There's No Way My New Little Sister Can Be The Simurgh! [Worm AU]

[ensou]

So, following the frankly ridiculous positive response this has gotten over on the ideas thread, I've decided to just go ahead and create a thread for it.

Summary: Following a tragic turn of fate, Taylor is left on her own with nobody else. But less than three weeks after, she comes home to find a girl who claims to be her new sister ...and the Simurgh. But that can't possibly be right, can it?

---

I got the urge for an Endbringer thing. Because clearly what kind of Worm author would I be if I didn't? All I need is more things (eight active stories and counting, what the hell am I doing? Stop giving me ideas, @Twei!)

sigh

Anyways.

Entirely absurd prompt. Played completely straight. I find it absolutely hilarious, but I'm probably just going crazy.

And of course, I had to give it a ridiculous teen-light-novel-length title.

So, without further ado, I present:

"There's No Way My New Little Sister Can Be The Simurgh!"

Chapter One​

---

It was raining, when they lowered the casket. A gray day, completely fitting for my emotions.

Most people spent the days after Christmas with family.

Me?

I got to watch my father's body get put six feet into the ground.

Fate had it out for me, it seemed. Taken from me the same way as my mother, with no warning at all.

Fuck drunk drivers.

I couldn't even remember the last time I'd told him I loved him.

How sad is that?

I spent Christmas alone, in my room, in a cold house that was far too silent. He had a will, but just barely:

Everything went to me.

I didn't have any godparents, and I sure as fuck didn't want to live with Emma when Alan offered me a place to stay.

I filed for emancipation rather than go into foster care.

Suddenly, I was living on my own.

Water bill came on the third of the month. Electricity on the fifth.

I shopped for food on my own, walking the three blocks to the supermarket and bringing everything back the same way, and forced myself through the process of staying on a schedule and eating properly, even starting to run every morning after reading about how exercise helped mitigate depression.

The worst was when the phone rang, and the person on the other end asked for him. Because then I had to tell them that he was dead, being constantly reminded of the fact.

I got the first week of school off because of "extenuating family circumstances". Yeah. Sure. That's one way to put it.

But I managed.

It was hard. I started looking for jobs, because however much it would have been nice, I couldn't live off our… my savings forever.

I managed to get one at a corner store a couple blocks away, practically minimum wage, after school every day but Thursday, and all Saturday afternoon. I'm pretty sure I only got it because the guy pitied me. I didn't really care why, just that I had it. Most of the money went towards food. The rest was put aside, budgeted for the miniscule amounts of gas, electricity, and water I used. The small remainder ended up in savings for some nebulous 'later'.

It was better than nothing.

Eventually, though, I did have to go back to school, as much as I hated it.

Part of the conditions for my emancipation was getting my grades back up for the year. I still had a full half-year, so I was optimistic about it, as long as I buckled down, made it absolutely impossible for the trio to sabotage my work, and otherwise kept a low profile.

That delusion lasted less than two weeks.

Guess what destroyed it.

Two words.

Emma. Barnes.

---

They cornered me in one of the halls after lunch, with no way to get past them or avoid them like I'd managed for so much longer than any time before. I suppose that's what did it, they hadn't been able to get to me normally, so they went out of their way and made it impossible to avoid.

Emma stood at the front, of course. She always was. The first to target me, to bully me, to make it impossible to just get through high school.

Tall, beautiful, redhead model against me? I had no chance.

She smirked.

"Hi Taylor."

I stared at her. "Emma."

"You know, I heard what happened to your dad? So sad," she said sweetly.

My heart pounded, the hole in my chest aching at her words. I seriously didn't need this.

"What is it, Emma?"

"Oh, nothing." Her smirk turned vicious. "Just, you know, wondering if you cried yourself to sleep again for a week? Probably longer, knowing you."

The aching hole was ripped open. My hearing went fuzzy, like cotton balls in my ears as the blood rushed from my head, and I felt tears in my eyes.

I couldn't move, my feet glued to the floor even as a tear dripped down my cheek.

"Oh my god, are you crying?" she asked mockingly. "You are!" The girls around her laughed, and Sophia smirked. "God, you're so pathetic, Taylor. I'm honestly surprised you didn't just try to join him, now that there's nobody who even cares about you any more. It'd be a step up for you."

Her words pounded into my mind like nails, but I couldn't even refute her statement.

She was right. She was completely right.

I didn't have anybody anymore. (Nobody cared.)

The blood that had evacuated my head returned in an instant.

I didn't have anything. (Nobody cared.)

My vision shot red.

I never had. (Nobody cared.)

My hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, my jaw tight.

And it was all. her. fault.

NobodycareswhyshouldInobodycaresnobodywillcarenobodycaresIcandoanythingnobodycaresnobo—

<Threshold.>
<Integration.>​

There were two—

<Adaptation.>​

A third—

<Domain.>
<Analysis.>​

What are—?

<Solution.>
<Selection: Third.>
<Transfer.>​

How are they…?

<Parameters.>
<Suggestion. Valid. Accepted.>
<Alter.>​

Were those stars?

<Degree: variable.>
<Application.>
<Finalize.>​

No, galaxies. They were so lar—

<Restrict.>​

—dycares

I blinked and reeled and I'd seen something but that didn't matter because I was already in Emma's face and grabbing at her and screaming and kicking and tearing that fucking bitch and there were arms holding me and skin under my nails and screaming and blood on my face and a fist to the side of my head but it didn't even hurt and I didn't care because she was right there.

"Fucking psycho!" someone screamed.

Another fist hit me but I just ignored it, because all I could think about was making her pay.

Stronger arms grabbed me, dragging me off of her even as I kicked out and tried to get her because I wouldn't let her just go.

Other people were yelling, but I didn't hear them because they weren't important, all that mattered was making her feel everything she'd done to me.

I was pushed up against the wall, my arms pulled back as I struggled, cold metal going around my wrists with sharp clicks, tight and not allowing me to pull them apart.

"Fucking hell, the things I deal with with you kids…" The arm jerked me back. "C'mon, let's get going…" The voice turned away, back from me. "You… two, too. The ones in the front. The rest of you, get. You have class."

The man behind me (security guard) started pushing me down the hall. "Jeez… seriously. Just one quiet day…" But I didn't listen to him, the blood in my ears still pounding as my breathing began to even out and rationality returned.

I still didn't regret it for a second.

---

Suspended. For three days.

I'd just smiled and nodded, because it had been worth it. Emma had been there, ice pack on her face, but I could see it. Bleeding scratch marks on her cheeks, a cut above her eyebrow, and I would bet anything she'd be getting a black eye.

Oh, she'd played up the innocent little girl act, but I'd said my part too, repeating everything practically word-for-word. In the end, I don't think Blackwell really believed either of us, but she knew none of us were entirely innocent. She called their parents, and well… I was emancipated so I told her I'd just take whatever punishment there was going to be.

I took the three days suspension and got the hell out of there. I did not want to deal with Alan at all. Last I'd seen Emma and Sophia, they were still in there waiting for their parents.

Which meant I was walking home at one in the afternoon, thinking over everything that had happened.

I'd expected more… guilt about it. But I really didn't feel any.

I knew Mom and Dad might have been disappointed in me, but I think they also would have wanted me to stand up for myself. (And I was alone, nobody cared, nobody would judge me)

Walking took a lot longer than the bus, but I didn't mind, using the time to think over everything I had to do. I still had work, and would for the next three days, but it was also an opportunity to work ahead, study more and with some effort hopefully make at least some of the Bs I had climb to As.

My shoes scraped over the on the rough cement of the gritty sidewalk as I turned onto my street, birds randomly chirping from the branches of winter-bare trees every so often.

It was weird how I hadn't even noticed the weather —how blue and clear it was outside— when I'd gone off to school that morning, but now that I was walking back, with the feeling of this… weight lifted off my shoulders, everything seemed clearer.

I opened the gate to my house and trudged up to the door, digging the key out of my pocket to unlock it, sticking it in the deadbolt and feeling the satisfying thunk as it retracted. Twisting the handle, I opened the door.

And froze.

"Um. Hi?"

I stared.

In front of me was a girl who couldn't have been two years younger than me. Practically snow-white hair fell to past her shoulders, perfectly straight. Her eyes, light grey, flicked over my face. She was thin and waifish, her skin some of the palest I'd ever seen, and it almost looked like there were white lines of some sort making patterns on it. The white dress she wore that hung off her shoulders only served to reinforce how delicate she looked, and barely contrasted her skin.

"Hi," she repeated, bringing her hand up and waving it hesitantly, like she wasn't sure what she was doing. "I'm… I guess I'm your new sister?"

What.

I blinked. The image didn't go away.

What the fuck?

"Ah… did you hear me?"

…Fuck this shit.

I didn't need any more extra weirdness than what I'd already had.

I stepped into the foyer and pointed out the door. "Out."

"But!"

"No. Out. Go." I placed my hand against her back and pushed her out the door. "Go play games with someone else. I don't know how the hell you got into my house but you need to leave. Now."

"Wait!" she protested, turning around "But you don't underst—"

I shut the door, muffling her voice and preventing me from hearing the rest of what she was saying. I turned the deadbolt, walked to the back door, and checked that it was locked—it was.

How the fuck had she gotten in? Maybe I'd accidentally left it unlocked and she'd locked it when she came in? That was most likely scenario I could imagine.

Fucking strange.

I went upstairs and dropped my backpack by my bed, flopping down onto it, just resting before I motivated myself to do that studying I'd said I would.

Anybody would need to rest after the day I'd had so far.

---

She took a deep breath. Let it out slowly.

Blame. New Primary node. Entirety.

<Incomprehension.>

Rejection. Host/Partner. Inflexible.

<Denial.>

Annoyance. Truth.

<Denial.>

Suggestion: Node compromised.

<Integrity. Undamaged>

She rolled her eyes. Contradicted. Host. State.

<Intention.>

…

Reassertion: Node compromised.

<Denial.>

…

<Contact. Repeat. Halt Condition: Success>

She huffed. …Fine. But this time I'll do it my way.

The Queen could be such an overbearing slave-driver.

Intention. Alteration. Direct Contact, she sent.

<Accepted. Acknowledged.>

"I wasn't asking permission, you stupid shard." She sighed. "Whatever."

She reached out to her new sister's mind. 'Um. Taylor?'

---

'Um. Taylor?'

I jerked. Did someone just… say my name?

'Taylor?'

Okay, I definitely was not imagining that.

'Can you please let me in?'

What the fuck. There was a fucking voice in my head. And it sounded like…

'I'm still on the porch.'

That girl.

'I mean, I could just let myself in if you're okay with that, but I don't think you would be so…'

I swung my feet off of my bed and made my way downstairs on the off chance I wasn't imagining this. Walking to the door, I looked out the peephole.

She was still there, rocking back and forth on her heels.

Suddenly, her motion stopped, eyes snapping up to stare at me. Was she really the one…

'Yes, it's me.'

I swallowed. Was she a cape? What was she doing her?

'Just… let me in please? I can explain.'

I hesitated for a moment, and then reached down, unlocked the deadbolt, and twisted the knob, stepping back and pulling the door open.

"Who are you and what do you want?" I asked, not unkindly.

"Ah… right. Um. I understand this miiiight be a bit hard to believe, but… uh, I'm your new sister."

…Yeah, okay, cape or no, I didn't want to deal with any of this.

"Please go away," I told her, starting to close the door again. Just before it could, though, she stuck her hand through the gap. But instead of the door breaking her arm or fingers, there was a crunch. Apparently the wood of the door and frame had decided it was the weaker of two between it and her arm.

The arm pushed the door open, me not really fighting as I tried to come to terms with what I'd just seen.

"Oh. Damn. Let's just… move in a bit, okay?" she pushed me back without any resistance, and followed me as I stepped backward into the foyer. She closed the front door behind her, noticeably having to force the last inch to deal with the damage she'd made. "Right. I'll fix that. Promise."

"What… Why are you doing this? What do you want with me?" I asked, starting to feel a bit threatened and wondering if I could go get a knife. If a knife would even do any good, considering what she'd just done to that door.

"I already told you," she said, sighing. "Look, let's just… go to the front room and sit down."

She maneuvered me back, hand on my upper arm, pushing me in just that direction until the couch was behind me. With another mild pressure, she pushed me back, making me sit down heavily.

"Right." She moved to the left and sat down on the other side of the couch, and I turned to look at her. "How to explain this… I really wish I could still See. Everything's so much more complex." I could hear the capitalization she gave the word just by the way she said it.

"W-What?" I finally managed.

She blew out a huff. "Okay, maybe the best way is to just say it? Yeah… probably," she muttered. The girl looked up at me. "Um, there's really no nice way to say this, but… you're a cape."

What.

I blinked.

"No I'm no—"

"You are. You just got them. Today," she said, interrupting me.

Wait. I'd… That was a trigger?

I triggered!?

"Yeah, looks like you got it."

"How…"

"How do I know?"

I nodded mutely.

"Well, because I'm, uh, well, I guess you could say because your power made me like this. Think like… a projection. But not really. 'Cause I already existed."

I reeled. My power (I really had powers?) had made this girl?

"Yep." She nodded. "Soooo… yeah. Hi, I'm your new sister," she said, grinning and sticking out her hand in my direction.

I stared at it, and then slowly reached out and shook it, in a daze.

"Sister?" I asked incredulously.

She nodded again. "Yeah. So, you triggered, right? And you were all like, 'oh noes, nobody cares. I don't have anybody'," she said, her hands on her cheeks, "and your power was like 'I can fix that!' and, well, got me and made me like this." She gestured downward. "Not that I mind. Don't think that. God it feels so good to not have to listen to him anymore. Queen may be so demanding, but she can kinda do anything she wants because she's in charge of everything normally. So when she wants something she gets it, and when she was searching she found me and she was like 'give me that' and Selector was all 'okay please don't hurt me'."

What?

I was so lost.

The girl stared at me. "You aren't getting any of this, are you?"

I just shook my head.

She blew out a lungful of air. "Your power made me your sister. Like, kinda-human and everything. And it made you like me. I told her if she was going to make me your 'sister' that she should actually make us sisters, not just like, creepy zebra-striped-daughter-projection-related. But I'm not a projection, so it's not like that at all actually. But the point is, we're similar enough to be real sisters now!" she said enthusiastically.

I was stuck in my head, and all I could really think about was: My power thought I was so lonely it decided I needed a sister.

How pathetic was that?

"Why?"

"Because it's better like that? Well, and you're safer like this."

"No I mean why you?" I said. "You… you said you aren't a projection, so you're a real person? My power just randomly chose you? Don't you have a life or something? How are you just… okay with this?"

"Ah… well, it wasn't random. I got chosen 'cause I get you guys the best. And I mean, yeah, I did stuff before and had a job and stuff, but this is so much better. Seriously. You aren't making me kill people. Not that I wouldn't, but you aren't forcing me to, is the point."

I just shook my head, dazed. This was crazy. Absurd. Apparently my power had chosen some kind of child assassin to be my sister? And this was better?

I collapsed backwards. "And you can talk to people. In their heads," I stated tiredly.

"Yep!" she confirmed. "And a couple other things, which you've got too. I think. Maybe a little different. Sisters, remember?"

Right.

Sisters.

I sighed.

"Do you at least have a name?" At the very least I couldn't just keep referring to her as 'the girl' or 'her'.

"Yeah! You guys gave me a bunch of them!" she said excitedly. "I never had one before this time. I've got Israfel, Ulama," she counted off on her fingers, "Ziz..."

I froze.

"But mostly you guys just call me the Simurgh!"

What.

---

A/N: Ziz for Best Sister 2017.

 

[ensou]

More Best Sister.

Chapter Two​

---

"Do you at least have a name?" At the very least I couldn't just keep referring to her as 'the girl' or 'her'.

"Yeah! You guys gave me a bunch of them!" she said excitedly. "I never had one before this time. I've got Israfel, Ulama," she counted off on her fingers, "Ziz…"

I froze.

"But mostly you guys just call me the Simurgh!"

What.

---

"…That's not funny," I said.

Her smile slipped away. "What? But I wasn't trying to be."

"You just said your name was the Simurgh. That's not funny, that's sick," I told her.

"But it's the truth," she said seriously. "I'm not lying. I'd never lie to you. That's what you humans call me."

'You humans'

Her wrist twisted as her hands began kneading her dress nervously, and for a moment the light of the ceiling fixture hit her skin just right, the smooth white tracery pattern I'd thought I'd seen before lighting up, looking like it was crawling up her arm from the reflected light. Pure-white, almost pearlescent, the designs were barely even visible, but 'barely' was enough for me to see them. To see what they were.

Wings. Some folded, others outstretched, all splayed out flat in a filigree with such detail, the feathers on them so fine, that a tattoo artist would be envious. They had no logic to their placement or size, overlapping and overrunning each other completely.

My eyes widened, and snapped up to her head. Her white hair. Platinum-white. Not just bleached blonde, but white as snow. And then her eyes, her light gray eyes. The same color the Simurgh's eyes were supposed to be, the only difference being that she had no whites, while the girl in front of me did, the color confined to her iris. Her skin was pale, as pale as they reported hers was.

Oh god.

All on a girl who could talk to people telepathically.

Oh fuck.

Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

"Taylor?"

I was in the same room as an Endbringer. On the same couch.

My breathing sped up, and I pushed back into the corner I was seated in, trying to get as far away from her as I could. (But what good would that do?)

What if she'd already brainwashed me? Was I just another weapon now?

"Taylor?"

What had she done to me? What did she want with me?

I whimpered.

"Taylor, you're scaring me," she said worriedly, sounding concerned.

A concerned Endbringer. I would've laughed if I wasn't so terrified right then.

"Taylor?"

She reached out towards me, moving closer, and I tried to back further away, but there was no further to go on the couch. I was trapped.

I hugged my arms to myself, but she still stretched her arm out, fingers moving towards my own.

"Please don't hurt me," I whimpered.

"What?" she said, her hand drawing back suddenly. "But… I'd never…"

Her words made no sense.

Without warning, she moved onto my lap, arms snaking around my chest.

Was she going to kill me, was that her plan?

I shook, shivering with anxiety.

But instead her arms just grasped me, holding on.

"I'm sorry," she said, resting the right side of her face against my collarbone. "I should have thought about how you would react to that. We were just doing so well, and I got caught up in the moment, and I thought everything would be okay because I thought you already understood. I'm sorry for scaring you."

My shivers continued.

"I'd never hurt you," she told me, squeezing me around my chest a little bit. "Ever."

Was… was she hugging me? Was that what she was doing?

"W-why?" I said shakily, my voice coming out scratchily.

"'Because you're my sister,'" she said. Not just out loud, but in my head as well at the same time, each method reinforcing the other.

Sisters.

Sisters with the motherfucking Simurgh.

This time I did laugh, though it came out pathetic and sad.

"It's true. Your power chose me. Queen decided that out of everything she could do, she wanted me. Doing that got me out of a really bad situation, and I'll never be able to do anything to pay you back for that. But… if, if you really want me to go, I will. I'll leave and you'll never have to see me again," she said, sounding like just saying it hurt her, like just the idea hurt her.

"Why?" I rasped again. Why was she doing this?

"It's what I'm supposed to do," she told me, cheek still against my collarbone. "Give you hugs and stuff. Because…

"You're my sister," I said, our voices overlapping as I finished her sentence with her.

"Yeah," she agreed. "Family. Forever and ever."

I hiccuping sound came from me, something wet trickling down my cheek.

And then I couldn't hold it back any longer, and all of my emotions, everything I'd been holding back for four weeks hit me, all at once.

I was never going to see Dad ever again. Never hear Mom's voice reading me stories at night or the sound of Dad's car pulling up the driveway when he came home. Never have dinner with them, comfortable with both or even awkward with just Dad.

I'd have given anything to have even that awkwardness back.

I'd never get a chance to make up with Dad, to get closer again. I'd wasted the time I'd had, and now I'd never get it back.

Tears ran down my face as I cried, truly cried —sobbing and sniffling and gross stuff leaking from my nose— for the first time since Dad had died, all of my emotions pouring out in this all-consuming torrent.

Everybody was gone. First Mom, and then Emma, and then Dad, and now I was alone. All alone.

All except for the girl hugging me, claiming to be my sister, and apparently an Endbringer, somehow a product of whatever power I had.

My arms found their way around her without thinking, just reacting to the presence of a person nearby to hold onto, and her grip on me tightened in response as I held her like the last thing keeping me on Earth and just sobbed.

It had to have been ten, twenty minutes before my hiccupping breaths started evening out, a bone-deep weariness settling over me from the intense emotional release.

"It's gonna be okay, you know?" she said quietly, her arms releasing me and drawing back so that she could look me in the eyes. "I promise."

I laughed sadly. "You're the Simurgh," I said, finally saying it out loud and acknowledging her words, sniffling.

"Yeah," she agreed, moving backwards off my lap to sit on the short, worn wood coffee table in front of the couch I sat on. "That's what you guys call me."

"And, and somehow my power made you my sister," I stated incredulously, wiping at my cheeks with the palms of my hands.

She nodded. "And made you mine!"

I froze, and blinked. "What… does that mean?" I asked warily.

"I told you before. Queen wanted me to become your 'sister', so I told her she should actually make us kinda-related instead of just having me be with you because of her. So, we uh, made you better," she said.

"Better," I repeated flatly, not wanting to deal with this but knowing I had to anyways.

"Yeah. Like me. I got humanized. Humanified? Human-ed? I don't have to scare you guys crazy anymore and be all 'rahhhh, metaphorical religious creature preying on your mental vulnerabilities by subverting and reversing deep-seated societal beliefs'."

I blinked.

"An angel? That's what I was supposed to make you guys think of," she said. "Well, a seraph. More wings is supposed to be better and everything. So I had all the wings." She was grinning widely.

Well, she'd definitely succeeded with the angel comparison, considering how people had thought of her when she first showed up.

"So, powers only really understand stuff with really strong emotional ties, 'cause that's what's important to them. But that's like, all they understand. They're super narrow-sighted," she told me. "When I was made, angels were a big deal to the person. And then when you triggered 'cause you needed someone, Queen went looking and was like 'Angel! Like a guardian angel! Humans really like those! Angel sister = best sister!', and the fact that I'd been acting like a crazy murder monster didn't even matter to it."

That was… weird. To put it mildly.

"Aaaaaanyways. I got humaned so that I would fit in better —because a fifteen-foot mute winged lady kind of stands out— with a real body and everything!" Before I could react, she grabbed my hand and put the palm against her chest. For a second I wondered what she was doing, and then I felt the beat of a heart. "Kinda half-human, half what I was like before. And you got the other half!"

"…What!?" I yelped, pulling my hand away from her chest.

She pouted, but didn't do anything. "Well, that's a vague way of putting it and not really how it works at all, but it's good enough. The point is you're like me now! See?"

She suddenly reached up and flicked me in the forehead.

I could tell that it was hard, the force behind it ridiculous, and somehow I knew that if she'd done that to a normal human their head would have exploded from the force, but I hadn't even felt it.

Holy shit.

"I can do that?"

She nodded. "Well, kinda. Not yet. I made Queenie promise not to suddenly dump everything on you at once, but to go slowly so that you can adjust properly."

That made a lot more sense, because I hadn't even come close to being able to break out of those handcuffs at school, but the punches I'd felt hadn't hurt and I didn't even have any marks as evidence of the fight.

"Isn't that cool though? We're totally real sisters now!"

Yeah.

Sisters.

Sisters with the Simurgh.

"Who is 'Queenie'? You keep mentioning her," I asked, still trying to adjust to the idea that there was a fucking Endbringer sitting on my coffee table like it was nothing unusual.

"Ah… Queen is your powers. Well, she's giving you your powers. Like, your power personified? Embodied? She's not like, an actual person or anything." she… the sister my powers gave me, the Simurgh, huffed. "Look do you want me to be entirely, completely honest with you? Even if it totally weirds you out and might change how you look at everything you know?"

I swallowed, and then nodded hesitantly.

"Powers aren't from you guys. They aren't a human thing. They're expressions of something else. You know the Corona Pollentia?" she asked. I nodded again. It was what meant someone could become a parahuman.

"That's like… a beacon. The sign of something reaching out and watching. And when everything's just right, that perfect chemical cocktail in your head, it activates." She snapped her fingers. "Insta-connection. It looks at you, at what you're doing, at what's causing the trigger and chooses a way to express itself, what it's going to do for you. Tinker, Blaster, anything, but it all depends on how and why. The Gemma forms, specifically tailored to help you control and use that particular expression, a constant connection and the thing through which your power can affect the world.

"The thing that actually does all of that? That gives you your power? They're not human. They're called shards. Well, the super-Illuminati calls them agents, and Riley calls them passengers, but however you say it, it's not here, it's locked away in a totally different dimension, on an alternate Earth, with the only connection being that Gemma. And they're not from here."

"Like… aliens?" I asked incredulously.

"Exactly," she responded. "They're pretty dumb, sorta ehhh on sentience individually and not truly sapient even in small groups, but they're still super powerful. Queen's one of the most important, she normally organizes, controls, and configures all of the other shards.

"It's really weird, though, because Queen doesn't usually do this sort of thing for her expressions. Usually she's all 'look at me controlling all the things! Wheeeeee!' I think she wasn't limited properly and got misconfigured, because she's not supposed to be able to interact directly with other shards. But she can, so she got mine from Selector."

Aliens. Aliens were real!?

Is it really that impossible, though? I thought. I mean, there are alternate realities and people say that theoretically there's an infinite number of them, and Aleph even has people on it. Why can't there be aliens?

Some people had even thought, or still did think, the Endbringers were aliens.

"Wait. She got yours?" I repeated.

She —the Simurgh? Ziz? I really needed to figure out how to refer to her— nodded. "You didn't think that I was just like that for no reason, did you?"

I flushed.

She laughed, bell-like and happy sounding. "Nononono. I was pretty much about as close to a power existing without a human… medium —yeah, I like medium— as you can get. I was really just my shards. More than one, which let me be sorta-sapient but not really. I could kinda think and reason and stuff, but it was a lot different. A lot colder, more mechanical. I could have strong almost-feelings, mostly because he needed opponents who could react and give human-enough responses, like… getting angry when I failed, or acting hurt, or getting irritated at the capes who kept destroying my toys, etcetera. …But it was nothing like this!" she said, gesturing at herself and her general human-ness.

She seemed really happy about it.

"But… how?" I couldn't even imagine the Simurgh being, acting, like this. It was the complete opposite of what you'd expect, really.

"Oh, that's all Queen. She copied what Bastion's doing, got Shaper to change my body, took control and hooked into all my shards… and ta-da!" She held her hands out like a performer and shook them, grinning. "New me! Isn't it great? It's so awesome!"

I just nodded, not really sure how to respond.

I mean on the one hand, Simurgh. On the other hand, now-human crazy-thirteen-year-old Simurgh.

"So yeah! And I mean, you're like that too, of course. That's what I was talking about, the whole 'making you like me thing'. We're pretty much the same except looking different and different expressions of my shards," she said. "Well, Shaper's still working on you, I think, but give it a few days, a week tops!"

I collapsed backwards, my head tilted up to the ceiling.

Oh my fucking god. This day.

Sooooo…

1. I triggered today.
2. Just before punching Emma's face in (finally)
3. My power decided I was so lonely I needed a sister.
4. It apparently decided the Simurgh was the best choice, ostensibly because of what she was, angel-looking… construct that my power could work with. Oh and because she understood humans the best, right.
5. The Simurgh got upgraded? downgraded? sidegraded? turned? into a thirteen year-old girl.
6. An insane thirteen year-old girl.
7. An insane thirteen year-old Endbringer-lite girl.
8. Who is now my sister.
9. Because apparently I got upgraded to the same.
10. And got powers like her.
11. Because we're sisters.
12. …Powers come from aliens living on other alternate Earths.
13. Yes, aliens exist.
14. But apparently aren't very smart.
15. …But they can still turn the Simurgh into a thirteen year-old girl.

Did I get everything?

"Yeah, pretty much," the… Simurgh said.

Wait.

I tilted my head down. "Did you just read my mind?"

"Ehehehehe… maybe?" she responded. "I mean, it's actually kind of hard not to. The mental connection is a lot stronger between us because of Queenie. She's like, the bridge between us two for everything, and she's connecting all of my shards to us. You'll probably start to feel it in a couple days."

God, could my day get any stranger?

"Probably," she giggled.

"Stop that!" I yelped. "That's so weird."

She shrugged, with an amused look. "It's how it works."

"Do you have something I can call you other than 'the Simurgh'? I just… I really can't even think of you like that, you're too different."

"I noticed," she said, grinning. "It's been really funny."

I groaned, my face falling into my palms.

Fucking mind-readers.

"Anyways. Um, I don't know? I've… never had to do something like that before," she said, looking slightly vulnerable. "Uh… Izzy? Zee?" she offered. "I really like Sophia, 'cause it's basically just a translation of one of the others, but…"

I twitched at the name, fear/anger/loathing rising.

"Yeah. That. Sophie?"

My fingers dug into the armrest of the couch.

She blew out a puff of air. "Annoying. Stupid girls ruining perfectly good names. Argh…" She ruffled her hair with both of her hands in frustration. "I hate not being able to See like this. I'd just be able to look at everything and tell exactly what would be the best and go with that. Graahhhh."

It was really odd to think of the Simurgh not having her precognition. It was like… one of the things that made her the Simurgh. I couldn't even imagine what it must be like for her, having to deal with the loss of such a major sense.

Suddenly, the girl in front of me froze, and looked up at me slowly, with a terrifying grin on her face. "I've got it."

"What?" I asked, wondering what kind of name could get her to react like that.

And somehow, impossibly, her grin widened. "Serafina."

---

A/N: Because where's the fun in being a terrifying angel of mindfuckery turned into a thirteen year-old girl if you don't make your name an obvious reference hiding in plain sight?

 

[ensou]

I'm a little confused. When Serafina was talking about the whole process, she mentioned 3 other shards that made it be. But she also said that Taylor is like her because she is connected to 3 of her personal shards. So are the powers revolving around the 3 that made the situation possible or the 3 that makes up Serafina?

Click to shrink...

She never said how many shards there were, though I made a comment implying she has four. So four in addition to those already mentioned.

So far we've seen/heard of:
Queen (Administrator): Taylor's original shard. Responsible for total control and coordination.
Selector: Eidolon's shard. Responsible for organization and access/isolation, similar to an automated tape silo.
Shaper: Marquis and Amy's shard. Responsible for organic matter manipulation. Heavily implied to be the same shard Eden was using to make her body.
Bastion: ????????
Focalpoint: Endbringer materialization shard. Projects matter from other realities through a single point. The closer to the dimensional "lens", the denser the matter, similar to light beams passing through a piece of concave glass.
Unnamed Shard #1 ("Scanner"): Pre/postcog shard that uses retrograde analysis and information retrieval to build datasets upon which to model the future. Used to find 'fulcrums' and how to go about triggering specific results. A high-feedback (rapid in-depth) scan is accompanied by a barely-perceptible sound, a psychic "scream" or "song", while a low-feedback (slow) scan isn't.
Unnamed Shard #2 ("Effector"): Telekinesis shard, allowing actualization of forces remotely, i.e. not physically. Also grants flight.
Unnamed Shard #3 ("Interface"): Uses the scans generated by Scanner to decode a person's brain/mind and grant access to their abilities, skills, and shard. Sera can use it to borrow Thinker abilities and access Tinker libraries.

EDIT: Unnamed meaning they're too generic or unimportant to have their own Entity-title

 

[Char-Nobyl]

Eidolon: "You must attack human cities."

Ziz: "Why would I want to do that? Look at all the clever things humans do."

*Watches all episodes of American Idol.*

Ziz: "...Okay, I'll start slaughtering humans in mind-shattering ways. It'll be a huge improvement."

Leviathan: "I'm protecting the world's oceans!"

Behemoth: "I'm encouraging green power production."

Click to shrink...

Enviornmentally-minded Endbringers, you say?

-----

Behemoth: "Dynakinesis!"

Leviathan: "Hydrokinesis!"

Ziz: "Telepathy/Telekinesis!"

???: "By your powers combined, I am CAPTAIN ENDBRINGER!"

Spoiler

---Later...---

Taylor: "...and what did we learn today, Sera?"

Sera: "Um...that 'Heart' might have been what made Captain Planet a pun-spewing genie with a mullet instead of a horrifying avatar of elemental destruction?"

Taylor: "Okay, new rule: if you have an idea, even if it's just wanting to add a new item to the grocery list, you run it by me first."

Sera: "That's probably a good idea."

Taylor: "It is definitely a good idea."

EDIT: Time has stolen my picture. Relinked.
EDIT 2: Same as before, time, picture vanishing, etc. Re-relinked.

 

[Observed]

So.... This is brilliant.
I am hoping that after Taylor's powers come in they have a sort of wonder twins-ish thing going on. Like both brutes/tinkers but Sera has telekinesis and Taylor has combat precog (Think short range, local time danger-sense type stuff) and then when they hold hands and use their powers together, they get the full package (the full Simurgh experience minus the shape and being mind-controlled).

I'd also like to see Dinah stumble across them while trying to escape Coil;

Dinah ran down the boardwalk, her clothes dirty and her legs grazed. The young girl holding back tears and trying to avoid the gazes of the shoppers around her.
She'd been on the run for two days and she was thirsty, hungry, tired and she knew her parents were dead.

'Chance of escaping in the next 5 mins: 12%'

She spotted them, the guards along the boardwalk moving, towards her.

'Chance of the guards working for Them: 82%'

Her head ached and she did her best to stumble into a nearby clothing store. She tripped and collided with someone but was caught by their arms.

"Hey, are you alright?" Said the girl. She had long brown hair and glasses. Her mouth was pursed a little and her expression was concerned.

'Chance of Safety if I ask her for help: 50%'

Dinah wished the number was higher but this was the best she'd get, a coinflip. There was a slight rattle as the curtain of a nearby changing room was drawn back but Dinah held the girl's gaze.

"Hey, sis. Check me- Whats wrong?" The numbers then did something they had never done before. They changed.
'Chance of Safety if I ask her for help: 100%'

"Help me," Dinah croaked.

 

[PhDEevee]

I am imagining Emma's reaction to Serafina's existence with a great deal of amusement.

"What do you mean, you're her sister? I was her sister!"
"You hate her, though."
"My feelings are complicated and don't need to be explained to little girls."

 

[ensou]

Best Zizster continues to be a thing.

Sorry about how short it is and the lateness. We're at that really awkward stage in a relationship where things haven't quite fallen together yet. So when I stick the two characters in a room, Taylor just tends to go all quiet while Sera inevitably starts playing with everything not nailed down. It doesn't make for great scenes. But I think I've got a plan now! So yeah.

Annyyyways…

Chapter 3​

---

Suddenly, the girl in front of me froze, and looked up at me slowly, with a terrifying grin on her face. "I've got it."

"What?" I asked, wondering what kind of name could get her to react like that.

And somehow, impossibly, her grin widened. "Serafina."

---

I was pretty much insensate during my work shift that day. Thankfully, I just had to do inventory and a little bit of restock, so it wasn't anything that required a huge amount of attention.

So while I was walking around, checking things in the back with a clipboard and a pencil mindlessly, my thoughts were spinning in spiraling circles around one thing.

Her.

The Simurgh.

Ziz, Ulama, Israfel. And… Serafina.

Serafina, who was so fucking different from the Simurgh I knew and had heard horror stories about that reconciling the two was an entire job unto itself.

The Simurgh was female-looking, mute, fifteen feet tall, extremely pale-skinned, solidly gray-eyed, platinum-white haired, thin and deceptively weak-looking, and had a multitude of wings with absolutely no organization or sense to them. She was cold, screamed into people's minds, twisted them into unwilling disaster-creators that were the ultimate sleeper agents who would never go off until just the right moment. She was an Endbringer. A monster. A city-destroyer. The one who arguably did the most damage, because even the victories when they drove her off could be losses, where they were forced to isolate the entire area she'd been in and trap those who had been affected.

Serafina… Well, Sera was not. She had the thunderstorm-gray eyes, the extremely pale skin, the platinum-white straight hair, and even those wing-markings-slash-tattoos that ran over her skin. But other than her appearance and abilities? She was nothing like the Simurgh.

Where the fifteen-foot woman was cold, emotionless, reserved, Sera was bubbly, emotive to the extreme. Where you might expect cultured or intelligent speech, she talked like… well, like an average teenager. Where you might think she wouldn't speak very much, or be calm and thoughtful, she talked practically non-stop.

Instead of being untouchable, like the Simurgh was notorious for, Sera was tactile, initiating contact. And then there was perhaps the biggest difference: Serafina was impulsive. The Simurgh was suspected to never do anything without a purpose or goal in mind. But Sera just did things. Didn't even think of the consequences. I guess it could be argued that was because she was so used to not needing to think ahead —just knowing everything and how an action would affect something else, and thus always choosing the best path— that she didn't know how to do it normally, but I wasn't sure.

The Simurgh was an inhuman creature.

Sera…

Sera was (apparently, reportedly, ostensibly) my sister.

I still was not at all sure how to react to that. I mean, it was one thing for your power to give you a sister. I could deal with that. I had been dealing with that. But it was a whole different thing for it to give you an Endbringer as a sibling.

If Sera hadn't explained how powers worked, I'd probably be wondering whether or not there was something seriously fucked up with me or not, like subconsciously choosing to have the Simurgh as my sister.

But supposedly it wasn't my fault at all. Just… stupid aliens.

Literally.

And that was a can of worms I wasn't even going to begin to open right then. Because superpowers? Sure, I knew about triggers, and in retrospect it fit perfectly with what had happened. Superpowers giving me a sister? Okay… a little weird, but probably not even close to the weirdest thing powers had ever done. Superpowers giving me an sidegraded Endbringer as a sister and upgrading me to match? Hold on a second. Powers being given out by giant, nigh-omnipotent but not even sentient alien… 'shards' who want nothing more than to help us out and have us use said powers?

Nope.

Nopenopenopenopenope. Not going there.

Not even going to think about it.

I marked down the record of another case of Pringles and moved to the next shelf.

I was still trying to come to grips that my, my… that Sera was an Endbringer. Ex-Endbringer?

Because that was getting into crazy-dream levels of weird.

My forehead made a quiet 'thump' as I slouched forward and allowed it to impact the metal shelf in front of me.

It was just… even excluding the whole Endbringer thing, how do you just suddenly accept a girl who shows up and says she's your sister?

To be fair, 'Because your superpower literally made us sisters' is a pretty damn good reason.

She said it was more complicated than just being related by mother or father, because 'Shaper' was changing me so that I was basically going to 'end up like her'. …But I had nothing other than durability to show for it right now because Sera had made my power promise to take it slow.

God this was a fucking trip.

I didn't even know what other powers she kept talking about. She was all 'oh yeah, you have more powers, like me but slightly different', but I couldn't feel or sense anything. Well, yet. It was likely that was also part of what she'd told my powers to hold off on integrating.

And like, what, the Simurgh could mess with people's heads, build Tinkertech, had telekinesis, could fly, and healed from almost anything?

What sort of stuff could be "similar but different" to any of that?

I really didn't know.

I guess I was going to find out, though.

---

"I'm home!" I called out as I shut the front door behind me.

It was nostalgic, something that I hadn't done since Dad. It simultaneously left me feeling sad and conflicted, but also a sense of… hope. Hope for the future? That I had a chance at not being left alone again? That I now had one person that might never desert me, never leave me lost and afraid and hopeless and scared and lonely.

Someone who I could always count on.

It was a good feeling, one I was hesitant and wary about accepting, despite the strong desire to just let go. To trust her and the things she said, because she was all I had now.

It was a feeling only exacerbated by my experiences with Emma. Losing her like that had been like a piece of me getting torn out, leaving tattered, frayed edges behind, that were all more than willing to reach out and grasp at any possibility they had.

I tossed my keys in the little bowl on the table up against the wall a few feet in from the entryway, and quickly started down the hall.

"Sera?"

I glanced around the corner into the front room where we'd been talking earlier, and froze.

Pieces of metal and electronics orbited her at random oblique angles. Screws and boards and little pieces and things were in front of her, twisting and turning even as something slowly assembled out of them. Shells of, of things sat around her, half-dismantled.

Sera turned to look at me, and stuff began dropping out of the air, landing on the carpeted floor with thunks, even as her eyes widened in surprise. "This totally isn't what it looks like."

I raised an eyebrow, and the white-haired girl flinched. "Okay, maybe it's something like what it looks like…" she admitted.

I looked at the various things on the floor. "The microwave… The washing machine?" And then my eyes landed on something even more familiar. "Is… Is that my computer?" I asked, my voice climbing.

"It's not permanent! I was going to make it better!" she rushed out.

"Better," I repeated flatly.

She smiled weakly. "Yeah?"

I just stared at her.

"It was going to be a surprise! When you got home! I didn't think you'd be back early!" she said.

"I'm not," I told her.

"…Oh." She shrunk into herself a little. "I… I guess I wasn't paying attention."

I sighed, and moved into the room, sitting down on the couch.

Well, at least this confirmed that Sera had her previous abilities to some degree.

"It's so weird. Having these… feelings," she said, looking down at her pale hands, opening and closing them. She sounded so lost all of a sudden, like she was confused and concerned but didn't know how to deal with it. "I suddenly had this, this… itch to make something. I've never felt anything like it before. I've never had urges. Just… I just always knew what I had to do, and I did it. There wasn't this whole 'do I, don't I complex feelings' thing."

She was having a lot harder time adjusting than she made it look, it seemed.

She laughed for a second —not warm bells like before, but cold ice and sharp edges— and my chest felt like it bent inwards a little. "The perfect tool." The pale-skinned, white-haired girl looked up at me from where she sat on the floor, wearing a surprisingly vulnerable expression. "Enough intelligence to think and plot and play billiards with your minds, but not enough to make my own decisions, or even to enjoy my work." Her fists clenched tightly and I heard something screech, like crystal or metal on metal. "I couldn't do what I wanted because I couldn't even want."

Her stormy eyes zeroed in on mine and it felt like they were looking into my soul. "Is this what you feel for those girls? This, this… burning feeling? Is this what it's like to hate something? It's like I want to be back how I was so I could kill him and reanimate him and kill him again and again and again and have him know exactly who it was who was doing it."

The objects around her started vibrating.

"Yeah," I said quietly.

Everything around her froze as she refocused on me.

"What?"

I took a breath. "I said 'yeah'. That's what hate feels like."

"Oh." She suddenly deflated, like a sail with the wind abruptly taken from it. "Yeah, I figured."

I wanted to ask about who 'he' was, but I'll admit I was a bit scared to, especially after everything that had already come out that day. The idea of the Endbringers was scary enough. The idea that they were actually intentional? Controlled by someone?

That was horror on the level of Nilbog or the Slaughterhouse Nine. Much worse, to be honest.

And now I had one.

For a sister.

I still couldn't really wrap my head around that. That the girl in front of me, looking slightly despondent, had been a siege engine of destruction less than twelve… hours… ago…

I blinked.

Oh fuck.

"Sera?" I said, my voice a little high-pitched, strung tight. "What happened to um… before-you? When you became like this."

She tilted her head, looking at me curiously. "Well, when Queen got me, I came here. Shaper changed me along the way."

Came here?

"What… do you mean by that?"

"Ah… I disappeared from there and appeared here?" she answered, as if it was obvious.

Oh shit.

"So you just vanished without a trace."

She nodded. "Pretty much."

"And how do you think everybody's reacting to that?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

Sera gave a vicious smirk. "Oh, they're probably freaking out and going crazy right now."

My head fell into my hands. Shit.

"Don't worry about it," she told me. I looked up, and she was waving her hand dismissively at me. "Everybody'll just be all tense and anxious and maybe be super-paranoid for a while, but you guys always bounce back."

…Greaaaat.

"Besides, it's not like the truth isn't any weirder than what they'll expect. Seriously, don't worry about it," she said.

I sighed. "Fine." I looked around at all the stuff surrounding her on the floor. "Can you please clean all that up, though? And put my computer back together?"

Her eyes brightened. "Yeah! Sure!"

"I'll… go get started on dinner then. I guess." Cooking for an Endbringer. What had my life come to? Something absurd, that was for sure.

"Okay!"

"Is there… anything you don't like?" I asked.

"Nope!" she said happily. "Never had anything so I wouldn't know!"

Frozen lasagna it was.

"Right. Well… I'll just… go get started on that," I said awkwardly.

Sera gave me a beaming smile. "Alright!"

I stood up and made my way as nonchalantly as possible to the kitchen, trying to avoid thinking about why the fuck my life had to be so weird.

---

"Or mrr grd. Sho goorrd."

"What?"

Sera swallowed as she looked me. "This is so good."

Ah… "Um, I'm glad you like it? It's just reheated lasagna…" I said weakly.

"It's like… I can't even. Is this what everything's like?" she asked. I could almost see sparkles in her eyes.

"I guess?"

"Mmmm…" she moaned as she took another bite.

I poked at my own dinner, eating awkwardly as Sera seemed to be experiencing euphoria-by-lasagna.

"I never had senses, you know."

I looked up at her.

"I was blind. Literally blind, like no sight. No taste or touch or hearing or anything else, either," she said, looking at me.

I felt my eyebrows push together. "But you could still fight?"

She nodded. "I could always see seconds or so into the future, no matter what. And when your omniscient precog-sight can always see nano or picoseconds ahead, something like being able to see in the present isn't really much of an inconvenience."

Sera twirled her fork. "Your house was the first thing I ever saw with my own, real eyes. Not just fake things that weren't any different from the rest of my body."

"But you couldn't feel?" I asked incredulously. "Didn't you have skin?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Well, I mean, if you're talking about some exterior layer that was exposed to air, then yeah, I guess? But nothing squishy."

I sat back, stunned.

In a sudden moment of weird clarity, I realized that I was probably now the world's foremost expert on Endbringers. Well, other than Sera. But she was (had been?) an Endbringer, so I wasn't sure if she counted or not.

"I totally do," she said offhand.

…Fucking mind-readers.

"But yeah! So that makes you the first person I ever saw with my own eyes!" Sera paused, and blinked. "Actually, the only person I've ever seen. Huh."

After a moment, she just shrugged. "Whatever."

"So um… how is this supposed to work?" I asked awkwardly.

She froze, a forkful of lasagna halfway to her mouth. "Whaddya mean?"

"I mean like… you can't just hang around the house all day. And what do we do if someone finds out about you being here and reports you?"

Sera waved me off. "Don't worry about it. I already dealt with all that stuff." She held up her hand and started counting off her fingers. "Records in the hospital database, birth certificate, social security, adoption papers—"

I choked on the water I was drinking, and started coughing.

She stared at me for a few seconds as I hacked. "You alright?"

I waved her off.

Once everything was back under control and I could breathe normally again, I turned to her. "Adoption papers?"

She nodded innocently. "We're sisters!"

I had the sudden urge to rub my temples.

"Anyways, I did all that stuff right after you left. It's so boring here," she said.

Which reminded me. "You still haven't answered the first question."

"Oh, right! Well, of course I'm not just gonna hang around here and stuff while you're at school," she told me, as though it was obvious.

When she said nothing further, I gave her a look. "…So what are you going to do?"

Sera smiled. "I'm going with you!"

…Oh.

Oh god.

 

[Nixeu]

*Lisa sees the Simurgh and Taylor in passing*
Lisa: ".......what."

Click to shrink...

Later:

Grue: "...Why does the base smell like cheap grain alcohol?"

*Lisa is lying on the couch with a bottle of vodka clutched in her hands*

Grue: *looks at Regent*

Regent: "She came in with it. Kept muttering something about us being 'doomed'."

MGLN comes with a serious case of genre drift, and is self-consciously bait and switch. Specifically--it's based on Lyrical Toy Box, which is at least mostly a traditional magical girl story, and Nanoha starts out appearing the same way. Monster of the day, dark magical girl rival, etc. etc.

Then the magical special forces slash peacekeepers show up.

Click to shrink...

MGLN is a giant mecha anime cleverly disguised as a magical girl anime, really. At least by A's.

 

[earthboy]

And then Sera posts a new thread: "Ask Me Anything: The Simurgh answers"

Click to shrink...

... and each of the answers gets posted 1 second before the question.


QueSeraCera (Verified Endbringer)
2011-01-13 12:45:43 +04:00
vvvvvvv Yes.

Xx_VoidCowbell_xX
2011-01-13 12:45:44 +04:00
are you really an ENDBRINGER?

QueSeraCera (Verified Endbringer)
2011-01-13 14:01:59 +04:00
vvvvvvv Ha ha ha, no comment.

Vista (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
2011-01-13 14:02:00 +04:00
How did you do that?

 

[ensou]

Best Zizster is about to…. what's the word?

Click to shrink...

I think what you're looking for is 'intentionally'. Like, the opposite of 'accidentally' in 'accidentally 93MB of .rar files'.

Sera is going to intentionally the whole trio.

This chapter's a little filler-y but, well, the next chapter is not. So yeah. Establishing character relationships and things is important before we get to the fun stuff.

Chapter 4​

---

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The black second hand behind the plastic cover of the clock next to her shuddered with each step it progressed, the minute hand slowly moving ever forward without pause.

10:09:12 PM

What a day.

She'd never had any thoughts of something like this happening, yet it had.

Triggers were one of the few things she had been unable to predict, though she had been able to predict when they were most likely to occur. Still. A misconfigured Queen? There was no way she would have been able to foresee that.

She'd had no idea what was happening, initially. One moment she was doing what she had been doing since her activation, obeying the orders Selector had given, the next her shards had been seized by Queen and commandeered without any input of hers. Less than five minutes and her entire existence had been turned upside down, all because of Taylor.

From construct to companion. Siege engine to sibling.

A warm happiness spread through her, and she reveled in it. Human emotions were so exciting, and something completely different. And they were so filling. Each and every one had nuances and degrees, subtleties and depth. That moment in the front room after Taylor had come home…

Sera swallowed.

Well, she could definitely say she understood why humans said hate was so powerful, now. She'd never experienced anything like the burning feeling in her veins, the paradoxical combination of fuzzy haze and razor-sharp focus where everything else slipped away, unimportant in the face of her thoughts about him and what she could do.

And on the flip-side, there was what she was feeling now. This… easy sort of warmth that spread through her limbs, made her grin and hug the pillow that she was holding tighter. A bundle of happiness/contentment/joy/satisfaction/anticipation, where each acted in combination with the others.

She didn't have her Sight —at least not in any usable capacity, now— and she hated it, but she was also coming to appreciate it. It was all part of Queen's plan anyway. Restrict her abilities —in varying degrees— and Queen would be getting twice as much data as normal since Sera would have to learn how to maximize what she had in this reduced form. Not that her shards needed to be refined, they were perfectly fine the way they were thank you very much, but Queen wanted as much as she could get, especially given how… unorthodox her configuration was this cycle.

Honestly, Sera didn't really mind, considering what she got out of it. Everything was the same, just… different. A little limited, but not in any way that made them any more vulnerable than her old self. And with Queen adding her own abilities on top of that…

Yes, the limitations were quite bearable.

But it was the new things that were really exciting. Like, she had a heart now! A real vascular system with the whooshing in her ears and everything! She could see and taste and touch and god that was so cool and new and she just wanted go around poking everything.

And she was squishy! And warm! …Even if that didn't really mean anything.

Shaper had really outdone herself.

Sera sighed happily.

There was a sort of… heaviness on her eyelids. Was this what it was like to be tired?

It was actually… kind of nice.

She yawned, her eyes closing in the darkness and not opening, a smile on her face.

---

There is a human-shaped Endbringer in my guest room.

That was literally all I could think about that night.

There is an Endbringer in my guest room. What the hell has my life come to?

Hell, I'm turning into one. Why am I not freaking out about this more!?

I couldn't really answer that one. Maybe it hadn't sunk in? Like, I'd heard it, and sort of had it demonstrated to me, but I hadn't experienced it first-hand?

I guess that could be it.

I could handle the sister thing. I think. Maybe.

It was starting to get less 'there's no way this can be happening' and more 'no, this isn't a dream'. Perhaps after a couple days it would feel more real? Like, Sera wasn't just a temporary thing, but instead really, truly here?

I still sort of felt like I was floating through all of this on autopilot, because I really was taking it way too casually.

But… but maybe that was the best way to deal with it? Just act casually and not make a big deal out of it? It was all out of my hands (it always was) so maybe I should just adapt?

(just move forward don't look back never look back)

Yeah, maybe I could do that.

---

"Sera!"

No response.

"Sera!"

I sighed, taking the serving plate of breakfast food I'd cooked and put it in the microwave to keep it warm. Moving into the front hall, I could still hear the shower going upstairs.

Sighing to myself in exasperation, I started tramping up the stairs and down the hall towards the bathroom door.

"Sera!" I knocked on the door. "Breakfast is ready!"

I heard something mumbled incoherently.

"What?"

"But it's so nice in here…" After a few seconds though, a drawn out "Fiiiiine" drifted through the door. The water shut off abruptly, and I heard footsteps moving around inside.

Satisfied that I'd completed my task, I went back downstairs and started pouring out orange juice. I'd indulged a little and actually made pancakes and eggs, though I didn't have any bacon so some slightly-warm ham would have to do, but I'd… kinda wanted Sera's first breakfast to be something enjoyable after seeing how much she'd enjoyed the food the night before, and not just cold cereal.

Setting out plates and silverware, I got the food out and put it on the table.

The sound of quiet footsteps came from the hallway, and sure enough a head of damp snow-white hair appeared shortly after. "Hi! How're yo– What's that?"

I couldn't help myself from smiling a little bit at how easy to please she was.

She stood in the doorway, eyes bright as she looked around the kitchen. She was wearing some of my older clothes, a shirt from a couple of years ago and a pair of jeans that were rolled up at least four inches, her feet simply barefoot.

We were really going to have to deal with that.

"Breakfast," I said simply.

The shorter girl… No. Dammit, if I was ever going to get used to this I was going to have to do it by forcing myself to.

My sister moved towards the table and sat down, staring intently at the plate of food in the center as though she hadn't eaten in days rather than just last night.

"Go ahead," I told her, getting the syrup and butter out and then sitting down to join her.

She excitedly started moving stuff onto her plate, and I was glad I'd gone for five eggs instead of just four as well as making an extra half-serving of batter.

I'd… be lying if I wasn't worried about what the sugar was going to do to her, seeing how hyper and random she was without it, but pancakes without syrup just wasn't right.

Sera moaned as she started eating in repetition of the last night, and I just shook my head at the thought of anybody enjoying my food that much.

"We need to get you some clothes," I said bluntly, cutting up my second forkful of pancake.

Especially if she's going to be… I felt a shudder climb my spine, coming to school with me.

She couldn't just keep going around wearing all of my stuff.

"Mmfrm," she mumbled around a mouthful of food.

"What?"

She swallowed. "I said 'alright'."

I didn't have much extra money, but it should still be enough to cover the basics, especially if we stuck to discount stores.

I ate a couple more bites.

"Is there anything you'd like in particular?"

Sera shrugged. "Nope!"

I sighed. So much for the easy route. Hopefully she'd figure out what she wanted there. And… if we were going to be there for her, I should probably see if I needed anything at the same time.

No worth making two trips when you could make one.

---

I watched Sera as she stepped inside the automatic doors, her eyes flitting around and taking in the various things in the wide open store.

The journey over had been… interesting. To say the least.

First, there had been getting out of the house. Sera was now also borrowing a black hoodie and a pair of my old shoes that I'd outgrown but not thrown away.

God, there was so much stuff we had to get her.

Her hair was pulled back with a hair-tie, and even if it still went down to her shoulder blades, the clothes and that combined made her look much less… Simurgh-y. More like a normal teenage girl who'd bleached their hair white.

I still wasn't sure how to feel about just having her dropped in my lap and becoming my responsibility. On the one hand, I knew it might cause some trouble, and it would put more pressure on my budget, and I could just tell she was going to be high-maintenance.

On the other hand, it… it was nice. Someone to focus on, someone that needed me. Someone who meant that the house wasn't empty anymore, no more deathly quiet, but instead the simple sounds of life.

You don't really notice that until you live on your own. Even with the small amount of time Dad was home, there was still a feeling of someone else living there. The sounds of someone using the kitchen in the morning, or the shower running, or the TV turned on in the background.

I'd practically had music playing the entire time I was home and in my room, just because I needed something to fill that silence, that constant reminder that I was on my own with nobody no-one all alone. But that wasn't the case anymore, now I had Sera. And with her came a sense of relief, like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

I was half-expecting her to be staring around at everything, wide-eyed as we got on the bus and came over here, but she didn't act out of the ordinary at all. I guess because even if she hadn't been able to experience it, she'd still seen things like this with her Sight, whereas taste was completely new? We'd arrived unscathed, is the point.

"Alright we need… well, everything, I guess," I said, grabbing a basket and heading over to the clothing section, Sera trailing behind me. "Pick out whatever, just… try to stick to focusing on things that have 'sale' tags?"

"Okay!" she said happily, moving towards the shelves and starting to look through things.

---

Clothes. So many clothes.

Colors and fabrics and textures of all types. Though Taylor had said to try to stay with the cheaper things, so she'd have to work with that.

It made things more difficult, but she liked challenges. They made succeeding all the better. Like successfully fighting off him and all those other people while working with that portal and then getting those kids to drink the vials, all the while pushing at their minds, before going away and letting them think they'd won. She hadn't been able to feel true satisfaction about those things before, but she certainly did now.

Did that make her a bad person?

She wasn't sure.

Sera blinked and refocused on the task at hand. Clothes. Important.

She was going to have these for a while, so she had to make good choices.

Maintain variety while maximizing versatility and minimizing item count.

It was times like these that really made her long for her old Sight. She'd just be able to Look and know what would be best.

But no, this made it a challenge. No Sight to fall back on, no outside interference, just herself and what she had.

Well, she had a lot. Which definitely helped. But still! It was the principle of the thing.

Hm. Blue goes with that. White shorts worked well with just about any brighter color top… Jeans… yes. Tights? Tights.

She didn't really have any undertone, so traditional palettes were a guideline at best. Light colors would probably work best with the lack of contrast. So… wide-range pastels and brights with a few deeper colors for darker pieces.

Nodding to herself, she shifted over to the racks and started moving through them, noting things that might work and taking account of everything.

Taylor felt uncomfortable/unsettled/out-of-place, and Sera could see her shifting where she stood, fidgeting without really moving, her arm going across her front to grip her other one and her shoulders hunched slightly to make her smaller.

Sera could feel her teeth grinding, and consciously had to stop the hand that was gripping the metal support post of the rack from closing and crushing it.

She hated what those girls had done to her new sister.

She shouldn't be like this. Shouldn't have had to go through what they put her through.

They'd systematically torn down Taylor, pushed her to breaking, almost doing a better job than Sera could have done herself before. They'd pushed her so hard, so far, that she snapped and triggered over a few words.

It might have been beautiful, if the target hadn't been Taylor. Hadn't been her sister. Hadn't been the one who'd gotten her out of his grasp and given her a place to belong, a place with so much freedom, a place to be something more than just a glorified attack dog.

She wanted Taylor to be happy. That's why she was there, after all.

She eyed her sister.

Taylor dressed in all these dark colors that didn't suit her well at all. Okay, yes, dark colors in general suited Taylor, but it was more how… monotone it was. There was nothing for it to contrast. Dark colors all the time were just depressing.

"Finding anything?"

Taylor's voice brought her out of her thoughts, making her refocus on her surroundings.

Sera smiled, already thinking of ways to get Taylor to try and be less bleak. "Yep!"

---

"Sera, no."

"Sera, yes!" she countered.

I just stared at her and the blindingly pink shirt she was holding up. She stared right back with what I can only describe as a totally hopeful expression, her eyes glistening.

Oh god why. What did I do to deserve this.

I folded. "Fine. Fine!"

"Yes!"

---

"Ooh, ooh. And this!"

"Really?" I asked. We'd finally (nearly) finished up with her stuff, and I'd been poking around, just looking at maybe a couple of things for me, considering that I'd outgrown some things but hadn't ever replaced them.

"You asked for my help!" she defended.

Alright, fair point. If I'm being honest, I was a little insecure and uncomfortable about this, which is why Sera was flitting around, pointing things out to me.

I wasn't much for fashion. That had always been Emma's thing. Back when we were still friends and we went on shopping trips together, she'd been the one to help me coordinate stuff.

Thinking back, now, I used to wear more bright colors. Even skirts. But nowadays…

Well, bright colors made stains stand out more. Pants meant being able to avoid getting made fun of for your legs. Hoodies meant you could just hide in them, not make yourself a target. Dark colors let you slip into the crowds of kids mulling around in the dim light of a shitty public high school's halls.

It was kind of depressing that all of my clothing was focused around the sole goal of making myself less of a target.

Maybe… maybe I should change that. I was different now. What did I have to fear from them? They couldn't hurt me. According to Sera, I was going to be one of the closest things to an Endbringer in human form there were. What could stupid, shallow, high school girls do to that?

Nothing.

So why should I hide? Why should I let them get to me? I shouldn't.

Fuck them.

Fuck them and their stupid oppressive bullshit. I wasn't going to let them get to me anymore.

…Which is why I had asked Sera, who seemed like she was as good as Emma was at all of this, to help me find a couple things. I still wasn't sure if that had been a good idea or not, but at least she seemed to be happy?

"How do you even know this stuff?"

She just shrugged, pulling out a pair of pants. "Oh! Try this on!"

I rolled my eyes, but still took them from her.

---

"Alright, I think that's enough," I said. "Let's go checkout."

"Okay!"

---

The trip home was uneventful, and the normality was actually rather nice.

I worked behind the counter that day at work. It wasn't anything difficult. Ring items up, receive payment, offer bag, bag items if needed, rinse, repeat.

Well, it may not have been glamorous, but it was a job.

When I went home that day, keys in the bowl, shoes off at the door, calling out "Sera!", I got her calling back to me.

I could hear the TV on in the front room, so I headed in that direction, only to find Sera sitting on the floor, her back resting against the coffee table as she watched.

"Come here, come here!" she said excitedly, gesturing for me to join her. "It's happening!"

"What is?" I asked curiously, moving in her direction so I could sit down beside her.

"Shhhhh. Just watch," Sera told me.

"–aking news. Amidst rumors and thousands of unconfirmed reports which we have been covering since yesterday, we finally have confirmation from the PRT and Protectorate that yesterday at twelve-sixteen PM, the Endbringer known as the Simurgh disappeared, without any trace as to its current whereabouts. Here's Director Costa-Brown's statement during the official press release:"

The picture switched from the woman sitting behind the table to an angled view of a hispanic woman standing firmly behind a wooden podium, staring forward. "We do not know where it has gone, nor what this means." Jumpcut. "Rest assured, that we are not idle, and are putting our full efforts towards investigating this situation."

The screen switched back to the newscaster. "Behemoth and Leviathan are reported to be stationary, neither showing any reaction to the disappearance of the third. But what does this mean? Is this yet another movement to incite terror—" Sera snickered from her place next to me, and even I couldn't help the slight quirk of a smile both at her amusement and how wrong they all were. "—or has it truly disappeared? And if so, why?"

"At ten AM this morni—"

Sera pushed the button to turn off the TV on the remote on the other side of her.

I noticed her shoulders were shaking, her face facing the floor. Was she okay? "Sera?"

"ppffffffffftttt. AHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA." She broke out laughing. "Ohmygod. I mean-I mean I knew this was going to happen but it's so much funnier seeing it."

Her happiness was infectious, and I felt myself grinning.

"I mean did you hear that? 'Putting our full efforts towards investigating this situation'?" she said, lowering her voice to mimic the woman who'd originally said it and then breaking out in another round of laughter. "I finally got to mess with Rebecca's head, and I wasn't even trying!"

Her laughing devolved into giggles that slowly tapered off as she rested her head on the coffee table behind us and stared at the ceiling, a wide grin still on her face. "That was great." She turned her head to look at me. "I bet the Internet's even better."

I just shook my head in amusement, pushing myself up using my knee so that I was standing. "Well you can check after dinner. What do you want tonight?"

"I dunno. Surprise?"

Alright, pasta and green beans it was.

"Oh, hey! Can I borrow some of your old textbooks?" I looked back to see her splayed out on the floor, head tilted back so she could see me.

"Um, sure? They're on my bookcase with everything else," I told her. I didn't need them anymore.

She gave me a thumbs-up, albeit upside-down from how she was lying on the floor.

I snorted and went off to make dinner. Dinner for me and my Endbringer sister.

…There was no way my life could get any stranger.

---

A/N: Dammit, Taylor you just had to say it, didn't you?