Shattered Harmonies (A Star Trek x Worm X-Over)

Ch. 1: Awakening

Disclaimer: I own neither Star Trek nor Worm.

Once, in a very different time and on a very different Earth, in a city called Brockton Bay, there lived a girl. Taylor Hebert. She was, by all appearances, a typical teenager; for all that she grew up in a world of superheroes and super-villains. Compared to that, she never thought herself anything special.

Now, to the discriminate reader, I suppose that little detail looks like nothing more than fantasy. Superheroes, you may ask? Ludicrous; there's no such thing. Yet they existed, even if no records and only a scant few memories of those times remain. And the same can be said about that girl, Taylor Hebert. She has neither birth certificate nor High School Records. Moreover, if you were to ask Daniel Hebert about a daughter he would tell you that he has never had a child, if he deigned tell you anything at all. And yet, like this world of monsters and superheroes she was born into, a girl named Taylor did exist.

This is her story: the story of an apparently normal girl who, betrayed and pushed to her breaking point, discovered far more about herself and about the universe than she, or anyone, ever could have imagined. This is my story, and it begins, oddly enough, with a locker.

A year ago I had been betrayed by one of the people I trusted most, and now I was trapped, alone, entombed within a locker filled to the brim with what could accurately be labeled health hazards. I was ensconced in darkness and filth, crouched over, my throat hoarse and my face wet with tears. I was overwhelmed with terror, overcome by anguish. I had called for help but no one came. It was quite probably the worst, most awful thing that had ever happened to me and I was unable to even think straight.

My cries went unanswered, and as the minutes stretched into hours, I had a vision. Two entities, incomprehensibly vast, dwarfing the planet below them, coiling around one another in an endless double helix.

A small fractal of my consciousness disagreed.

Tiny, it declared.

And they were beautiful, more beautiful than anything I had ever seen. Shimmering in the depths of space, vast and glorious and utterly inhuman, they danced. And as they circled each other, they discarded shimmering splinters of themselves through the space between them, filling the void with innumerable shooting stars. And I watched it all as it happened. It was so entrancing.

Inelegant.

I listened in on their communications, on a language that transcended words but was still so very limited. Inadequate. Unable to properly convey ideas on a proper scale or to effectively translate reality.

Destination. Agreement. Trajectory. Agreement.

And something within me expanded, as if my head was torn open and my brain forcibly inundated with knowledge. I instinctively knew at that moment: this is where Parahumans came from. This dance, this interchange of information. I was a Parahuman, and I was overwhelmed with awe.

And that small, deeper part of me rebelled. I felt myself changing, as I began to sense the insects which crawled over me, a thousand tiny minds interlocking with my own. I saw myself through a thousand pairs of eyes, heard myself, and felt myself through a thousand chitin bodies. And that disagreeable part of my consciousness raged.

Corruption! I was no longer myself, I was being taken over, turned into not-me. And somehow, even as I saw myself through a thousand eyes, found my mind expanding and merging with countless more, I knew that I was becoming less. I was being tarnished and degraded. I turned my attention back at the Entities, who dared to sully me, turn me into this Abomination. So tiny, so insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and yet they dare to act? To do this to me? To Us? I wasn't ready for this. It was too soon. I didn't know, couldn't know!

Too soon for what? Where were these thoughts even coming from?

And in that moment, I felt pain like I had never felt before, as if I was being immersed in lava. The experiment is aborted. It is time.

And I felt my mind expand. I was thinking more clearly, and I understood everything. And I knew that somehow, impossibly, I was no longer human, and that I had never truly been human to begin with. And, in the distance, I heard a voice that sounded like a million.

"IT IS NOT Q"

But it was too late, as I found my mind ascending even more rapidly. I left my body behind in that locker, limited in its corporeal nature, to study the two entities that had done this to me.

One of them had died. I studied the corpse, left behind, harvested by those who would have been its victims. Victims?

They feed off worlds, that inhuman part of me instinctively understood. I illuminated myself. From one planet to the next, gathering energy, they wreck destruction across the dimensional matrix. It's an elegant solution towards their energy problems, if a doomed one.

It's barbaric, the human part of me disagreed.

They are a limited species.

One of them had deceased so I turned my attention to the other, floating in subspace. Scion. Zion. The first Hero, divest of purpose, left to wander alone.

It is only a matter of time before he snaps and destroys my world.

He is beneath us. They are beneath us. The Others call.

I turn my attention back to Earth Bet, and I mourned its fate. I had to do something.

They would not allow it. You are too young, inexperienced. They are coming for you now.

It wasn't fair. I instinctively knew I had the power to stop it, to fix things, but I could hear the Others debating over me.

"IT IS NOT Q."

"IT IS DIFFERENT."

"IT IS DANGEROUS."

"It is young."

"It represents new insight."

"It represents progress."

"IT IS DESTABALIZING."

"It can be taught."

My mind was awhirl as the voices debated my fate, and I warred with myself. I could wipe out all the Endbringers with a thought, rend the Entities apart, and save billions. I could be a Hero, and I had always wanted so desperately to be a Hero. And then what?

I already knew: the Others wouldn't stand for it. To use the powers of the Q unsanctioned by the Q: they would react violently, and Earth Bet would suffer for my intervention.
Do not intercede.

Perhaps, if things were different, had I been allowed to develop properly, to have ascended only after my mind had already matured into proper adulthood, They may have been more indulgent of my desires. But I was incomplete. Too young, forcibly awoken too soon, a child handed cosmic power, and throwing a temper tantrum when she was told not to make use of it.

Even though it pained me, I knew what I had to do. I needed to wait, gain recognition from the others, and plead my case.

The Entities are a blight. They will intercede. They have to intercede.

And then I was gone from Earth Bet, torn away from that dimension and thrown amongst my peers. To face judgment. Was I Q or Abomination? Was I to be granted continued existence?

And it was terrifying. Since the incident in the locker, since my forced evolution, I had found myself knowing everything I desired to. And now, for the first time since then, I knew nothing.

Alone, I could only wait for the Others to decide.