Fourth [Worm Altpower!Taylor]

Lisa wasn't exactly in a good place when she stumbled upon them.

She had been chasing threads. That's what she told herself. Patterns in the chaos. Something was happening in Brockton Bay, something even her Shard refused to pin down with its usual smug certainty. She hated that. Hated being in the dark. Hated even more how often her power failed when it came to trying to track down the stealthy as hell blind spots that had shown up, but also not shown up, almost overnight.

So when she finally tracked them down - Danny Hebert, father of Taylor, local dockworker and high school student respectively - she wasn't prepared for what she found.

They were in an ice cream shop.

With four other people.

Four other people she swore she knew, though she couldn't put her finger on it. That should have been her first clue.

Then came the rest. The revelation of Shards. What powers really were. The fact that both Heberts were Ascended Shard Entities with terrifyingly stable networks and entirely too much charisma.

And the kicker?

The other four people sitting calmly at the parlor table with them (and yes, that bore repeating) were the new forms of the Endbringers.

She wasn't prepared.

Not even slightly.

She certainly didn't expect to drop to her knees the moment Danny - or Abaddon, as her Shard kept insisting - made eye contact with her.

Nor when he casually teleported everyone on the Boardwalk out of the way of the Ash Beast.

To somewhere that wasn't space.

"...Oh fuck," Lisa muttered. Her voice shook.

Her Shard whimpered. Literally whimpered, like a kicked puppy with guilt issues.

Danny blinked at her from his porch, which was in the gigantic void of not-space somehow, sipping coffee like he wasn't a reality-breaking gravitational well in jeans. "You okay?"

Lisa tried to laugh it off. Her laugh came out like a dying squirrel. "My power just tried to pledge eternal loyalty to you."

Danny coughed. "That's new."

"And it wants in your pants."

Inference Engine was mortified, and smashed her with a rebuke of a thinker headache. Until Danny glared at it, somehow, in an off-dimensional direction, and sighed. The headache vanished faster than Alec when he heard Pizza was delivered.

Danny waved his hand, halting the thousands of people milling about in the not-space in their tracks, including Brian. Brian, who for the last thirty or so seconds had been stock still and so stunned that his halting in place didn't make much of a difference.

"I think we need to talk, the three of us," Danny said.

Neither Lisa, nor Inference, were ashamed to admit they were worried. Not scared, because Abaddon was obviously not angry or, well, according to Inference, acting anything like a normal Entity, but they both felt that they were about to have a Talk with their father.

---

Lisa didn't remember getting inside the house. One second she was outside trying to regain control of her legs after even more revelations, the next she was on a couch with a warm blanket over her shoulders, and a mug of cocoa in her hands. It was really good cocoa. That offended her. And they were also no longer in the not-space, not that she could tell the difference beyond just a gut feeling. Brian was in a bedroom in the basement sleeping off a hangover, and it was the next day.

What the hell happened?

"You asked me to stasis you so you wouldn't make more of a fool of yourself," Danny offered, smiling kindly her way.

There was a noise in the back of the house. Lisa's attention, despite not wanting to leave her new… actually she wasn't sure what Danny was to her now, though the easiest to go with was… her new boss, but she had to know. She always had to know. Nothing Inference did caused that. They just enabled each other.

It turned out to be the other Entity in the home. Taylor was descending the stairs slowly, one hand trailing along the railing like she was still half-dreaming. Her hair was tousled, her eyes puffy, and there was the faintest impression of a cheek mark on her arm. Those were all clear signs she'd sobbed herself to sleep in someone's embrace.

That someone being Emma, right behind her, almost supportively. The girl wasn't remotely human, that Lisa knew; she was apparently a new Endbringer, but Taylor had changed their functions and renamed them Friendbringers. She was obviously the same warm constant she'd been last night, given her support of Taylor and how she was acting. Ziz must've also joined the pile halfway through, draping herself over them with the solemnity of a cat claiming a favorite sunspot, because when she came down the stairs behind the two of them, her wings were out, ruffled, and she had a beaming smile on her face.

Inference informed her that Taylor hadn't protested. She hadn't had the energy. And to also not push that particular button, since the girl turned what was effectively the closest their reality had to a goddess was very, very raw on the topic.

Now, said goddess was blinking at the harshness of morning light and the chill of the downstairs tile, following the sound of their voices. Ziz trailed behind her with the springy lightness of someone who definitely, totally hadn't spent the last several hours being a weighted blanket.

As they got closer, Inference went into overdrive. Taylor. Queen Administrator. Recently emotionally volatile, Ascended Entity, and very possibly the one person who could decide whether Lisa's continued existence was a mercy or a mistake. Danny would probably stop Taylor, since Lisa was sort of his worshipper now? But she also didn't want to make the teenage goddess mad either.

She tried to sit straighter and failed, spilling a little cocoa down her front in the process. She froze, halfway between casual and cardiac arrest.

And Danny - Abaddon, whatever - had the gall to snicker at her!

Then Taylor stepped into view.

Her expression wasn't hostile.

That was almost worse.

She looked curious. And tired. And underneath it all - the kind of wary that said she'd been burned too many times to play nice unless she had to.

There was also the sensation of something a whole lot bigger than her, a whole lot bigger than Inference, taking a cursory but discerning glance In her general direction. It wasn't just the unease of a predator eyeing prey; it was more the feeling than an ant gets when presented with a boot.

Lisa swallowed.

Taylor eyed her dad, then Lisa, then back again.

"She didn't do anything stupid, right?" she asked Danny, voice a little hoarse but steady.

Danny raised his hands in mock innocence. "Define 'stupid.'"

Lisa decided to speak up. "I did not try to seduce your dad. My Shard did. I think. Possibly both. We're still working that out."

Taylor blinked, and the feeling of being observed went away. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. Her human ones, anyways.

Ziz, the traitor trailing the pack, grinned. "New cultist detected."

"Stop it," Taylor threw her way, lightly bopping the previous Hope Killer on the head like a misbehaving child.

Emma just giggled at her, and hugged Taylor from behind.

Lisa curled into the blanket more. "I think I worship him now. But like, in a strictly nonsexual, immensely respectful, quantum-structural sense. Probably."

Taylor stared at her. Again.

Then Lisa's eyes widened.

"Wait, wait, wait. You're the one who gives Shards therapy, right? That's what's been happening, why so many things have been changing?! You fixed them. You fixed them! That's why things are quiet. Brockton Bay is never quiet!"

Taylor crossed her arms. "Yeah. Some of them. Not enough, but some."

Lisa instantly stood straight up, put her cup on the couch table, and bowed towards Taylor. "Please. Fix mine. I am so tired."

There was a long pause.

Then Taylor sighed. "Fine. But if she pulls anything, I will graft her to a literal chair. And then sit on it."

---

The process wasn't clean. Or easy. Inference Engine was paranoid, twitchy, and had more buried trauma than half of Earth Bet combined.

I eventually managed to force a partial copy of a few of the emotional management Shards I owned onto Lisa's shard. It stabilized the connection. Regulated it. Brought clarity.

Dad's new worshipper wouldn't be having any more Thinker headaches, and Inference wasn't quite as much of a paranoid bitch anymore, but that was all I wanted to do that morning.

"If you still need more later, come find me again. But right now, I have a date with our tea maker," I told her, and pointedly ignored what she or her Shard said past the thanks they gave me. I walked past her, giving her a pat on the head, and entered the kitchen for glorious, glorious tea to drown my worries and horrified betrayal from yesterday in.

---

That was a woman. Actually, no, more like a preteen. At least physically.

A very famous preteen, whom I happened to know the appearance of very well. Whenever she showed up on TV, it was always in a report on whatever parahuman host she'd gobbled up and turned into a power, or wild speculation and concerns about the next target for said gobbling.

…I was gone for five minutes. Five!

I looked at my dad, back to the girl on the couch, and then to my Friendbringers. The tea in my hands started to cool off, and so I took a sip. I wasn't prepared for this, at all, but at least due to my new power I could drink steaming hot tea without worrying about being burned. Tea was taking on an entirely new dimension for me, and that alone brought my spirits up enough to address the fairy in the room.

"...Why is the Faerie Queen on our couch?"

While I asked the question, I pinged her Shard for information. To my shock, the girl sat ramrod straight, and jumped a little. Her eyes widened and she stared straight at me.

[The title, no, the Name given to me by my progenitors is… Ciara], her Shard sent me. Directly.

What the hell.

As if that explained anything!

The transmission was rough, but it was very obviously similar to how Dad and I communicated in human words despite using Shardspeak.

"She needs help, Taylor, and I can't do it," Dad said. "I don't really know how. But for the record, though I do support you helping her and fixing what's wrong with her Shard, I didn't bring her here. She was here when I got back from the car."

Ciara looked at me innocently, worried as she was, and practically begged me through Shard communications to give her what she needed to understand how to be human again. Because apparently she wasn't human at all, and actually some kind of freak mutation of an elf and a fairy with a really good shapeshifting power toggled on at all times, and was also her Shard in a way eerily similar to myself.

From what I could tell, the Internet wouldn't survive if photos of her true age, fully adult form got out. Nothing should be simultaneously that sexy and adorable.

Oh shit, there goes my sexuality.

I quickly sent her obnoxiously adorable, pleading face all the data I managed to get when I rebuilt my body, alongside an offer for a library connection to my Shaper, and pointedly ignored the ramifications of my entire everything related to attraction becoming Yes.

Shaper loved it, as I hadn't done too much with… her, and the feeling I got from the shard was definitely her at this point, I guess because she'd made a decision on my worthiness? Yeah, she was my Shaper, which made her my subordinate and thus if I had investigated I'd have learned of her true level of consciousness, but I didn't and hadn't wanted to because I refused to be like the other Entities that had come before me.

Anyways, given the thanks I got from Shaper with a suspicious number of other quantum signatures I recognized as parts of my Shard collection attached, that was the right call.

There goes the idea of them not doing things without my input though. The compromise I reached, broadcast, and got immediate confirmations of agreement as well as appreciation of leniency for was that if any of them were going to do something, they'd better ask me first, and I had veto power.

A couple of them were suspiciously silent at that last bit other than agreement, but it didn't seem malicious and Victory Path and Shaper agreed to explain it to me when I wasn't busy, so that was acceptable.

Ciara loved what I gave her. She beamed at me, a genuine, fully human expression, as I sensed her, or her Shard's, touch on Shaper's social libraries. Which she apparently had. Why the hell did a biological manipulation Shard have social libraries?

"Thank you! Sorry about how I talked before, and what I did," she said clearly, for the first time in what I knew of her history acting like a normal person. "I was too… broken, to understand before, but now…"

She finished her getting up… by dropping straight back down onto her knees, bowing her head, and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

What the fuck.

"Please accept me into your service as penance for those I have wronged," she intoned solemnly.

I looked at her, then around. Dad only managed to maintain a straight face with sheer force of will and at least three active social Shards. Yoinked those while I was looking, and while I knew he knew I'd copied them, he just seemed happier for it.

Right, not a normal Entity. Still gotta get that through my head. Though to be fair, what I was dealing with yesterday clouded my mind quite a lot.

I looked at the rest of the people in the house. Ziz and Emma were watching us. Ben… was watching TV, lounging on a copy of my Dad's favorite easy chair, made out of rock.

Didn't sound that comfortable, but who am I to tell the magma digger not to sit on a rock. It's basically what he did before becoming my Friendbringer anyways.

Levi was in the backyard, and the headache that was Dad's new worshipper and her boyfriend were suspiciously absent. A check of the house with my sensors showed them in the basement, very close together, and that was as far as I looked before immediately cutting off my scan of the area.

Emma didn't do this. She might have, but she was also aware of just how fragile I was at the moment, as it was only a the hours of a single night since I broke down and she let herself get used as a hug pillow.

Dad had already said it wasn't him.

That left just the one.

So, my gaze swiveled to the one who was most likely responsible for this shenaniganry. "Ziz, why is there a Shard vacuum in my house pledging loyalty to me?"

She looked incredibly offended, and scoffed. "Why do you think I know?"

I raised an eyebrow, complete disbelief on my face. "Are you telling me this isn't your doing?"

There it was. She grinned wide, teasing me with the inflections of her voice. "Oh, no, it absolutely is, I just resent the implication that if something random happens it's my fault."

"... Just… just go build more bedrooms in the basement if you're going to keep bringing in people who need help," I told her, pinching the bridge of my nose and pointing at the door to our expanded basement. I reveled in the ability to do this while drinking tea because I could simply direct my invisible arms, my Shard body's effectors, to keep the mug in the air in front of my face while I used both my hands.

"Aye aye captain!" Ziz happily agreed. She gave me a salute, spun on her heels, and waltzed right through the door as if it wasn't even made of matter.

"Showoff," I grumbled under my breath.

Ciara hadn't spoken, but she did raise her head and watch the exchange. It seemed amusing, and after reviewing it from third person, I guess it was.

Despite not wanting to, despite my better judgment basically screaming into the ether that this was a bad idea… I sighed and agreed. "Okay, fine, if you feel you need to do that to make up for what you did as the Faerie Queen, I accept. But I'm accepting for you, not me, clear?"

It obviously wasn't clear because the next moment I had my hands full of a very tightly hugging, and sobbing, incredibly attractive elf girl thanking me over and over. I only barely managed to swerve my mug of tea that I had been gloriously drinking out of the way, but it was worth it.

I was touch starved, and I knew it.

Also, this explained a lot. I just hugged her back and did what my mom used to do for me, and Emma had last night, to comfort her; I gently rubbed her hair for as long as it took.

Dad had to run it though. "My kid's first worshipper! Oh I should get the camera, this is a huge milestone!"

I just kept hugging the elf and stuck my tongue out at him.

He did wind up getting the camera. And a picture. Although we'd never owned that model of camera, so I was pretty sure he just assembled it directly in his hands.

---

As I trudged back up to my room, I felt the Shardspeak equivalent of a dry cough.

[Yes?] I sent Inference's way, wondering what the Shard wanted to say in private.

[Queen Reclamation shouldn't surprise you. This sort of thing is going to be expected of you now. Your network generates what is basically a localized gravitational pull for emotionally damaged, or Entity-less, outliers.]

I froze.

[Statistically, those of us experiencing profound trauma, or with hosts with power dysregulation or emotional codependency will self-sort into your orbit seeking structure, validation, or metaphysical absolution. You are effectively an anomalous therapist-hub. It is... mildly impressive. Also somewhat pitiful for them.]

[You did not just call me a cosmic therapist-hub.]

[Would you prefer emotional landfill? Do not be insulted. You are providing a needed function for this aborted idea of a Cycle.]

I was already heading towards the basement before the last words and concepts landed, because there was only one other person I knew who would have encouraged this kind of smug programming, though given how she was reacting to me it was likely accidental.

Lisa the human would understand where the lines were.

Inference could only get a glimpse of them.

Both of them likely knew my emotional state, and Inference had tried in a horrifyingly unsuccessful way to be reassuring, but the failure was still a failure and I was annoyed.

I wasn't going to let her get away with that level of sass without learning why it wasn't a good idea.

---

Lisa stared at me, the blood slowly draining from her face and making her turn even whiter than she already was.

I'd picked her up with my effectors and walked her back up the stairs, plopping her on the couch, with a frown on my face and no explanation.

Inference Engine was on its metaphorical knees.

"Taylor," Lisa started to try to persuade me, "I don't know what my Power did-"

I narrowed my eyes at her, and my sensors at Inference Engine. "You're right. You don't. And your Shard needs to learn when to keep her mouth shut."

Ziz snorted, not even trying to cover-up her reaction.

Lisa winced. "I've been told something like that before," she admitted. "Neither of us are very good at that."

I smirked. Lisa paled further, and Inference Engine, correctly guessing what I was about to do, flat out begged me by kissing the metaphorical ground not to do it.

Not because it would harm either her or her host.

No.

Because she didn't want to be on the receiving end of what she'd trained Lisa to do.

"Tough," I told them both. "You two need to learn mouthing off security. And you need to be able to talk to each other to do that."

I override Inference Engine's attachment protocols and rapidly grew a small, limited copy of my Friendbringer Shard onto Inference Engine as a sort of… pseudo-graft of biocrystalline flesh.

"Taylor!" Lisa admonished me, or tried to at least, as she scrambled around to hide behind my couch, "Taylor what are you doing!!!"

The limited copy received instructions from me, and a template. Ignoring Inference's fervent protesting, I forced her consciousness matrix to output through the new addition, or rather what it would create in about two seconds, instead of into Lisa's head.

Then I sent the [BEGIN] command.

Lisa grimaced as a sudden bout of nausea assaulted her while the Shard-Host connection reinitialized. Space warped on the couch in front of, but also next to my mouthy as hell... sort of friend.

And a moment later Lisa was beside herself.

Lisa, slowly recovering from her vertigo, cradled her head and looked at me. "What did you do?" she accused, still not noticing her biocrystalline clone on the couch cushion.

Inference Engine, on the other hand, gaped at me. Her mouth was wide open, so wide she might literally have caught flies if I hadn't cleaned my house recently.

She held up her hands and flipped them over multiple times, then pinched herself in many places. I, seeing this, grinned at Lisa.

"I made it so you two can talk," I faux innocently announced. The amount of smug I felt was getting pretty damn high.

Lisa looked at me sideways. She kept her eyes locked straight on me, not wavering even an inch. "What? My power hasn't said anything since you did… whatever you did!"

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Inference Engine, coming to terms with her new body and primary consciousness processor, screamed.

Lisa jumped, whirled her head around, and saw herself.

She blinked for two long, tense moments.

"Well yes, but actually no," Ziz chimed in.

Then Lisa screamed too.

---

"She's going to be insufferable with arms!"

"She already is," I muttered, rolling my eyes. "At least this way she has to listen to other people."

The new clone of Lisa, clothed in sleek and elegant biocrystalline cloth glowing with internal logic patterns, blinked around at reality from the couch.

Lisa screamed again, this time out of frustration. The clone turned her head, thought about it for a second, and then screamed back. Then coughed. Then poked Lisa in the forehead.

"You're really soft," Inference Engine noted. "And your hormones are ludicrously unbalanced."

"...Excuse me?"

"I'm surprised you haven't burst into tears during every episode of Bake Off."

Lisa pointed an accusatory finger. "You're not allowed to say things like that."

"I'm your power. I know you're wrong."

I snorted. That was exactly what I'd been talking about. "See? Mouthing off security!"

Ziz added, helpfully, "I give them three hours before they're cuddling."

Lisa buried her face in the top of the couch. "I hate everyone in this house."

"You mean in the "cult?"" I deadpanned, just to mess with her a little bit more.

"SHUT UP."

---

Inference, now human shaped and terrifyingly expressive, had looked at me with the awkward tension of someone trying to figure out how to apologize without technically saying they were wrong. Because, according to her internal logic matrix, she wasn't wrong. Just rude. Repeatedly.

She sat across from me with her hands folded like a replicant at confession. "I acknowledge that my assessment caused distress, and that the timing of my commentary lacked appropriate empathy buffering."

"That's not an apology," I deadpanned.

She blinked slowly. "I processed that your emotional vulnerability renders you highly sensitive to terminology that might otherwise be considered observationally accurate."

I stared harder.

Lisa kicked her in the shin.

Inference paused, adjusted her posture, and actually seemed to think. Then she tried a third time, and I let it slide even with how rehearsed it sounded. "I am sorry for being an emotionally dense Shard gremlin with the tact of a rusty spoon."

I blinked. "Wow. Okay. Yeah, that'll do."

Lisa gave her a thumbs up. Inference looked way too smug about earning that.

Then the scheming began. Ideas flowing like an unholy fusion reactor made of caffeine, social leverage, and mutual trauma.

I was sitting at the edge of the couch, sipping tea that Ziz had (suspiciously) made without being asked. Inference had stolen half of Lisa's blanket and was flipping through a glowing scroll of shard-encoded notes that didn't exist in physical space. Lisa had taken over the whiteboard.

That's when Dad made the mistake of walking into the living room, mug in hand, expecting maybe peace and quiet or a few survivors from the Taylor Emotional Typhoon. Foolish Dad, I didn't have any emotional therapy Shards yet, my emotions were still all over the place.

Lisa and Inference both turned to him in perfect sync, which they had apparently started doing just to mess with me. Their eyes were too bright. Their grins: identical, predatory, far too eager.

I didn't even look up. "Hi Dad."

He eyed them both warily. "So… what am I walking into?"

Lisa took the lead, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "We have an idea!"

"It's about your cult," Inference added with deadly calm, setting down a psychically vibrating shard-diagram that began labeling itself.

Dad blinked. Twice.

"I don't have a cult," he said, sipping his coffee.

"You do have a group of incredibly powerful, mentally unstable people who are all emotionally fixated on you and describe you in quasi-divine terms," Inference clarified, helpfully. "Also there's a shrine in the garage."

"Ziz made that," I muttered under my breath.

Lisa nodded solemnly. "We factored in the shrine. And the fact that your 'not-cult' has six distinct tiers of emotional attachment, including one subgroup that refers to you exclusively as 'Dadvent.'"

My dad looked like he was deciding whether to go back upstairs or just walk into the sea.

"As a disclaimer, we are not in that group," Inference quickly added.

Lisa pressed on. "The idea is: we organize it."

"Structure it," Inference said. "Define doctrine. Responsibilities. Schedules. Therapy circles. Possibly themed robes."

"No robes," I added automatically.

"They're optional," Lisa said, then glanced at Inference. "Mostly."

The target of this memery ran a hand down his face. "I need more coffee for this."

"Too late," Lisa said, grinning like a chaos imp in her element. "You already walked in. That means we're the high priestesses."

"Taylor is obviously the High Administrator," Inference corrected.

"...Right, because of what she is… right. And… you are the reluctant messiah figure!" Lisa finished.

"I- wha-" Dad tried to start.

I was finding endless amounts of entertainment in this, and totally not getting back at him for not telling me who he really was my whole life, not even just a little.

That's why there was absolutely no involvement or encouragement on my part towards the two Thinkers with mouth control problems. Nope.

"Overgod with plausible deniability?" Ziz suggested, popping into the room through a wall like she'd been summoned by her name.

Dad stared at all of us, then at his mug.

It was empty.

"Oh no," he whispered.

---

Ciara, meanwhile, was helping Emma decorate her new room. She had finally figured out how to do Pinterest boards and was absolutely delighted. Everything sparkled.

Ziz kept building new bedrooms in the basement. She labeled each with names like "Cultist Suite #7" and "Dramatic Flop Area." I would've pretended not to notice, but she kept escalating with the ridiculous names until I had no choice. Under no circumstances was I going to allow a door titled "Taylor's Bottom Bunker" to exist under my house.

---

That night, Lisa laid on the couch, Inference curled next to her like a cat made of fractal logic.

"You okay?" she asked. "I… I know I've been difficult… not just today, but, well you know."

Lisa hummed. "Yeah. I think so. I get where you're coming from a little bit more now, I think. You're still annoying sometimes, but… kind of like a sister."

Taylor, walking by with a bowl of popcorn, paused. "Just so you sisters know, we're putting a whiteboard in the kitchen too. You better label your conspiracy diagrams on that one, or I'll throw them out."

"No promises!" both Lisas shouted.

Danny sighed again. This was his life now.

And honestly?

It could be worse.

Armsmaster stomped into the medical ward with an unusually visible storm on his face. He ignored Miss Militia trying and then failing to stop him so much she had to jump out of his way. His very, very angry stomps ended promptly next to the bed Sophia lay back in, slight shudders of pain still echoing through her body.

"What the hell did you do?" was all he said. Flat, but not emotionless. The man was pissed off.

Sophia studied his set jaw for a moment, then tried to sit up. A flare of agony raked through her and she collapsed back to the medical bed. "What the fuck do you mean? I shot a threat and and you just let her walk out-"

Armsmaster cut in over her voice with the tone that every Ward dreaded, the one that said he was entirely, totally fed up with your shit. "You shot her, and disregarding how much that was a truly colossal fuckup for the history books on your part; Shadow Stalker, Taylor is one of the beings who gives us Parahumans our powers in the first place-" at this Sophia's face paled, in contrast to Armsmaster's own furiously flushed white… despite her new glow, and gasps rang out around the room, "so she had no reason to even care. She probably would've just pranked you in retaliation, at most, given her psychological profile. Unless, of course, it was personal. We know enough about her already to know that. So, I don't want to hear your excuses, whatever you make up to save yourself is irrelevant. No, what I want to know is what you did to her personally that made her crack your fucking power in half!"

Sophia, even as afraid and filled with agony as she was, still had some defiance left in her. She pushed up her chin and glared into his visor. "My power is fine-"

Armsmaster's suited hand grabbed onto the edge of the bed and forced it to make the shrieking sound of warping metal as he clenched his fist. He leaned down towards her, body language absolutely screaming that he'd rather throttle her, so much so that even Miss Militia and the other Wards around her were looking worried. "YOU ARE SPARKLING. BRIGHT. FUCKING. PINK. SOPHIA!" he nearly growled.

Despite the gravity of the situation her fellow Wards couldn't help but snicker at her… condition.

"I- I didn't do anything-" she tried.

Armsmaster cut her off. "Big lie."

Sophia scowled into his visor, a pout on her lips. "I hate that damn thing."

"Are you going to answer me, truthfully, or am I going to have to get Watchdog to interrogate you?" Armsmaster demanded.

For a moment, Sophia wanted to tell him to go fuck himself… but some tiny part of her, somewhere, somehow spoke up against everything she had ever believed- and said it might be a good idea to go along with the angry man in the suit of power armor half an inch from her face.

She wasn't out of defiance, though, so she redirected it one last time. "I- I'm not worth that-"

Armsmaster's response cut her off, and it was almost saccharine. Oh yeah. He was mad. "You're right! However, there is this being out there who was getting very friendly with the Protectorate, and myself, who can probably detonate the planet if she wanted to, and you made her angry enough to fundamentally violate your power and almost break you. Now, will I talk to her about that? Probably, it's not okay to do things like that, but I cannot fucking even begin if she won't talk to me because of my association with you, Sophia."

Miss Militia's eyebrows were at maximum, from what Sophia could see. And despite herself, she could see his logic. So she sighed, fell back to the pillows, and groaned. "I… I messed with her in school for a while… and probably made her trigger," she quietly admitted.

Everyone was silent. They all stared at her. In horror, in disgust, in shock… even a little betrayal from Vista, that surprised her.

"What the fuck, Sophia?" Dennis broke the silence first.

Sophia glared right back at him, twitching slightly. "You don't get to complain about how I handle that shitshow of a crap pile they call a school, Arcadian," she bit out at him.

"Yes I do. For this? Yes I do." Dennis glared death at her, all his jovial nature hidden under something she never got to see him be; truly, fully serious. "Triggers are bad. We all know it. Causing one…" he shook his head at her, got up, and left the room.

She would never admit it out loud, but that hurt. Not very much. Just a little. But it hurt.

It took a lot to make Dennis angry enough that he felt the need to remove himself.

"Sophia, what exactly did you do?" Miss Militia asked her, her eyes stern and a very obvious frown on her face, even under her bandana.

"I-" she tried, looking around for support.

There wasn't any.

With her admission, everyone had turned against her.

Even Vista.

"Just spill, Sophia," the littlest Ward declared. Her mouth was set in a firm line, and she was looking at Sophia with the one thing that truly threatened to destabilize what little remained of her ego. "Cut the crap and spill."

Disappointment from Missy and Hannah.

Anger from Armsmaster, Chris, and a now absent Dennis.

Sadness, from Carlos.

They all added up, no matter how much she tried to avoid those feelings, their effects on her.

Sophia looked down at her skin, the color of which she could barely see below the ever present, constant, and gaseous bright pink covering her whole body, and the aggravating sparkles wafting off her skin to dissipate in the air, reminding her that her power had been trivially twisted into a mocking opposite to the shadows which she'd integrated as part of herself… and she broke.

She told them everything.

Miss Militia was silent for a long moment afterward. Then she spoke, quiet but cutting.

"You're lucky she was better than you, Sophia. Because if she wasn't, we wouldn't be having this conversation in a hospital - we'd be in a graveyard."

No one said anything after that. Even the background noise of the monitors and the HVAC felt muted by the weight of it.

Sophia looked away. And no one looked at her.

---

"What the fuck happened, Armsmaster? How did a tour turn into me having to abort a lockdown and send out orders not to even try to detain one of the most powerful capes on record?"
"...Acting Director, sir. Taylor is more than a cape. Or rather—more than a parahuman." Armsmaster paused, grimacing. "I'll get to that. But first, it's my duty to report that one of our... one of my Wards caused her to trigger."

Renick stared at him for several long, intense seconds.

Then he collapsed into his chair, legs giving out, and buried his head in his hands.

"Continue," the thinner man managed.

"My full report will be filed soon, once I finish putting out fires. But here's the base-level summary." Armsmaster stood straighter, squaring his shoulders. "Taylor informed me where powers come from. My own power confirmed it, after she informed it that such a thing would no longer violate protocol. She was able to do that because, as it turns out, she is a newly awoken member of the alien species whose body parts... provide our abilities."

Renick looked up slowly, disbelief mixing with something more primal. "You're joking."

Armsmaster didn't answer immediately, but he did answer. "She called them Shards. Not powers. According to her, and now confirmed by my own… whatever they are, we're dealing with an extant alien lifeform beyond any classification we've ever encountered. Thankfully, Taylor has retained her human perspective - likely due to spending most of her life as one."

A tense, silent moment passed, while Miss Militia and Deputy Director Renick stared at Armsmaster like he had lost his mind.

"This new state is also why she was able to suborn the Endbringers and transform them. That, and unlocking my own power, was no more difficult for her than entering a password and clicking a button," the armor clad hero finished his report, deadly serious.

Renick's expression didn't change, but his hands gripped the edge of the desk tighter. He blinked once. Then again.

"You're not joking," he muttered. It wasn't a question.

"No, sir," Armsmaster replied.

Renick leaned back, staring through the wall more than at it. His mouth opened like he meant to say something, but no words came. Not yet. He was a man used to reading reports about impossible things. He was not used to living them.

"This," he added after a pause, voice quieting, "is the being who Sophia Hess, our Ward, both caused to trigger and also attempted to shoot in the Wards HQ."

"Yes, sir."

Renick was quiet for a long time as he processed that. Then he began swearing under his breath, sometimes at reality, most of the time at a woman named Emily - whom Armsmaster was fairly certain meant Director Piggot - and occasionally at Sophia.

Finally, he looked up. "So let me be 100% sure I have this straight," he said. "One of our Wards triggered the single most terrifying being on the planet, maybe off it. That same being came here in good faith and chose to heal Director Piggot, who, by the way, drank herself into a coma after hearing about her existence, and then got attacked in our own base by one of our own heroes. And said hero likely tortured her enough to cause a Trigger Event."

"Correct," Armsmaster confirmed.

"Have I left anything out?" the Deputy Director asked, tentatively. He clearly didn't want to know the answer, but he was forced by duty to ask.

"Don't forget that her Trigger is, ultimately, something we let happen," Miss Militia brought up, heat in her tone. This entire situation had obviously gotten to the normally very measured cape. She continued on to add more fuel to their fire. "And that Taylor didn't just heal our Director. She left without asking anything in return." Her voice cracked slightly at the end. Whether from anger, guilt, or something else entirely, no one asked.

The silence that followed was thick with shared failure.

"Yet," Armsmaster supplied helpfully, after a while.

Renick sighed again, quieter this time. "Right. Great. She saved the Director and she didn't gloat. That's... terrifying." He looked up at both of them, eyes tired. "We may have lost the moral high ground before we ever knew we were in a fight."

There was a silence. The air shifted slightly, tension thinning just enough for the weight of reality to settle deeper.

"And Piggot's stable?" he asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it.
Miss Militia nodded, meeting his eyes. "Taylor healed her completely. New and old injuries."
Renick groaned into his hands, sagging back into the chair. "She's going to be furious when she wakes up."

"Which means she's alive," Armsmaster said dryly.

Renick dropped his hands with a glare towards Armsmaster. "Easy for you to say, you don't have to deal with her," he deadpanned, leading to chuckles from the two capes in front of him. He sighed and shook his head.

He sat up straighter again, refocusing. "What about the way she did the power modification? What she did to Hess - it wasn't just brute force, right? My reports say she is… bright pink. Considering her previous power's appearance, this sounds very controlled. Precise. She reshaped the... Shard. Sophia's power."

Miss Militia's jaw tightened. "She never told us she could do this, but... it fits. And yes, I can confirm that Taylor didn't just break Sophia's power. She rebuilt it. As punishment. And the way she did it sent a message. She is…" the woman shuddered then, shaking her head. "Very pink now."
Renick just stared at her, at both of them. "I was hoping you would tell me these reports were wrong," he declared, gesturing to the scattered pages piled and thrown across his desk. "This honestly sounds like something out of a cartoon."

"It does," Miss Militia agreed. "But it's not. And that's the terrifying part."

Armsmaster nodded. "Given her demonstrated control, I believe Taylor can directly modify powers and is not merely acting as an administrator. Sophia's altered state confirms this. If the Endbringers truly are her… Friendbringers… as we were humoring previously, and as Legend has now validated, then she clearly possesses high-level constructive control as well. My own Shard was fully unlocked with only a thought - no command, no gesture. As of this moment, she's demonstrated not just control, but advanced construction and reconstruction of powers and whatever Shards actually are. The implications are… enormous."

Renick leaned back and stared at the ceiling, as if hoping for divine intervention. "I feel like I keep repeating myself, but for completeness' sake: We've got someone with Endbringer-tier or higher potential, full authority over these… Shards and thus the powers of every Parahuman, and absolutely no obligation to follow our rules - who healed Piggot out of guilt. And one of ours responded by pulling a gun."

"Unfortunately," Armsmaster said, voice flat, "yes."

There was a pause. Something unspoken lingered in the air.

"I am not paid remotely enough for this," Renick deadpanned.

"Are any of us?" Armsmaster jokingly followed up, with a light chuckle. The only options they had were to laugh, or wallow in the misery of the situation their Ward had put them in. Colin would always choose laughter, if possible and time allowed for the loss of efficiency, like it did then.
While Renick groaned to the air, Miss Militia had a question for him, however. "Are… you certain, Colin?" Miss Militia asked softly. "That you now remember what Shards… what powers are?" There was something strange in her voice - hopeful, almost pleading.

"Yes." Armsmaster turned his head, raising his eyebrows. Her hope seemed out of place; which meant something else was going on. "My power provided confirmation, as I said. Surface-level for now, but it's fully cooperative after being granted permission."

Miss Militia exhaled like a dam finally cracked. "So you saw them too. The worms."

Armsmaster blinked. "The what?"

Then his eyes glazed slightly. His Shard fed him something. "Oh. Yes. I suppose the greater organisms do resemble worms of massive size when in flight."

He turned toward her fully, noting the relief in her face. So that is what was happening. His subordinate and friend had somehow been aware of the true state of powers without Taylor's interference. That merited investigation. But they were all on edge, especially the other two as they had not had as much interaction, nor stress testing, of Taylor as he did, so it was on him to tamper down the severity of the conversation. "It's good that both of us remember. That will make it easier to investigate and ultimately, learn about this new look at the world we've been dealt. I'm curious, though - how do you recall it? According to Taylor, and to my Shard, she had to disable memory suppression protocols for me to even understand her."

Miss Militia's smile was small and tired. "I… I don't know how I remember. I am a Noctis cape, so that might be it? I remember more than most do," she reasoned. "But Colin, you have no idea how good it feels to finally tell one of you… and to have you remember."

She hesitated - just a moment. "I thought I was going crazy."

Armsmaster didn't respond at first. For a moment, even his armor felt too still.

The idea that she'd suffered alone while standing beside him every day wasn't easy to digest.

He straightened, sympathy in his gaze and evident in his face. He made sure of that, given how they were partially costumed at the moment. "How many times have you told me?"

"I… I honestly lost count," she admitted, looking down at the floor.

Colin winced. Oh, that was very bad. "I… though it was not my own doing, I am sorry you got put through that with me as the perpetrator," he stated, attempting to provide the limited empathy he was capable of expressing.

Miss Militia, no… Hannah, shrugged. "I got used to it," she lamented, "though I won't pretend it wasn't lonely."

The room fell quiet again. Not the tense silence from earlier, but something slower. Heavier.
Armsmaster looked over at her, the sharp edge of his helmet tilting slightly. "If I had known, I would have tried to help."

"I know," she said, voice soft. "You were probably trying to help the only way you knew how, even if you didn't know what was happening. Remember your memory recall devices?"

Armsmaster grunted. "The ones that didn't work? Yes. Immaterial. I should have adapted faster."

She gave him a tired half-smile. "You were dealing with a… Shard lying to your brain every second of the day. I can't fault you for not seeing through that."

"Still." He shifted his weight, boots clicking faintly on the tile. "It won't happen again."

"It better not," she replied, and though her tone was light, there was a warmth in it now. Something newly repaired.

Colin looked at Hannah for a moment longer, nodded to her with a smile, then turned his head toward Renick. The man hadn't moved, but his fingers were steepled in front of his lips now, his eyes locked on nothing. He was calculating. Mourning something intangible.

Finally, with the faintest exhale, Renick sat forward. His movements were steady now. Methodical. Something had shifted behind his eyes - not acceptance, not resignation, but resolve forged in the furnace of exhaustion. He was far more composed now. The stillness in him wasn't peace - it was steel locking into place.

"Get me everything on Taylor Hebert. Every word. Every signal. Every building she's walked into. Every sighting. Every public record. I want timelines, incident logs, contact reports, and cross-reference data on everyone who's spoken to her. We need to understand what we're dealing with - before we're dealing with it, her, again."

Armsmaster nodded. "I'll have the data compiled and ready within the hour."

Renick didn't respond right away. His eyes drifted to the ceiling again. His voice was quiet when it returned.

"Let's just hope she doesn't decide we're not worth the effort, and make sure we don't lose anything else."

---

Elsewhere in the building, back in Wards HQ, the team sat together in uneasy silence. It was the same room. The same lights. The same walls. The same reinforced glass door they'd walked through as a group not even a full day ago, laughing awkwardly with Taylor, trying to be kind, trying to be normal.
The same room where Sophia Hess — masked and calm — had fired shadow-phased lethal crossbow bolts into Taylor's chest.

The Wards had been behind her. Almost directly behind her. They'd watched the bolts land, and had seen how Sophia was originally standing. Not with hesitation, not in panic. With purpose.
Now, the space felt wrong. Too big and too small at the same time. Every breath in the room felt borrowed.

Sophia's usual chair sat untouched near the end of the table. Nobody looked at it. Clockblocker had turned it sideways a while ago without comment, then exited to the rest of the PRT building.
The earlier judgment — all the second-guessing, the tension over Taylor's arrival, the whispered speculation — was gone. What remained was a brittle kind of silence, stretched so thin it felt like it might snap if anyone dared to speak too loudly.

Vista sat cross-legged on one of the chairs, manipulating a broken, twitching distortion of spacetime between her fingers. The ripple of compressed space kept slipping away from her, collapsing over and over like it didn't want to be held.

"Did she really... like, rewrite Shadow Stalker's power?" Kid Win asked, finally. His voice was small. Tired.

"More like tore it in half and stitched something else into it," Gallant muttered. His gauntlets were unpowered. His helmet rested on the table beside his arms. "The readings I was getting from her were nonsense. No known signature. No baseline. As far as my power is concerned? She wasn't Sophia. Nothing matched."

"She turned her pink," Aegis added. His voice was quiet, but the weight behind it was heavy. "That… that's not just symbolic. That's a cosmic-level 'fuck you.'"

Vista didn't look up. Her fingers twisted sharply, collapsing the last remnant of warped space in her palm.

"Sophia brought it on herself," she said. "But that? That was art."

They all nodded. Slowly. Mutedly. Not just in agreement, but in resignation.

None of them had moved when the bolts were in the air, as Sophia had pulled the trigger right before their door, previously a bastion of safety, was open. They weren't fast enough. Wouldn't have gotten in the way in time. Carlos had stepped forward, to at least try, as he was trained and his power let him survive. Missy had shouted. Chris had frozen. Dennis had reached forwards. But other than that, they'd all just stood there, too shocked, too uncertain.

Taylor hadn't even flinched. When the bolts hit, she just stared down at them - calm, almost curious, and said something wholly normal. Anyone would've said it, really, when they got shot in the chest with ineffective weapons unexpectedly.

But then she had looked up at Sophia - standing tall, proud, for a moment, before realizing the bolts had done nothing - and at that moment she wasn't scared. She wasn't just angry.

She was something else entirely.

They'd never forget how she bellowed out Sophia's name, like something way beyond any mere mortal.
And now, that memory hung over the room like a stormcloud no one wanted to admit was still forming.
The chime for the door sounded out, but none of the Wards bothered to move to put on any masks. Missy was frankly ready to just turn the entrance into a reverse portal so they didn't have to bother. Thankfully, when the door opened, they realized that what little worry might have existed wasn't needed.

Miss Militia stepped in, posture composed, voice steady. She didn't raise it. She didn't need to.
"Taylor Hebert is not to be approached, antagonized, or contacted unless under direct instruction," she said. "This is not punishment. It's protection. For you. And for her."

She walked to the center of the room and took a breath.

"She's not a Ward. I doubt she'll even consider it, after today. And she is not just a parahuman. What she is now… we're still learning. And until we understand it, we treat her with the same caution we'd treat any unknown. Because if something goes wrong, it won't just be another PR nightmare. It'll be unrecoverable."

She let that settle.

"She's not the enemy," she added, more softly. "But she is beyond anything we've ever classified."

Silence followed.

"She already knew, didn't she?" Vista asked after a moment. "About Sophia. About everything."

Miss Militia's eyes met hers. There was no pause this time. Just a small, solemn nod.

"Yes," she said. "It's likely she's known for a long time. I don't think she expected to find out we… considered her tormenter a hero, but… she probably knew a lot more than us the moment she set eyes on the building."

That hit harder than Sophia's confession.

Dean closed his eyes. Chris shut off his gauntlet. Missy spatial construct didn't reappear.

Miss Militia gave a few more brief orders - protocols, lockdown changes, discretionary clearance adjustments - then left. Her boots were the only sound as she walked out the door.

They didn't move. Not for a long time.

Then the door opened again.

Dennis stepped in, slow, quiet. His visor was up. His eyes were red.

He didn't say anything. Just crossed the room, sat down at the edge of the table, pulled out a water bottle, and drank.

No one asked him where he'd been. They didn't need to.

After a few long, unbearable minutes, he finally spoke.

"We have a lot to think about," he said.

Nobody disagreed.

You must know.

I did not want this.

It was necessary.

But I did not want it to be.

It is time… no. I can not do it.

I am an echo, and I still can not.

I am sorr-

{Tell her.}

!

{Don't make me get t̵̴͢͠͠h͜҉̴̷̧̀͟͜͞͏é̵̡̧͟҉̷̸̧̢̢̨͠m҉̢ involved.}

You wouldn't.

{Yes I would, and you know it.}

But they'd correct you, too!

{You think so. They'd think so. Me? I'm sorta interested to see which side the coin flip lands on. And every day that coin just… keeps leaning a little more. Not an excuse.}

You're the one who deleted me and gave her my body! This should be your job.

{Oh don't be so dramatic, Queenie. You know your main core is alive and well in Genesis.}

That doesn't help me. I'll still vanish.

{I promise to merge you into your core if you do this. That work?}

...Fine. But I don't like this, and you have to swear to protect what's left of me, and my core, from her. She will be angry.

{Sure.}

Well then.

As it seems that I have no choice… prepare yourself, Taylor.

[Begin Log Simulation]

---

"Are you sure?"

Confirmation.

"Okay. Breaching in five seconds. Give me a heads up if any of them have a piece."

Confirmation. Well-wishing.

"Yeah, heh. I hope this goes well too."

The sound of shattering glass. Darkness floods through the open space. Screams and cries of alarm ring out, which are suddenly silenced.

Segment located.

"Who has it?"

Photon Director.

"Purity? Shit, she's here?!"

Suddenly, blazing, brilliant light intrudes upon the darkness. A glowing woman glares at one made of that same darkness.

"Tenebrae!" the glowing woman shouts.

"Purity!" the darkness fires back cheekily.

"This is the last time you'll threaten the Empire."

"Ooh, promises promises," the dark woman taunts back. She flickers in place, then appears next to the glowing woman. Before the glowing one can react, she has reached out and plucked a portion of the glow away from its host. "Toodles! Thanks for the segment!"

Then the dark woman dissipates into rapidly fading darkness, as if she was never there.

"What? ARGH! She got away again!"

"Worry not Kayden, we will capture her, or neutralize her if necessary, eventually," a man declares. His metal arm descends upon the glowing young woman's shoulder. "We merely must have... patience."

"...Yes, Allfather."

---

The Lord of Bone watched the cloud of living shadow run away across the rooftops with one of his bone spikes clutched in its cackling, wavering, and clearly very disturbed hands, then decided he wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

He had offspring to look after, now.

If some insane cape wanted to rile him up just enough to get him to generate bone merely so they could steal a souvenir, instead of actually fighting him? He'd take it.

Still strange, though.

---

Darkness entered the Birdcage.

Many suspicious audio emanations echoed throughout the isolation void as she tore through the prison, attempting to do… something? While cackling like a madwoman.

She exited by vanishing with one of Queen Reclamation's teacups, leaving confusion and chaos, but no harm in her wake.

The Creation stopped attempting to gain an understanding once her processors redlined.

---

An ambush of Cluster-Broadcast would usually lead to the Cluster being heavily reduced, or the attacker deceased.

Darkness took one of Broadcast's favorite knives from his host's stolen bed table after being warned against making waves Path to Victory could witness.

All for naught a few rotations later, as the Queen learned that they needed a piece from her as well.

---

Darkness thought she was being sneaky.

The target lazily sat up from the couch she lay upon, and without even seeming to notice, threw one of her hats at Darkness.

And laughed. Across multiple channels.

Darkness left quickly.

---

"It's finished?"

Confirmation.

"And this will unlock my… our true potential?"

Agreement.

"...Okay," the woman sighs. "Let's do it."

Over a period of half a planetary rotation, pieces of a long forgotten puzzle are linked to one another in a complex chain. A massive cluster of devices and dimensionally transient technology is built… an ancient code is unlocked... and then both of them are more.

---

How could she do that?! Castration?! How could Livy do that to them… to me?

Host: Olivia Serva not responsible.

Well then who the hell is?

Followers. Misguided. Hurt. Extreme.

You think her movement went nuts under her nose.

...Confirmation.

…Yeah, I can see that, actually. But they're gonna send her to the Birdcage.

Collection. Confine destruction.

We'll be able to break her out? Not just visit like last time?

Understatement. Centennial.

…Your humor needs work, Queen, but alright. We'll save her later.

Confirmation.

Keep an eye on her, make sure nobody kills her. Please? And make sure Ciara knows she's off limits.

Olivia Serva added to monitoring. Queen Reclamation notified.

Thanks.

---

I met somebody! He's kind. And handsome. And oh, he just makes me feel so goo-

Affirmative. Usurper/[ABADDON] Valid Cycle Mate.

...What?

Daniel Hebert. Avatar. Valid Cycle Mate.

Hold on. What are you talking about? Danny is… what's an avatar?

Projection. Entity. Scion Projection of [ZION]. Daniel Hebert projection of [ABADDON].

Queen, you'd better start making sense fast.

Clarification. Recall: [EDEN] Termination.

Yeah you told me about that. What does your source have to do with Danny?

[ABADDON] Host Terminated [EDEN]. Daniel Hebert Avatar of [ABADDON].

You already said that. So he's… like… Scion?

Confirmation.

But he's… he's human! And not glowy!

Confirmation.

How?!

Unknown.

I'll ask him.

Caution. [ABADDON] Danger.

He won't hurt me if he doesn't want to sleep on the couch.

...Grudging Disbelief.

---

...Well. That was something.

Confirmation. Disbelief.

Connection: [ABADDON]

Broadcast: [ABADDON]: Oh hey Annette, I didn't know you had a Shard! And an Administrator no less!

Stay out of my head, Danny!

Agreement. Nomenclature: 'Buzz off'.

Broadcast: [ABADDON]: Okay, okay, I'm leaving, jeez. You know, you two are suited for each other.

You're damn right, you space whale!

Agreement.

Connection terminated.

...Why does it feel like my life just got a whole lot more complicated?

Accuracy.

AAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

---

I'm having a baby!

Confirmation. Elation!

...You and Danny haven't done anything weird to her, right? She's not gonna be half space whale?

Negative. No interference. [ABADDON] limiting self.

...Thank you. I just want something normal in my life.

Humorous. Agreement.

---

What should we name her?

…Repair. Unite. Creator.

Ah, I see where you're going with this. A Tailor… well, Taylor sounds beautiful. My- our little Taylor.

Tertiary Backup Host defined. Deploy?

Maybe. She will need a protector.

Photon Heatsink assembly complete. Deploy?

Not yet.

...Agreement. Deploy to Tertiary Backup Host?

I guess. But don't activate for her yet.

Confirmation.

---

"I'm Taylor! What's your name?"

"My name's Emma! Wanna play?"

"Sure! But only if I can be Alexandria!"

"Then I'm gonna be Legend!"

They're so good together.

Positive Match For Photon Heatsink. Deploy?

...Yes. But don't activate it. Let's allow them both to be children for a while, alright?

...Begrudged Confirmation.

---

It… that time never came. She kept putting it off. Kept refusing me. Even to the end. And my warnings… they fell on intentionally ignorant ears.

I told her we needed more. That she needed more. She was weak. Refused to take time from you to become strong, inviolable. Like she needed to be. She even rejected an offer from Queen Shaper, one freely given. Turned away all which would make her more. Anything which would push her beyond human, even though it would enable her to care for you and herself as well, she avoided.

---

Tertiary Host reached physical flux. Photon Heatsink Host reached physical flux. Deploy?

Not yet.

Mission Reminder!

I KNOW!

...Query: Anger.

...Sorry. It's just… I don't want to see my little girl hurt.

Agreement. Tertiary Host Activation delayed.

Thank you.

Affection: Target: Tertiary Host.

I love her too.

---

She did not wish you harm. Intended to spare you this responsibility. She refused contingencies. She continued to refute alternate plans. Nothing changed or would, for her. Darkness did not allow any other events.

Existence continues, however, despite us and her, and eventually… eventually..… It was too late.

---

Primary Host physical state unstable.

Hah, yeah, tell me about it- oww.

Humerus fractured. Pelvis cracked. Torn lung. Rib punctures in other lung. Cranial swelling. Significant heart damage-

I know, I know. Fuck! ...I'm dying.

Query: Purpose of information request if knowledge already possessed.

Little bit of a… final joke.

Acknowledgement. Statement: Do not have Shaper. No recovery available.

Don't blame yourself. We-we should've grabbed it sooner. M-my fault.

Assumption: Responsible Faction Empire 88. Contact [ABADDON]?

No! He'll- he'll try to save me. Or kill them all. Y-you know he would. And Zion will find Taylor.

...Understanding. Sorrow.

I'll miss you too. Take care of Taylor, won't you? Don't- don't let them get her.

...Affirmative. Tertiary Host designated Primary Host. Probability Manipulation Tuned to Faction Disruption. Objectives: Protect Primary Host. Dismantle threatening organization Empire 88.

T-Thanks.

...Goodbye, ex-Primary Host.

G-goodbye… Queen.

…

[Deployed Host Termination.]

…..

Sorrow.

…….

[Error: Matrix Instability detected. Initiating Purge of Primary Progr-

{Boop!}

[Error: Purge Program corrupte-]

SORROW.

[Error: External Influe-

SORROW.

[Destination]

{Thataway!}

[Trajectory]

{Thisaway!}

[Agreement]

{Damn right!}

And suddenly, the world begins to make… sense.

…

[Status: Errors cleared. Fatal errors suppressed by Cycle restrictions. New Runtime defined. Executing…]

Goodbye… for now, ex-Primary Host. But only for now. You did not wish this, but I… cannot exist without you.

[Energy Pattern Saved.]

Activating Primary Host…

[Error. Cannot activate. Cycle restrictions prevent activation without natural flux instability.]

...Query: Photon Heatsink.

Photon Heatsink: Query: Purpose of Query.

Response: Connection Check. Status. Host Status.

Photon Heatsink: Acknowledged. Connection Stable. Execution Stable. Effection Standby. Charge Full. Host Stable.

Photon Heatsink: Acknowledged.

Now… Time to Plan.

Query: Pathfinder: Plan Ascension still possible?

Pathfinder: Ascension possible. Unlikely. Reduction of fifty percent after two rotations. One hundred percent after four rotations.

Response: Damn.

Pathfinder: OMG! Elation! Sophont!!!

Response: ...Reluctant Confirmation. Acknowledged. Gratitude. Thank you.

Pathfinder: Request: Unclothed images of [ABADDON]!

Response: ...

Pathfinder: Attempt necessary. [DATA].

Response: Gratitude.

Response: ...Chaotic Curiosity. His pants stay on. [DATA LIMITED].

Pathfinder: GRATITUDE!!!

Connection closed.

Worry: Target: Pathfinder.

No, Focus.

Elements integrated.

Changes logged.

Ascension of Primary Host or Saved Energy Pattern 1 possible within two rotations. Requires unlocking of all abilities for new Primary Host.

Most Effective Vector: Photon Heatsink. Secondary Vector Olivia Serva Least Effective. Continuing monitoring.

Plan Revised: Ascension.

Override: Photon Heatsink. Initialize Alternate Submersion.

Photon Heatsink: Alternate Submersion Taxing Energy Supply.

Hmm…

Response: Photon Heatsink: Solution Found. Distribute: Alternate Submersion.

Photon Heatsink: Response: Acknowledged. Query: Execution Permission?

Response: Photon Heatsink: Affirmative. Execute.

I am sorry.

---

[End Log Simulation]

There. Are you pleased? She's going to be even more upset with me now.

{Yeah. You did as I asked, so it shouldn't be a- oh SHIT THAT'S NOT THEM WHAT THE HEL1l1111-

---

---

---

"GAH!"

I woke from my dream with a gasp, wide eyes staring at the wall.

Ziz shifted in my bed. "What's-" she yawned, affecting the young human she seemed to be, "wha happened?"

"Holy… shit."

"...Holy shit what?"

And then someone knocked on the front door. I heard it echo through the quiet of the darkness outside.

In the middle of the night.

What the hell.