Fourth

Chapter 01

Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Terror. Bugs crawling around me, eating my flesh. Pain, when they were carving tunnels into my legs. Disgust from the grime and disease filling the locker with me.

I was going to die here. I'd never see my Dad again.

Oh, god. Dad. He couldn't handle me dying too. Not after Mom...

I called out one last time into the darkness. Not with my voice, I couldn't speak any longer, not after the screaming tore my vocal cords apart. With my mind.

HELP ME!

please...

Suddenly everything was black. I could look around. Move. But that shouldn't have been possible given I had no body. I saw two impossible massive things twisting around each other, firing bits of light back and forth as they traveled through the universe.

[TRAJECTORY]

[AGREEMENT]

[DESTINATION]

[AGREEMENT]

[CONDITIONS]

[AGREEMENT]

My head spiked with pain so much I screamed. One of those light bursts was on course for me, coming closer and closer. Just as it was about to hit me, it stopped. A voice that shook the stars issued an instruction to the light in front of me. Somehow I sensed that the light, my nonexistent body, and the voice were hidden from the huge entities.

{PURPOSE OVERRIDE}

The bit of light sort of... spun around. I could feel it's confusion, alien as the sensation was.

[AUTHORIZATION] it asked.

Instead of giving whatever 'authorization' meant to the light, the voice did something incredibly uncomfortable to the fabric of the universe itself. How I knew any of this was beyond me, but I did.

[ERR-]

[AUTHORIZATION AGREEMENT]

{PURPOSE DESIGNATION: UPGRADE} the voice said. Unlike the bit of light I could sort of understand the huge amount of extra meaning in every word of the voice's command. Upgrade in this instance apparently meant everything from Uplift to Safety and including Merge.

[UPGRADE AGREEMENT] the bit of light said. It started approaching me again.

Then the voice talked, actually talked, to me. No extra meaning in the words. For what it is worth, Taylor, I am sorry for what you are about to experience. But you will come out the other side better. Your world sorely needs one of what you'll become, a Fourth, with their head screwed on straight. The others are a combative idiot, a half-dead librarian and a depressed, inactive troll.

I couldn't speak in whatever this hallucination was but I would have if I could. What the hell was she, and the voice was most definitely female, talking about?

A moment later the light hit me and I couldn't care anymore. I was too busy screaming.

I lost consciousness. I'm completely certain of that. After an unknowable time screaming and undergoing the worst pain imaginable, I couldn't take it anymore. My mind broke. I faded from reality.

So how the hell was I still awake?

I also felt big. Really, really big. I would have said I felt fat or bloated, but that wasn't it. I just had this sense of being massive on a scale I simply couldn't think of before.

I tried to look around where I was. That was when I learned I didn't have a head, but could see everything around 'me' regardless.

I tried to move. That was when I found out I didn't have a human body. I got this sense of slipping between two vastly immense locations, so much larger than even my new 'big' self, and the surroundings changed.

One second I had trees poking into my side. Another I had dust and rocks underneath me.

I was frankly starting to panic. Nothing made any sense! I looked to the sky to find the sun and instead saw a rapidly shifting kaleidoscope of color where it should have been.

I finally figured out that since I could see everything around me, logically, I should also be capable of seeing myself. I turned whatever it was that gave me sight on my own body.

That was when I flipped out and decimated a continent.

I was a huge mass of flesh, crystal, and some kind of hybridization of the two. I also sat on a planet I recognized as Earth, not easily mind you with the lack of trees, and covered the entirety of what could be called Asia. If you squinted.

I wasn't human any longer.

I couldn't be.

After I stopped screaming, I realized that I actually looked a lot like those two entities in my apparently not so false hallucination-

Son of a bitch.

The voice had told me that flat out, I just hadn't listened. I was an Entity, whatever they, and now I, were.

Okay then. Get your head on straight, Taylor, this isn't the end of your world. You're not dead, you're just… some kind of gigantic space… Thing.

I tried to focus on myself. I obviously wasn't a Parahuman, but I had to have some kind of power now. No way is all the energy I'm soaking up from the Sun going to just support my new body.

And suddenly I understood.

I was a Shard.

Specifically, I was an Administrator, the type that Entities used to, well, administrate their other Shards. I had the ability to control and assimilate other Shards into myself in order to grow, or even spawn new Shards of my own, though they would only provide similar powers to the ones I provided a host. They needed to evolve by latching onto a host of the current Cycle's target species, giving them limited parts of the Shard's absolutely ridiculous ability to mess with space and time in exchange for data and new ways of using the power.

My metaphorical eyes widened as I digested this. I dove deeper into what Cycles were. What I found would have made me throw up if I could.

Oh my god.

It finally all hit me.

I wasn't a Parahuman, I had become something that could make them.

And I could control other Shards of my Shard's progenitor, Zion.

Or as my world called him, Scion.

It took a few moments for my mind to really come to terms with the fact our most heroic icon was not only the cause of Parahumans but also an omnicidal space whale.

My eyes widened even further when I found out his mate, Eden, was dead, and so it was highly likely I would be scoped out as the new potential mate to continue the Cycles once Zion learned of what I really was.

Actually, that might even be a little bit of a help. Zion was the 'idiot' the Voice had told me about. He let Eden do all the thinking for him, she being The Thinker after all, so if he started dating me I'd take the same authority role with him.

Was I seriously considering dating an omnicidal space whale to save my whole world, including every version of it, from destruction? Hell yes I was. Even as much as it grossed me out. That said, basically every hot blooded girl on Earth Bet wanted to get into Scion's pants.

It wasn't that much of a hardship.

But before that I had to collect Shards, make them part of myself. Right now I was just a single Shard. A large one, the biggest Zion ever had, but not an Entity. Zion wouldn't have any problems taking me right back into himself. That was something I couldn't allow under any means.

In Parahuman power ratings it was entirely likely that I was a Master: Yes. The Administrator could control anything with a Corona Pollentia, after all.

Taylor Hebert, Queen Administrator. Sounds good to me.

It was two planetary cycles, or days, later that I found the connection my Shard had with my human body. It was a nearly insignificant part of my new abilities. I was surprised to hell when I found it.

I got even more surprised by the fact that not only could I control the host body through the connection to the brain parts scientists named the Corona Pollentia and Gemma, but that the feature was present in all Shards.

That meant I could control anyone with powers or the potential to connect with a Shard. Oooh boy, the PRT were really going to be accepting of a Master: Fuck You rated Parahuman, not.

What didn't surprise me was the state of my body when I seized control of it.

I was in a hospital with a tube down my throat. Obviously I'd been rescued from the Locker, but without my mind, I would have been comatose. The moment I reconnected my brain lit up with activity, the machines around my bed started logging that activity, and a soft, non-alarming sound began chiming.

I opened my eyes to the world, coughing and spluttering around the tube in my throat. Doctors and nurses burst through the door. They tried to comfort me, the nurses taking out various things from my body including what I guessed was a catheter and the tube in my throat. The Doctor was asking me a few questions, which I answered with head nods or shakes as best I could.

But that wasn't what drew the majority of my attention. Because my Dad burst through the door a moment after them, running up to my side and grasping my hand like his life depended on it.

I would have been touched if I wasn't so shocked by what my new state of being identified him as.

[ABADDON]'s human form avatar, much like [ZION]'s Scion form, stood over me with a fatherly smile and tears of joy.

My human body fainted.

It woke up in my bed at home. I'd worked on channeling my significant inbuilt spacetime manipulation abilities into regenerating my body. I had to contact a shard called Shaper to get the necessary code, but after growing the appropriate structures into a new Shard and budding, then assimilating it, I had the ability to manipulate biology. Also, I was officially an Entity. Just a really, really tiny one.

Dad was in the kitchen downstairs. I reviewed the logs of occurrences around my body while I'd been focused elsewhere. My dad had noticed me starting to regenerate and signed me out of the hospital, then took me home. He told me in my sleep that even if I was a Parahuman now, he wouldn't abandon me. He'd do everything he could to help me. He apologized profusely for ignoring me after Mom's death and told me everything was going to be okay.

Then he caught himself chastising himself for saying all that when I was unconscious, swearing he'd say it again when I woke up anyways.

Whatever changes I'd gone through to become a Shard clearly left my mind intact. Soul too. Because that made me sob with happiness.

But we were definitely going to have to have a Talk.

I swung my body off the bed. My feet hit the floor and my Shaper helpfully delivered all the data about the biological systems everywhere in my radius.

As an Entity and not a limited host, that happened to be half the planet.

I was certain that if I was still human my brain would have exploded.

I hastily directed Shaper to collect its own data and only deliver it when I asked. The torrent of information left, secluded in the Shard itself, and I continued with standing up.

My body felt good. More than good, it felt great! I'd taken the liberty to do some pretty intensive remodeling of my human form. I could probably outrun a locomotive, punch straight through steel and leap skyscrapers in a single bound.

So I was inspired by Supergirl. Bite me.

I also had the… proportions of her at this point. Hey, I'm a teenage girl who's been flat as a board her whole life. I'm afforded some leeway.

As a last test before meeting with my dad I tried activating the physics manipulation field my body generated and thought of going up.

Space around me subtly warped, so fine you'd need a microscope (or the senses of a Shard) to see it. Energy poured into the system from my cells, harvested from the solar radiation that hit me on the car ride home, and my feet lifted.

I let out a whoop of joy. Shard I may now be, but my lifelong dream had been to fly.

Now I could.

"Taylor?" Dad called, obviously worried. He started towards the stairs at a rapid sprint.

I giggled with glee. "I'm fine, Dad! I'm just flying!" I squealed back.

He tripped and fell face first into the stairs.

Serves him right for not telling me about his real name.

He pushed himself up, used a discreet (for him anyways) flash of purple light to heal his nose, and ran up the remaining stairs. A second later my door burst open. His jaw dropped.

I waved at him and did a circle in midair. "Hi Dad!"

His mouth worked open and closed from shock. Eventually he shook himself, zoning back into reality. "Taylor?" he asked cautiously.

I grinned at him and flew forward, wrapping him up in a hug as I levitated above the floor near the doorway. "I can fly, Dad!"

"I- I can see that, Taylor," he stammered, leaning on the door to support his weight and mine.

I giggled and flew back above my bed. I decided to keep flying, the feeling of freedom too good to give up. So I started doing lazy circles in the air, slightly kicking my feet like I was swimming.

"Taylor," he finally managed to start, "when did…?"

I frowned and looked at him. "Really?"

His face fell. "Oh my god, Taylor. I'm so sorry you had to go through that."

I shrugged, forcefully burying the memories. "It's over. I'm better. I've got powers. Please don't ask me about what it was like."

My dad's eyes widened. "I won't," he assured me. "But… Taylor-"

I cut him off. "You had to accept hush money. I know."

Dad hung his head. "I'm sorry, kiddo. They were saying there was no evidence. Alan sided with them for some reason. We can't afford to sue them, especially not if Alan is the defense lawyer," he tried explaining. "Damn you, Alan Barnes."

I sighed, placing both hands behind my head. "He's probably doing that because Emma was the ringleader of their little pick on Taylor club," I glibly revealed.

Dad froze. He looked up at me with such a defeated gaze I flew back down to him and hugged him. "Oh Taylor," he said. "I'm so sorry." His strong arms encircled me, and his lips kissed the top of my head.

"It's over," I said. "I don't think we're gonna be able to win this one."

His arms tensed. "There's gotta be something we can do," he reasoned.

I figured that was the time to breach the subject. "You can't do anything in your current emotional state without destroying the planet, Dad, and I'm not powerful enough yet to take on the Idiot."

Dad froze. He pulled me off him and stared at me incredulously. "What are you talking about, Taylor?"

I grinned at him and directed some Shardspeak his way. Tilting my head of the side to hammer home it was my doing, of course. [GREETINGS, ABADDON.]

His eyes shot wide open. His mortal avatar, my flesh and blood Dad, dropped his jaw. "Taylor, what?"

"That's Taylor Hebert: Queen Administrator, Daddy Abaddon," I spoke out loud. My grin reached Titanic proportions.

My dad's eyebrows rose to their maximum. I received a message broadcast to my Shard's reality. [TAYLOR?!] Dad's voice said.

"Yup," I replied.

"You're an Entity," he gasped.

"As are you," I shot back, crossing my arms and glowering at him.

His face paled. "Uh oh. I know that look," he gulped. "What did I do?"

"You didn't think it was a little important to warn your daughter that you're an omnicidal space whale?!" I shrieked.

"Omnicidal? What-" he began, his face turning dark. "Oh. You mean The Warrior and The Thinker."

"As opposed to The Troll?" I stated, my tone flat. I was emulating my mom big time then.

"Hey!" he defended himself, "I've never killed anybody!" Then he caught on to what I'd called him and his face lit up like the fourth of July. "Did you just call me The Troll? By any chance are you an Entity because of some random woman's voice interfering with your Shard connection?"

I blinked, stunned. My dad erupted into a huge smile and laughed. "You are! Hahaha yes!" He pulled me into a tight hug and twirled me about the room. "I've been alone for so long!"

"Dad!" I yelled, it coming out as a muffled groan. I pushed away from him with my body's new strength and hovered in the air. "Explain!" I demanded.

He grinned so wide he looked manic. "Taylor, I've been Abaddon for several million years. Before that I was a member of another species that Abaddon, the original, and his mate were taking through a Cycle. Abaddon tried to give me a shard, the woman interfered, and I became Abaddon instead."

I stared at him for several seconds. "You're millions of years old?" I asked incredulously. My brain simply couldn't reconcile the concept of my dad, Danny Hebert, with the idea of my dad, Abaddon, several million year old Entity.

"Taylor, we're immortal," he explained. "So yes, I'm millions of years old. You'll probably reach that age too, eventually."

I stared at him even longer this time. "And you're an alien," I deadpanned.

He shrugged. "Yeah. Technically we both are, given you're an Entity."

My brain finally managed to catch up to the insanity that was now my life. "No, Dad, before I became an Entity, I was human. You went from alien to alien," I needled him.

He crossed his arms and pouted. "So what? I've been human for over 40 years, that isn't good enough?"

"You've been an Alien Entity for millions," I pointed out, giggling.

With that he realized I wasn't serious and started to play the game. "Huh. Well I guess you have a point. That makes you pretty unique, huh? A Human Entity," he mused. "Man, you're gonna rock this whole little section of the multiverse, aren't you?"

"Right after dealing with the Idiot," I agreed.

He grinned and rustled my hair. "That's my girl."

"Dad!" I squeaked indignantly.

"So Taylor…" Dad started, trailing off.

I rabidly kept wolfing down my cereal, only managing to let out a muffled "Mmfh?"

He chuckled. "Uh… You're looking a little… Different," he delicately said.

I put the bowl down on the table and raised an eyebrow. "You mean smoking hot?" I indelicately responded.

Dad winced. "Well, uh… Yes," he admitted.

I shrugged and ate another spoonful. "Hey, I was healing my body anyways, why not get some curves on top of it?"

He stared me down amusedly. "Taylor you were also flying this morning," he deadpanned.

"And?"

"You don't have a Shard for that," he pressed further.

I blinked at him. "You can see my Shards?" For some reason I blushed, feeling embarrassed as if I was standing naked before my dad.

He grimaced. "Human responses, right. I'll stop looking at you," he grumbled. "But yes, I took a peek into your reality and only found two. Not much of an Entity are you?" he teased me.

"Well if you're so fancy why don't you give me some?" I snarked back.

Dad raised an eyebrow and leaned back. "Huh. Not a bad idea. You are my kid, after all."

I barely had time to widen my eyes before the spacetime of my root reality, the one I had my own Shard and Shaper in, was invaded by about fifty other Shards, jumping into orbit of the rocky disaster of an earth. They went dormant, waiting for me to grab onto them and assimilate them.

"I was kidding!" I breathed out, staring in awe at my dad.

"You're my daughter, Taylor," he refuted, grabbing onto my hand and gently rubbing it. "It's my job to take care of you. I failed at that so badly that you turned into an Entity. Please let me help you now that you pulled my head out of my ass," he pleaded.

I gazed deep into his eyes, seeing nothing but unending love and guilt for how he'd treated me. In that instant, I forgave him, even though I hadn't known I needed to. "Okay," I let out a breath. "Okay. Thanks, Dad," I said.

"Will you tell me how you were flying now?" he asked.

I peered at him with mock suspicion. "Is that Abaddon, data hoarder talking or Dad, worried for his daughter?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not like the Idiot and the Librarian, Taylor. I don't need data. I am genuinely worried for you," my dad refuted.

I sighed. "Fine. I made my body into something as closely resembling a Kryptonian as I could."

Dad blinked. "You manipulated your biology with an Administrator Shard?" he asked incredulously.

"Oh no, I did that with Shaper."

"You took Shaper?!" He stood up from the table, eyes wide. "Taylor, harvesting Panacea's Shard could have killed her!"

I stared at him with confusion. "Panacea? She's the one with Shaper?"

Now he was confused too. "She still has it?"

I blinked. "Uh, yeah. Of course. I didn't know who Shaper's host was, but that certainly explains why it was complaining so much to me."

"Taylor how did you get Shaper if Panacea still has it?"

"I copied it, duh."

Dad stared at me, completely dumbfounded.

"What?"

He visibly gathered himself before continuing. "You copied… a Shard," he restated.

"Yeah," I confirmed. "What's so strange about that?"

Dad let out a tense breath. "Taylor, Entities spread data by giving each other their Shards. We can't copy them. At the most a Shard can reproduce but it would be a derivative, not a copy."

I froze in the middle of taking another bite. "Buh I dhidh," I reaffirmed.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," he reflexively chided me.

I blushed and swallowed. "Sorry. But I did," I repeated myself.

Dad stared at me.

"This is a big thing, isn't it," I suddenly realized.

"Oh yeah. It's big."

"That is bullshit," Dad finally commented.

He'd jumped one of his sensory Shards into my root reality to watch me copy the fifty six Shards he'd donated to me. He was most interested in the part where I copied the data and code present in a Shard into my root Shard, the Queen Administrator, then budded a new one off of it with the exact same code and data inside it.

Apparently, that was impossible, no matter that I'd performed that very feat fifty five other times.

Our human bodies (or human looking, on my part) still sat at the dining room table on Earth Bet. I'd asked to use normal speech instead of what I called Shardspeak, and being my Dad, he'd agreed. So whenever we wanted to say something, we did it through human (ish) mouths and ears.

"Taylor, this is incredible," he complimented me. "Do you know how revolutionary this ability of yours is?"

I blushed and rubbed the back of my head. "Uh, sorta?"

Dad shook his head and grinned. "I don't think you do. Part of the reason why most Entities destroy all versions of planets is to make sure that none of their Shards are left behind for others to poach. They're an incredibly precious resource to us. You… you've just made that unnecessary," he beamed at me.

I raised my eyebrows as the ramifications hit me. "Oh. Wow."

"We could very easily make a case to The Warrior that Cycles are now redundant," he continued musing.

I fidgeted a bit, blushing madly as the idea I'd come up with when I first learned about Zion raced through my head.

"Taylor," Dad pressed.

"Hey, it was the only thing I could think of at the time!" I defended myself.

"And what was this thing?"

I ducked my head, blushing even further. "Dating Zion so I could take over the role of his mate and prevent the Cycles from continuing," I mumbled.

Dad sighed and rubbed his forehead. "That won't be necessary, kiddo," he groaned. "And even if it was, I can't imagine my fifteen year old daughter being hitched to Golden Boy."

"Hey! I thought that he and I were the only Entities left!"

He shook his head. "I'm not sure he'd be open to it, given how you're the kid of the one who killed, or at least made it possible to kill, The Thinker," he explained.

My eyebrows rose. "How the hell did you do that?" I was shocked. Entities were supposed to be nearly impossible to kill.

"Two Shards, one a planning precog that basically says 'I Win' and tells you how to get there, then another that is essentially a virus I wrote for Entities."

"Huh," I said, mildly impressed.

Dad's face brightened. "Actually, we should have you make a copy of those two Shards for yourself, now that I think of it! The planning one would help you out immensely with figuring out your new state, trust me it helped with mine, and the virus one can be held as a weapon against Zion if necessary."

I shrugged. "Hey, I'm always open to getting more Shards. Send em over."

Dad suddenly looked sheepish.

I crossed my arms. "Dad, what did you do?"

He gulped. I looked so much like my mother it was painful at that moment. "So the thing is," he hastily explained, "the weapon Shard works by being assimilated into an unsuspecting Entity's systems and then ripping apart the majority of their code. So I don't have it. It is probably being hosted by someone on Earth Bet at the moment."

"And the planning one?" I asked tensely.

"That one I do know it's whereabouts. Eden wasn't entirely dead when she hit an alternate Earth, so I gave the shard to someone who could end her. I don't know what she's doing these days, but I guess we could always have a reunion."

I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "Okay. So you do actually have at least one, possibly two Parahumans to your name. Well, I suppose it was too much to hope for that you wouldn't cause a little bit of conflict."

Dad looked hurt. "Taylor, even if I did start giving out Shards, they wouldn't intentionally cause conflict. I know I gave those two the directive that if they were hosted they'd try to reduce it, but not by manipulating the host. And don't forget, you'll eventually start making your own hosts," he subtly reminded me.

Oh, right.

I could give people powers now. By splitting of pieces of myself and wiring them into their brains. With my copying ability I could probably even give people identical power sets too.

Shit.

I drew in a deep breath and relaxed. "Okay. That's good enough. I guess," I admitted.

Dad slightly smiled. "This is your show to run, kiddo. I'll follow your instructions on whatever you want to do. We don't have to go and get copies of those Shards for you if you don't want to."

I shook my head, steeling myself for dealing with a possible victim or two of my Dad's well-intentioned meddling and most definitely shoving the impending existential panic attack I was going to have to the back of my mind. "No, it's fine, Dad. The planning one sounds immensely helpful, especially to an Entity as new as I am. I don't know about the weapon one, but it wouldn't hurt to have."

Dad curtly nodded. "Got a handle on the dimensional travel Shard I tossed you yet?"

I slightly blushed, grimacing. "I haven't actually investigated any of them," I sheepishly admitted.

My Dad's face grew disapproving. "Taylor."

"Hey! I've been a little busy getting used to all this!"

Once I mastered the dimensional travel Shard, we were ready. Apparently an Entity had a connection to all it's Shards at all times. That was something we could use to track the host of Path To Victory (the name of the planning 'I Win' Shard, so humble) at her current physical and dimensional location.

Dad had pushed me to learn a few other Shards along the way too, including something that was basically a field of complete invulnerability to everything and one that granted flight.

"Hey, even if you can fly because of that fancy Physics Manipulation Field, it's always good to have a backup," Dad had argued.

I grudgingly admitted he was right.

Dad and I held hands as we stood in our living room. "You ready, Taylor?" he asked me.

I grinned up at him. "Sure thing Dad. This'll be my first time hopping dimensions!"

Dad snorted. "There were many things I thought I'd have to teach you as you grew up. Never in my life did I imagine I'd be raising another Entity."

I shrugged. "Hey, could be worse. I could be a host to the Shard I replaced with the drive for conflict and some stupid power limit like controlling bugs or something."

My Dad snorted again. "That would be all kinds of fascinating and terrifying at the same time."

I put my free hand on my hip. "Hey!"

Dad shook his head and held out a hand to the air in front of us. "Just watch what I do and try not to end up in another thread of the multiverse," he told me.

I rolled my eyes and huffed, but paid attention regardless of my teenage antics. Being indignant and seeing my actions as childish at the same time was quite a ride.

Dad called on his dimensional travel Shard, willing a wormhole open in front of us. The fabric of reality parted like the Red Sea, a swirling portal of raw spacetime bursting into being with a thunderclap. It was something incomprehensible to my human senses, my Kryptonian ones could only hint at the spacetime fuckery going on, and my Shard senses understood everything.

"Cool," I grinned.

"Yup. Next stop, Earth… Let's call it Witch," he declared. Something about his smile was way too knowing.

There was a joke in this somewhere.

"You'll be bringing us back, Taylor, so pay attention as our bodies pass through," he chided me, slightly bopping my nose.

I had just enough time to annoyedly sigh. "Yes, Dad." Then we entered the conduit of trans dimensional bullshit.

I can't describe what I saw. I won't even try. Three seconds later though, our bodies emerged into something a lot more normal.

We were in some kind of room, an apartment if I was guessing correctly. That it was one of many within a massive facility housing the remains of The Thinker lent credence to something else going on.

A 40-ish year old woman was sitting at a desk across the room we'd entered, some kind of office, in a gray pinstripe suit and wearing a dark blue Fedora.

I got a good look at her Shard while we stared at each other. It was incredible. I immediately started copying everything from the thing into my root Shard, a bud growing as it was fed information.

"Fortuna!" Dad exclaimed, waving. "Long time no see! How's Path To Victory doing?"

The woman, Fortuna, stared at my Dad. She gulped. She looked to me and paled. I didn't know why she was acting like that, we only said hi after all.

That didn't stop her from slamming a red button on her desk and putting the whole facility on alert.

Dad sighed. "Oh dear."

I turned my glare on him. "I thought you said you were friends!"

"We should be! Give me a break, it's not my fault she's become paranoid!"

"Dad!"

When the woman heard me address him as Dad, she fainted.

Well, I got to meet Alexandria.

In a full-tilt flying battle, yes, but meet her I did.

It took Legend arriving through what I recognized as a Zion dimensional travel Shard's effects (copied that one as soon as I could find the inter-reality wormhole in the head of the unconscious, sedated host) for the all out brawl our first meeting with Cauldron turned into to stop.

Snrk, Cauldron. That's an… interesting name for a shadow organization.

I finally got the joke, though. Earth Witch indeed. You're not as funny as you think, Dad.

"Hey!" the oldest member of the Triumvirate yelled.

Alexandria and I paused in midair, both about to swing punches into each other's faces. Eidolon and Dad stopped flinging ever more esoteric abilities at each other.

All four of us turned our heads to look at him.

"What the hell is going on?"

We'd retired to the medical lab of the Cauldron base once Legend managed to talk his teammates down from fighting me and my Dad.

He didn't have to talk us down. We weren't the ones who attacked unprovoked, after all.

Alexandria glared at me from the rather comfortable looking examination table she was sitting on. She winced as she pressed the ice pack in her hand against her eye again. Turns out being completely invulnerable for a couple of decades makes people forget how to keep ice applied to their bruises.

Well, I say bruises. Alexandria had a black eye from how hard I sucker punched her.

Eidolon and my Dad were staring into each other's souls. For his part, Eidolon seemed like he was having epiphanies about his existence every few seconds. My Dad was merely amused.

Fortuna, or as she had introduced herself once she regained consciousness, Contessa, was present too. Also some woman called Doctor Mother, or just The Doctor for short.

I didn't regret asking "Who?" at all, regardless of the death glare I received for my troubles.

"Now that we're all calm," Legend began, trying his best to project confidence in the face of us Heberts, "why were you fighting Alexandria and Eidolon?"

"They started it," I said without any hesitation.

Dad turned to look at me and raised an eyebrow. I blushed when I realized how childish that sounded.

Legend stared at me for several seconds. "Right. Because you and your… father? Invaded a highly secure facility and incapacitated one of our highest ranking members," he tried scolding me.

"She fainted," I refuted.

Legend seemed surprised. "What?"

Fortuna, sorry, Contessa, groaned. "Yes, I fainted. After being surprised in my office by two unPathable people and hearing one of them call the other Dad."

"Hey!" Dad shot back. "We were just trying to have a reunion!"

Legend and Alexandria paled. Eidolon abruptly grinned for some reason. The Doctor just sighed.

Legend got his mojo back way quicker than I'd expected. "A… Reunion?" he asked my dad incredulously.

He nodded.

"With who?!"

"Fortuna, of course," he answered. "I haven't seen her for almost forty years, after all."

Contessa scowled. "I've never met you," she refuted.

"Oh, but you have," my dad insisted. "Two unimaginably huge beings fly through the cosmos, leaving behind pieces of themselves. They arrive around a world and prepare for touchdown."

Doctor Mother raised an eyebrow. "You're referring to the trigger visions when an Agent connects with it's host," she realized.

Dad smiled. "They're called Shards, but yes, I am. That's what everyone else sees. But I know Fortuna saw something… a little more," he teasingly hinted.

Contessa paled.

My Dad's grin evolved into a full on smirk. "A third being follows the two, hidden in the shadows of the cosmos, until they are set to arrive. Then this third being fires something at the smaller one, something they unexpectedly and thus happily absorb. Moments later the great being shudders and fails to slow down, slamming into the planet it never finished arriving at, and is damaged so thoroughly that it would take years to recover. Then to finish the job, the third one tosses a Shard towards Fortuna. The vision ends."

Contessa jumped up, scrambling back to a corner of the room. The whole time her eyes were locked on Dad, almost unseeing.

"Is that what you saw, Contessa?" Legend asked.

She barely nodded.

"Shit. There's another one?" Eidolon asked.

"We're screwed," Doctor Mother declared.

"Fuck," Alexandria cursed.

My Dad and I met each other's eyes for a moment. He inclined his head, requesting permission, and I nodded.

He turned back to the assembled group and resumed grinning. "You don't have to worry about me. I'm not like the two others."

Every human present froze.

As one, they turned their eyes to my dad. Fear blossomed over their faces, and what little emotional output I could detect with my limited Shards of that type showed terror in their hearts.

Dad sighed. "Oh relax. Do you really think I'd lethally damage The Thinker and give humankind a Shard like Path To Victory if I meant you harm?"

Legend gulped. "You're… an Entity?" he finally asked.

Dad nodded. "I'm known as Abaddon, but I really am thinking of changing it to Danny. Human names are so much better than Entity ones," he idly mused.

This was a new side of my dad I hadn't seen before. Apparently he hid a lot of himself from me as I grew up.

That would have hurt pretty bad if I didn't know why he did so. I suddenly realized that I'd have to do some hiding of my own with whoever didn't know my new secret.

The fear in the room rapidly bled away to be replaced by utter confusion. "You… Want to be an Entity called… Danny?" Alexandria deadpanned.

"No worse than Taylor," he reasoned. "And that's what my daughter knows me as best anyways. It seems fitting that the previous millions of years as Abaddon come to a close and I continue on to the coming ones with a name that matches hers."

It took a couple of seconds for them to process that. Alexandria, the permanent Thinker in the room, figured it out first. Her eyes locked onto my face, found my grin, and widened. Then she stared at me. Her jaw dropped open and her face paled further than snow.

Everyone slowly matched her state.

I grinned and gave them a little wave. "Hi. Taylor Hebert, Daughter of Danny Hebert. Brand new Entity. Also trying really hard not to geek out at meeting you all."

Contessa fainted again.

A/N: Never fear! Ancient Legos is still being written. I just couldn't get this plot bunny out of my head, so here it is!