Fourth [Worm Altpower!Taylor]

[Guardian54]

You dislike Taylor "the entire Protectorate is bad and I'm gonna shack up with some villains because Armsmaster is a dick", Hebert, and Taylor "Nobody can help me not even my dad because the school didn't and I blame my dad for not helping me even though I didn't tell him" Hebert, continually blaming people for things they had no control over?

Get outta here!

Click to shrink...

The problem is that Taylor Hebert is supposed to be bookish and take after Annette, who was an English prof. She should have been better-read and know better than some of her canon fuckups as a result. For example, black and white worldview on heroes and villains at start of canon is IMPOSSIBLE for a serious reader.

Especially in the "heroes don't kill" department. It should be "heroes don't kill... as much as possible under the circumstances" (Source: MacLean's magazine survey on "As Canadian as..." ended up, claimed by a Quora user, being won by "...as possible under the circumstances". I'm only citing that because it sounds almost absurdly believable)

And then there's Danny Hebert. To keep a work gang like the DWU going in a shithole like Brockton Bay requires a critical mass able to meet surge requirements, and enough genius at interpersonal relations and contracts to maintain that critical mass is more than enough to steamroll Winslow post-Locker and not be the useless limp noodle we see in canon!

 

[Prince Charon]

The problem is that Taylor Hebert is supposed to be bookish and take after Annette, who was an English prof. She should have been better-read and know better than some of her canon fuckups as a result. For example, black and white worldview on heroes and villains at start of canon is IMPOSSIBLE for a serious reader.

Especially in the "heroes don't kill" department. It should be "heroes don't kill... as much as possible under the circumstances" (Source: MacLean's magazine survey on "As Canadian as..." ended up, claimed by a Quora user, being won by "...as possible under the circumstances". I'm only citing that because it sounds almost absurdly believable)

Click to shrink...

She's fifteen, and traumatised, so that issue is understandable, at least for canon Taylor.

And then there's Danny Hebert. To keep a work gang like the DWU going in a shithole like Brockton Bay requires a critical mass able to meet surge requirements, and enough genius at interpersonal relations and contracts to maintain that critical mass is more than enough to steamroll Winslow post-Locker and not be the useless limp noodle we see in canon!

Click to shrink...

That part I do agree is a mistake on Wildbow's part.

 

[Guardian54]

She's fifteen, and traumatised, so that issue is understandable, at least for canon Taylor.

That part I do agree is a mistake on Wildbow's part.

Click to shrink...

Trauma usually induces cynicism.

Unless it regressed her to before she was oh about 10 or so mentally, because going into puberty is when you start getting emo and cynical, especially art/literature folks. And that's about 10.

 

[Prince Charon]

Trauma usually induces cynicism.

Unless it regressed her to before she was oh about 10 or so mentally, because going into puberty is when you start getting emo and cynical, especially art/literature folks. And that's about 10.

Click to shrink...

'Usually' is not the same as 'always' (mental age regression is not the only option), though it could be another of Wildbow's mistakes.

 

[RichardWhereat]

Taylor took her memories of her friend and turned them into an Endbringer.

She took her friend and turned her into an Endbringer.

I guess you could say....*ba dum tss*....that she's a Friendbringer.
.
.
.
I'll show myself out.

Click to shrink...

You're not going anywhere. That was good and we need to keep that level of pun.

 

[medon12]

As far as I have been taught, you use 'it's' for anything with agency and 'its' for things without it. E.G. a dog vs a rock.

Click to shrink...

It's means "it is" its refers to a possessive "it was a slave to its fate"

 

[TCGM]

The problem is that Taylor Hebert is supposed to be bookish and take after Annette, who was an English prof. She should have been better-read and know better than some of her canon fuckups as a result. For example, black and white worldview on heroes and villains at start of canon is IMPOSSIBLE for a serious reader.

Especially in the "heroes don't kill" department. It should be "heroes don't kill... as much as possible under the circumstances" (Source: MacLean's magazine survey on "As Canadian as..." ended up, claimed by a Quora user, being won by "...as possible under the circumstances". I'm only citing that because it sounds almost absurdly believable)

And then there's Danny Hebert. To keep a work gang like the DWU going in a shithole like Brockton Bay requires a critical mass able to meet surge requirements, and enough genius at interpersonal relations and contracts to maintain that critical mass is more than enough to steamroll Winslow post-Locker and not be the useless limp noodle we see in canon!

Click to shrink...

She's fifteen, and traumatised, so that issue is understandable, at least for canon Taylor.


That part I do agree is a mistake on Wildbow's part.

Click to shrink...

Trauma usually induces cynicism.

Unless it regressed her to before she was oh about 10 or so mentally, because going into puberty is when you start getting emo and cynical, especially art/literature folks. And that's about 10.

Click to shrink...

'Usually' is not the same as 'always' (mental age regression is not the only option), though it could be another of Wildbow's mistakes.

Click to shrink...

Mistake or not, it is Canon, and as such her pushover attitude has to make an appearance.

It won't last very long, though ^_^

And as for Danny letting stuff happen? Well, he doesn't really know how to do Human while hiding his massively overwhelming power and he wanted to protect Taylor from Scion. Before she became an Entity, he had a vulnerable human daughter which Scion could snap his fingers and eliminate. So he massively sandbagged everything he's capable of, in the process sandbagging his normal humanity too.

Or well, that's Fourth canon, anyways.

You're not going anywhere. That was good and we need to keep that level of pun.

Click to shrink...

Puns are appreciated.

It's means "it is" its refers to a possessive "it was a slave to its fate"

Click to shrink...

Hmmm. I see your point. I'll try to see if I can start getting it right, but I've been writing with the agency differentation for so long I might not be capable of it. We'll see.

---

Hold on to your butts people, because a huge update is incoming right now.

 

[TCGM]

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.

 

[Zeushobbit]

YES!!!!!

PTV gives the best presents

Also, Magical Girl Khonsu is freaking adorkable.

 

[Alt255]

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.

 

[JammyASDFG]

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.

 

[Zeushobbit]

Taylor needs something to challenge her. The alternative of just going around harvesting or copying shards will become repetitive.

Click to shrink...

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.

 

[Jonn Wolfe]

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

And pinkie is way kyute!

 

[RichardWhereat]

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.

 

[Ralyx]

Still not sure how Ash Beast got there...

 

[Jonn Wolfe]

Ash was a present.

Well, his shard was.

 

[ToxinTurian]

This story is so much fun. I wonder when the Protectorate capes are going to remember that there was a reason they were trying to arrest Taylor and co.

 

[amimai]

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.

Click to shrink...

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

 

[Guardian54]

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.

Click to shrink...

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.

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

Click to shrink...

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!

 

[badger.black]

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.

 

[jo demon]

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

 

[MimeofDeath]

The temporal 'magical girl' ran up behind Ben and Levi, panting.

Click to shrink...

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

 

[Guardian54]

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

Click to shrink...

Rule of Cool.

Or rather, Rule of Drama.

 

[jo demon]

Rule of Cool.

Or rather, Rule of Drama.

Click to shrink...

Both wrong, its whatever would look more cute.

 

[Guardian54]

Both wrong, its whatever would look more cute.

Click to shrink...

Cute is totally a form of drama.

 

[the DragonBard]

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

 

[Guardian54]

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

Click to shrink...

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."

 

[Caelleh]

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.

 

[jo demon]

Cute is totally a form of drama.

Click to shrink...

That's debatable.

 

[Emiya Pendragon]

Ok seriously I needed that...