Several people have accused me of making the ending as I did because I got bored of the fic and just wanted to end it.
This is false. While it is true that I've already used up much of the canonical material, there was still plenty to work with.
No, the problem is that I decided early in the fic to take Cauldron, the Slaughterhouse 9, the Endbringers, and Scion seriously. By doing that, I painted myself into a bit of a corner and I didn't realize it until it was too late.
What I should have done was treat those things as background lore for the setting – important, but in a distant "over the horizon" kind of way. Usually, handwaving away big issues is a bad idea. Worm is a bit peculiar in the fact its big issues are too big to really solve without massive escalation of force that is then impossible to come down from, yet at the same time have very simple solutions if you have meta knowledge.
Well, lessons learned, I guess.
XXXXX
Rebecca Costa-Brown approached Brockton Bay on foot. The city had become a grim ghost town, but more than that, it played tricks on people's minds. There were reports of terrain shifting, of investigators looking down to see their feet moving backwards, of days passing in minutes and minutes dragging on for days, and much more.
She knew that it was dumb to come here, but it wasn't like she had anything better to do. She was no longer Alexandria or the PRT Chief Director. Hard to be either of those things when parahuman powers had disappeared from the world in the wake of the Last Battle, as it had come to be called.
It had been six months since then, most of which she had spent in psychiatric care until the effect of Psyker's power on her mind faded. She was sure that if her powers hadn't been removed, she would have never recovered. The ability to forget things was essential for dealing with what she had seen, although it had been difficult to adjust to no longer having a perfect memory. Far more difficult than losing the ability to fly or punch through buildings.
Rebecca had awoken to a changed world, a world that didn't need her anymore and had no place for her.
The backlash against the suddenly powerless parahumans had been as horrific as it was predictable. Most Protectorate heroes and Wards got off pretty lightly. Some villains had also managed to slink away. The worst offenders had not been nearly so lucky.
The Fallen for example – once the collapsing PRT had mustered up the time and the nerve to check – had been found tortured to death by their former captives and brainwashed members.
Moord Nag down in Africa had found herself suddenly powerless while surrounded by all the vicious men she had once terrorized into obedience. She had been raped to death over a period of months.
The Chinese Union Imperial had collapsed into civil war.
There were plenty of similar stories as regular humans took revenge.
There was no more Cauldron. Doctor Mother, Contessa, and Number Man seemed to have been stranded in their base, Eidolon was dead, and Keith had quietly retired and gone to live with his husband and son.
Rebecca had strongly contemplated simply ending herself. The mission was done, Scion was gone, the Endbringers were gone. Earth Bet was battered, but it would recover in time.
But there was one thing left to do, one question left to answer.
Where was Psyker? What was Taylor Hebert doing?
Keith had told her that she had simply told Scion to kill himself, and he had done it. The sheer simplicity of it was aggravating beyond belief. Obviously, Cauldron couldn't have done that, but it was still galling to think back to everything they'd done and hearing that a few words had been enough to do the trick.
So she drove to the outskirts of Brockton Bay without telling anyone and entered the perimeter. There was a fence around it and warning signs posted, but no guards. There used to be, but they had been recalled months ago.
Rebecca walked the eerily silent streets, not sure what she was looking for or where she was going. There were no birds, no rats, no bodies, nothing. Just ruined concrete and the skeletal remains of buildings. Her footsteps echoed ominously.
She didn't know how long she kept walking. Her sense of time felt distorted, and the sun didn't seem to move. The clouds sometimes stayed motionless and then accelerated like the effect movies used to show a rapid passage of time. She didn't get hungry or tired, so she just focused on the task. Find Taylor Hebert.
And then suddenly, she was standing in front of a church. More of a cathedral, really, given how huge it was. She should have seen it earlier.
Tall and thick granite walls surrounded it, and the only way inside was through a wrought iron fence topped with steel spear tips. Instead of religious iconography, the stained glass window featured a single black hand print.
Rebecca swallowed her nervousness as the gates swung open by themselves. If Taylor Hebert was trying to be creepy and intimidating, then it was working. The quasi-religious overtones to this entire situation weren't helping.
Still, she stepped inside… and had to blink in surprise at the expansive gardens. They were jarringly in contrast with the ruined city outside, and far too vast to really fit. She could see what looked like an entire forest… and some of those trees didn't look native to the New Hampshire area.
Not for the first time, Rebecca wished that she still had her encyclopedic knowledge. Learning to function with all this uncertainty had been terrible, only overshadowed by the even greater uncertainty of what she was supposed to do with herself.
She kept on walking through the admittedly very beautiful and relaxing gardens, which completely failed to relax her. Eventually, she came upon several young women tending to a bush.
Wait… wasn't that Glaistig Uaine?! Along with Victoria Dallon and Amy Dallon?
"Ah, hello?" Rebecca greeted, internally wincing at herself.
Not having absolute control of her body had really done a number on her confidence. Talking to the dead and missing wasn't helping.
"Hey, Alexandria!" The former Glory Girl waved at her. "You want to do some gardening with us?"
"Maybe later." She prevaricated. "I need to speak to Ms. Hebert. Do you know where I can find her?"
"You shouldn't lie, not in this holy place." Glaistig Uaine said chidingly, giving her a disapproving look.
Rebecca had no idea how to respond to that. She hadn't been lying?
"Just go inside, she's waiting for you." Amy Dallon told her impatiently, with an insolence that Rebecca hadn't had to deal with in a long time.
"Thank you?" She said, bemused, but relieved to have some kind of direction.
Glaistig Uaine had been reported missing after the Birdcage was cracked open, and the Dallon girls were supposed to be dead.
Rebecca pushed the mystery aside and just thanked them, walking towards the doors of the cathedral. They were huge and looked heavy, but they swung open easily. Inside was an empty hallway, with ornate walls and shiny tiles.
Cautiously stepping forward, her footsteps echoed despite her best efforts to keep them silent. There were windows, and each one of them showed something different. Forests, deserts, mountains, valleys, snow and sun, villages and cities. Rebecca recognized some of the sights, and they weren't anywhere near each other.
There were also paintings on the walls. One particular one made her stop, because there was someone familiar featured in it. Sophia Hess, Rebecca had received reports on what the foolish child had done back in January. It could have been the biggest PR disaster that the Wards program had ever faced, so the details continued to stick in her memory even now.
Frowning, she took a closer look, and the painting started moving. It showed Sophia, naked as she ran frantically through the woods. Chasing after her was Taylor Hebert with a pack of vicious-looking dogs, hefting a heavy crossbow. Taking aim and firing, the bolt struck the former Shadow Stalker in the back of the knee and she fell with a cry of pain, just before the pack of dogs set upon her. Then the painting reset back to the beginning.
Disturbed by the implications, Rebecca moved on to the next painting. This one showed Jack Slash. The leader of the Slaughterhouse 9 had a harried look on his face as he stomped through a busy shopping center. He was going up to people and screaming at them, but they all ignored him, sometimes even walking through him like he was a ghost. No matter what he did, nobody paid any attention to him. Judging by the demented look on his face, this was causing him considerable distress.
There were more paintings. Lung, Kaiser, Hookwolf… villains from all across the world. Each of them was suffering some kind of ironic punishment. Lung was dressed up like a twink and working in what appeared to be a Thai brothel, Kaiser was a filthy beggar getting spat on by passers-by…
… Hookwolf was being forced to knit sweaters while listening to ninety-year-old grannies gossiping?
Cruel and unusual.
Rebecca decided not to look at any more of these 'paintings' and just hurried along the hallway. It twisted and turned in ways that she suspected was illogical, but could no longer be sure without her perfect memory. It also seemed to go on forever.
Finally, she came upon a large archway that opened up into a hall of truly massive proportions. It was very church-like, with high ceilings and stained glass windows, but minus the pews. At the end, where the altar and lectern would normally be, sat the person Rebecca had come to speak to.
Taylor Hebert still looked young, but she didn't give off that impression. She was sitting on the stone floor in a proper lotus position, not the half-assed cross-legged thing most people did, with her hands folded in her lap. There was a low table in front of her and she was dressed in a voluminous dark robe.
Rebecca was annoyed at herself for being intimidated by these theatrics. It was a visceral, human reaction that she couldn't control no matter how intellectually fatalistic she was when coming here. Still, she squared her shoulders and stepped forward. The echo of her footsteps was louder than ever.
"Rebecca." The most powerful being on Earth greeted placidly, gesturing towards the other side of the low table. "Sit."
"Ms. Hebert." Rebecca returned, sitting down as she was bid. Just as she was about to cross her legs, she froze, realizing that her shoes had disappeared. Well, it would make it possible to get into lotus position at least.
"Just Taylor, please. We may have never properly met before, but we are kindred spirits in a sense."
"We are?" Rebecca asked skeptically.
A redheaded girl came from… somewhere… carrying a tea set. She placed it down on the low table and quietly poured two cups of fragrant tea.
"Thank you, Emma." Taylor said, reaching out to give the redhead's hand a squeeze. Emma's smiled brightened and she left with a skip in her step.
That was another person that was supposed to be dead.
Taylor picked up her cup and blew on it, taking a sip with every sign of pleasure before speaking again. "Yes, we are. Had it been me in your position, I would have likely gone down a similar road as you did."
"Would you have succeeded where we failed?" She couldn't help but ask.
"Without my psychic awakening? Not likely." Taylor admitted easily. "You made a mistake in following the guidance of a failed nursing student and a Bronze Age child, but you were very young yourself back then. It was foolish to think that you could use the enemy's weapons against him, but understandable."
"So it was all pointless, then?" Rebecca couldn't even say that she was surprised. The creeping sense of futility had settled in years ago.
"Powers that nullify other powers work by sending a request to the target parahuman's Agent, as you called them, to stop working for a time." Taylor explained, closing her eyes as she sipped at her tea. "The Warrior, or Scion as you knew him, was the highest authority and could have demanded such a thing at any point. Using his own powers against him would have only worked if he allowed it."
Rebecca wished that her body was still time-locked, because the weight of guilt was threatening to make her hurl. She'd grimly resolved herself to perpetrating so many atrocities out of desperation. To hear that it had all been fundamentally pointless for such an obvious reason…
"Drink your tea. It will settle your stomach." Taylor advised.
She obeyed, and it did exactly that, but she still didn't know what to say anymore.
"You saw Sophia on the way here, didn't you?" Taylor spoke again.
"Yes?" Rebecca asked cautiously. Was this the part where she got a painting of her own, to suffer some kind of ironic personal Hell?
"She liked to think in terms of predator and prey. A simplistic view of the world born of arrogance, sadism, and intellectual laziness. For all their vast computational ability, the Entities are also mere animals. If you dropped a green beret naked in the middle of the woods and told him that he had a week to kill a bear, what would you get?"
Rebecca blinked in surprise at the abrupt series of non-sequiturs, but answered nonetheless. "A dead bear."
"Oh? And how would he do that? Is he going to rush at the bear and beat it in a fistfight?" Taylor prodded.
"Of course not." Rebecca scoffed. "He'd make improvised weapons and traps. He wouldn't fight it head on unless there was no other choice."
Taylor remained silent for a long minute, sipping at her tea. Then she replied. "You tried to make the bear hit itself with its own paws."
Rebecca's head drooped slightly. Hindsight really did make fools of them all.
"Was there any way for us to succeed?"
"The Warrior and the Thinker were a pair, their duties clearly defined." Taylor replied, putting down her empty tea cup and folding her hands into the sleeves of her robe. "With the Thinker effectively dead, the Warrior was without purpose. He made his human avatar in an attempt to find some new purpose, and randomly chose a human to listen to. This human was Kevin Norton, a homeless man in Britain. If Kevin had told Scion that life was meaningless and that he should simply kill himself, Scion would have done it. Contessa could have found him if she'd asked the right questions, and Kevin would be easily convinced."
Rebecca couldn't believe what she was hearing. It had been that simple?
"But we asked how to beat him." She protested desperately.
"Path to Victory didn't work on Scion, and it was compromised anyway. In her final moments, the Thinker was able to alter it to always seek the path of maximum conflict." Taylor said. "The right question would have been 'Path to who gave Scion clothes'."
Rebecca couldn't hold it in anymore. She threw her tea cup with a shout of rage. So many years of committing some of the worst, most unnecessary evils in history, because of such a stupid oversight. If she'd thought that the way Taylor had handled Scion was galling, then it was nothing compared to knowing that they could have done more or less the same thing if they'd just bothered to think a bit more instead of making assumptions.
"You are in good company, Rebecca." Taylor said. "I, too, built Scion up to be some monstrous foe that would require a climactic battle to defeat. I assumed that such a powerful being would have an equally powerful mind. I thought that I needed to seep into his soul like poison to bring him down."
"Your attack on the Agents." Rebecca acknowledged.
"His Shards, yes." The 'younger' girl nodded. "And calling it an attack is perhaps being too generous. My plan was to kill the Butcher and use the nature of that Shard's power to infect the Warrior Network."
That would have come as quite the nasty surprise for the PRT. "Could you have handled the voices?"
"The Butcher collective drove its host insane because the personality vestiges all used the same brain to run simultaneously. I had all the brains I needed, and I could have crushed the vestiges anyway." Taylor said confidently.
"That would have made you unstoppable." Rebecca tried to imagine it. "Everybody would have been forced to settle on an indefinite appeasement strategy."
"Which I would have exploited relentlessly to absorb as many Shards into my proto-network as I could before I encountered Scion. Then he would have either killed me and I would have jumped into his network, or I would have killed him and absorbed the remnants." Taylor sighed. "You cannot even begin to imagine my fury when I saw Scion's soul and realized that all of my clever planning was wasted, and that I could have slaved him to my will at any point. My father and all of my mortal friends are dead because I assumed that my ultimate enemy will be a worthy opponent."
"Some of them seem pretty alive." The former Alexandria noted cautiously.
"They are quite dead, I assure you. Where do you think we are?"
Rebecca frowned and looked around. "It looks like a church? One of the reasons I came here was because those of us in the know were wondering what you were up to. I was assuming that you were setting yourself up as a goddess and laying the foundations of your religion."
She didn't really care if Taylor Hebert wanted to be worshiped, especially after what she'd just learned.
"This place is based on the church of a kind and wise priest who sheltered me after I had to run from home, and who continued to give me good advice for my entire cape career." Taylor revealed. "If I had never met him, things would have gone a lot differently. Isn't it ironic, how one old man with no power beyond his faith, has shaped mankind's destiny?"
"Right place at the right time, I guess." Rebecca sighed, thinking of how Cauldron, with all its stolen powers, had only managed to fuck everything up. It was depressing.
"And that is where we are now." Taylor smiled. "In the right place, at the right time."
"I'm no sure what you mean." Rebecca hedged, not wanting to make assumptions. This all felt like it was leading up to something, but she didn't know what.
"We are everywhere and nowhere, always. This sanctuary lies outside time and space, beyond life and death. Its gates may appear anywhere on Earth, on any Earth in this multiversal cluster. Some of the living will be offered shelter here before returning to their lives, and the souls of the dead may rest here before choosing whether they wish to stay, become one with me, or to pass on. Some may even be offered the chance to return to life."
"And some go to Hell?" Rebecca asked, remembering what she saw on the way here.
"Well, it hardly seems fair for evil people to get the same ending as the good ones." Taylor shrugged. "I am experimenting with various methods of punishment to see how long it takes to break their pride. If they reach a state of true remorse, I will release them. If not, then their souls will eventually be squeezed dry of energy."
Well, that was vaguely terrifying.
"You really knocked God off his throne, huh?" Rebecca had grown up catholic, but lost her faith a long time ago.
"The throne was empty." Taylor replied serenely. "As the first psyker in this reality strand, my privileges are great."
"First psyker?" That had some rather concerning implications.
"There will be others, eventually."
Rebecca didn't have time to fully process the weight of that. Wasn't sure if she even wanted to. There was a much more important question she needed an answer to.
"Why am I here? You didn't have to let me in."
Frankly, she had half-expected to end up dead on this venture.
"I could make the world perfect, you know." Taylor said, seemingly digressing again. "I could fix every problem, purge all corruption, foil every criminal before they even committed a crime, prevent every act of cruelty, whether thoughtless or deliberate. It would be a perfect utopia, where nobody suffered."
"Everyone would hate it." Rebecca said immediately.
"Yes." Taylor agreed. "Ancient Greek philosophers posited that enduring suffering and overcoming difficulties was the meaning of life. There is more truth to that than many people would care to admit. A perfect world would crush mankind's spirit and reduce it to a race of dull slaves. Even limited meddling, or deliberately imperfect meddling, would still be just another form of micromanagement and would stifle the potential of our species. Even I can't see all ends, but I see too much."
Something clicked in Rebecca's mind. "You want me to act on your behalf."
"Mmm." Taylor hummed in confirmation. "You are human in ways that I no longer am, but also driven and experienced. Though I do send out pieces of myself to be born among humanity, pieces that will not know they are part of me until they die and rejoin me, all that does is refresh my remaining humanity a little bit. I need people who will work my will, but who will also screw it up just enough to keep humanity's fighting spirit alive, yet not enough to make it self-destruct."
"And what is your will?" Rebecca asked, although she was already leaning towards accepting.
Although it hadn't been publicly revealed, the government knew her identity as both Alexandria and the PRT Chief Director. Nobody wanted her back in any kind of position of authority, whether because they didn't trust her or because she had run roughshod over them in the past, so the only thing left to do was give up and die, and she had never been good at that.
"I want Earth Bet to recover. I want driven and focused people to take charge and lead the way to the future. I want mankind to create an empire that spans across both stars and dimensions, and to take me with them as they do so. I want to devour the rest of Scion's species."
Those were all goals that Rebecca could agree with.
"How can I help?" She asked simply.
It was far too late to be worrying about her soul. Cauldron's goals hadn't been wrong, but they had done such a terrible job of it. All the innocent blood would never wash off, but maybe she could do some good before she died. And if this was another mistake? Meh.
"All you have to do is take my hand." Taylor held out her right hand. The palm was black.
Cautiously, Rebecca reached out to take it. As soon as she grasped it, she felt something settle into her. She also felt her mind sharpen. It wasn't quite the same as when she was Alexandria, but her thinking was far faster and clearer than normal.
"I wouldn't send my Pactsworn out into the world without gifts." Taylor smiled. "You may use your palm to mark things. Only other Pactsworn will be able to see the Black Hand."
That was… valuable. Being able to covertly signal to others that they were part of the same conspiracy was no small matter.
"Any orders, or do I just do whatever I feel is right?" Rebecca asked, starting to feel more like herself now that she had a purpose again.
"Not orders, but a bit of advice." Taylor said. "There's no deadline hanging over you anymore, so don't miss out on chances for happiness."
And then their surroundings warped and Rebecca found herself standing outside the ruins of Brockton Bay again. The sun was in the same position and a check of her watch confirmed that seemingly no time had passed.
And yet her mind was still superhumanly sharp, and her palm still turned black when she willed it. It had been very real.
Rebecca took a deep breath. Alright then. Humanity had a new goddess, one that was mostly benevolent but did have a cruel streak. And she was wise enough to not be a micromanaging control freak. That was already better than Rebecca would have managed if she was being completely honest with herself.
Time to start cleaning up the mess she was partially responsible for. Even if the government didn't want her, she could still do plenty. Maybe it would be enough to avoid being forced to suffer any 'educational' punishment after she died.
XXXXX
Taylor watched her newest minion walk off with new determination burning in her soul and was pleased.
The brief Age of Parahumans had done a great deal of damage to Earth Bet, but it would recover in time. She saw the suffering of all the people across all variants of this reality strand and constantly had to resist the urge to meddle.
She'd grown to hate bystanders while she was being bullied in high school, now she was forced to be the ultimate bystander. The irony was not lost on her.
But as frustrating as it could be, she knew that she couldn't coddle people. Not without ruining them in the long run. Taylor herself would not have grown into her full potential if she had been shielded from suffering.
Still, that didn't mean that she could do nothing at all. As she had told Rebecca, her sanctuary existed outside normal reality and it's doors could appear anywhere. Many, many people would find themselves stumbling inside and finding refuge when they needed it.
They could spend as much time inside as they wished, but there was nothing to do here except meditate, work in the garden, and talk to her. Eventually, they would return to the real world, at the same moment as they entered, their souls fortified and more ready to deal with life's hardships. Most of them would not actually remember their time here, but some would.
It wasn't all altruism, though. Stronger souls were much more appealing and Taylor couldn't help her hunger. It was better than simply letting them disperse into the Empyrean, because now she was finally able to look back and see with clarity what had touched her at the moment of her trigger event.
Those four… things from that distant universe, and the insane Game they played. Taylor would never allow those kinds of monsters to form from the unfocused emotions of the sapient beings in this universe. The stars would be hers, all of them, and all the souls inhabiting them. There would be no Chaos Gods here, only her.
XXXXX
Well, here we are at the end. The ending didn't go as well as I'd hoped, but I am at least satisfied that the story wasn't left hanging.
First, a sincere thank you to Alvor, who helped with both lore stuff and pointing out any obvious issues that I missed.
Next up, some of you may remember that I mentioned towards the end of "Metagaming?" that I had two potential Worm stories to start posting. This one, and a Post-GM Cyberpunk 2077 crossover. I will begin uploading that one now, at a rate of one chapter every two weeks. This is so that I have time to continue adding to the backlog and hopefully even get to the end before it runs out since it won't be as long as this one.
Also, the ending of Worm is very crossover-able, so there is a distinct chance that I may have started on another one as well.
