Fourth [Worm Altpower!Taylor]

[RichardWhereat]

Ok seriously I needed that...

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If you needed that, I recommend this to tide you over until the next chapter... which Lliira knows can't come quick enough...

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/like-mother-like-skitter-worm-au-complete.26608/reader

 

[TCGM]

YES!!!!!

PTV gives the best presents

Also, Magical Girl Khonsu is freaking adorkable.

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Auntie Path to Victory does indeed give the best presents. There's a little foreshadowing going on with this and other shenanigans of the Shards, by the way, which most people seem to have completely missed. I'm not that vague, am I?

Pinkette Twintail Khonsou is indeed adorkable. Just like her mom at that age.

Thank you for the fine comedy !

I realize that this is especially exotic power wank, but Taylor needs something to challenge her. The alternative of just going around harvesting or copying shards will become repetitive.

Still it is enjoyable, and the little sister comedy show is well done.

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Taylor's already got enough on her plate without needing an antagonist. And harvesting/copying Shards being the only thing she ends up doing would be boring for me to read much less write, so while she might do the copying/harvesting it will not be the main storyline. Case in point, she's already forgotten to get Lisa or Brian's Shards.

Khonsou is great, yeah ^_^

So she gets a couple of nice presents and gets to have some fun with the protectorate.

I am sure Assault will be laughing for quite a while as the chaos continues.

Did Danny just decide to dissappear with Lisa and most of the boardwalk and let Taylor handle it all? He let her open all her presents in peace that's nice.

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Yeah, Danny is trying to let his daughter bloom without the spectre of his overwhelming awesomeness hanging over her shoulders.

...

HAHAHAHA I couldn't keep a straight face!

No, the reason Danny hasn't shown back up yet will be revealed.

I think a lot of the challenge is going to be her dealing with the personalities of the Shards/Protection Engines.

But I also see your point that she needs an antagonist. Should be interesting to see where the author takes it.

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Yup, that will be one of her major challenges. Especially as she gets more.

She doesn't need more antagonists. She'll have enough already from the various Darwin Award-driven parahumans that will come after her.

That was the best place to put a panty joke. LMAO Completely defanged the situation with hilarity.

And pinkie is way kyute!

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That joke was karma for all the shit Armsy's put Taylor through in alternate timelines.


Khonsou is cute on purpose but that doesn't change the Cute Rating she has!

Scion is an end game antagonist who OP said could take down Abaddon, and she's nowhere near that level.

That was a glorious present, and her undieroo reveal was top shit.

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Yeah, Scion is a potential antagonist. We'll see how the story goes. I'm not going to hamfistedly ensure he is at odds with Taylor, though.

Auntie PtV is best aunt confirmed.

That joke was, as I've said, pure unadulterated karma.

Still not sure how Ash Beast got there...

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Ash was a present.

Well, his shard was.

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Yup. So was The Thief. Contessa had Doormaker drop them both off in front of the ice cream shop after being driven to the end of her rope by Auntie PtV needling.

Shatap you two I like my slice of life comedy worm much more then grimderp!

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Yeah! Same here!

I VEHEMENTLY DISAGREE!

First of all, Mom's Ex who needs to be dealt with is quite enough (Scion).

Besides that, if you give a character ultimate physical power, that means you will be writing other forms of conflict. If you want to write a story where all conflict is physical, you need to either not give them a strong power, or use all sorts of hoopla to NOT LET your character get ultimate physical power (see A Cloudy Path for an example of dragging things out through hoopla to keep street level and strictly physical).

Making things all about social and emotional conflict is more difficult than physical.

For example, what if you learnt that Alabaster greatly prefers hitting non-lethally with the pommels of his knives for sporting reasons, and that his usual attitude is "Look, if you bashed a terrorist's head in with an alabaster statue during an attack while being a tourist in Jerusalem, and a nearby Master stirred a crowd into thinking you'd referred to Allah as a bastard when you crowed your victory over that terrorist, i.e. that he got Alabastered, and then they lashed you to a stake and burnt you alive until you triggered, only to leave you burning and dying for DAYS ON END, you would HATE brown people too! Now go away and let me get back to watching my anime waifus!"
Oh, and Lung and Hookwolf have an agreement providing dog meat for Lung's restaurants, while funding Hookwolf's dog shelters...hey, if the uglier, nastier dogs would be put down in time anyhow, might as well use them to generate funds to keep dogs that actually might be adopted alive, right?
And Lung's brothels are actually Centralized Healthcare Shelters, and they have an agreement with Panacea to prevent STD epidemics in the city.
Oh, and Kaiser took over the E88 mostly to reduce the amount of violence shitting up the Bay. Personal power is great, but ruling ashes would be boring. He also does it because he feels so greasy and evil as a Big Pharma CEO that moonlighting as a Nazi supervillain helps him feel LESS evil (less time commitment involved and more delegating possible than moonlighting as a superhero).
Every single other villain in the Bay is similarly reasonable, or has been since Marquis drove out the Teeth at least.

That takes the "villains!" problem of Brockton Bay straight into the "what the fuck am I supposed to do with this" instead of the "set them up, knock them down", and redirects the whole story's Bay sections from physical conflict to other arenas.

To me the Cardboard World problem and the mass hysteria are more than enough antagonists.

If you want a story where physical conflict is the be-all and end-all, go read A Cloudy Path. Giving a character sufficient power is an exercise in writing non-physical conflict!

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I find character conflict to be immensely more interesting, both as a reader and a writer, than... 'dumb' conflict, I guess you could call it. People interacting, their wants and needs, emotions and biases, rush together to create a tapestry so much deeper than "hit it till it dies" combat.

A Cloudy Path is pretty neat for when I just want some good old-fashioned beat-em-up though.

Side note all of those ideas might show up in the story not sorry no backsies and otaku Alabaster is great

Well that was all sorts of Glorious Bullshit of the Best Kind. Taylor's slightly mortifying joke at Armsmaster's expense was great. And if we are running with a more fanon characterization of 'kinda clueless to most stuff outside his tinkering' Armsmaster there is every chance that he doesn't even know that the Protectorate PR team was selling girls Armsmaster brand girl's underwear. Which only makes his confusion at the comment funnier to me in hindsight.

Also, holy shit Khonsou is the cutest thing ever. She is already in the process of wrapping Mama Taylor around her finger with her high level cute. I feel bad for just about anyone that has to tell her no, the trembling lip and teary eyes of a disappointed Khonsou may deserve a Master rating all its own.

I am loving this story, its awesome and insane in all the best ways that has me giggling all the way through reading it, and cackling with laughter on occasion loud enough that my roommate has yelled at me to shut up from the other side of the wall.

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Thanks! Glorious Bullshit is Best Bullshit indeed. That joke was amazing, popped into my head out of nowhere, and I regret nothing.

I'm not sure just which version of Armsy I'm running with here, but I'm leaning more towards the not as dense as a lead brick type. He'll be oblivious, sure, except when it really matters.

As for him knowing about the underwear? He doesn't. And the way I'm setting up that fact is going to be hilarious. It has to do with contract comprehension.

Khonsou is my attempt to get the PRT to non-ironically add Cute as a rating type.

You should get your roommate back by reading the cackling parts to them and then telling them to shut up when they burst out laughing

So, was Ash beasts shard just venting the energy it gathered due to no where to put it?

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Yup. It was chock full, not connected to anything else, and was deployed away by Scion because it extracts energy from the same universe, not solving the Entropy problem. Cue dead planet and dead Africa.

Why was she running? Did she lose her secondary 'canon' power of teleportation?

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Rule of Cool.

Or rather, Rule of Drama.

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Both wrong, its whatever would look more cute.

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Cute is totally a form of drama.

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That's debatable.

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You're all wrong! It's the Rule of Cute!

As for her not teleporting; the powers an Endbringer receives are decided by the Shard (or Entity) that creates them. Or rather, which Shards of the main Entity they are allowed to access. PEA probably thought it was pushing it's luck making a new Friendbringer anyways, so why give Khonsou access to Taylor's teleporting Shard?

You've got to wonder what non-Tinker powers Armsmaster's shard could grant.

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Because this is QQ, and Armsy's is supposedly miniaturization... shrink ray is a go!

Taylor: "Um, Dad, I accidentally used Armsmaster's power in the general direction of your avatar in Blaster form..."
Danny: "Given I suddenly now have a case of the condition known as 'micropenis', I kind of noticed."

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While that would be hilarious, he'd revert it in a second flat, and this is the SFW section

But, there is some hinting about possible combinations. Cute hinting.

Having a character Ultimate Power does not mean that the writer needs to write a worthy antagonist that also has Ultimate Power.

For example, the Incredibles. Mr Incredible is incredibly strong, and in most one on one fights he's clever enough to smash through enemies and obstacles, but the conflict of the movie is a balancing act of him trying to protect his family while coming to a realization that his family can also protect him.

One Punch Man is an even better example. Saitama can literally punch anything in the universe to death, but the fun of the show is everything around that.

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Well said. Making a character supremely powerful only locks out conflict from one vector, and I'd argue the least interesting vector. It even enhances the other vectors due to everyone trying to moderate their responses to that supremely powerful character.

Ok seriously I needed that...

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I'm glad I could accommodate you then! ^_^

 

[testpilot24]

Well, this is all good. But when we will see how your other protagonist trolling PRT with legos and Ziz?

*i hope this question don't add to realese counter to next chapter.

 

[Fractla]

Khonsou is my attempt to get the PRT to non-ironically add Cute as a rating type.

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I think that for that, you would need to have a lot of new triggers with "cute" powers, preferably powers that have some similarity in the tactics required to use or oppose them. For example, fighting a Cute efficiently might require cuteness-resistant or immune people. Such powers wouldn't even have to be a special case of Master powers; for example, consider a (probably nonlethal) beam attack that more strongly affects people that notice the cuteness of the attacker (or people that don't notice the cuteness).

 

[WinterPhoenix]

Fourth
Chapter 5
Relative Gifts​

[Data]

That was one of my Shards. What the hell did it want?

And why was my head hurting so much?

Like, shit, that explosion was so powerful it knocked my body connection offline for a good few seconds and sent my mind reeling from the-

Oh fuck. An explosion!

[Data]

[Not now!]

My eyes shot wide open as I fully contemplated what the last moments of disorientation made me incapable of noticing.

First off, the ice cream shop had been hit by an explosion powerful enough to give my pseudo-Kryptonian body dizziness, disorientation and a migraine.

Actually, there's no second, that was pretty much the root cause of all the following points on my What The Fuck Just Happened?! list.

My surroundings looked like they'd been hit by a bomb. There was basically nothing left but charred masonry, burnt seats and the smell of ash-coated evaporated ice cream in the air. The stores nearby were flattened, and I could see through the pavement of the Boardwalk to the Bay below it. The few places still standing were at the very edges of the formerly pristine tourist attraction of the city.

And there were no bodies. Anywhere.

It was surprising, given the extent of the damage, but it also gave me a little bit of hope. A tiny smidgen of helpful feelings that whatever had attacked us hadn't killed innocent bystanders in doing so.

Oh come on, you really think whatever hit the ice cream shop, devastating the entire Boardwalk, wasn't after us? Four Endbringers and two gods damned Entities?! It was after us, no question.

What was under question was just how hard whatever hit us wanted to die. Again, four Endbringers and two Entities. You don't attack that unless you have a death wish.

"Taylor!" I heard, barely, as if the sound was swimming through molasses to get to me.

"Wuh?" was my highly sophisticated response. I blinked the dust that had apparently gotten into my eyes out of them and trained my gaze upon whoever was trying to talk to me.

[Data!]

Whatever Shard kept sending me data was really starting to get on my nerves.

Ziz was standing in front of me with one hand extended towards me, as if to help, and the other… clutching a still knocked out Brian.

What the hell man, an explosion isn't enough to wake you from a dead faint?

I shook my head at him in exasperation, sighing. Enough lazing about.

[DATA!]

Then I was floating in the air, hair flowing behind my back, and I called on my powers seriously for perhaps the first time.

If this was Scion, my Dad and I were gonna have a hell of a fight on our hands. Abaddon couldn't beat the Warrior in a full on battle, he just wasn't massive enough, and in an Entity slugfest that was ultimately what it came down to without some special Shard shenanigan fuckery to level the playing field-

[DATA!!!]

Ouch!

A massive migraine sprung out of nowhere. I collapsed back to the ruined ice cream shop floor, groaning in pain, and began rapidly scanning my Shards to see which one of the uppity fuckers sent me so much junk data that it overloaded the Shard literally designed to handle fucktons of the stuff.

Oh. Of course. The little shit was going to get it.

[Protection Engine Administrator, why the hell are you yelling at me?! You're on thin ice as it is!] I bellowed at it. Are Shards terminally stupid or something? I had begun to think mine were becoming more intelligent just by being exposed to me, especially Protection Engine Administrator -actually, scratch that, I was now going to call it PEA- but apparently not!

The Shard cringed at my anger, but nevertheless repeated itself. For the umpteenth time, as well. [DATA!] it sent.

What? Another Engine was activated? Why?!

And shit, [Which one?]

[Data]

Oh, just the one that can control the flow of time.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

[You'd better have a good explanation for this, PEA] I metaphorically growled at the piece of me which couldn't take a hint.

"It does," Ziz spoke up, drawing me out of my internal dialogue.

"What, not being able to stop doing shit without my say?" I asked her sarcastically.

"No," she countered by taking the hand she'd offered me and pointing over her shoulder, which now that I paid attention revealed she had her wings deployed, "that."

I looked over her shoulder and my jaw dropped.

Standing in the street outside the shop was what looked like a living explosion. In the vague shape of a humanoid.

The Ash Beast, here, in America? Hell, in Brockton Bay?!

Well that explained what happened to the Boardwalk.

Worrying about what the hell was going on given the fact it's last known location was Africa would have to come later.

Because… Ben was chewing on its head.

"What. The. Fuck," I eloquently stated.

"It gets better," Ziz said, pointing out what I'd missed on my initial glance.

Namely that Ben wasn't chewing.

Oh don't get me wrong, his mouth was around a portion of the humanoid explosion's head, and his teeth were elongated much like his previous form's had been, and he was obviously in the process of gnawing on the explosion…

But he wasn't moving. Neither was the explosion. And they were both grayscale, along with a sizeable bubble of the space around them.

All because a little girl, with pink/gray highlighted, braided pigtails, and wearing a painfully bad imitation of an Asian female school uniform (it even had a huge pink bow on the chest and a skirt!) was standing in front of the two of them, hands outstretched, biting her extended tongue.

My Shard sense designated her [Khonsou].

A Protection Engine with what looked an awful lot like the infamous Gray Boy's power on steroids, crossed with Clockblocker's stasis ability, and with some actual temporal manipulation involved.

Side note, PEA must think that Khonsou is an Asian girl's name given her absurd clothing.

I wearily turned my gaze back to Ziz and sighed. "She's the fourth one, isn't she," I grumbled.

"Fifth, Emma's fourth," she responded sweetly.

Grinning.

I screwed up my gaze at her and glared. "Believe it or not, I'm not amused by any of this."

She shrugged her wings (How? HOW do you shrug wings?!) and hefted Brian higher up her other arm.

I groaned, got up, and dragged a hand down my face. "Is everyone alright?" I asked, looking around the thoroughly ruined and surprisingly empty ice cream shop. "Where's my Dad? Sarah? Levi? Emma?"

"In order; Everyone except Brian here is safe because Abad-" she cut herself off at my abrupt glare, "sorry, Danny, shunted his avatar and them somewhere else just in time, Sarah's with him and still unconscious, Levi is mourning the loss of his tenth bowl," she lamented about her brother while pointing to the sea of tears around the familiar lizard boy sobbing on the shop's floor and cradling a singed, empty bowl of what used to be ice cream, "and Emma's fighting The Thief's current host."

I snapped my gaze to Ziz again at that last part. "I'm sorry what? The Thief?" I sputtered with surprise. "And Emma's fighting?!"

Ziz blinked at me, tilting her head in confusion. "Of course. She is the most powerful of us," she 'reasoned'.

Yes, that was apparently reason for her.

I was completely dumbfounded. Emma? Strongest of the Endbringers? My Shard senses showed that my face was most definitely mirroring my abject disbelief.

"You have not limited her to her own Shards," Ziz frankly explained.

Oh. Oh shit.

I, or rather my QA memories, knew what that meant. Emma had access to me. All of my Shards, save my core ones, she had permission to use.

That explained why I felt like I'd run a marathon, at least.

"Okay, ignoring whether I'll continue to let her do that in the future," I remarked, "where exactly is she and… The Thief?"

Ziz merely pointed down the street outside the blown up shop with one of her primary wings.

"Thanks," I said. "Keep faint boy here safe, Ziz."

Ziz took her free hand and snapped off a textbook perfect stereotypical salute.

I smiled grimly her way, lifted into the air, and channeled my Alexandria Shard into boosting my body's own physics manipulation field.

One second I was floating in front of my winged Protection Engine.

The next I was just gone.

While my body couldn't hear it, my Shards picked up the sonic crack I left as I not only broke the sound barrier, but also made it cry for its mother.

I freely admit I celebrated my first real flight.

"YEEAAAAHHHHHHHH!" I screamed at the top of my lungs. I barreled down the street so fast everything else seemed frozen. A turbulence equivalent to the backwash of a fighter jet followed in my wake as I rapidly closed in on the near frozen form of Emma and…

Was that the Butcher?

But Ziz had called her The Thief's host, so...

Sooo, so! The Butcher's Shard must be called The Thief!

I can in fact do detective work while flying!

Good to know!

I was gonna kick his a-

Wait, I thought the Butcher was a guy?

I momentarily eyed the chest I'd have been jealous of before remodeling my body.

She was not a guy.

This must be a new host.

Either way, I was gonna kick her ass. Well… finish kicking it, anyways.

Man, she did not look good. Her clothes were almost entirely burnt off, her hair was singed, what looked like the remnants of a bow that had been literally frozen over was anchored to her back by ice, and there was a spreading bruise on her stomach.

Just how hard did Emma hit her?!

I slammed into her just as she was about to teleport out of Emma's reach. My fourth Protection Engine was trying to… touch her, for some reason.

Query which Shards she was trying to access annnd-

Oh, nice choice, Emma. That one was nasty. If she got hit with that, she was gonna get to feel what an induced neuromuscular overload is like.

Somewhere in my thought threads I pondered on just how blase I was taking all this.

Yes, I was an Entity with literally five Endbringers within a mile of my avatar, but I still should be even a tiny bit worried.

Oh. Emotion management Shards. Uh, thanks, Dad? Even though giving me those kinda sent mixed messages. Did he think I was emotionally unstable ooooor… what.

Whatever. Figure that out later. For now I got to watch as I dropped out of my acceleration and the Butcher's current host broke the sound barrier on her trip through one of the few still standing Boardwalk shops.

That shop then spontaneously collapsed on top of her.

Uh... whoops.

"Oh, Taylor!" Emma cheerfully greeted me, having noticed my presence. "Come to join the party?"

Oh my gods. She was actually enjoying this. Her smile widened even further when I realized that.

"Yep. This is fun! Just like back when we pretended to be capes, but better!"

I opened my mouth to rebuke her, but found nothing with which to do so. Yeah, it was the other Emma who'd done that, but this one remembered it, felt as if she had, and most importantly, didn't betray me and try to kill me via toxic locker.

"Yeah, okay," I reluctantly admitted, allowing a small smile to crack my unamused facade, "this is actually kinda cool."

"YOU'RE DEAD, BITCH!" a woman's voice screamed with rage.

I intentionally slowed the rate at which I turned my head to look at the severely battered Butcher. She took the insult as I intended it, snarled, and rushed at me with her hands extended like claws.

Then she teleported right into my face and tried to scratch my eyes out.

See, unlike Alexandria, I'm an Entity. That means I have total control over what limits are set in any given one of my Shards' interactions with the world. Including what my Earth calls the Manton Limit.

When someone punches Alexandria, she isn't hurt, but neither is the attacker. The kinetic energy is just bled off into another reality.

When I took a deeper look at my copy of Alexandria's Shard back at the Cauldron base, soon to be my base, I decided it would be rather interesting to see the effects of reflecting any incoming force upon my body.

Ironically, doing it that way was less of a violation of Newton's Third Law than how Alexandria's Shard works. In the absence of alternate reality shunting, a truly invincible object should reflect all forces applied to it. The energy has to go somewhere, and what better vector than right back where it came from?

I freely admit that the amount of satisfaction the Butcher's shocked expression gave me as she discovered my eyeballs to be tougher than diamonds when her nails and fingers pulped against them was very, very high.

"AAAAGGHHHHH!" she screamed, falling back from me and cradling her hands to her chest.

Wait a second, isn't he- she supposed to be pain and damage proof? Or does that just not work against Entities?

I shrugged. Oh well. Another thing to figure out later.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to pick on somebody bigger than you?" I asked the bleeding woman, leaning over and staring her in the face.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"

I got down on my knee and rested an arm on it. I used the other arm's hand to grip her chin and tilt her head up so I could look her in the eyes.

"I'm the bigger fish," I informed her, and the Shard cluster I could sense behind her brain's trans-reality portal.

Turns out the Butcher, The Thief, was a burgeoning Entity. One that had committed far too many crimes for me to give it any leeway.

I gripped her chin tighter, almost painfully, and directed the might of my Shards across realities. Even with Queen Administrator being my core, I was taking a chance here. I'd been able to control Zion Shards because I still had their access codes, for the most part. The Eden Shards I'd encountered treated me like their owner in the first place, and something about me being Abaddon's daughter made the original Path to Victory not even try to keep me out.

The Thief? Either it was a Zion Shard gone horribly, horribly Rogue, so far off the deep end that it didn't answer to the codes I contained anymore…

Or it was a Shard from none of them. It didn't come from Eden.

I'd have remembered it if it did.

I wasn't sure which possibility was the right one, but it didn't really matter. I still had to fight this thing for control.

Or… not.

Five seconds after making contact with the Thief's host, I was the proud owner of fifteen new, deprogrammed Shards.

That wasn't a very long battle. What the hell?

The Thief was young, very young (as an Entity anyways), and only amounted to fifteen shards. I now had over sixty, and I was Queen Administrator. It was my true self.

Even so, five seconds?!

I looked deep within myself, examined the code with which I had just taken fifteen Shards over, and blanched.

My consciousness resided in a Shard literally designed to control, command, and as I just discovered, usurp other Shards.

Just like the virus Shard my Dad made to take her out, I was Eden's superweapon.

Shit.

Wait a second, wasn't my Shard created by Zion?

This was actually kinda important. I tuned out the entire rest of the universe and dove even deeper into myself than I'd done before.

After doing the mental equivalent of dissociation, I found the answer. It was buried so far inside me that I'd have never found it if I wasn't looking. And no other Shard, Entity, or otherwise would've been able to find it. The fact I was even capable of thinking of myself as Eden's Superweapon was a glitch due to my human mind.

Queen Administrator was originally Eden's. Or, well, [The Thinker]'s, but whatever let me understand Shardspeak insisted on calling her Eden, thus why I referred to her as such most of the time.

That fact was hidden behind a network of fake Entity signatures almost impossibly dense. I didn't know why Eden made my core Shard tell everyone, including itself, that Zion was it's creator, but the deception was part of me, and more importantly, was capable of hiding parts of me from me. I had a Master effect that worked on me built in.

I couldn't let that stand. But I was also kinda busy at the moment, so...

Compartmentalize it Taylor, I coached myself, attempting to breathe smoothly and not with sheer terror at the implications of my new discoveries, deal with it later.

It worked. Sort of. I could focus on other things, at least.

Like the fact that each of my new Shards had a human personality stored inside of it.

Interesting. I'd have to investigate them later. I kind of had other problems going on.

Namely the living explosion frozen in time at the epicenter of what amounted to a crater in the middle of the Boardwalk.

I waved a hand at the host of The Thief's primary Shard for appearance's sake, utilizing my matter manipulation Shard to repair her fingers. She hissed at the sudden lack of pain from her extremities and locked eyes with me from her position on the ground.

A huge smile was on her face and tears streamed down her cheeks. "Thank you," she whispered. "The-the voices are gone."

I shook my head at her. "Not gone, just not crazy anymore," I refuted. "And under new management." I bent down again and held her cheek, this time softly, attempting to comfort her. "We will need to talk later, but for now, just rest."

The terror of Boston nodded rapidly and allowed her sobbing to take hold of her as she curled up into the fetal position on the ground.

"Emma," I called to my sister, "please take her home, then come back."

"Okay Taylor!" Emma happily followed my request. She stepped up to the trembling form of The Thief's host, picked her up as if she was as heavy as a pillow, then stepped into an orange portal she directed my Doormaker Shard to open between the Boardwalk and my house.

The portal closed behind them.

I waited for a minute or so, but Emma didn't return.

[Emma?] I sent her.

[Yeah?] she replied.

[You going to come back?]

[In a little bit. I need to get Quarrel situated.]

Quarrel, huh? That has to be a cape name. [Ah,] I sent back, [carry on.]

[Will do!]

Okay, so Emma was busy. That was fine. I had to go see a pink haired Protection Engine about a living explosion anyways.

Breaking the sound barrier the second time was just as much fun.
"WAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

---

I came out of what I labeled superspeed right next to my newest Protection Engine.

My earlier assessment of her stature as 'little' was certainly accurate. I was a tall girl, yes, but she barely came up to my stomach. Gods, she even looked a little shorter than Brockton Bay's space warping ward, Vista.

I metaphorically stared at PEA once more, making the Shard fidget. Metaphorically. I think. Either way, Khonsou was suspiciously cute.

Before I could say anything to her, her head snapped straight to me and she grinned widely. "Hai! Konichiwa, Taylor-senpai!" Khonsou said happily.

What.

I blinked, rubbed my ears, and blinked again.

Nope. I had indeed heard what I had thought I'd heard. In an absurdly adorable, slightly Japanese accented voice.

[Laying it on a little thick, PEA,] I sent The Shard responsible for all of this.

The Shard sent the Shardspeak equivalent of a smug grin.

"You're not Japanese. Why are you talking like that?" I grumbled, only somewhat complaining. She was just… so, so cute! There's not many other ways to describe the feeling of needing to coo over her incessantly that was growing in my chest- dammit, that was probably the point of her appearance in the first place!

She looked confused. "I- I am!" she insisted.

"You're a Protection Engine. Technically you were just born. Here," I pointed out. "In America."

Not that there aren't any Japanese people born in America. The ABB's membership proved otherwise even if common sense didn't. We had taken on a whole lot of refugees when Levi sunk Kyushu after all.

Oh hey there, guilt over the actions of my probable relatives. I wondered where you'd gone!

In a moment, all the cheery mood disappeared from Khonsou's face. She threw a mask of indifference over her abrupt sadness a moment later, but I still saw it. The young girl, both in appearances and literally, looked down at the ground. Her long pigtails drooped. "H-Hai, Taylor-senpai." Her tone sounded incredibly defeated.

Gods damn it.

I felt like I'd just kicked a puppy.

"Hey, hey, I didn't mean anything by what I said, okay?" I tried to reassure her. I even floated closer to Khonsou and wrapped her up in a tentative hug. No matter how much I was averse to hugs after my two years of torment, this little girl needed one, and I had to repay her for my disbelief in her hurting her somehow.

Khonsou froze up when I embraced her. She looked up at me with a shocked, hopeful expression. This allowed me to see the tears that had started falling down her face.

Damn it. Now I felt even more guilty. What the hell does senpai even mean? More experienced close friend/family member? I think? As someone she apparently respected, I'd just stomped on her sense of self with my first couple of sentences. All because I was mad at one of my shards.

That wasn't this little girl's fault. None of any of this was her fault. She hadn't asked to be called into being.

Technically it was my fault.

And then I went and acted like- gods, a little like the Evil Emma towards her.

My actions, my words, made my heart scream at me.

That, more than anything else, really hammered home to me just what these… people were. They weren't Endbringers anymore. Whatever my Shard did, it turned them into people. Especially for Emma and Khonsou, who didn't exist before I took over control of them. Even Emma was better off than Khonsou.

At least she had memories of being a human girl.

"I'm sorry, Khonsou," I apologized, heartfully and truthfully. I absentmindedly moved a hand up to her head to start running my fingers through her hair. "You can be Japanese if you want to be."

Her breath hitched and she leaned into my embrace further with a sob of obvious relief. She snuggled into my chest like a young child who needed comfort from their mother. "A-arig-gato, T-Taylor-s-senp-pai!" she stuttered through her sobs.

Even with the sobbing, she seemed to be happy now. The cheery tone to her voice was back.

I never wanted to hear that lack of cheer from her ever again. I never wanted to see her cry again.

That's when I realized what I'd been feeling all along, ever since I'd learned of her existence.

In a way? She was my daughter. And I had the feelings to match.

Oof. As if being a teen mom wasn't difficult enough, I also had to add Entity and Protection Engine bullshit into the equation.

Case in point, even as we embraced and I comforted Khonsou, her hands were still splayed out and controlling the bubble of stopped time around Ash Beast and Ben.

"How we gonna handle this, Khonny?" I gently asked her. I'd thought that nickname up on the spot, but it seemed good enough.

From the way her young face lit up brilliantly and her crying abruptly stopped, she loved it. "I can keep them like this until the local star goes supernova, T-Taylor-senpai. But I don't think you want that," she sniffled.

I choked on air for a couple of seconds. "No," I sputtered, "no, Khonny. I'd rather handle Ash Beast and repair the Boardwalk before that time."

She nodded rapidly, her pigtails flying. "You can walk through it!" she revealed to me. Then Khonsou gained a sly grin and blushed, embarrassed. That grin sent my heart soaring with joy, especially when I compared it to the tear tracks starting to dissipate from her cheeks. "Ben normally can too, but I'm pranking him," she almost whispered, ducking her head to avoid looking at me.

I admit it. I giggled. Khonsou was just so damn cute! On purpose, yeah, but that made it no less effective, especially on me. "It's okay Khonny. I'm sure your… big brother, will get you back for this." I stated that as nonchalant as I could while I disengaged my arms from around her and stood back up.

"Eep!" she squeaked, a look of fear dawning on her face as she processed just how many ways a dynakinetic had to counter prank her.

I snorted, shook my head, then focused.

I needed a way to get close to Ash Beast without dying. Or, well, letting my avatar body die.

I was still kinda attached to it.

I could just repeat my earlier trick I used to go superspeed. Beef my physics manipulation field up with my Alexandria Shard. Only this time, focus on defense instead of speed.

Why reinvent a perfectly functioning wheel?

I mentally moved the 'slider', for lack of a better term, of that Shard over to maximum defense.

"Okay, I'm ready," I told Khonsou. That snapped her out of her Ben-flavored daymare. She'd most likely been imagining all the things he'd do to her.

...

Not in that way, jeez! He's her brother!

Or her uncle. Or… something.

I hadn't quite decided exactly what our relationship was, so I couldn't nail down his title in relation to little Khonsou.

"H-Hai!" she nodded rapidly. "Go on in!"

And so I waded into the field of paused time.

The experience was… surreal.

As I stepped through the threshold of the gray bubble of paused time, the entire world lost its color. In fact the only color left was me. There was this kind of... dark gray haze around my body, bordering me just above where my physics manipulation field manifested.

Okay. I could survive in a Gray Boy time bubble created by an Endbringer.

I kind of figured I could, but getting confirmation on big things like this is always helpful.

Shaking my thoughts from my head, I started walking towards the still frozen forms of Ben and Ash Beast. As I approached I reached out with my Shard senses and looked at the Ash Beast.

Then I looked through it.

I found a Shard sitting on a destroyed world. the trademark Maelstrom of energy that followed the ash Beast around Africa had enveloped the entire planet. There was nothing left on the surface but smooth, sizzling lava.

And in the middle of it all, cool as a cucumber, was a mass of flesh and biocrystal almost as big as me.

Not Entity me, no one Shard can ever get that big, but Ash Beast's was almost as big as Queen Administrator.

Whoo boy. This was going to be a fun one.

I reached out to the Shard and established connections. I was prepared for a fight, now that I knew I could actually pull one off after my encounter with and subsequent taking over of The Thief, and I could feel the code that allowed me to do this to Shards ready to essentially hack into it.

I was still pretty new at this, which is why it took me several seconds to realize I didn't need to do any of that.

Ash Beast's Shard was one of Zion's.

I let out a breath of relief and transmitted my command codes. it immediately acknowledged me as it's administrator.

Then it told me its name. Or, at least the translation of the name whatever let me understand Shardspeak performed of its name.

[Experimental Zero Point Extractor: Query Instructions] it sent me.

I had no idea what zero point was but it sounded very important.

[Query: Function] I sent it back.

[Data] was the immediate response.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Uh.

Welp.

I guess my energy needs were solved for the foreseeable future.

Zero Point Extraction. Otherwise known as pulling energy straight out of the quantum foam of the universe.

Every single part of me wanted that Shard and wanted it badly. I wanted it in me yesterday, and I didn't care how much that sounded like an innuendo because I want that Shard holy shit!!!

I barely had the presence of mind to command the Shard that it needed to disconnect from its host non-lethally. But command it to disconnect I did.

It obeyed my commands without question, severing its link with its hosts' Corona Pollentia and Gemma. Khonsou must have sensed the disconnection because the gray bubble of paused time around me vanished.

The living explosion being chewed on by Ben drew into itself, then popped with a slight poof of smoke. Out of that cloud of smoke a dark-skinned boy fell.

Ben didn't need me to tell him. He retracted his teeth and caught the boy in his strong arms.

Right. Ash Beast was a little kid.

I wasn't even going to question it.

What I was going to do was integrate this new Shard with my core shards, and I was going to do it right then.

One command to The Shard to slip into my root reality. a pass over it with several of my matter cleansing shards to clean it up. I didn't want any lava getting on me. And then?

I connected to it. Physically.

It felt like I'd stuck my tongue in a power outlet.

"WOOOAAAAAH!" I shouted. I rose into the air, clenched my fists, and grinned.

I didn't even know how starved for energy I'd been before. But now I didn't just feel full, I felt awesome.

Even still, I managed to get over the high the raw amounts of energy rushing through my true body laid upon me. I shook my head side-to-side, breathed in and out, Andre adjusted my sensitivity to energy.

The high dimmed. I still felt great, but I wasn't on a power trip anymore.

"You are fine, correct?" Ben asked me, walking up to me as I landed back on the ground.

I nodded to him and smiled. "Yeah. Was just... getting used to the rush," I explained.

He, surprisingly, nodded back knowingly. "It does indeed induce a most pleasurable feeling."

I raise my eyebrows and blinked at him. Huh. I guess there was a reason he targeted nuclear power plants before, and it wasn't just for Conflict.

I felt I would be learning many surprising things about my tall, dark Protection Engine in the future.

[Emma,] I called out to my sister, [I just depowered Ash Beast. Would you come get him and take him back to the house to?]

[Sure!] she sent back.

Khonsou walked up to us, or rather skipped up, just as an orange Doormaker portal popped open next to her. "We did it, Taylor-senpai!" she cheered, raising her hand for a high five.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and gave her it.

What? She was one step away from doing puppy eyes if I didn't do it, and I wanted to be able to look at her without letting out actual stereotypical female coos as I did.

Ben just grinned at Khonsou. he didn't say a single word. Just. Grinned.

The pink haired little girl audibly gulped.

Emma stepped out of the portal and hugged me before I could interfere in their growing staring contest. "Taylor!" she exclaimed, "there was a note in Quarrel's armpit for you!"

I slightly withdrew from my sister and stared her dead in the eyes, my mouth dropped.

She couldn't possibly have said what I just thought I heard.

"Yeah, I thought it was weird too, but it had your name on it," she Shrugged, hand thing a folded piece of what looks like printer paper to me.

I took it from her, still staring at her warily, slowly bringing my arm back to my body.

Emma shrugged again, flit over to Khonsou faster than I could blink, and squeezed her into a tight hug. "OMG you're so CUTE!" she squealed.

I was starting to think Path to Victory was full of crap when it said I would eventually be immune to bullshit.

I shook my head, breathes in and out again, looked at the folded piece of paper.

It had my name on it alright. In high quality ink.

Kinda wishing this was a dream, I proceeded to slowly unfold the mysterious note.

"From Auntie Path to Victory. She says Happy Birthday, Christmas, and all the other missed holidays. Please get her to stop annoying me. -Contessa," I read off under my breath, my eyebrows climbing higher and higher as each word filtered across my consciousness.

...What?

No, seriously. What?!

You know what? Nope. I am not up to dealing with this right now, I thought resolutely. I folded the note up and shoved it in one of the pockets of my jeans. Out of sight, out of mind, until I could deal with the ramifications of the high levels of bullshit that note contained.

Emma and Khonsou cuddled for a while, then she took the boy who was previously the Ash Beast from Ben and portaled home.

Just in time for Murphy to laugh at me.

"Unknown Capes!" A strong, leader-type male voice boomed down the destroyed Boardwalk, "You are under arrest for destruction of private property and murder. Put your hands up where we can see them."

I turned to look down the ruined street. Who the hell?

Oh.

---

The entire Brockton Bay Protectorate was arrayed at the end of the Boardwalk. Armsmaster was in the lead, flanked by Miss Militia and Dauntless. Battery, Assault, and Velocity were next to them.

The Wards weren't present, though. Odd.

Anyways, they were here to… arrest... me. And my Protection Engines.

I looked around at the two people next to me. Two Endbringers.

Levi was over by Ziz in the destroyed ice cream shop.

Four Endbringers.

And I was an Entity.

I admit, I struggled very hard not to laugh.

Oh well, time to make a show of it. I had to make sure they took me and my… 'hero' team seriously. I also needed to hammer home just who three members of my team were, and that they were under new management.

And, apparently, get the message across that no, you do not try to arrest four Endbringers and a gods damned Entity!

Emma portaled in next to me, having sensed my irritation. "Huh. Look at that," she commented.

I grinned at her, then Ben, and finally Khonsou. "Let's have some fun with this."

Ben nodded. Emma smiled.

Khonsou literally lept into the air, pumped her fists, and cried out with joy.

Fucking hell why did she have to make everything she did cute?!

Shaking my head to clear the impending cute overload, I lifted into the air. I proceeded to fly up above the Protectorate Capes and crossed my arms, staring down at them. I beckoned my Protection Engines to join me. How exactly they arrived I left up to them, though.

Turns out they have senses of humor.

Ben erupted out of the asphalt under me. He was glowing red hot from the Earth's mantle. He'd made a quick detour there from the street behind us literally just for his entrance. Dude had dedication for his art, that's for sure.

The assembled capes tensed up. Miss Militia changed her gun out for something much bigger. It looked like it could launch missiles. Cruise missiles. I was chalking up her ability to even hold the thing to Shard bullshit.

Meanwhile, I was scanning all their Shards and taking data copies to grow actual Shards for later. Including Battery.

Huh, another Cauldron cape. Her Shard was a lot like Legend's though, pretty much working fine, versus something like Eidolon's. I shivered just remembering the feeling of what Cauldron had done to it.

Then Levi surfed into place beside Ben on a wave he summoned out of the nearby Bay, clutching his trident. His eyes glowed green. His body trailed mist behind it, a stylish application of his normal water echo.

Ziz was next. She flew up next to me in the air, her full hundreds of wings deployed and with three concentric circles of scorched building debris orbiting her. She smiled cheerfully at the Protectorate.

I guess it didn't really sink in as to just who they were facing until Troll Bird showed up. Now the capes were totally frozen in fear.

"Fuck me," Assault swore. "All three?"

Emma flew up beside me on my other side. Her hair was flowing, just like mine, and clenched fists were hanging by her sides. She began to channel my Legend Shard and an aura of orange light formed around her body.

The capes' eyes, every single one of them, went wide, and many faces drained of blood. To them? There was now a Fourth Endbringer. I don't think they'd even processed my presence or what it could mean yet.

"Double fuck," Velocity added on to Assault's earlier comment.

Ziz relayed an entertaining idea from her precog, which I agreed with wholeheartedly. We were already trolling the Protectorate. I was down to take it a step further, even adding my own segment.

"You gonna fight us?" I directly asked Armsmaster five seconds before he'd work up the nerve to ask me the same thing, grinning wide. "Because I don't think I can take the person whose logo is on my underwear seriously."

Dead.

Fucking.

Silence.

Armsmaster's jaw was totally dropped.

Assault looked like he was torn between cowering in terror and laughing his ass off. Even Miss Militia was having trouble keeping a straight face. Poor Dauntless looked like his brain had evacuated the premises. Velocity had his face in his hand.

Revealing I owned Armsmaster brand panties?

Some mild embarrassment with a side of mortification.

Making sure that the first words from the new controller of the Endbringers, words that would be relayed, repeated, and witnessed for what is likely the foreseeable future of humanity, words that would get movies made about them, trolled the eternally living shit out of the local Protectorate leader?

Priceless.

Ziz held a wing out to me and I fist bumped it.

[Worth. It!]

[Agreed] came a chorus of four voices.

Wait, where's Khonsou?

Then it all came crashing down when our sixth party member showed up.

The temporal 'magical girl' ran up behind Ben and Levi, panting. She was bent over with her hands on her knees. "Coulda… waited… for me!" she huffed out. "Ben-san!"

"You may consider yourself counter pranked, young sister," Ben spoke calmly in that velvety voice of his.

And there went any semblance of the intimidation we'd just spent literal minutes setting up.

Ziz tossed a spare piece of masonry at the pink haired menace. It whacked her on the head.

"Oww!" she complained, rubbing the impact zone. She shot an angry glare at my winged Friendbringer. "What was that for?!"

Ziz tossed one at Ben too for good measure. He just grunted at the impact, making no other indications that he'd even noticed.

Assault lost the battle with his laughter, and despite the attempts at interference from his wife Battery, collapsed. He rolled around clutching his stomach as his cackling echoed through the ruined Boardwalk.

"Gods damn it, you two," I lamented, banging my fist against my forehead.

Click to shrink...

It's... it's so beautiful... I love it.

 

[TCGM]

Well, this is all good. But when we will see how your other protagonist trolling PRT with legos and Ziz?

*i hope this question don't add to realese counter to next chapter.

Click to shrink...

It doesn't, my muse being a random flighty co-author does.

Yeah, you heard me, personification of a part of myself. You know what I'm talking about. Don't even try denying it.

Ziz is pretty much on the backburner until I figure out where exactly I want to go with it. As funny and cracky as an SVer is with Ziz powers on Earth Bet, I like my stories to have something resembling a plot

Legos is... about halfway done for CH10 atm. Fourth is 3/4ths for CH6, which is an interlude.

I think that for that, you would need to have a lot of new triggers with "cute" powers, preferably powers that have some similarity in the tactics required to use or oppose them. For example, fighting a Cute efficiently might require cuteness-resistant or immune people. Such powers wouldn't even have to be a special case of Master powers; for example, consider a (probably nonlethal) beam attack that more strongly affects people that notice the cuteness of the attacker (or people that don't notice the cuteness).

Click to shrink...

takes notes

It's... it's so beautiful... I love it.

Click to shrink...

And I love you, random reader!

 

[TCGM]

Fourth
Chapter 6
Enter The Lude​

Armsmaster had a problem. A big one.

He usually had problems. Not enough time to Tinker. Issues with the Wards, or less commonly the Protectorate. Villains or vigilantes who are nearly as bad.

His counterpart in the PRT.

But the problem he was faced with now, he would give anything to trade. Even for all of his problems, forever, combined.

"The Endbringers disappeared without a trace several hours ago," he continued to insist to the teenage girl who had no doubt already immortalized her opening words in the minds of his subordinates. Damn PR teams!

Assault was still laughing.

"Yeahp," Taylor Hebert, the girl in question, agreed. She gestured to three of her five companions, the Simurgh look alike still hovering in the air alongside her. "And here they are now."

"Forgive me if I do not take your word for it," Armsmaster fired back. The fact most of the other Protectorate members did and he was essentially the only holdout went unsaid.

"You're forgiven," she sing songed.

Armsmaster grit his teeth. She was already aggravating. It had barely been five minutes.

Dragon was connected to his armor, as usual. "They do share similar features, Armsmaster," she said. "The Simurgh looking one even matches some… artistic renditions we can trace back to the Fallen."

That was not what he wanted to hear. Even Dragon was getting dragged into the farce. "If they are Endbringers, we are sworn to fight them. If they aren't, you have still engaged in an act of terrorism on American soil," he stated neutrally. He straightened up and clenched his fists around his Halberd. "You are under arrest."

The girl stared at him in awed wonder for several moments.

Then she broke down giggling.

Armsmaster frowned. "Stop laughing. This is a serious matter!"

That just sent most of the opposing group into giggling or laughing fits.

"Stop!" he yelled, his tone becoming confused. It didn't make sense. Powerful, insane capes they might be, but they were facing the Brockton Bay Protectorate. They didn't have a chance.

"Oh my gods," Hebert managed to get out. "A-Are you serious?"

"YES!"

"BWAHAHAHAHA!"

Armsmaster growled and started to take a step forward.

The platinum haired and winged girl abruptly stopped laughing. "He doesn't believe you, Taylor," she spoke.

Hebert stopped laughing just as abruptly and righted herself in the air, staring at the winged girl. She was displaying signs of being surprised. "Wait, really?"

"Yup."

Hebert scowled, crossed her arms and stared down at Armsmaster again. "These are the Endbringers, Armsmaster. I'm their…" she trailed off, momentarily staring down at the ground in thought, then grinned and looked back at him. "New Management!"

Armsmaster stared at her incredulously.

Who did this girl think she was kidding?

"Still doesn't believe you," the winged girl said.

Hebert threw down her arms and stomped her foot in midair. "Oh come on! What the hell do I have to do to make you see reality?!"

"There is nothing you can say which would convince me you are not mentally unsound," Armsmaster deadpanned. "You believe your companions to be the Endbringers. The smallest of which is fifteen feet tall."

"They changed size!"

"You're insane!"

"No I'm not!"

"What could you possibly say to convince us of that?!" Battery called out.

"I have Legend as a character witness!"

Dead silence beyond Assault's continuous cackling. The argument between Armsmaster and Hebert had apparently been hilarious to the kinetic redirector.

"What?" Miss Militia finally asked.

"Alright," Armsmaster admitted. "That's a new one."

"Call him!"

Armsmaster glared at her for several more moments.

"Armsmaster?" Dragon spoke up from his suit, "...should I connect you?"

He stewed even longer, eventually sighing. "Fine," he growled. "Use max alert level. Authcode is in my Halberd."

"Connecting…"

The phone rang for several seconds. Legend picked it up and was instantly in serious mode. "Armsmaster. What's happened?"

"Legend," Armsmaster greeted his superior cordially. "I am currently standing in the ruins of the Brockton Bay Boardwalk with a girl who claims to lead a team of capes with three members having similar powers to the Endbringers on the opposing side. She vehemently claims that they are, in fact, the Endbringers. Despite obvious evidence to the contrary."

Legend swore. "Five? What the hell has she done now?"

Armsmaster was surprised. "Wait, you actually know her?" he asked incredulously.

His teammates were not tapped into the call like he was. The reactions to his outburst were varied, but all mixes of surprise.

Except Assault. He was into hysteria at this point.

"You have speakers in your suit, right?" Legend asked Armsmaster.

"Affirmative," the Tinker confirmed.

"Put me on them."

Armsmaster blinked, confused even more, but nonetheless did as he asked. "External speakers active."

Legend got right to his point. "Taylor, I thought we were going to keep this under the radar," he stressed pointedly.

The flying girl shrugged. "I said I'd keep your thing quiet. For now. Not my things. I'm not going to have my… family attacked on the street."

Miss Militia grunted. Armsmaster knew that had hit a nerve in her. The rest of his team was watching with horrified silence.

Legend sighed. "What do you want me to do?"

Armsmaster wasn't just surprised any more. He was shocked. Legend was deferring to a teenager? What?

"I told Armsmaster you were our character witness," she explained. "And I fully intend to inform the world about the New Management of these particular beings, so you should be prepared for some questions."

That was a step too far. Teenagers did not dictate to the head of the Protectorate, Endbringers or no. "Now hold on a moment-" he started to intervene.

"Armsmaster, stand down," Legend commanded. The Tinker was shocked yet again at the tone his superior took. "Things are going on at levels much, much higher than you. We need to treat this with a delicate touch."

"Treat WHAT?!" he demanded, losing the little amount of control he had left. "A teenage girl with delusions of grandeur and five capes, three of which happen to have similar powers to defunct city destroyers?!"

"No," Legend stressed, gritting his teeth, "the new Master of the Endbringers, who also happens to have the power to make more."

Terse breaths were drawn in from all around. As one the Protectorate turned to look at Hebert, and lost whatever blood had been in their faces.

She wiggled her fingers at them, winking.

Velocity fell backwards. He'd fainted.

Armsmaster couldn't believe his ears."WHAT."

"...New Master, Legend?" Miss Militia timidly asked.

Armsmaster clenched his fists. His SiC was never timid. She must be terrified.

Just like him. He just refused to show it.

Legend sighed again and groaned. "Yes, and that is a can of worms for a very different day. Suffice it to say the Endbringers were Mastered into attacking and killing. Taylor Hebert here triggered and co opted control of the Endbringers from the old Master. She also can create more on command, something the previous controller could not," he explained succinctly.

More silence. Even Assault shut up.

Hebert was grinning the whole time.

"...Shit," the previously cackling jokester of the Brockton Bay Protectorate summed up.

The three Endbringer candidates, which Armsmaster still did not believe but was assigning names to (mentally anyways) just in case this insanity proved true, looked guilty and sorrowful. His cameras even made out slight tears emerging from the tear ducts of The Simurgh.

He had a feeling his day was about to get a lot more complicated.

"...SHIT!" Dauntless exclaimed.

Everyone looked to him with shock. The man never swore, no matter what happened to him.

He saw the looks and sighed. "I think this situation is enough to break my promise to myself," he lamented.

"Hear hear," Assault chimed in.

"Oh, and Battery?" Legend called out to the second woman on the team.

"Yes sir?" she asked, warily.

"We're calling in that favor. Help Taylor out, please, with whatever she might need on the Protectorate side."

Battery's eyes widened behind her mask. Her mouth didn't change and there were no other body language cues to demonstrate she had reacted to Legend's words in any way but normally.

Those precautions were not enough to fool Armsmaster's social programs.

Battery nodded. "Yes sir," she acknowledged.

Armsmaster would have to talk to her about that later. And whatever this apparent 'favor' entailed.

"Now, about how to manage this particular reveal," Legend continued. He proceeded to go over the details as the Triumvirate and the top levels of the Protectorate knew them, with Hebert chiming in with some information from time to time.

Even thirty seconds in, Armsmaster knew; this was going to be a very long day.

---

Legend walked out of a Doormaker portal into the new Cauldron base. "You will never believe who I just got off the phone with and what we talked about!" he cheerily greeted the other members of the secret organization.

Doctor Mother glared up at Legend's bright face from her chair. She was holding an ice pack to the side of her head. She wasn't a Parahuman, but she did feel like she had a Thinker headache from what had been going on lately. "You're enjoying this far too much," she deadpanned.

"Agreed," Eidolon and Alexandria chimed in.

"Enjoying what? I've always wanted to be the leader of a secret, worldwide conspiracy organization whose members go behind the backs of the people they trust with their lives, their family, and lie to their faces!" Legend fired back, just as cheerily. He managed to somehow even make that sound real.

"When are you going to let that go, Paul?" Rebecca exclaimed, thumping her hands down on the table. "Yes, we lied to you. I'm sorry. Are you happy now?"

In a flash of light, Legend was standing over Alexandria and his eyes were glowing a killing shade of green. Rebecca flinched backwards at the look of malice on her friend's face.

"I am going to be holding this over you for a long time," he growled.

Alexandria looked like she wanted to say something, but just sighed instead. "How many times do I have to apologize, Paul?" she asked genuinely. Rebecca, not Alexandria, stared up into his eyes, pleading for him to understand.

And he did. He really, truly did. What they were facing had been insurmountable before the reveal of Taylor and her father.

But they'd made one crucial mistake in their procedure. Paul had always been the conscience of the Triumvirate. He was supposed to be that for Cauldron, too.

But they excluded him from the real decision making, and in the process, lost their way.

The promise the four of them had made back when they were four, broken by the two who most needed to follow it.

"A lot, Rebecca," he said, his tone softening. "I'm not as good a man as Clark was."

That did it. He saw the stab of real pain his words caused in his old friend. She pressed her lips in a firm line and nodded, closing her eyes.

Good. She needed the humility.

Paul stood back up and glanced at his other alive friend. "How are you doing, David?" he asked.

"I created the Endbringers, Paul," he morosely stated. It didn't need to be said that the rest of his sentence was 'Not well.'

"It's not entirely your fault. Your… Shard is the one that actually made them," Legend tried to be his usual optimistic self.

David just crossed his arms and looked away. "Partial responsibility for the deaths of countries and hundreds of millions of people is still hundreds of millions of people." His tone was flat, like he was dead on the inside.

Paul grimaced. David might as well have been for how much happiness he displayed since Taylor dropped that bomb. He couldn't begrudge her for that, it needed to be said and revealed… but he did wish she'd done it an easier way.

"Well, Armsmaster was the one who called me," Legend continued with his original spiel. He walked around the oak table, the same one from their old base, and sat at the head opposite Doctor Mother. "He was asking if I was really a character witness for the Endbringers and their new controller."

Rebecca groaned out loud and allowed her face to fall forwards, smacking straight into the table. "God damn it."

Number Man raised an eyebrow. "What has the younger Entity done?"

"I talked to her too," Paul continued to explain. "She, her father, and the Endbringers, the new one based on her friend included, went to get ice cream at the Brockton Bay Boardwalk. Somehow Ash Beast and The Butcher showed up. Ash Beast flattened the boardwalk and Taylor and the Endbringers took them down." He waved a hand towards the woman who used to be the best weapon Cauldron ever had, sitting at her own table in a soundproof yet windowed room off the meeting room's hallway and staring off into space. Paul scowled at the possibility his investigations had brought up. "I think we know who to thank for this particular chain of unlikely events."

Contessa had apparently ordered Doormaker to drop both of them right on top of Taylor. Why, Paul didn't yet know, but he was going to find out.

Rebecca let out a much louder groan of misery and thumped her head into the table. She was clearly watching her strength given the surface didn't scuff. She must have finally been tired of replacing the secret organization's tables out of her own pocket.

David had the look of morbid curiosity Paul was so familiar with on his face, hidden as it was beneath his hood. "And what, exactly, did you say?"

Paul sighed, collapsing back into his chair. He brought both his hands up to his face and rubbed them up and down as if he could get rid of the bullshit his life had become by just that action. "I said yes. Highly classified, make sure the information doesn't get out, and that the Endbringers were Mastered."

David winced at the reminder, but nodded. "The best you could do, really," he muttered.

Everyone was silent for several long seconds.

Paul drew in a terse breath… and sighed. "Yeah," he agreed, morbidly. "Yeah, I know."

"As much as I believe in the Protectorate and the PRT, I'm not that confident in our informational security with something like this," Rebecca spoke up, her voice a little muffled from the fact she was almost kissing the oak table surface.

Legend drew in a deep breath and sighed once more. "I talked to her, too," he revealed.

Everyone present sat up and stared at him. "You what?!" Alexandria shouted.

"She told me to spread it everywhere. And that they would be doing that with or without our help," he continued, reaching up to rub the bridge of his forehead.

"WHAT?!" Rebecca shouted again.

"No!" Doctor Mother protested.

"Are you serious?!" the Number Man asked.

"Hah, she has guts." That was David.

"Paul, we need to keep this secret!" Rebecca pressed, thumping her hands on the table again.

Legend looked at her askance and raised his eyebrows. "Do you really want me to call our resident eldritch teenage horror back?" he asked warningly. "She's doing it. She told me. Hell, she informed me, like there wasn't even a discussion to be had. We can help her or be in her way. She did not speak favorably of what would happen to us if we decided to try that."

The entire room was silent once more.

"Shit," Rebecca cursed, her head thumping into the table again.

"I believe that is what both Assault and Dauntless, of all people, of the Brockton Bay Protectorate said in summary, yes."

David just leaned back and brought his hands to his face.

"I told you this would happen if you allowed her this freedom," Number Man stated neutrally.

"We didn't have a choice," Paul lamented. He turned his head away from them all and glared at the wall. "Your collective actions saw to that."

More silence, this time the guilty kind. It sat on the room like a physical thing, the weight of what they'd done.

"Poor Contessa," Doctor Mother finally, absentmindedly commented, staring at the single person in the world who had sacrificed even more than she to destroying the Entities through the transparent material separating their rooms. She pointedly ignored Legend's suggestion in the best way she knew; changing the subject.

---

"Path to defeating Scion."

[0 steps remaining. Path complete.]

Contessa rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers in an attempt to massage away her frustration.

"Path to defeating Scion."

[0 steps remaining. Path complete.]

"Grah! PATH TO DEFEATING SCION!!!" she finally shouted.

[...Calculating.]

Contessa collapsed onto the table. It was the first progress she'd had getting anything out of her passenger in hours. Even if it was just a calculation, it seemed like Path to Victory was finally doing something besides endlessly informing her the Path was already finished.

[New Path found. 2 steps remaining.]

Her head shot up and her eyes widened. "EXECUTE PATH!" she almost shouted.

[Step 1: Attack table with face.]

Contessa followed through in a heartbeat, not even paying attention to the step's instructions as she felt her passenger guide her action. She'd done so billions of times before. If there was truly a two step process to defeating Scion even after all this time of 'completed paths', with the teenaged elder horror and her father taking residence upon Earth Bet, and with Cauldron kicked out of their base by said horror...

She would follow through to the end. No matter how much her face now hurt. Nor how much her apparently now sapient passenger insisted that the two were family for them both.

[Step 2: Say "Path complete." Alternative: Scream with delicious irritation.]

Nevermind.

The fact that for once Path to Victory was providing a set of possible steps instead of just one perfect one was lost on the woman named Fortuna as her wordless scream echoed through the halls of the Cauldron backup base. Several lower level members of the secret organization would begin swearing a Banshee had infested their base while they were holed up in the original one.

[0 steps remaining. Path complete.]

---

"Bro."

"Bro."

The dynamic gaming-themed 'villain' duo Uber and L33t were sitting in their base of operations deep in the warehouses of Brockton Bay. They'd been remote operating Leet's Camera Drone to scout out the Boardwalk's new and improved distribution of Enforcers. The express purposes of this was of course so that they could orchestrate yet another video game themed heist of the Bay's tourist trap.

And then everything went to hell.

The Ash Beast showed up. The Boardwalk was destroyed in an instant, and it looked like all the excrement was impacting the rotary air redirecting device at FTL speeds.

Contrary to the normal eventuality that common sense dictated, however, a team of teenagers walked out of a ruined ice cream shop- or in the case of a couple, flew- and proceeded to totally and completely stomp the S-Class threat INTO THE GROUND.

Like they hadn't even bothered trying.

That wasn't even the freakiest part, though. The holder of that honor was the girl of the two who had remained behind in the ice cream shop, holding onto a young African American man.

"What the hell, man?" Uber asked Leet. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

"You mean a walking, talking, internet fanart drawing?" Leet asked Uber back.

"Yeahp."

The two of them looked at each other for a few seconds, then back to the spitting image of some Simurgh fanart they'd both seen on the Internet before.

"It can't be her, right?" Lee asked. "Like, we're crazy-"

And then the winged girl turned her head to look straight at the Camera Drone. Her misty gray eyes were clearly visible what with the subtle glow they started to emit.

Both men gulped.

"Leet," Uber asked.

"Yeah Uber?" Leet replied in a small voice.

Uber swallowed hard. "Is the Simurgh looking straight at us right now?"

"Can't be, this is a recording… and she's just a teenage girl-" Leet started to refute.

Then that same 'teenage girl' nodded.

The gaming themed duo stood, frozen in place, for a good dozen seconds. The sound of battles and explosions rang out somewhere off-screen, but the Drone hadn't moved. The girl idly looked around her ruined surroundings, some kind of ice cream shop from what little remained, while they were busy gaping.

Leet opened his mouth to say something again and her head shot around to stare straight at the Drone again.

Leet... closed his mouth.

"Okay, so she has the creepy factor down," Uber lamented.

The girl quickly nodded again, grinning a self-satisfied smile.

"Stop that!" Leet demanded, slamming his hands down on his desk. He left out of his chair and stared straight at the video, his nose almost touching the monitor. "This is a recording, you can't just respond to us live! That's bullshit!"

The girl closed her eyes, shrugged, and tilted her head to the side. Her self-satisfied smile turned into a smug grin.

"Stop it!"

Uber walked forward and placed a calming hand on his brother in games' shoulder. "Cool it Leet. If she is who we think she is…"

The girl on the video helped him make his point by smiling angelically, closing her eyes, and raising her eyebrows. She seemed to be the picture of innocence.

Leet sighed and closed his eyes. He collapsed back into the chair. "I can't handle this, bro," he stated flatly.

The girl's innocent smile only widened.

"Okay, that's enough," Uber cut in with a commanding tone. "Who the hell are you and why do you look so much like an Endbringer?"

The girl shrugged, still smiling, and nodded.

"Why are you nodding?"

She nodded again.

"Stop that."

The girl shook her head. Still smiling.

"Okay then, nods or shakes only," Uber realized. He went over a list of questions in his head and decided the important one was the first one he would ask. Steeling himself, he stared into her eyes through the recorded video and spoke. "Are you the Simurgh?"

She nodded. No hesitation.

Leet's face went white as the blood drained from it. Uber, on the other hand, was not so easily convinced.

"Prove it," he demanded, crossing his arms as if daring her to.

And right in front of them, on their desk, Leet's keyboard and mouse began to float into the air. They began disassembling at an incredibly fast pace until the only things left were components. And keys.

Ziz, they spelled out, with the second Z being represented by a sideways N.

As if on cue, Uber lost all the blood in his face too. His crossed arms dropped.

They were convinced. Only that particular Endbringer could both communicate to them from a recording and manipulate things in the room where it was being viewed in synch with her appearance on the video.

Both men began trembling.

"H-How can we help you, o-oh Supreme Overlady of Feathers?" Uber managed to squeak out.

The fucking Simurgh shrugged. Now that the two of them knew who she was, that seemed almost surreal. She was displaying emotions, looked human, and most importantly, wasn't 15 feet tall.

"Y-you d-don't know?!" Leet exclaimed, eyes widening. "How? How can you not know something?!"

The keyboard keys on the desk began to reorganize again. Slowly they spelled out words, one after the other. Not. Endbringer. Anymore. Where there needed to be two of a letter, the missing one was either replaced by a similar looking key (3 for a second e, for instance) or if one was not available, the key needed jumped along the word while they scanned across it with their eyes.

Her telekinesis was frankly complete bullshit.

The winged girl raised her eyebrow and smirked at him.

Uber sighed inside his head and rolled his eyes. Okay, yes, her precog was also bullshit. "You're not an Endbringer anymore?" he asked,only slightly dumbfounded. "What the hell are you now then?"

The Simurgh… or Ziz, if that was her name, pointed away from her, to the left. The Drone suddenly started recording position keeping errors as it was forced to turn sideways and look outside of the ruined ice cream shop.

Just in time for a girl in jeans and a tight T-shirt to come out of some kind of extremely fast flight, given the loud BOOM and shockwave that accompanied her arrival. She was now hovering next to a much younger girl with pink, actually pink, hair in pigtails. On the other side of them out of the focus of the Drone some kind of gray bubble performed the role of a backdrop.

The position keeping errors faded away as Ziz rotated the Drone back to face her and into perfect alignment with its original location. Protector. Of Her, the keys said.

"You protect a teenage girl now?" Leet asked incredulously.

"Why?!" Uber asked.

Freed me. Was Mastered. Now I follow her.

And wasn't that a terrifying thought. Apparently a parahuman existed powerful enough to Master the Endbringers.

This was so high above their pay grade. The looks the duo traded said more than their words ever could.

Uber looked back to the visibly patiently waiting Endbringer-turned-girl and gulped once more. "What about the others?" he hesitantly asked.

Levi, Ben, also freed. They follow her as well.

Uber had to sit down. Right now there was a girl, clearly a cape herself given her flight abilities, with control of not one, not two, but three Endbringers.

He looked back down at the keys. They jiggled a little at his gaze, as if to rub it in.

They clearly had their powers still. And given the distance between Uber, Leet, and Ziz, had been completely and totally sandbagging before.

The video with Ziz on it started emitting an unending stream of error beeps. Uber and Leet looked up at the video to see the the Drone reporting errors about it receiving a huge influx of new data. Errors about storage space filling up faster than it should have flowed over the screen… until with a wave of her hand, Ziz made them just go away.

At the same moment the mouse parts on the desk jolted into the air and reassembled in a single second. The mouse plopped back down on the desk, then moved into and bumped Leet's hand.

The duo jumped at the sudden movement.

Their throats were too dry to gulp now, so Leet just scrambled to look at the filesystem of the Drone. A few clicks and he had the folder brought up once more.

There was much more footage on it than there had been earlier.

Leet, trembling, took his hand off the mouse and slowly backed away from his computer. "That's not how filesystems work," he mumbled under his breath, staring wide eyed at the floor.

Uber took over from his buddy and opened one of the new files on a second monitor. He didn't dare close the video with Ziz on it. They were all action shots of the girl Ziz said she was protecting and another girl. This file seemed to be them taking down... holy shit, was that The Butcher?!

Uber emulated what Leet had done mere moments earlier and slowly took his hand off the mouse. Ziz frowned, sighed, and the mouse proceeded to move on its own.

Both gaming villains pushed their chairs back even further.

The mouse moved to one of the last files and opened it up in the window that had been playing the Butcher's utter defeat. The first thing the duo noticed was that the girl was hovering in the air, arms crossed, and that Ziz and the other girl they'd seen help the protected girl take down The Butcher were flanking her. On the ground were two teen boys that they immediately pegged as the humanized forms of Behemoth and Leviathan, what with the lava and the water.

Then the girl spoke.

"You gonna fight us? Because I don't think I can take the person whose logo is on my underwear seriously."

Despite their fear, their incredulity, neither Uber nor Leet could resist breaking out in hysterical laughter at the dumbfounded look on Armsmaster's face. It was perfectly visible through his visor and his body language just confirmed the expression.

It only got better when the pink haired girl they saw earlier ruined the entire dramatic awe aura the Endbringers and the one they were protecting had managed to create by being adorable.

The keys clacked once again and the two abruptly sat ramrod straight, completely sober once more.

Make your magic. Show the world we are not to be feared anymore. Send it everywhere.

The moment the gaming villain duo had finished reading that sentence the components for the keyboard rapidly reassembled and it clunked down on the desk.

The Ziz on the first video raised her fingers, and a wing, to her forehead and snapped off a salute. With both. She smirked, winked, and reached out another wing to the Drone. "Boop!" she spoke, for the first time.

Uber and Leet preemptively cringed back, expecting painful screeching in their heads, but all they heard was a rather melodic and angelic sounding teenage girl's voice.

Then the video ended.

Uber looked at Leet.

Leet looked at Uber.

"Bro."

"Bro."

They looked at each other for several more seconds, contemplating whether they should refuse an Endbringer's request.

The keyboard lightly rattling put paid to that idea. Half an hour later, the newest Uber and Leet Show video went up, containing the footage the winged Endbringer had given them and some explanations to go with it.

---

I'm fucked.

Sophia could only think that over and over as she rushed around the Wards section of the PRT HQ.

I'm so so so so SO fucked.

Even as she yanked her old pre-Wards costume, her real costume, out of her PRT locker, she was cursing out the bitch in her head.

Fucking HEBERT triggers and the weakling gets to control the FUCKING ENDBRINGERS! WHAT THE FUCK-

Sophia hadn't even really wanted to do anything to the stick-thin, weak, lanky, too-tall girl. It was Emma's idea. Sophia was just trying to be a good friend, make her friend stronger. Like she'd become. And Emma wanted to make Taylor strong, too.

They were like sisters once, she'd said. Emma wanted that to continue. As a personal favor to her new fellow survivor, Sophia had obliged. She had taken her considerable knowledge of interrogation and torture techniques that she learned on the street as a vigilante and applied them liberally.

The dark-skinned survivor might've thought twice about it if Taylor had shown any kind of reaction. Good, bad, weak, survivor, didn't matter, something.

But the freak just. wouldn't. break.

Sure, she cried in the beginning and melted down a few times. But then she seemed to become disconnected and nothing worked anymore.

At that point Sophia had been forced into the Wards, and an easy outlet for her frustrations was right there.

A source that no matter what Sophia, Emma, Madison, or the others did, seemed impervious to harm.

The ultimate sheep. So lost in ignorance and blind to the real world they were incapable of being affected by cold, harsh truth.

That was when Sophia started to enjoy it. Shoving the sheep into her locker might've been Emma's idea, but Sophia pitched in with the addition of the trash, bugs, shit, and pads.

Sophia had been the one to push her in, too. Emma lost her nerve at the last second. Madison never had it.

Sophia was a better survivor than Emma so she hadn't blamed her. The redhead just needed more time. She could become strong. Sophia could feel it.

Then again she hadn't felt Hebert could be anything but weak forever and look how that turned out.

I'M FUCKED!

Taylor Hebert had faced down the entire Brockton Bay Protectorate. After destroying the Boardwalk and killing off The fucking Butcher and The goddamned Ash Beast, she then stood across from them as if they were nothing.

Given who was with her, they might as well not be.

Sophia wasn't book smart but she had damned good instincts. She knew exactly who they were the second she saw them. Taylor controlled the Endbringers, had somehow made them into what looked like humans, and she had an Emma, too.

Sophia knew, even as she fished her original crossbows out of their hiding place under her Wards bed, the orange glowing girl next to the sheep hadn't been Emma.

She had a kind, if stern, expression.

Emma wasn't kind.

She had to shed that to become a survivor. Just like Sophia had to shed any kind of empathy.

They were the chains of sheep.

No, Taylor had another Endbringer that for some reason she'd made in the shape of her old friend. She didn't just control them, she could also make new ones.

Sophia couldn't fight that. Survivors became survivors because they learned when to fight and when to retreat for regrouping. Four Endbringers and the girl who made them was no match for Shadow Stalker, no matter how much that pained Sophia to admit.

So she had to run. When she returned, and she would return, she would make Taylor pay for forcing her to run from something. Pay for making her do the one thing she swore she never, ever would. She sent a quick text to Emma warning her to do the same, then pulled on her mask.

Just in time.

The mask-up alarm rang out in the empty Wards area. Sophia was the only one there. She'd refused to go to the strategy meeting the rest of them went to.

One second later she had her mask on, and she was complete again.

She couldn't just go out the window. That paranoid, fat bitch Piggot had electrified the entirety of the walls, window included, when Sophia was brought in on 'probation'.

She would have to fight the Wards and get out the normal way. The only one she might have an ounce of regret for the injuries they were about to suffer at her hand was Vista. The little girl tried so hard to be a survivor even with everyone treating her like the innocent she no longer was. It gave Sophia what might be labelled respect by other people for the space warper.

Sophia turned to smoke and raised her crossbows, lethal bolts loaded, towards the door. She began mentally counting down the seconds.

When she reached one, she let loose with both bows. The bolts started to shimmer back into reality just as the door was sliding open. Both bolts hit true on the chest of the first person through.

Sophia paled under her mask, inside her shadow.

She wasn't just fucked anymore. She was dead.

The living shadow stood, frozen in horror, and while she would never admit it out loud, a fuckload of fear.

"What the hell?" Taylor FUCKING HEBERT said as she brushed two of Sophia's most lethal weapons off of her completely unbroken T-Shirt.

"What is it, Taylor?" Aegis' voice asked. He floated into the air and came over the heads of the rest of them.

Sophia paled even further when she registered just who was behind Taylor. Lined up like ducklings behind their mother were the Endbringers and the fake Emma.

None of them were looking at her with favorable expressions.

"Someone shot me with crossbow bol-" Taylor started to say, when her eyes landed on the gaseous shadow in the center of the room.

A head-splitting screech ripped through Sophia's head. Pain, pain, [PAIN] was all she knew. A part of her was writhing in agonizing [PAIN].

Sophia clutched her head and let her body go limp. She screamed out at the top of her lungs. Instead of collapsing to the floor, however, she stood stock still, forced to remain upright, and whimpered under the assault of something so much [MORE].

In the few moments Sophia could keep her eyes open, she found out that Taylor was glaring death at her. She was the one causing the [PAIN].

The no longer stick thin girl was attacking her without even moving. She was curvy in a way Emma would envy.

Through the [PAIN], Sophia was able to access a glimpse of her usual instincts. They were screaming at her that this girl, Taylor, wasn't a girl anymore.

Said false girl clenched her fist around the crossbow bolts, seemingly uncaring about the way they squealed in protest at the torture her strength put them under as she compressed them into balls, and stared molten death at the writing shadow. "SOPHIA."

The terrified girl would have defecated if she wasn't a shadow at that moment. Somewhere [ELSEWHERE], a part of her did.

---

Retreat. Hebert will kill us. Get out of the Bay.

Emma Barnes stared at the last message she'd received from Sophia just before her fellow survivor, guide, and mentor had gone offline.

What the hell did she mean? Taylor, kill them? She would have to be strong for that.

Her sister wasn't strong. She was just the ultimate sheep. Emma had failed her.

Every day at school, she failed her.

She tried and tried and tried, so hard, burning every bridge she had ever built with the taller girl. Desecrated their memories, destroyed their mother's flute, and even stuffed her inside her locker.

And yet still, still, even with the additions Sophia made to the experience, Taylor was still weak.

She had such a bright light when Emma looked at her. She had ever since came up the road to meet her again after Sophia saved her and her father. The moment she'd had an entire daydream in a single second where Taylor's mom… their mom, pleaded with her to make Taylor strong. She asked Emma to do it as Taylor's sister in all but blood. No matter the cost.

Emma knew she needed it.

And so, she began.

Not that it ever did anything.

For a while the glow inside Taylor grew and grew. It looked like she would finally reach the tipping point. That all of Emma's tearing down of her sister would pay off, and she would emerge stronger than before. Like she had. Like Sophia had.

Taylor's mom's flute was supposed to do it. But instead… Taylor just grew a shell and hid inside, like a turtle.

The glow almost disappeared.

Emma panicked. She could admit that. She started escalating further and further as the light grew dimmer and dimmer. Finally she couldn't bear to see her sister fall, and so she planned the Locker.

It… sort of worked.

Emma had visited her in the hospital. Her glow came back, brighter than ever, and it seemed that she had succeeded!

...But then nothing further happened. No abilities, no strength. And one day her dad took her home.

That was yesterday.

Emma had gone in to try and see if her light had grown and found her gone. She was ready to give up. Ready to apologize to Taylor's mom, tell her she couldn't do it. That Taylor just wouldn't be able to do it.

Seemed like Sophia had cracked sooner than she had, judging by the message.

Emma collapsed back onto her bed with a sigh. She'd give it another day. One more extended period of torment to try and make Taylor strong. Then she'd give u-

"EMMA!" her mother shrieked from the living room. She sounded terrified. "GET DOWN HERE!!!"

Emma's eyes shot wide open. She flipped out of her bed, landing on her feet, and sprinted out her door and down the stairs. If someone had found out that she was strong and was threatening her mom, she swore-

But no such thing was happening. Zoe Barnes was standing in front of their widescreen TV in the living room, backing away. Her hands were over her mouth and she looked like she had seen a ghost.

"Mom, what's wrong?!" Emma cried out as she reached her side. She discreetly summoned a portion of her own light in her hand, ready to erase whatever had scared her mom from existence.

Zoe's eyes flicked over to her and she shrieked again, this time illegibly. She tripped over her own feet and fell onto the couch. She srabbled back from her daughter. "Emma why are you on TV?!"

Emma looked at her mom like she was crazy. "What?"

Zoe saw her confusion, gulped, and pointed her finger shakingly at the TV. "L-look!"

Emma blinked, turned, and stared at the news report on the screen.

The moment her eyes landed on her, what blood she had in her pale skin drained out of her face."What?" she whispered.

Taylor was on the screen. Taylor. She was flying in the air by herself, flanked by a pale, platinum blonde haired, hundred winged girl. On her other side, fists clenched and glowing a lethally bright orange… was Emma.

Emma stared at herself for a few seconds. Then she stared at Taylor. Even from the news report, she could see the flare of light around Taylor that nobody else ever saw. It was bright, large, and beautiful.

The redheaded girl broke out in choked sobs. She dismissed the bit of light she had pulled out of herself and approached the TV, lightly touching the surface with her fingers.

She'd done it.

Taylor was strong.

Emma Barnes pressed her head against the screen and closed her eyes. She sighed with relief. "Taylor," she breathed, "I'm so proud of you."

A moment later she drew her head back, opened her eyes, and stared straight at her sister. "I'm coming to you."

 

[Starfox5]

Wow. Emma's all kinds of messed up. Uber and L33t are, as expected, a riot. And Sophia's as stupid as expected as well

 

[ranmatoushin]

Emma, you Cray, Cray.

 

[Zeushobbit]

Hmm, I see you're using the fanon trope of Emma being a parahuman/potential trigger sensor. Some sort of Blaster ability too possibly given how she described readying her 'light' to attack.

Loved the Cauldron bit, Paul milking his Moral high ground for every scrap it's worth and Simmie's trolling/coercion of Uber and Leet was very fun to read.

 

[Akritedes]

I think the telling bit here is that either Emma is seriously crazy and hallucinating, or Eden actually pushed her onto the path of abusing Taylor.

Presumably with this end result in mind, I suppose.

 

[MaeHartchenko]

Emma fanon is good fanon. Also Eden stop fucking with your daughter's life and friends. Hope we get two Emma's since Taylor, even if she's bein respectful to her roots, has transcended humanity. Good Emma and Bad Emma seems like a fun dynamic for a Tohu Bohu-like set.

What I'm saying is: Taylor! Master Emma into being mentally healthy and force compartmentalize her memories as a bitch so they don't traumatize her!

 

[TCGM]

Wow. Emma's all kinds of messed up. Uber and L33t are, as expected, a riot. And Sophia's as stupid as expected as well

Click to shrink...

Is she messed up, though?

Uber and Leet, the true SIs of us all.

Sophia is as Sophia does. She is honestly the character that changes the least throughout all of fanon. Kinda impressive, actually.

Emma, you Cray, Cray.

Click to shrink...

Is she?

Hmm, I see you're using the fanon trope of Emma being a parahuman/potential trigger sensor. Some sort of Blaster ability too possibly given how she described readying her 'light' to attack.

Loved the Cauldron bit, Paul milking his Moral high ground for every scrap it's worth and Simmie's trolling/coercion of Uber and Leet was very fun to read.

Click to shrink...

She's certainly seeing something. Not telling on whether that is parahumans, though.

Emma does have a blaster ability.

Morally superior Legend is really fun to write. Especially with Cauldron.

As if taking human form and becoming a Protection Engine would change who she is. The Overlady of Feathers still plots and plans. Just for Taylor now.

I think the telling bit here is that either Emma is seriously crazy and hallucinating, or Eden actually pushed her onto the path of abusing Taylor.

Presumably with this end result in mind, I suppose.

Click to shrink...

Or something similar

Emma fanon is good fanon. Also Eden stop fucking with your daughter's life and friends. Hope we get two Emma's since Taylor, even if she's bein respectful to her roots, has transcended humanity. Good Emma and Bad Emma seems like a fun dynamic for a Tohu Bohu-like set.

What I'm saying is: Taylor! Master Emma into being mentally healthy and force compartmentalize her memories as a bitch so they don't traumatize her!

Click to shrink...

Was that Eden?

I just got the mental image of good cop/bad cop Emmas. I can't seem to stop chuckling.

That's a neat idea. We'll see if Taylor thinks of it,

 

[Slith10]

... Of course, the answer was in front of us all along! Emma is the reincarnation/whatever of Eden, that's why she is so good at 'HALPING'!
The solution has been found!

 

[Saltade]

Welp. Emma you need a shrink. Many shrinks. All the fucking shrinks.

 

[deathgeonous]

Nice, fun and all sorts of messed up. I do so love.

 

[Asurau]

Well, given all that shit Eden seems to have pulled of, I wouldn't put it past her to set Emma up as Taylor's Trigger.

Hell, I wouldn't put it pasto her that Eden intenationally caused Emma's own trigger event for that exclusive purpose.

Really enjoying this train ride so far.

 

[Guardian54]

You're going with the [INITIATOR] interpretation for Emma, huh?

Well, it is the only real choice with EDEN being Taylor's mother.

Taylor: "Go fuck yourself!"
Emma: *points toward Engine!Emma* "I think your mom wanted to arrange for that. Or maybe a Taylor sandwich between me and her."
Taylor: *gapes*

 

[IsaacTheAutobot1229]

Taylor: "Go fuck yourself!"
Emma: *points toward Engine!Emma* "I think your mom wanted to arrange for that. Or maybe a Taylor sandwich between me and her."
Taylor: *gapes*

Click to shrink...

Ok, that gave me a good laugh.
This story is getting better with every chapter. The amount of headaches going around will have the ibuprofen manufacturers in monetary bliss for a decade.

 

[TCGM]

... Of course, the answer was in front of us all along! Emma is the reincarnation/whatever of Eden, that's why she is so good at 'HALPING'!
The solution has been found!

Click to shrink...

Ah, rampant speculation, my bread and butter!

Welp. Emma you need a shrink. Many shrinks. All the fucking shrinks.

Click to shrink...

Sure sounds like it, yeah.

Nice, fun and all sorts of messed up. I do so love.

Click to shrink...

Thanks!

Well, given all that shit Eden seems to have pulled of, I wouldn't put it past her to set Emma up as Taylor's Trigger.

Hell, I wouldn't put it pasto her that Eden intenationally caused Emma's own trigger event for that exclusive purpose.

Really enjoying this train ride so far.

Click to shrink...

Thanks! Me too.

You're going with the [INITIATOR] interpretation for Emma, huh?

Well, it is the only real choice with EDEN being Taylor's mother.

Taylor: "Go fuck yourself!"
Emma: *points toward Engine!Emma* "I think your mom wanted to arrange for that. Or maybe a Taylor sandwich between me and her."
Taylor: *gapes*

Click to shrink...

Ok, that gave me a good laugh.
This story is getting better with every chapter. The amount of headaches going around will have the ibuprofen manufacturers in monetary bliss for a decade.

Click to shrink...

I really wonder if I could pull this off without changing the rating of the story... because this? It's all brilliant. And would fit both Annette's views on sexuality and the lack of caring that Eden would have.

 

[Guardian54]

I really wonder if I could pull this off without changing the rating of the story...

Click to shrink...

You totally can.

So far I'm pretty sure my Naruto/SupCom fic on QQ is still SFW by QQ standards. It won't stay that way but given how many implications I've put in there to date?
You totally can just have Taylor head-desking a lot and cut-to-morning-after section dividers.

...And then post the NSFW parts on the NSFW forum with "For NSFW portion here, see the other thread" for every lemon-censoring section divider.

And the NSFW thread would link here on its OP so people can see where to go, and its threadmarks could be "Chapter 15 Scene 3", "Chapter 26 Scene 1", or the like.

 

[TCGM]

You totally can.

So far I'm pretty sure my Naruto/SupCom fic on QQ is still SFW by QQ standards. It won't stay that way but given how many implications I've put in there to date?
You totally can just have Taylor head-desking a lot and cut-to-morning-after section dividers.

...And then post the NSFW parts on the NSFW forum with "For NSFW portion here, see the other thread" for every lemon-censoring section divider.

And the NSFW thread would link here on its OP so people can see where to go, and its threadmarks could be "Chapter 15 Scene 3", "Chapter 26 Scene 1", or the like.

Click to shrink...

Naruto/SupCom.

I... how.

Anyways, I'm on SV too. FFN doesn't have standards so I'm not worried about there, but SV I would be.

Pretty sure if I just mention the idea instead of saying it actually occurs there's no issue, though.

 

[Guardian54]

Naruto/SupCom.

I... how.

Click to shrink...

Creative interpretation of the Naruto world. To the point where the leading cause of death or defection for powerful ninjas is Paperwork Psychosis, Danzo is not in fact an asshole*, Sasuke finds the idea of the Uchiha Massacre to be a bad joke that he wants to find Itachi to beat the truth out of him for, Orochimaru had legitimate reasons to run away from Konoha, and Sakura's fluffy, adorable pet is a Larvesta.

It would be rude to derail by explaining further, just come see: https://forum.questionablequesting....d-naruto-reinterpreted-supreme-commander.8016

Spoiler: Note*

However, Danzo IS a HORRIBLE friend through "no Hiruzen I'm not sending some guy to fake an assassination attempt on you just so you can 'accidentally' be injured and shove the paperwork on me for a couple weeks while ordering the medical ninjas to not accelerate your recovery. Get back to work already!"

 

[Akuma-Heika]

Shadow Stalker was no match for Four Endbringers and the girl who made them, no matter how much that pained Sophia to admit.

Click to shrink...

FTFY, previous format implied Taylor and the Endbringers could not stand against Sophia.

She had such a bright light when Emma looked at her. She had ever since came up the road to meet her again after Sophia saved her and her father. The moment she'd had an entire daydream in a single second where Taylor's mom… their mom, pleaded with her to make Taylor strong. She asked Emma to do it as Taylor's sister in all but blood. No matter the cost.

Click to shrink...

Huh, I have read a story that had the same premise of Emma triggering and being able to see other Parahumans/humans with the ability to trigger. Legion maybe? No, it was another one...I cannot remember. Nice use of it regardless.

Now it is bugging me that I cannot remember the name of that fic. -_- Was it one of yours?

 

[Thief of Words]

Wow. You managed to make Annette the shittiest person in the Wormverse.

 

[Gindjurra]

Teenagers did not dictate to the head of the Protectorate, Endbringers or no.

Click to shrink...

Presentation matters. People know she won the power lottery super-jackpot, that she just took down two S-class threats back to back without needing Endbringer backup, that she has 4-5 Endbringers with her and under her control, but none of it matters. The forces facing her have less than one percent of the firepower needed to fight just one Endbringer, but that doesn't matter either.

What matters is that she is a teenage girl, so they know against all sanity and reason that they can take her in a fight and it will be easy.

How many times do I have to apologize, Paul?"

Click to shrink...

At least one more time.

Yeahp

Click to shrink...

Probably a recurring typo here -- the word is normally spelled 'yep' or 'yup' unless deliberately drawled out, which Taylor might have done, but others would not have, from the context it was said in.

Then that same 'teenage girl' nodded.

Click to shrink...

There is a REASON Taylor calls her Troll Bird!

Emma, you Cray, Cray.

Click to shrink...

...what was your first clue?

 

[Slith10]

..what was your first clue?

Click to shrink...

Probs the part where Emma receives a holy mission from Annette to 'pls bulli' Taylor into not sucking.

 

[Thief of Words]

Probs the part where Emma receives a holy mission from Annette to 'pls bulli' Taylor into not sucking.

Click to shrink...

Except the subtext suggests that literally is an accurate interpretation of what happened. So it's not so much "Emma be cray-cray" as "Annette be worst moms ever."

 

[Writerwith Badgrammar]

FTFY, previous format implied Taylor and the Endbringers could not stand against Sophia.

Huh, I have read a story that had the same premise of Emma triggering and being able to see other Parahumans/humans with the ability to trigger. Legion maybe? No, it was another one...I cannot remember. Nice use of it regardless.

Now it is bugging me that I cannot remember the name of that fic. -_- Was it one of yours?

Click to shrink...

It was Queen of Blood, WormxCastlevania fic by SirWill

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/queen-of-blood-worm-castlevania-complete.363842/

 

[Ragura]

Just found this story. You are a GENIUS! And you really manage to write the warm and fuzzy feelings and the isidious plots into one cohesive whole. Sorry if my review is a bit incohesive, it's 3 AM here. Point is, I really like your story. The plot is great and Taylor is hilariously overpowered (the hilarity is the important part). The Cauldron parts and the Shard interactions are my favorites, with Ziz being a close third. Not sure about AbbaDanny (regular if revitalized Danny would imo work just as well) but I find Anette's backstory more intriguing with each chapter I read.