]

If I had to guess, which I did given how none of them exactly screamed Endbringer, it was probably the second one. The first one, Rapid Solution Prototyping, must have been Eidolon's trademark 'I can have any three powers I want' shtick, and Atmospheric Travel was clearly the standard flight plus invulnerability. By process of elimination, Test Administrator had to be the Endbringer controller.

If you looked at it a certain way, I guess you could call Endbringers tests. Horrifyingly high death count, regular destruction and chaos tests.

I had a feeling that Shard wasn't one I wanted to allow to keep it's intelligence after it attached to me.

My mind poured in and ripped what remained of the Shard apart. It became a hollow shell. Less hollow than my two original Shards as there was an absolute crapton of code necessary for controlling Endbringers, but hollow nonetheless.

Eidolon screamed.

I had the Shard remove its interface with David and open a new one with me. My brain tingled for a good half minute as the connection was established to my Corona Pollentia. Almost as an afterthought I started the Shard on growing energy collection systems so it wouldn't lose power over time anymore.

"Sorry about the pain, David," I winced.

And suddenly, I could feel them. Twenty distinct points of other in the back of my head, only needing to be focused on to bring to the fore. Three active, much stronger than the other seventeen. Unlike the scattered and unorganized cloud of 'asleep' Endbringers, the three active ones were in a neat little mental row. I brushed my mind lightly against each one, feeling an almost child-like mind curiously brush back each time. They never tried to travel up the connection to me, but I sensed I could do that to them.

A certain evil space squid's immortal words popped up in my brain and I chuckled. "Assuming Direct Control," I announced, and plunged into the first one.

"It worked?" I heard Doctor Mother ask.

David's voice came next. "Yeah, I think so. I feel weaker. I'm pretty sure I only have two slots for powers now too," he groaned. "And my head hurts."

I winced "Sorry about that. I had a suspicion that might happen," I apologized.

"No, if it allows us to stop Endbringer attacks, I'd happily give up all my slots."

Oh great. Depression alert!

While the rest of the Cauldron leadership tried to deal with the mope, I felt the child-like mind step aside. It almost gleefully allowed me to control its body. It was washing my mind with thankful emotions and hundreds of concepts, somehow communicating that it felt good to be used directly like this. It also sent it's displeasure with the previous Administrator.

"David, Behemoth thinks you're a poopy head," I said. My eyes were still closed.

"You're in communication with it right now?" Doctor Mother asked, awe in her voice.

I snorted. "Oh no, I'm driving her body," I corrected. "Currently bathing in exfoliating molten rock down near Earth Bet's core."

"Her?!" Alexandria demanded.

"Yeah, they're basically sentient beings," I explained. "Behemoth is a girl, Leviathan a boy, Simurgh a girl. The next one, if it's called into existence, will be a boy. That's what Beth is saying anyways."

David couldn't keep up his moping with how ridiculous the situation was. "Beth?" he asked incredulously.

"They apparently all have names. Beth is Behemoth, Levi is Leviathan, and Ziz is Simurgh. Beth is actually extremely talkative, almost a stereotypical preteen Californian valley girl," I elaborated.

The total and utter silence coming from the senses of my human body were telling. I peeked open an eye and raised an eyebrow at Alexandria's dumbfounded and completely disbelieving look.

"What?"

--LB--

"You didn't have to Door me to the middle of Antarctica for me to prove the Endbringer thing, you know!" I complained, teeth chattering.

"Less talk, more summoning," Alexandria growled.

I sent a query as to Beth's location while my jaw felt like a jackhammer.

"She's almost here," I informed the two next to me. "Just rising through the crust now."

"A likely story," Alexandria shot back.

I smirked with victory. For right behind me, the ice vaporized into steam and a tall, lithe, red form clawed her way out of the ground.

She towered over us. We found ourselves looking up, up, way up to see her face.

Alexandria gulped. Contessa smiled.

Beth waved at Alexandria, revealing a cheeky grin full of teeth.

Alexandria fainted.

"Well at least it's warm again," I deadpanned.

Beth looked pleased. Contessa stared disapprovingly down at the incapacitated hero.

I sent a smile Beth's way and allowed her to return to the earth. She gave me a wave, jumped, and did an actual swan dive back through the ice.

--LB--

"So now what?" I asked when I arrived back at the warm Cauldron base. "You gonna take me to the the Sahara Desert to make me land Ziz too?"

"Don't tempt me," Alexandria growled out.

"You're an absolute bitch sometimes, you know that Rebecca?" I shot at her.

She glared at me through narrowed eyes.

I rolled my eyes. "Door to the Heberts' Room," I called out.

It took two seconds for the thing to open. I looked up into the air and sighed. "Really, Doorman? You and I really gonna do this now?"

Of course, there was no response. I sighed again. "Fine. Door to Doormaker."

The portal in front of me closed and reopened, this time into what looked like a medical area. I stepped through. I ignored Alexandria when she protested and definitely ignored her when she stepped through behind me.

I stood in front of the comatose form on the bed on front of me. Middle aged guy, white skin from lack of sun exposure, gaunt and willowy despite the IV drip in his arm. Joined hands with another, a woman, who I guessed was the Clairvoyant.

"Tiny portal above my hand. One reopening for no, two for yes," I declared, holding out my hand.

A small portal opened above it, closed, then opened again. It repeated this once more, presumably indicating a Yes.

"Right. Do you want me to do something with your Shard?"

One reopening.

"No. Okay… hmm. Do you want me to call my friend Amy and have her heal you and Miss Big Sister over there?" I guessed.

Two reopenings.

"Hold on, you can't just-" Alexandria protested.

"Rebecca, she will only see this room. She'll be called by me, so she won't ask questions. She and I have done this kind of work before," I explained.

"And what of the Door itself? That capability is integral to continued Cauldron activity."

"Well given I was planning on getting Panacea Door access anyways, I can easily sell it to her as a benefit of helping me help the secret shadowy organization I'm associated with," I joked.

Her look of chagrin was perfect. "Why do you want to give Amy Dallon Door access?"

"Because she needs to be a far more effective healer than she is now, and with Door access, she can be anywhere on Earth Bet in less than five seconds," I reasoned.

"And will she buy that you're wrapped up in a 'shadowy organization'?" Alexandria asked, using air quotes around the offensive words.

"Wouldn't surprise her in the least," I grinned. "She knows about my powers, what I can really do, just as I know what she can really do. It came out in a heart to heart we had a while back. I would be very surprised if she didn't already assume I'd come across Earth Bet's shadow organizations from my forays into every computer system on the planet."

Alexandria narrowed her eyes. "Panacea is a healer," she stated.

"No, Panacea is a Biostriker," I corrected her. "Healing is something she can do, yes, but it's like… saying all Amy Dallon can do is healing is like saying the only purpose of a fighter jet equipped with fusion bombs is going from Point A to Point B."

Alexandria's face paled. "What."

"I've focused on Amy for a while, being her friend and working out her issues. Primarily because she can directly manipulate biology. She makes Nilbog look like a toddler," I revealed. "But she's now also my friend. So I've been helping her out with her various issues and getting her to lighten up. She feels guilty about her real power's possibilities, not the least because Carol Dallon doesn't really treat her like a daughter and treats her like an undercover villain infiltrating her precious family," I spat out the stuff about Brandish with a tone approaching hate. "So she tries to push herself way overboard on healing people, and again due to Carol, feels extreme guilt that she can't save everyone, so she gets even further buried in her work."

"Fuck," the Triumvirate member breathed. "Are any of your friends stable?"

"Taylor's the closest," I admitted, "but only because I waged a year and a half long war against the bullying campaign that ended with her Locker incident and saved her Mom. She would be a very different, broken person otherwise. Would've taken over Brockton Bay, killed you, and destroyed your precious Thomas Calvert, among other things. And even with all that effort the Locker still happened. Because of a Ward, no less."

Alexandria went still. I smiled broadly, not turning to see her reaction.

"How could you possibly know all that?" she asked.

"You know how Rebecca, or at least your Thinker power has an idea."

"You're from the future," she gasped.

I turned then and smirked. "No. I'm not a precog either. I just know one previously possible version of the future like the back of my hand, and through that, a whole lot about the present and recent past. People don't change with the little butterflies I've set off, and most events are pretty heavily set in stone too. I only started making waves two years ago after all, and they were mostly focused on Taylor and Amy. My butterflies aren't quite that big yet. The biggest change so far is that now I control the Endbringers, and what I've told you in this room."

Stunned silence. I almost missed the question she whispered.

"Do we beat him?" she asked.

"95% casualties on Earth Bet. 5% Multiversal."

"Fuck. When?"

"Two years."

Alexandria drew in a tense, long breath. "And using your future knowledge… Can we stop it?"

"The confrontation? No," I explained. "But we can choose whether it's violent or peaceful, whether two years or a decade and a half, and whether Zion becomes a legitimate force for good alongside his mate, Eden."

"How?!"

I grinned at her. "Work with me, follow my suggestions, and you'll see. And no, I'm not saying that because I'm trying to hide something. You are a catalyst, along with every other member of the human species on and from Earth Bet. I have to manipulate all of you in some way. Sorry."

"And you're not a catalyst?" she shot back.

I shrugged. "I'm not on Earth Bet right now, am I?" Come on, take the bait.

"No but you are from it," Alexandria declared.

My smirk was very wide and very knowing. "Are you certain of that, Rebecca?"

She narrowed her eyes to near slits with suspicion and caution. "We tracked your past. You were born on Earth Bet. To your parents," she insisted.

"True," I acknowledged, "but let me ask you this. Who were my parents' parents?"

She blinked and scowled. "I don't know," Alexandria admitted.

I nodded. "I'm not surprised. That's because they didn't exist before I decided to be born on Earth Bet."

"What."

I sighed and smiled. "As far above humans as Zion is, he is still part of your spacetime. I, and my colleagues, simply aren't. Neither this body's parents nor this body existed in the original timeline."

Alexandria gulped. "Who are you, then? And how can you change reality like that?"

"I come from a place where we hold so much power over your universe that simply thinking up an idea would change your reality," I began explaining. "One of us thought you up. I'm a… fan, you could say. The small consciousness in this body isn't anywhere near a small hundredth of a percentage of my true self. The timeline we're in now is mine. It's not the original."

The amount of bullshit I was spewing was too damned high, but I needed to really ram home what I was. Some of what I was saying was even true; though what flavor of Robert Heinlein's World as Myth theory was actually real determined exactly what was true. Did stories shape their realities and authors were gods? Or were authors just recorders of events that happened in other realities?

Fuck it I knew. One sounded a lot more impressive though, and if I'd learned anything in my two years on Earth Bet, impressive impressions were 90% of the battles.

Her face was pale. "Wh… why are you here, then?" she managed to ask, barely squeaking. It was a credit to her composure that she didn't.

Taylor would probably squee if she saw her hero squeaking, but I assumed Cauldron needed whatever satellites they might have had in orbit.

"Fun, I suppose," I 'admitted'. "Intellectual stimulation."

Alexandria stared at me with complete disbelief. She just could not compute the bullshit spilling from my lips.

Or at least that was my impression of her slightly open mouth, scrunched eyebrows, narrowed eyes, and hands held out towards me like she wanted to strangle me.

 

[TCGM]

Tech Support
Plot Bunny 2
When​

I stood on that street corner for a longer time than I'll ever admit. Thoughts and plans raced through my head, considered and discarded in moments. There was so much I knew and still so much I flat out didn't. Too much in both directions to make anything concrete or long-lasting until I got more data.

An abrupt surge of humor shocked me out of my stupor. I snorted. Data, the very thing the space whales' Shards wanted. How ironic that I needed the same as, and thought remotely similar to, alien supercomputer biomasses the size of small moons sitting on dead Earths in other realities, hooked up to humans through two abnormal growths in their brains and granting them highly limited portions of the Shard's own frankly bullshit abilities to fuck with the fabric of space and time.

Oh gods.

What if I had one of those?!

A quick check of myself found no unusual impulses for causing conflict. Okay, that was good, it meant I didn't have a Shard of Zion. I wouldn't have my personality and will coerced into doing shit against my will or knowledge.

It was possible I had an Eden Shard. I didn't feel any different, thinking-wise, so I was throwing that possibility in the 'unlikely' column for the time being. Plus, the only way to get one of those was to be a Case 53, part of Cauldron, or be lucky on the scale of certain bullshit-tier precogs and have one of the few she'd bled off before crashing into a planet attach to you.

I was not that lucky.

I guess it was also possible I had an Abaddon Shard. The guy was hiding out somewhere around this corner of the multiverse after all, he might find it funny to throw a ROB'd human from elsewhere a bone, see what I could do with it.

If that was the case, or even if the ROB that had brought me here for their own amusement had given me a Shard, what were my abilities? I had no clue. They clearly weren't movement-based, else I'd have manifested them in my sprint from the alley to this street corner. I also wasn't a Thinker. I was 100% sure about that. My mind was my own and hadn't changed at all. The only thing off about my body or mind was the bone-dead weariness permeating everything.

I didn't think any power ripped your organic energy reserves apart and left you still functioning, so that was out. Plus, it was highly likely that a trip through whatever it was that sat between universes would take its toll on a human being like myself. Mystery… most likely solved.

Alright, further testing for powers or testing of powers would have to wait. I knew where I was now, I just needed to know when.

I jogged back to the coffee shop across from the alley I woke up in to see if I could steal a closer look at the newspaper I'd seen. Along the way I studied my surroundings, hoping to find a date or time of any kind on anything. In my time and world there were plenty of signs around that carried the current value of at least one of those. It seemed that Brockton Bay either couldn't support those or it was too early in the timeline for them to really catch on.

I wasn't sure which would be worse.

The sidewalk on the coffee shop's side of the street ended up being just close enough for me to make out the larger text on what was most definitely a newspaper. If the guy who owned the paper noticed the scruffy homeless man peering at it through the window, he didn't acknowledge the fact. The paper was apparently named the Brockton Bay Bulletin. It had several headlines which didn't help me much, but it did have a date in bold, Times New Roman-faced lettering at the top of the front page, right under the name.

March 8th, 2011.

I had a date. It was likely yesterday's paper given it was clearly past midnight, and I doubted you could pick up a newspaper any time after 8pm in this city. That meant today was March 9th, 2011. Let's see.. pull up the timeline in my head…

My eyes shot wide open and I cursed under my breath. I'd missed the Simurgh attacking Canberra by a week. Frak that was close.

I went over the timeline again, just to make sure I had everything correct.

Taylor Hebert triggered with the Administrator Shard of Zion in January, but I didn't know the exact date. Went to the psychiatric ward for a week, was hospitalized for three days afterwards while she physically healed.

I would bet a hundred bucks I didn't have that she was still frakked up in the head, though. Being locked in your own locker by your sibling analogue after they betrayed you, tortured you for a year and a half, then left you to die among bugs, sludge, and toxic waste tends to do that to people.

One month before Taylor Hebert subdues Lung, meets the Undersiders, and the shitshow that is Worm truly kicks off.

How was I going to play this? I hadn't come here because of an infamous ROB-sponsored CYOA. I didn't have a set goal, I wasn't necessarily going to be returned after 10 years of surviving, and I had no inkling I'd go back to my world at all if I died, unlike a certain security guard. I wasn't even sure if I had powers in the first place!

Alright, that decided it. If I was going to proceed with any kind of plan, I needed to know, once and for all, if I had powers. And if I did, what they might be.

…

Now how the hell was I going to figure those two things out?

 

[TCGM]

Tech Support
Plot Bunny 3
Up Up, Down Down, Left Right, Left Right​

Right. I most definitely wasn't a Brute.

I am very glad I chose to whack my forearm with a metal pipe, gently, instead of my first idea of a possible test.

To be fair, that idea was influenced by stereotypical superhero testing from movies and media, so it wasn't entirely my fault that I conceived of such a retarded plan.

Taylor would probably smack me upside the head if I ever told her I had contemplated jumping off an apartment building to test my vulnerability.

I also wasn't a regenerator. After realizing just how disastrous my initial power testing ideas might be, I toned them down to the smallest, least injuring trials possible. Stubbing my toe, while painful, had nothing on what I would have thought of without limiting myself to reasonable ideas.

Just because I only consider reasonable ideas doesn't mean my brain, on superhero-obsessed kid cocaine, doesn't come up with stupid shit. Case in point; it suggested testing regeneration by cutting off a leg.

I was starting to doubt the idea that I didn't have a Shard of Abaddon dedicated to trolling me by giving me terrible ideas for testing. It would be just like him. It could also be the ROB whispering in the back of my mind for amusement, but the fact I'd always tended to consider idiotic ideas in my own headspace, just to amuse myself, put paid to either possibility.

Needless to say, making me a ROB would be the first and last mistake any other ROB ever made as the entire multiverse became my target for trolling and needling. The Alterans would kick me out of the glow club so fast I'd pulse like a strobe light if I ever managed to ascend naturally. It's highly likely my compatriot forum and unofficial fiction aficionados would suffer similar fates, or if not stopped, do the same. Something not often considered is that real Authors and Writers are the worst kind of ROBs.

That's B for Bastard, not Being.

I couldn't see through things. I couldn't fire blasts of any kind. I couldn't sense emotions. I couldn't influence them. Just to be sure I ran down the list of powers I was aware of manifesting in the Wormverse at some point. No go for Triumvirate, nothing from the S9, none of the Undersiders, Faultline's Crew, or the Wards.

Not even Tinkering; I checked. I couldn't look at a bunch of components and suddenly have a blueprint pop up in my head.

It was with a hung head and a depressed air that I trudged into the Brockton Central Library. I asked the skeptical front desk lady if the computers were free to use. It turned out they did actually have a guest account that anyone could use to access a few basic functions, like email and some websites. I thanked her, my smile's perfect teeth contrasting strongly enough with my haggard appearance for her to allow me use of the guest account, and made my way to the computers.

I chose an out-of-the-way terminal so that nobody could see me or my computer screen. It was one of three on the side facing the wall. I sat down, logged into the guest account, and started up the thankfully present Firefox.

Google didn't seem to exist on Earth Bet, thus neither did their Chrome browser, and I'd be caught dead before I used Internet Explorer for anything but downloading one of the other two.

There still was a search engine, though. It was Firefox's home page on these library computers. Some website called Magellan provided a rudimentary barebones version of what Google provided in my world, and if I guessed right, Earth Aleph. Funny that Magellan of all things survived while Google didn't exist. Something about that hammered home just how much of an alternate universe I was in.

Wikipedia existed, Reddit did not. PHO seemed to have taken over the role Reddit would have served, which explained the absence. Sort of. If I squinted. It didn't seem to matter that PHO was called Parahumans Online, it was still the 'front page of the Internet'.

I used both Wikipedia and PHO to do my research, to validate that my knowledge was accurate for this Earth Bet. After all, it wasn't like my fellow writers hadn't created hundreds of different versions of the universe. It would be just like my luck to get me plopped into one of the more sadistic writer's stories.

From what I could tell though, nearly everything was identical to the vanilla Worm fanon baseline. Canberra was indeed attacked by Ziz without Scion showing up, the angelic Endbringer still posted on the PHO forums under the incredibly frakking obvious username Winged_One, and Void Cowboy was universally hated. Armsmaster was a dick, Miss Militia her normal insomniac self, and Clockblocker hadn't changed one iota. Dragon existed, the Triumvirate existed, Hero was killed by William Manton's projection.

Not that anyone knew the Siberian was a projection. I was probably the only one besides a few members of Cauldron who did.

All these similarities is why I was shocked to hell to find two near identical looking women, one mature and the other obviously a teenager, walk into the library. From where I was I could actually see the double doors that served as the barrier between the inside of the Brockton Central Library and the rest of the world. It took me quite a few seconds to place the two in my mind. I was starting to think they were just two people I'd never heard of from the story when recognition clicked into place.

Holy shit. Annette was alive. And that was Taylor?! The long-haired, vibrant-color-wearing, happy girl walking next to her mother didn't resemble Taylor Hebert of vanilla Worm at all. Even her hair was full of life. It was like the entire universe was doing it's best to take a dump on what little handle on the timeline I thought I had.

My eyes widened with sudden realization. If Annette was alive, who died two years ago?

Frantic Magellan-ing found out that Daniel Hebert was still alive and the de-facto leader of the Dockworkers' Association. Not the Dockworkers Union; I was surprised. Apparently I'd fallen for that mental confusion as well. Yeah, their website had him listed as Head of Hiring and Union Spokesperson, but there was an entire section of PHO dedicated to the organization and a ton of supposed Association members 'jokingly' calling him variations of Boss. He was most definitely the leader.

I leaned back, letting out my tension with a slow, relaxing breath. Taylor had both her parents. I was happy for her, but this threw a lot of my previously accurate knowledge into question. Nothing else looked different from how I remembered it being, but I simply didn't have enough information to be reasonably sure. In the grand scheme of things, Annette living and Taylor not looking like a goth weren't very big changes, but neither is every little rumble on a mountain.

Not until the avalanche starts.

I was going to have to be very careful with my movements and changes from now on. Even if I didn't have powers, I technically qualified as Earth Bet's first Thinker 0, subcategory Precognitive, because of my knowledge. In the wrong hands my mind could cause untold damage. And as much as I wanted to believe I wouldn't crack under torture, I'd have no way to know if I did in another timeline in front of a certain asshole. Lisa was a major threat; I couldn't let her catch wind or sight of me, lest she tell Coil or try to manipulate me herself. She wasn't savvy enough to realize when she was shooting herself in the foot before it was too late.

So much for my smooth ride.

I glanced back at the library entrance. The Heberts were gone, and the front desk lady was back to reading her magazine.

I sighed, logged out of the guest account, and stood up. I smiled at the beige computer tower. It was a reminder of simpler times, though nobody should have such an old-ass computer in 2011.

Back home this computer would be in a museum. Kids would go past it with their parents and ask how you controlled the machine if you didn't have a touchscreen.

Nostalgia, man. Hit me right in the feeler organ.

I reached down to pat the top of the tower, brimming with that nostalgia-

And then the moment my hand made contact with the audio jack embedded in the plastic, my universe expanded.

 

[TCGM]

Keeping My Head (Down)
Plot Bunny
Mastery​

The Endbringer sirens went off.

We tried to evacuate.

She was way faster this time.

And she sang. Floated over the city getting attacked by everyone and everything that could be brought to bear.

I knew why she was here.

She was here for me.

I didn't want to get involved yet. Apparently she became impatient though.

So much for keeping my head down.

I walked out of our shelter, a mere touch forcing the guard to unlock the doors for me and most importantly keep my family safe.

They might not be my original one but I cared for them all the same.

There she was, flying towards our shelter slowly. She was forcing her way through the frantic defenders.

Her song radiated like the sound of nails on a chalkboard. In exchange for not mind fucking people, I guess it just sounded terrible instead.

Worst. Singer. Ever. 1 star Yelp review.

Did Yelp even exist here? I never actually checked.

It'd been way longer than 30 minutes. They were probably thinking they were going to have to Dome us. If she ever left.

But I had knowledge from elsewhere, and most importantly, a power she desperately needed.

Needed me to use on her.

As the 15 foot tall hundred winged woman flew towards me, I sighed in resignation.

A speedster cape showed up next to me and reached out to touch me, to get me out of there.

The moment she did, she was mine.

"Continue normally," I instructed her. "Then come see me when it's not suspicious. I will explain at that time."

She straightened up, snapping off a salute, then zipped off into the surprisingly not ruined city.

Surprising if you didn't know what Ziz was really here for.

Several flyers came by and tried to move me. I sighed at each one and gave them their instructions.

I have extremely mixed feelings about my power.

On one hand, everyone I touch is instantly Mastered.

On the other, everyone I touch is instantly Mastered. No exceptions so far.

My bet was that included Endbringers. Why else was she here?

And then, I was staring up into her cold, angelic face. A bubble of force encapsulated us, isolating us from everywhere else.

I sighed again and put my hands in my pockets. "Hello Ziz," I greeted her.

She stared at me, unchanging. She knew I knew that she knew that I knew what she was here for.

"You know the consequences, right?" I asked her. Hey, I had to stick to my principles even with this ridiculous power.

A solitary nod.

I pursed my lips together. "Very well," I pulled a hand out of my pocket and held it out to her.

She didn't move. Didn't hold out her hand. She just stared into my eyes.

"Uh, hello?" I asked warily, shaking my hand around. "Only works through touch?" I shook it more to emphasize what she needed to do.

A single headshake.

I groaned and pinched my fingers together. "No wait, let me guess; you have limiters and they prevent you from trying to be mastered by anyone but… him," I gave a shot in the dark.

She nodded. Twice.

I rolled my eyes and threw my head back. "Alright fine! Fine!" I angrily stalked forward and almost slapped her on the knee.

And then my world exploded.

Touchtastesightsoundfeelingsthoughtsconcepts-

"Ahh!" I screamed, clutching my head as I staggered back. "What the fuck was that?!"

Apologies.

My breath hitched in my lungs.

That was her voice.

In my head.

I gulped and slowly raised my eyes to look at her.

Her previously cold face was alight, happy, a huge smile looking down on me.

I abruptly found myself inside a huge, hundred winged hug.

"Oof!" I groaned, my headache only worsening.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you! she repeated over and over in my head, hugging me like her life depended on it.

 

[TCGM]

Shipping It Stargate Style
Plot Bunny
Unending Odyssey​

In one universe of one multiverse, a girl was trapped in her locker.

In one universe of an entirely different multiverse far away across the sea of existence, a starship was exploding from the beam of energy that lanced through it.

The girl screamed one final time before her vocal cords broke.

The ship… began to put itself back together.

If it was just a temporal reversion, the fabric of that universe wouldn't have cared.

But the people on that ship sought to bring something back.

Even with that, the universe would've probably been okay. An uninhabited galaxy or two burned away to solve the paradox, no biggie.

They tried to bring back a person.

A soul.

The fabric of that universe tore itself apart, and was only put back together by the frantic efforts of some ascended beings.

They were left with a conundrum, because there were now two occurrences of the ship and everyone on it.

One was fine, and was about to initiate the time bubble. It had the displaced soul.

The other was almost completely destroyed.

The ascended did what they always did to solve problems. Out of sight, out of mind.

They tossed that ship out of their multiverse.

The entire aborted timeline, ship included, was ejected into the space and time between space or time.

It traveled for unknown eons, occasionally pinging off other multiverses like a pinball in an arcade machine. Some of the collisions had effects on the contents of the tiny universe despite their paused state.

One gave the ship sentience.

Another gave it a soul.

Yet another imbued it and the people on it with the gift of Magic.

Finally, one multiverse didn't reject it. This one had been so damaged by a race composed of faulty Clarketech that the ship was able to slip right in.

It glanced off another tiny travelling spirit, both redirecting it's course and imparting the ability to come back as a human looking girl if it ever was destroyed.

Given it was in the process of being destroyed, this activated, turning the people on board into tiny faeries and the ship into a girl. Time was still paused inside the tiny universe though and as such the mind of the ship failed to form.

Such are the perils of tampering with time.

Then it slammed into a piece of the Clarketech race, ate that piece like it was a snack, and experienced it's final course correction.

On January 3rd, 2011, the Odyssey slammed straight into Taylor Hebert. Due to their weakened states, the two became one being.

And she woke up.

--LB--

Stars, two beings spiraling around each other-

-screaming battle enemies explosions shields down hull damage pain-

-ages long sedate unmoving low power safe-

-frozen cast out collision more collisions change entry collision change consumption merge-

Taylor woke with a gasp, banging her head on her locker.

And promptly stared in shock at the impression of her face staring back at her from the metal.

"What?" she tried to say, her surprise over her own face staring out of the metal of her locker overriding the panic and fear and disgust she felt at her location.

Which she somehow knew the exact statistics of, down to the millimeter.

Her core was thrumming with unexpected new life and her crew were scrambling to figure out what went wrong with the temporal reversion-

Crew? Core? Temporal reversion?! Taylor asked herself. She shook her head to try and remove the certainties she knew to be true. What the hell is going on?

She half heartedly banged on the locker door once more, momentarily chalking it up to her going crazy.

She instinctively fired her sublight engines.

The poor metal door didn't just fly off the locker, it disintegrated against the force and power of engines capable of accelerating her to a full 80% of lightspeed in a few seconds.

WHAT THE FUCK?! Taylor screamed in her own head, pushing herself away from the now missing door and into the sludge on her back.

The sludge which was being repelled by a shimmering white field, bright enough to light up the locker from the inside.

Her sublight engines flared again, forcing her hull through the back of the locker and a foot into to the concrete wall.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" Taylor screamed, her vocal cords repaired by her merge.

She hesitantly stood up and shimmied the foot of distance back to her locker, looking back at the impression of her spread eagled body now almost punched into the wall.

"Sublight engines?" Taylor asked herself under her breath, almost jumping when she received a status report on their functionality.

Oh, and she had a hyperdrive too apparently, whatever that meant.

Taylor started to hyperventilate. She stumbled out of her locker, her sublight engines helpfully indicating their status of being barely a hundredth of a percent engaged.

Then came the voices.

"Colonel, what the hell is going on with the ship?" a nice sounding, if old, man asked.

"I don't know Cam, I've never seen anything like this!" a woman's voice answered. "The Odyssey's doing things all in it's own."

Odyssey.

That name rang true in Taylor's head. It felt as much her name as Taylor did.

U.S.A.F. X-304 Daedalus Class Deep Space Carrier Odyssey, her well of new knowledge and senses informed her.

U.S.A.F? Taylor asked herself. She blinked when the answer came to her, not from her new stuff but from her… previous? knowledge. United States Air Force? Deep Space Carrier?!

"Maybe the ship got so bored of being trapped in this time bubble it evolved its own sentience?" a rather mischievous, slightly European sounding woman said sarcastically.

Her voice made Taylor want to hide her valuables. Several of her armories and cargo bays sealed shut subconsciously.

Because apparently she had those now.

"Oh come on, that's crazy," a fourth man dismissed her.

The voices were silent for several seconds.

"Right, guys?" he hesitantly asked for confirmation.

"Well we do have the Asgard core on board…" the first woman started to reason.

"No way. Nuh uh. I draw the line at alive ships," the first man said flatly.

"Well why don't we just ask?" the second woman reasoned. "And hey, has anyone seen Muscles around? I thought he was supposed to be going back in time or something."

Taylor was pretty sure she was crazy. She'd obviously snapped in the locker. Maybe she was still in there. Hallucinating all this.

"Fine! Fine! Hey Odyssey, here's a dumb question but apparently we should ask it anyways: anybody home?!" the second man sounded like an angry old grandpa.

Taylor saw no reason to not indulge her mental break. She was already far gone enough to experience all of this. Not much more to go.

She tried to feel for a way to reply to them and got something called a comm system back in response. She, trembling, tried to pipe her voice through it and into the room the four of them were in.

She barely registered it being the engine room. Her engine room.

"H-hello?" she called out.

Two of them, the first man and the second woman, jumped with surprise. The second man just dropped his arms and let his head flop back with defeat.

The first woman gulped. Taylor could see all this through something called the internal sensors. Because she had those now, apparently. "Hi," she said to the ceiling, shivering slightly. "Uh… who are you?"

"Y-You're the voices in my head, you tell me!" Taylor shot back.

Suddenly she found dossiers on all of them pulling up in her vision. Colonel Samantha Carter. Colonel Cameron Mitchell. Doctor Daniel Jackson. Vala mal Doran.

"Nevermind, whatever this insanity is just told me," she informed them. A thought of wanting the things to go away made them disappear.

Sam blinked several more times, then set her face sternly. "Are you the Odyssey?" she asked, the tone of disbelief on her voice very clear.

"I-" Taylor started, then hesitated, and tried again. "No, no, I'm not. I'm Taylor. I don't know what this crazy shit is but you'd better stop it!"

Oh god. Maybe this was a cape Mastering her. That had to be it.

"GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" she screamed at them.

"We're not in your head, kid!" Cameron fired back. "We're on a ship! What are you doing in it's head?!"

"Uh, guys," Vala said. She was looking at one of the monitors that showed the outside. She'd previously been looking at the screen that showed the Odyssey's status.

And a screen for Taylor's external sensors. Displaying her surroundings. In her school.

"Not now, Vala!" Daniel scolded her.

"Oooh no," Vala shot back. "You do not get to do that to me anymore!"

"STOP IT, ALL OF YOU!" Taylor screamed, collapsing to her knees and hiding her face. She just wanted this to go away!

The 'ship' they were on went dark. She'd shut down power to everything but life support and the internal sensors.

"Uh, Sam," Daniel asked pleasantly after a few moments. "What just happened?"

Sam tried to place a crystal down on the very unique console at the back of the engine room. It clunked against the glass-like surface uselessly. "Damn it!" she cursed. "I have no idea!"

"Maybe we upset the poor little girl who is also now our ship?" Vala tersely suggested, her arms crossed.

The three others looked at her with dumbfounded expressions.

"You really should learn to listen to me more," she deadpanned, her tone kind of hurt.

"What the hell do you mean, girl who is our ship?" Cameron asked.

Vala grinned and looked at the ceiling. "Taylor?" she asked sweetly. "Would you turn the lights back on please?"

She really didn't want to. But Taylor looked at the remains of her locker and grimaced. Something was going on. Something immensely screwed up. But maybe she'd triggered in her locker and her power was weird, giving her four voices in her head to talk to.

She was always alone.

She'd prefer to believe that over being Mastered.

Taylor searched herself for a way to do that. It was a set of simple switches in her mind she'd flipped on instinct in her panic. She hesitated, closed her eyes, and flipped them back on.

The systems of the ship all came back online.

"There, see?" Vala presented smugly. "I told you. I was right!"

"Vala a little girl cannot be a starship!" Sam lamented, sighing.

Vala stepped closer to the sensor screen and pointed. "Well then you tell me, Sam, how the outside of the Odyssey shows a Tau'ri school?"

The three of them stared dumbfounded at her for several seconds.

Then they reluctantly stepped over to the screen.

"Holy Hannah," Cameron exclaimed.

Sam's eyes widened. She looked at the ceiling again. "Um… Taylor?"

"What?" Taylor replied, wary of them yelling again.

"Where are you right now?" she asked, a struggle to believe Taylor's sensors on her face.

"I-I'm on the floor outside my locker," she said, choking up. "Hugging my knees."

The four of them looked back down at her sensor screen.

"That certainly looks like a pair of legs and arms hugging them," Daniel dryly remarked.

"This is impossible!" Sam refuted. "Ships… don't just suddenly become humans!"

"Uh, guys?" Cameron asked, tapping a section of the screen. It zoomed in on Taylor's arm. "What's that?"

Taylor hurriedly hid her arm out of view of that particular visual sensor. "Nothing."

Vala's face darkened. "It looked like feminine refuse, Cam," she said.

Taylor whimpered and curled in on herself further.

 

[TCGM]

Without A Paddle
Plot Bunny
Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come For You​

I wake up with a gasp.

Cold, hard ground under me. That's the first thing I notice.

The second thing is that I'm smaller. Seriously, proprioception is a thing and mine is going nuts.

Well if I'm smaller, I certainly didn't just get KO'd. You do not randomly get smaller in our reality.

I mean, unless I've been abducted by aliens.

Slightly peek open my eye… yeah no that's a brick wall, I've not been abducted by aliens.

Unless they're pulling a Saints Row 4 on me.

If they are, I'll have to figure out how to deal with that later. For now assume that this is in fact a reality, and most importantly, not my native one.

Seriously. You do not suddenly get smaller. Not to the tune of what feels like a decade and a half.

Not in our reality… but I can think of dozens more off the top of my head where that can easily occur.

Great. I've been ROBed. And I don't remember filling out anything like a CYOA, so I'm up shit creek as far as location data from that is concerned.

What the hell am I now, twelve? Thirteen?

I open my eyes and sit up, glancing down at my body.

Man I'm tiny now.

Not really, but compared to my previous six foot two, two eighty pound toned adult body, I'm a shrimp.

Will probably still tower over and outmass anybody in my current age group, though.

… Actually… gods I hope I'm wrong.

I pat down my chest and my groin, just to make sure. Flat chest, unhelpful given my age, but my package is still present, if smaller, so I'm still a guy. Whew.

Right, younger, still myself, if my skin color, relative bone density and hair color is anything to go by.

So where the hell am I?

My surroundings aren't that helpful. It's an alleyway. A bog standard alleyway. Trash, a dumpster, brick walls. And that aforementioned cold hard ground.

Fantastic.

Well, I feel okay, despite being suddenly half my age. So it's not that hard for me to stand up. Some minor wobbling as I get used to my greatly reduced weight and much lower center of gravity, but still.

Thankfully the alleyway lets out onto some kind of tourist attraction avenue thing, given the bustling shoppers I can see. The two stores bordering the alley across from mine aren't that helpful in determining my new multiversal location.

Seems Starbucks and Burger King are universal. Multiversal.

I abruptly chuckle at my own joke. My voice sounds weird, younger, higher, but not as high as I expected it to be. Ah well, I kinda hit puberty a little early and as heavy as Thor bringing down the hammer on Cap's shield.

Hmmm… there also seem to be two people in black body armor, the SWAT kind, bracketing the other alley. I can't get a very good look at them from my position, there's too many shoppers, but odds are good that my alley has a matching set.

Bouncers to keep hoodlums off a tourist trap, makes sense.

A review of my clothing shows that I don't look too bad. Cargo shorts and a T-shirt, slightly dirtied from the alley ground but still nice. Huh, I'm pretty sure this is exactly what I was wearing before I got dragged here… wherever here is.

I comb back my hair, the only piece of me out of place, then slowly and semi purposely stride out of the alley. Look like you know where you're going and almost everyone will ignore you. Confidence and slight genius is the entire driving force behind subreddits like ActLikeYouBelong, after all.

And like I planned, it works. The… Enforcers? judging by their arm patches, merely scope me out and nod to me. One does take a look down the alley, presumably to find out if there was someone who dragged me in there and was still present, but just shrugged once he found nothing.

I nod back to them and just keep walking, merging with the crowd. It takes about thirty seconds for the feeling of eyes on me to go away.

Little known fact; that feeling isn't psychosomatic. Our brain is capable of using observed phenomenon and tendencies to calculate just how long a given thing will have its eyes glued to you after choosing you as a target. Hind brain survival instincts are powerful if you know how to use them.

Almost like really minor superpowers, honestly.

They're not perfect, but they have been honed by hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Barring special circumstances, or individuals trained to exploit these primal abilities, they're very effective.

I doubt a bunch of glorified tourist trap security guards are trained in that.

One quick side glance back… and yeah, none of them are paying any attention to me whatsoever.

Anyways, where the hell am I? No signs pointing to the general location yet, and so far all the stores I'm passing have relatively normal names. Nothing really sticks out.

Then I hear a word, one word, in the run on sentences of someone who passes me. Sentences I was previously ignoring. But that word catches my focus.

"-and we need to get you new clothes, Ames! You can't keep going around in that smock of yours. Come on. We only come to the Boardwalk once a week!"

Boardwalk. Enforcers.

Ames.

Alarm bells start going off in my head.

Once is chance. Twice is coincidence. Three is a fucking pattern and that's fucking Victoria Dallon, Glory Girl, dragging her adoptive sister Amy Dallon, Panacea, into a high end clothing store.

…

FUCK FUCK FUCK!

---

"Contessa!"

I'm in another alleyway, my head tilted back, and speaking to the sky.

"Contessa!"

No answer. Or at least no portal showing up out of nowhere and no scary as hell woman in a fedora walking through.

Fine then.

"Clairvoyant! Doormaker! I know you can hear me. Open up a portal from Contessa to me right now or I can't help you save the world. Fucking morons!"

…

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Okay, what.

They still think I'm not important? Even if I have a Blank perk or an equivalent, those only protect me from Thinkers. Once words leave my mouth they should be detectable.

Fine. I'll just have to ramp up my threat level.

Is it stupid to poke a multiversal organization with highly questionable morals this hard if I have no powers? Yes. Yes it is.

On another note, this is fucking Brockton Bay. On Earth Bet. A death city on a death world.

I'll take my chances, thanks.

"Cauldron, Zion, Eden, Agents, Passengers, Trigger Events, Trigger Visions, Case 53s, Extinction Event, The Cycle, Public Awareness-" I begin.

Two things happen that interrupt me.

One, a tear in space opens right in front of me, and the fedora clad woman of nightmares steps out. "Talk." she demands.

Two, a moment later, the alleyway starts to glow an off-gold.

From behind me.

And Contessa's eyes widen.

Oh no.

I gulp, turn around, and find myself eye to junk with Scion.

Right. I'm short. He's not, either in height or, well… length.

I crane my neck back so I can get a look at his face.

Scion is staring straight at me, intense focus displayed on his normally emotionless face.

"Well… shit," I lament.

 

[TCGM]

Rogue One
Plot Bunny
A Galaxy Divided​

"Sir!" came the cry of a communications technician, "New contacts five hundred fifty three kilometres off the port bow!"

The captain of the Mon Calamari battleship and Rebel Alliance flagship spun around in his chair. "Friendlies? Reinforcements?!"

"I don't know Sir!" the tech responded unhelpfully, "they don't match any known configuration!"

The captain only considered his next command for a second. "Hail them! Ask for any assistance they can give us!"

"Yes Sir," the tech responded.

With a flip of a button a standard hailing and aid request message was blasted toward the small fleet of nine hanging west of the Battle of Scarif.

---

Let me tell you, their communication and security protocols, for a grand united starfaring civilization, are absolute shit.

However, I've already seen this series of events. I know how it will end if I do not step in now. It was why I came here, after all.

My name is Gwyneth Corona. That is who I am. Exactly what I am is something I've been trying to find out for many, many years. I've lost count of the eons that I've lived through. But I do know that no matter what time or place I find myself, I try my best to save everyone I can.

I am something beyond even my own comprehension. I make Jedi quake and Sith feel real fear. The Force is but a drop in the ocean compared. And right now, I am in direct control of a fleet of ships so powerful the scout frigate at the head could go toe to toe with the Death Star and still have room for dinner.

I engage the sublight thrusters on my fleet and begin moving into range. That same scout frigate I mentioned is heading to the other side of the planet. It will take any and all shots dear old Tarkin decides to fire off.

It may or may not fire back.

I have three carriers in my fleet. The Poseidons are some of my best work. They each are capable of fielding several hundred thousand mini drones, or about a hundred thousand of the larger ones. That number quadruples if the drones are the kind that don't phase, just fire.

Given the 'shields' of this galaxy are about as protective as a screen door on a submarine, I'm going with the second type. Mini size.

With a loud squeal the metal of the Poseidons' drone bays cycles out of the way. Over ten million bright silver lights pour out into the night, spreading across the unlit sky until they all have clear firing lines on the Scarif planetary defense shield.

The other several hundred thousand pulse towards the battle of good and evil taking place over the shield gate.

---

"What is that?!" The Mon Calamari captain gasps.

His sensor officer appears to have a spastic seizure in her chair. "They're… they're ships Sir! So... many... tiny… ships! The sensors are failing to get their total number!"

The captain spins around again. "Trajectory!" he screams. "Get their trajectory!"

The sensor officer scrambles to get any information at all. Suddenly, what little color her face has drains. She looks up at the captain with dead eyes. "The trajectory is here, Sir."

He blinks. "What?!"

"They're on course for this ship."

---

The net of drones I sent to align with the planetary shield has finally entered position. I prep the command to fire until the shield is down, then another to head towards the now one sided battle. I will only send the actual engage command once I am ready. The drones currently approaching the Rebel flagship are actually going to miss them and head right down to the surface, but it'll be funny to watch them panic until they realize that. Meanwhile my fleet is almost inside maximum range for the Artillery Lances and is moving ever closer. Once in range, the Star Destroyers will be nothing but space dust. Regardless of my clear power advantage, I need sensor locks on the Rebels at Scarif base. Only then can I beam them to my flagship. Even worse, Vader and the Death Star will be arriving soon; I am running out of time to save Rogue One.

---

"Sir, what is that?" a gunner on the Bothan Hammerhead Cruiser asks.

The Admiral which sent the captain of Rogue One to kill Jyn's father paces to the command window. "What are you talking about?" he asks with a glare.

The gunner swivels his gun turret to aim into supposedly empty space. Instead of a black void dotted with stars, three bright orange flares are visible on the targeting monitor.

The Admiral leans closer. "What in the name of Grybar?"

"Rebel Alliance ships, do not fire on the silver ships. I repeat, do not fire on the silver ships. They seem to be moving around us and heading down to the planet," a fleetwide announcement from the Flagship rings out.

The Admiral looks up to acknowledge the announcement and then down again to the trio of stars. He pats the gunner on the shoulder and grimaces. "Just keep your eye on those things."

"Yes Sir."

---

The Lances are in range and the ones on the Poseidons are fully charged. They have finished locking onto the two Destroyers. The third Poseidon is waiting on Vader's flagship to arrive before it fires. Even though I no longer have a human body, I will always retain my humanity.

This is why I mentally form my hand to the shape of a gun, cock it back with my other hand, and say "Boom".

My little corner of the battlezone lights up like the Fourth of July.

---

A loud hum and two lines of pure orange light are all the warning the Empire gets. The lines expand to half the gigantic ship's length an instant later. If anyone could see the ships during that instant, they would find the beams had sliced right through the hull and continued out the other side as far as the eye can witness. Only two seconds later can anyone begin to notice the charred and twisted metal carcasses that used to be Star Destroyers.

"Fuck!" cries out the gunner who had been 'keeping an eye on those things'.

"They just took out two Destroyers with one shot each," the Bothan Admiral breathes.

Suddenly millions of lines of blue light leap across space, miss the Rebel fleet entirely and hit the Scarif shield. The entire matrix is blown to smithereens at the subatomic level, and the regulation gateway is vaporized in the process.

A second later, an undulating cord of silver light dives through where the field previously was and begins to split up, bright lights heading everywhere. More beams come from those lights and swat Imperial fighters from the sky.

They completely ignore the Rebels.

A wide eyed Admiral taps his communications officer on the shoulder. "Repeat that order with my backing. Do not engage the silver lights."

That poor comms tech gulps. "Y… Yes Sir."

---

The Scarif tower base was reached first. My helpful drones relay transports through their network back to the main ships. Using this handy feature I've scooped up every single data drive in the place. I can't imagine little Stardust was very happy when the Project bearing her name literally disappeared off her belt.

She also wasn't very happy to be beamed away a second later along with her entire squad. Her screams only stopped vibrating the walls of the Flagship's cargo bay when she noticed other Rebels appearing out of thin air next to her.

When I projected a holographic human form of myself is when she got really entertaining.

I open my virtual eyes to the universe for the first time since I said goodbye to Corona. After they adjust to the cargo bay's dim lighting, I find her 'laser' rifle aimed at my face.

"That's not a very nice way to greet the person who saved you," I greet them with a frown.

Jyn and Cassian momentarily glance at each other in confusion and disbelief. "Who are you?" Jyn finally demands.

"Very well," I sighed, "if you will behave like children then I will treat you as such." Without answering her question I spin around and walk through the door of the cargo bay. I make sure the doors stay open so they could get my command.

"Jyn, Cassian, K-2SO. Come."

As one unit the Rebels move towards the door. I sigh, spin around, and using my flagship's internal effector systems, stop the forward movement of everyone but the three I mentioned.

Seeing it was useless, Cassian gives the order to stand down. The fighters grumble but eventually comply.

Given they were going to be cooperative, more or less, I also allow Mr. Blind Ninja to come forward.

Jyn's eyes almost pop out of her head. "You're a Jedi?!"

The blind guy shakes his head. "No. She is not even alive."

"Wrong," I scoff, "I am not a physical being. That by no means indicates whether I am alive. Your Force sensitive friend here cannot sense me because he has not widened his senses far enough. This body you see is a hologram. I am projecting it for your sake, not mine."

Cassian has to get a word in. "If this is a projection, where are you?"

I smile and nod my head to the blind guy. "He knows."

I figure that Imwe's jaw dropped, eyes wide state is caused by him finally finding my essence, after all.

"How can this be?" he gasps.

"There are many beings of many kinds in many galaxies, Imwe. Not all of us are like you," is my cryptic answer.

Cassian glances between us before he shakes Imwe's shoulders gently. "What is it, Imwe?"

He replies almost unseeingly, as if in a daze. "She is the ship, captain." I snort at that thought. A blind man replying as if unseeing. I crack myself up sometimes.

Both K2-SO and Cassian's eyes fly open. "Impossible," Cassian declared.

Jyn on the other hand is looking at me curiously, if warily. I simply nod in reply to her unasked question.

"Shall we go to the bridge?"

Cassian jumps out of his skin. Jyn shrugs, but holsters her blaster.

"There is a high probability of this going horribly, horribly wrong," K-2 unhelpfully states.

"Do not antagonize her unduly and we will come to no harm." Imwe is so clearly an old Jedi Padawan it's painful.

---

"It's beautiful," Jyn said.

We had managed to make it to the bridge without any of them starting something. I hoped once they saw what my fleet was doing, they would stop being petulant.

Just as I was about to respond, an internal alarm in my systems went off.

"I'm terribly sorry to cut off this spectacle, but we have incoming," I warned them. With a flicker my hologram went out of existence. I would need all my concentration to find Vader.

"Where did she go?" Cassian barked.

"She is still here, captain," Imwe stated, "she just seems… busy."

I most certainly was busy. Both Vader's flagship and the Death Star had exited their version of hyperspace. I was simultaneously moving my ships into protective shielding positions between the flagship and the Rebel fleet and maneuvering the scout frigate to intercept any blasts from the giant laser moon.

I was seconds too late to save one Rebel ship, which was torn apart by 'laser' fire from Vader. The rest of the fleet was fine though, and my drones were all converging on the flagship. The third Poseidon finally let the Lance go, intentional aiming away from the ship's center. Instead of slicing through the hull, the beam brought down the shields. So catastrophic was this takedown that the deflector bulbs above their bridge went up in balls of fire. Someone must have finally noticed my ships on the Empire scanners, because Vader immediately began shooting at my flagship with his flagship. Not that it did anything; the 'laser' blasts dissipated harmlessly against my own shields.

"What are those?!" Jyn cried out, seeing the undulating cords of silver light streaming up from the planet.

"They are over a million interception drones on course for Darth Vader's Flagship," I replied over the internal speakers.

I swear, Jyn learned how to jump five feet high somewhere. Cassian laughed at her antics. Imwe was less enthused.

"The Force will not allow you to tamper with Fate," he told me.

"The Force is certainly welcome to try and stop me," I shot back. "I don't particularly care. I could eliminate the entire energy field in the blink of my metaphorical eye if I so chose."

"Nothing can be powerful enough to eliminate such a thing as the Force," Imwe scoffed.

"Your faith in what amounts to a semisentient psionic energy field spread by bacteria is disappointing," I shot back.

The drones had arrived at the flagship and their beams were slicing through it like butter. I'd started at the very front intentionally to allow Vader enough time to get to an escape craft. He had a purpose in time beyond this moment, as did the Death Star. Neither could be destroyed today.

My decision to stick with the timeline didn't remotely prevent me from making sure both of them limped home to Papa Palpatine bloody and bruised, though.

"I've seen what those craft have been doing to the Imperial fighters around us," Cassian said, "why are you taking your time with that Destroyer?"

"Vader is on board. I am giving him a chance to escape with his life."

All four people on my bridge joined forces to glare at the ceiling. "WHY?!"

"Messages are much more effective delivered in person," I drawled humorously. A small TIE Advanced fighter broke off from the Destroyer's bridge and jumped to hyperspace right as the last drone beams were about to hit it.

Seeing as the main battle was over, I just needed to deliver my second message to the Empire. "Tarkin is bringing the Death Star around the planet to destroy Scarif Base. You would all be dead within minutes if I had not come here, along with every ship in the fleet present today save Princess Leia's blockade runner," I explained to them as I brought the flagship about.

The only one not stunned into silence was Jyn. "What? How could you possibly know that?"

"Like you walk space, I walk time." Despite the shouted demands to elaborate, that was the only answer the four on my bridge got. I throttled my gravity drive up to full and my flagship began moving towards where the Death Star would appear over the horizon in about ten seconds. I instructed a large portion of the drone swarm to escort us. They rushed up to join my flagship and formed three concentric rings around the middle, just for style points. The rest were ordered to finish off the Imperial forces and then enter a similar holding pattern around the Rebel fleet.

Right on time the horizon visibly bulged and a huge gray metallic moon moved along its orbit to get firing angles on Scarif Base. The only thing Tarkin hadn't counted on was the frigate parked right in front of the emitter dish.

I got to witness Tarkin's reaction first hand due to some speedy hacking.

"Governor Tarkin Sir," a weapons tech said, "we can't fire."

"Why the hell not?" Tarkin growled, spinning around to pin the tech with his signature glare.

The tech gulped before replying with a stutter. "There appears to be a ship sitting in the path of the beams, Sir."

Tarkin stared at the tech with the best 'you're a moron' face I've ever seen. "Don't just stand there, you idiots!" he finally shouted, "get rid of that ship!"

The hundreds of turbolaser emplacements around the emitter dish swiveled into position and opened up on my frigate. Just to be cheeky I relayed the sensor feed and the shield strength to my flagship's bridge.

"Awe, poor old Tarky can't fire because my ship is in the way, and when he tries to get rid of it, well…" I chuckled with a singsong voice.

Cassian was the only one who really got the gravity of what I was showing them. "Is this accurate?"

"Completely. Registering about six hundred impacts per second and exactly zero point zero zero zero zero five shield integrity drain per second," I reported happily.

"How is this possible?" he barely breathed out his question.

"Science and technology far beyond what your civilization can even dream of runs through my hulls and my systems. My shields aren't even the best bit." With that statement I engaged the point defense beam systems on the frigate and targeted the turbolaser emplacements. Another order later and they were all smoking hunks of flash-welded metals.

The view off my bridge shifted to a panorama of the emitter dish rim and the smoke drifting off into space from what used to be some of the best defensive installations in the Empire.

"Holy Jaeeria," Jyn gasped.

"Those weren't even the ternary weapons systems," I smugly informed her, "those were the point defense beams."

K-2SO finally had it with me. "You expect us to believe you just took out an Imperial superweapon's primary defenses with anti fighter guns? Seriously?" His tone was extremely disbelieving.

"You must not have seen what my artillery weapons can do. Please, have a look," I shot back, shunting a recording of the two Poseidons' Lances going through the Destroyers earlier to the bridge viewport.

"Maia destraiia," Cassian breathed.

"How can you do this? What part of the galaxy have you been hiding in to have enough time to develop this level of technology?" Jyn asked.

"You are under the mistaken impression I am from this galaxy."

While they chewed on that I tuned back into the Tarkin sitcom developing on the bridge of the Death Star.

"What do you mean it took out all our emplacements?" the Governor screamed, flinging spittle all over his poor subordinate's face.

"The lasers hit some kind of barrier before they even got close to the ship, Sir. It took the combined fire of all the dish rim emplacements for over fifty seconds."

"What?!" he growled.

"There's more, Sir. It then fired solid beams of its own at all of the emplacements." The poor officer gulped at his next word. "Simultaneously."

Tarkin's eyes grew wide, for the first time showing a hint of fear. "It hit them all at the same time?!" he barely whispered.

All he got was a hurried nod.

The governor turned round and began pacing. "How could such a technology be developed by the Rebel Alliance without us knowing?"

The officer looked around at his bridge mates and got several cautious nods. "Uh, Sir," he started.

Tarkin spun around on him. "What?" he hissed.

The officer gulped again. "The bridge crew and I… Uh… Might have a theory."

Tarkin's eyebrows rose. "By all means, let's hear it."

His current quarry locked eyes with the other bridge crew one final time before he spoke. "While our sensors could not get anything resembling a lock on, we can see the ship. We actually had to target the guns manually. While we were looking it over, we found what appears to be some kind of writing on the side."

Tarkin actually smiled. "That's very good work, Commander. That writing should help identify where it came from."

The officer gulped and shook his head. "It isn't any known language, Sir, and from what the targeters could see, it matches no ship configuration in our database."

Tarkin slowly walked right up to him and glared down into his eyes. Their noses were mere inches apart. "Then pray tell why you believed it was remotely important to bring up."

The commander had never been so scared in his life. There were tales of what Governor Tarkin did to those who… displeased him.

Thankfully his comms officer saved his hide. "Sir, I was the one to ask the Commander to bring it up with you."

Tarkin retrained his death glare on the young man. "Speak quickly and clearly. You are all on quite shallow ledges as it is."

The comms officer nodded quickly. "I dabbled a bit in ancient languages in the Imperial Academy, Sir. While I have never seen the language on that ship, I did manage to recognize one of the characters." He pressed a few buttons and the bridge screen was overtaken by an image of my frigate, zoomed in to the name emblazoned across its bow.

"Tau'ri," Tarkin almost choked.

"Yes. The last recorded appearance of this symbol, if I remember my history classes correctly, was just before all contact was lost with the origin of humanity," the comms tech summarized.

I smirked and returned my attention to my flagship's bridge. "Tarkin has finally figured out where I came from. Why don't we discuss this with him?"

Cassian and Jyn had been arguing this whole time about that very subject. They both jumped at my sudden words, but had no time to talk as I sent off a hail to the Death Star. I re-engaged my hologram body so that I could communicate with the Imperials. Just as my body shimmered into existence, my flagship arrived and slotted into formation next to the frigate. The streams of silver drones expanded to flow around the other ship, forming a three sided infinity symbol.

A moment later my hail was answered. The very irate Governor Tarkin stood glaring straight at the Rebels on my bridge.

"So," he growled, "the Rebels have managed to find a way to contact the Tau'ri."

I snorted. "Wrong. I happened upon the battle above Scarif and observed the actions of both sides. I chose to help the liberators as is my right as a Terran citizen."

Tarkin's face drained of all color. "Did you just say Terran?"

I snorted. "Didn't you know? Tau'ri is not our race's original name. We adopted that to help other species of the galaxy identify us. Terran and Tau'ri are the same people. The people of Terra, otherwise known as Earth."

His eyes were wide now. "No! You are a myth, nothing more!"

I raised my eyebrows and smirked. "This myth just destroyed three of your most powerful ships and crippled the defenses of your Empire's most powerful weapons platform without breaking a sweat. If I decide to do more than just save them today, if I decide to join them, what could you possibly do?"

Tarkin gulped. "The Empire is the rightful ruler of the galaxy. These 'Rebels' are nothing more than terrorists," he tried to convince me.

"Some terrorists," I scoffed. "The only time they fight is when they have to protect. But what does the so called Ruler of the Galaxy do? You kill, maim, or destroy all who will not bow. Those are the actions of a tyrant, not a ruler. Terra did away with your kind millions of years ago. Guess where we sent them?"

Jyn and Cassian locked eyes on me in shock. Imwe was unfazed as usual, while K-2SO tilted his head. "Are you implying that those cast off from your planet were sent here?"

I nodded and growled my response at Tarkin. "Your long dead ancestors were strapped into our fastest ship and thrown into the cosmos. We picked a random direction and set the velocity drive to full. It would burn out eventually, but that was the point. We hoped to never meet you again."

Tarkin had become more and more grave as I spoke. His only recourse was to sneer at me. "You speak as if you were there," he accused, "assuming any of what you have just said is real."

I smirked. "Oh, but Tarkin, I was there. Who do you think designed the velocity drive, or what you now know as a hyperdrive?"

I had actually shocked the unflappable Governor Tarkin. "That would make you millions of years old."

I nodded and gestured to my bridge. "Only fifty or so years after we got rid of you, those who held back the progress of science, did we figure out how to bypass death. A thousand years later we learned that we could exist as energy. Most Terrans no longer have human bodies. The ones that do hold onto them for mere solidarity."

"I am sure your crew could be convinced to follow the true leader of this galaxy," he tried.

"Oh Tarky," I chided, "have you seen any crew?"

His mouth opened to reply but closed just as quickly. "How are your ships running without anything controlling them?"

I shook my head and sighed. "They do not need crews, many don't even support them, because they are me. I am my fleet."

"Impossible," he scoffed.

"Regardless of your stupidity, I have a message for you to deliver to Palpatine," I stated, ignoring him. "Show him our exchange today. And just for good measure, the next two events."

I overrode the systems on the Death Star, aiming it at my frigate. I powered up all the reactors and let loose a blast capable of ripping apart a planet into the ship.

The shields dropped a mere five percent.

"Tarkin, that is a scout frigate, one of the smallest in my fleet. Its shields just dropped five percent. You can review it later, but all reactors were online. Oh, and I can seize control of any computer system your galaxy has to offer without breaking a sweat. Just one more thing before I send you limping back home to Papa Tiney."

The main broadside cannons on my flagship warmed up and painted the emitter dish.

"You won't be blowing up anything for a long, long time."

Each turret discharged, ten solid beams of red plasma flashing across space. They hit the emitter dish at important locations, causing hundreds of secondary explosions. Their bridge visibly rocked from the bombardment. Sparks flew off walls and exploding consoles everywhere. A very disheveled and bleeding Tarkin crawled back into view of the hailing screen, clinging to one of the consoles he'd been thrown behind.

"Leave. Before I decide to get rid of you permanently," I threatened.

Tarkin growled at me while giving the order to return to Coruscant. "This is not over, Terran!"

"I would be sorely disappointed if it was," I shot back.

The Empire's crowning glory retreated into their limited version of hyperspace, leaving major pieces of the large emitter dish floating in the void behind.

"Did that really just happen?" Jyn asked. She was summarizing how everyone in the Rebel fleet felt, given I'd broadcast our conversation on an open channel.

---

The crippled Death Star dropped out of hyperspace in orbit of Coruscant. Before Palpatine could do anything more than stare uselessly at the broken form of his superweapon, a video stream overrode the Togruta women's championship volleyball tournament he'd been watching. What was in that video stream made his blood boil.

"Sir!" one of his personal aides interrupted his attempt to scream in rage.

"WHAT?!" he growled.

The aide gulped. "S-sir, that video is playing across the entire galaxy. It's on anything that's an entertainment device or was tuned into a channel of that type."

As the upbeat song chronicling those disgusting Rebel's victory over 'Papa Tiney' and his best fleet, personal right hand Vader, fortress world and superweapon with the assistance of a Terran continued on, the aide was witness to a white hot ball of incandescent rage with entirely uncontrolled Force lightning outbursts decimating the Emperor's chambers.

He survived due only to a nearly invisible golden shield that settled into his skin and the softest touch of reassurance from me.

---

"How can we ever repay you?" Mon Mothma, leader of the Rebel Alliance Council, asked.

I shrugged. "Other than continuing to promote peace and empathy throughout the galaxy? Keep fighting against a tyrannical Empire hellbent on enslaving or destroying everyone?"

She smiled at my unsaid joke and took it in stride. "Yes, other than the very things the Rebel Alliance is built upon."

I pretended to ponder for a moment. "I could use a planet."

"What class and size?"

I raised my eyebrows at her. "No hesitation? I ask for a planet and you don't even blink?"

"Need this council or I repeat the things you have done yet again?" she countered.

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. "I helped because you needed it. I didn't do it for a reward."

"Yet we will not rest until you accept one. You saved the Rebel Alliance today and dealt the most crippling blow the Empire has seen since their inception."

I couldn't do anything but scowl and roll my eyes. "Fine. I asked for a planet because I figured you guys had nothing else I could use, but I just had an idea. Within Rebel Alliance space, is there a completely uninhabitable system with at least two planets?"

Mothma raised her eyebrows in curiosity. "Yes, many. What use would that be to you?"

"How would the Rebels like if the Terrans took a more… direct approach in aiding you, our descendants?"

"Explain what you mean, we will at least listen," a certain admiral spoke.

"I could very easily establish a Terran Republic that comprises the entirety of Rebel space. Such a Republic would be defended by the power of my race, so much so that even other Terrans would have trouble attacking. I could very easily accept the Rebel worlds as members of this Republic, placing you under my protection. Any attacks on one of you would bring the might of the Terrans down upon the aggressor," I explained.

The entire council looked skeptical. "What sort of rules do you Terrans follow? I assume we would have to agree to follow your government's laws," she stated.

"Correct, though I doubt there's anything in our code of ethics you'd be opposed to," I agreed. With a wave of my hand a datapad with Terran ethics code was sitting in front of every council member. "You're free to peruse those, they're general descriptions and explanations of Terran life and ethics. For us, ethics are laws."

While Mothma and several others immediately started reading, Mr. Admiral had another concern. "Even if your code and offer is as good as it sounds, how do you propose to defend an area as expansive as the Rebel Alliance? Your ships and technology are extremely impressive, yes, but I hardly think your nine vessels could cover such vastness."

"You're right, of course. Even if one of my ships can take on an Imperial battle fleet and not break a sweat, it is only one ship and has a maximum weapons range. The solution then, is simple. I just build more."

His eyebrows rose slightly. "I assume that is what the uninhabitable system is for?"

I nodded to confirm his hunch.

"But what of crew? Shipsmiths and builders? You are one being. How could you build and crew all the ships necessary?"

I grinned, laying my hand on the table. "Firstly, my ships have no crew. I am the ships. They are under my direct mental control like your body is yours. Secondly, as to building them… well…"

With that I engaged the reconstruction system of the nanites in my hand. The metal underneath made a horrible slurping sound and sucked right into my body like the liquid it had become. After I'd eaten a cubic foot of the table, I regurgitated it into a miniature version of a Poseidon. "We Terrans mastered nanotechnology millions of years ago. We can build ships, provided we have raw materials of any kind, in a matter of moments. We don't even need metal; I could use the very air we breathe and fuse it down into heavier elements. It would take longer and more energy, plus a lot more volume, but it would work. If you don't believe me, watch this."

A mental command to the Poseidon had it lighting up and humming, the inertial gravity engines lifting it up into the air above the table. Two more commands had the turrets on the thing aim at the remaining table and fire. Beams of red plasma, just like what had taken out the Death Star's dish, raced out causing flashes and impact craters on the previously unmarred surface.

There was only one person in the huge council chamber with their mouth closed, and that was K-2SO. He didn't have a mouth.

---

"Excuse me!"

I heard the call of a young woman just before I was going to beam my nanite body back onto my flagship. I sighed and turned around to come face to face with LEIA FUCKING SKYWALKER.

Suppressing my gulp of nervousness I nodded to her respectfully. "What can I do for you, Princess?"

"A certain member of the newly coined Rogue One happened to mention to me in passing that you had the ability to travel time," she began.

I raised my eyebrows slightly. "That is not exactly what I can do, but it is a good enough simplification. What of it?"

Leia wrung her hands slightly before getting up the nerve to ask. "I was wondering if you knew who my father was."

...Shit.

To continue the timeline or not to continue the timeline, that is the question.

...Split second decision, go for fun over Time's Arrow.

My face darkened considerably at her question. "While I do have the answer to what you seek, you may not exactly like what I uncover. It will change how you see yourself, and if anyone ever learned of it, would change how they see you. Are you certain you wish to continue your current path?"

She nervously considered my warning for several seconds before nodding. "I have to know."

I smiled sadly. "Very well. We shall discuss it on my flagship where I know no soul can overhear."

Without warning I beamed us both to the bridge. She nearly jumped out of her skin at the change in scenery but accepted my offer of red wine after a moment's hesitation. I grew two chairs out of the floor and sat in one, she taking the other. She glanced momentarily at the wine before shrugging and chugging the whole thing in one go.

Many things could be said about the Princess, 'lightweight' wasn't one of them.

I swished my own wine glass around for a minute while I decided how to begin this. Finally I had a chosen course. I leaned back in my chair and took a sip of my wine before staring into her eyes. "What do you know of life before the Empire?"

She blinked at my question. "Um… It was good, I think. It was called the Republic then."

I nodded and motioned her onward with my glass. "What of the enforcers of the peace?"

Her eyes widened when she got it. "He was a Jedi?!" she almost squealed.

"Yes," I said, placing my glass down on a newly grown coffee table. "Your father was a Jedi. Emphasis on was."

Leia sunk back in her chair when she saw my face. "He died when the Jedi were purged, didn't he."

I tilted my head to the side slightly. "From a certain point of view," eat your heart out, Obi-Wan, "one that I do not share. Your father didn't die, but you may well wish he had. This is the point of no return, Leia. After my next words you will be unable to unhear them."

Leia gulped but nodded courageously. "I must know."

I sighed and shook my head. "It's your life." I sunk back into my own chair and looked above the table. A hologram of a loving couple appeared above it, the woman hugging the man's side and smiling. "I trust you know her?"

Leia smiled sadly, placing her hand on the image. "I know of her. This is my birth mother."

I nodded. "Correct. Senator, and previously Queen of Naboo, Padme Amidala."

Her eyes shot wide open. "She was my mother? He never told me…"

I held up a hand to forestall her look of betrayal. "Your adoptive father did it to protect you and your twin brother."

Leia's mouth ripped open. "I have a brother?!"

I nodded and grimaced sadly. "Yes. Luke. You were separated after Padme died giving birth to you both. As for the reason why you were separated, it is twofold. Firstly, the Force signature of familial blood is powerful, especially if two carriers were to be in the same area of the galaxy. You and Luke would be beacons in the night to someone with the Force and your blood, like your father here," I explained.

You could see the revelations slamming into her one after the other. "But that means…"

"That you're a Force user? No shit Leia, you shine like a star on an energy sensor. The only reason you do not exhibit the ability to use the Force is a lack of training. That is the same with Luke."

She looked down at her own hands and flexed them gently. "It's a little hard to believe I could use the Force," she commented.

I shrugged. "You know now and it's your call. I can't train you, what I use to manipulate the universe is something entirely different. I know of at least two Jedi still alive that would gladly train you in your gift, but that is another tale for another time. I must tell you why you and Luke were separated."

Her eyes shot up to lock into mine like a hyperspace jump.

"It has to do with who your father is. Do you know the name Skywalker?"

Her eyebrows rose. "As in, Anakin Skywalker? Hero of the Clone Wars?"

I nodded. "The very same. Do you know what happened to him?"

"He was killed in the Purge," she recited.

I shook my head and sighed. "I am truly sorry for this, Leia." With a wave of my hand the image of her parents standing happily was slowly faded out. Her father shifted position slightly, scowled, grew wild and unkempt long hair, then was replaced by a man clad in black plastic with an unmistakeable helmet and an activated, blood red lightsaber.

Leia withdrew into herself. "No," she refused.

"Anakin Skywalker was the main perpetrator of the Purge. He killed Mace Windu personally. He marched into the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and murdered everyone he could find. Women, children; it didn't matter. He then fought his old Jedi Master and longtime friend Obi-Wan Kenobi on a lava moon, Mustafar, a fight which he lost badly. The Emperor only managed to find his burnt body by accident. Extensive, experimental Bacta treatments plus large sections of his body replaced by machine and you get one Darth Vader."

"No!" Leia sobbed, collapsing to the floor.

"This is why you were separated. Padme's closest friends knew he would try to find you if he knew about you and the beacon effect is strong enough with you on your own. Whenever you and Luke meet, you'd better be ready. Vader will not hesitate."

---

The Death Star, newly repaired, and an absolutely massive fleet of Star Destroyer and Executor class starships emerged from hyperspace outside the defensive line of the Terran Republic.

I hailed them, sitting back in my command chair to appear menacing. The fleet of nine I'd come to this universe with were the only ships besides the defense stations I'd felt were needed.

My hail was routed directly to the Emperor's quarters on the Laser Moon. He was sitting in that chair, up against a starry background, and scowling at me from under his overdramatic hood. "Terran Republic," he growled out, "Surrender. You are outnumbered and outgunned. You cannot stand against the power of the Dark Side of the Force."

I rolled my eyes and snorted. "You face death here, Imperials. I am not bloodthirsty and have no wish to destroy you all. You have not actually declared war, as you have not moved past the defense line. If you leave now, I will not follow. The galaxy will be yours to do whatever you wish. Leave those who do not want to submit to your rule alone," I warned.

Of course, Tiney would never listen to that. "The Empire is the rightful ruler of the galaxy. You and your little friends are no match for the power of this battle station."

Jyn was on my bridge too. She actually laughed at him. "Old man, you've seen what the Terran did to that thing before, right? She was holding back."

Palpatine was enraged, and stood up shakily. "If you will not surrender, we have no choice but to eliminate you." He turned to a subordinate and gave the command. "Fire on their flagship, full power!"

The 'war' for this galaxy had begun. It would be very short. I engaged a broadcast to all their ships and gave them a last chance. "While the Laser Moon is powering up, I'd like to give you all an offer. Anyone who takes their ship out of the fight will be spared, and protected by the Republic as defectors. You need merely power down weapons and move past the defense shield. You and your crew will be spared, your families allowed to enter and take safe haven within Republic space. Additionally, anyone on board the Death Star besides Palpatine and his co-conspirators will not be fired upon if they make to escape craft to leave your doomed station. This offer is on the table until your insane emperor hits my ship. After that, I will not hold back."

It gave them roughly thirty seconds to make up their minds. Unsurprisingly, several groups of Destroyers and even a few Executors shut their weapons down, pointed at the defense line, and moved forward like bats out of hell.

Palpatine scowled as those ships crossed the dividing line. "You traitors will burn as well then. Fire!"

One more Executor decided enough was enough, booking it for the line even as the lasers emitted into a single point to form the planet destroying beam. It was, funnily enough, the Executor. Vader was on board. I would let Leia decide his fate later.

The powerful beam from the Death Star rammed into my Flagship's shields, coloring them brilliant green for a moment until the beam ended.

I idly glanced at my shield readout. It barely noticed a fluctuation.

I grinned and turned to glare Palpatine in the eyes. His yellow corneas were fully exposed in fear. "My turn."

The defense stations lit up. Their rims glowed and began spreading a shield over the battlefield vertically. It very effectively placed the Republic separate from the Empire and left their fleet at the mercy of my fleet and the weapons systems of those same platforms.

"As those of good old Mother Russia say," I began, "Das vi dania, morons."

Each defense satellite in the array of thousands had an Artillery Lance on board. A field of orange stars glowed behind my fleet for but a moment, then the light raced across space in powerful beams of plasma. Every single station had targeted a separate ship.

Only the Death Star and a single Executor were left.

Palpatine's eyes grew wide, him collapsing to the floor. "How?!"

"By the right vested in me as a citizen of Terra," I began to pass judgement, "I find the actions and ethics of 'Emperor' Palpatine to go against the Ethics of the Universe. The penalty for his level of breaching is elimination from the cosmos. So mote it be."

A golden light surrounded Palpatine and solidified into unbreakable chains. "NO!" he screamed, "You cannot win against the Force!"

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? Well then, I'd better demonstrate just how wrong you are."

My nanite body went limp, then compacted into a solid metal cube. Before Jyn could ask what I meant, a golden ball of energy three times bigger than the Death Star emerged into the void of space between the fleet and what remained of the Imperials.

I'd let a portion if my true form out to play. Now when I spoke, the entire galaxy heard it.

I am Gwyneth Corona. Some may know me as the ruler of the Terran Republic. Others might know me as something else. I am here to tell you who and what I am myself. Those of you who are not present at this battle yet hear me anyways, do not worry. It is a part of what I am that I am about to explain.

Millions of years ago your ancestors were cast off from Terra, my homeworld, for their ruthless and incomprehensible behaviour. Half a century later my kind figured out how to bypass death. A thousand years later we figured out how to exist as pure energy. Since then my race has scattered to the ends of the universe. We are, and always have been, explorers. As I was instrumental in the engineering
of your past's casting off, it seems only fitting that I should be the one to find you.

I have no physical body, and the object you might very well call a star in the middle of the battlefield is but a small part of my true form. I came across a battle between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire over Scarif months ago. I chose to help the side which looked kind. Fast forward to today and I am yet again defending them against the Empire, a tyrant equal to those Terra sent away so long ago.

Today I end this. Palpatine and his precious Empire will be no more within a matter of moments. The Terran Republic has no wish to replace them, so you lot had better make a government that sticks this time.

The star changed shape into a giant version of what my human form looked like. A golden hand, my hand, reached out and grabbed hold of the Death Star. In this form, from this perspective, it was nothing more than a baseball in my palm. I lowered my head to look into the Emperor's Tower, just in time to witness Palpatine pissing himself.

I sent that recording back to my flagship so I could watch it later.

Goodbye and good riddance, Palpatine, I growled out. A squeeze of my giant hand and the worst superweapon this galaxy had ever seen was reduced to space dust. I opened my palm and blew it away on a nonexistent wind.

The only ship remaining that wasn't a deserter or a wreck was the Executor class. It quickly turned around when I turned my head to face it and jumped into hyperspace at what felt like maximum power.

The Empire is no more. Good luck, I told the galaxy, before I reclaimed the slice of my true form back onto the ascended layer.

 

[TCGM]

Tayles of Mice and Men
Plot Mouse
The Tail End​

Danny has been down in the dumps for what feels like forever. After Annette died... he just couldn't work, couldn't focus, his life effectively halted. And his daughter... she was still being bullied and he didn't. NOTICE.

But at least things were looking up. He'd met someone, the only one to put light in his life other than Taylor since that fateful day. She had been visiting the Bay to say hi to one of her old friends, they met at a coffee shop, got to talking, and they've been dating ever since. Taylor still hasn't warmed up to her entirely, but he's sure that she will be the rock solid thing she needs to come back from this.

He looks at his daughter lying in a coma on the bed, then calls Melanie, not noticing the hint of whiskers on Taylor's face, for they are gone in an instant.

She's at the hospital before Danny knows it. She's always like that. Always happy and hammy, and she's just what they needed. She'll know what to do.

"Danny!" she breezes into the room, like always. "What's wrong? Why are you at this hospital which I totally was at too?! I-" she sees Taylor, then hesitates. "Oh, no."

Danny nods, then holds out a book to her. "I've been letting this happen under my nose, Mels," he says, depressed to all hell.

That lasts exactly five seconds as her cheery, unbeatable attitude breaks his funk, like it always has. "You lost your wife Danny it's understandable, but as the totally not mom I have a job to do!" Melanie exclaims, then opens the book. She reads a few lines in, then freezes.

"Danny, what's this Sophia's last name?"

"Uh... Hess, I think? Not sure. Taylor didn't mention her last name much in the book and she never told me."

Melanie grimaces, snaps the book shut, then turns to him with the first fake smile she's ever shown him. "Excuse me, Danny, I need to go kill someone. Hold onto this, please?" she asks, tossing the book at him.

Then in a moment, she turns on the spot and is gone.

It suddenly adds up in his head. How she's almost always quick to get to their house, or dates, the ham sandwich that is her mile a minute talking so like how Taylor used to be, the now obvious jokes about mice she constantly fired off…

"...Huh. Well now lots of things make sense."

Meanwhile, in another reality, Queen Administrator is being given Ideas by Flicker...