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

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Xinoz said:
I'm almost hoping that The Fallen finds out about Taylor's little Zizter
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"My father didn't bring me up to let my little sister go around starting cults, young lady!"
"There is so much wrong with that sentence and you know it."
"Maybe, but I'm getting sick of having to fill eyes with bugs, and you're not making it any easier on me."
"But it's quality sibling bonding time!"
 
...so basically QA decided that mini Ziz is much cuter... considering this is what came to mind when I read the first chapter i have to wholeheartedly approve! QA Good Job!!

i demand that this be the most fluffy worm fic ever! making mini Zizter cry is evil, it would be the most heinous crime ever committed!
 
Magnificent.

So I wonder how everyone else is going to react to this. Ziz can't hide forever.

In this case though Taylor is safe physically because she now has Endbringer durability, which is beyond anyone's ability to deal with as far as the world knows.
 
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Chapter 3: Taylor thinks about things
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    • 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.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • There is no way that can go wrong is there :D

    On a more serious note I you hit a pretty good tone for this chapter, both Taylor and the Zizter seem believable characters, the only thing that strikes me as odd is, that Taylor doesn't react harder to the thought of someone controlling the Endbringers. That seems sort of urgent to me, but then I'm just reading this here and not in shock like she probably is ;)
     
    Tulafaras said:
    There is no way that can go wrong is there :D

    On a more serious note I you hit a pretty good tone for this chapter, both Taylor and the Zizter seem believable characters, the only thing that strikes me as odd is, that Taylor doesn't react harder to the thought of someone controlling the Endbringers. That seems sort of urgent to me, but then I'm just reading this here and not in shock like she probably is ;)
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    Yeah Taylor's pretty much massively overwhelmed right now. So every new little thing she gets she's just nodding her head at and going "uh-huh, okay", all while filing it off to be dealt with "later". The past five hours of her life have not been kind to her.
     
    I wish I could write shit even half this entertaining.

    ensou said:
    "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.
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    Only difference between me and Taylor here is that when she says it, it's tinged with terror. When I say it it's because I'm too busy laughing to properly breathe.
     
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