The entities spiraled through the void, passing around and through one another as their intertwining path caused them to overlap as they existed in the same space across different dimensions. To an outside observer, it would have been impossible to parse one from the other. In one dimension, enough of their shards existed to provide a phantom of a single being. In others, only a single shard. A view that encompassed the entirety of them simply was not possible according to traditional senses.

The two flew on through space, their destination determined. Space compressed, matter shifted to states less bound by physical laws, all in the name of increasing the speed of this approach. As they passed through space they harvested, stealing fragments of energy from hundreds of versions of each sun, small amounts of mass from thousands of alternate planets, reducing the drain on their resources. Such actions were subconscious to the entities. Their focus was elsewhere.

The Warrior cast its senses towards its partner. It had not gained anything in the exchange with the Other, leaving such matters to the Thinker and trusting any relevant information would be passed along to it.

Curiosity.

Satisfaction.

The Warrior did not pursue the topic further. Previously, its partner had expressed certainty in response to concern and now satisfaction in response to inquiry. The Thinker was not impaired and had benefitted from the intersection. The Warrior felt no need to inquire further unless an issue arose.

Something caught its attention. There was something ahead, near their projected path. This wouldn't normally be notable. Many things often passed near or through their paths. But this thing was moving. Not in the limited sense that most things did but in the same way it was, the way its partner was.

Detection.

Concern.

Disagreement.

Curiosity.

The Warrior cast out its senses. The Thinker was occupied, its own abilities would have to suffice. The object responded unusually, vaguely like how a loose shard would respond to a broadcast. The response was there but lacking complex intelligence, relying solely on base drive.

Trajectory.

Disagreement.

Anomaly.

Agreement.

The Warrior reached out farther with its space altering power, adjusting distances and vectors so the anomaly would be close enough to intersect on their path without the entities themselves having to divert their movements. When the arrival eventually came it was drawn into them, wrapped in defenses pointed inwards in case it should prove to be a threat.

What it proved to be was fascinating. The object was of living material, but of a kind the Warrior could only approach by leveraging a multitude of its powers to shift to something far from anything resembling physical form. At the same time it was limited, frail.

The Thinker was watching, probing with its own senses, but it was also analyzing the gathered shards from the Other even as it refined their plan for arrival based on the new information. Even with their capabilities, there was a limit to how much they could do at once. The limit was high but with a task as intensive as a shard exchange, one they'd not had practice with in a long time, it was pushed by this new issue.

Quarantine.

Disagreement.

The decision was made. The plan could not afford for them to delay their arrival while they parsed this anomaly, nor could they afford the energy drain to keep it thus contained for the entirety of the cycle to dissect later. They would have to do this now, either assimilating what they could or discarding it by their findings.

Relying on its partner to aid or warn it, but knowing this task was largely up to it, the Warrior set about its own examination. It probed experimentally, a beam of energy effortlessly slicing a piece off to be drawn away from the whole. Though vastly smaller than the whole the piece maintained its anomalous properties.

The Warrior drew on its stored energy to manifest a new shard, small and lacking in purpose, before moving it to the fragment and merging the two together. The result was immediate. The fragment contained power, incredible power.

A probe of its senses investigated the matter, seeking the source. Neither the fragment nor the original mass had such energy that it could detect. Using the fragment now considered a part of the entity itself as a window into the whole, the Warrior investigated. No, the fragment didn't have the power itself. It was merely an aperture, a recipient much as how hosts received energy from the shards. However, the origin was not the original mass.

It looked more. No, the mass was receiving energy too. Whatever the source was it broadcast to its fragments, whether that fragment was broken from the original or a fragment of a fragment. The Warrior leeched from this energy, drawing on it to power its attempts to follow the trail back and find the source.

What it found was incredible. Just as the entities passed through many versions of reality, all of these versions were themselves simply one branch of an array of alternate realities too vast for even it to comprehend. The source of the energy was a far simpler matter, originating from an alternate cluster of realities just as the entities dwelled in their own cluster.

Discovery.

The following series of broadcasts were complex, carving apart what had been learned. The cycle could be expanded, moving on to other clusters just as their ancestors had moved onto different worlds. The Thinker replied as the Warrior began breaking down the anomaly for dissemination. Some shards were immediately fused with fragments to serve as a greater power source, reducing their draw on the entities' reserves. Others were paired with sensory shards, locked into a loop of self-analysis to increase the collected information.

Their approach was near, shards already being shed in anticipation for arrival. The Warrior worked quickly, attempting to complete the integration of the anomaly even as the Thinker refined the plan in response to the changes.

It was too much. They were overtaxed between the anomaly and the recent shard exchange. With shards already gone and more departing every moment, the entities' efforts were hasty, lacking the amount of foresight and planning that their actions usually had. In such circumstances, mistakes were made. The Warrior sensed as the Thinker cast off vital shards, only to falter as it found the replacements were insufficient. It felt itself waver as its attempts to complete the exchange of the anomaly continued without the Thinker to guide its actions, knowing that it was acting outside of the plan for the cycle.

It abandoned its work as it arrived, casting off the still separate pieces of the anomaly as it shifted itself to survive the impact. In the flurry of action and stimuli, it scarcely noticed a small piece of input. The Warrior could be forgiven for that. It wouldn't be for some time that it constructed its avatar, and even then it would have depended on the knowledge of the Thinker to properly intake the information of the host species. The input was simple, an emotion that emanated briefly from every shard now fused with the anomaly.

Hate.

I woke to the sound of muffled conversation. My first reaction was to try and shuffle myself farther under the covers to go back to sleep, but instead of the slight adjustment of comfort I'd expected the small motion brought half a dozen things wrong to my attention. The sheets didn't feel right against my skin, the pillow under my head didn't compress the way I expected, a breeze blew on my face when I knew my windows were shut and there were no vents in my room that would cause it.

I opened my eyes blearily and immediately jumped from "half-asleep" to "panic." I definitely wasn't in my room, and that was pretty sad that that was the entire list of places I could possibly wake up and feel safe. But even under the best of circumstances it wouldn't be great to would be great to wake up in a hospital.

I was pretty sure that's where I was anyways. Everything was blurry without my glasses, but I could tell the room was small and monotonously colored white with a chemical smell in the air. The bed was definitely a medical one. Either that, or a pretty good approximation of the ones shown on tv.

I raised myself up on my elbows, wincing a bit at unexpected discomfort. My back was sore, as were my arms, and I couldn't remember why. I took a look at myself and the source immediately became clear. There were bruises on my elbows and parts of my forearms, with skin clearly scraped away on my fingertips and knuckles. Smaller scrapes and bruises decorated my arms and every bit of skin I could see was a faint pink, like I'd just stepped out of a really hot shower. With the way it stung when I brushed against the sheets though, it felt more like I'd been scraped raw.

I pulled up my sleeve, and sure enough the pink extended farther. That drew my attention to something else: this wasn't my sleeve. I was wearing a hospital gown, not the clothes I'd put on for school this morning. I felt my face heat a bit as I realized that someone would have had to undress me to change me into this. The injuries I could deal with, but even the idea of being exposed like that made me cringe.

But the injuries… I didn't think they seemed that bad, though there seemed to be a bunch of them. I poked one of my bruises, trying to remember what had happened. I'd woken up here and they'd put me in a gown, which all spoke to expecting me to be here a while.

Or I'd already been here for a while.

Now I was starting to be afraid. I tried to slow my breathing before I started full-on hyperventilating. Okay, think this through. Last thing I remember. What was it? Where?

I wracked my memories, trying to distract myself from my current situation. I'd been at school, I remembered that much, the first day back from winter break. I remembered trying to blend in with the crowd, relying on the fact that everyone was wearing baggy winter clothes to try and hide myself, hopeful that the terrible trio might be distracted enough with holiday catch-up to let me slip for just one day. And then…

I couldn't remember. I frowned, trying to think of anything that could lead me to memories of what had happened. I couldn't remember any classes, so whatever it was it happened soon after I arrived. I shifted my weight in the bed a bit, trying to get comfortable, catching a whiff of that chemical odor in the process. The smell triggered something, a phantom memory of a different smell. I seized on it, trying to remember something, anything that would tell me why I was here.

What was the smell I remembered? Not chemical, not food, but… rancid. That thought was enough. I remembered the smell, remembered what had happened. I immediately wished I'd left well enough alone and settled for ignorance.

I remembered the smell when I got to my locker in the morning, vile and rotten. I knew as soon as I smelled it that is was the trio's work, but I'd assumed just jimmied the lock and filled it with stink bombs or something. It had taken me a moment to realize what I was looking at when I opened my locker, realize just how bad it was. And in that moment of realization hands grabbed me from behind, shoved me into the locker, and closed the door behind me with the sound of mocking laughter.

I'd spent what felt like hours in there. Maybe it had been. It was long enough to hear the bustle of people in the hallways going to class die off into silence, long enough to realize that no one who'd seen me shoved in the locker had done anything about it. Face pressed into the mess on the back wall, unable to look out the slits, a coffin crossed with a septic tank. I'd screamed, slammed my back into the door, but no one had answered. I spent who knows how long trapped in that locker, unable to move, trying my best not to breathe because every breath made me want to retch, battering myself sore as I tried everything I could to push open the door or even make enough noise for someone to investigate. And then…

I lost the thought as the door to the room opened. A nurse stood in the doorway with a clipboard. She looked up from it and blinked in surprise as she saw me. "You're awake," she said, seeming almost relived. The comment really didn't help my fears that I'd been in here for months.

She leaned back out the door, closing it all but a crack as she said something to someone I couldn't here before stepping back into the room. "Hello," She said in a reassuring tone as she walked over to the bed. "Can you tell me your name?"

My first attempt at a response was just a rasp. Apparently my throat was a lot drier than I'd thought. I swallowed a few times and tried again. "Taylor Hebert." I croaked. "How long have I been here?" Probably a bit rude, but I needed to know.

She gave me a look that seemed like a perfectly practiced mix of reassuring good humor and calming confidence. "You've been here a week and a half," she responded, "Don't worry, we already called your dad and he's on his way."

She gave me another look, this one closer to empathy at my situation. Or pity, if I wanted to be harsh. "Do you want me to wait with you until he's here?"

Belatedly, I realized I was in some position halfway between curled into a ball and sprawled out. I forced myself to relax, settling into a more normal position. "Yes, please."

She didn't say anything in response but she grabbed one of the chairs along the wall and pulled it closer, sitting down beside me. She put a hand on the bed beside me, letting me take her hand if I wanted to. After a moment of hesitation, I did. The human contact was oddly grounding. I didn't have a boyfriend, no one at school touched me other than to push me around, and Dad had never been the most physically affectionate even before Mom died. This was my first positive physical contact in I didn't even know how long. A year, at least.

I grasped her hand more firmly. She picked up on that, squeezing my hand reassuringly. She also apparently picked up on that I wasn't really in the mood to talk, because she didn't say anything else. I wanted to think more about the locker, as much as I hated the idea of it. I was certain there was something else, but I didn't feel comfortable doing that with someone else right here.

Instead I thought myself in circles, dwelling on book plots and old movies I'd seen. It felt odd to do the same sort of daydreaming in a hospital. I usually only felt safe enough to zone out like this at home, another thing I'd given up to the bullying over the past year and a half of bullying. We sat there in silence for however many minutes until I heard the running footsteps approaching the door. A moment later it was flung open and Dad was there.

He looked bad. Not that I wasn't happy to see him, but the almost desperate, forlorn look on his face brought back memories of the time shortly after Mom had died. I'd seen that expression on him a lot then and I remembered how bad things had been then for both of us. The idea that he felt that way again and it was my fault was almost as bad as my physical pain.

I could feel myself starting to cry. "Dad!" I didn't yell so much as I choked the word out between the dryness of my mouth and the tightness in my throat, but I was loud enough for him to hear.

He rushed across the room to pull me into a hug, his thin shoulders shaking with sobs. "Oh kiddo," he said, barely more intelligible than I had, "I- Oh God, I'm glad you're alright. I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry."

I hugged him back as tight as I could, beginning to cry in earnest now. I'm not sure how long we stayed like that desperately clinging to each other and practically bawling our eyes out. At some point the nurse had slipped her hand out of mine and retreated from the room to give us privacy, which I was grateful for.

Finally Dad let go of me and sank into the seat the nurse had been sitting in, still within easy arms reach. "Oh, Taylor." He sighed, his voice cracking. The puffy red eyes and marks of tears on his face didn't do anything to make his forlorn expression any better. If anything, I felt worse seeing that. When Mom had died he'd mostly withdrawn into himself, barely functioning or reacting. This was a whole new level of grief to see on him and it was gut-wrenching.

"Dad, I'm okay." The rasp in my voice didn't give the lie any credibility but it needed to be said. I wasn't happy about it, but Dad didn't handle grief well. He couldn't afford to backslide into the same pall he'd been under since Mom's death. I couldn't afford it.

It was a kind of sick irony that I was the one in the hospital and still felt like I needed to look out for my own father's interests. If this was some sort of joke by the universe, I wasn't laughing.

Dad, on the other hand, was, a short bark of a laugh without humor. "Okay?" he said disbelievingly, "Taylor, they told me what happened. The way they found… You were in toxic shock, they had to keep you under for a week and then you still didn't wake up!"

My stomach turned at that. I didn't know much about medicine, but even I knew that was Bad with a capital B. I'd always suspected that the Terrible Trio would put me in the hospital at some point, but for something like a broken bone after Sophia pushed me down the stairs. This was a whole other level.

"They told me how they found you." Dad said quietly. His voice pulled me out of my thoughts to listen to him. His voice didn't have that trembling quality it had before when he was afraid for me. "By your locker, covered with… stuff. How did it happen?"

I didn't answer right away, scrambling for the right response. I'd been able to hide most of the bruises and the stains and the general mess left by the bullying and make excuses for the rest, but that wouldn't work here.

I decided to go with the truth, or at least most of it. "Just some kids who thought it would be a fun joke." I said.

"Who?" he asked. I could recognize the tension in his voice, it was the way he always sounded when I'd done something wrong and he wanted to yell at me. And on the occasions where it wasn't directed at me, it was the way he sounded when he was collecting himself to verbally tear someone a new one.

I nearly cracked when he asked. The idea of telling him about Madison, Sophia, fucking Emma, it would be a weight off my shoulders. But hearing his voice, seeing the anger in his frame, I knew that if I told him, he'd go after them. He'd try to sue them, sue the school, make the biggest mess he could and dig his heels in until they paid.

But I also knew it wouldn't work. The school would be no help, they always seemed to be covering for them. I'd be lucky if they even admitted that anything had happened at all and didn't try to 1984 it out of my head. The other students would never turn of some of the most popular people, that would be social suicide. Hell, Emma's dad was a lawyer!

It wasn't a fight we could win. And with how expensive I assumed the hospital bills to be and our general lack of funds in the first place, it wouldn't be a fight worth picking in the first place.

So I lied. "I don't know." I said. "I was facing into the locker when they shoved me in. I didn't see them and I don't know their voices."

Internally I was screaming. I was covering for them. A year and a half of torment, and I was covering their asses for what they did to me. The thought of it made me feel vile, but I bit down my desire to take it back and tell him everything.

Dad didn't respond for a while. Maybe he thought I was hiding something, maybe he was just trying to process that he wouldn't have a target to vent his anger on. The sick feeling in my gut now had a twist of guilt for lying to him. Great, some flavor for my misery. Just what I needed.

"If you're certain…" He said questioningly, leaving it open for me to reply. I didn't.

The conversation sort of trailed off after that. He tried a few half-hearted questions, but they were all about school, and he didn't seem to get that my half-hearted answers meant I wanted to talk about something else. Instead he just stopped talking altogether, leaving us sitting in silence until a doctor came to talk to him.

Apparently I wouldn't get to go home until tomorrow morning. Now that I'd woken up they apparently wanted to keep me for observation. Half of me understood, while the other half wanted to protest and go home now. If I was going to be stuck in a bed, I at least wanted it to be my bed, not to mention how much another day in the hospital would cost.

In the end, my desire to not die of a sudden medical problem won out and I didn't argue. Dad left after that, discussing the particulars of my hospital stay with the doctor. I wanted to feel saddened at that, but I only felt relieved.

I lay back on the bed, trying to do my best to relax now that I didn't have to try and fumble through a conversation. Dad was leaving, the doctors probably wouldn't check on me so soon after one had just been in here, so I had time to think.

I took a deep breath as I started thinking about the locker. It wasn't any easier to stomach this time, and bile rose in my throat. I gritted my teeth and forced it back down. I had weathered the Trio in person for a year and a half, and there was no way I'd let a memory of what they'd done be the thing to break me.

There had been something off, I remembered that much. Now I just needed to remember what. Was it something before the locker? Inside of it? Or maybe…

I frowned as a thought crossed my mind. Something dad had said… He'd said they found me by my locker, not in it. That… lined up actually. My memory was fuzzier towards the end, probably because I'd passed out a few times between the smell and trying to avoid it by holding my breath. But I did remember the locker opening and dumping me onto the ground along with a tide of filth

That was what was off. No one had done anything when the Trio tormented me before, why would someone do something then? Even with the locker no one had done anything, not when they saw me get shoved into it and not for what I hazily guessed to be an hour or so afterward.

So who let me out? A mystery Samaritan? A passing cape? A wry smile crossed my face. Or maybe just a normal person who didn't realize it was me in there. Wouldn't that be rich if they'd thought they were helping a stranger and regretted it once they realized it was someone they knew.

Maybe I could ask the school. I chuckled a bit at that. If I did, I could probably find them by asking who had gotten detention. It would be just like Winslow to punish whoever it was on the grounds that they'd spilled the mess in my locker into the hall.

But something told me that wasn't it. There was something else, some little detail that was niggling at the back of my mind. I spent at least another half-hour going over that same stretch of memories again and again in slightly different ways before I realized it.

The sound. After the first period bell rang, I'd stopped screaming, trying to conserve my energy in case I heard someone walk by that I could call to for help. After the first half-hour or so I'd given up on breaking the door myself. I'd just sat there, quiet and still in my rank jail cell, listening for someone to come by.

But I remembered not moving or screaming when the door opened. That meant that I hadn't heard anyone approach, and that didn't make sense. Maybe it was a cape after all, how else could they have gotten to the door without me hearing them? I thought there were a few capes in the city that could do that. Maybe Velocity, or Shadow Stalker

I wracked my brain, trying to remember some other detail, some clue. A cape didn't make sense though, why would they have been in Winslow? I remembered Shadow Stalker was a new member on the Wards team, so she could have been in a school, but the Wards went to Arcadia.

Then who was it? Try as I might, I couldn't remember anything else, the memories were too fuzzy. I just remembered feeling trapped, alone, wishing someone had done something instead of-

My thoughts were cut off by a noise halfway between breaking glass and a stone being crushed. I sat bold upright just in time to see the air above the foot of my bed crack. A spiderweb of glowing white cracks spread out through the air from a central point. They simply hung there for a fraction of a second before they moved. The central point was pushed out and the 'fragments' of air seemed to collapse like shards from a mirror. Instead of falling they were drawn to the center, collapsing and folding together around a shape that seemed to be emerging from the broken air.

I couldn't be entirely sure if the thing came through the broken space of if the broken space had condensed into it, but in a moment the cracks were gone and there was something standing on my bed.

My breath caught in my throat from fear as I regarded the thing. As such a close distance, I didn't need my glasses to make it out. It was about the size of a toddler, but it looked nothing like any toddler I'd ever seen. It stood on backwards jointed legs with a tail flicking in the air behind it. Its hands had only three fingers and its arms reached down almost to its first set of knees. Its head seemed almost flattened, a disk-like shape with six beady red eyes and a nasty-looking arrangement of teeth flanked by a set of mandibles. The entire thing was covered in a brown-black exoskeleton, with spines protruding from the edges of its head, along its spine, and at each of its knees and elbows.

I sat perfectly still, trying not to move in case that set it off. I stared at it. It stared back. Strangely enough, the fear I had felt moments before was fading away. In its place I felt something new, something alien to me. A connection of some sort, linking me to something else.

Panicked and recently awoken from a week-long coma I may have been, but I wasn't an idiot. There was only one thing that could be on the other end of that connection that would make sense, and I was looking at it right now.

I sank back onto my elbows, my gaze still fixed on the creature in front of me. It clicked its mandibles and turned its head, regarding me with something like curiosity. My mind raced, trying to grasp the truth that was now so clear.

It had been a cape after all: me.

New Summon: Vexgit Gremlin (LE tiny fey, CR 1)