Taylor felt a lot of things about Subjugglator, most of them affectionate. After… after her dad had died during Leviathan's attack, she had needed a support more than ever and Jug gave her that. The transition in species had been jarring, but the new emotional spectrum had actually helped her cope a little bit with her father's passing. Troll's didn't really feel regret or sorrow as keenly. The only hiccup had been when she bled tyrian for the first time… but Meenah had taken the reigns as Empress, so Taylor was safe enough as the current Heires. The only really odd thing about it all had been her new understanding of her importance to Jug.

It was odd getting used to being just one facet of your significant other's relationships, but it made sense in context; if she hadn't had a proper family her father would have been something like a moirail, Emma a kismesis, perhaps she and Greg would have fallen into an auspisticism, though she had no idea how that would have worked exactly, she still didn't really understand what Jug got out of mediating between Greg and Madison… She still wasn't sure exactly what she felt about Madison, actually. Well, she didn't have to decide right now, anyway. Relationships evolved over time, so-

Something was wrong. What had triggered her attention?

Her center of focus shifted to her bugs, sliding through them like a fog. The majority were at the specialized computer interfaces, twitching their wings to type or shifting across track pads, a large spread of eye types allowing her to resolve the images displayed on the small screens. She had ramped down recently, after reading the entire internet for the second time; now she only had 103,719 interface ports working simultaneously. The distraction wasn't there, yet, though something was beginning to percolate in from the edges of the net as people elsewhere began to react in turn.

Something big then, very big, but what had precipitated her noticing something was wrong…?

Jug wasn't moving. That was the thing. It was a tiny thing, actually, which explained why she hadn't noticed at first, but Jug was always moving while he worked on his projects, maintaining a dozen threads of concentration at once as his TK assembled fantastical Tinker tech on the peripheries of his work space, while he sat in the middle, a gentle hum of prayer and sway of breath as he typed on a peculiarly outdated laptop.

Now, he was still and silent.

"CURSE HIM! PURGE HIM, PURGE THE HERESY!"

Jug was slamming his fists on the keyboard of his laptop, snarling and growling as his eyes bled to solid red, the change rapid enough to startle Taylor slightly. He settled somewhat after a moment, typing frantically with oddly jerky motions before slamming his computer shut. The original Troll stood and raged out at the lab, fist swinging wildly but hitting only the floor and walls.

"CURSE HIM, I WAS HAPPY! MOTHER FUCKER!"

Taylor was already alerting Vista, the younger girl sprinting through the Ward's base towards her Moirail even as Taylor did the same. It wasn't quite her job to pacify Jug but it still prickled at her to see him so upset. What could have happened…

Oh.

Shit.

A few of her flies sent out a simple message, clarification of Jug's rage, and warning mixed with call to arms.

"What are we going to do?"

Jug turned to her, eyes wild and teeth bared, fingers curled into ripping claws.

"KILL HIM! PURGE ZION!"

Vista was looking at her with a nervous expression, and Taylor's was grim.

"Scion has gone insane. He just wiped out New Dheli, and Britain. We must assemble for war."

The younger Ward was now so frightened that the tips of her curly horns were shaking, ever so slightly.

"Fight Scion? How can we- that's impossible!"

"No."

Jug's voice was calm and cold, plummeting from the height of mania to the pit of icy reason.

"It is not impossible. It has been done before; it will be done again."

He looked at Taylor with an unreadable expression in his eyes for a brief moment before turning to the tech still floating at the edges of the room.

"We will not make the same sacrifices this time though."

With a sharp flipping motion, everything in the room exploded into its component parts, flying through the air towards the center where something new began to form.

"Go, prepare, we leave in 5 minutes. TO WAR!"

Taylor left but had no real idea what to do. Her hand rose subconsciously to stroke one of her horns, gently brushing away any hair which might have gotten tangled.

She was wearing her costume already; spider silk made by something cooked up by Jug so it was even stronger than Darwin's Bark Spider silk, almost pure carbon nanotubes. There were more custom bugs in terraria in her personal workshop, wasps with stings filled with tranquilizers and clotting agents for attack or medical aid, beetles with jaws strong enough to gnaw through solid steel, bombardier beetles with Crawler-acid sprays, a sort of wasp/spider hybrid Jug called a Danger Lady, relay bugs… her mind raced and her bugs buzzed with her brief flare of panic.

What good would any of her bugs be against Scion? Jug might not be giving in to despair yet, but… No. No, she could not afford to be afraid. Her posture straightened and her hand fell from its nervous stroking as she shunted her disquiet into her bugs.

They had to win, or they would die. Everyone would die. Every person across every Earth, murdered by a mad god. Her bugs might not be good for fighting, but she could actually beat even Dragon at multitasking if she had everything in proper order.

In neat sequence, her custom arsenal of biological horrors crept and jumped and flew from their cages, settling into the carrying cases and backpacks she had prepared for just such purposes. Others settled on her costume, in her hair, in the little nooks and crannies made just for them.

In almost no time at all she was ready, and she made her way back to Jug's lab with two backpacks and a wardrobe sized box crammed full of bugs. It hadn't taken her quite 4 minutes, and in that time Jug had apparently almost completed what he had been working on.

It was only barely recognizable as some form of gun because a tube extended from one end; the massive canon sat in the center of the room, gleaming faintly despite the occasional mess of knotted wires which squirted from its sides like the guts of a trodden on mouse. Jug was still putting final touches on it, a dozen of him tapping out lines of code on as many computers even as a few more tightened screws or soldered exposed bits.

Taylor simply stood quietly, at peace with the low drone of bugs which emanated from her equipment. After a moment one of Jug looked up, finally focusing on her. His face briefly twisted into an expression she might have called sorrow, before melting into compassion and affection.

"Come here?"

She let Jug wrap his gangly arms around her, holding her close, even as a new, but familiar, awareness blossomed in her mind. Trump effects were somewhat risky, the gifted strength had been stripped of overt influences but still carried the risk of addiction through its simple euphoria. Her thoughts quickened and her range expanded even as she felt even the slight weight of her bugs disappear before enhanced strength.

Jug pulled back and gave her a small kiss, chapped and painted lips brushing against her own. Only for a moment. She made a silent promise to herself. When they got back, and they would get back, she would give him a better one.

Feet clattered outside as the rest of the Wards filed in, looking various degrees of nervous. Kid Win was brushing his hands over his gear and muttering to himself, a checklist of preparedness. Galant was wearing the new, heavier armour Jug had made him (a very clever jab that, they had had a rather explicit fight over it a few months ago). Vista was wearing a few pieces of tech as well, a helmet settled neatly under her horns and a chest piece which Taylor knew doubled as a jetpack and forcefield generator. Browbeat was looking less and less human as he added mods and addons, one hand stuck through a small hole in a oil drum marked 'fortified oatmeal'. Maddison and Greg- er, Corpse Princess and Void Cowboy, looked calmer than she had expected, gripping their chosen weapons firmly, but without the sort of desperate tension some of them seemed to be feeling.

The Protectorate entered a moment later, the older heroes wearing expressions in varying shades of grim. Satisfied, Jug spoke.

"Zi- Scion has gone rouge. He was never your friend; he was only bored. Now he is tired of that which is heroic, and is applying his hand to villainy. If we do not fight him, every Earth will perish; even New Alternia. This is unacceptable. You will fight, and some of you will die, but we will be victorious. No other outcome is possible."

That was not quite as inspiring as might have been hoped, but Taylor felt a stiffening resolve fill her spine anyway. Maybe it was Jug, but if it was, she didn't mind. With a wave of his hand, a portal opened at the back of the lab, leading to a field where more capes were already gathering. The assembled heroes stepped through, Jug's massive weapon floating out after them. More portals opened further away, spitting out even more capes to assemble in the open grassy space they found themselves.

Taylor spread her bugs out in a great cloud of hissing and buzzing, extending her range to nearly a kilometer and setting some eye-and-earbugs around the larger groups of capes to listen in, but some of her attention was caught; Jug was looking around as if searching for something.

"What is it?"

Jug glanced at her, his face solemn.

"I need some space to work."

With a quick nod, Taylor sent a small flurry of bug flying around their position like a vortex, gently nudging those nearby to get them moving away accompanied by calmly spoken instructions by her mouthbugs.

The Troll's fingers sunk into the ground once their immediate area was mostly clear, and Taylor felt the subterranean insects wink out of her awareness like snuffed candles as a sort of shiver propagated out from their position. The grass they stood on turned grey for a moment before being sucked back into the ground as if growing in reverse. The dirt began to slowly subside into a massive crater, all the capes still nearby stepping away or floating up off the ground, and in the center next to her and Jug, a shape began to form.

It was something like a centaur crossed with a scarab beetle, easily the size of an SUV and armed with wickedly curved blades on its forelimbs. There was a sort of click in her mind and suddenly Taylor could feel it. The beast trundled a few feet away under her command before settling down. It was followed by another, and another, a veritable horde, an army, ready to fight for her. There was something odd at the back of the beasts' minds though, and she wasn't sure what it was.

"They have a gemma. They have powers. Gravity control… sort of. For flight and for attack. And durability and strength equal to an ant's, but more."

Taylor looked from Jug to the creatures, feeling out the peculiarity… yes, she could see that, she could feel it. With a flicker of thought, the army of monstrous insects rose into the air, the beating of their wings an almost subsonic hum felt more than heard. 3,210 formed quite a cloud over the proceedings, mingling with the circling Dragon craft.

Her matesprit stood work done for the moment, and cupped her cheek gently for a moment, smiling fondly, before turning to the assemblage of capes now starring in their direction with not a little fear.

"Today, we fight for our independence! Not from tyranny or oppression, but from annihilation."

It was a familiar speech, and in Jug's rasping basso profundo it seemed to resonate even more strongly with the assembled capes. More Mastering, most likely, but expertly done. Fight, and maybe die, or run, and certainly die.

"We're going to live on! We're going to survive! Today, we celebrate our independence day!"

With that last, Jug threw his head back and roared.

It was a sound which seemed to surpass sound, transcend hearing, to hum like the roar of a jet engine in the brain of every parahuman present. It hung in the air like a physical force, a weight and pressure like amplified gravity. Even as the echoes finally started to fade, a golden shimmer grew in the air.

Scion was here.

Taylor sent a wave of her new soldiers at him, slashing with rending claws and spitting with caustic venom. Even as the first few struck Scion waved his hand and they burst into so much chiton and ichor. The rest of the assembled capes took that as the signal to attack, throwing everything they had into it, tempered only by Taylor's instructions.

The tide of humanity smashed against the golden castle… and the castle held.

More capes died, singly or in entire groups, and Taylor felt her confidence waver.

"Is this going to work?"

Her voice was a whisper, and would have been inaudible to anyone without enhanced senses. Jug heard her.

"...No."

She looked at him, standing nearly a full head taller than her, face scarred and horns chipped. He had aged himself well past adulthood, for the first time she had ever seen. There was a charisma to him now, an air of command, and a heavy weariness as he looked deep into her eyes.

"Their attack is pointless; Scion is the well from which their powers all up and sprung. He designed them personally. They cannot really hope to inflict that which is harm upon him."

He glanced back up as another wave of her bugs and a few parahumans exploded into golden fire.

"But it does not need to. I only need him to become that which is distracted. His true body is elsewhere, many dimensions away from us, and scattered. He can model the thoughts which flicker through my pan, but he cannot actually see me, or my workings, and it is possible he does not understand all of the powers I collected unto my carnival. If his attention wavers but for an instant, I have a weapon which can strike him across the gulf of universe betwixt these frail forms."

Taylor glanced at the hulking silvery shape Jug had brought along with them, but he simply shook his head again.

"Not that. That will strike a great blow against him yes, but it will not kill him, or seriously injure him."

From his sylladex he pulled a small silver sphere, only the size of a grapefruit.

"Reality bomb. Kills universes. It will kill him. If I have but a moment."

Taylor stood and thought, focus split a million different ways as she worked to coordinate the troops and direct her attackers.

A distraction, only for a moment, just for a second, and the fight could be over. She glanced at the massive gun and a pair of her scarab warriors descended to move it for her. She locked her eyes on the Subjugglator once more.

"Stay safe."

His smile was crooked, teeth chipped and paint smeared, but oh so familiar, and warm, and safe. With a last wave, Taylor set off to do battle.

Calling it a battle was too generous. It was a staggered slaughter. By the end of the first hour she was convinced the only reason no one had fled was because Jug was keeping them there. Even when the Ziz descended from the sky and Behemoth erupted from the earth below, they were being forced back. Her beloved moved at the periphery of the fight, staying near Thinker clumps or those people with exotic powers. Shadows, presumably, in which he could stay hidden even as he turned the corpses which fell from the sky into more creatures for her to control. Different things, impossible things, bugs which breathed fire, could cut through time, could strike with the force of a meteor, more. Each one was different now, distinct, a novel power or power variant.

And all the while, they died. The ground was turning red from it, a blood-mud mixed with the wreckage of mangled bodies, lingering only for a moment before being consumed by the hungry earth.

The gun was fired, Scion went flying. For a moment there was cheer, a flicker of hope beyond the hatred and determination and euphoria woven around them all. Then the golden fool was back, face as placid and unconcerned as it ever was.

But their chance came.

A wave propagated from Scion, a golden ripple in the air. Where it passed, capes fell, a wall of stillness passing through them all. It stopped before reaching the edges of the battle, and Jug strode forward into the sea of corpses, mouth stretched into a hungry smile.

"Warrior, Fool, singleton, your time is ended, your cycle spent, your profligate waste brought low. You and your kind are a plague on this reality. She killed herself because she saw that."

Scion's placid facade shifted, for a moment, into an expression of utter despair, before the calm became a mask of total and consuming hatred.

But only for a moment.

"No more."

Even as Scion reached back his hand to conjure the golden ray of destruction there was a flicker of motion. Subjugglator's hand stretched forward and the golden man fell, limp as a puppet with its strings cut.

The thump as his body hit the ground was quieter than it seemed it should have been but only for a little while, before an echo heard across worlds heralded an explosion of activity. The golden corpse shuddered and writhed as the ground cracked under weight pushed through from parallel dimensions, the distributed form of the worm bleeding through, a forest of limbs and heads rupturing up from the ground and spreading out as a fourth dimensional entity collapsed down to just three.

The survivors ran from the torrent of flesh, but Taylor had eyes only for Jug, who continued to float a little ways above the expanding catastrophe. With a thought, one of her surviving scarab warriors flew down for her, and she climbed onto its back quickly, even as it began to fly towards her dearest friend.

"Jug!"

He turned towards her slowly, mouth shifting from a blank line to a small smile, even as he began to crumple.

Her mount caught him before he could fall far, and she saw the hole seared clean through his heart, its edges still glowing faintly golden.

"Hey! Jug, no, stay with me!"

His eyebrow quirked up very slightly at her distress even as he patted her gently on the cheek.

" 's okay. All okay."

There was purple dotting his lips, a speckle of life draining from him as his claws caught in her hair from the shaking of his hand.

"Everything ends. But nothing really stops."

With that last little word of comfort, he fell still, body reverting to a clone template which slid from her hands limply. Below her there was a new rumble from the mountain of flesh, before a small piece, a single torso, shifted. The new body slid off the precarious tower, and she only barely managed to catch Jug's new incarnation before it fell to the ground. The Troll was smaller, back to his actual size and age, only just 10. But he was alive, and whole, and after a moment his eyes opened to blink up at her.

Jug's expression was one of soft wonder and surprise, as if seeing her for the first time. The little bit of overbite showed only the rounded nubs of his fangs, the dangerous mirth which so often lingered about him completely absent as his face stretched into a wide smile, and then a shaking, delighted laughter.

It was a long moment before Jug began to subside, hugging her closer and breathing her in, saying only one simple thing.

"Mother fuckin' miracles."

~0~o~0~

Notes: I hope no one was waiting for this update on tenterhooks, because... seriously, I'm really sorry. The last PHO interlude honestly felt like a conclusion to me, even if I said I would write on more chapter. I don't like writing things that aren't doing anything new, it's why I have so few fics. I have a lot of ideas, but a good idea is way less important than follow through, and more than one fic (particularly CYOAs) I look at and say 'okay, neat, haven't seen that start before, where do we go from here that we haven't seen before?' and the answer, too often is 'nowhere really, we had a neat beginning and then it turned into every other thing out there'. So, when I wrote the last PHO interlude and it ended with the call to arms against Scion... we've seen people fighting Scion before. I actually had a bit of a picture in my head of what it should look like and... it wasn't new. It wasn't interesting. So I didn't want to write it.

But, I'm loath to leave a fic unfinished, or unlabeled as dead, and I actually really liked this one for the most part, even if I think it needs a bit of touching up (which I plan, but... we'll see). So, here it is, the last chapter. Sorry. :/

I think you can see what I mean. In particular, Taylor was always going to be less interesting in this version of reality, because she hadn't had a lot of the same moments. She was never betrayed by Armsmaster, she was never outed at school, she never fought the S9, she was never a warlord, she never killed Alexandria. So while that core of steel was still there, it was less tempered and her perspective was reduced as a result; I promised you a Taylor interlude, but I guess I didn't think it through. Le sigh. Well, my general level of writing is steadily improving I think; you can always check out the stuff I write on SB if you like, seeing as I post there more often.

Anyway, The End