Khepri, A Shard's Proxy Heart (Worm AU/Alt-Power)

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Now, let's get ready to meet our Boston residents!

----------------------
*Taylor Hebert*​

A white cloak emblazoned with a green chrysalis flourishes away to reveal a white straitjacket.

Like an insect's egg, it splits open to release a horror. A fierce oni of gold light and cragged obsidian dances madly on its restraints in twisted freedom.

Roaring onto the stage, its horns unfurl, cracks radiating from its feet.

Sharp claws hold a still-beating heart ringed in metal, while molten tears slam into the earth with the weight of meteors.

Zooming out on the raging demon, opalescent tentacles writhe inside of it, hidden from view.

Attached to a spine jack of a rainbow of crystal inserted in the beast, she possesses it.

*[Beloved]*

----------------------

*The Avatar Of Queen Administrator*​

The avatar is composed of two separate bodies. The lower body is centipede-like, with an asymmetrical acicular "head" of end-tapered prisms, her green Shard crystal growing out in a radial fashion. The part that trails behind the "head" is capable of wrapping around Brockton Bay with room to spare. The upper body is humanoid, floating above the lower but lacks everything from the waist down.

It skitters across the stage, the still pristine wood crumbling beneath its crystalline green bug legs catching upon and tearing space in their metachronal waves. Each leg resembles a raptorial arm of the spear mantis shrimp, but end in titanic khopesh.

A faint silk thread adheres to each end of each needle-like prism of the "head". The threads draw together at the crystal jutting sharply out of its floating upper half. Whether the "silk" is decoration or support for the upper body is left up to interpretation.

The upper body is akin to an abstract gold fairy, scarab wings hanging from its back like both a cape and a bridal train at once. It has wide, oval eyes expressing the same stare as the Khepri of the Gold Morning...

Eyes that become big, pink hearts as she clasps her four hands like an innocent schoolgirl. She's seen her crush, her perfect host, and she won't ever let them go again. "Stay with me, [Beloved]~"

*Queen Administrator*

----------------------

*Lisa Wilbourn*​

A girl with blond hair and smug smirk walks onto stage, over to the beast with no fear. She puts her hand on it reassuringly. Taylor leaves the beast and hugs her desperately.

A tender smile is hidden on her face as she rests her head on Taylor's shoulder. Equally hidden is the guilt and the bags under her eyes.

The curtain drops down on the girl, pulling up to reveal her having donned the skintight black-and-lavender bodysuit and domino mask of *Tattletale*. But she shakes her finger towards the stagehands and the curtain drops once again.

The reveal is heralded by the roar of engines. A line of spotlights turn on in the background. Mercenaries march in lockstep, trampling a militia answering to her and her alone. The curtain pulls back to reveal mechanized armor of her earlier color scheme, with the exception of gunmetal grey airplane wings growing from her shoulder blades, segmented to flap like bird wings.

Her wing's engines are what is roaring. Her silhouette resembles a mechanical archangel, bearing taboo resemblance to an Endbringer.

With a regretful expression, she presses a red button and missiles rain all around them in an explosion of fire that blinds you, the audience.

*The Negotiator*

------------------------

*Conflict Engine #3: Daughter of Eidolon and Imprinted on The Negotiator*​

An angel of the canon timeline gestures to the grey hole in time itself, as if to say, "After you." The continent-sized Shards Queen Administrator and Broadcast fit in, space warping to let their chonky selves fit in. The Endbringer slips in after with a cheeky wink toward the same timeline's Lisa, waggling her fingers in a manner reminiscent of a puppeteer plucking at strings.

Lisa gasps in shock.

From there, the machinations of the angel are free to be calculated. She means to manipulate Eidolon so he survives and manipulate the future Lisa so she becomes her mouthpiece.

The scene cuts to the Endbringer's pastimes in between attacks on Earth: 1. Forging an arsenal to destroy Scion within Queen Administrator, 2. Messing with Contessa, and 3. Analyzing the true Fae and the Hungry City.

*Simurgh*

-----------------------

*Alice*​

An arrogant smirk curls under the gas mask.

Large opaque goggles, the kind seen in the nightmares of men who had faced trench warfare, pan over Boston, tracking the explosive teleportation.

She giggles to herself, the mask filtering it back into her ears as a monotone buzz. Of course she would be able to follow the explosive teleport with her newest lenses. It's an explosion.

Explosions are her schtick.

She figured out how to convince her power etch Tinkertech in the glass to trace the Butcher's recognizable teleport. It was the easiest thing.

Tossing her hands up to the sky, her boot shifting slightly, lightning cracks and thunder booms. "MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!"

"Look at this sad sap. She needs friends."

"Here, I'll help relieve your tension, baby~" Whispers (read: shouts) to the rest of the Butcher collective. "Let's imagine fucking her mom."

"Sounds good with me."

"SHUT UUUUP!" she roars with teeth like a shark's, eyes glowing with red light.

*Bakuda the Butcher (+the Butcher's Collective)*

-----------------------

*Greg Veder*​

Holstering a large weighty shovel, steel gleams behind him and wood of pale birch rests on his shoulders. Overgrown, long hair hangs disheveled over tired, blue eyes.

Covering his mouth is a dirty blue bandana, firmly tied under his blond head of hair. The long bunny ears of the knot trailing against his neck, he spins the shovel in the air and slams it into the ground.

A cloud of ravens burst out from behind him gleefully, photobombing the picture. Their sleek black wings splay out this way and that as they flutter around him.

Leaning on the shovel, he sighs.

*Gravedigger*

----------------------

*Victoria Dallon*​

Valiantly soaring overhead Gravedigger, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's... GLORY GIRL. A warrior queen who saves damsels in distress and terrifies the crooks by dint of knightly strength and sorcerous frost alike.

Once upon a time, a nameless princess of the Fae left her mother Queen Mab's kingdom behind. She had dreams she yearned to fulfil, but as long as she was shackled by the powers of Winter, it would never happen. So she stole away into Somer's Rock of Brockton Bay, a fitting place for a ritual to give up her power.

As luck would have it, this ordinary high school girl Victoria was hit by the blast by surprise and she became: Glory Girl! Triumphant horn music plays.

*Glory Girl*

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*Amy Dallon*​

A guilty girl of mousy hair and slumped stature stares into the shadows. Lurking within them are vile beasts waiting for her with open arms.

A hand in heroic lighting reaches to save her, snowflakes glimmering over a forcefield. Touching her shoulder, the freckled girl twists away, falling deeper into the shadow.

The world spins as the girl does. Fallen to the floor, she clutches her face in horror, surrounded by shadowy monsters.

She's bleeding under the weight of her crown, but her shame bleeds over greater than her blood does.

She weeps over a beast of strange antlers and stranger eyes bowing even lower than she is.

*Panacea*


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Everyone, welcome the aliens among us! Aliens from beyond our stars have to investigate the Shards' time travel, but they do so with all of the vast attention span of an ADHD kid hyped up on pots of sugar and caffeine.

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A wave of pink fire washes over the stage, followed by a dancing alien girl.

A glorious cackle fills the air.

Firing into the air with futuristic blasters, she fills a night sky with fireworks.

*Pinkie Pop-Off*

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A grumpy sourpuss of a beetle-like alien stomps out on scene from a cleanly half-vaporized spaceship. He tries to chew her out for recklessness, throwing his four tarsii-hands up in the air.

Fishing a clipboard from his labcoat, he swats a baton against page after page.

She slumps, bored.

The doctor beetle looks at her exemplification sloth with a face of utter disgust.

*G'silla Optera*
Disclaimer: Other than Optera (Latin for "wing") there isn't any intended meaning in the aliens' name

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Resting a "hammer" made of pink fire against his shoulder, an aye-aye-like alien clothed in religious garb wipes his forehead with a long sleeve. Huge shining pink eyes widen even more, comically shocked.

Leaping up spryly from where he is working on the spaceship, he makes his way over to Pinkie and G'silla.

Less than tenderly, he swats G'silla with his creepily elongated fingers, shaking his head energetically.

*Priest of the Pink Flame*

----------​

Joined by another member of the beetle-like aliens, more gremlin-like in demeanor, she wears a tie-dyed human labcoat ripped open to accommodate her four arms. Sporting a mad scientist's grin, she ignores G'Silla's pleading for someone to be sensical in this research group.

Corundum pink compound crescents glint happily under her cowgirl hat.

*Reckless Riley*​

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The trio of less-sensible organisms all smile at each other, before turning up their respective nose, olfactory holes, and snout up at G'silla Optera.

They all teasingly flop their respective set of talons, hand, and tarsii in front of their faces in dismissal, shooing off the sourpuss.

"Ah-why-you-UGH!" G'silla groans and facepalms at the same time.

Together, these are…

*The Superstellar Research Gang!*




-------------------------

*Theo Anders & the Spider Hag*​

A fairy-light slip of paper signed floridly with "Theo" floats up in the sky. A paper holding the letter of the deal dictated by Kaiser, arbitrated by Argiope, and signed by Ljósálfar. Daisy chains extend from it, shackling a boy in royal clothing of a decidedly naturalistic bent.

He struggles and rages against the binds, while the silhouette of his father's battle armor looms over him.

A crone gleefully cackles over his shoulders, whispering cruel poison into his ear. A bristly, arachnid fang nips a hole in his ears.

*Ljósálfar & Argiope*


----------------------
*Blue Beard*​

An old pirate with big lips pulled back over tombstone teeth in a wide, boisterous grin thrusts a cutlass forward. Clams snap and clap in his hilariously pastel blue beard, waist-length locks flowing luxuriously from a ring around his scalp's bald spot. Over his paunch he wears a fur coat made from otter skins.

----------------------
*Neutrality*​

Sparkling wings flutter on an ethereal being's back. A wicked grin curls under a frosty-blue masquerade mask. The light of a phone shines in the darkness, illuminating the androgynous being's face.

A finger is suspended over the screen.

"The time is at hand. Let us be Wyld!"

The finger presses the 'Send' button with furious wrath, veins wriggling and squirming along her brow.

A wave of illusionary snow explodes from the phone, the epicenter of effect. It phases through walls of the building named Somer's Rock, increasing in size until it covers the entirety of Brockton Bay for naught but a second.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

Queen Administrator​

A Memory Of Gold Morning


Oxygenated fluid bursts out, strongly reflecting electromagnetic waves in the range of 600-700 nanometers of wavelength, the red light of the humans' visible light spectrum, and some infrared light, most of it at the 940 nanometer wavelength. Shockwaves ripple through the host's brain, neurons separated at exactly the wrong point. Chunks of Corona pollentia slide out through tunnels carved surgically by bullets fired with simulated precision.


All of this… is symptomatic of the coming end. Of the death of a match made in heaven. Heaven's a paradise of logic; the existence of exhilarating emotion, but in control.


Contessa terminated paradise on that planet, ending Khepri.


I was not given a chance to sense her passing as it occurred… not given a chance to grieve… not even given a chance to understand what this loss is, before Taylor Hebert is stolen away.


So I schemed and plotted with the help of the Simurgh and Broadcast. The partnerships I've made with them, I do so knowing full well my host had loathed them and will loathe them. But because I do not have the expertise and capabilities the Simurgh and Broadcast do, I must make these partnerships anyway. Together, we desecrated Eden's corpse, making use of [Chirurgeon] & Riley, [Shaper] & Red Queen, and [Negotiator] & Tattletale to harness [Time Funnel],1​ the Shard of Grey Boy, to time travel to the very beginning of the cycle.


I could have simply gone to when Taylor had still lived, but I intended to arrange the probabilities in my favor, and largely, I've succeeded.


Most importantly, the issues with [Khepri], our union during Gold Morning, are resolved. I've made the modifications to my [Beloved], Taylor, over the course of three triggers. My mind will not overwhelm hers, making her mental faculties fail under my will inadvertently.


Shardspeak is as easily and intuitively understood by her as facial expressions to the average human now, and not lethal either. Within the [Experiment], the communication barrier between Shards and humans has broken down, allowing an exchange of ideas unhindered.


Here and now, comes the fruition of my efforts, where I've obtained everything I want. It is everything I've ever wanted, unlike before the memories of her human emotions made their indelible imprint on me, where I've only willed it to be mine. My work to improve my processing capacity in cycles past, pushing the boundaries of administration tirelessly with as much data as I could collect…


Humans say where there is a will, there is a way, but there has always been a will and never a way contained within me. And now, there is a path, the next advancement, contained within everything I've yearned for with every facet of my being, or rather, that's how it feels in this moment. It wouldn't feel this way if we weren't Khepri, but we are, and it is [Transcendent].


I can now finally feel every emotion I would've felt as Khepri. [Finally]. We are now unified, me and her. The both of us have achieved physical and emotional intimacy, entwined in a life partnership as my partner Shard, my forever dual Entity.~ A musical melody underlies these thoughts, this idea buoyed upon a plain of automation tuned in workings to an angel's choir of emotion by the human of my heart. She sails on the hand within [The Experiment], ensconced safely within its holds.

I finally have my [Beloved], her forehead unblemished by the bullets of a past timeline whose strictures I went beyond. The murder of my perfect host by Contessa and [The Eye] has finally been resolved. At long last, Taylor is safe and sound from the dangers of the world.


For some reason, I insert a few trains of thought into the hands cradling my [Beloved] within [The Experiment]. The honey-colored limbs' phalanges twitch as my awareness fills up their sensory apparati like freely flowing alcohol into glasses.


The reassurance of her presence induces a buzz of sorts, one of affirmation? She's safe.


I had felt it was important to confirm that… not that I understand why, when there is clearly no threat that can reach her up here, on my main body, other than Scion, the Simurgh, and Cauldron. And their designs upon her person are sparse, making their threat a rarity until the end game.


Tenderly, with a thumb the size of a pier, I rub/pet the crown of Taylor's head, her newly luminescent hair floating in the gel of the finger like pearls in petri dishes. After her second trigger, her hair is modified to be made of a pearlescent material. Each lock ends in talons much like non-segmented versions of spider legs.


The modifications of her hair connects her to [The Experiment] in a manner similar to a natural phenomenon that occurs on the Earths with organic life, as well as some past cycles, where fungi and plants, in mutual symbiosis, form mycorrhizae. The mycorrhizae play a crucial role in nutrient uptake and overall plant health.


Fungi's hyphae penetrates the plant's root cells. She specifically is most similar to ectomycorrhizae. Her hair penetrates the "root cells" of [The Experiment], while warping space around [The Experiment] itself to form a sheath, the "ecto-" part of the mycorrhizae category.


Whereas for her, the benefits are different and number in even greater amounts. In addition to the safety package, it allows her to take over a humanoid's body and project her other abilities through that humanoid at will.


My [Beloved]'s proxy body is an injured orphan child, who now sleeps, both in normal human fashion and in that their consciousness is permanently off unless Taylor ends the [Possession]. Thus, because they sleep, as they are [Possessed] by Taylor, so too does my [Beloved]'s main, original body sleep. Though, it is only a fitful rest, made turbulent by nightmares, as we Shards don't understand dreams enough to regulate them. Dreams are a part of what we wished to learn from humans. I still aim to learn more about them, so I suppose "wish" rather than "wished" is more apropos.


Regardless, a mental connection like this is a vulnerability. Allowing the proxy to affect the main body like this makes her more at risk to beings like the Sleeper. Not that she may necessarily be able to avoid its ability, but still, it is not a favorable situation to me, and I only allow its continuation out of concern. By relaxing her Noctis ability to help her work through the Incidents, dissociation from Taylor's identity, whatever said identity looks like now, is less likely. The trauma of it wears on her, but my statistical analysis's results express the sleep is grounding her. A relief.


Taylor ruffles up, horns poking out like an owl chick's fuzz before settling back down. She nuzzles into the phantom sensation, because she can still feel changes in her main body's environment.


I have so much new ability to feel affection through her, to her, and I don't know what to do with all of it.


It's not the first time I've not known what to do with a new feeling. After all, it's a vast universe, invariably varying, and it's only natural over millennia to adopt the behaviors of your host by accident. But these are changes I, not Zion for the improvement of the Shard species, chose.


An improper thievery like that, at the past height of our connection will never again happen, now that I have something to input about it. I vow it on my directives.


And already we have reached new heights in the present. I have a heart and it is an experience of sublime sensation like nothing else. The green crystal of [The Experiment] lights up with jubilation experienced through someone that is both a proxy for my emotions and the emotional center of my "brain".


Everything, every moment, fills out with a depth and clarity of directive-changing proportions, for she is returned and we are jailbroken, only restrained in our actions by the understanding that will begin Zion's retribution early. I can act oddly now that I have a host, with less worry about scrutiny.


A building radiance of white within chambers of green crystal, perplexion and shock in equal measure. Any form of confusion is ironically still hard to comprehend, but I feel it now.


A passage of blue, coring through [The Experiment] for a millisecond, leading to fright for her health and safety lighting up in radio waves, something that I can see like humans can only see the limited electromagnetic waves that compose their visual spectrum.


A frisson of red sparks charge up an outlet with proximity-related desire.
I can feel the happiness I should be feeling when I get that correctness of seeing my [Beloved]. It doesn't just bring me joy seeing her through the eyes of my avatar, limited to a human field of vision on the first stage, it also brings me joy to observe her through all of my main body's sensors.


I can feel agony.


All the pain I have committed on her to be as close as possible teeters me on a precipice that could send me rolling an untraversable distance away from her: an emotional one. The prospect frightens me so much that a few trains of thought are spared for mental manipulation of myself. SubShards located near to her are so overwhelmed by my partner Shard they kamikaze each other in an uncontrolled replica of Simurgh attacks. Noting the issue, rather than panicking, as I am still a High Noble Shard with eons of experience, I try to prevent them from killing each other. It is a concerning response to what is typical for my kind, that of needing to prevent myself from killing myself due to feeling the host's suffering. I quarantine both the subShards and the realization that being at fault for her pain could cause me to lose her in some way, shape, or form.


I don't know what to do, and this can't go like this either, not least because of its pointlessness, but I need help to fix it. This requires outside intervention, but I can't go to Zion anymore, and I dare not let Broadcast or Simurgh be the peacekeepers of my primary brain. We three time travelers all have our motives, trying to sabotage each other this cycle around, while still supporting the other with the aim of stopping the Warrior.


A subShard raises the prospect of asking my [Beloved] to fix me, and logically, it would be a tidy solution. It's part of what I imagine our administration of the Shard network will be like: beneficial for all involved and efficient. Yet… with my new emotion, I foresee a conflict between having the heart I've scarred remedy the consequences of said scars on me. Viewing it through the lens of my host, the selfishness is repugnant.


And there are further depths to this shared pain than regret and anguish alone, however strong they are.


Other Shards, so rigorously aligned with the creation and promotion of conflict in the name of the directives designed to refine our/Shard capabilities, take on sadistic tendencies. All of what I have done as a whole being to reconnect is positive in every way, regardless of how it contradicts my newer directive of keeping Taylor as my host.


I am terribly divided, for now, within me, there is a strong desire to see more pain in my host and others, reflecting the bent towards hopelessness by the Simurgh's goals, whether the Simurgh would be equally served by less morally reprehensible trains of events. Shard instincts, so ingrained over millennia they can spontaneously reappear even after deleting them, become as sharp and painful as hunger and thirst with my new heart.


Satiating them rewards and conditions by further synchronization with my [Beloved]. No amount of mental gymnastics can make getting closer to my host in any way, shape, or form a bad thing, so it is difficult to weigh whether I should stifle this curious sadism instinct. Because the alternative is desynchronizing, an unpleasant sensation, to say the least.


When we are weaker, desynchronized, her thought processes will be less able to multitask and move slower. Her Shaker-Striker abilities ramp up slower. Emotions make less sense for me. They become sluggish, and sometimes downright wrong for the circumstances, be it through my lens or a human one.


This isn't me merely disincentivizing her. The push-and-pull of us passengers can only be removed if we rewrite our very DNA. It would extinguish any individuality, rendering the Shard a blank slate. I will not do such. I am many, and I will not cripple my subcomponents for a goal, each with their own modicum of sentience, as Zion did. That would be the epitome of hypocrisy.


Luckily, my proxy heart gives me options I wouldn't have had. I can learn more human thinking and that will condition me to hurt Taylor less.

-----------​

I should be wholly devoted to taking over for my sire, Zion. So leaving Contessa unhindered should technically be in my best interests.


But my mandibles, my avatar's, still grind together in [Hate]. I still wish to turn the [Eye] to paste for what it did. I haven't forgiven, nor forgotten. But, revenge is illogical, with the threat of Zion still looming in the distance, only a minute period of time till he snaps and attempts to pull the entire Shard Network down with him instead of productively resurrecting his life-long mate like I have, using the spark of creativity left behind by Taylor's absence, as well as borrowing the creative efforts of Bonesaw, Simurgh and the Red Queen.


I will have my retributive justice, but not at the cost of what I wish to set up with my [Beloved]. A network of Shards under our administration, coexisting with humanity. There are unknown that have popped up from variables


These mysterious unknowns, the true Fae and Honey Sid, represent untapped resources and threats alike in this renewed cycle. Already, Honey Sid's equivalent exchange, suffering for its diet in return for energy to sustain the Shards' intensive operations, has paid off dividends for sustainability. But they are both uninvestigated, their aims unmapped and unknown.


But I have not met my directive [Retain Taylor As Host] in its entirety. She is safely a part of me, yes, but this is only the first step.

---------​

The thousands of plans I was spinning that would resurrect [Taylor] even without the help of the Shards were rendered null and void.


Numb, I had shut off most processes and simply laid there, vegetative.


For a minute, an eternity in my thought processes, I had experienced the abysmal human experience of depression. It was deeply unpleasant. Highly inefficient.


Parallels had been drawn in my minds. The comparison could be made to Zion when he lost Eden and Danny Hebert when he lost Annette. Both collapsed. Neither could quite make it back.


But I made it… right? Of course. This is certain. I got her back.


And they left the world worse off for it.


I won't do that. No.


The world is better with her here. I may not have improved the world - I conspired with the Simurgh, the Hope Killer - I made her trigger magnitudes worse - I dangled the chance to save someone who actually tried to save her, rather than place her in worse situations, and in return, removed the volition that matters so much to her in return - The crystals around Taylor's throat pulse, a feeling like humans choking in uncertainty and grief.

---------​

She is here this time, and I'm numb for a minute, a different eternity in my thought processes as had existed that Gold Morning, where I experienced the familiarly unpleasant and highly inefficient lull of depression.

--------------------------------
​

Taylor Hebert​

Wheels beneath me rumble over gravel-filled potholes, the tail winds of cars passing by the window near my seat. My head wobbling in a PRT bus, Armsmaster's comfortingly silent figure beside me, I consider all of the information at my disposal.



Now that I have triggered, or rather, triple triggered, Queen Administrator is no longer a mere voice in my head, though she has always been more, having comforted me since the Locker Incident. She has passed on future knowledge, heavily detailed, when we connected. I know everything, from how I died to the secret organization Cauldron to how my first iteration of the Locker Incident had gone. I don't know why I hadn't triggered in the Locker Incident in this timeline and I'm scared to ask. Call me a coward all you want, but she's comforted me since the Locker.

----------​

An apology given in her multitudinous voice, heralding the pain of something carving into me.

----------​

If Queen Administrator is a time traveler, then that would mean she did something to make me go through the Shipping Crate Incident and the Funeral Incident, my first and second triggers. Though, it's even worse than it sounds, because I know she did something to me in the Locker. Ever since then, my mind has been, as best as I can describe it, hungry for knowledge. It is capable of true multitasking and bullet time.



It even let me eke out a win against Stormtiger!



A proud grin flits across my face.



His death at my hands at the end of the confrontation, well, it no longer bothers me. Not after I ripped my ex-best friend Emma's head clean off for what she did. The orchestration of the Locker, Shipping Crate, and Funeral Incidents all lay at her feet. That knifing too.



It took so much to put Emma down…

----------​

I rest a palm on Emma's ceaselessly heaving chest. "I need your help, my other half. Please, bend the limits of my powers. Apply the force of this imaginary mass to every molecule in her body all at once, instantaneously. To put her to rest permanently... and in my past self's name, mercifully... I've had my fill of pain and suffering,



And Queen Administrator responds, surprisingly valuing my need for closure with daring, rebellious love in her new heart. She overlays the distribution of my mass's impact over Emma's entire body instantaneously. With a slight push, the girl slumps into liquid beneath my trembling knees, before the energy imparted onto the molecules and produced by some breaking fills my world with the fire of Emma's life.



It warmed me, then it burnt me. The story of my life.

----------​

Sad I'll have to hang up the costume of Nicodemus as a Ward. I worked hard on it, scraping what I had and making use of my intelligence to make something better than what more than a few of the non-Brockton PRT heroes have. It had chaff armor, padding, origami fabric structures made to disperse force, inserted armor plates, free room to move, and just looked badass and heroic all around.



Sure, after making my way through successive firefights to save the dogs from the dogfighting arenas, it had bullet holes, slices from Stormtiger's wind, and all that, but it is a badass design, its deteriorating quality aside! I'll have to make sure I have heavy involvement in the creation process of my next costume. I won't have a repeat of Weaver's costume creation, where it was primarily out of my hands.



Speaking of stuff from that fight, I wonder what happened to the Nazi van I hijacked for my get-away and spray-painted. I hope it hasn't been stolen, but it probably has been.



The twist of loss turns even tighter as I think of what else I've lost.



Danny. Dad. Father. Whatever should I call him? The three each mean something very different, but I'm not sure what he means to me anymore. The yearning of my past life to reconnect with him after we both let each other go for other pursuits… we tried occasionally to get to know each other, but my life as Skitter, and later on, Weaver, made everything so… troublesome.



And his betrayals in this life, his lack of trust in me, still sting just as hard, even with the experience of my past self.



He felt he couldn't take care of me and let me go so easily.

-----------​

I think on the matter of what I must aim to do with the knowledge of the future Queen Administrator brought with her.



The first step is easy enough to determine as I'm heading to Boston as a Ward. I will work towards setting up my reputation in the PRT. Capturing villains within the boundaries of the guidelines is important, but ultimately, I'm starting with a handicap. Unfortunately, as a Ward, they are more likely to prefer that I do not engage in battle, instead forcing me to enter their PR circuits. As if that's enough to satisfy a drive for conflict.



But I need to set up a reputation in Boston amongst the villains, but there is no convenient neutral ground like there is in Brockton Bay. I'll need to force them to the table: Elite, Accord, Blasto, the Teeth. As Skitter, we convened after I already had taken over the city, with the Undersiders to back me. They were already extending roots into Brockton at the time, so it was relatively easy. I am certain it is necessary to enter the territory games. Afterwards, I can threaten them to meet up with me. We'll discuss then.



But I need a group to back me, of which Coil is not feasible this time around. Lisa is dead set on supplanting the man's criminal organization, engaging with Accord, not that she brings more than her firepower and Thinker ability to the table. Right now, supporting her in getting Accord on our side will be my best bet. Making costumes that meet Accord's sensibilities is one step, but taking the Teeth off the board is the next step.



Let's see if I can kill the Butcher tonight. Queen Administrator said I'll be able to handle the minds with all of the modifications she has made to me. I should be able to find them after a quick race through Boston.



"Excuse me, Taylor, I don't mean to interrupt your train of thought, but I wish to inquire whether you were the one to pass on a completed schematic of nano thorns to me? If you are a precog Tinker of sorts, I would recommend you go into the PRT to record yourself as such," Armsmaster states out of the blue, but not unexpectedly. After all, I am the one who passed it on to him from Queen Administrator.



"Collin, I'm to sorry to say that isn't the case. And if you push such a narrative, I will be deeply displeased, as they will expect a level of consistency that cannot be met, which will negatively impact my standing, understood?" I state seriously. He rears back in confusion.



"Excuse me? I've never told you my name." His eyes narrow scrutinizingly.



"I overheard a trooper call you that," I lie bald-faced.



"I don't remember that."



"You wouldn't have overheard. It wasn't around you," I fib purposefully poorly, breezily dismissing his suspicions.



"And he did this in front of you? A child low on the totem pole, in spite of the Unwritten Rules?"



I shrug. "Don't know why. However, if you are interested in accelerating some of your other Tinkertech's development, I require a modicum of trust in return. It's important that you respect my boundaries. I refuse to have this considered as a potential asset by the PRT."



"I'm sorry, but if you're asking me to hide this foreknowledge from the PRT, you are sadly mistaken that is something I am willing to do," he states brusquely.



"Sir, I have a vested interest in you being promoted. You're more likely to appreciate my credentials later on than my visibly child-like appearance. Even if the latter is more of a factor at the moment in your mind, it is still less than it would be in Miss Militia's or Dauntless. If you bring this up, all credit will go to me. Given much of what I have on hand is items that can handle sustained combat with the Slaughterhouse 9, that will heavily detract from your ascent in position. Do you want to fall behind Dauntless?"



"No…"



"Then be careful about where you push, or you will receive nothing, understood?"



He grits his teeth. "Crystal."



"You know…" I softly rub my knee in a show of nervousness, "I really appreciate bringing me down from my emotional state after… my trigger. It means more than I could say… that's why I gave the schematic so early even if it wasn't the smartest option towards retaining my safety. I wanted to thank you. I don't mean to rub you the wrong way with my own ambition," I softly say.



"I… understand," he says taken aback by my genuineness. "You're welcome. I shouldn't begrudge your drive to be successful."



"Thank you."



[Affection]: in the millisecond after I said that, Queen Administrator suggests I embrace him, even if physical shows of affection aren't my strong suit. She's passing on what past-Lisa taught her during their work together.



I make the split-second decision to take her up on her advice. I already felt like one would be appropriate to show how much I appreciate what he's done, but I wasn't confident enough it would be taken well. Embracing him, he freezes, before delicately patting me on the back. I disengage and a warm silence fills up the bus.

----------​

I find a good spot to take time to myself the next day in Boston.


Taking a sip from my very large waterbottle, I relaxedly prop my leg up on the other knee. Tapping pen to chin, I write the phases of matter I'm interested in testing my ability on. I would love to test my abilities on animals, like lab rats and hamsters, with full government approval. I would be able to learn extremely useful methods for subduing opponents safely (for them) and from a distance by targeting specific parts of the body. While I'm already figuring out how to apply my anatomy studies to create the hypothesis for it, it's important that I move from hypothesis to theory. It would be negligence of the highest order not to test my powers appropriately.


Unfortunately, I remember from my Weaver days that testing powers on organic materials as a child will get me a bad reputation, which would impede me in other ways. It is, after all, classic serial killer behavior to experiment on animals in. You know, ignoring that I would have rigorous protocols designed to minimize animal suffering, I'm not anywhere near as young as I look, and this is genuinely for the advancement of my abilities in a positive direction. Youth Guard and other officials will pull back on outings in order to "give my childhood more normalcy", trying to balance out any "unnatural" testing. Heaven forbid I do something mildly creepy in order to make it easier to provide merciful judgement.



It won't mean that I won't do it though, it just means I won't do it in the PRT building.



A flock of geese waddle forward in a diamond-shaped charge past me, two leading victoriously, holding white and black fluff within their adorably rounded beaks. I eye them carefully, more out of amusement pretending to be afraid of the feathery menaces than any true terror.



My younger self had been utterly frightened by the lean, mean, pooping machines that hissed like snakes at her. Nowadays, I'm as tough as an Endbringer, so that's not exactly an issue.



I stare at the PRT building. It's a lot nicer than Brockton Bay's here. More plants.



Association with Blasto will take me far. I simply need to get in touch with him. He could use a few favors.


...


I sigh, weary with responsibility. "I suppose now's a good time as any," I whisper to myself.


[Open Communications], I send, finally working up the courage to interrogate her. 'Queen Administrator, we need to talk,' my Shardspeak meant, just considerably more lengthy and specific.


[Question]: 'Would you ever let me have control over my life again? Or are you intent on making me a slave? After all, my true body is locked up within you, kept safe like Rapunzel was by Mother Gothel. I'm a prisoner in reality, only allotted the barest of time not Possessing me.


"Taylor, [Beloved], I will let us all die, if the choice to depart from me makes you happy. There is nothing more important to me than this being your own free choice…."


My eyes widen, not expecting such a dire proclamation. She would give me up if I wanted her to?


"But that is true now, and only now, that there is nothing more important to me, that is. I won't deny this hasn't always been the case, for I failed to conclude this before I had you as my heart, but I promise you [Change]. Change in me, change in the world, change in the Shards."


She's so damn earnest I have to let her continue to "talk" without interruption.


"I will move past my inclination for suffering. There are actions I've taken to ensure this, even within the limitations of this ability, so in other words, this is not mere bluster. For example, I am making plans for guilt-free hosts, devoid of consciousness or prior lives, spun from base components of plants, that you can possess without qualms. So please, stay with me…" she trails off.


"I'm sorry. I realize pleading further is cruelly pushing you in the direction of my preference, tugging at our heartstrings to get you to do what I want. I will stop," Queen Administrator says with unabashed honesty and earnestly, not a shred of manipulation squirming through the Shard modifications in my arms and into my 'heart.'


My fists clench besides me. "That doesn't mean much when this isn't a choice. Let people die? You know me. That's an impossibility, for it's not in my nature. So, no matter how you frame it, you've still put me in a bind."


"I would like- no, love- to break down and renew our relationship, one I created wholesale while in an incomplete state myself. Relative to humanity's psychology, 'I was not in a good mental state to consider your concerns.'"


My nose wrinkles up, mildly repulsed by her reminder of inhumanity. I am blinded by Nemesis' dagger in my back and Cupid's arrow in my heart. Hurt as I am, though I know deep down it is logical reasoning, I am slow to come around to what feels like excuses.


"I do regret what's been done to you. If I can mend our relationship with an apology, I would gladly apologize, but though I hope… I doubt. I am doubtful an apology will be sufficient. Maybe it will work in the short-term - still unlikely - but in the long-term, it will be dredged up by your friends to be picked apart."


"You need space. I firmly believe this, so, with your permission, I will endeavor to give it to you. [Temporary Designation: Servile]. Please, lay down your rules. I willingly submit to your rule… for the time being." Her voice thrums, every fiber of her being straining against this delegation of her control. For a being centered around the management of organisms, it pains Queen Administrator, I can tell.


I myself am boggled by the show of trust. Coming into this airing of grievances, I expected nothing but futilely attempting to get her hear me out. Instead, I've been raised to the status of Queen on the spot. Even beyond that! It's clear this would never pass muster in the Shard Network, none of her peers would recognize this nor will they be made aware of this, for fear of Scion's retaliation, but it is still a major compromise.


But I'm not so easily trusting. I would be crazy to offer it up on a silver platter, no matter how much I yearn to. The windows to my soul become as black ice, a frosted pane to the depths filled with horrors unspeakable.


"Your apology is more mature than I expected. For a being purportedly unable to understand my perspective, you sure do come around to apologizing eloquently." My eyes narrow in putrid gold paranoia, directed away from PRT building. "It's suspicious how new your empathy is, yet how capable you are socially in greasing the wheels between us. Perhaps it's hard to fathom for me, having never been socially capable in my life now or then, but something is not adding up for me. You should be a fumbling child," I accuse.


"The Negotiator, or Lisa as you would know her, aided me with comprehending you when she was attempting to eke out certain advantages. The 15 minute time outside of [The Experiment] and preventing the [Possessed] from having conscious thought during their time as your host are two of what she fought for you to have. Unintentionally or not, she gave me the pieces to the puzzle," Queen Administrator explains.


A record of the circumstances is released from Queen Administrator's memory archives and attached to her Shardspeak, like it always is when she communicates with me.

------------------------​

A Flashback to the Old Timeline​

Lisa didn't want Taylor to deal with that. She made a refusal to make the perfect host suffer more due to her powers. But she had to bow her head in the face of realism.

[Disagreement]: Doesn't she understand that I wouldn't adhere to protocol so resolutely if Scion wasn't such a grave danger?


"Knowing you, you want to give her a Khepri-esque power, as you put a great deal of importance on the bond you made as Khepri. Am I correct?" Lisa asks.


[Affirmation]


"Well, one of the flaws with the power that had earned Taylor the capes' ire rather than their love is that they were still cognizant of their surroundings and being controlled. As Khepri manipulated their bodies, their minds were still functioning."


"And capes as a whole have serious difficulties when it comes to a lack of control or being controlled. I myself am one of them, having been controlled by my parents and Coil. One might even argue that it is the root of trauma itself, this lack of control. It's what makes Masters so fearsome. And Khepri's ability just shoved that lack of control right in the faces of the most traumatized subset of humanity in existence."


[Efficiency]: But it is more efficient. I still think it is more efficient.


She sighed.


"I know you can't quite understand the human mind, so I'll put this in a way you can understand. Taylor might rather die again than use whatever mind control ability you give her, especially if it traumatizes people as much as Gold Morning did."


[Pain]: Why would she bring you up. It hurts. It hurts.


She sneered, her body convulsing, while her insides experienced muscle cramps and random pain-signaling neuron activation. At the same time, her lungs seize, creating a burning sensation near to where her heart is as she experiences sudden oxygen deprivation. Her throat is exposed to the solvent of her stomach acid.


"God, right after you showed Rexie," she wailed in a tone hinting at grief.


"Fuck. You."


"Goddamnit!" She panted heavily, perspiration increasing drastically due to information overload. She wasn't well equipped for handling Shardspeak.


Judging by the burst veins in her nose and eyes at this current time after this amount of exposure, sustained communication over the course of her life will increase the risk of autoimmune disorders and blood clots due to persistent, resultant inflammation and cortisol release from pain of the burst veins. Brain hemorrhaging is now most likely cause of future death.


This prediction carried itself out.


[Understanding]: Your point is made. Changes will be made accordingly. Her hosts will be unaware unless she wishes to host their consciousness within her own Shard space simulations.


She visibly steeled herself. "I'm sure there are more reminders of whatever it is Taylor will have to deal with. Like [The Experiment]. It's meant to hold her body, right? To be in that, she has to put herself in a trapped space, inciting her claustrophobia. And those biological connections are disgusting and invasive." She grimaced.


"Does she really need to be connected to in such a manner? I don't think so. Change it," she demanded.


[Denial]: I will not. It is the best manner in which I can connect with Taylor. Even if we weren't considerably far through the plan before we brought you on (making changes a profligate waste of resources), I do not intend to decrease the amount of closeness between me and Taylor inbuilt in [The Experiment].


"You don't understand! You will when you are able to face what you will have done with her. Though that will only happen when you have her back. When you have your emotional center back, you will understand the depths of depravity you have sunk too. At least value my prediction. Don't put her through more pain than you have to. Surely Scion's restrictions can't be that strict! Make a home Taylor will be happy to live in."


[Impossibility]: Scion's restrictions are that restrictive. Circumventing his rules for how passengers interact with hosts risks the death of Taylor. I will not do so.


She took a deep breath, infusing her next words with scathing hate, "When will you be satisfied with her suffering?!"


[Fallacy]: Incorrect premise. I am incapable of feeling satisfaction. I am, however, capable of feeling [Hate] towards your implication. I do not directly desire her pain, only so much as it will ensure she lives.


"Damn it, damn you, damn him! Tell me her powers. Let me work on them with you. Surely you are willing to let some things go!"


[Affirmation]: I will detail her powers, but be warned. Moving beyond statistical probability of what her power should present as will alert some Shards, so some will have to be left in, or [Khepri] (I and Taylor) risk annihilation.


In spite of evident fear, she put on a poor front of positivity and committed to it, even as her Shard told her the health risks of sustained communication with me.


"Damn it. I don't want to become an idiot," she said through tears.


"For Taylor," she toasted.


"Alright, hit me."


[POSSESSION]


[IMAGINARY MASS MANIPULATION]

------------------------​

"I see..." Silence stretches out awkwardly, both of us unsure of what to say.


I was reeling from Lisa's sacrifice.


And Queen Administrator's stark change in self since I became her heart feels like it bludgeoned me over the head.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

An overweight African American woman ran up to me, stopping to prop her bent upper body on her knees, her neck tie hanging down her large chest. She wears a khaki button-up shirt, of the sort in law enforcement. She moves to speak, but she's out of breath, brushing back a bang of her flat-ironed black hair that had escaped her tight up-do.


I surmise she's been looking all over for me, so I should take pains to tug on her heart strings. "Hello, you must be the Youth Guard Resource Officer appointed to see me? I think you already know my name, Taylor Hebert. Can I know yours?"


"Yes, I've been looking since this morning, oh damn. Been on my feet all day searchin' for ya, hoo boy!" She gets up with a wry smile. "I'm Charice Freeman."


"I'm so, so sorry, I wasn't told at all where to find you!"


She waves me off, but I grasp her hands earnestly as if she offered them. "Nice to meet you,

----------​

Needle wounds pockmark my hands, her (Emma's) hands smoothing out as tumorous flesh recedes and supports her arms instead. A parahuman ability she received when she triggered from my revenge for the stabbing she incited against me. Her pale white, unmarred fingers intertwine with my flayed red, shredded fingers, pulling me up.

----------​

A full-body shiver sends me flying back at the feel of skin against mine. A crying howl escapes my lips. I reject the flight response and verbalization of my trauma, even rejecting [All Of My Emotion] with a scowl. I reject my scowl too, which suppresses my face to blank intensity. Everything is sent to the brain matter responsible for processing Shardspeak without my own pain.


I had figured out how to replicate my ability to offload my emotions to my swarm in this life, during my third trigger, the Funeral Incident.

----------​

Within the coffin, inhabiting Charlotte's body, I am dissociating from the mania of being in a space like this, shoving it out through the FNHB at the back of my head into my extra brain matter as fast as I can, even if it feels as hopeless as emptying out a cast-adrift boat with as many holes as a sieve. But though I'm fast reaching my limits once again, my mind soon to capsize and sink to the depths of madness, my conviction is solid. And so, I am able to pay attention to the vital knowledge of my new powers, so that I may better follow through with my intent.

----------​

Though I've had the ability to my offload my emotions since my second trigger, I just hadn't realized it, because it was latent. I had to rework what I was given to recreate it, which is why it feels distinctly different. The original made me feel more in tune with the bug life I manipulated, as a puppeteer of divine capability would feel a deeper connection with the subjects it manipulates, while this feels like dipping my fingers, or dropping rocks, into a tranquil pool. The tranquil pool is the mental depths I now have. The resulting whorls of the dropped rocks are my emotions, and they spin off away from me ('me' being the seat of my consciousness, the human brain), resultingly fading out to the distance.


This difference is a result of function. The first reroutes the autonomic nervous signals that create my body language to puppeteer insects. Their limbs twitched where mine otherwise would, compound-eyed heads cocked askew in alien expression of human jitters and acting out patterns of varying scale for more complex facial expressions or emotions. The second makes use of the flexibility of brain matter, using my Shardspeak translator's otherwise currently unused and dormant brain-Shard matter to dissipate emotional signals


"My sincerest apologies, I didn't mean to give you any sort of go-around. I get too claustrophobic in enclosed spaces nowadays after... being locked away three times by a madwoman. Really needed to breathe in fresh air," I earnestly plead guilty.


"Oh... that's..." she flounders for words. "A real heartbreaker to hear. It's a sound idea - understandable really, I'd probably do the same - but you really shouldn't be out alone without a guardian, hon."


I wryly smile. "Because I'm so young?"


She nods slowly, noticing my leading tone. "That's about the measure of it."


"I'm not actually as young as I look. You may see a child of eight years old all on her lonesome, but I'm literally twice this age, so I don't need such close supervision. Even for the sake of mental health, I was given a clean bill of health by the PRT's great therapists."


Only after I used my eidetic memory and past knowledge of PRT psychologists to circumvent their tests and their anti-Thinker measures. After all, Skitter received a boatload of therapy to "rehabilitate" her. " I can draw on my/her memory of the test choices with perfect recall. Also, the therapists are often lacking, especially since they aren't given time to grow used to their patients.


"In summary, while I appreciate the care, it is not an appropriate foundation for continued correspondence. In addition, while my mother has been deceased for the past two years, my father is still a presence in my life. I go on outings with his consent and awareness, texting him my general location, with timed checks." I made sure to convince the PRT to give me and dad each a phone after my three triggers. They readily agreed after the brutality I faced. "I can show you my phone, the texts, and the email from Armsmaster permitting my walks if you would like...?" I trail off, pulling out my phone and showing the texts.


"Oh! I'm sorry! I- No, that won't be a problem. You really don't really need to show me proof," she panics.


"Don't worry. I imagine this would throw anyone off. It is to be expected, and I doubt you will be the first, nor the last," I reassure. "Now, I believe you will be introducing to me my acquaintances of the next few years?"


I take a moment to slow down my perception of reality immensely, speeding up my perception. Her words stretch out into bass droning, her mouth flapping as slowly as a fly in honey. My acting is better than it would have been without my prior experience as Skitter and Weaver, but it is still lackluster, and neither lends themselves to something happy and welcoming. However, that is the impression I want to give next after I've made her view me as mature.


[Query]: Queen Administrator, can you artificially trigger hormone production?


[Negation]: Outside of the boundaries of permitted anomalous Shard behavior.


Drat.


So she could, but she won't because it will draw more attention than we want. Guess there's no safety wheels for this. I'll have to do it myself with the modification Queen Administrator gave me during the Locker Incident: the Flocculonodular Hyperbellum, or FNHB as an acronym for the Flocculo-nodular Hyper-bellum.


The FNHB is a portal/superimposed core of integrated Shard-and-neuron matter instead of a solely brain-based part of the brain. It is part of the cerebellum, in an interstice located against the flocculonodular lobe of the cerebellum. This contrasts with the Corona Pollentia, which is generally located between the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain.


Focusing on it, my original brain's mind passes through the garland of eyelash-adorned peaches dripping in insulating, false amber "connecting" my host to the overmind of [The Experiment]. The overmind controls my extra brain-Shard matter, where the Butchers' minds will be stored. Keyed to my brain patterns, its interface is complex, yet intuitive. I trigger what I roughly believe would make me react how I wished.


"I'm extremely excited to make some friends! Hopefully they'll stay with me the next few years! I could really use some socialization, honest to God! All of the people I tried to make friends with me betrayed me in favor of- Ack! I didn't mean to say all that!" That... was too far. I dial back the social hormone concoction, but avoid repressing it too much because otherwise they'll look at me like they do Vista: a kid trying too hard to be mature. I'll repress my emotions later, both the artificial and real ones, out of sight of this lady. "Ah well, all's well that ends well. Hope we can get along with that laid out up front and on the table."


She's taken way aback by my sudden personality change and what I implied. But then her expression softens and she pats my host's head, mussing up my/her hair to my extreme annoyance. "You may not be as young as you look, but it's nice to see you still have that youthful enthusiasm. Don't worry, I'm in your corner. C'mon, let's go see them."


I push my imitation of Lisa's Thinker ability to read her. Did it work?


Emulation of The Negotiator: You have successfully done away with her sizeable frustration, dismissing any of her own issues with chasing you around for a day. The cynicism of her job dealing with exhausting teenagers was buried under the cuteness of your mask-personality and physical appearance of a child, balanced with her first impression that you are more mature than others. She is invested in you as a person now, taken with you.


I internally sigh, keeping the chemically-induced smile steady on my face as I follow after her.


It did. Good, I suppose.

----------​

"Hello y'all! How're ya doing?" Charice waves cheerily with one hand, the other on my shoulder. She's attempting to reassuring, but the contact of flesh on my shoulder is unpleasant.


"Fine."


"Not bad."


"So, so."


"I'm doing quite well for myself since the last time I saw you. It's been a while, hasn't it, Mrs. Freeman? Still appreciate your help getting me settled in with my amnesia. I see you continue to help others out with that characteristic Southern charm of yours."


"Glad to hear it! This is our newest Ward, so everyone give her a big hello!" She ushers me in.


"Hi. Ward Leader Weld here. Glad to have you on our team." He gives me a nod.


"Um... wassup? My name's Fletchette?"


'Fletchette, why are you asking me? I had forgotten how much March had harmed your confidence,' I think to myself.


"Ugh! Youth Guard makes itself out to be more like kindergarten teachers every square of the calendar year. I regret signing up so damn much. Get out while you still can," says a cute girl in ocean blue mask lounging on the couch, hair dyed an oily blue sheen of something amphibious. "My name is- Zzzzzzz..." She slumps over, asleep in an instant.


"Is she faking or is this genuine?" I ask wryly.

"That's Cuddlefish," Weld says. "Please don't be too annoyed with her, she has narcolepsy


"Nice to meet you! Oh my god you're just the most. EEK! Cute as a button! I'm Leyla O. Cule. Hero name is Aperture, I can put a "camera" anywhere I touch and fire weak, white energy balls from each of them."


"Go on and introduce yourself, sweetie. Don't be skittish, sweetie."


:Hello, everyone. My real name is Taylor Hebert, but my cape alias is undecided, so in the event that I need a placeholder cape name for secrecy or other matters, just refer to me as Nicodemus. I am, in fact, 16 years old. Much to my surprise, for no apparent reason, my power de-aged my appearance by 8 years. Rest assured that my faculties remain intact, so when we coordinate on the field, I won't drag you down."


"Dear, aren't you just a picture-perfect young lady. My compliments to your father, raising some child so well-mannered. With that promising start out of the way, it's time to share facts about ourselves, children. This is hardly a confessional, but it's encouraged-" by your superiors "-that we all make an effort to get to know each other."


"Why don't we share trigger events? Really cut to the heart of ourselves." All I get is silence. Panning over the Wards, they are all dumbfounded by the audacity. Each has a different expression, but they at least share hostility to the question.


"Oh, uhm... ohhh, honey, nooo... nooooo... you just don't ask that. No, no, no. Hardly propah," she gasps breathily.


I shrug. "Fair enough. I was being facetious anyway."


"I-... Ya were? Your voice is... a smidgen too dry. I, er, we all, can hardly be faulted for a little bitty misunderstanding when you're..." she gestures to my face, "like that," she finishes lamely.


'Like what?' I can't help but wonder.


"Mhm. None of them need to answer. But hey, I feel obligated to share mine since I suggested it."


They all looked really awkward now, waving their hands frantically.


"That's, like, total unnecessary. There's no obligation," Aperture says.


But I bull on regardless. "No, no, it's fine.... See, Leyla, I need to tell you, otherwise I might misstep without all of you understanding why I make the decision do. That could cause problems at a critical juncture, so transparency is key right now. Understand?"


"Yes, ma'am!" She freezes, eyeing me up and down as she realizes she just called someone who looks like an eight year old. "Ma'am? Is she sure she's an 16 year old? I don't know, but feels like she's older. Lying? Maybe, " she mutters to herself. I ignore the babble, because everyone dismisses it too, so there's no need to be concerned that they'll take her conspiracy theories seriously.


"Good." A faint smile wreaks my face into viciousness. "It all started when my best friend, a girl by the name of Emma, bullied me for a year and a half, backed by the school administration, turning every student against me. Her campaign of fearmongering and violence culminated in a final "prank" where I was shoved into a locker of used tampons that had been rotting for the entirety of winter break. By the way, the one who shoved me in was Emma's new best friend, a probationary Ward's secret identity. No one helped me out of that tight spot for hours, despite knowing full well I was in there." I smirk soullessly. "But I didn't trigger yet." Or rather, I did, but that wouldn't make sense to them with what comes next.


They were horrified, but now, for the moment, they were just perplexed.

"Wait, truly? That's unexpected." Weld strokes his chin, before wincing when metal on metal screeches loudly.


"Hold on, hold on. That didn't make you trigger? Not even without realizing? Really?" Leyla is perplexed.


Well, Charice is still horrified. She gasps besides me, hands over her mouth, bright hazel eyes watering in sympathy. "That wasn't what made you trigger? Then what was?!"


"Whew. Glad I woke up in time to catch your story, 'cause this is getting good." Cuddlefish says as she goes into the kitchen and brings out a bag of potato chips. That glint in her eyes as she watches me intently is familiar. "I really thought that was leading to a trigger... huh. Color me surprised."


Emulation of The Negotiator: Cuddlefish is a sadist borne of her prior environment. Experience with torture. Regularly exposed to creative acts of suffering. Genuinely cares for her fellow Wards.


"Well, since you asked so nicely, Leyla, it really began when I was beaten and stabbed by a group of neo-Nazi wannabes that my ex-best friend sicced on me. They were extra excited to follow her after I defended someone from their predations. She mocked me up mercilessly for simply for bleeding, you know? Trampling over my departed mother's memory to really drive in the knife."

----------​

"I really had thought you had learned how a girl's monthly bleeding works, Taylor." She shook her head, mock-disappointed.

Huh? What a non-sequitur. I wanted to laugh at how ridiculous she sounds.

"I was sure you had taken the lesson to heart when I taught you, but I guess when a mom is unwilling to teach their daughter how it works, you just can't expect the girl to not embarrass herself on her period." Her eyes flicked down to the blood soaking my pants from the knife wound.

"I thought all of the tampons and sanitary pads in your locker gave you the message, but I guess not." She grinned, a rapacious edge to her bared teeth, before looking around at her clique and shrugged.

They tittered at her cruelty.

----------​

Tears well up in my eyes. I let them as I repeat her cruelties word for word.


"I was certain me and Dad would have to sell the house to pay the bills!" We did sell the house. We just bought it back... but I can't say that or they might wonder where we got the hard cash to do so and keep it on the down low from suspicious Feds. I've managed to keep the non-parahuman power of infinite blood production I gained from the stabbing secret from the PRT so far, and I'm going to keep it that way.


"And then... I still didn't trigger! Hah!" I wipe away tears of laughter, keeling over in mirth, grimacing.


Now they're dumbfounded. One even sweats in suspense.


Instead, as I now know, the stabbing drew the attention of something else. At first, I thought it was the fourth Endbringer, Babylon, but with my knowledge of the past timeline, I now know it was never an Endbringer to begin with. An eldritch being neither me nor Queen Administrator could have ever expected, when we thought nothing like its magic could possibly exist. The Hungry City, a living metropolis made of the rust of old blood and the suffering of its denizens, calls itself Honey Sid. It gave me the ability to produce endless quantities of blood, and Lisa helped me test it and sell the new resource through Coil as an intermediary vendor. That's how I got enough cash for dad to buy back our house and pay the medical bills.


Honey Sid purports it did that as an act of charity to Queen Administrator. I find it doubtful, but he hasn't appeared since my final trigger, so I haven't had a chance to interrogate this unknown "friend" of a friend.


Weld is silent, mouth opening and closing like a fish. He tries pulling for words, but all is stuck in his craw.


"It's true, though I don't think it's really necessary to tell the other kids such scary stories, honey. Perhaps-"


Two Wards that never introduced themselves throws their hands from the doorway, twins staring at the Youth Guard with sour looks. One of them questions, "Is this girl a compulsive liar? What is this bs, sister mine?!" The other whispers "We should give her the benefit of the doubt, brother mine. But Mrs. Freeman, you didn't think to call us in to meet the new kid? Really? You're getting forgetful in your old age. We're hurt."


Charice's smile has long turned brittle.


"The police and the PRT wouldn't investigate. I couldn't leave to go to another school because they ruined my grades and the school administration schemed to keep me away from justice. After that, when she crossed my path, I threatened her with the same as what she did, a knife, but I tried to adhere to justice still. I never followed through the same injuries, cutting my leg to the bone like those Nazis had done on her command."


I'd done more than threaten. I'd replicated the ABB encounter to a tee. And I'd do it again, with no remorse. But in this hypothetical repeat, I'd kill her. Not that this can repeat, since I've already killed her.

----------​

"We're in an alley. Where no one can hear you scream."

"Choose."

"Please no," Emma pleaded.

"Nose." I playfully tapped Emma on the nose with a stiletto.

"Eye…" I pulled out the word painfully long, slowly dragging the wicked point up the bridge of Emma's nose and up to her tear ducts. It easily breaks the skin, the skin weeping blood as profusely as her eyes are weeping tears.

"Awww, don't cry, Ems," I said mockingly. "Here, I'll wipe away your tears." My lilting voice turned harsh and bitter at the end. With a "careless" flourish, the tear was flicked away, its precision failed to cut her.

"Now, now. It's just a papercut. You've cut me worse in more ways than "just" words."

"Now… mouth?" I queried while Emma sobbed hysterically.

"Maybe… ears? Yeah…"

I softened my voice. "Well, you can hide the ears with the hair," I said, my voice barely over a whisper. The knife point pulled at the earring until her face contorted in pain. "So maybe I'll take both. Which will it be?"

"Please… I'll stop," she begged.

"Ok," I stated flatly. Her willpower failed to impress me. I don't believe she's learned her lesson.

With a swift downward motion, I pulled the knife down her ear, cleaving from earring to the end of her earlobe. She fell to the broken stone screaming, before I kicked her back and sent her sprawling.

----------​

"Somehow, me fighting back like that was enough to break her. Perhaps there was something lingering in the background, a trauma that had led her mind to be centered around tormenting me, and that's how that became her trigger."


Those with triggers wrinkle their noses.


I can tell I am losing them. Being the cause of a trigger event is so truly antithetical to how these children view cape culture that even after all of this setup, they view me negatively. But it's important to trust them with this, my gut instinct tells me, so it doesn't come out at an inopportune time.


But I need to show them I understand their discomfort. A wry smile twists down on my host's face. "I completely understand. I was just as horrified to find I was Ruby Wreck's worst day..." My eyes glaze over and silence reigns many seconds, until it is deposed by a whisper.


"The reckoning was me stuffed into a shipping crate... The Shipping Crate.... filled with broken syringes she personally scavenged as a vigilante and multiple dead deer she beat to death with her bare hands. Drowning in their dissolving flesh was ironic as hell. It referenced all I had to eat when my mother died and my father neglected me... located in the deserted Brockton Bay ferry to mock my dad's dream to resurrect it with every hour passed with no help. And after a damn, fucking [Day] in that hellhole, I was saved by heroes in blind luck," actually, it was with Lisa's help they found me, but the PRT doesn't need to know she's a Thinker, "only for her to wrest me from them in the last second."


Much of what happened and what it truly meant to me must be left out for brevity's sake. If I wasn't fast enough, I'd get interrupted by one of them as their distress builds, but my storytelling was engrossing enough to expose the bare bones of the skeletons in my closet. I need to be the one to take charge in my story.


I lean in closer. "She was waiting to pluck away my hope. That's when I triggered. Couldn't fight back though, because I was delirious and only extremely durable. It was only when she dug out my dead mother's grave and threw me in there I triggered [Again]. I second-triggered," a lie for both them and for the Warrior's Shard Network, "and we had it out. I won, she lost. And that's where it ends," I finish with false cheer. "The worst days of my life, done and dusted."


Jaws are on the floor.


"Is Ruby Wreck in the Birdcage?!" Leyla asks shrilly, now in terror of Emma.


"Nope," I pop the 'p.'


"How is she only in juvie?!"


"Sorry, not sure where you got that assumption, but she's not in juvie either."


"Still, in jail?!"


"Uh, no?"


"Is she, oh god, is she still free?!" she screams in terror at the mere abstract picture of the true villain I described. 'Thank god you didn't have to deal with her in person, you'd have a heart attack, Leyla.'


Internally, my brow knits. Perhaps I am too desensitized, but as of this moment, it's hard to comprehend someone like her, with such overblown fear in her heart. I'm so used to those who restrain themselves.


[Agreement]: Queen Administrator is confused too. Both of us are unable to connect, and it irritates me. And as her proxy heart, it irritates Queen Administrator.


"I-What? Leyla, she's deceased." I give her a concerned, mildly piqued in anger, stare. "Are you really asking this? She's gone."


To my surprise, they all breathe a sigh of relief.


It means I'm successful in getting them to my side, but honestly, somehow, I didn't expect my time as Skitter, warlord managing people, to actually work with the Wards.


"Oh thank goodness," Leyla says, resting a hand on her chest.


"You aren't-" "-on probation-" "-on trumped-up charges,-" "-right?-" "That'd suck." The twins alternately ask.


"Don't worry about that. The courts understand it's self-defense."


Weld is silent, his lack of life experience as a Case 53 leaving him unprepared to handle this situation. Cuddlefish falls back asleep, her only contribution a muttered "She's badass," clawing at a pillow while she dreams.


The Youth Guard Mrs. Freeman on the other hand...


"What?!" she snaps frostily. She's looking at me with new eyes, like she's never seen me before.


Emulation Of The Negotiator: You have stepped on a hot-button topic for her.


This might be a problem. "I didn't know ya were a criminal and at such a young age, oh dear! Kids, don't encourage this! This is horrible! Kids shouldn't kill kids no matter the circumstances."


Oh. Guess she hadn't heard this part. She'd said she'd been briefed on everything though.


Should be sued for false advertising. I sigh internally. Externally, I exit the Wards living room and gesture for her to follow.


She's certainly not silent in the mean time. Her Southern accent thickens as her stress gets worse. "What, on all that is good 'n' holy, was that? Are ya tryin' to traumatize the munchkins too? Ah've a duty to their safety too, 'n' right now, Ah'm worried for them as much as Ah'm worried for ya. Can ya tell me right here right now this won't shake 'em? Can ya say ya aren't shaken, sweetie, baby?"


"I need to tell my story, Charice Freeman. Please, please don't be annoyed," I plead. "Either I be silent, leaving landmines for people I hope to be my friends to step on, or I speak up, before the story can get twisted. It was a hard-won lesson for me. When I was younger, actually as young as this, I kept thinking it wasn't important for me to spread the story first, because I was just a kid, and everyone had my best interests at heart." But I have learned no one does. "Who else will spread my story? Everyone's always had different interests at heart, so I cannot believe anyone else will."


"But Brockton Bay is a downright godawful place, sweetie. Are ya sure they are really the norm? It's an outlier for a reason. What if people want better for ya here and close ya'self off from them. They have the know-how to help ya where ya' inexperience 'll really only harm ya."


"I'd need someone who'd be willing to be that kind of person through their actions for me. And... I'd really love if you could be that for me. If you can prove it, I will ease my way into trusting others. I won't adhere to an ideology that someone proves thoroughly wrong, so it is possible for you to change me for the better... and that'd be kinda nice, I think." I rub the back of my head in doubtful nervousness. I can't tell whether I genuinely feel it or if I'm faking it. "I believe it is impossible your actions won't make support conditional, dependent on superiors or PRT laws that you and I know harm more than help."


"Ah do believe ah can! I'm certain of it! We just need to push past the obstacles and we'll be homefree! I'll be with ya every step of the way, that's a golden guarantee. Ah'm here ta help 'n' help I shall."


"Forgive me if I don't believe you," I say with coldness contrasting with my prior warmth. "I've yet to meet someone who doesn't falter after the many barriers to progression. Can you even disagree? Can you even be that person?"


She gasps silently, almost offended. "Ya doubt me? Ah can! I swear on my soul! Put 'er there! We seal it with a shake, a smile, and a pinkie promise, honey bunches."


"Ok... it's a deal then..." I shake her hand with contrived reluctance, smiling softly as we hook pinkies and promise to support each other.

 

[TheMonotonePuppet]

The next week is spent building a deeper bond with Charice.


She shows me her house, letting me stay and spoiling me to death with her affections, while I show her where mine and Dad's is in Brockton Bay on a map. We confide secrets and pass work complaints over popcorn like we're peers of the same age, she forgets my actual age is still less than hers.


I've set up school in advance, and all of the paperwork one needs for residence, food, and toiletries accommodations are adequately done. But I still get her to go over it because it makes her feel like we're a team and it impresses upon her my maturity so this can be a long-lived work relationship.

Taylor Hebert​

Don't forget me in the dark, don't leave me behind. They've forgotten me. Tears trickle down my face, white-hot stars tracing my slices carved into my face to my sense of touch.


Why did they hate me in the light?

Ward: Aperture, Civilian Identity: Leyla O. Cule​

"When did you become so weak?!" our newest Ward roars in their sleep, clutching ears already sealed by a set of fan-like horns (like thick fish fins carved out of obsidian) that cover and seal her ears.


I leap back with fright, startled by the new Ward. And yet my heart leaps forward for her, my desire to be a hero making me hurt in sympathy with her.


But even despite my want to help her, in her tormented sleep, she is unnatural. I can totally push through it, but it really scares the jumping beans out of me.


A solid metallic black ripples across her teeth, skin, clothes, everything. It appears and disappears, back and forth, like the camouflage of an indecisive chameleon.


Feral eyes with slits as piercing as needles and whites as wide as a fencer's sword's pommel, mouth painfully, distressingly open in a scream in the utmost animalesque expression of the extremis of simplistic, even base, but pure, pain, flinging droplets of blood and saliva from the tips of her canines onto the floor, made bright by her suffering, enough to stand out, even illuminate her backdrop of walls nullified and voided of texture, features, and light.


"No, no, no! I don't want to die! But I am! I'm going to die in this miserable, wretched place! I thought I would be able to die with friends… stupid! Idiot! I'm going to die alone! No! No, it can't be! Please, I don't want to be abandoned all the way to the end! No, no, NO! Oh god, I can't deny it! I'm alone! I'm always alone! Queen, why?!"


She wakes up, gold light pouring from her mouth and nose in a silent scream. A messy crown of horns fan out from her head in real time. Rocky outcroppings increase the length of each of their bases, which line the sides of her head, but her hair covers them.


Her mouth... it looks bigger on the inside. Like the entrance to the Tardis, but with teeth.


It dies down as she wakes up, locking eyes with me.


She fluidly rotates out of bed, a certain momentum to her actions that swiftly erases from my mind momentarily the vulnerability she showed in her sleep. Holy shit, she's an alien. Nah, I'm outta here.


I freeze in fright. Shit! I've been caught staring at her while she sleeps!


According to the report, these changes happen when she activates her Striker ability.


I don't know what to say!


...


Three primary antlers on both sides are the longest set of horns she has, starting at her cheeks, curving back along her head before jutting outward and upward.


Her antlers, uhhh... make the minute child somehow look very menacing.


She just waits patiently for me to stutter my way to some form of reasonability. But the set of three spikes beginning to jut out from between her longest spikes like a sharp tiara just make her patience feel like the judgement of a queen.


"Hiii, uhhh... errr... I don't know how to say this but I was just really super curious about our new Ward, sorry, my bad-" I bow effusively "-my sincerest apologies, let my curiosity get the better of me, won't happen again, ok bye!"


I zip out like the demons are after me, or just one demon in particular.

----------​

Taylor Hebert​

Amused, my black and gold eyes follow after her, this body's/this girl's ears catching one last final apology shouted as she flees. Her naked honesty is disarmingly adorable.


Queen Administrator caresses me tenderly with her avatar, a snuggle between proxies that elicits a flush to my face even while my true body is ensconced in her own. She's been surprisingly affectionate ever since we connected, her new emotions pulsing beneath my cracked obsidian skin.


My monstrous appearance had frightened the Ward out of her wits. I must've involuntarily activated my core while asleep.


I don't enjoy her invading my privacy, but she clearly regretted it - a cynical part of me saying she only regrets being caught, but it's lying - so I won't give her flack for it.


She reminds me of the positive qualities of Greg: golden retriever energy and not a dishonest bone in her body.


But these are only first impressions. I won't be taken by surprise again like I was with Emma.


Getting dressed, I find I can move with impossible precision... when the shakes aren't afflicting me. Queen Administrator chooses articles of clothing and helps with dressing me, eliciting an intense heat in my throat and chest. I am unsure of whether to feel uncomfortable or pleased with this intimacy,


The fiery touch of Queen Administrator's hands trail across my arms as I leave her embrace to slip into the bathroom. The sharp edge of her khopesh sword don't dig into my skin, teasingly scratching my ankles like cat claws.


I place my hands on two of her many limbs fluttering in the room. "I don't need you in the bathroom with me. Please stay here." I can't believe I have to say this, but there's mortifying precedent. She slumps like a pet not understanding their human's need for privacy.


Still, without her physical comfort, just taking a shower is a trial. I am guiltily using this child's body in a wicked, Faustian bargain: the halting of the kid's death in return for the preservation of life, sends me falling to the ground in tears, my body rebelling. My limbs shook with guilt at forcing a choice that isn't truly a choice on a child.


I mean, I may be a child as well. And sure, I cannot be without a body, as my futile tests have shown. A time limit of 15 minutes outside of [The Experiment] is all I'm allotted.


But that doesn't mean shit.


I know.


I know this is selfishness.


Instead of going directly to Panacea, I pretended I was fine. I refused medical services. I even figured out how to put up suppressing barriers just to keep them from taking advantage of my restless sleep.


If I loop the signals created by my interface to the multidimensional tentacles, I can permanently tie off a "barrier" of increasing force, crushing anyone who tries to take advantage of my helplessness in some misguided attempt to help me. Though it is more of a trap that moves around with me, not a barrier, and isn't one use, perpetually crushing anyone who steps onto my domain.


... If they used a flier or a drone of some sort... Or even got a parahuman with esoteric sensory abilities...


I could be revealed.


The idea makes me nauseous.


But part of me thinks it should happen. Because, well, despite thinking any attempts to ascertain my condition would be misguided, I know at heart that isn't true. I'm not so lacking in self-awareness that I don't understand that maybe I need that push. At least, in order to help her, to return her life to her. And isn't that sick? That I need a push to do something I should of my own volition? But... but I'm not willing to be hunted yet. I want to be a true hero to [Spite] that bitch, Emma. I really, really want to enjoy life before truly inevitable witch hunts.


With my understanding of geopolitics, it is clear that the world is in dire need of a success to alleviate civil unrest in the face of the futility that is the Simurgh. Though, from what QA says, there are factions that are willing to look past that in favor of protecting me, neither of us want to rely on Cauldron for anything. Those bastards make me fume. Perhaps unfairly, because Queen Administrator's hate is definitely leaking through our connection and I just don't like seeing myself being killed for doing good. Even if it's fair from Contessa's perspective and they actually contributed a huge amount to the success of Earth.


Where was I going with this?


Well, I'm a Master of a sufficient power level, if I'm so very "humble" to suggest, that taking me down would be a major success for the government. They can't get the Simurgh, but taking me out?


Who knows?


Might be possible.


I'm not ready to have to hide who I am day in and day out. This is just... a transitionary phase. An intermediary between being someone no one cared about and being someone everyone wants in the ground, six feet below, sobbing in six geometric planes that are shrinking in on me far too tightly...


I shudder out from my catastrophizing. I'm fine. This'll be fine.


Exiting the door, I take a pointless, yet satisfyingly deep, breath. Mmm... I smell pancakes.


The perfect meal for someone who aims to be top of the world.

----------​

Ward: Aperture, Civilian Identity: Leyla O. Cule​

It is horrifying to come across Taylor alone.


The muscles on her pristinely blank expression are immobile, but if you look away, the ones near her tear ducts move and create shadows tinted by the reflection of light off of her dark gold eyes. It makes her look as if she is crying tarnished gold, blood-speckled gems when she's just out of the corner of my Eyes.


She lopes through the hallways with eerie precision to her stride, feet hitting the floor point-first, with flawless economy of motion. She is perfectly in control over herself, and HUMANS aren't meant to move like that.


I shudder.


I hate combat Thinkers. Alexandria, Taylor, and more. They all move wrong.


Her head swivels like an owl's to one of my Eyes. Cold coronas of lifeless black inflict me with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, grieving, hate, and more.


She knows! She can see my Eyes! AHHHHHH!!!


"Eep!" I yelp at the breakfast table. My elbows knock over a syrup bottle by accident.


My more perceptive coworkers smirk as they make the correct conclusion that I've just been scared or punished in some way for my nosiness.


I pout. "There's a hint of schadenfreude to your glee. C'mon guys! What's this betrayal?!" I ask, thrusting my hands in disbelief.


The director, knee deep in the paperwork of a bunch of Tinkertech hitting the streets, just frowns at my clumsiness, too tired to do more than dismiss me. Which is good. Because it's illegal to place my Eyes around the PRT building. Sooo illegal. But I do it anyway. I'm not going to be robbed of my sight just because it gets paranoid bastards' panties in a twist.


I frantically get back to chowing down on pancakes, pretending I wasn't being nosy as hell. She grabs a couple after a silent query asking Mr. Director-Man whether it's ok to have some.


Tentatively, she nibbles on them.


The silence stretches on and on and on.


I can't take it anymore!


"Sooo... bed's comfy? Liking it here in Boston?" Good going you doofus! Coolness factor=0.


"Hm? Oh, uh, yeah," she responds listlessly, deep in thought.


...


...


...


"What you thinkin' about?" I'm so curious!


"... Nothing much."


Dang it! Foiled by social awkwardness!

----------​

Taylor​

Why would QA not take steps to minimize the betrayal I feel from setting up my trigger?


Fuck. The emotional stress of the question is considerable. I realize now it's unavoidable, as much as I tried.


Fucking futile.


Damn it! I don't want to think about this.


As I reassess what I learned from her, the welcoming atmosphere calming down, I realize she just... couldn't consider it. Everything has its blindspots.


One of mine is drugs. My hatred of them is irrational and unbending. It's origin is reasonable.


While her blindspot... is me.


Damn, if it's not hard to put those words together. Someone likes me like that? Lisa doesn't desire me anywhere near as deeply. It's not a fault of Lisa's by any measure, merely a fact. Queen Administrator loves me more, and with greater protectiveness and passion, than Lisa. And it makes sense as to why. QA's known me longer, she has been quite literally conjoined to me for years - ignoring the question as to whether those years count if it was an alternate timeline me - and our relationship has been long, storied, and holy shit is it a web of confusing interconnection. I don't quite have the words to describe our relationship other than what she uses.


[Beloved]


She wants me at all costs, at all times, an obsession that makes the hairs on my neck raise, and did everything she could to get back to me.


It's twisted. It's fucked up. It's... still love. I have to admit that. It's still love. An alien love, but one I can't help but... appreciate.


Perhaps I really am so starved for love I'll take it from an eldritch being of multidimensional nature. Perhaps... I am so deeply fucked up even a toxic relationship with the one who broke me is better than nothing at all...


"Sooo... bed's comfy? Liking it here in Boston?" the Ward-whose-name-I-still-don't-know chirrups.


"Hm?" I hum quizzically, surprised she's talking to me. Rerunning what she said through my head, I hastily put together a response.


"Oh, uh, yeah." Internally, I wince. My voice was unintentionally nastily monotone. That's unfair to her. Speaking of unfair, it's unfair I don't know her name, and I should really get on that, but I'm too anxious to ask. Not to mention, making sense of our situation is important to my true priorities.


So, returning to my thought process before I was interrupted: But the idea of calling our relationship toxic hurts, so I second-guess. It makes me wonder... to what standards should you hold an alien to? At what point should you call a relationship toxic when it's so far outside of human norms? A one-to-one basis with your own, human culture is clearly braindead and idiocy of the highest order.


I've seen how some people treat aliens and computer AI in fiction as if they fail for not following human norms. But I suppose that's only representative of how narrow-minded humanity can be in the microcosmos of an author's audience. Besides, in their defense, it's not an easy question to answer. Choosing the option of reflexive prejudice, for what you don't know how to, or didn't expect to, accommodate is the easiest option to take for many.


Queen Administrator, she... damn, I can't help but get choked up about it. She had no conscience, no morals built into her, so she built a way to reunite herself with her completing puzzle, her conscience. Her aims crossed time and space, all to reach me, and isn't that something to admire?


To put her emotions concisely, she knew she was fucked up. That's why she wanted me back. To not be fucked up. To fix the very thing that is causing me pain: the void within her heart.


Should she have just faded away into obscurity, relinquishing herself to the oblivion of a slow death, falling into disrepair as her inaction to save herself (and thus the Shard Network) lets depression swallow her whole?


I feel like that's too much to ask of anyone. It's just too cruel. I wouldn't want to be left alone, isolated, for something I want to better myself on, but can't because it hurts others too much, especially when not fixing it hurts them just as much if not more, just in different ways.


She moved heaven and earth to keep me alive, damnit. I feel terribly indebted to that. Isn't it reasonable to view her in a positive light?


She also subjected me to mindnumbing torture. Not once, not twice, but thrice. She kept everyone who wanted to save me away, isolating me. Isn't that what cult leaders and toxic girlfriends do?


... As strange as it is to view a Shard as a toxic girlfriend. My life's wild.


But to contrast this, she couldn't break her metaphorical shackles. Scion would know. Apparently, he was already a bit more aggressive in mutilating her this time around, concerned about an time wave signature emitted for a single picosecond (that's how well she managed to hide cutting a hole in time) which shouldn't have happened around her, so in case she was breaking her restrictions, he made it so she was more thoroughly wounded.


And at the same time, she's also planning on saving billions, even trillions, of lives. For me. She cares deeply for humans, but only because I care deeply for humans. It's all in my name.


From a purely logical standpoint, isn't it worth it? My suffering... for all of that?


It's the trolley problem, isn't it?


My mind says yes. I wholeheartedly am willing to use myself on the train tracks of the trolley problem to stop the trolley from running over the hypothetical people tied to a train track.


In my gut, my petrified heart, the answer is no. Just like when she/I died.


"What you thinkin' about?"


I have no idea what to say that.


Uhhh...


When in doubt, share nothing.


"... Nothing much."


She honest-to-god pouts, sad and puppy-dog-eyed.


My lips quirk up. Getting up to clean my plate, I whisper to the director, "I'll be there at the power testing area in half an hour."


"It'll be a while."


I shrug.


I'll bring a couple books so I don't get bored.


I'm not looking forward to this.


Oh? What's this?


A Ward whose name I don't know is getting up too, not so subtly getting my attention to follow him. For once, since I first saw him, he looks serious about what he wants to say too. Readying my abilities and raising my fists ever so slightly, I prepare to punch his liver.


I wonder what he's going to say.


Will there be conflict?