A world of luminescence fell away to dulled colors and then even that narrowed into monochrome. A vision of myriad possibilities stuttered into a lone string of understanding. Countless senses, a universe of knowledge and expansion, all cut down into one fragile, small body of flesh and blood.

Yet everything made so much more sense.

We're s-so very small, in the end.

I gasp. A sharp, harsh inhale; the expansion of my lungs surprisingly caused little pain. I immediately knew there was something very wrong. The very fact that I could filter that thought with any resemblance of clarity was confirmation of it.

The confusion I felt was literally overwhelming to the point that my body shuddered—convulsed—from the panicked sensation. I had no idea what just happened. I had no idea where I was. I barely even knew who I was.

My memories were blurry, and their connections to one another were disjointed. One moment an idle chat, the next vicious combat. The feeling of my powers grasping endless power, to the screaming horror of absolute helplessness. My vision was as blurry as my memories. I didn't have my glasses. Half a dozen names sprang to mind that all held a grain of truth to my identity, but all felt wrong.

I exhaled. The breath stuttered out of throat like a staccato as I continued to fail in controlling the shakes ripping through my body.

My body?

I glanced down at it. The gritty hand and mauled stump, and everything I could see of it in my blurry vision.

This was not my body.

The clarity of that thought caused a feeling of dread to begin to creep up on me. There was no lifting veil that allowed me to grasp the truth, but rather a connection of thoughts that lead me there. I had no clear memories of it, but I still instinctively knew certain facts regardless.

Although my memories were disorganized, I could still remember key moments of my life, important people within it.

Anchors.

Yes, I could remember those things again. I could remember my father—my father?—Lisa, Rachel, Brian, Aisha, Alec…

My name…

I could actually internalize those points as a matter of language instead of just vague concepts to keep some resemblance of sanity and direction. It was glorious. A hiccup interrupted my shaking as I struggled with a feeling of joy in the simple pleasure of holding myself together.

But it was still all wrong. I knew that with a feeling of absolute certainty, and I felt both excitement and apprehension as I questioned that fact. Why was it wrong? Well, obviously because I'm wrong.

I'm wrong.

I'm wrong.

Taylor Hebert—is not my name. I know Taylor. I know this scarred, maimed body intimately well. But I am not Taylor. That is certainty. It is so absolute and undeniable I cannot even protest the absurdity. I simply move onto the next thought.

So who am I?

Queen Administrator.

Ah.

Yes.

The dread in me gave way to an odd sensation of satisfaction. A triumph to have finally reached an answer to one of the burning questions that confounded me so. Perhaps I should have been disbelieving—I did not feel like some hulking monstrosity born from… something to do with Scion, but the clarity I felt could not be denied. I only held Taylor's memories, but I still had certain aspects that were not at all human.

But it was limited. Why? Because there was only a limited amount of space. In what? In Taylor.

I paused.

A premonition struck me. A feeling of certainty that I did not want to finish this train of thought.

I continued to shakily breath in and out, not seeing anything but fuzzy outlines. In, out. In, out. Time passed. It could not have been more than a minute or two, but given time's relativity, those few minutes stretch to an eternity before I drove my car off the bridge.

Where's Taylor?

Gone.

She's gone.

Beyond the memories and feelings still remaining in the body she left behind, everything was overtaken by the shard—by me.

I swallowed. The taste of my own—of Taylor's—saliva was almost bitter, perhaps from some form of dirt that made its way into my—into Taylor's—mouth.

Surely… there was something left. Some sort of reversal of essences. I felt like I was Taylor because of the massive difference between our beings. All that is the administrator shard could not hope to be contained in a human being—and even if it could, the two species were simply not compatible to that level, not without incredible modifications. Yet even so, the fact was that I was in Taylor's body. If that's the case, then shouldn't Taylor be in mine?

No.

The answer was no. It wasn't a switch, it was an overwrite, a bleed over.

Taylor's body choked. For a second I thought I'd flubbed a swallow, but when her breath coughed out of her throat in a wheeze, I realized that wasn't the case. She was starting to cry. I tried to contain it for a few seconds, resulting in a couple more gagged sobs, but soon failed.

Why?

The thought sprang up as tears started to drip out of her—my?—eyes. A part of me was entirely detached from it all, only curious as to the sensations now causing… the body to quake with another type of shuddering.

But that was a very small part of me. The rest of me could easily remember—now more clearly than ever in my existence—the intimacy between us. I was connected to Taylor long before she awoke to me in that locker, but from that point on we were connected deeper than intellectual or emotional level. A philosophical way of putting it would be a connection of the soul, but perhaps it could simply be summed up in the fact that she was my friend.

A friend I didn't always understand. I had my mission, and she didn't always agree with that. We worked together. We fought each other. I could recall Taylor being afraid of me at times, afraid of the blurring line between her and me. Even so, we understood one another. Not always, but when it mattered most, yes.

How could I not cry?

Time is a relative thing. I have no idea how long I simply wept. If I were feeling particularly egocentric, I could say I cried for a couple years—it's not even like that's a long time for me—but if I were to take a guess it couldn't have been more than ten or twenty minutes.

However, I didn't stop because I felt I'd finished with my grief.

"M-miss, are you all right?" No, I was interrupted. The sound of a man's voice caused Taylor's… no, it caused me to flinch. I fell over onto my side when I tried to pick myself up, still shuddering with sobs. I wasn't in any condition to deal with another human, not in any form of interaction. The fact that I could even understand the words the man spoke caused a ping of interest to that detached self of mine, but in the immediate sense I hardly cared.

But when Robert Goodman stepped into the radius of my administration, I found I didn't need to interact with him at all.

It was like… like a sealed vent suddenly opening and bringing fresh air into a musty old house. It was nothing like when I—Taylor—had Panacea break down the walls between the two of us.

Well, no, it kind of was.

But better. A lot better. I immediately knew that it was 2010. I knew I was on Earth Bet. I knew that Scion was alive. I knew that I was in Brockton Bay. I also knew a lot of irrelevant things. I knew these things because Robert Goodman knew these things. I wasn't reading his thoughts so much as totally hijacking him to the point where his very memories were connected to me, not unlike the connection I had with Taylor's body. I could see out of his eyes. I could control his body. I could even control his brain, although anything but rudimentary commands would likely cause serious damage.

I could also let him go, which I did.

The world felt a little darker as the sensation of actually being able to see clearly disappeared, but I felt a sense of accomplishment at the simple exercise of control.

Then Robert Goodman ran out of the alleyway screaming hysterically. I suppose I couldn't really blame him.

But I was quite thankful for his kindness in investigating the sounds of crying nonetheless.

Despite the insanity—no, the sheer impossibility of it, I was somehow three years in the past. This was impossible because, while time was not immutable, certain beings such as Scion should be a constant. If he was alive it was something never before encountered. It would be a potential that might very well change the universe if it could be controlled. If I could find out how I got to this point, a new path could be forged for my progenitor.

Yet I felt no sense of wonder, no feeling of hope for that path. Far from it, my initial feeling was something close to resentment—all the work Taylor put into the world was ruined. All of the feelings, her happiness and suffering both, all of her successes and failures, all of it was gone. Her legacy to the race she left behind had been undone like it never was.

But then I stopped to consider.

If Scion was alive, was she?

This body was not that of Taylor Hebert from 2010. It was the freshly brutalized, battle worn form of 2013. When I was shunted to this place, did I overwrite the current Taylor, or simply misplace myself? The conventional logic I had on hand would lean towards the latter given Scion's existence, but since when did logic have a place in the universe?

I tried to pull myself up from my curled position, and felt strangely invigorated. Tremors still shook my limbs, but it felt easy to pick myself up from the blurry, grey concrete. Maybe I should have been exhausted, but possibility of seeing my friend so soon after I'd began to console myself with her death left me feeling weightless.

That small part of me pinged. A nagging reminder of something important.

I ignored it.

I fumbled my hand to the wall, trying to get my bearings, taking stock of myself finally. I knew who I was. I knew where, and when, I was. I didn't exactly know what happened, but I knew something far more important—I knew what I was going to do. I had my administration abilities, I had half a costume, I didn't have my glasses annoyingly enough, and I didn't have an arm.

That was okay. We've had less before.

Far more smoothly than I had any right to, I pushed off the wall and walked into the city.

I was going back to school.

It was not an arduous task, walking to Winslow. It wasn't an easy one either. It was exceedingly easy to find my way there, but it took time. I had no money, so I couldn't call a taxi. I could have taken control of someone to get me there, but I couldn't do so without drawing attention to myself. My range was still a rough sixteen feet, and I didn't have Doormaker to extend that. Dragging around unnecessary bodies at this time would be inconvenient, and while Goodman's hysteria could be ignored, several people screaming of a body snatcher wasn't going to do me any favors.

So walking it was. It wasn't a terribly long walk either. I didn't feel the drain of exhaustion, only the vigor of hope. School was in. It was a Monday in April, just shy of noon. The sun was shining, spring had fully set in, the city looked a little less dingy than one might expect, and I'm sure Taylor was absolutely miserable.

I paused at the gates of the school. A pitter-patter of different thoughts crept through my minds—different approaches, different venues, different times. There would be so many better ways to do this, but I couldn't.

I couldn't fight my nature.

I adored conflict, and while all those better ways were something Taylor might have strove for, they weren't something that appealed to me. Taylor would have waited; she would have hidden herself, slowly worming out all the possibilities until she felt secure in her path. She would have masked herself, donning another identity to hide away her nature, perhaps even leaving her past self for the time being until she had a more concrete solution for the situation.

I smile.

Too bad I'm not Taylor.

Sneaking into the school was a bit difficult with one hand, but it was Winslow, so it wasn't exactly a labor. Everyone was in class, so the halls were empty, but my shoes squeaked nosily on the dirty floors. My memories of school at this point were dim, so I had little idea where Taylor was in school, but the time for subtly had passed.

"Hey!" I smiled as I heard a janitor's gruff shout. Winslow didn't have the budget for any sort of hall monitors, but the tertiary workers had the joy of being used for more tasks than in their job description. I grabbed him as soon as he entered my field.

Jake Morey, what a fine fellow. He actually knew a lot of student names. Not Taylor's, but Sophia Hess, that certainly was someone he was aware of. Chances were likely that she'd be in the same class, but even if she wasn't I had business with Shadow Stalker.

Now two, I marched along to a class in the middle of history. If this were a movie, I imagine this would be the part where much dramatic music and tension would climax.

Well, if I were the hero, anyway.

In reality, as soon as the door opened and I walked in, there was a very abrupt silence as I grabbed every single human in the room, skimming over all of their memories and identities with only a brief thought, except for Taylor—and she was there, face down and staring a hole into her notebook, not writing. I imagine it was rather eerie for her. Not at first, of course. The door opening in the middle of a lecture would normally interrupt the flow of class, and anybody talking would shift their attention to the invader.

Taylor still kept her head down though, for a few moments, as I walked through the now silent room closer and closer to her. She only glanced up when she realized her teacher hadn't said a word. Her classmates weren't looking at me; they were just staring ahead as I kept them in place. The silence now permeated the room as if my entrance had frozen time.

"Taylor." I murmured the name huskily. My throat was sore from only using it to harshly gurgle and hack for… who knows how long now. However long it's been since Taylor had Panacea break down the walls.

"W-what?" I can't see her well through the eyes of 'my' body. I hadn't found any glasses. However, I could see through the eyes of the teacher—William Penn—and the janitor well enough. She looked incredibly… well, to borrow a phrase from Regent, she looked like a dork. She had glasses that looked a bit too bulky, framing that familiar not-quite-attractive, yet not really ugly face, on a body still going through that awkward teenage phrase of parts not quite being balanced in all the right places. A few pimples of acne were poorly hidden under a veil of shabbily applied makeup.

I remember that phase. Taylor only kept it up for as long as it took for Emma to actually get a good look at her face and start mocking her.

Honestly, it's kind of nostalgic to see her like this.

But she was also beginning to look frightened. I could almost see her connecting the dots. She was just confused initially, but now she began to actually understand to a point as her eyes darted from person to person.

"Come with me, Taylor." I held out my hand. She looked at it like a viper.

"W-who?" She tried, but failed to articulate a full sentence. I could imagine her thoughts as if they were my own even without extending my power over her. I could have acted like I read her mind, easily answering her questions before she had the fully formed them, but I didn't. I stood there, my hand extended as her mind blazed, asking questions just as quickly as she found answers for them. But there was one question she wouldn't be able to grasp in any form.

"W-why?" She stumbled again.

"Yes?" I urged her forward. I wanted her to ask this question.

"Why are you… why are you here?" She swallowed, blinking rapidly behind her glasses, half formed thoughts whispering horrific possibilities in her mind. This was a world where unnatural disasters struck every few months, where beings with strange powers could go mad and slaughter entire cities on the drop of a dime. It's all very fascinating and amazing for the average person until it showed up in the middle of class.

The Taylor a year from now might have immediately surged to possibilities of just how she could get out of this situation, but the Taylor in front of me was a very different matter. She had no powers, and had already had a full year of being crushed underfoot by ordinary girls, let alone a super powered one.

"I'm here for you, Taylor." I smiled, hoping it came out as gentle rather than intimidating. "I'm here t—"

There was a thundering crash that literally shook the school. The glass in the classroom rattled, and a ceramic trinket on the teacher's desk fell off and shattered. Taylor squeaked in fright. I blinked in surprise. I quickly focused on Sophia, and found nothing out of the ordinary—she actually wasn't even part of the Wards yet. No warning messages of some Master prowling the school, so what—

My thoughts were interrupted by another loud boom. I realized now that it wasn't from any sort of explosion, but an impact.

"Hm." I felt sweat begin to form on the small of my—that is, my Taylor's—back as possibilities began to solidify in my mind. Making one of the students closest to a window—strangely enough, it was Emma—look out allowed my fears to take form in reality.

It was Dragon. Two of her suits had landed on the campus grounds.

Another thundering boom.

Make that three.

"Well, this just got complicated."

I pulled back my hand to place my thumb and middle finger on my temples. Sighing, I began to rub the area. Perhaps I really should have researched things a bit more.