Fourth

Chapter 10

Telling Tales

Lisa wasn't exactly in a good place when she stumbled upon them.

She had been chasing threads. That's what she told herself. Patterns in the chaos. Something was happening in Brockton Bay, something even her Shard refused to pin down with its usual smug certainty. She hated that. Hated being in the dark. Hated even more how often her power failed when it came to trying to track down the stealthy as hell blind spots that had shown up, but also not shown up, almost overnight.

So when she finally tracked them down - Danny Hebert, father of Taylor, local dockworker and high school student respectively - she wasn't prepared for what she found.

They were in an ice cream shop.

With four other people.

Four other people she swore she knew, though she couldn't put her finger on it. That should have been her first clue.

Then came the rest. The revelation of Shards. What powers really were. The fact that both Heberts were Ascended Shard Entities with terrifyingly stable networks and entirely too much charisma.

And the kicker?

The other four people sitting calmly at the parlor table with them (and yes, that bore repeating) were the new forms of the Endbringers.

She wasn't prepared.

Not even slightly.

She certainly didn't expect to drop to her knees the moment Danny - or Abaddon, as her Shard kept insisting - made eye contact with her.

Nor when he casually teleported everyone on the Boardwalk out of the way of the Ash Beast.

To somewhere that wasn't space.

"...Oh fuck," Lisa muttered. Her voice shook.

Her Shard whimpered. Literally whimpered, like a kicked puppy with guilt issues.

Danny blinked at her from his porch, which was in the gigantic void of not-space somehow, sipping coffee like he wasn't a reality-breaking gravitational well in jeans. "You okay?"

Lisa tried to laugh it off. Her laugh came out like a dying squirrel. "My power just tried to pledge eternal loyalty to you."

Danny coughed. "That's new."

"And it wants in your pants."

Inference Engine was mortified, and smashed her with a rebuke of a thinker headache. Until Danny glared at it, somehow, in an off-dimensional direction, and sighed. The headache vanished faster than Alec when he heard Pizza was delivered.

Danny waved his hand, halting the thousands of people milling about in the not-space in their tracks, including Brian. Brian, who for the last thirty or so seconds had been stock still and so stunned that his halting in place didn't make much of a difference.

"I think we need to talk, the three of us," Danny said.

Neither Lisa, nor Inference, were ashamed to admit they were worried. Not scared, because Abaddon was obviously not angry or, well, according to Inference, acting anything like a normal Entity, but they both felt that they were about to have a Talk with their father.


Lisa didn't remember getting inside the house. One second she was outside trying to regain control of her legs after even more revelations, the next she was on a couch with a warm blanket over her shoulders, and a mug of cocoa in her hands. It was really good cocoa. That offended her. And they were also no longer in the not-space, not that she could tell the difference beyond just a gut feeling. Brian was in a bedroom in the basement sleeping off a hangover, and it was the next day.

What the hell happened?

"You asked me to stasis you so you wouldn't make more of a fool of yourself," Danny offered, smiling kindly her way.

There was a noise in the back of the house. Lisa's attention, despite not wanting to leave her new… actually she wasn't sure what Danny was to her now, though the easiest to go with was… her new boss, but she had to know. She always had to know. Nothing Inference did caused that. They just enabled each other.

It turned out to be the other Entity in the home. Taylor was descending the stairs slowly, one hand trailing along the railing like she was still half-dreaming. Her hair was tousled, her eyes puffy, and there was the faintest impression of a cheek mark on her arm. Those were all clear signs she'd sobbed herself to sleep in someone's embrace.

That someone being Emma, right behind her, almost supportively. The girl wasn't remotely human, that Lisa knew; she was apparently a new Endbringer, but Taylor had changed their functions and renamed them Friendbringers. She was obviously the same warm constant she'd been last night, given her support of Taylor and how she was acting. Ziz must've also joined the pile halfway through, draping herself over them with the solemnity of a cat claiming a favorite sunspot, because when she came down the stairs behind the two of them, her wings were out, ruffled, and she had a beaming smile on her face.

Inference informed her that Taylor hadn't protested. She hadn't had the energy. And to also not push that particular button, since the girl turned what was effectively the closest their reality had to a goddess was very, very raw on the topic.

Now, said goddess was blinking at the harshness of morning light and the chill of the downstairs tile, following the sound of their voices. Ziz trailed behind her with the springy lightness of someone who definitely, totally hadn't spent the last several hours being a weighted blanket.

As they got closer, Inference went into overdrive. Taylor. Queen Administrator. Recently emotionally volatile, Ascended Entity, and very possibly the one person who could decide whether Lisa's continued existence was a mercy or a mistake. Danny would probably stop Taylor, since Lisa was sort of his worshipper now? But she also didn't want to make the teenage goddess mad either.

She tried to sit straighter and failed, spilling a little cocoa down her front in the process. She froze, halfway between casual and cardiac arrest.

And Danny - Abaddon, whatever - had the gall to snicker at her!

Then Taylor stepped into view.

Her expression wasn't hostile.

That was almost worse.

She looked curious. And tired. And underneath it all - the kind of wary that said she'd been burned too many times to play nice unless she had to.

There was also the sensation of something a whole lot bigger than her, a whole lot bigger than Inference, taking a cursory but discerning glance In her general direction. It wasn't just the unease of a predator eyeing prey; it was more the feeling than an ant gets when presented with a boot.

Lisa swallowed.

Taylor eyed her dad, then Lisa, then back again.

"She didn't do anything stupid, right?" she asked Danny, voice a little hoarse but steady.

Danny raised his hands in mock innocence. "Define 'stupid.'"

Lisa decided to speak up. "I did not try to seduce your dad. My Shard did. I think. Possibly both. We're still working that out."

Taylor blinked, and the feeling of being observed went away. She scoffed and rolled her eyes. Her human ones, anyways.

Ziz, the traitor trailing the pack, grinned. "New cultist detected."

"Stop it," Taylor threw her way, lightly bopping the previous Hope Killer on the head like a misbehaving child.

Emma just giggled at her, and hugged Taylor from behind.

Lisa curled into the blanket more. "I think I worship him now. But like, in a strictly nonsexual, immensely respectful, quantum-structural sense. Probably."

Taylor stared at her. Again.

Then Lisa's eyes widened.

"Wait, wait, wait. You're the one who gives Shards therapy, right? That's what's been happening, why so many things have been changing?! You fixed them. You fixed them! That's why things are quiet. Brockton Bay is never quiet!"

Taylor crossed her arms. "Yeah. Some of them. Not enough, but some."

Lisa instantly stood straight up, put her cup on the couch table, and bowed towards Taylor. "Please. Fix mine. I am so tired."

There was a long pause.

Then Taylor sighed. "Fine. But if she pulls anything, I will graft her to a literal chair. And then sit on it."


The process wasn't clean. Or easy. Inference Engine was paranoid, twitchy, and had more buried trauma than half of Earth Bet combined.

I eventually managed to force a partial copy of a few of the emotional management Shards I owned onto Lisa's shard. It stabilized the connection. Regulated it. Brought clarity.

Dad's new worshipper wouldn't be having any more Thinker headaches, and Inference wasn't quite as much of a paranoid bitch anymore, but that was all I wanted to do that morning.

"If you still need more later, come find me again. But right now, I have a date with our tea maker," I told her, and pointedly ignored what she or her Shard said past the thanks they gave me. I walked past her, giving her a pat on the head, and entered the kitchen for glorious, glorious tea to drown my worries and horrified betrayal from yesterday in.


That was a woman. Actually, no, more like a preteen. At least physically.

A very famous preteen, whom I happened to know the appearance of very well. Whenever she showed up on TV, it was always in a report on whatever parahuman host she'd gobbled up and turned into a power, or wild speculation and concerns about the next target for said gobbling.

…I was gone for five minutes. Five!

I looked at my dad, back to the girl on the couch, and then to my Friendbringers. The tea in my hands started to cool off, and so I took a sip. I wasn't prepared for this, at all, but at least due to my new power I could drink steaming hot tea without worrying about being burned. Tea was taking on an entirely new dimension for me, and that alone brought my spirits up enough to address the fairy in the room.

"...Why is the Faerie Queen on our couch?"

While I asked the question, I pinged her Shard for information. To my shock, the girl sat ramrod straight, and jumped a little. Her eyes widened and she stared straight at me.

[The title, no, the Name given to me by my progenitors is… Ciara, her Shard sent me. Directly.

What the hell.

As if that explained anything!

The transmission was rough, but it was very obviously similar to how Dad and I communicated in human words despite using Shardspeak.

"She needs help, Taylor, and I can't do it," Dad said. "I don't really know how. But for the record, though I do support you helping her and fixing what's wrong with her Shard, I didn't bring her here. She was here when I got back from the car."

Ciara looked at me innocently, worried as she was, and practically begged me through Shard communications to give her what she needed to understand how to be human again. Because apparently she wasn't human at all, and actually some kind of freak mutation of an elf and a fairy with a really good shapeshifting power toggled on at all times, and was also her Shard in a way eerily similar to myself.

From what I could tell, the Internet wouldn't survive if photos of her true age, fully adult form got out. Nothing should be simultaneously that sexy and adorable.

Oh shit, there goes my sexuality.

I quickly sent her obnoxiously adorable, pleading face all the data I managed to get when I rebuilt my body, alongside an offer for a library connection to my Shaper, and pointedly ignored the ramifications of my entire everything related to attraction becoming Yes.

Shaper loved it, as I hadn't done too much with… her, and the feeling I got from the shard was definitely her at this point, I guess because she'd made a decision on my worthiness? Yeah, she was my Shaper, which made her my subordinate and thus if I had investigated I'd have learned of her true level of consciousness, but I didn't and hadn't wanted to because I refused to be like the other Entities that had come before me.

Anyways, given the thanks I got from Shaper with a suspicious number of other quantum signatures I recognized as parts of my Shard collection attached, that was the right call.

There goes the idea of them not doing things without my input though. The compromise I reached, broadcast, and got immediate confirmations of agreement as well as appreciation of leniency for was that if any of them were going to do something, they'd better ask me first, and I had veto power.

A couple of them were suspiciously silent at that last bit other than agreement, but it didn't seem malicious and Victory Path and Shaper agreed to explain it to me when I wasn't busy, so that was acceptable.

Ciara loved what I gave her. She beamed at me, a genuine, fully human expression, as I sensed her, or her Shard's, touch on Shaper's social libraries. Which she apparently had. Why the hell did a biological manipulation Shard have social libraries?

"Thank you! Sorry about how I talked before, and what I did," she said clearly, for the first time in what I knew of her history acting like a normal person. "I was too… broken, to understand before, but now…"

She finished her getting up… by dropping straight back down onto her knees, bowing her head, and letting her hair fall in front of her face.

What the fuck.

"Please accept me into your service as penance for those I have wronged," she intoned solemnly.

I looked at her, then around. Dad only managed to maintain a straight face with sheer force of will and at least three active social Shards. Yoinked those while I was looking, and while I knew he knew I'd copied them, he just seemed happier for it.

Right, not a normal Entity. Still gotta get that through my head. Though to be fair, what I was dealing with yesterday clouded my mind quite a lot.

I looked at the rest of the people in the house. Ziz and Emma were watching us. Ben… was watching TV, lounging on a copy of my Dad's favorite easy chair, made out of rock.

Didn't sound that comfortable, but who am I to tell the magma digger not to sit on a rock. It's basically what he did before becoming my Friendbringer anyways.

Levi was in the backyard, and the headache that was Dad's new worshipper and her boyfriend were suspiciously absent. A check of the house with my sensors showed them in the basement, very close together, and that was as far as I looked before immediately cutting off my scan of the area.

Emma didn't do this. She might have, but she was also aware of just how fragile I was at the moment, as it was only a the hours of a single night since I broke down and she let herself get used as a hug pillow.

Dad had already said it wasn't him.

That left just the one.

So, my gaze swiveled to the one who was most likely responsible for this shenaniganry. "Ziz, why is there a Shard vacuum in my house pledging loyalty to me?"

She looked incredibly offended, and scoffed. "Why do you think I know?"

I raised an eyebrow, complete disbelief on my face. "Are you telling me this isn't your doing?"

There it was. She grinned wide, teasing me with the inflections of her voice. "Oh, no, it absolutely is, I just resent the implication that if something random happens it's my fault."

"... Just… just go build more bedrooms in the basement if you're going to keep bringing in people who need help," I told her, pinching the bridge of my nose and pointing at the door to our expanded basement. I reveled in the ability to do this while drinking tea because I could simply direct my invisible arms, my Shard body's effectors, to keep the mug in the air in front of my face while I used both my hands.

"Aye aye captain!" Ziz happily agreed. She gave me a salute, spun on her heels, and waltzed right through the door as if it wasn't even made of matter.

"Showoff," I grumbled under my breath.

Ciara hadn't spoken, but she did raise her head and watch the exchange. It seemed amusing, and after reviewing it from third person, I guess it was.

Despite not wanting to, despite my better judgment basically screaming into the ether that this was a bad idea… I sighed and agreed. "Okay, fine, if you feel you need to do that to make up for what you did as the Faerie Queen, I accept. But I'm accepting for you, not me, clear?"

It obviously wasn't clear because the next moment I had my hands full of a very tightly hugging, and sobbing, incredibly attractive elf girl thanking me over and over. I only barely managed to swerve my mug of tea that I had been gloriously drinking out of the way, but it was worth it.

I was touch starved, and I knew it.

Also, this explained a lot. I just hugged her back and did what my mom used to do for me, and Emma had last night, to comfort her; I gently rubbed her hair for as long as it took.

Dad had to run it though. "My kid's first worshipper! Oh I should get the camera, this is a huge milestone!"

I just kept hugging the elf and stuck my tongue out at him.

He did wind up getting the camera. And a picture. Although we'd never owned that model of camera, so I was pretty sure he just assembled it directly in his hands.


As I trudged back up to my room, I felt the Shardspeak equivalent of a dry cough.

[Yes?] I sent Inference's way, wondering what the Shard wanted to say in private.

[Queen Reclamation shouldn't surprise you. This sort of thing is going to be expected of you now. Your network generates what is basically a localized gravitational pull for emotionally damaged, or Entity-less, outliers.]

I froze.

[Statistically, those of us experiencing profound trauma, or with hosts with power dysregulation or emotional codependency will self-sort into your orbit seeking structure, validation, or metaphysical absolution. You are effectively an anomalous therapist-hub. It is... mildly impressive. Also somewhat pitiful for them.]

[You did not just call me a cosmic therapist-hub.]

[Would you prefer emotional landfill? Do not be insulted. You are providing a needed function for this aborted idea of a Cycle.]

I was already heading towards the basement before the last words and concepts landed, because there was only one other person I knew who would have encouraged this kind of smug programming, though given how she was reacting to me it was likely accidental.

Lisa the human would understand where the lines were.

Inference could only get a glimpse of them.

Both of them likely knew my emotional state, and Inference had tried in a horrifyingly unsuccessful way to be reassuring, but the failure was still a failure and I was annoyed.

I wasn't going to let her get away with that level of sass without learning why it wasn't a good idea.


Lisa stared at me, the blood slowly draining from her face and making her turn even whiter than she already was.

I'd picked her up with my effectors and walked her back up the stairs, plopping her on the couch, with a frown on my face and no explanation.

Inference Engine was on its metaphorical knees.

"Taylor," Lisa started to try to persuade me, "I don't know what my Power did-"

I narrowed my eyes at her, and my sensors at Inference Engine. "You're right. You don't. And your Shard needs to learn when to keep her mouth shut."

Ziz snorted, not even trying to cover-up her reaction.

Lisa winced. "I've been told something like that before," she admitted. "Neither of us are very good at that."

I smirked. Lisa paled further, and Inference Engine, correctly guessing what I was about to do, flat out begged me by kissing the metaphorical ground not to do it.

Not because it would harm either her or her host.

No.

Because she didn't want to be on the receiving end of what she'd trained Lisa to do.

"Tough," I told them both. "You two need to learn mouthing off security. And you need to be able to talk to each other to do that."

I override Inference Engine's attachment protocols and rapidly grew a small, limited copy of my Friendbringer Shard onto Inference Engine as a sort of… pseudo-graft of biocrystalline flesh.

"Taylor!" Lisa admonished me, or tried to at least, as she scrambled around to hide behind my couch, "Taylor what are you doing!"

The limited copy received instructions from me, and a template. Ignoring Inference's fervent protesting, I forced her consciousness matrix to output through the new addition, or rather what it would create in about two seconds, instead of into Lisa's head.

Then I sent the [BEGIN] command.

Lisa grimaced as a sudden bout of nausea assaulted her while the Shard-Host connection reinitialized. Space warped on the couch in front of, but also next to my mouthy as hell... sort of friend.

And a moment later Lisa was beside herself.

Lisa, slowly recovering from her vertigo, cradled her head and looked at me. "What did you do?" she accused, still not noticing her biocrystalline clone on the couch cushion.

Inference Engine, on the other hand, gaped at me. Her mouth was wide open, so wide she might literally have caught flies if I hadn't cleaned my house recently.

She held up her hands and flipped them over multiple times, then pinched herself in many places. I, seeing this, grinned at Lisa.

"I made it so you two can talk," I faux innocently announced. The amount of smug I felt was getting pretty damn high.

Lisa looked at me sideways. She kept her eyes locked straight on me, not wavering even an inch. "What? My power hasn't said anything since you did… whatever you did!"

The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

Inference Engine, coming to terms with her new body and primary consciousness processor, screamed.

Lisa jumped, whirled her head around, and saw herself.

She blinked for two long, tense moments.

"Well yes, but actually no," Ziz chimed in.

Then Lisa screamed too.


"She's going to be insufferable with arms!"

"She already is," I muttered, rolling my eyes. "At least this way she has to listen to other people."

The new clone of Lisa, clothed in sleek and elegant biocrystalline cloth glowing with internal logic patterns, blinked around at reality from the couch.

Lisa screamed again, this time out of frustration. The clone turned her head, thought about it for a second, and then screamed back. Then coughed. Then poked Lisa in the forehead.

"You're really soft," Inference Engine noted. "And your hormones are ludicrously unbalanced."

"...Excuse me?"

"I'm surprised you haven't burst into tears during every episode of Bake Off."

Lisa pointed an accusatory finger. "You're not allowed to say things like that."

"I'm your power. I know you're wrong."

I snorted. That was exactly what I'd been talking about. "See? Mouthing off security!"

Ziz added, helpfully, "I give them three hours before they're cuddling."

Lisa buried her face in the top of the couch. "I hate everyone in this house."

"You mean in the "cult?"" I deadpanned, just to mess with her a little bit more.

"SHUT UP."


Inference, now human shaped and terrifyingly expressive, had looked at me with the awkward tension of someone trying to figure out how to apologize without technically saying they were wrong. Because, according to her internal logic matrix, she wasn't wrong. Just rude. Repeatedly.

She sat across from me with her hands folded like a replicant at confession. "I acknowledge that my assessment caused distress, and that the timing of my commentary lacked appropriate empathy buffering."

"That's not an apology," I deadpanned.

She blinked slowly. "I processed that your emotional vulnerability renders you highly sensitive to terminology that might otherwise be considered observationally accurate."

I stared harder.

Lisa kicked her in the shin.

Inference paused, adjusted her posture, and actually seemed to think. Then she tried a third time, and I let it slide even with how rehearsed it sounded. "I am sorry for being an emotionally dense Shard gremlin with the tact of a rusty spoon."

I blinked. "Wow. Okay. Yeah, that'll do."

Lisa gave her a thumbs up. Inference looked way too smug about earning that.

Then the scheming began. Ideas flowing like an unholy fusion reactor made of caffeine, social leverage, and mutual trauma.

I was sitting at the edge of the couch, sipping tea that Ziz had (suspiciously) made without being asked. Inference had stolen half of Lisa's blanket and was flipping through a glowing scroll of shard-encoded notes that didn't exist in physical space. Lisa had taken over the whiteboard.

That's when Dad made the mistake of walking into the living room, mug in hand, expecting maybe peace and quiet or a few survivors from the Taylor Emotional Typhoon. Foolish Dad, I didn't have any emotional therapy Shards yet, my emotions were still all over the place.

Lisa and Inference both turned to him in perfect sync, which they had apparently started doing just to mess with me. Their eyes were too bright. Their grins: identical, predatory, far too eager.

I didn't even look up. "Hi Dad."

He eyed them both warily. "So… what am I walking into?"

Lisa took the lead, bouncing slightly on the balls of her feet. "We have an idea!"

"It's about your cult," Inference added with deadly calm, setting down a psychically vibrating shard-diagram that began labeling itself.

Dad blinked. Twice.

"I don't have a cult," he said, sipping his coffee.

"You do have a group of incredibly powerful, mentally unstable people who are all emotionally fixated on you and describe you in quasi-divine terms," Inference clarified, helpfully. "Also there's a shrine in the garage."

"Ziz made that," I muttered under my breath.

Lisa nodded solemnly. "We factored in the shrine. And the fact that your 'not-cult' has six distinct tiers of emotional attachment, including one subgroup that refers to you exclusively as 'Dadvent.'"

My dad looked like he was deciding whether to go back upstairs or just walk into the sea.

"As a disclaimer, we are not in that group," Inference quickly added.

Lisa pressed on. "The idea is: we organize it."

"Structure it," Inference said. "Define doctrine. Responsibilities. Schedules. Therapy circles. Possibly themed robes."

"No robes," I added automatically.

"They're optional," Lisa said, then glanced at Inference. "Mostly."

The target of this memery ran a hand down his face. "I need more coffee for this."

"Too late," Lisa said, grinning like a chaos imp in her element. "You already walked in. That means we're the high priestesses."

"Taylor is obviously the High Administrator," Inference corrected.

"...Right, because of what she is… right. And… you are the reluctant messiah figure!" Lisa finished.

"I- wha-" Dad tried to start.

I was finding endless amounts of entertainment in this, and totally not getting back at him for not telling me who he really was my whole life, not even just a little.

That's why there was absolutely no involvement or encouragement on my part towards the two Thinkers with mouth control problems. Nope.

"Overgod with plausible deniability?" Ziz suggested, popping into the room through a wall like she'd been summoned by her name.

Dad stared at all of us, then at his mug.

It was empty.

"Oh no," he whispered.


Ciara, meanwhile, was helping Emma decorate her new room. She had finally figured out how to do Pinterest boards and was absolutely delighted. Everything sparkled.

Ziz kept building new bedrooms in the basement. She labeled each with names like "Cultist Suite #7" and "Dramatic Flop Area." I would've pretended not to notice, but she kept escalating with the ridiculous names until I had no choice. Under no circumstances was I going to allow a door titled "Taylor's Bottom Bunker" to exist under my house.


That night, Lisa laid on the couch, Inference curled next to her like a cat made of fractal logic.

"You okay?" she asked. "I… I know I've been difficult… not just today, but, well you know."

Lisa hummed. "Yeah. I think so. I get where you're coming from a little bit more now, I think. You're still annoying sometimes, but… kind of like a sister."

Taylor, walking by with a bowl of popcorn, paused. "Just so you sisters know, we're putting a whiteboard in the kitchen too. You better label your conspiracy diagrams on that one, or I'll throw them out."

"No promises!" both Lisas shouted.

Danny sighed again. This was his life now.

And honestly?

It could be worse.