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My breath hitched. A faint glow in the living room had told me that, as...
My breath hitched. A faint glow in the living room had told me that, as...
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[Worm AU] The Shards And The Bees
- Thread starter Eotyrannus
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User Total Eotyrannus 4
Chapter 1
- Location
- England. Tea and scones, wot wot!
Cope is grim story. Thus, I decided I needed to write Being Taylor Is Suffering instead of Being SI Is Suffering. This is much amusing.
____________________
My breath hitched. A faint glow in the living room had told me that, as my first night as a cape ended, my dad was waiting for me.
Or, at least.... that's what I'd thought at first.
Slowly, I pushed the front door open. I could hear him talking- Was he calling the police? Alan? His voice sounded... calm? Fond?
I blinked in confusion. If he doesn't know I'm gone- and he didn't know I was gone, I knew how worried he'd be if I wasn't in my bed at three in the morning- why's he up so late?
The living room door opened with a painfully loud creak as I opened it a crack. I was busted- so, with a sigh, I pushed the door open the rest of the way.
And then stared in confusion at the real source of the faint glow in the window. A man- long-haired, muscular, and the colour of purest gold- was holding a plate of crackers on our living room sofa.
I stared. Dad coughed.
"...Ah, Taylor?" said my father, awkwardly, as Scion munched quietly- no, silently- on a glowing cheese cracker in the sofa opposite. "...You're normally asleep by now."
I blinked, not comprehending what was happening.
Scion glanced between us. Then he leaned over to beside the sofa, picked up another cheese cracker, and bit into it with a crunch.
The sudden noise- unexpected- jarred both our brains back into gear. I glared at him- he shrugged, uncaring, and returned to his snack.
Dad looked at him for a moment as well before he continued. "So, ah… you haven't met your Uncle Zion," he said.
"...Uncle Scion."
"With a Z," my dad clarified.
With a Z, I thought. Right. Because that makes sense."Is that…" I tilted my head. "...actually his name? Not just a cape name?"
Scion- no, Zion- shrugged in his seat. "His real name's pronounced with multiple supernova-level explosions," Dad told me. "He doesn't really do the whole 'social analysis' thing, so he didn't really feel the need for a human secret identity. Him and his wife never bothered with subtlety. Seems a bit odd, to me, but to each their own."
I resumed my look of incomprehension. Multiple supernova-level explosions? I thought. That… didn't make any sense at all. But if I were to take it at face value- and I had no idea why that would be a good idea- it was pretty obvious that nothing on Earth could do that without blowing up the entire solar system. "So… you're not human?" I asked Zion.
Zion nodded in confirmation of my hypothesis- but said nothing. "He's a hyperdimensional space whale made entirely out of superpowers," Dad translated.
I looked at them both, trying to process exactly how any of this discussion was reasonable, sane or possible in any way, shape, or form.
My brain pretty much just gave me an error message instead.
There was only one reasonable response- I turned around, left the room, and closed the door.
Then I took deep breaths, counting from my first one up to twenty.
A brief opening of the door told me that yes, I was still seeing something blatantly impossible. Zion had a beer, now, and was halfway through drinking it.
I closed the door again.
"I've gone mad," I realised, starting to pace. "Or it's a dying dream. I'm still on that rooftop, and I'm just hallucinating that Scion's here to save me. Or I'm in a coma and this is some weird recollection."
A voice came through the door. "Zion said none of those things are true," Dad called from the other room.
"...Thanks, Zion," I called through the door, for his sake. "I feel much better."
"Zion says you're welcome."
...Wait, I thought. Didn't Scion speak his name? Why isn't he saying anything now?
I took a breath, and pushed open the door. Yes- they were both still there. Still doing… whatever they were doing.
"...Didn't Zion say his name before?" I asked, just deciding to… roll with it or something.
Dad paused. "Yes," he said. "He did."
"...So he could just talk to us, right? Not do this whole let-Dad-say-everything thing?"
"Yes," he agreed.
"And he's not talking now because…?"
Dad looked at Zion. The golden man just shrugged- I noticed that the beer had disappeared without a trace, not even an empty glass being visible. I questioned exactly how somebody could be so selfless and yet be so infuriatingly unhelpful at the same time.
My father, probably thinking similarly, decided to change the subject. "Me and Zion normally meet up to reminisce," he explained. "About Annette, and his wife. We both miss them… a lot, and it's helped us both to just… talk it out. Enjoy their memories." He smiled fondly, and Zion nodded, closing his eyes. Then he caught himself in his nostalgia and returned his attention to me. "But, err… he came over today because we need to have a talk."
Zion also left his brief nostalgic moment, blinking. He pointed at me for a half-second, agreeing.
I went pale. He knew how I'd almost died tonight.
They both knew I'd almost died tonight.
I'd risked my lives fighting one of the strongest villains in Brockton Bay, and-
"So, you may have been noticing some strange feelings recently…"
-and… Err…
That's the start of The Talk right there, I suddenly realised, a spike of dread going through me. He's about to do The Talk.
The visions of being roped into the Wards for my own safety were abruptly shattered into a thousand pieces, replaced by something far worse.
"...You might have been feeling aggressive, or-"
"Dad," I interrupted. "Are you about to give me The Talk."
"Well, err… sort of," he said. "A bit. ...Yeah."
I glanced down at myself. Yes, I was- in fact- still a teenager, and had been for many years. "...I'm pretty sure Mom already went through that with me," I said.
Zion winced. "That was only the human half," said Dad.
It took me a moment to catch on. "...Are you saying that Mom was also…"
"...A hyperdimensional space whale made of superpowers, yes," Dad said wistfully.
"And that I am, myself, half hyperdimensional space whale."
"Well…" Dad tilted his head. "I wouldn't really say half. There's, err… there's probably a few orders of magnitude more space whale mass. Just a couple dozen solar systems, give or take a few."
"A couple dozen…" No, I thought. Let's deal with one bit of madness at a time. "You're saying that mine and my moms' bodies were… are... They're just fronts for some kind of interdimensional creatures from the stars?"
"You were born and bred on Earth," Dad pointed out. "This body and the one that's stretching across a few storage dimensions in the background. So... only the first part? Your mom… yeah, that's true."
I decided to ignore the implication that I was, in fact, some sort of multidimensional abomination and continued my previous train of thought. "Then… how did Mom die to a car crash?" I questioned, quite reasonably.
"Her avatar used precognition rather than brute force techniques like Zion to keep the central node intact," he explained. "Unfortunately... some crazy woman in a fedora apparently had better precog."
So my Mom was a space whale who had been murdered by some random fedora-wearing cape. That… did not make any more sense than the rest of this situation.
Zion tilted his head to Dad. "Same woman killed Zion's wife," he said, passing the message onto me. "Stabbed her while she was still forming up her avatar- cut her conscious shards away from the main mass after a poor landing. Sort of like a severed brain stem, except… far more specific and precisely-timed. His wife died shortly afterwards from her paralysis. We don't really blame the woman who killed them, since that's an entirely reasonable response if somebody's going to blow up your planet and every version of your planet that has ever existed, but…"
I blinked. "Both your loved ones wanted to blow up the planet."
"About ten to the power of eighty of them, really." I squinted at them both in continued, intensifying disbelief- Dad raised his hands defensively. "Hey, it wasn't like we weren't going to manage it ourselves with all this pollution and global warming going on," he told me.
"Global warming was going to kill us all in every dimension out of more dimensions than either of us are capable of imagining," I said, in a request for confirmation.
Dad had the decency to look abashed. "...Zion also wanted to blow up the planet," he said, "but we decided that wasn't a good idea now he can't actually get off of it."
With a nod, Zion bit into another cracker. I looked at him incredulously- then glanced further behind him, somehow finding yet another point to be utterly confused about.
I could have sworn that plate was empty a second ago, I thought.
Zion followed my gaze as I leaned back again. Then, he lifted another miraculously-appearing cheese cracker to me.
It probably was, I noted.
He looked expectantly at me. "...Err, no thanks," I politely declined. He nodded.
After a brief pause to savour his snacks, Zion looked at Dad meaningfully. Dad translated his vague looks once more. "He asks if you've experienced any enhanced non-visual awareness or ability to evade threatening situations recently?"
My bugs are pretty good for navigating, I thought, and not dying to Lung after getting pepper spray in his eyes is a pretty good evasion of a threatening situation. But I doubt that's what they mean specifically. "...A little?" I hedged.
"Feelings of aggression?" Dad continued. "Urges to destroy your enemies in as creative a manner as possible?"
"...Yeah?" I replied uncertainly, not adding that it was probably just the fact I went to Winslow High rather than any sort of secret extradimensional hypershoggoth true body's influence.
"Have you been emitting strange laser beams?" Dad continued. "Spontaneously flying? Regenerating lost limbs?"
"No," I said. That was a clear answer, at least. "I haven't been flying or shooting lasers or anything."
Zion nodded sagely. "Looks like we caught it early, then," Dad said warmly. "That's good. Talk to Zion if you get any urges to blow up the planet- we don't expect any, but it's always worth being prepared. He'll be staying with us for a while when he's not at work."
I looked between them.
Zion nodded too, and smiled at me, with a face that looked distinctly unused to smiling.
"Okay then," I said.
I tried to think of what the appropriate response was.
"I'm going to go to bed," I told them both.
"Love you, Taylor," Dad called after me.
With a flat expression, I turned around and closed the door behind me. Then I headed up the stairs.
After that, I headed into my room, buried myself in my sheets, tried to fall asleep before anything else could wake me up again, and prayed that this would all be back to normal in the morning.
I would have no such luck, instead learning that Zion was- in fact- remarkably competent at making bacon-and-mushroom omelettes.
Last edited:
Chapter 2
- Location
- England. Tea and scones, wot wot!
Today, I'd skipped my morning run and gone to school with two slices of toast in my bag, because five minutes was too long to spend with Dad and Zion right now.
Despite how good those omelettes had smelled.
Which meant I got to school early, before the doors were open- I found a railing to sit on and started eating while I waited. Surprisingly, nobody cared, and I didn't have any issues as I headed up to homeroom.
I was first in, obviously- Mrs Knott blinked in surprise. "Taylor?" she said. "You're in early today."
"Yeah," I said. Mrs Knott wasn't exactly an attentive person- I got the impression she taught IT only because there was nobody better to do it. I waited a moment for her to continue.
"Were there…" She paused. "...problems on Friday?"
Friday? I- oh, right. Between almost dying and having the world's greatest superhero sitting around the house, I'd completely forgotten about the way I'd missed a major project and two hours of a school day last week. "There's always problems on a Friday," I pointed out.
Apparently, that was enough to placate her- Mrs Knott didn't speak up further. Internally, I sighed with relief, and headed for a computer. I was struck for a moment by how old and slow they were- then I shrugged that off, too. It wasn't anything new, but I guess I was just in an irritable mood today.
The first thing to do was log on and get something productive done- which, in this case, was anything but my school work. The obvious topic of research was Zion.
For how people spoke of the guy, you'd think he'd be more of a mystery. A legend. But his wiki page...
Well, it… didn't really speak well of him. For the first couple of years, he'd just been floating around being sad or something, despite his tremendous power. He'd cured a guy of cancer when he was first seen, and then just spent the rest of that period of his life just... floating around, occasionally staring at people for no apparent reason. Sure, he'd defeated a few particularly egregious villains, but you could say that was more for his own safety than himself.
It took a while for him to actually get into heroism, and even then, his efforts at heroism had been… choppy.
Most notably, his first encounter with an Endbringer had consisted of him completely ignoring its rampage as he flew past.
His ignorant fly-by had been caught on camera. Which was probably the only reason he'd started bothering with fighting them in the first place. Really? I thought, trying to comprehend exactly what he'd been thinking. You save kittens from trees, and yet an Endbringer is completely irrelevant to you?
Then I remembered that his original plan was to cause an omnidimensional detonation of the planet or something, and it made a lot more sense all of a sudden. That really fit his behaviour a lot more than some sort of 'archangel sent to protect us' or 'embodiment of our need for a hero' or something like that. He was kind of an ass.
Of course, despite everything- public nudity, a complete lack of priorities, not washing his clothes- everyone still considered him the world's greatest hero. Having actually met the guy, I could confirm that such a comment was distant from reality.
It could be me that had gone crazy, of course- it was likely, even- but assuming that would make it difficult for me to get anything productive done. So I just assumed I was sane and carried on.
The cape in the fedora… Apparently the same woman had killed both my own mother and Zion's wife, in her quest to keep the planet from being exploded. I wanted to say I hated her, but I had to agree that it was a pretty reasonable reaction to finding out that a hyperdimensional space whale with an interest in multiplanetary destruction was currently smooching some random dockworker in a random small town. Unfortunately, all the search terms I used didn't turn up anything useful. Apparently there were a lot of capes with fedoras, and precisely none of them had any sort of precognitive ability.
Or fashion sense, for that matter. You'd think at least one of them would have thought to wear a suit. I moved on.
It took me a moment to think of what to research next- those four villains I'd saved were the first things to come to mind. Tattletale and Grue turned up stubs. Regent turned up nothing. Bitch didn't either, but Hellhound turned up a whole wealth of information- most of which could be summed up as her being incredibly violent. Well, that's just peachy.
I glanced behind me, and saw there were some notes on the board. Instructions, for what to do. Apparently, this period's work had been set while I wasn't paying attention- since it just looked like busywork, I finished it off without giving much thought to it and kept working.
The next person to research was the person who'd attempted to murder me, and who I'd presumably pissed off by coating liberally in pepper spray and venomous insects. Lung was just as much an asshole as I expected- targeting anyone older than twelve or younger than sixty who was even vaguely asian, extorting as much as possible, and he'd spent his early years in the Bay just cannibalising gangs and kicking out anybody who wasn't asian anyway. No mention of any enhanced senses, though- which left me feeling a little vindicated.
Then there were two other people- Bakuda and Oni Lee, both described as explosive-wielding maniacs. The former was just as Armsmaster had described her, having bombed her own university, things like that.
I tabbed back to Lung's page, and continued scrolling. There was a new addition, at the bottom, saying Armsmaster had successfully taken him in. I got the impression I should be angry that I didn't get any credit, but really I couldn't care less right now.
The last person I searched for was myself- and though there was a false positive with some guy called Pestilence, there was another one that seemed to be specifically for myself.
It was sent by one 'Tt'.
A request to meet. By a known villain.
I considered it for a minute. Before, I might have ignored it for my own safety, or used it as an excuse to prove myself before joining the Wards.
Now, though?
If Dad and Zion were right, I was seeing any option where I joined the Wards as ultimately ending in being lauded as Scion's second coming. Or Legend's. Or Alexandria's. Or Eidolon's.
It didn't take much thought. Zion being in my living room was weird enough- training sessions with the most famous heroes on Earth would just be even more stress on top of that. I imagined it- Oh, Taylor! I'm so glad you blew up ten Endbringers! By the way, can you pass on a message to your uncle? The President and Legend both want to get an autograph from him...
I shivered. Yeah, no.
So it was really just an excuse to take them out, if they didn't have anything useful to say. It didn't take much consideration- if I went to meet them, either I could swarm them with bugs and arrest them, or… actually, that was pretty much my entire plan. Just swarm them with bugs and arrest them. That sounds like a good plan, I thought. I went to check the calculator I'd had to code for the lesson was working-
-and blinked when I took another look.
Apparently I'd... accidentally coded a fully-functional scientific calculator while I wasn't paying attention, which wasn't something I could say I did often. Now I'd noticed, I could feel something hanging in the back of my mind…
Ah. That... seemed like more superpowers, which would make sense if my real body was in fact made entirely out of the damn things.
Don't panic, Taylor, I thought. Just keep working. Let's... reply to that message. Without getting it logged and arrested for talking to a supervillain, hopefully. Which gave me another thought.
If I could use it to code a calculator... I asked that part of my mind if I could use the computer without getting my history logged, and a few minutes of effectively chopping the browser into pieces and stitching it back together again, I posted my reply to the message.
Subject: Re: Bug
Sure.
-Bug
Then I posted it. It was done. Honestly, it was a little bit anticlimatic.
I checked the time- there was still a bit of time left. I spent the last few minutes waiting for a reply, and fixing my calculator so that I didn't have any evidence of coding or mathematical knowledge I basically had no way to know. Then the bell went- I logged off, got up, and left, feeling rather impatient despite knowing there was no way I could make the message arrive any earlier.
Instead of being able to focus on something interesting or panic about the fact I'd accidentally used a power I didn't even know I had, I had World Issues to deal with.
Y'know, that one class with Mr Gladly, Greg, and a whole lot of bitches.
Joy.
I walked in, hoping for my usual seat, and sighed when it was covered in orange juice. Of course it was. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply for a second, and headed for the back instead.
Of course. They just had to remind me of their last 'prank'.
An hour of pretending to listen to Greg and low-quality group work later- it was basically just me that had done anything, I hadn't precisely been willing to give anyone else the work I'd done considering what I'd accidentally accomplished in my last piece of school work- and I was in no mood to listen to Mr Gladly's vague attempts at assistance or Emma, especially after having my path blocked by a gaggle of schoolgirls pretending they were having a conversation rather than insulting me.
"What's the matter, Taylor?" she said, moving past the others, as if I'd just been standing here for no reason. "You look upset… So upset you're-"
"Emma, if you keep talking, I swear to God I'm going to punch you." It took me a moment to realise I'd just said that.
By the looks of it, it took Emma even longer. She stood there, shocked, and then... started sputtering in indignation. Because apparently she was just that bad at talking.
I glanced at one of the girls- she was just as confused as I was.
Apparently, trying again with saying whatever she'd been about to say was her decision. "So upset you're going to-"
There was only one reasonable response to that, in truth.
I took my own advice and punched her in the face. She fell backwards, wide-eyed, bewildered. I stared- as did everyone else.
Well, most people stared. One person did action.
Sophia stepped forwards, scowling. "You bitch!" she swore. "You think you're going to-?"
I didn't punch her in the face.
I gave her a sharp kick to the groin instead. Her face twisted, and she dropped.
She fell forwards onto the floor, pressing her legs together, gasping in pain. The other girls were looking at me with eyes almost as wide as Emma's.
I glanced behind me- Mr Gladly had seen that, too. He turned around, pretending he'd seen nothing. I felt surprisingly appreciative of that- At least he's not completely against me.
Then I tried to figure out why on Earth I'd just done this.
Dad's voice came to me. Feelings of aggression. Inexplicable ability to evade threatening situations. Which, considering the state Sophia and Emma had ended up in, seemed... eerily accurate.
...At least I wasn't on the creatively destroy your enemies stage.
I hoped.
Realising that I was still being stared at, I looked at the gaggle of shocked girls dumbly. I saw Madison flinch back as I did.
"...I should go," I said, stepping around the two girls on the floor, and hurrying off to my next class before something else could go that badly.
Despite how good those omelettes had smelled.
Which meant I got to school early, before the doors were open- I found a railing to sit on and started eating while I waited. Surprisingly, nobody cared, and I didn't have any issues as I headed up to homeroom.
I was first in, obviously- Mrs Knott blinked in surprise. "Taylor?" she said. "You're in early today."
"Yeah," I said. Mrs Knott wasn't exactly an attentive person- I got the impression she taught IT only because there was nobody better to do it. I waited a moment for her to continue.
"Were there…" She paused. "...problems on Friday?"
Friday? I- oh, right. Between almost dying and having the world's greatest superhero sitting around the house, I'd completely forgotten about the way I'd missed a major project and two hours of a school day last week. "There's always problems on a Friday," I pointed out.
Apparently, that was enough to placate her- Mrs Knott didn't speak up further. Internally, I sighed with relief, and headed for a computer. I was struck for a moment by how old and slow they were- then I shrugged that off, too. It wasn't anything new, but I guess I was just in an irritable mood today.
The first thing to do was log on and get something productive done- which, in this case, was anything but my school work. The obvious topic of research was Zion.
For how people spoke of the guy, you'd think he'd be more of a mystery. A legend. But his wiki page...
Well, it… didn't really speak well of him. For the first couple of years, he'd just been floating around being sad or something, despite his tremendous power. He'd cured a guy of cancer when he was first seen, and then just spent the rest of that period of his life just... floating around, occasionally staring at people for no apparent reason. Sure, he'd defeated a few particularly egregious villains, but you could say that was more for his own safety than himself.
It took a while for him to actually get into heroism, and even then, his efforts at heroism had been… choppy.
Most notably, his first encounter with an Endbringer had consisted of him completely ignoring its rampage as he flew past.
His ignorant fly-by had been caught on camera. Which was probably the only reason he'd started bothering with fighting them in the first place. Really? I thought, trying to comprehend exactly what he'd been thinking. You save kittens from trees, and yet an Endbringer is completely irrelevant to you?
Then I remembered that his original plan was to cause an omnidimensional detonation of the planet or something, and it made a lot more sense all of a sudden. That really fit his behaviour a lot more than some sort of 'archangel sent to protect us' or 'embodiment of our need for a hero' or something like that. He was kind of an ass.
Of course, despite everything- public nudity, a complete lack of priorities, not washing his clothes- everyone still considered him the world's greatest hero. Having actually met the guy, I could confirm that such a comment was distant from reality.
It could be me that had gone crazy, of course- it was likely, even- but assuming that would make it difficult for me to get anything productive done. So I just assumed I was sane and carried on.
The cape in the fedora… Apparently the same woman had killed both my own mother and Zion's wife, in her quest to keep the planet from being exploded. I wanted to say I hated her, but I had to agree that it was a pretty reasonable reaction to finding out that a hyperdimensional space whale with an interest in multiplanetary destruction was currently smooching some random dockworker in a random small town. Unfortunately, all the search terms I used didn't turn up anything useful. Apparently there were a lot of capes with fedoras, and precisely none of them had any sort of precognitive ability.
Or fashion sense, for that matter. You'd think at least one of them would have thought to wear a suit. I moved on.
It took me a moment to think of what to research next- those four villains I'd saved were the first things to come to mind. Tattletale and Grue turned up stubs. Regent turned up nothing. Bitch didn't either, but Hellhound turned up a whole wealth of information- most of which could be summed up as her being incredibly violent. Well, that's just peachy.
I glanced behind me, and saw there were some notes on the board. Instructions, for what to do. Apparently, this period's work had been set while I wasn't paying attention- since it just looked like busywork, I finished it off without giving much thought to it and kept working.
The next person to research was the person who'd attempted to murder me, and who I'd presumably pissed off by coating liberally in pepper spray and venomous insects. Lung was just as much an asshole as I expected- targeting anyone older than twelve or younger than sixty who was even vaguely asian, extorting as much as possible, and he'd spent his early years in the Bay just cannibalising gangs and kicking out anybody who wasn't asian anyway. No mention of any enhanced senses, though- which left me feeling a little vindicated.
Then there were two other people- Bakuda and Oni Lee, both described as explosive-wielding maniacs. The former was just as Armsmaster had described her, having bombed her own university, things like that.
I tabbed back to Lung's page, and continued scrolling. There was a new addition, at the bottom, saying Armsmaster had successfully taken him in. I got the impression I should be angry that I didn't get any credit, but really I couldn't care less right now.
The last person I searched for was myself- and though there was a false positive with some guy called Pestilence, there was another one that seemed to be specifically for myself.
It was sent by one 'Tt'.
A request to meet. By a known villain.
I considered it for a minute. Before, I might have ignored it for my own safety, or used it as an excuse to prove myself before joining the Wards.
Now, though?
If Dad and Zion were right, I was seeing any option where I joined the Wards as ultimately ending in being lauded as Scion's second coming. Or Legend's. Or Alexandria's. Or Eidolon's.
It didn't take much thought. Zion being in my living room was weird enough- training sessions with the most famous heroes on Earth would just be even more stress on top of that. I imagined it- Oh, Taylor! I'm so glad you blew up ten Endbringers! By the way, can you pass on a message to your uncle? The President and Legend both want to get an autograph from him...
I shivered. Yeah, no.
So it was really just an excuse to take them out, if they didn't have anything useful to say. It didn't take much consideration- if I went to meet them, either I could swarm them with bugs and arrest them, or… actually, that was pretty much my entire plan. Just swarm them with bugs and arrest them. That sounds like a good plan, I thought. I went to check the calculator I'd had to code for the lesson was working-
-and blinked when I took another look.
Apparently I'd... accidentally coded a fully-functional scientific calculator while I wasn't paying attention, which wasn't something I could say I did often. Now I'd noticed, I could feel something hanging in the back of my mind…
Ah. That... seemed like more superpowers, which would make sense if my real body was in fact made entirely out of the damn things.
Don't panic, Taylor, I thought. Just keep working. Let's... reply to that message. Without getting it logged and arrested for talking to a supervillain, hopefully. Which gave me another thought.
If I could use it to code a calculator... I asked that part of my mind if I could use the computer without getting my history logged, and a few minutes of effectively chopping the browser into pieces and stitching it back together again, I posted my reply to the message.
Subject: Re: Bug
Sure.
-Bug
Then I posted it. It was done. Honestly, it was a little bit anticlimatic.
I checked the time- there was still a bit of time left. I spent the last few minutes waiting for a reply, and fixing my calculator so that I didn't have any evidence of coding or mathematical knowledge I basically had no way to know. Then the bell went- I logged off, got up, and left, feeling rather impatient despite knowing there was no way I could make the message arrive any earlier.
Instead of being able to focus on something interesting or panic about the fact I'd accidentally used a power I didn't even know I had, I had World Issues to deal with.
Y'know, that one class with Mr Gladly, Greg, and a whole lot of bitches.
Joy.
I walked in, hoping for my usual seat, and sighed when it was covered in orange juice. Of course it was. I closed my eyes, breathed deeply for a second, and headed for the back instead.
Of course. They just had to remind me of their last 'prank'.
An hour of pretending to listen to Greg and low-quality group work later- it was basically just me that had done anything, I hadn't precisely been willing to give anyone else the work I'd done considering what I'd accidentally accomplished in my last piece of school work- and I was in no mood to listen to Mr Gladly's vague attempts at assistance or Emma, especially after having my path blocked by a gaggle of schoolgirls pretending they were having a conversation rather than insulting me.
"What's the matter, Taylor?" she said, moving past the others, as if I'd just been standing here for no reason. "You look upset… So upset you're-"
"Emma, if you keep talking, I swear to God I'm going to punch you." It took me a moment to realise I'd just said that.
By the looks of it, it took Emma even longer. She stood there, shocked, and then... started sputtering in indignation. Because apparently she was just that bad at talking.
I glanced at one of the girls- she was just as confused as I was.
Apparently, trying again with saying whatever she'd been about to say was her decision. "So upset you're going to-"
There was only one reasonable response to that, in truth.
I took my own advice and punched her in the face. She fell backwards, wide-eyed, bewildered. I stared- as did everyone else.
Well, most people stared. One person did action.
Sophia stepped forwards, scowling. "You bitch!" she swore. "You think you're going to-?"
I didn't punch her in the face.
I gave her a sharp kick to the groin instead. Her face twisted, and she dropped.
She fell forwards onto the floor, pressing her legs together, gasping in pain. The other girls were looking at me with eyes almost as wide as Emma's.
I glanced behind me- Mr Gladly had seen that, too. He turned around, pretending he'd seen nothing. I felt surprisingly appreciative of that- At least he's not completely against me.
Then I tried to figure out why on Earth I'd just done this.
Dad's voice came to me. Feelings of aggression. Inexplicable ability to evade threatening situations. Which, considering the state Sophia and Emma had ended up in, seemed... eerily accurate.
...At least I wasn't on the creatively destroy your enemies stage.
I hoped.
Realising that I was still being stared at, I looked at the gaggle of shocked girls dumbly. I saw Madison flinch back as I did.
"...I should go," I said, stepping around the two girls on the floor, and hurrying off to my next class before something else could go that badly.
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Chapter 3
- Location
- England. Tea and scones, wot wot!
Now, just because Mr Gladly decided to ignore me, doesn't mean the entire faculty would.
This may seem a bit odd- after all, the faculty's ignorance was one of many things that made Winslow the shithole it was- but I had the misfortune of being violent against their star students. Poor Emma, getting some sort of retribution after two years of steadily making her best friend's life hell. Poor Sophia, for hanging around her and encouraging her antics! It wouldn't do if that creepy Taylor girl hurt either of them, would it?
Idiots.
This neatly explains why I got pulled from the least hostile English class I'd been in since elementary school to go sit in the office under accusation of unprovoked violence instead.
The room was as crowded as anywhere else in Winslow. Blackwell's office was on the second floor- a small room, with an overflowing trash can (probably containing nothing but Arcadia applications and eyewitnesses) and a bored-looking woman in front of an old, worn desk in an old, creaking office chair. Across from her were six seats, with three girls- myself included- alongside both Alan and my own dad. They were sharing concerned looks, Emma held a cold icepack to her face, and Sophia just sat very still while giving me a glare that was even colder.
I was trying to ignore them, sweating bullets as I was, when the last person arrived. She… didn't look like she was Sophia's mother, and Sophia's glare shifted somewhere out of the window when she arrived, but Principal Blackwell took it as her cue to start speaking.
The dark-haired woman swiveled her chair in my direction with a faint squeak. She looked me in the eyes. "Taylor," she said, singling me out as quickly as possible, presumably just to bring things to their logical conclusion with equal speed. "Do you know why you're here?"
I nodded in agreement. Or, at least, I nodded. My best guess is that she interpreted it as 'yes, Principal Blackwell, it's because I didn't sit down and let her stab me with emotional knives that you all seem to think are completely normal and harmless'.
I don't think she would have appreciated me expanding on that to say it was that she wasn't doing her own damn job. My restraint in explaining properly allowed her to move on from talking to me, letting her talk to the adults as a whole.
"The girls here," she explained, "as well as a number of witnesses, have contributed enough for the faculty to have an understanding of exactly what happened earlier. We believe that Emma and her friends were talking outside their classroom and incidentally happened to be blocking Taylor from her route. When Emma questioned why she was standing there, Taylor took offense, and was aggravated enough to attack Emma, as well as Sophia when she defended Emma. Would anybody like to contest this?"
Alan looked at me darkly, as if I had actually done anything wrong- though I suppose Blackwell's version was just a tad bit biased in that regard. Dad raised an eyebrow at me and Emma, confused as to why I of all people was being accused of doing the punching. Sophia's guardian, meanwhile, looked politely disinterested at the whole situation while maintaining a concerned look on her face.
Seeing nobody else willing or able to contest the statement, I raised a hand. "Yes, Taylor?" said Blackwell.
"They were specifically insulting me while keeping me from being able to leave," I said. Dad blinked- and gave Alan a questioning look. "I'd already had orange juice poured onto my chair that lesson- I had good reason to be aggravated."
Dad frowned at Blackwell. "You told us you would keep an eye out for Taylor," he challenged.
"She hasn't made any accusations after the week she returned," Principal Blackwell explained calmly.
My brows furrowed in irritation. "Because they weren't doing anything, I was just getting bullied more when they called me a snitch!" I accused angrily.
I took a deep breath when Dad put a hand on my shoulder- he was angry, but he wasn't doing anything. Not just yet.
"This is unrelated!" said Alan, getting Dad's attention with a wave of his hand. "You can't just let your daughter imply mine is a bully so she can get away with her own lack of control."
"Emma has been a bully," I stated, keeping myself calm and making sure that I wasn't just implying it. "She's been bullying me since I got to Winslow."
Dad's surprised, disappointed look went from his own friend to me- though the latter time the disappointment wasn't for the look's recipient. "Emma?" he questioned, blindsided- then his eyes narrowed at the two Barnes.
"Do you have any proof of that, Taylor?" Principal Blackwell asked me, resting her chin on two interknitted sets of fingers.
"I have a diary at home," I told her. "I've been logging the incidents- there's multiple entries for every day since… December, last year, I think. There's the emails, too- I save those."
"Keeping a diary doesn't matter if there's nothing to back it up," she said, almost sighing. "And are the emails from Emma's account?"
...I shook my head.
"We're getting sidetracked, here," Dad said, frowning. I looked at him. Was he using Alan's own excuse against him, here...? "I didn't want to have to bring it up, but… we've had a family emergency recently."
Huh?
"Taylor's been under a lot of stress," he told them, "and it's certainly enough to be mitigating circumstances."
"A family emergency?" Alan asked, frowning at my uncomprehending facial expression. Blackwell raised an eyebrow. Even Sophia's… person seemed interested at the sudden change of topic. "You haven't mentioned anything-"
"Oh, yes," he continued, nodding, seeming to take great pleasure in the interruption. "It's bad."
"Then tell us what-"
"Very bad," Dad said. Somehow, his poker face had covered the shit-eating grin that his voice told me lay behind it. "We've even had to invite a few family members to comfort her."
Alan went stiff, as if he'd been told Lung himself had been invited to the Hebert family reunion.
...Ah, I thought, suddenly realising the exact same thing as Alan. He knows about Uncle Zion.
Slowly, he looked from Emma, back to me. "...Any… particular family members, Danny?"
"My brother-in-law is living with us right now," Dad explained, as if he was actually seeking empathy. Each word seemed to be making Alan more in favour of just jumping out the window and hoping his legs were still intact and unlacerated enough to run. "He knew we've both been feeling vulnerable recently, and he's come to support us in these trying times."
...Wait, I thought. Since when did Alan know about Uncle Zion in the first place?
While I was trying to figure out when that had happened, and if it meant something like Zoe having met Zion too, Sophia snorted in disdain. Alan gave her a horrified look, as if golden beams were about to start lancing through the walls for the slightest insult.
Fortunately for Sophia, Uncle Zion was a lot more absent-minded that Alan thought he was.
And when did I start thinking of him as Uncle Zion, anyway? I questioned. Ultimately, I decided to put that particular question away for another time. Just like every other question concerning him and his relationship with my parents I'd had.
"...Ah," said Alan, very deliberately, his voice having gone up an octave since I'd last heard it. "I… understand. Emma, you should show a lot of sympathy for poor Taylor. A lot. The poor girl."
"What!?" shrieked Emma. Well, it wasn't quite a shriek- more like the sound a particularly yappy chihuahua makes when another dog steals its latest chew toy. "But-"
Alan raised a finger over her lips, the universal gesture for a parent telling their toddler to shut the fuck up while adults do adult things. "A. Lot. Of. Sympathy," he said, patting his indignant child on the head. "For the poor girl."
"Umm… Excuse me?" Sophia's woman spoke up. "I understand that you two might know each other, but this is-"
"-A perfectly valid reason," Dad interrupted, as calm as if he were on a theoretical new ferry's maiden voyage.
"A perfectly valid reason for Taylor to be so distressed as of late," Alan agreed, as calm as if he were being thrown over said ferry's side into a pool of hungry sharks. "Me and Emma will vouch for her." Emma took a moment to realise what he'd said- and spluttered in outrage again.
Sophia was looking at us like we'd all gone mad (which, to be fair, was probably true regardless of what we did here today). Her person was looking politely interested in leaving the room and getting a nice cup of coffee or something, instead of listening to us. "...Ah," she responded.
I just groaned and put my head in my hands.
"Now if you'll excuse us," said Dad, unseating himself, "my daughter is under a lot of stress and I'd like to take her out of school for a day or two while she recovers. Is that acceptable?"
"God yes," Alan said, as if he'd just been offered true salvation. After a moment he noticed the two women's incredulous looks. "...Err, I think that would be a good idea, Mrs Blackwell."
Blackwell seemed to be at a loss… until she glanced down at the paperwork beside her. "...Miss Cassandra?" she questioned. "I trust you'll take these gentlemen's advice as reasonable?"
"..." Sophia's person glanced down at the girl herself. Sophia seemed to be having a mental blue screen of death right now instead. "...Yes, that's fine," she slowly agreed.
"I apologise for not informing anyone of the situation earlier," Dad said solemnly. "Come on Taylor. Let's go home."
"...Okay," I replied, getting up and following him like I was walking to the executioner's block.
I heard sounds of explosive teenaged discontent behind me as we left.
We stepped outside, Dad walking towards the car he'd left in the parking lot. I opened the front passenger door-
-and found Zion looking up at me, reading a violent-looking comic book. "Why is he…?"
"Oh, he was just going to stand outside the window and start staring at that Sophia girl's caseworker if she didn't relent," Dad explained casually. "Nobody saw him, don't worry, he's got precognition for that."
"So he can turn invisible or something?" I questioned.
"He could if he wanted to, yes," said Dad, "but it's more energy efficient for him to stay curled up next to the footrest. He just got uncurled very quickly when you opened the door."
I wasn't quite sure if that was a 'gosh, those kids really will believe anything you say!' thing or a 'Uncle Zion is Uncle Zion' thing. Once again, I ignored it. "And staring through the window would help… how?" I asked.
"Well if Scion was staring through the window at you while your ward was being accused of bullying a girl, you'd be intimidated too, wouldn't you?" Dad said.
Right. Because that sentence was a perfectly logical sentence to make.
"...Let's just go home," I told him, getting in the back right passenger seat to keep me from seeing any more of Zion than I had to today. The headrest wasn't much of a barrier, but it was something, at least.
I resolved myself- saying hi to that supervillain group was getting more appealing by the minute.
This may seem a bit odd- after all, the faculty's ignorance was one of many things that made Winslow the shithole it was- but I had the misfortune of being violent against their star students. Poor Emma, getting some sort of retribution after two years of steadily making her best friend's life hell. Poor Sophia, for hanging around her and encouraging her antics! It wouldn't do if that creepy Taylor girl hurt either of them, would it?
Idiots.
This neatly explains why I got pulled from the least hostile English class I'd been in since elementary school to go sit in the office under accusation of unprovoked violence instead.
The room was as crowded as anywhere else in Winslow. Blackwell's office was on the second floor- a small room, with an overflowing trash can (probably containing nothing but Arcadia applications and eyewitnesses) and a bored-looking woman in front of an old, worn desk in an old, creaking office chair. Across from her were six seats, with three girls- myself included- alongside both Alan and my own dad. They were sharing concerned looks, Emma held a cold icepack to her face, and Sophia just sat very still while giving me a glare that was even colder.
I was trying to ignore them, sweating bullets as I was, when the last person arrived. She… didn't look like she was Sophia's mother, and Sophia's glare shifted somewhere out of the window when she arrived, but Principal Blackwell took it as her cue to start speaking.
The dark-haired woman swiveled her chair in my direction with a faint squeak. She looked me in the eyes. "Taylor," she said, singling me out as quickly as possible, presumably just to bring things to their logical conclusion with equal speed. "Do you know why you're here?"
I nodded in agreement. Or, at least, I nodded. My best guess is that she interpreted it as 'yes, Principal Blackwell, it's because I didn't sit down and let her stab me with emotional knives that you all seem to think are completely normal and harmless'.
I don't think she would have appreciated me expanding on that to say it was that she wasn't doing her own damn job. My restraint in explaining properly allowed her to move on from talking to me, letting her talk to the adults as a whole.
"The girls here," she explained, "as well as a number of witnesses, have contributed enough for the faculty to have an understanding of exactly what happened earlier. We believe that Emma and her friends were talking outside their classroom and incidentally happened to be blocking Taylor from her route. When Emma questioned why she was standing there, Taylor took offense, and was aggravated enough to attack Emma, as well as Sophia when she defended Emma. Would anybody like to contest this?"
Alan looked at me darkly, as if I had actually done anything wrong- though I suppose Blackwell's version was just a tad bit biased in that regard. Dad raised an eyebrow at me and Emma, confused as to why I of all people was being accused of doing the punching. Sophia's guardian, meanwhile, looked politely disinterested at the whole situation while maintaining a concerned look on her face.
Seeing nobody else willing or able to contest the statement, I raised a hand. "Yes, Taylor?" said Blackwell.
"They were specifically insulting me while keeping me from being able to leave," I said. Dad blinked- and gave Alan a questioning look. "I'd already had orange juice poured onto my chair that lesson- I had good reason to be aggravated."
Dad frowned at Blackwell. "You told us you would keep an eye out for Taylor," he challenged.
"She hasn't made any accusations after the week she returned," Principal Blackwell explained calmly.
My brows furrowed in irritation. "Because they weren't doing anything, I was just getting bullied more when they called me a snitch!" I accused angrily.
I took a deep breath when Dad put a hand on my shoulder- he was angry, but he wasn't doing anything. Not just yet.
"This is unrelated!" said Alan, getting Dad's attention with a wave of his hand. "You can't just let your daughter imply mine is a bully so she can get away with her own lack of control."
"Emma has been a bully," I stated, keeping myself calm and making sure that I wasn't just implying it. "She's been bullying me since I got to Winslow."
Dad's surprised, disappointed look went from his own friend to me- though the latter time the disappointment wasn't for the look's recipient. "Emma?" he questioned, blindsided- then his eyes narrowed at the two Barnes.
"Do you have any proof of that, Taylor?" Principal Blackwell asked me, resting her chin on two interknitted sets of fingers.
"I have a diary at home," I told her. "I've been logging the incidents- there's multiple entries for every day since… December, last year, I think. There's the emails, too- I save those."
"Keeping a diary doesn't matter if there's nothing to back it up," she said, almost sighing. "And are the emails from Emma's account?"
...I shook my head.
"We're getting sidetracked, here," Dad said, frowning. I looked at him. Was he using Alan's own excuse against him, here...? "I didn't want to have to bring it up, but… we've had a family emergency recently."
Huh?
"Taylor's been under a lot of stress," he told them, "and it's certainly enough to be mitigating circumstances."
"A family emergency?" Alan asked, frowning at my uncomprehending facial expression. Blackwell raised an eyebrow. Even Sophia's… person seemed interested at the sudden change of topic. "You haven't mentioned anything-"
"Oh, yes," he continued, nodding, seeming to take great pleasure in the interruption. "It's bad."
"Then tell us what-"
"Very bad," Dad said. Somehow, his poker face had covered the shit-eating grin that his voice told me lay behind it. "We've even had to invite a few family members to comfort her."
Alan went stiff, as if he'd been told Lung himself had been invited to the Hebert family reunion.
...Ah, I thought, suddenly realising the exact same thing as Alan. He knows about Uncle Zion.
Slowly, he looked from Emma, back to me. "...Any… particular family members, Danny?"
"My brother-in-law is living with us right now," Dad explained, as if he was actually seeking empathy. Each word seemed to be making Alan more in favour of just jumping out the window and hoping his legs were still intact and unlacerated enough to run. "He knew we've both been feeling vulnerable recently, and he's come to support us in these trying times."
...Wait, I thought. Since when did Alan know about Uncle Zion in the first place?
While I was trying to figure out when that had happened, and if it meant something like Zoe having met Zion too, Sophia snorted in disdain. Alan gave her a horrified look, as if golden beams were about to start lancing through the walls for the slightest insult.
Fortunately for Sophia, Uncle Zion was a lot more absent-minded that Alan thought he was.
And when did I start thinking of him as Uncle Zion, anyway? I questioned. Ultimately, I decided to put that particular question away for another time. Just like every other question concerning him and his relationship with my parents I'd had.
"...Ah," said Alan, very deliberately, his voice having gone up an octave since I'd last heard it. "I… understand. Emma, you should show a lot of sympathy for poor Taylor. A lot. The poor girl."
"What!?" shrieked Emma. Well, it wasn't quite a shriek- more like the sound a particularly yappy chihuahua makes when another dog steals its latest chew toy. "But-"
Alan raised a finger over her lips, the universal gesture for a parent telling their toddler to shut the fuck up while adults do adult things. "A. Lot. Of. Sympathy," he said, patting his indignant child on the head. "For the poor girl."
"Umm… Excuse me?" Sophia's woman spoke up. "I understand that you two might know each other, but this is-"
"-A perfectly valid reason," Dad interrupted, as calm as if he were on a theoretical new ferry's maiden voyage.
"A perfectly valid reason for Taylor to be so distressed as of late," Alan agreed, as calm as if he were being thrown over said ferry's side into a pool of hungry sharks. "Me and Emma will vouch for her." Emma took a moment to realise what he'd said- and spluttered in outrage again.
Sophia was looking at us like we'd all gone mad (which, to be fair, was probably true regardless of what we did here today). Her person was looking politely interested in leaving the room and getting a nice cup of coffee or something, instead of listening to us. "...Ah," she responded.
I just groaned and put my head in my hands.
"Now if you'll excuse us," said Dad, unseating himself, "my daughter is under a lot of stress and I'd like to take her out of school for a day or two while she recovers. Is that acceptable?"
"God yes," Alan said, as if he'd just been offered true salvation. After a moment he noticed the two women's incredulous looks. "...Err, I think that would be a good idea, Mrs Blackwell."
Blackwell seemed to be at a loss… until she glanced down at the paperwork beside her. "...Miss Cassandra?" she questioned. "I trust you'll take these gentlemen's advice as reasonable?"
"..." Sophia's person glanced down at the girl herself. Sophia seemed to be having a mental blue screen of death right now instead. "...Yes, that's fine," she slowly agreed.
"I apologise for not informing anyone of the situation earlier," Dad said solemnly. "Come on Taylor. Let's go home."
"...Okay," I replied, getting up and following him like I was walking to the executioner's block.
I heard sounds of explosive teenaged discontent behind me as we left.
We stepped outside, Dad walking towards the car he'd left in the parking lot. I opened the front passenger door-
-and found Zion looking up at me, reading a violent-looking comic book. "Why is he…?"
"Oh, he was just going to stand outside the window and start staring at that Sophia girl's caseworker if she didn't relent," Dad explained casually. "Nobody saw him, don't worry, he's got precognition for that."
"So he can turn invisible or something?" I questioned.
"He could if he wanted to, yes," said Dad, "but it's more energy efficient for him to stay curled up next to the footrest. He just got uncurled very quickly when you opened the door."
I wasn't quite sure if that was a 'gosh, those kids really will believe anything you say!' thing or a 'Uncle Zion is Uncle Zion' thing. Once again, I ignored it. "And staring through the window would help… how?" I asked.
"Well if Scion was staring through the window at you while your ward was being accused of bullying a girl, you'd be intimidated too, wouldn't you?" Dad said.
Right. Because that sentence was a perfectly logical sentence to make.
"...Let's just go home," I told him, getting in the back right passenger seat to keep me from seeing any more of Zion than I had to today. The headrest wasn't much of a barrier, but it was something, at least.
I resolved myself- saying hi to that supervillain group was getting more appealing by the minute.
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Chapter 4
- Location
- England. Tea and scones, wot wot!
The car trip home was done in the contented silence of a job well done... The silence from the two adults was, anyway. Personally, my silence was caused by actively-sought incomprehension. Either way, nobody spoke, not until the tires were crunching on the gravel outside our old, familiar house.
We stepped out of the car together- or rather, me and Dad did. Zion just sort of hovered, apparently unperturbed by the idea of someone seeing him, his radiant gold features not quite meshing with the dingy streets around him.
To be honest that was probably a sign nobody could see him. He probably had a power for that, the ass.
We trailed after him as he floated over to the door, looking much less majestic than he would due to the fact he was only about three centimetres off the ground. He pressed his eye to the keyhole, as if it were an optic scanner- which was apparently enough to unlock it, as a second later the door was open and he was moving into the hallway.
We continued to follow, until Dad paused just outside the door. "So, I've been thinking," he said.
"God help us all," I muttered under my breath, stopping beside him.
"Your mother, she… kept a diary," he explained. "I would have let you read it as well, but it… ah… makes her nature fairly obvious."
"You mean it... looks like it was written by a hyperdimensional space whale made out of superpowers?" I questioned as I stepped inside. Zion was holding the door, which was probably the only polite thing I'd seen him do. "What's that supposed to mean?"
In lieu of an answer, he stepped over to the stairs and picked up a small, worn-looking, leather-bound book from a well-trodded, carpet-covered step. A single ribbon kept it closed. He regarded it for a moment- fondness welled up in his expression- and then he held it out to me. "Here's your chance to find out," he said.
It took me a second to register what it was- and another to muster the courage to take it from him. I tentatively took it in my grip, and stood there for a second, staring at her messy, hand-written name on the cover. It looked like it was done by a kid- and, thinking about it, perhaps she had started this diary as a young girl.
Dad noticed my reflective pause. "Open it up," he encouraged, smiling.
Zion had fucked off to somewhere else in the house while I wasn't looking. That was good- this was… this was important to me.
I opened it, and flicked through it for a second. Beyond the front cover, her handwriting was constant- the same small, circular writing I remembered from progress reports, school journals and her own then-incomprehensible essays she wrote. Each entry was carefully dated, the times jotted down in digital format to a greater precision than could possibly be useful. The space that wasn't filled by text was covered in tiny dots, of varying sizes and colours.
I began to read.
The next entry was much shorter, and simply read:
I skipped forwards.
I blinked. "...Did Mom set up Mouse Protector to get murdered, when she was a kid?" I asked.
"Is it murder if something with their brain is still alive and well enough to join the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Dad suggested.
I… I'm not going to answer that question. I skipped ahead again- and found myself coming to a place where a number of pages had been neatly removed.
The entry before that read:
The pages cut out here. Overleaf, it continued an unrelated sentence.
"...Really, Mom?" I asked the diary flatly. "That's all you have to say?"
Dad glanced at the expression of pure exasperation on my face, and wisely said nothing.
Imagine, if you will, a beautiful painting.
Now imagine somebody putting it on the floor, taking the cover off, covering it in bacon and squeaky toys, and releasing a cascade of dogs upon it. Then, after ten minutes, and without removing the dogs, they picked it up and put it on the wall again.
This is roughly what the diary was doing to my perception of my mother right now. Nevertheless, I flicked forwards- and stopped on the last page.
My heart skipped a beat when I realised it- I glanced away, not willing to read it for a second. Then, I took a breath, and read the last personal thoughts she'd wanted to write down.
The entry before that last one, it read:
And then, there was the last entry. It was… not what I would have expected her last entry to look like. I was expecting just some normal day-in-the-life stuff, or perhaps more crazed ramblings like the other things that had caught my attention.
Instead, it was very short, and read:
The book went to unmarred, perfectly white pages after that.
Despite how… utterly underwhelming it had been to hear some of my mother's personal thoughts on life, I closed the book gently and carefully redid the ribbon that had held it shut, with the intention to read it fully later.
"I hope you find it enlightening," said Dad.
I was still going to read it. But I certainly wasn't going to think about it. "Being enlightened by it sounds like a very bad idea for my sanity," I told him, and headed upstairs for the desktop computer.
It didn't take me long to butcher the browser again and write my reply to the teen supervillain I'd met last night. It was then I realised- last night felt like a long, long time ago.
Tattletale wanted to meet me in costume, with a ciphered message telling me her location. I eagerly accepted the request- it was the most irrelevant thing I could think of, and that was something I badly, badly needed right now.
We stepped out of the car together- or rather, me and Dad did. Zion just sort of hovered, apparently unperturbed by the idea of someone seeing him, his radiant gold features not quite meshing with the dingy streets around him.
To be honest that was probably a sign nobody could see him. He probably had a power for that, the ass.
We trailed after him as he floated over to the door, looking much less majestic than he would due to the fact he was only about three centimetres off the ground. He pressed his eye to the keyhole, as if it were an optic scanner- which was apparently enough to unlock it, as a second later the door was open and he was moving into the hallway.
We continued to follow, until Dad paused just outside the door. "So, I've been thinking," he said.
"God help us all," I muttered under my breath, stopping beside him.
"Your mother, she… kept a diary," he explained. "I would have let you read it as well, but it… ah… makes her nature fairly obvious."
"You mean it... looks like it was written by a hyperdimensional space whale made out of superpowers?" I questioned as I stepped inside. Zion was holding the door, which was probably the only polite thing I'd seen him do. "What's that supposed to mean?"
In lieu of an answer, he stepped over to the stairs and picked up a small, worn-looking, leather-bound book from a well-trodded, carpet-covered step. A single ribbon kept it closed. He regarded it for a moment- fondness welled up in his expression- and then he held it out to me. "Here's your chance to find out," he said.
It took me a second to register what it was- and another to muster the courage to take it from him. I tentatively took it in my grip, and stood there for a second, staring at her messy, hand-written name on the cover. It looked like it was done by a kid- and, thinking about it, perhaps she had started this diary as a young girl.
Dad noticed my reflective pause. "Open it up," he encouraged, smiling.
Zion had fucked off to somewhere else in the house while I wasn't looking. That was good- this was… this was important to me.
I opened it, and flicked through it for a second. Beyond the front cover, her handwriting was constant- the same small, circular writing I remembered from progress reports, school journals and her own then-incomprehensible essays she wrote. Each entry was carefully dated, the times jotted down in digital format to a greater precision than could possibly be useful. The space that wasn't filled by text was covered in tiny dots, of varying sizes and colours.
I began to read.
Entry 1
Dear Diary,
It took a while, but I finally have that new body up and running. And for once, none of the native organisms are inappropriately running away and screaming! I'll have to thank that lovely couple if they ever come to visit, I don't think they left their communication shards intact.
So, the primitive beings here make a habit of utilising paper as a recording method, and then attempting to communicate with it while writing upon it. This is, of course, ridiculous- but it could still be useful data, so I'm going to do it anyway. Their 'writing' methodology is also incredibly inefficient, so any excess data I'm going to store in a pleasing and efficient encoded system on the sides of the page.
To summarise what has happened since my last planet-
-I figured out how to make the omniplanetary detonation a little more efficient. This should help now I'm sharing a planet.
-A pair of undulatory entities missed my alert to say I was going to set down here- the risks of divergent evolution, I suppose. I needed to save energy, so I couldn't use anything more than a quick burst, but passing over my primary precognitive and quantum stabilisation shards was enough to prevent them from murdering me.
-Apparently the random shardload of social data was incredibly valuable for their destructive testing methods, and what they considered to be useless data on three-dimensional organisms has finally given me what I need to run an infiltration properly! I'll keep it as a single individual for now, and then scale it up as the other entities destabilise the planet.
-I really need to get some faster-than-light travel, because wow are my shards outdated compared to these two. Hopefully I can trade for some, maybe tag along for a while until I'm caught up to modern standards.
Signed, Annette.
Dear Diary,
It took a while, but I finally have that new body up and running. And for once, none of the native organisms are inappropriately running away and screaming! I'll have to thank that lovely couple if they ever come to visit, I don't think they left their communication shards intact.
So, the primitive beings here make a habit of utilising paper as a recording method, and then attempting to communicate with it while writing upon it. This is, of course, ridiculous- but it could still be useful data, so I'm going to do it anyway. Their 'writing' methodology is also incredibly inefficient, so any excess data I'm going to store in a pleasing and efficient encoded system on the sides of the page.
To summarise what has happened since my last planet-
-I figured out how to make the omniplanetary detonation a little more efficient. This should help now I'm sharing a planet.
-A pair of undulatory entities missed my alert to say I was going to set down here- the risks of divergent evolution, I suppose. I needed to save energy, so I couldn't use anything more than a quick burst, but passing over my primary precognitive and quantum stabilisation shards was enough to prevent them from murdering me.
-Apparently the random shardload of social data was incredibly valuable for their destructive testing methods, and what they considered to be useless data on three-dimensional organisms has finally given me what I need to run an infiltration properly! I'll keep it as a single individual for now, and then scale it up as the other entities destabilise the planet.
-I really need to get some faster-than-light travel, because wow are my shards outdated compared to these two. Hopefully I can trade for some, maybe tag along for a while until I'm caught up to modern standards.
Signed, Annette.
The next entry was much shorter, and simply read:
Entry 2
Dear Diary,
Whoops.
Signed, Annette.
Dear Diary,
Whoops.
Signed, Annette.
I skipped forwards.
Entry 53
Dear Diary,
There is a rather irritating girl in my class. Normally this would be excusable, but unfortunately they've got a shard attached to them which is driving her to be so annoying, which is the main reason I'm actually feeling irritated rather than my human avatar experiencing a roughly similar emotional analogue. I mean, really? 'Mouse Protector'? Who thought that would generate any conflict?
This just doesn't work for me, so I've set it so a small child kills her and fuses her brain with her shard-designated most-hated-enemy in the world in a few decades' time.
It'll be hilarious.
Signed, Annette.
Dear Diary,
There is a rather irritating girl in my class. Normally this would be excusable, but unfortunately they've got a shard attached to them which is driving her to be so annoying, which is the main reason I'm actually feeling irritated rather than my human avatar experiencing a roughly similar emotional analogue. I mean, really? 'Mouse Protector'? Who thought that would generate any conflict?
This just doesn't work for me, so I've set it so a small child kills her and fuses her brain with her shard-designated most-hated-enemy in the world in a few decades' time.
It'll be hilarious.
Signed, Annette.
I blinked. "...Did Mom set up Mouse Protector to get murdered, when she was a kid?" I asked.
"Is it murder if something with their brain is still alive and well enough to join the Slaughterhouse Nine?" Dad suggested.
I… I'm not going to answer that question. I skipped ahead again- and found myself coming to a place where a number of pages had been neatly removed.
The entry before that read:
Entry 247
Dear Diary,
This species is both rather intelligent and incredibly stupid.
As I've previously established- unlike myself and the warrior entity I still see flying around on the news, humans possess a sort of… fuzzy intelligence. They don't remember things with perfect clarity, as we do, or as their computers do- rather, their sentience is based almost entirely on the linking of different concepts and sensations.
While they suffer a large amount of data loss, they utilise instinct and more strongly-linked concepts as a baseline with which to peruse and recreate novel memories and ideas. This means that their entire consciousness is, effectively, an engine that recombines previously-existing ideas into new ones.
Now, this doesn't seem like an unlikely conclusion of the evolutionary process, being a highly efficient and reactive method of sentience. However, I would probably consider most sapient creatures to be more like ourselves- or rather, the designed ones, which tend to exist for long enough periods of time I'd be likely to encounter them. And besides, this is the first time I've had the resources to do a proper infiltration and observation, thanks to the other entities I've met. When I asked the warrior entity, he and his partner had come to the same conclusion long ago.
Personally, I'd consider this method of thought extremely useful. The other entities do, as well- I've observed many shards capable of this type of processing- but I'd suggest that an attempt at larger shard clusters that think like this would be great for downtime processing.
Of course, this would be counterproductive for most other entities I've seen. After all, the goal is data collection here, not data processing- that's for the end of the Cycle- and this is specifically dedicated for processing as much information as possible while recording very little information.
Then there's the fact that most other entities don't really have the downtime a momentum-based method of travel brings. They just zoom from place to place, testing to their heart's content, thinking as little as possible, just utilising their precognitive abilities to get ready to collect data and then immediately landing to begin.
I may be slightly jealous.
The main reason I'm discussing this is because this method, obviously, relies on increasing base knowledge and methodologies to exponentially-
Dear Diary,
This species is both rather intelligent and incredibly stupid.
As I've previously established- unlike myself and the warrior entity I still see flying around on the news, humans possess a sort of… fuzzy intelligence. They don't remember things with perfect clarity, as we do, or as their computers do- rather, their sentience is based almost entirely on the linking of different concepts and sensations.
While they suffer a large amount of data loss, they utilise instinct and more strongly-linked concepts as a baseline with which to peruse and recreate novel memories and ideas. This means that their entire consciousness is, effectively, an engine that recombines previously-existing ideas into new ones.
Now, this doesn't seem like an unlikely conclusion of the evolutionary process, being a highly efficient and reactive method of sentience. However, I would probably consider most sapient creatures to be more like ourselves- or rather, the designed ones, which tend to exist for long enough periods of time I'd be likely to encounter them. And besides, this is the first time I've had the resources to do a proper infiltration and observation, thanks to the other entities I've met. When I asked the warrior entity, he and his partner had come to the same conclusion long ago.
Personally, I'd consider this method of thought extremely useful. The other entities do, as well- I've observed many shards capable of this type of processing- but I'd suggest that an attempt at larger shard clusters that think like this would be great for downtime processing.
Of course, this would be counterproductive for most other entities I've seen. After all, the goal is data collection here, not data processing- that's for the end of the Cycle- and this is specifically dedicated for processing as much information as possible while recording very little information.
Then there's the fact that most other entities don't really have the downtime a momentum-based method of travel brings. They just zoom from place to place, testing to their heart's content, thinking as little as possible, just utilising their precognitive abilities to get ready to collect data and then immediately landing to begin.
I may be slightly jealous.
The main reason I'm discussing this is because this method, obviously, relies on increasing base knowledge and methodologies to exponentially-
The pages cut out here. Overleaf, it continued an unrelated sentence.
-power drill seemed really unsafe, but it was probably the most data-rich part of the whole experience. If it had gone wrong I could just get a new body anyway. They'd probably just assume the missing central nervous system of an emergency nexus withdrawal was unrelated.
Signed, Annette.
On further notice, there seemed to be an awful lot of missing pages- the entry directly afterwards seemed like proof of that, considering the much later date and slightly larger number.Signed, Annette.
Entry 264
Dear Diary,
Apparently, the other entities' three-dimensional knowledge is sufficient to create an avatar capable of reproduction.
I was not, in fact, aware of this.
The male specimen also appears surprised, but a brief application of intensive data processing later and I confirmed that my parents had indeed suddenly come into a windfall of material wealth. So basic biological requirements for the juvenile have been met.
Of slightly more concern is that the shard I was utilising hadn't encountered this situation before, and its closest scenario involved applying additional shards to provide the target with superpowers. It gave up on attempting to apply all shards, but it managed to create and apply copies of the most vital shards as considered by both myself and my two compatriots.
The nature of those primary shards, and the other entities' own methodologies, means that those primary shards have been scrubbed, disconnected, and set up with their own dimensional guards and precognition prevention engines (or however you'd translate that to meat sack language) while mine have experienced an unplanned drain.
Effectively, I have somehow accidentally created what the test species would probably consider a 'juvenile entity'- though as this phenomenon is completely outside of anything we were told to do at the start of the cycle, a more correct term would probably be 'juvenile human with a brain-dead gestalt creature that technically meets the minimum requirements to be considered an entity'.
I'll ask Zion to see how it's probably going to work out. Who knows? Maybe it could do something useful.
Signed, Annette.
Dear Diary,
Apparently, the other entities' three-dimensional knowledge is sufficient to create an avatar capable of reproduction.
I was not, in fact, aware of this.
The male specimen also appears surprised, but a brief application of intensive data processing later and I confirmed that my parents had indeed suddenly come into a windfall of material wealth. So basic biological requirements for the juvenile have been met.
Of slightly more concern is that the shard I was utilising hadn't encountered this situation before, and its closest scenario involved applying additional shards to provide the target with superpowers. It gave up on attempting to apply all shards, but it managed to create and apply copies of the most vital shards as considered by both myself and my two compatriots.
The nature of those primary shards, and the other entities' own methodologies, means that those primary shards have been scrubbed, disconnected, and set up with their own dimensional guards and precognition prevention engines (or however you'd translate that to meat sack language) while mine have experienced an unplanned drain.
Effectively, I have somehow accidentally created what the test species would probably consider a 'juvenile entity'- though as this phenomenon is completely outside of anything we were told to do at the start of the cycle, a more correct term would probably be 'juvenile human with a brain-dead gestalt creature that technically meets the minimum requirements to be considered an entity'.
I'll ask Zion to see how it's probably going to work out. Who knows? Maybe it could do something useful.
Signed, Annette.
"...Really, Mom?" I asked the diary flatly. "That's all you have to say?"
Dad glanced at the expression of pure exasperation on my face, and wisely said nothing.
Imagine, if you will, a beautiful painting.
Now imagine somebody putting it on the floor, taking the cover off, covering it in bacon and squeaky toys, and releasing a cascade of dogs upon it. Then, after ten minutes, and without removing the dogs, they picked it up and put it on the wall again.
This is roughly what the diary was doing to my perception of my mother right now. Nevertheless, I flicked forwards- and stopped on the last page.
My heart skipped a beat when I realised it- I glanced away, not willing to read it for a second. Then, I took a breath, and read the last personal thoughts she'd wanted to write down.
The entry before that last one, it read:
Entry 672
Dear Diary,
Y'know, it was extremely unlikely that Zion's wife would have died if she were just being shanked at random. From what I've seen of his avatar, even a dimension-spanning work-in-progress wouldn't have every single central processing unit be a nexus like my own, admittedly more vulnerable avatar has.
I'm suspecting their stupid superpower things worked against her- an information-gathering power that she didn't turn off before the human (or other sentient being, I'm not sure where in this planet's list of dimensions that happened in) gathered enough to apply lethal force.
I expect she turned it off for every entity, but just in case she didn't, I'm going to check with Zion next time he visits our cute little family. My anti-precog is running low on power- apparently the avatar shard thought it was really important for some reason- and I gave away my personal-use precog to provide aggressive countermeasures for me, so it's prudent to check. Being prudent, I've learned, is extremely important in situations where you don't have all the information.
Goddamn anti-precog butterfly effects. The other two love that thing so much even some of the thinker entity's dead, broken combat shards still have their precog guards up. It's ridiculous.
Signed, Annette.
Dear Diary,
Y'know, it was extremely unlikely that Zion's wife would have died if she were just being shanked at random. From what I've seen of his avatar, even a dimension-spanning work-in-progress wouldn't have every single central processing unit be a nexus like my own, admittedly more vulnerable avatar has.
I'm suspecting their stupid superpower things worked against her- an information-gathering power that she didn't turn off before the human (or other sentient being, I'm not sure where in this planet's list of dimensions that happened in) gathered enough to apply lethal force.
I expect she turned it off for every entity, but just in case she didn't, I'm going to check with Zion next time he visits our cute little family. My anti-precog is running low on power- apparently the avatar shard thought it was really important for some reason- and I gave away my personal-use precog to provide aggressive countermeasures for me, so it's prudent to check. Being prudent, I've learned, is extremely important in situations where you don't have all the information.
Goddamn anti-precog butterfly effects. The other two love that thing so much even some of the thinker entity's dead, broken combat shards still have their precog guards up. It's ridiculous.
Signed, Annette.
And then, there was the last entry. It was… not what I would have expected her last entry to look like. I was expecting just some normal day-in-the-life stuff, or perhaps more crazed ramblings like the other things that had caught my attention.
Instead, it was very short, and read:
Entry 673
DEAR DIARY,
THAT. FUCKING. BITCH.
SIGNED, ANNETTE.
DEAR DIARY,
THAT. FUCKING. BITCH.
SIGNED, ANNETTE.
The book went to unmarred, perfectly white pages after that.
Despite how… utterly underwhelming it had been to hear some of my mother's personal thoughts on life, I closed the book gently and carefully redid the ribbon that had held it shut, with the intention to read it fully later.
"I hope you find it enlightening," said Dad.
I was still going to read it. But I certainly wasn't going to think about it. "Being enlightened by it sounds like a very bad idea for my sanity," I told him, and headed upstairs for the desktop computer.
It didn't take me long to butcher the browser again and write my reply to the teen supervillain I'd met last night. It was then I realised- last night felt like a long, long time ago.
Tattletale wanted to meet me in costume, with a ciphered message telling me her location. I eagerly accepted the request- it was the most irrelevant thing I could think of, and that was something I badly, badly needed right now.
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