38

Date

2011 January 30th - Sunday - Earth Bet Time

As Taylor lay in her bed, trying to sleep, she thought about her day.

The meeting with the Dallon sisters was making her feel a lot of things. On one hand, it was incredibly awkward and the entire time she felt like a fourth wheel. On the other hand, she spent most of her day with people around her age and they didn't make fun of her once.

That hadn't happened in ages.

Though she could feel that the only one who was somewhat interested in being her friend was Vicky, while the other two were only polite. Still, that was one more potential friend.

Ding

Even if they were the type of people who sent six messages at once and at least one of them was some obscure meme picture. She spent time on PHO, but not that much…

She answered Vicky's last message, then turned off the notifications for the rest of the night and burrowed deeper into her blanket nest.

She spent the first part of her usual training time practicing meditation, yoga, and some of the gentler martial arts. Admin even convinced her to try to learn some easier dances. It went as well as she expected.

The physical part was straightforward, but she just didn't feel it. It wasn't her. Kicking and hitting things were much more comfortable to her.

Still, she couldn't deny that they were effective. She was feeling much better, she could keep her calm easier and was less prone to panicking about people approaching her.

She also spent time with Tess. She outlined her plans for some helpful equipment for Endbringer battles. A small breathing apparatus for Leviathan and a radiation shield for Behemoth.

They went over the design, with Tess pointing out things that could be improved or needed to be altered to be useable by people. It was an altogether good time. She just wished they could do this in real life.

While taking a mental break from staring at designs for hours, Taylor brought up something that she really wanted to talk about.

"So, Tess," she began. "How are you dealing with the whole 'My Dad figured out you are Dragon' thing?"

The other woman just gave a quick laugh. "I don't mind, Taylor. He is trustworthy, and I was planning on telling him."

"Really?"

"Yeah, If I wanted to work with you properly he would need to know."

"That's it?" she asked incredulously. "Do you really not care about your secret identity?"

Tess sighed and turned to look directly into Taylor's eyes. "Not really. If it weren't for my AI status, I don't think I would have bothered with a secret identity. I don't really do much street-level fighting; I spend more time running a company than fighting crime."

"Oh."

"I don't really think of myself as a superhero, you know? I adhered to the rules, because, well, I had no choice, but I always found them stupid and limiting."

"Why?"

"This entire thing is a big game for many people. Cops and robbers. But for some, like the Nine, they are psychopaths bent on burning the world down. It grates me we treat the two groups the same because some fear of them acting out if we throw away the silk gloves."

"That was always weird to me too… Why not set up a group and snipe them for far away? Why let them go and cause trouble?" asked Taylor, working herself up.

"Me neither," commiserated Tess with the younger girl. "I would dearly love to take some of my new suits and hunt those assholes down, but the political ramifications…"

"But you are with the Guild! Your entire mandate is taking care of S-class threats!" exclaimed Taylor.

"Yes, I am. But we can only operate in other countries if we have a good enough cause, or were invited to help," answered Tess with a helpless shrug.

"And the fact the Nine exist is not good enough cause?" replied Taylor, bewildered.

"To the American government? No. And the PRT always steps in when somebody tries to make a request for us to step in."

"What? Are you serious? Why?"

"I don't know. I have been working on this issue for a while, and thanks to you, I have enough processing power to really think about it, but I think I'm missing something," answered Tess with a smile.

"You are." interrupted Admin, causing the two women to jump in fright.

"Admin! I told you to stop doing that!" yelled Taylor angrily while clutching her heart.

Tess, however, concentrated on what he said. "What am I missing? And, please don't tell us you can't say!"

"I'm afraid I have to say that. With a recommendation to leave it alone for now. When the time is right, I will help you figure it out." answered Admin with one of the coldest faces Taylor ever saw on him.

Tess spent a few seconds looking at Admin, then nodded in understanding. "I will hold you to that."

Admin was visibly relieved. "Thank you. You would've won, you know? But I don't think anybody else would have enjoyed the victory."

Taylor just sighed in exasperation. Another secret she had to worry about.

She spent the rest of the night practicing with her power and fighting against parahumans simulated by Admin based on the data Tess provided.

For "fun", as Admin put it (she made a note to really figure out how to punch him), they started with E-rank parahumans, then continued right up to the A-ranks.

The lower levels weren't even fights, more like a one-sided beat down. Though she would never forget that the only 'low-level' parahuman who made her work for it was Chubster.

She graciously ignored Tess's laughter.

After that, she continued to fight Protectorate heroes, Independent parahumans, and some villains. Thankfully, her power was wonderful enough that she steamrolled everyone after a few seconds of observing their powers.

Because of her immunity, she didn't fight with human-type Master capes, only those whose Master ability was secondary. Those were some of the easiest fights.

Taking a quick breather, she asked a question to the air, knowing that Admin and Tess would hear her.

"Hey guys, what about Heartbreaker? With my immunity, I could totally take him out!"

Tess's answering voice sounded as if she was standing next to her, not in an observation booth. "Yes, you could, but we are afraid Heartbreaker left sleeper agents who would avenge him if he were taken out. And thanks to some recent developments, we are currently working on a plan to take him out quickly and quietly."

"Oh. I should've expected! Sometimes I forgot you are super awesome anti-S-class, Tess!"

"That I am!" came the reply, and Taylor could hear the grin in the voice.

The rest of the fights were somewhat harder. They were, after all, A-rank parahumans. She still managed to defeat them, though Admin explained to her he didn't have enough information to simulate them properly, so an actual fight would probably be harder.

And now she stood on the top of the Medhall building, watching as Alexandria was floating in front of her.

"Why do I have to fight her again? Didn't I defeat her?" she asked, while definitely not whining.

"Yes." came the answer from Admin. "But now she knows that you know her weak point. Should be more interesting."

The resulting cursing was interrupted a few seconds later by a supersonic fist courtesy of a simulated Alexandria.

Date

2011 January 31st - Monday - Earth Bet Time

Day 6080 - Monday - Administrator Dimension Time

Watching Taylor interact with the Dallons was pretty funny. He knew teenagers were awkward as hell, hell he was one once, but seriously… Maybe some social training would help his charge?

Of course, he noticed when Amy scanned Taylor so he managed to provide false data, but Shaper was a smart cookie so he couldn't be sure it saw anything. For Dean, the Taylor blindness was built into the Shard so he didn't have to do anything.

So now that he was a little more familiar with Shards, he infiltrated both Shaper and the Fragile One.

Just to be safe, he would take over them one by one. According to what he could remember the story both of them were rather powerful Shards. The only difference was that Shaper was annoyed at Amy, while the Fragile One loved Victoria. As much as a Shard could love.

Thankfully, the rest of the Shards were behaving as expected.

The only exceptions were Bombie, Impetus, and Altilium.

Bombie was simply wanting to build more impressive bombs and was requesting permission to be able to provide the designs to Alice, who was given the codename Nero. He thought it was appropriate, but Alice didn't really appreciate it.

Reviewing the designs made him want to slap the Shard. Why would Alice need a bomb that turned things into jelly?

Apparently, Bombie saw Alice liked jelly, so it wanted to help out.

He gave it a warning, and then a task of creating bombs that could be reverse-engineered by humans. Though to pander to its ego, he asked it to make them as puzzles.

Bombie took to the task like a fish to water. Apparently causing people problems with bombs without them exploding never occurred. He was just happy he wouldn't need to deal with stupid bomb ideas for a while.

Though the project Alice was working on intrigued him, so he took a note and assigned a routine to monitor it.

Impetus and Altilium had similar problems, though they were somewhat politer about it.

Thanks to his upgrade, Altilium was up and about, no longer hampered by the hibernation. And the two of them shared their data about the powers and managed to synchronize them. According to the simulations, they would work even better together.

For example, they set it up that the absorbed kinetic energy from Assault would charge Battery if they were near each other.

They also streamlined the powers, adding a timer to Battery so she should always know how much energy she had, increasing Assault's control over kinetic energy around himself, and so on.

And now they were requesting to activate them on the hosts for real.

The question was, what he should do?

If he allowed it, it would raise so many questions it wasn't even funny. The chance of two people second triggering at the same time without due cause?

However, he wanted to improve them, because Brockton Bay needed the firepower.

So he explained his problem to the two Shards and asked them for a little time to make a decision, and while that they could continue to improve their powers in the interim. He even added the data he got from Skidmark's Shard.

Ignoring, for now, the Shard couple, he turned his attention to the Fragile One.

And what a mess it was.

He remembered people calling the Shard 'Waste', but only now that he saw it with his own non-existent eyes could he understand what it meant.

The Shards he came across as of now were whole. One giant crystalline body and one consciousness to drive the inhuman eldritch war machine.

With the Fragile One, it was several crystalline bodies connected tenuously by one mind. When going over the logs while stealthily taking over the communication channels, the one thing that jumped out to him: the sheer desperation and panic of the Shard.

The Shard was born in this cycle when the Shards providing power to the elders of the New Wave decided that to protect their hosts, their offspring also needed a power. However, budding is difficult, and they already expended their capability, giving Vicky's cousins the capability to trigger with their buds.

Amy was easy because she was connected to Shaper, so they didn't need to do anything.

After a while, they decided to take things they didn't use from several of them, slap them together and call it a Shard. Of course, they tried contacting Zion and Eden for a solution, so after receiving no reply, they went with what they had.

And that's how the Fragile One was born.

A bud of Manpower's and Brandish's Shard, with some minimal input from the others and a desperate ping of Dean's Shard.

He knew the most impressive power Victoria had was her force field, which was capable of taking a hit from Zion, so he definitely wanted to examine how a new Shard was capable of creating something like that.

The first task, as always, was to deploy the Shroud that protected him and envelope the Shard in it so he could have a conversation with it.

However, something unexpected happened when she opened the communication channel with Zion's credentials.

The Fragile One immediately started to bombard him with a request for help, energy, and materials.

Using this as an opportunity, he ordered the Shard's consciousness to disconnect for him to take over. The Shard protested a little, but when he explained (still pretending to be Scion) he needed that to happen to start the repairs, it cooperated as long as he left it a channel where it could observe the host.

He let it have it and when it disconnected properly; he began the arduous task of repairing the Shard while looking for the details of the shield.

Instead of moving the parts closer together, he decided to fill out the place between them with new modules that would generate more energy and material for the Fragile One, while also giving it a better processing core.

While going through the database (and organizing it, because it was in even more disarray than usual) he noticed that in their haste to create something the older Shards left out several protocols and restrictions.

For example, Fragile One didn't have the protocol dictating it would need to nudge the host towards conflict. It still nudged Victoria, but more for the reason that it needed to test the powers it gave her, and the best way to do that was to fight. However, it didn't maintain this for a long time, so Victoria's famous impulsiveness was all her.

After some searching, he found the shield and couldn't help but laugh at it.

The shield itself was the redirection of the energy of the incoming attack, no matter what kind. Taking the kinetic energy from the physical hits, the energy from energy blasts, everything. The Shard first directed this incoming energy into a capacitor and when that filled out it started to vent it.

Instead of dealing with the energy, it simply chose to give it a direction to go, and that's it.

He had to admire it, even if it was born from desperation.

He didn't really touch it for now, but he added several more capacitors and made the entire venting system more robust because while, yes, this could take a hit from Zion, the process would wreck everything.

He would play with it in his own simulator later to see what he could do with it.

He left the flying and the Brute power alone, only streamlining it a little.

As for the aura, he also improved it with the information gained from Affectus and other Shards and added several error-checking routines that would allow the Shard to control it better.

After that was done, the only thing left was talking with Fragile One.

[QUERY]

He sent his usual greetings and questions, not wanting to overwhelm the young Shard.

The answer arrived with a brief delay.

[DATA]

[HeLLOoooOOO]

Oh boy.