CANS OF WORMS
by Louis IX

Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings.

Spirited Spirits

My ancestors had quite a unique relationship with spirits.

Ancestry

The first noteworthy one is Meresankh (meaning "she loves life"), who lived four millennia ago, in Egypt – she's my direct ancestor if you follow the matrilineal line. She lived as a servant to priests, and was sometimes paid to communicate well-wishes to her contemporaries' dearly departed. Sometimes, she brought answers, too.

Following her, roughly two millennia ago, is Vaishvi – a devotee of Vishnu, the Protector. The family was, by then, established merchants alongside the Silk Road, and freely exchanged ideas as well as wares. Given the mores of the times, she was given to the first man to "know" her properly, a passing Greek merchant, and followed him back to his home.

On my father's side, there is Ebert Magnusson, a Viking born in Scandinavia a millennium ago. His father's name meant "great power", and his was "wild boar". As a third son, he left home to explore the world of his times, especially the isles that would form the United Kingdom, later. He fought many battles, there, some for which he went with the prayers of druids or seidr chamans (those women telling the past and the future, and who could transform into the animals whose skin they were wearing), and some in which he fought tribes who had their own spiritual help. He eventually settled down in Germany, made beers and stronger alcohols, and married a local girl.

Five hundred years ago lived Toltecatl (meaning "artist" as in "creative person"), another ancestor of my mother. As a member of the Aztec civilization, it was also around that time that he was slain by the invading army of Hernan Cortez (meaning… Hernan Cortez, himself). Thankfully, he had been a high priest, and quite rich, and the Spaniards ransacking his temple preferred taking the gold rather than murder his daughters. Although some ended up captured. And you know as well as I do what happens to women in the hands of victorious warmongers (the fate of the vanquished men isn't spoken about for a simple reason: the Spanish kingdom not being in need of slaves, they were all killed). Still, some of them survived. Mostly. And had descendants. I am a proof of that.

Two and a half centuries ago, yet another ancestor of my mother experienced some hardship as an army of better-equipped colons took possession of their lands. It's not that these lands "belonged" to my ancestors, because they didn't believe in something so… avaricious. That belief (or lack thereof), however, was what allowed those pale-faced invaders to grab more and more lands for themselves. They ended up biting more than what they could chew, when they found themselves attacked by a coalition of indigenous tribes. It is known today because those educated invaders kept logs of what was happening to them and others. And, in those logs, I could find drawings and descriptions of my ancestor, and what she supposedly did – such as sending vengeful spirits to haunt those who killed her brethren needlessly. Yes, needlessly. Like those who "invaded" the continent a millennium before, the natives believed honourable that warriors died in battle, their passing blessed by the spirits. Those who couldn't fight, and who were killed anyways, that was another matter entirely, and it called for vengeance. The ancestor in question was named Etsanatlehi, after the famous Navajo deity (the "changing woman") and was well-versed in the traditions of her people.

In Louisiana, a century ago (and some change), one of my father's ancestor was lynched. His name was Tianlong (as in "heavenly dragon") and he was of Chinese ascendancy (although he was born in the US from a mother who was of European stock). His main crime was to look and sound Chinese, with a Chinese forename, at a time when Chinese people were forbidden from entering the States. His secondary crime was to live alongside other people the law frowned upon, at that time and place, such as recently-freed slaves (many of whom not knowing, by then, what to do with their time). The time spent with the first-generation African Americans allowed them to share stories and myths from their distinctive origins – such as the knowledge of voodoo and of Taoist talismans. Given the facts, it was a given that the crime written down, when he was hung alongside his new friends, was of using voodoo to kill someone. His kids survived, though. Thankfully. For me.

This leads to my grand-parents: Runvard (warden of secrets) Hebert and his wife Fengchan (snow phoenix), as well as Ikalahiga ("warrior spirit", if you mix several Native American dialects, South as well as North) and Carmanat (same with those cultures living on the Silk Road, this can mean a mix of "fate" and "goddess of war"). Each of them taught me things they knew as true, as well as legends they had learned in their own youth. It all mixed up in my mind, with aspects of mythology from various civilizations and cultures such as Ancient Egypt, Hindu, Greek, Viking, Celts, Aztec, Chinese, and even African.

And then came my parents, Annette and Daniel Hebert. As was usually the case in humans, they spent their teenage years opposing their parents. With that impetus, they soon identified the many ways their beliefs clashed with reality, and with each other's ideas too. Much like the scientific laws of relativity and quantum theory, but thankfully there have been no war waged between those two. My grandparents were human as well, and still tried to explain that, at least, they could extract a moral code from their beliefs. But not necessarily being theologians themselves, they couldn't form their thoughts in a manner that couldn't be easily debunked… and where often incoherent with themselves.

As a result, my parents are quite firmly into the ranks of the atheists, and, as such, didn't propose a spiritual point of view to counter what my grandparents taught me – because, yes, in this world where both parents must work to make ends meet, the grandparents are still useful to keep children during holidays.

Causality

Given that I asked for books, afterwards, my mother took it as a sign of early literacy, and let me buy many of those… without necessarily reading them in details beforehand. Most of those contained crap, and I had to navigate some really dark passages, too – voodoo is not for children, usually. And if you explore any kind of mythology, you often find parents doing unspeakable things with their children (sacrifice, yes, but not only). Even the Bible.

All that data cemented my knowledge, though, and a few experiments solidified my understanding. Of spirits. Because, amongst the various explanations about the nature of life and the universe, I was taught that the soul was immortal… and stayed, after we died (even if, depending on your interpretation, it could be reincarnated). My older grandparents died before I could work it out, but with a bit of help from my last grandmother, I was finally able to perceive them.

From then on, I was able to communicate with them. And exchange services. The monster I saw under my bed? It allowed me to move from there to under the bed of anyone I was in good terms with (spirits are strange that way). The one in the closet? It would summon anything I wished – within reason, as there was always a price to pay. Even as a young girl, I knew this already. And I'm always polite when interacting with spirits, because you never know when they could become angry and transition from benevolent to evil. Many myths spoke about incautious people who got eaten by what they summoned.

Walking outside, I could also see the ghosts of the past who haunted some old people, as well as the guardian angels hovering over some lucky ones. Thinking that it would be good for our family to have one, I summoned one – having quite a good karma from doing good actions all the time, I could use some of it as "sacrifice" to call for the celestial being. And, for a while, life was wonderful.

And then I went to a summer camp in nature, while my best friend got a modelling gig instead. My guardian angel was with me, and protected me from various dangers, such as falling off a cliff, drowning in a river, getting impaled by a falling branch, and several other mishaps. The camp counsellors were doing quite a bad job at herding us, preferring chatting with their boyfriend (or girlfriend) on their cell phone.

I didn't die, but… while the angel was with me, it didn't protect my family.

In the same week, my grandmother had a stroke, my mother got a car accident leaving her in a coma, and my best friend was mugged. It was almost as if the universe extracted the cost of protecting me from the health of those dear to me. As such, I almost wished I had died, in that camp. If I didn't say the sentence, it's because I know of the angry spirits who hear this kind of wish, ready to pounce and make life even worse.

How could it be worse?

That wasn't a question to ask, either, as I felt the spiritual currents shifting even as it formed in my mind. Dad was already occupied with grieving for his mother, as well as having mom hanging to life by a thread. He ended up spending his free time with her, instead of home. Without me, too, as I disliked staying there: too many spirits of people dying in suffering, and not my mother.

I tried to summon her spirit, but, apparently, comatose people aren't dead, so their spirit isn't "on call" by the nearest medium. Or she had reached Nirvana. Or Hell. I preferred the first option, and decided to wait.

Waiting wasn't something I could use to deal with my school life, though, because of one person there, who was always escalating in her treatment of me. At the beginning, she "just" pushed me around without making it obvious. Me, and others, but with Emma behind her, she often returned to pile some more bullying on yours truly. And with her needling Emma, my ex-friend started to add to it. Tentatively, at first. And then gleefully, when she noticed that I didn't answer.

Despite my guardian angel protecting me from the worst (because being tripped in the stairs could lead to cases of broken bones or death, which I "miraculously" avoided), the abuse still stung. Both the physical and the mental.

I asked the spirits for the reasons behind their unholy association. The story I got had to be filtered several times, but the end result was that, during her mugging, Emma had been threatened by disfigurement, something that made her panic and try to strike out blindly. And Shadow Stalker helped her. And I learned, at the same time, the dual identity of Sophia Hess.

The fact that my bully was recruited as a Ward shocked me, when I learnt about it. Since I didn't follow the news closely, I learnt that titbit of information quite late: it was also the day they played a "prank" on little old me. If a murder attempt can be called that. Yes, that's when they decided to stuff me into a locker filled with filth. I knew that I had to do something, but… what?

Each solution I imagined implied a cost I wasn't necessarily willing to pay – using other people's soul to fuel any ritual was a big no-no, for me. Using mine… it's my soul, right? I wasn't going to sacrifice my immortal soul for something as trite as getting out of a locked locker? Even with filth in it? People will notice, surely, and free me?

The cantrips I knew weren't that useful, in the cramped place. And ended up worsening my perception of the situation: getting some light inside the closet brought to my eyes the fact that the disgusting matter was covered in insects of all kinds, insects that I could soon feel biting at my exposed flesh… and at the clothing itself, exposing more flesh.

I could feel my helpful "monster in the closet" nearby, with just a dimension separating us. So close, yet so far until I chose to sacrifice something. Something important. Something worthwhile.

Hearing Sophia still mocking me from outside, I realized that there was something worthwhile to be used as sacrifice, since it belonged to the person at the source of my misery. As such, given the laws governing the spirit world, I could access it as a bargaining token. And since it wasn't her soul, I risked nothing in terms of karma.

Her power.

That day, Sophia lost her parahuman power, the spirits siphoning it to help me. I could now use the "cantrip" of exiting another cabinet, when entering one – like the age-old magic trick… or the Vanishing Cabinet, in Harry Potter. Since Sophia's power had been available to her in a permanent fashion, the spirits granted me an unlimited number of uses.

So I did so.

The filth ended up in Emma's locker, while I exited one of the unused ones, further down the hall.

I debated for a minute over showing myself to them, but I decided to head home instead… after a bit of clean-up in a nearby toilet. I wouldn't show myself in class, thus not alerting the Trio that they had failed to contain me – I knew they wanted me to stew there the whole day, and week if they could manage it: they had told me so.

Meditation

Once home, I meditated.

It was something that seemed coherently distributed across all myths: meditating upon your day would bring you enlightenment, whether it comes from divine dreams… or just introspection.

In doing so, I felt something vast and powerful under my senses. Like when I first started to feel the spirits. Now that I could see the individual spirits quite well (and hear them, and sometime touch them, too), I could feel an all-encompassing presence which was even fainter… but it was everywhere. Impersonal, too, and relatively neutral, its only tendencies being towards survival.

Of what?

It took me a while, but I realized that the massive spirit I was trying to commune with was… the whole planet! And that, by offering a parahuman power as a sacrifice, I had suggested the possibility of doing so with others. I had also awakened it – or "her", as it had a distinctively mothering presence. And her consciousness brushed mine softly, transferring feelings of gratitude, as well as the name the first chamans to awaken her gave her: Shaan.

I also got a feeling of dislike towards the one she perceived as a source of parahuman powers, Scion, and conveyed to me that the Golden Man was linked to these powers, in a visceral way: each of them was like an actual part of his real body. Any sacrifice of power would remove a small proportion of his own power.

Why would I want to do so, then? Why would she do so? The man was known to help in Endbringer fights, after all. And save kittens from trees, too.

Shaan having meditated about the situation, in her own way, she has felt the past, present, and future of her "body", and she shared the ghastly views of Scion harvesting his powers back, followed by the annihilation of the planet. In many dimensions.

Hence Shaan being wary… and happy at having found a possible way out, by progressively taking the parahuman powers out, one after the other – if she did it her way, it would be too sudden and Scion would react.

In order to achieve balance, I was offered the ability to use a sacrificed power in order to do something else. Much like I did with Sophia, in fact: with the plucking of a parahuman power, I could bargain for a change in reality. Any change, if it was possible due to past actions having been done differently.

Such as: if an enemy threatens me, I could instead decide that he simply turned left instead of right, at some point in the past, or fell off the stairs. Or that his parents never met, or had a puppy instead…

The farthest I went from the present situation, though, the most complex the change was, and the higher the cost. Moving people was like teleporting them. Making them disappear equated killing them. Those options were always costly, not to speak of the ripple effect of changing something too far in the past.

She would do it, and consume powers from parahumans within her purview (which included everyone, since everyone was within her biosphere), but I had the distinct feeling that she preferred that I choose her targets, in order not to remove a benevolent hero's power at a critical moment.

Of course, I couldn't do evil deeds with such a power – I couldn't even do such a thing and then use this power. Doing egotistical wishes meant that the sacrifice had to come from the one making the wish. And a wish great enough could erase my own existence, as if I would never have been born.

On the opposite side of the scale, if the change was smaller in scope, I could even do it for "free", provided that I continued my "offerings" later. For instance, if I find an enemy aiming a gun at me, I could decide that, when preparing himself for "work", earlier, he grabbed a banana instead of his gun, and was too tired to notice it until now (going to work already tired was too often a staple of the times).

I also followed the news more closely than before, and learned that Shadow Stalker had "chosen to move elsewhere", according to the PRT… and that the local juvenile correction facility had one more prisoner. And that, without her parahuman power, Sophia was still violent, but she couldn't escape retaliation.

In a move I could have seen coming from far away, but still bamboozled Madison and the rest of her posse, Emma wanted to be my friend again. Having lost the one who pushed her incessantly, she had quickly lost momentum too, and she tried to return to step one. Having almost triggered, in that locker, meant that I couldn't accept that. At least not at face value.

What I could do, though, was bind her to a spirit, in order to ensure that she would stay faithful to me, rather than crawl back to her evil ways, should Sophia resurface. It didn't require much of a sacrifice, too: just the potential she had to trigger herself – according to Shaan, each traumatic experience was watched by the power shards, and allowed them to connect to the person. The first two times, it was to deposit anchors in the target's brain (what humans call Corona Pollentia and Gemma), and the third is to actually trigger. Emma had the anchors, the first caused by her mugging, and the second by Sophia's disappearance. Removing them was both a boon and a sacrifice, since it removed a foothold from Shaan's enemies.

I taught her meditation, too. A dubious Madison followed, but by extolling the various virtues of yoga on a young woman's body tone, she became quite eager.

I was quite far in my mastery of the subject, though, and let myself go, one day. Seeing that Emma and Madison were almost asleep, I delved in something I rarely approached: the multidimensional aspect of reality (or how my spirit-monsters of the bed and closet manipulated distances).

I had seen spectacles, in my youth, with the viewpoint facing several young women arrayed in a column, and moving their arms in total synchronicity… with a slight difference of movement. It looked like the front woman had dozen of arms. It also looked like the Hindu deities, in a way, as some are depicted with several arms too.

And I ended up doing the same. Eyes closed, third eye open wide, I reached outwards, in several places around me. And my arms grasped helping hands from spirits as I brought them in an arc around me, stopping at different points in different dimensions.

And then I heard a gasp and stopped. Slowly opening my eyes, I saw my two students looking at me with their eyes wide open. I took stock of myself (courtesy of another spirit in the room) and realized that I was making quite a view, there: in lotus position, hovering above the bed, with light coming from my third eye, and dozen copies of my arms waving around my body. I could understand they were impressed. Not wanting anything untowards to happen, I chose to move slowly as I returned to my normal state. And then I took a deep breath.

And then they pounced. "Wow. You're a parahuman, Taylor?" Emma asked, eyes almost glowing in her excitement.

"Not at all." I replied. "It's all a mastery of the world of spirits. I had years to reach that state."

Madison slumped. "Years? It's too much work."

"You've already advanced." I asserted, having understood something thanks to another spirit. "It's the first time I reached so far, and it must have resonated with your meditation, for you to awaken. Right?"

They nodded. And then they spent part of their free time meditating too… and another part searching for ways for Taylor to become even more impressive.

Elements

After the first forays in Hinduism, Emma suggested another way of understanding the very word "spirit", such as the various "spirits of nature". Since it was in line with what my grandfather Ikalahiga taught me, I delved further in their study.

It was like when I met Shaan for the first time: the spirits were extremely diffuse, and not really responding to calls. You can't connect to them as you'd do individual spirits, or even planetary-wide spirits with a vague sentience. It was like trying to grasp a handle that was made of air. Still, you could direct them a bit by spending quite a lengthy moment concentrating on the subject. Or take the shortcut of a worthy sacrifice.

The moment I really let loose with that was when Leviathan tried to sink my hometown. The sirens had sounded, warning everyone about the imminent disaster, and I had joined the capes – I wasn't one, but when we had discussed it, Emma and I, I had realized that it would be easier to pretend being one (with enough of a disguise that nobody could recognize me afterwards) than telling the truth. Thanks to the spirits I knew, I was even able to look quite different than my normal shape.

I didn't dare ask for a change in narrative that would make Leviathan attack another city, not only because of the massive cost it would incur, but also because I would doom other people, rendering the sacrifice moot.

"Medium. Healer." I said when asked for a name and occupation. I knew I could heal, in a way, because of my ability to change the narrative of what happened around me. I could decide that the bullets who struck someone had hit the ground instead. Yes, it meant that I could revive someone actually killed by those bullets. Or powers. Or whatever natural disaster. Such as the one who was arriving.

I got myself quite a bit of goodwill from New Wave when I brought several members of their family back from the dead. Many others, too. Thankfully for my peace of mind, my disguise made me so different from my normal self that I had no fear of getting abducted into a gang or another, afterwards – I looked like a small and pot-bellied Latino man of fifty, one of the spirits I had helping me. Until the next Endbringer battle, where I would appear as another spirit's former incarnation.

Anyways… when I spoke of letting loose my power over elemental spirits, I was speaking about acting against the threat itself – Healers had a moment of waiting, at the beginning, and I made good use of that to meditate… and work against the Endbringer. Thanks to Shaan's help, I was able to stop Leviathan's destructive waves by sacrificing the beast's hydrokinesis. It visibly panicked, afterwards, and hurried back into the Bay, and away, not caring if its footsteps crushed capes on his way.

As a result of both my ability to change what happened, letting those capes survive, and the aforementioned cutting off of Leviathan's powers of destruction, Brockton Bay survived mostly intact, with most capes alive afterwards – even villains, as it wouldn't do for me to cull the volunteering villains' powers right in the middle of an Endbringer Truce. But I had my spirits following them.

After the basic elemental forces, Madison suggested something else. Apparently, she had gone to the movies with a boyfriend, once, and it was to see one of the Marvel flicks from Earth Aleph. And in those, there was a retelling about universal forces theorized as being condensed into Infinity Jewels, or something like that.

She didn't remember exactly what it was, but a quick web search got it for us: Power, Space, Reality, Mind, Soul, and Time. Not really elemental forces. In fact, I quickly determined that things like Light, Weight, and Age, were more susceptible to being modified than the above ones: I could change light, and also bend its path, so as to appear invisible; I could change the weight of things, and people, and fly; I could change the age of things, increasing or decreasing it as needed… within reason.

Of course, yet again, those very concepts were even more diffuse than Shaan or the elements had been, and it was only thanks to my earlier experiences, as well as their help, that I was able to do so. And with my new control over the dimensions, I was able to do that in several places at the same time. I could be everywhere… and nowhere.

Opposition

My actions during Leviathan's incursions were scrutinized by many, afterwards. Many spirits told me so, including one that was doing surveillance on one of the unknown gangs in town – there were known gangs, such as the Empire, but I was wary of gangs of which nothing was known.

This allowed me to learn about Coil's presence, as well as the alliances he had with individuals and groups previously thought as independent. And he had moles everywhere, too.

The man used his civilian persona (of a Consultant for the PRT) to download a video of me during the Endbringer crisis, put side-by-side with a city-wide camera showing the bay. Doing so, it appeared evident that my meditation (and my tiredness afterwards) were one of the possible causes for the tidal wave's reversal.

He also had validation from a Thinker in his employ, named Tattletale. The girl confirmed his hunch, and offered many others, one of which being that the appearance I had shown was as removed as possible from my normal one. In fact, she told him many things, paling further each time. But, apparently, her power made her blurt everything, preventing her from shutting up when it would have been wise to do so.

That I can do everything, and undo everything too.

That I can be everywhere, and nowhere.

That I can even perceive when Coil uses his power. As a test, he split his realities, creating another dimension. Since I knew about dimensions, I realized what had happened, and it meant that I acted slightly differently in each… despite Coil not doing anything differently in them (as he was used to).

Dismissing an almost-comatose Tattletale, Calvert removed his mask and wept in envy – while he could prepare two realities and choose one, I could choose any past I wanted, leading to a present I'd prefer (and I was ready to change the past so that my mother would wake up soon). He seriously debated whether he should call Cauldron for a refund or not.

In the end, he took refuge in a bottle. Of strong alcohol, also known as… spirits.

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To be continued… spiritedly, of course

Author's Notes: Inspiration for this one includes "Kernel of Truth" from mp3. 1415player, "All Fictions" from Jeckparadox (on SV), "Narrator" from Camolot the Creator (on SB), "Everything and Nothing" by Rescind (SB) …and the RPG called Shaan. It's nice for the answer to belligerent opposition to be something different than the usual "kill it with fire".