Disclaimer: All rights belong to Wildbow and whoever came up with Magneto along with their subcontractors.

(If anything seems like a copy of another's work, please let me know.)

[TDASS: Taylor Doesn't Always get the Short Stick]

Shaker 13 (Mover 1, Brute 3 (field), Tinker 2, Stranger 2, Striker 1 and Master 2). This is how I rate Magneto at full power, but I don't quite think Taylor is there yet ;)

[TDASS: Taylor Doesn't Always get the Short Stick]

Chapter Summary: This is an alternative start to TDASS that I've been thinking off, where 8-year-old Taylor decides to meet her father for herself to try and see what her Mom saw in him. Mom doesn't really want to say that he was a one-night stand, so she lets her meet him.

PLEASE READ THE NOTES AT THE BOTTOM!

I know that I'm not biologically related to Dad, and I normally didn't care about it. I was curious, however, about him. My father, that is. How much did I look like him? Do I act like him? Do we like the same things. Would he like me? So when Mom finally sat me down to talk, and told me how she met my Father and then how she fell in with Dad, I finally asked the question that had been haunting my thoughts.

"Would he like me?"

Mom gave me this sad smile, and her hand shook as she ran it over my hair. "I think so dear, I really do."

She pulled me into a hug, and whispered into my ear softly, almost like she didn't want me to answer. "Do you... do you want to meet him?"

I shivered a little, goosebumps forming on my arms. I hugged myself, and looked up into Mom's eyes. "Yes." I whispered back.

Mom had me meet Father at the park. I wasn't really sure why we couldn't meet him at his place, unless he was homeless, but that would be weird. Mom stood, and I looked up from my hands. There was a man walking toward us with purpose, wearing a blue shirt and some kind of black pants that weren't jeans or slacks. They kinda looked like running pants, and he was wearing tennis shoes. Maybe he was just going on a walk or run or something.

He stopped to talk to Mom.

A slow realization started to dawn on me. Was he... my father?

I was looking up at him curiously when he seemed to take a deep breath, and kneeled down in front of me.

"Hello, Taylor. I'm Colin Wallis." He gave me a pretty smile, but I frowned, and tilted me head. He blinked.

"Why are you smiling fakely?"

"Taylor!" My mom looked embarassed. I wasn't sure why, I was asking Mr. Wallis a question that I wanted to know the answer to after all.

"It's fine Annette." He was giving me a considering look, his focused gaze made me a bit nervous, but it looked right on him. He didn't really look like a smiler.

He looked back to me. "How did you know that was a practiced smile."

I looked at him seriously. "You don't look like a smiler."

His mouth tilted to one side, and his shoulder's shook a little, then stopped. "You are quite like me, aren't you?"

"I am?"

"Very much so, I'm afraid."

"But why is that a bad thing? Aren't I supposed to be like my parents?" I was confused again.

"I am a very blunt person, and that has often gotten me in trouble. Not a lot of people like to be told things they don't like to their faces."

I crossed my arms and pouted. "But why should I talk in circles when they're just going to here it eventually?"

"I... think that's something your Mom and Dad will have to teach you. I'm still not quite sure myself, but I still have to play by their rules when I need something from them. I think that people prefer their words to be a game instead of a way of instant communication."

"I didn't think that adults still played games."

"Oh, they do. Their games just normally don't have any absolute rules."

I nodded, not feeling like talking anymore, and I reached for his hands. He gave them to me fairly easily.

He had really strong hands, with lots of caluses. His nails were a little dirty, but that was normal. Letting go of his hands, I reached for his face. This time he hesitated, but leaned forward slowly. I ran my hands through his hair, the strands cut fairly short. My hair fell over my shoulder, and I compared mine to his. My hair was a little lighter than his, closer to Mom's in color.

I slid off the bench, and I hugged him, burying my face in his shoulder. "It was nice meeting you, Father."

I stepped back, and walked over to Mom, grabbing her hand. We walked away, and I glanced back. Father was only just now standing from his crouch, and he turned to watch us leave for a moment. He squared his shoulders and turned, jogging off.

I was on a jog of my own right now, but I was no longer eight. I was eleven, and I had been going on jogs ever since I met my father. Mom used to jog with me until her class schedule changed, but said I could continue to run as long as I carried pepper spray and a phone, which Father had gotten for me. It didn't really look like a lot of the phones I had seen, so I figured that he had gotten a TinkerTech one. I hadn't tested how sturdy it was aside from the ocassional accidental drop, but it still looked and acted like it was still in mint-condition even though it was a couple of months old.

I hopped over the trick step and opened the door. "I'm home!"

Something clattered, and Dad ran over and hugged me. Something was soaking my shoulder, and Dad was shaking. "Dad?"

"There was an accident."

"Dad, what's going on." I was very carefully not panicing.

"Annette's in the hospital." Oh...

It was raining, and I was sitting on a park bench. Mom hadn't made it, had only lived long enough to hug me one last time. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, letting the rain wash away my tears. Not long after, the rain stopped reaching my face, and Armsmaster was holding an umbrella over me.

"Hello."

He sat on the bench next to me.

"I am sorry."

I turned and looked at him, surprised, and searched his visible features for anything I recognized. He gave me a smile.

"You don't look like a smiler."

No, I suppose he wasn't much of a smiler. I gave him a smile of my own, one that trembled on the corners, and took the umbrella.

I coasted through the rest of middle school, and considered Arcadia before deciding on Winslow to stay with Emma, as her grades were just under the qualifification for admittance, and I wanted to stay with my only friend.

Halfway through the summer, she stopped talking to me. A month later, there was a new Ward, a former vigilante named Shadow Stalker.

I walked into school that day, more nervous than I can recall feeling, beating that of even meeting my father for the first time. At least then, mom was with me. I refused to get my dad or my father involved, especially my father, that would be overkill. The Trio didn't greet me at the gate nor at the school entrance, but that only made my stomache start to twist in fear.

The hallway with my locker was packed with people, more than I can recall ever being in there even between periods or after the final bell rings. I could start to smell something, and it certainly wasn't pleasant. Taking a deep breath, I moved to open my locker, and gagged immediately. Before I could back away, I was shoved forward, and forcefully crammed into the locker.

"Let me out!" I started to scream, pounding on the door.

"Not a chance in hell, you pathetic little bitch." Annnd that would be Sophia.

"Emma! Please! Let me out!" I called out desperately.

"No way! This was my idea, you know. There's no way I would even think about helping someone as weak as you anyway."

"Madison, please, you know this isn't right."

"Whatever, you whore. At least you know what you smell like now."

The hallway erupted in laughter, and the first bell rung.

I was in there for hours, people hitting my locker as they walked by between classes. The final bell had rung over an hour ago, and I was waiting for the janitor to happen by. He did, and he was singing along to a song I couldn't hear. He had fucking earphone on.

The little bit of light I could see through the slots in the locker eventually disappeared, and I gave up.

Huge creatures filled my perception.

It was hard to say how I knew they were two different creatures, when each of them existed in multiple parallel spaces all at once. Countless mirror moved in sync with one another, each occupying the same space, just as solid as the others, differing in how they moved and the worlds they interacted with. Each of them folded, unfolded, expanded and shifted without taking more or less space. I couldn't wrap my head around it, even as I felt there was something like a pattern there.

Some distant part of me realized I'd seen something similar to that folding and unfolding once, in a much simpler form. A tesseract, a fourth dimensional analogue to the cube. The difference was that while the cube had six flat faces, each 'side' of the tesseract had six cubes, each connected to the others another at each corner. To perceptions attuned to three dimensions, it seemed to constantly shift, each side folding or reshaping so that they could all simultaneously be perfect cubes, and each 'side' was simultaneously the center cube from which all the others extended outward.

The primary difference between these things and the tesseract was that these beings I was looking at were alive, and they weren't simple models I was viewing on a computer screen. They were living entities, lifeforms. There wasn't anything I could relate to any biology I knew or understood, nothing even remotely recognizable, but they were undoubtedly alive. They were enigmas of organs that were also limbs and also the exteriors of the creatures, each simultaneously some aspect of the entity as it flowed through empty space. It didn't help that the things were the size of small planets, and the scope of my perceptions was so small. It helped even less that parts of them seemed to move in and out of the other dimensions or realities where the mirror images were.

The pair moved in sync, spiraling around one another in what I realized was a double helix. Each revolution brought them further and further apart. Innumerable motes drifted from their bodies as they moved, leaving thick trails of shed tissues or energies painting the void of empty space in the wake of their spiraling dance, as though they were made of a vast quantity of sand and they were flying against a gale force headwind.

When they were too far away to see one another, they communicated, and each message was enormous and violent in scope, expressed with the energy of a star going supernova. One 'word', one idea, for each message.

Destination. Agreement. Trajectory. Agreement.

They would meet again at the same place. At a set time, they would cease to expand their revolution and contract once again, until they drew together to arrive at their meeting place.

(Infestation 11.6)

A seam ripped open in the center of the locker, and I started fighting again. I had a way out, I could finally go home.

I cut myself open getting out, my hands, arms, face and legs bloodied from more than the locker. I slumped down in the hallway, blood dripping from me and my shoes squelching as I collapsed. I fumbled for my phone, hoping that it had survived. The first number I called wasn't Dad, but Father.

It rung, and he picked up after a few rings.

"Taylor? Where are you?"

"I want to go home." The phone slipped from my fingers

"Taylor? Taylor!" He sounded concerned, and I struggled to pick my phone back up.

"I'm so cold..."

"Hold on Taylor, I'll be right there, don't you dare hang up. Keep talking to me. Why are you at Winslow?"

"I was in my locker." I was smiling. Why was I smiling?

"Taylor, Taylor why were you in your locker?"

"The Trio did it."

"Who are the Trio, Taylor?"

"Emma, Sophia and Madison." I was starting to slur.

"What are their full names, Taylor, I need last names."

"Emma Barnes, Madison Clements and Sophia Hess." I could hear something. It was loud, and getting louder. Something screeched, and Armsmaster was in the hallway on his bike.

"Damn it! Miss Militia, what are the effects of using containment foam on open wounds?" Armsmaster growled.

"Nothing, it's only dangerous when the foam is removed."

"Have Panacea ready."

He started to spray foam on my wounds, and once he covered the worst of them he looked over at the locker. He looked inside, and took a couple of samples.

"Armsmaster?" I slurred at him, my surroundings were going fuzzy.

"Taylor? The medics are on their way, stay with me."

"I'm really tired."

"Taylor, Taylor don't you close your eyes. Remember Annette, remember your mom? Don't you do that to me. Eyes on ME, Taylor."

"I never... said thanks, about that phone."

"I'm just glad you have it."

There was a loud whooshing sound somewhere, and two EM's came in carrying a stretcher.

I blacked out when they moved me.

Basically, I'm just going to put this here as a guide and a refresher of Magneto's powers

Magneto is a mutant with the power to manipulate magnetic fields to achieve a wide range of effects.

The primary application of his power is control over magnetism and the manipulation of ferrous and nonferrous metal.

Maximum amount of mass he can manipulate at one time is unknown, he has moved large asteroids several times and effortlessly levitated a 30,000 ton nuclear submarine.

His powers extend into the atomic level (insofar as the electromagnetic force is responsible for chemical bonding), allowing him to manipulate chemical structures and rearrange matter, although this is often a strenuous task.

He can manipulate a large number of individual objects simultaneously and has assembled complex machinery with his powers. He can also affect non-metallic and non-magnetic objects to a lesser extent and frequently levitates himself and others.

He can also generate electromagnetic pulses of great strength and generate and manipulate electromagnetic energy down to photons. He can turn invisible by warping visible light around his body.

Another way in which Magneto frequently uses his power is the projection of force-fields which selectively block out matter and energy. These fields are strong enough to withstand the simultaneous detonation of multiple thermonuclear weapons, hence Magneto is invulnerable to most harm when surrounded by his shield and can survive in deep space thanks to it.

His shields have at times withstood the likes of the X-Men, Thor, Jean Grey as Phoenix, and briefly during Secret Wars an attack from Galactus.

He can also channel his powers through his own body to increase his strength and durability far beyond human limits and has a baseline reaction time 15 times faster than those of regular humans.

On occasion he has altered the behavior of gravitational fields around him, which has been suggested as evidence of the existence of a unified field which he can manipulate. He has demonstrated the capacity to produce a wormhole and to safely teleport himself and others via the wormhole.

Magneto has been frequently depicted as able to resist all but the strongest or most unexpected of telepathic attacks. A number of explanations have been proposed for his unusually strong resistance to telepathy, among them: (a) technology wired into his helmet (the explanation given in several comic plotlines), (b) some physical aspect of his electromagnetic powers that can interfere with telepathy (he once used the Earth's magnetic field to dampen the powers of all telepaths within his reach), (c) latent telepathic powers of his own or (d) sheer force of will. The theme of latent telepathic powers has been explored in a number of stories, among them the Secret Wars limited series.

In some of his earliest appearances, Magneto was depicted as capable of engaging in astral projection. He has used Cerebro to locate mutants at great distances while leading the New Mutants. He has also, on rare occasions, been shown reading other's dreams, issuing telepathic commands, and probing the minds of others.

He has demonstrated the ability to shield his mind, while in intense meditation, so completely that even Emma Frost was not able to read his thoughts, despite being directly in front of him and actively attempting to do so.

He possesses extraordinary skill in "reading" the microexpressions on others' faces and sensing what they are thinking and feeling, whether they are lying, fearful, etc. a skill which he refers to as "taking your enemy's measure".

He also is a master strategist and tactician with extensive combat experience, and has often been successful in single-handed combat against entire groups of superhuman adversaries. He also has some military training in hand-to-hand combat and has been shown to be effective with his fists, but he prefers to use his powers when in combat.

This will be translated later on into the fic, but I have... (ideas) :3